The way we read another person’s smile, and the emotions which it may be said to indicate, depends upon the mental faculties and instincts upon which we rely for guidance. That mental equipment is obviously unique to each individual, and therefore serves some people better than others. Naturally, it can improve or deteriorate with age, so that the naïve observation of youth may, with luck, give way to the wisdom of years. It may also vary in quality and reliability depending upon circumstances too various even to imagine. And sometimes we exhibit our full measure of humanity simply by getting it wrong. We are easily capable of misreading another person’s smile, misinterpreting or misunderstanding it, and the consequences of that can be tragic or merely comical. Everybody has a blind spot, and there is nothing quite so reassuring as the discovery that somebody else’s is more ridiculous than your own. It would be interesting if some day we should read a headline in the daily newspaper which said, A germ of fear is not operating in a certain locality, or infecting a whole community. And it would be interesting if the same article were to tell us that a group of people were working to counteract this fear germ by broadcasting faith. And then after a while we would pick up another newspaper which had a headline reading, We are now inoculated with faith, and the fear germ has disappeared. #RandolphHarris 1 of 8
In most encounters we can determine the kind of experience we are going to have by how we respond. The quickest and most effective method to get rid of fear is to get quiet and lift up the whole though in confidence and faith to something bigger than we are. It is like going from a cold, dark room into the sunshine and just sitting there, letting the rays of the Sun penetrate the whole being with warmth and colour until the darkness and the dampness are gone. So it is with the life of prayer and faith, of affirmative meditation and of communion with that divine spirit which is closer to us than our very breath. The raw materials of creation are all around us. Sculptors of life we are, with our uncarved souls before us. Everyone of us is carving a soul. Let us determine now to make those souls pure and chaste. Create homes filled with love and serenity. Relieve suffering. Create enduring testimonies of eternal truths in ourselves and others. Do we recognize in our own lives the opportunities for creation that there are? Do we prize the gifts, talent, and choice spirits that God has given us? Do we share the creations of our hearts, minds, and hands with others? Let us not forget if fear is contagious, faith is doubly so. How wonderful it is to realize that we can so influence our environment that everyone who steps into it will be benefited. If this is what we are doing, the very stars in their courses will conspire to assist us. #RandolphHarris 2 of 8
The miracles recorded in the Bible have done more than anything else to set the stage for all subsequent paranormal phenomena in Western culture, outside as well as inside a specifically religious context. There are over two hundred instances of paranormal powers recorded in the Gospels that in many quarters still stand as the primary exemplar of what a human who is more than a human-machine might do. Miracles provide the type for the new phenomena that people imagine and hope that they might find in life. Faith is the absolute trust that there is wisdom and power beyond what we can measure, know or control, and that the mysterious nature of the Universe will work in our favor as we learn to welcome it. For many, this means that we have faith that God will intervene or take over our situations for the better. The World is not corrupt and things will work out for the best. Faith is linked to extraordinary things and outright miracles from God. The power of our mind can make objects at a distance (including human bodies) undergo physical changes in the direction we desire. We can, through faith, intervene in the normal chains of causation and form and transform matter. #RandolphHarris 3 of 8
And we may be certain of something else—there is at the center of our beings a strong fortress of faith, placed there by a power greater than we are, by an intelligence that knows everything, and forevermore held in place by a divine presence which is the God in us. It is to this indwelling God that we must turn. So how would it be if we worked out a method for doing this? First of all, if we are filled with fears we cannot harbour them as a great secret in our life, but in prayer look at God as a close friend or confidant to whom we may unburden our whole soul. This will release the tension which our fears have built up in our bodies. Prayer can be a conversational talk with God, as if he is a calm, confident person, who can point out the reason why we need not entertain these fears, and that is a great relief. We are circled eternally in God’s arms of love. The next thing we have to do is build our faith, and realize that we would not be here were there not a power greater than we are that put us here. We must learn to have confidence in this power. As we confess our fears to ourselves before this power, and reach a little higher in faith than where we were in fears, we will discover a miracle is taking place—fears will begin to recede, until finally they appear as a speck on the horizon of our mind, and then they seem to walk over that horizon and disappear entirely, like darkness running away from the light. #RandolphHarris 4 of 8
Casting out doubt and fear and stress is not as difficult as it sounds. We all need to resurrect the innocence within us, which has unfortunately has been so buried in our unhappy experiences that we have almost forgotten that the purity of heart and spirit was ever there. However, we have not quite forgotten, have we? We all need to resurrect the confidence in life which we have in our youth. To recapture this dream of youth is the wisest and the most intelligent thing any person can do. Fear has brought confusion. Faith will give birth to confidence. Stress has brought days filled with conflict and nights full of dread. Faith aloe can heal this confusions and drive from our minds all thoughts of fear, and dissipate all stress. Love alone can bring harmony into out lives. God is at work in modern times, and we must never give up hope and faith. Lay all fear aside, and have confidence and complete faith in the one perfect divine presence. God is not limited in any degree nor any respect. He is totally sovereign. We must know that the light of truth shines upon our paths, as divine love guides us into the secret place of the Most High, where we dwell under the light of the Almighty. There is nothing to be afraid of in God’s World. Fear cannot operate in us, nor can it go forth from us. The spirit will speak to us. We must be patient, ask in faith, and we will receive guidance in our creative efforts. #RandolphHarris 5 of 8
We cannot be paralyzed from fear of making mistakes. At the very center of our being there is complete confidence, complete faith. There is a consciousness of the protection of divine love, the guidance of divine wisdom, and the strength of divine power. In every language, the spirit of God—the Holy Ghost—guides, or can guide, everyone as it has from the beginning, the spirit of God inspires worthy souls. And so we turn in thought to the whole World and know that the words of God is bringing light and life and a feeling of strength and confidence to everyone. Angels speak by the power of the Holy Ghost; wherefore, they know that love and intelligent guidance is directing their thoughts and actions to all the nations of Earth and awakening them in the realization that there is good enough to go around; that there is a divine government under which they all may be protected from the fear of each other. We need not live in fear of the future. We have every reason to rejoice and little reason to fear. If we follow the promptings of the spirit, we will be safe, whatever the future holds we will be shown what to do. #RandolphHarris 6 of 8
The voice of the spirit is a still, powerful voice—a voice that is felt rather than heard. It is part of the creative imagination of the human race and assures us that there is a feeling and a presence at the center of everything waiting to make itself known. It is not unusual for one to have received the gift and not really know it. We must turn to the great God, who knows all things and who can do all things and allow him to lead, kindly light, amid the encircling gloom and lift us up. It is awakened with prayer and cultivated by obedience to the laws and ordinances of Gospel. Each of us has agency to learn that the tempter—the adversary—uses those same channels of the mind and heart to inspire us to evil, to laziness, to contention, even to acts of darkness. He can take over our thoughts and lead us to mischief. However, we can learn to sort out the promptings from the temptations and follow the inspiration of the Holy Ghost. The gift of the Holy Ghost, a sacred spiritual power, can be a constant companion to every soul who will receive it. God has set up the Universe in a hierarchy of laws, and the law of faith is actually a higher law than the laws of nature. That is where it miracles come in. Because when faith is used, the law of faith goes into practice, and the law of faith can actually do more than the laws of physics. God wants our faith to supersede the law of nature. #RandolphHarris 7 of 8
God is in the mountain-moving business. Do not doubt nor underestimate what he wants to do in your life. Christian apologists were, early on, only too well aware of how our Savior demonstrations must look to outsiders. “Have faith in God! If you have faith in God and do not doubt, you can tell this mountain to get up and jump into the sea, and it will. Everything you ask for in prayer will be yours, if you only have faith,” reports Mark 11.22-24. We must open our eyes that we may see. There is another way down this road, we are getting closer to the place where we belong. Under the stars, familiar, now we are here, we can be who we are. In the darkness I found you, all that matters is how you want to live your life. Every turn, taking it slowly with you, and I am going to be there by your side. You are a believer of everyone. Darling, you are one in a million, and you have go to know it was in you all along. The most satisfying experience is to see what the gospel does for people. It gives them a new outlook on life. It gives them a perspective that they have never felt before. It raises their sights to things noble and divine. Something happens to them that is miraculous to behold. They look to God and come alive. God, may you open our hearts wide to receive the love of God. As we receive God’s love as Universal supply, all our affairs are healed. We realize and accept the healing power of the Universe as love, and allow the healing power that is love to penetrate our lives. We feel God’s love in our affairs, and know all is well. #RandolphHarris 8 of 8
It is possible for us to catch fear from others much as we would catch a cold, for we are all unconscious mental, emotional, and spiritual broadcasting stations. This takes us back to a thought in the Bible which says that a person’s enemies shall be those of one’s own household, for our real enemies are our fears and phobias, our doubts and uncertainties, our stressors and our inner conflicts. Nervous, fretful, and agitated children, who have nightmares and who cannot retain their food, are affected by the inner agitation of their parents’ thoughts and feelings. The whole World is filled with the thoughts of the people who live in it, and perhaps we are all more or less subject to the passing emotions of the race mind. Psychiatrist will admit that fear can render a person completely unconscious as far as one’s brain is concerned. Fear can paralyze the memory, and, if a person is afraid he or she will forget something, one is likely to do so. We know that in cases of amnesia people are so frightened by some unconscious thought that they even forget their own names and who they are and where they came from. Fear produces a mysterious chemical which is released into the blood, but this chemical disappears when the stress is over. We all have our stress and fears. And we all wish to get over them. The healing of fear and stress is not to be found in any drug or physical manipulation. The cure is to be found only within our own minds. Where fear is the infirmary, we have to be our own doctors. #RandolphHarris 1 of 8
It may be true, as we have seen already, that paranormal phenomena are likely to be troublesome and odd, and that the soul may not play by the rules we would expect. However, oddness in itself is not the issue here. Mere irregularity as such would certainly not constitute evidence of unwarranted design. What would do so would be regularities of the wrong kind. The new question will therefore have to be, not just, does the soul behave in unexpected ways, but does it behave consistently in inappropriate ways? Are there unfitting limitations on what the soul (or its sub-agents) can do? Without knowing in advance what we shall find, it would seem prudent to focus attention on two areas, which in practice often overlap. There might turn out to be surprising limitations on the physical props and manifestations that the soul makes use of. For example, it would seem reasonable to ask why, if it were indeed the cause, psychic power should be capable of transforming a wooden staff into a serpent but not into, say, a diamond sword, why it should be capable of turning water into wine but not into honey, why of producing thought images on photographic plates but not on other people’s retinas, why of divining water in a natural landscape but not an artificial one, why of reading the faces of playing cards in a laboratory but not in a poker game, etcetera, etcetera. #RandolphHarris 2 of 8
The apparent arbitrariness of such constraints should be enough to alert us to the likelihood that something other than paranormal forces is involved. However, it would of course be particularly puzzling if the patterns should turn out to be such as to suggest that the soul can do by paranormal means only what, in other circumstances, a human conjuror can do by normal means. Nothing in our starting concept of the soul would have led us to expect that kind of design. There might equally turn out to be surprising limitations on the psychological or social conditions under which paranormal phenomena typically occur, and on the psychological content of people’s paranormally generated experiences. It would seem reasonable to ask why, if it is so, people should be more likely to witness paranormal events when the viewing conditions are relatively poor, why they should be more likely to do so in company than when alone, why those who already believe in the powers of the soul should be more susceptible than sceptics, etcetera. And, more particularly, why messages from the dead should be so surprisingly vague, why poltergeists are particularly active around teenage children, why a statue of the Virgin Mary rocks her head at night but not during daylight, etcetera, etcetera. #RandolphHarris 3 of 8
Again, the arbitrariness of such constraints should alert us. However, all the more so if it should turn out that paranormal experiences typically occur under conditions that are known to be conductive, in other circumstances, to common-or-garden psychological dysfunction, illusion or mendacity. Noting we know about the soul would have led us to expect that either. Nothing we know about the soul would lead us to expect it? If these patterns of constraints do occur, the riposte from believers might still be that the soul, trickster that it is, is in fact being doubly tricky by arranging things precisely so as to mimic events that are sometimes brought about by normal means. They might even want to argue that the soul is presenting people with a kind of challenge—deliberately arousing their suspicions in order to test their willingness to suspend disbelief. There is an idea that when God created the Word six thousand years ago, he mischievously planted the evidence of evolution in the Earth, as to tempt people to doubt the Bible story of divine creation and hence prove their religious fibre. Only those whose faith was strong enough to enable them to resist the Darwinian heresy, however well it was apparently supported by the fact, would be saved (thus providing, as it were, a kind of natural selection for Christian sheep over Darwinian goats). #RandolphHarris 4 of 8
Such a way of arguing would, admittedly, effectively disarm the Argument from Unwarranted Design. For there is no denying that, by building into the theory of the soul the very pattern of limitations that seems to pose the problem, believers could make the problem go away. If it could be argued, say, that it is of the essence of the soul to imitate a human conjuror, then we would never expect the soul to do things that a conjuror could not. Fair would be foul and foul fair, and all skeptical objections would be beside the point. While the phenomena in question do indeed have their origins in conceptually simple design processes, what has happened is that some sort of filter has got interposed between the underlying process and its particular expression. Take, for instance, what might be done with our own earlier examples. Perhaps the man who sends After Eights on Thursdays is genuinely in love but happens to live somewhere where no other chocolates are available and United States Postal Service only collects on Wednesdays? Perhaps the cockatiel is a true English speaker who happens to have grossly aphasic? Perhaps the Lord Lestat de Lioncourt claimant is the real Lord Lestat with a highly selective memory block? Likewise, perhaps the soul really is out to make monkeys of potential sceptics? The pursuit of truth involves dealing with a great deal of filth and foolishness because here nature takes the field, and nature is an equivocal element: impure, obscene, spiteful, demonic. #RandolphHarris 5 of 8
Certain paranormal manifestations sound bogus, they look bogus. And yet, paradoxically, this is a powerful argument in favour of their being genuine. The soul seldom if ever behaves in ways that are unequivocally paranormal because if people were to be confronted with indubitable evidence they would find it too disturbing. It is possible that the Creator has eternally intended this department of nature to remain baffling, to prompt our curiosities and hopes and suspicious all in equal measure. It may be the case that we cannot absolutely discount this kind of sophistry. God is subtle but he is not malicious. The Bible reports that perfect love casts out fear, and where love is, fear cannot remain. We can apply this principle of faith and confidence to ourselves as individuals, to our families as the first unit we deal with, and to all the people we contact in the everyday walks of life. Did you ever notice the effect of just being with a person who is clam and poised and unafraid? How different you feel, how buoyed up and confident you become! Why should not each one of us become a broadcasting station of faith? The World is too largely governed by fear. We are afraid of this and that and something else; we are afraid of what has happened and what is happening and what we think is going to happen. #RandolphHarris 6 of 8
If fear is contagious and does in some mysterious way secrete a germ which acts negatively in the physical body, it is not too much to say that is also secretes some kind of mental germ in the whole race mind which affects everyone with a sense of confusion and uncertainty and stress. There is no doubt that this is true, and we should do something about it. Not that we have to become heroic figures who consider themselves the liberators of humanity, for we are probably not in a position to do this. What I mean is that each one of us should analyze our own thinking to determine what is wrong and replace every fear with faith and confidence. However, where are we gong to get this faith and confidence? Certainly not out of the weakness of our previous experience, and perhaps not out of the thoughts that we had in the past—those thoughts that were so filled with stress. It seems to me that we will have to begin all over again. And we must find some reason for having a faith that is stronger than all our fears. So far the Word has never found this reason outside what we call a religious or spiritual idea of having faith in God. There is nothing for God to be afraid of. And if we can, and do, tune in to the thoughts of others, and if they affect us, as they most certainly do, why should be not learn to tune in to the mind of God, which is free from fear and doubt? #RandolphHarris 7 of 8
This is what is meant by prayer. For in the act of prayer we commune with the invisible spirit; we draw its strength, its peace, and its serenity into our own souls. And as a result of this we become strong and self-reliant, because we have built up a confidence in life, a faith and conviction which wards off all fear. Just as a germ of physical infirmary is less liable to infect a strong body, so the germ of mental fear is resisted by a whole and happy mind. Good comes from God. If we keep our focus on the Lord, we are promised a blessing beyond comparison. God’s plan of salvation and happiness will help us overcome every challenge in life. All around us we see a growing desire for spiritual direction the World over. The smile has always been associated with restraint, with the limitations upon behavior that are imposed upon men and women by the rational forces of civilization, as much as it has been taken as a sign of spontaneity, or a mirror in which one may see reflected the personal happiness, delight, or good humor of the wearer. The act of smiling itself is inevitably social and communicative, part of the complex nonverbal language with which our bodies are equipped. A decorous smile, a smile of restraint, is therefore an important ingredient of good manners, just as the lewd grin has to do with the bad. It can be kind of mask. The adversary lulls people into security and cheats their soul. #RandolphHarris 8 of 8
You will remember that in the Garden of Eden, God created man and woman a them in the garden, which was an Earthly paradise. The River of Life flowed through the garden, watering it, and it contained every kind of fruit and plant necessary to human’s physical well-being. Adam and Eve were told to enjoy this garden, to live in it and be happy. However, they were warned that, while they could eat of all the fruits that grew in the garden, there was one tree from which they should not eat. This was called the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. At once we see the meaning of this. We can eat from the tree which bears fruit of love, and the more we eat from it the better off we shall be. However, if we begin to mix love with hate we come into confusion. The fruit does not digest because hate is contrary to the nature of love. It is natural that we should ask: Why did a God who is all wise, all-powerful, and loving and compassionate create a tree that could bear the fruit of hate? Because human beings have a self-choice or they would not be a person, and having choice implies there must be with which one is endowed makes it possible for one to use that freedom, at least temporarily, in a way that will restrict the individual; otherwise one would not be free. Therefore, human beings are given the right to choose, but with the right to choose must come the liability as well as the reward of one’s choice. #RandolphHarris 1 of 8
The great principles of nature exist to be used, and the laws of nature become our helpers when we use them rightly. However, these same laws, wrongly used, impose suffering upon us. We can use our minds to be happy or unhappy; we can think peace or confusion; we can be loving and kind, or disagreeable, because we are free. If we were so crated that we did not have this freedom, we should be eternally bound. Life would have no meaning. Everywhere we look in our own lives and the lives of others we see the use and abuse of this power. The power that can be used so destructively could be converted into an instrument that would help to bring freedom to everyone on Earth. The clue to whether we are dealing with the paranormal or the normal might lie not so much with what the soul does achieve as with what it does not achieve. We ought to examine the soul’s preferred style of working and the peculiar patterns it slips into. Suppose you have a theory that the reason someone says he is Lord Lucan, who mysteriously disappeared in 1974, is that he is Lord Lucan. However, in practice the only part of Lucan’s life he seems to be familiar with is the part serialized in the newspaper, and he gives a start whenever someone says, ‘Come off it, Jones.’ Whatever this is, it is not what you would expect of normal ‘human identity.’ #RandolphHarris 2 of 8
Or, to take a rather more puzzling example, suppose you have a theory that you are being shown an accurate drawing of a solid triangular object. However, when you ask to be shown other views of it, you are told this is the only angel from which the object likes to be photographed and that it goes to pieces if anyone doubts its word. Whatever this is, it is not what you would expect from an ordinary ‘solid object.’ Well, this is the meaning of the serpent and the savior and that great symbol which runs throughout the Bible, depicting the right and the wrong way to use the power which is within us, the power that is greater than we are. However, again, we must stop and ask ourselves a very important question, one we find to be in almost everyone’s mind: Is evil, then, equal to good? The answer is No, for we have already found out that, while we can love to any extent without being hurt, hate finally destroys itself and destroys us with it. Yet, love harms no one. Good protects itself because God is good. We are given the freedom to misuse the power of life, but only to a certain point. This is why the symbol goes on to show that, when Adam and Eve finally decided to eat from the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and after they had done so, they were expelled from the Garden of Eden and compelled to earn their living by the sweat of their brow. #RandolphHarris 3 of 8
Sceptics have often got themselves into unnecessary difficulties by unwisely promising to explain how everything that has ever occurred in the paranormal realm is in reality achievable by normal means. Even supposing they are right about the underlying normality, such a promise must be wildly over-confident. With many of the cases on record there is in practice no prospect of knowing what really happened—perhaps because there is insufficient information about the circumstances at this distance in time and space, or because the investigation has been or is being blocked by interested parties, or simply because no one is clever enough to work it out. The sceptic’s position will be all the stronger if and when he or she can suggest how a particular effect was achieved, and stronger still if he or she can duplicate the phenomenon oneself. However, this challenge is not one that he or she should feel obliged to meet. Someday it is bound to happen that one will meet their match. And the danger is that when this happens, when one cannot say what normal explanation would make sense, this failure may be taken by the other side as absolute evidence in favour of the phenomenon being paranormal by default. “May God raise you from death by power of Resurrection and from everlasting death by power of Atonement,” reports 2 Nephi 10.25. #RandolphHarris 4 of 8
We are all Adam and Eve, and when our intellects become coerced or misdirected they still find a subconscious reaction. When the subconscious reaction becomes powerful enough, it controls the intellect because of the unconscious thought patterns that are laid down in the mind. Finally, when these thought patterns become dominant, they control even the intellect. This is what produces most insanity and the psychosomatic relationships between the body and the mind. Our present knowledge of the mind tells us exactly how these Laws of Mind work, and we now know that our mental and emotional reactions to life decide what is going to happen to us. Because human’s misuse of power within them, they are led on the pathway which produces bondage and weakness. And so we come to the other side of this great story, which explains that God is within all of us and we all have the power to do what is right. “Atonement prepared that salvation might come to those who trust in the Lord,” reports Mosiah 4.6-8. If we want salvation, we are told to obey God. Of course, we all wish salvation. We all want to be happy; we should like to be well. We have never yet met anyone who did not wish to be successful. We want people to like us. We greatly desire to love and be loved. And above everything else, we want and need an inward sense of security and peace of mind. #RandolphHarris 5 of 8
It is true that we all long for the Kingdom of God on Earth, whether or not we know it. And the great struggle of humanity is toward freedom, emancipation from want and fear and infirmary, and from everything that can hurt. We all long to return to our lost paradise. “People assemble in sanctuary to worship,” reports Alma 15.17. Humans are put on this Earth to enjoy life and we are given the freedom to decide how we are to live; always there is placed before us the possibility of two things: to be, or not to be. All real power must rest on the side of good, and finally evil will be vanquished by good. This is the whole meaning of the story of the savior, the lifting up of the life principle on the Tree of Life—the coming to realize that we are one with God forever. God’s countenance smiles upon disciples. When in social situations we meet people for the first time, we notice if they do smile or not, and may form the impression that they are unfriendly or cold. In some cases we will recognize that a painfully shy person finds this situation unbearably difficult, and does not smile for that reason. However, if the person we have just met does smile, we tend to accept it as an expression of good manners and refrain from reading that smile in any particular way. This may or may not make the difference to whether we like this person, find him or her attractive, or else conclude that we have little in common. #RandolphHarris 6 of 8
A true person is strong enough to withstand the wiles of the adversary and humble enough to submit oneself to the redemptive powers of the Savior. A true person does not need the adversary to lead him or her down the easy path with the everlasting chains of destruction. Professional encounters can be complicated. When we front up to a job interview, we will perform the rituals of greeting and smile gamely. In that situation experienced employers may make allowances for the many stressors that our smile fails to conceal and, provided they are fair, will allow themselves to take notice only if our nerves continue to jangle long after removing the tension from the initial encounter. Others will adopt harsher tactics, which may better suit an industry where the people or businesses involved all want success and do not care if they harm each other in getting it in which the smile is a rarer commodity. That can also be a trend in some communities where a smile is considered a sign of weakness. Not everyone smiles and there are reasons why. Some people do not and cannot be seen as being nice, as it is not part of their repertoire. As other people are expected to smile and be polite. Likewise, circumstances will nudge the polite smile in one direction or another in business meetings depending on whether or not negotiations are going our way. If the other side obviously has us in a dire predicament, nobody will be surprised if at the end of the meeting we do not beam with unalloyed pleasure. #RandolphHarris 7 of 8
Wisdom, understanding, humbleness of heart are signs of maturity. However, the process of maturing is not as simple as acquiring wisdom. To mature is to retain or regain some innocent qualities we need to have to develop other qualities which youth may not have. Every spirit of human beings was innocent in the beginning; and God having redeemed humans from the fall, humans become again, in their infant state, innocent before God. Yes, the challenge to each one of us in these days of deceit and discord is to be innocent, to be guileless. We live in a wonderful World where people have largely turned away from righteousness and are self-seeking, gratifying their pride and vain ambition. We have the challenge to humble ourselves before God and to become patient, full of love, and willing to submit to all things which the Lord sees fit to inflict upon us. God intends good to come to everyone. What are we going to do with this greatest of all truths—the relationship that we as individuals have to the Divine Spirit which is already perfect, and which desires only our good? We have come to the crossroads of time, and the decision is ours. However, like everything else, this decision has to start with the individual life. If we are weary of our troubles there is something we can do about it. We can begin to exalt the life principle within us. Life should be beautifully simple. And then it will be simply beautiful. Learn to live. #RandolphHarris 8 of 8
Given what we know about the World we live in, the balance of probability is always going to be against evidence for the paranormal being what it seems to be. Nonetheless, cogent as it is, there are goo reasons for not taking this argument to be the knock-down argument. We must recognize that an argument based on probabilities can never be more than that—a probabilistic argument. While it can provide a rule of thumb that tells us how the plausibility of one explanation compares with another, it surely cannot provide a rule of thumb that tells us how the plausibility of one explanation compares with another, it surely cannot provide an absolute guarantee of where the truth lies. However, even if we have reason to believe that people testify to paranormal phenomenon constantly, we should still have to allow that the reported event might on this occasion have been genuine. There have been notorious examples of people wrongly refusing to accept the facts of meteorites, the facts of continental drift, the facts of evolution, the facts of child abuse, and so on. In every case people presumed they knew enough about the World and about human fallibility to be safe in concluding that these facts could not be genuine and they were wrong. #RandolphHarris 1 of 8
It may be instructive if we put our own presumptions to the test right now, using a relatively neutral example of an unlikely fact. There is numerological evidence that Shakespeare’s birth was anticipated in the Bible. However, the idea of there really being such evidence is antecedently absurd. Yet, I am not tricking you, and, whatever it is, it is not a subterfuge. William Shakespeare was born on 23 April 1564 and died on 23 April 1616. Two 23s make 46. There are 46 letters in the words ‘Twenty third of April in fifteen hundred and sixty-four’. Moreover Shakespeare was 46 years old when the King James Version of the English Bible was completed in 1619. With all these 46s, the number 46 is presumably a pointer. Which book of the Bible should we turn to? If we examine possible anagrams of WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, we find the letters spell out a clear message: HERE WAS I, LIKE A PSALM. We should turn then to the Book of Psalms—and, in particular, to Psalm 46. Now, if we count to the 46th word from the beginning of the of the 46th Psalm we find the word is ‘shake’, and if we count back to the 46th word from the end we find the word is ‘spear.’ However, there are other theories, some people believe that William Shakespeare was the scribe for the Bible. Whatever the case may be, this does surely illustrate how unwise it may be to rush to judgment about the truth of antecedently improbably facts. #RandolphHarris 2 of 8
With all the being said, it does not mean that one would be wrong to be suspicious of any such improbably fact. People have been known to tell lies even in books. However, to be suspicious is one thing, to close one’s mind to the very possibility of such a highly improbable fact being true at all is another. Perhaps someone someday will mount an argument to show that certain sorts of paranormal phenomena such as life after death or telepathy or psychokinesis are not merely contrary to the laws of Worldly physics as we know them but contrary to some truly incontrovertible higher-level laws of mind. When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however, improbable, must be the truth. In assessing any particular piece of evidence we must consider what else the paranormal explanation of this evidence would lead us to expect. Assuming the phenomenon in question is the soul’s work on this one occasion, we ought to ask how and where else we might expect the soul to show its hand. And if, in this wider context, we find that the patterns of phenomena we actually observe are really not at all what we might reasonably have predicted, we must of course ask why. #RandolphHarris 3 of 8
Especially we must ask why the paranormal phenomena are manifest only in certain curiously mundane situations and only take certain curiously mundane forms. For I take it that, however unpredictable the soul may be, nothing in paranormal lore or paranormal logic suggests that the soul will do only such things as absolutely demonstrate Earthy limitations on its powers. “Because of unbelief, people could not understand work of God,” reports Mosiah 26.3. Our faith has been greatly strained, as we have learned of the profligate stealing in some communities, where millions of dollars are taken by shoplifters from our merchants and citizens. In the end, the public must eventually pay. Why would any man, woman, or child steal from the friendly merchants and one’s folks and neighbors? This is unbelievable. And great losses are sustained with the incredible amount of vandalism. We can hardly understand the makeup of any person who would destroy for the mere satisfaction of doing it. Certainly we could have more pride in ourselves than to wreak havoc on property. It is possible that some of us have that little respect for ourselves. We hope that we will all live frugally, and within our means, and that we will pay our debts faithfully and honestly. It was the Lord who gave us the injunction: “Thou shalt not steal,” reports Ex. 20.15. #RandolphHarris 4 of 8
We are taught that the spirit of God should permeate all we do, whether at work, at school, or at home. When we see someone smiling in the street we think of that individual as smiling to oneself, meaning that there is some hidden object of one’s present thought and feeling. At the same time, smilers may not even be aware that they are displaying a smile; or they may have developed it with subtle forethought, aiming to tease or mislead. Either way, knowing or oblivious, the smile is a powerful form of communication. In places where the death penalty still exists, new judges are sometimes advised never to allow themselves to be photographed smiling because inevitably that will be the photograph chosen to illustrate a newspaper article in which it is reported that this judge has passed the sentence of death. Honesty is very important part of character. We have all seen people who think they are not accountable to the human laws or the laws of God. They seem to feel that rules of human conduct do not apply to them. A popular philosophy is “What can I get away with?” The difference between a moral person and a person of honor is that the latter regrets a discreditable act even when it has worked. #RandolphHaris 6 of 8
Our honor should make us honest in all we do. The hidden smile might also find a place here. You do not need to see someone’s face to know that they are smiling. Blind people are keenly aware of the change in timbre that may be detected in the voice of a smiling interlocutor. Many of us can tell when a person at the other end of the telephone is distracted by something funny but gamely tried to continue an otherwise serious concertation. Smiling changes the sound of the voice no less then the shape of the mouth. If people remain pure and chaste, completely devoted to each other during the storms of life, their love for one another will deepen into something of supernal fulfillment. The smile of a subject is a direct avenue of meaningful communication, vividly reserved for you and me. There is no doubt that this sensation, this knowledge, has a profound impact on the viewer. It may be a blinding glimpse of the obvious, but it is worth noting in conclusion that the exchange of a smile—be it sincere or forced or spontaneous—makes us feel good. A smile may stimulate us in certain superficial ways, elicitin a ready smile in response, for example, but it also penetrates the deep recesses of our subconscious mind. From this union of affection, springs all the other relationships, social joys and affections diffused through every branch of human existence. #RandolphHarris 7 of 8
Life can find its way to the depths of our hearts, leaving us with the most indescribable sense of beauty and feeling. Solitude is marvelous, it can also be so beautiful and pure, provided that one can talk to somebody about it afterwards. Scientists who took up the cause of searching for the soul, were at first at least, keen to discover evidence of regular behaviour. Supernormal is a term that is applied to phenomena which are beyond what usually happens. Supernormal phenomenon are events that exhibit the action of laws, higher, in a psychical aspect, than are discerned in action in everyday life. Paranormal is a term applied to observed phenomena or powers which are presumed to operate according to natural laws beyond or outside those that are considered normal or known. These laws may indeed be higher or beyond what is already known, but assumption is nonetheless that the phenomena are in their own way lawful. Miracles are so called because they happen seldom and for that reason create wonder. If they should happen constantly according to certain laws impressed upon the nature of things, they would no longer be wonders or miracles but might be considered in philosophy as part of the phenomena of nature notwithstanding that the cause of their causes might be unknown to us. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6
There is nothing that God has established in a constant course of nature, and which therefore is done every day, but would seem a miracle, and exercise our admiration, if it were done but once. Miracles must be contrascientific and therefore necessarily beyond the scope of science—either because they are actually unlawful or because whatever laws they do obey make a mockery of the existing laws. Where there is yet no strong conception of a natural order, there is little room for the idea of a genuinely miraculous event as distinct from the phenomenon of a prodigy, of a wonder, or of a divine sign. However, once such a conception of a natural order has taken really firm root, there is a great reluctance to allow that miracles have in fact occurred or even to admit as legitimate a concept of the miraculous. The Bible does contain miracles, but conventional interpreters of the Bible read far more miracles into it than it contains, because they constantly read poetic Hebrew idioms literally. However, miracles do happen every day, just not always to the same person. For instance, when a person is extremely ill and is not likely to make it, but then in so short a time, the individual has a recovery. Supposed that in some particular case the evidence for a miracle appears extremely strong, it is because “The Lord has wrought many miracles among humans,” reports 1 Nephi 17.51. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6
It is remarkable that, at least after 1893, American President Grover Cleveland was able to smile at all. In that year, at the age of fifty-six, in the midst of an unprecedented economic crisis relating to the federal reserves of gold and silver, President Cleveland discovered a growth on the left side of his upper jaw. A specimen of rough tissue in the roof of the mouth was taken and sent (anonymously) for pathological analysis. It was malignant. Upon further investigation, the cancer proved to have invaded the upper jawbone and spread from the bicuspid teeth (between the canine or eye tooth and the molars) to within a fraction of an inch of his soft palate. Cleveland was advised to have an operation immediately, in complete secrecy, on board a yacht steaming along the East River in New York. Seated in a chair propped against the mast, with a few close colleagues present, including Secretary of War Daniel Scott Lamont, the president was successfully anesthetized. The surgical team began by extracting the bicuspid teeth. Incisions were then made in the roof of the mouth to make way for the excision of the entire left upper jaw from between the first bicuspid tooth and the last molar. #RandolphHarris 3 of 6
During the surgery, a large cheek retractor was used. The orbital plate—the floor of the bony enclosure that surrounds the eyeball—was left intact, and only a small portion of the soft palate was removed. Miraculously, there was no hemorrhaging, and only one blood vessel was tied, and the wound was tightly packed with gauze. After two days’ voyage up Long Island Sound to Cape Cod, the president was up and about and was able to disembark unassisted. Within three weeks he was back in Washington, equipped with an excellent prothesis of vulcanized rubber, which filled the gap left by his excised jawbone. It was made by a New York dentist, Dr. Kasson C. Gibson. The president could speak normally. He lived on, with no recurrence of the cancer, for fifteen years. “God has provided means that humans, through faith, might work mighty miracles,” reports Mosiah 8.18. There is an intelligence hidden at the center of everything, and we are brilliant, and our luminosity responds to God. And we also know that while hate, animosity, and confusion can produce discord, love can heal it. God intends us to be well, happy, and successful. This brings us back to the need we all have for faith, miracles, calm assurance, and an inward sense of well-being. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6
Surely God who has the intelligence to create has both the will and the ability to sustain. An important less we learn is to bless everything, to be grateful for everything, to gladly acknowledge the divine presence—not as something far away but as something close and intimate. Not only is there an intelligence directing the activities of our physical bodies, but this same brilliance is also directing everything we do. How many of us have confidence enough in God to sleep in peace, wake in joy, and look forward to the coming day with gladness? We have to honor the supremacy of God and cannot deny ourselves the privilege of working with the power that put us here. We cannot unify and cooperate with something we do not believe in. So, the starting point, the very beginning of the reeducation of our minds, must be a deep conviction, a firm faith. Each day we should think how wonderful it is to be cooperating with God. Surely this is the greatest drama of all. We do not stroll across the stage of human experience as separated and isolated characters, but rather as actors in the great play of life, the drama of human existence. We must not forget the director of the play, the one who knows how to make each separate line and act become part of the whole piece, until something complete is produced. #RandolphHarris 5 of 6
People, being only human, are quite capable of being alarmed by the very thing that promises them freedom—and like caged birds may sometimes show considerable ambivalence about what lies beyond the open door. Nonetheless, with their heads in the air, even if with their hearts sometimes in their boots, many have sought such evidence as they can find that there are more things in Heaven and Earth—but especially more things on Earth—than dreamt of in common sense philosophy. Countless people may say words that sound like—and surely were meant to be—an indictment of Christianity. Even with that being the case, people still keep their faith in miracles as the testament to the fact that Christianity is doing its proper job. We continue to doctor our faith as a hope of transcending physical reality, and as we do so we have the opportunity to discover palpable evidence that there is more to life than common sense suggests. Miracles are more important than some may thing. Even for someone who calls to deride all paranormal phenomena as nonsense, when they are drowning, these same individuals often pray that a legion of angels will carry them safely to shore. And when some are in a gloomy mood, they cannot but hope for divine interference with Universal law might lift their spirts. #RandolphHarris 1 of 7
Substance takes form through faith, and is projected upon the screen of human experience through the mold of mental equivalents. Miracles are as important as we think. They become even more important when the miraculous events that common sense has already told us are unlikely to happen are declared by a newly authoritative science to be unable to happen. The search for extraordinary facts becomes a crusade to retake the present on behalf of the future. And yet exactly what kind of extraordinary facts might be the solution? What people wanted—and still want—is, above all, to get their souls back from science. For it was and still is their possession of a soul that most people have relied on as their ticket to a better World. The immediate task therefore has to be to seek out whatever facts could be counted as firm evidence in favour of the soul’s existence. We should throw away all doubt, fear, and despair, and enter joyously into our inheritance. However, the very law which we are using should teach us that we shall arrive at the consummation of our desire only by starting from where we are. We are told to despise not the day of small beginnings. Each one must start with the mental equivalent one has today, and by enlarging upon it increase one’s capacity to receive. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7
Everybody believes—or at any rate hopes—that they themselves do possess a soul. Nonetheless, when it comes to looking for evidence, the problem is that the soul is not an entity that many people would know how to define in practical or instrumental terms. Perhaps most would, if asked, claim to know what a soul is even without being able to say what it is. Just like people hear words all their lives and understand how they are applied in a sentence, but might not actually know the definition. Maybe belief in the soul has always been one of those beliefs which does not lend itself to a final, clear interpretation. Sacred things are to be treated with ore care, given greater deference, and regarded with deeper reverence. Part of the interest of religious beliefs for those who hold them comes precisely from this element of mystery, their very mysteriousness makes them addictive. The essence of the soul is power. Our lives are all changed by encounters with the divine. These experiences strengthen us to remain faithful to the Lord and his work throughout our lives despite overwhelming opposition and subsequent difficult trials. Our strength to endure faithfully depends upon recognizing, remembering, and holding sacred that which we receive from above. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7
In this connection we must remember that the Law of Cause and Effect, the Universal Subjectivity, has no intention or purpose of its own relative to any individual. It is natural to the power and economy of God’s operations that he should implant the idea of himself in the soul at its creation as the mark of the creator on his work. “Ask the Father to consecrate thy performance for welfare of thy soul,” reports 2 Nephi 32.9. As we seek answers from God, we feel the still, powerful voice whisper to our spirits. These feelings—these impressions—are so natural and so subtle that we may overlook them or attribute them to reason or intuition. These individualized messages testify to God’s personal love and concern for each of his children and their personal mortal mission. If we can become more in our inner consciousness we shall have more in our external environment. We should expect so much good that we should conceive it as being more than we even have time to enjoy. We should feel the presence of this good and appreciate its meaning and give thanks for its manifestation. There should be the combination of gratitude, expectancy, and joy. There should be enthusiastic recognition that we are in partnership with the divine and that God cannot fail. #RandolphHarris 4 of 7
When it comes to actual and specific practice we should definitely know that the particular thing we desire, we already have. In this way we form a mold in our thought, and a definite one around which the creative energy of mind may play. This is our bowl of acceptance, catching, as it were, from the horn of plenty that which we are able to receive. We cannot experience more than we can accept, but we can expect more than we have been experiencing. If we are willing to start from where we are today, creating a little bigger, broader, and better mental equivalent than we had yesterday, we shall progressively advance. The addition of a soul to a machine could contribute anything to the machine’s practical capabilities. A mechanism as a watch would, once granted a soul, no longer be quite the watch it was before. A watch with a soul might at least have reason to feel less lonely and more cared for. Some are convinced that ordinary computers should in principle be capable of thinking very much like human beings, perhaps even conscious. Yet, human beings, unlike any conceivable computer, have an additional capacity that goes beyond mere thinking. It is paranormal powers we seek: powers that exceed the usual limits, powers that demonstrate beyond dispute that, while human beings are evidently in the World of physical machines, we are not entirely of that World. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7
Hope of salvation and fear of damnation are clearly self-interested motives. To tell us that we ought to do good rather than harm to our fellow beings or that we ought to obey the rules of our society because we shall be rewarded for obedience or punished for disobedience hereafter is to appeal to our regard for our own interests. The Middle Ages are often referred to as the Age of Faith, and there is no doubt that the people mind entertained a literal and lively belief in Heaven and Hell. (Whether this is also true of the learned in an age in which any overt denial would have courted the risk of punishment by death it is difficult to say.) Yet the Age of Faith was not notable for its high standard of mortality. A lively belief in eternal torment as the punishment for sin existed alongside a cheerful disregard, in practice, of those moral rules for which eternal torment was held to be the punishment. The paradox is lessened by the fact that when morality is connected with religious faith, the penalties can be evaded. “Open your hearts and minds that mysteries may be unfolded to your view,” reports Mosiah 2.9. That which is sacred to God becomes sacred to us only through the exercise of agency. #RandolphHarris 6 of 7
God sends light and knowledge from Heaven. He invited us to receive and treat it as sacred. People tell their children and teachers tell their pupils that morality is to be practiced because it earns an individual a good reputation. One of the laws of radiation says that the absorbing power of a substance is equal to its emitting power, which means that the ones that absorb the most must be the ones which emit the most. That is why we are taught to treat others like we would want to be treated. To refuse to give is to refuse to live to the fullest extent. To refuse to give love is to refuse to receive love. That which we refuse to give out not only closes the door on the giving but on the receiving as well. Each one of us is a point in the Infinite Mind, a center in the Consciousness of God or the Living Spirit. How many of us claim our divine inheritance? How many of us realize that the will or nature of God was written before the foundations of this physical Universe were laid, and that in this will each one of us was endowed with the faculty of true perception, bequeathed a life of perfection and guaranteed immunity from all evil? For surely the will of God could be no less than this. That which is of God is light; and one that receives light, and continues in God, receives more light; ad that light grows brighter and brighter until the perfect day. #RandolphHarris 7 of 7
One sees clearly only with the heart. Anything essential is invisible to the eyes. Imagine how it felt for those who stood out from the traditional values. Or, rather, imagine how it feels, because the discussion is still very much a part of our contemporary culture. ‘I just want to know who I am and why I am alive.’ It is the cry of people everywhere. Everything can seem so frustrating. Our intellectual understanding of creation, nature, life, and death, is so limited. What is the problem? The problem is actually not that our intellectual understanding is so limited. Anyone who cares to do so can read up on creation, nature, life and death, any day they please. And they will get a much fuller and better understanding than has ever been available before. Rather, the problem is that this modern scientific understanding neither entails—nor, in all honesty, can even be said to be consistent with—the future people yearn for. They will not find from science that the only real answer is to allow our spirits to rise beyond ourselves, to rise to God in faith, love and worship. We are all God’s children. However, for some, alternative answers are possible, this can only because they do not have sufficient information to make a better judgement. God rewards those who earnestly seek him, so we need to keep looking for him. Do not give us. Seek God with all your hearts. #RandolphHarris 1 of 7
Sometimes it is not easy to develop faith in spiritual things while living in a physical World. In some circumstances too much depends on our making the correct prediction about what we are dealing with for it to be permissible to play fast and loose with truth. If anything goes, some things obviously go on more than others. And when it comes to discovering what does go and what does not go, the scientific method has repeatedly proved itself terribly convincing. If the physical Universe has been created by God, it would follow that there was a time when the quantity of matter was less than it is now, when it was in fact zero. However, physics proves or presupposes that the quantity of matter was always been the same. Notwithstanding the jibes of its detractors, science has in most areas made the World much less of a mystery than it was in the past, and its explanations are sometimes almost alarmingly straightforward. However, the doctrine of eternal return tells us that every event in the Universe, in all its details and in its whole cosmic context, will recur an infinite number of times in exactly the same way that it has already occurred an infinite number of times in the past. Eternity is the complete possession of eternal life all at once—a notion that becomes clearer from comparison with things temporal. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7
Whatever lies in times moves as something present from the past to the future, and there is nothing placed in time that can embrace the whole extent of its life at once. It does not yet grasp tomorrow, and it has already lost yesterday. And even in the life of today you do not live longer than in the transitory moment. That, then, which is subject to the condition of time, even if (as Aristotle thought of the World) it has no beginning or end and its life extends through endless time, is still not such as may be rightly judged from eternal. For though its life be endless, it does not grasp and embrace the extent of it all at once [totum simul] but has some parts still to come. And so, if, following Plato, we wish to give things their right names, let us say that God is eternal, but the World is ever lasting. Also, perhaps if we only pry a little bit further, we shall find new facts that science has yet to take on board—non—standard facts that may, with luck, still force a revision of the scientific picture? Indeed perhaps such facts have been knocking on the door for ages, only to be told by science to go away? Faith is a strong conviction about something we believe—a conviction so strong that it moves us to do things that we otherwise might not do. Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7
Forced rewriting of the rules does in fact happen every so often, even within conventional science. However, once physicists come up against certain peculiar phenomena at the atomic level, such as the photo-electric effect, they have no alternative. Only the complicated theory could now meet all the facts. Or consider an example of a more controversial kind. The conventional scientific theory of how human memory works assumes that people’s memories are stored as physical traces in their individual brains. Almost all the data are, of course, consistent with this. Nonetheless for some time there have been other, more outre theories doing the rounds. These suggest that memories are actually not stored in the physical brains at all but rather in non-physical fields outside the brain to which individuals tune in when occasion arises because before this life the human soul lived among timelessly existent forms and contemplated the directly as in this life it sees things belonging to the realm of becoming. The field theory (if someone were ever to spell out just how it works) would certainly be much more complicated than the brain theory. Since the facts as known at present do not demand it, most scientists would say there is no reason whatever to take it seriously. #RandolphHarris 4 of 7
However, if and when we look in the right places in nature, we shall find new evidence (which same say has already been discovered) that completely undermines the brain theory: evidence, for example, of memories being transferred between different individuals who have had no form of physical contact. If it were really to be so, it would be right that the field theory would then be the only one left in contention. Scientific theories themselves undoubtedly do change and grow in response to new evidence and human insights. An accepted theory can be proved wrong and even turned on its head when more facts come to light. The World is much mysterious than we realize; in fact, I think it is dynamic than we can realize. There is always room for further change in the World outlook, and therefore—for those who do not like the current scientific picture—room for hope. All Universal principles are available to those who understand them, and they immediately respond to anyone who subjects oneself to the way which they work. For instance, water will reach its own level by its own weight—water will flow downhill. We obey this principle. We use it. We apply it, but we cannot go contrary to that principle and compel water to flow uphill. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7
It is the same with electricity. The electrician can do anything he or she wishes to with his or her principle provided one realizes that it flows from a higher to lower potential, but one cannot make it act contrary to its own nature. Yet, brilliant minds do sometimes come up with revolutionary ideas before their time. It has often been said that the mark of genius is to be able to see the revolution coming, to sense that something is wrong with a received idea even while other people are still celebrating its rightness. Our great investigators in the field of experimental science have watched the operations of nature so often and closely that they are able to guess what course it is likely to take, to smell out, so to speak, methods that are still to be discovered, new experiments, unknown results. These scientific innovators posses l’esprit de divination. Divine necessity and the law of cause and effect teaches us to believe that we shall receive, and we shall have these things we desire. The law of cause and effect operates through human consciousness. This remarkable genius does not deny us the right to possess and use the entire gift of God, wholeness of life and its manifestation. #RandolphHarris 6 of 7
While scientists have, for sure, taken it on themselves to watch the operations of nature often and closely, the poets and mystics have arguably watched human nature more often and more closely than anyone. Maybe they could already legitimately claim to know something the scientists do not. Rather than ignoring or deriding science, the better way could be to try to beat science at its own game. We want a particular future state. We cannot expect to get to it unless we have good reasons to posit a special explanation of the present facts. As things stand, however, contemporary scientific doctrine tells us this special explanation is not required. Then our strategy, should perhaps, be to go out and uncover new facts that do require it: facts that prove the current doctrine wrong. Human beings may have faculties, and be surrounded by agencies, which physical science does not take into account in its theory of the Universe and of human nature. Of God’s ever-present eternity all years stand at once (omnes simul stant). The divine will is toward life, since being the very principle of life it cannot contradict itself; it must be toward life. It is toward givingness, since in giving it expressing itself. Therefore we know that as far as the divine is concerned, it is always its will that we be self-expressed. For God is expressed through the expression of humans. The divine will is harmony, peace, love, goodness, truth, and beauty. #RandolphHarris 7 of 7
Often the future is unknown; therefore, it behooves us to prepare for uncertainties. We must purse an education and learn marketable skills so that, should the situation arise, we are prepared to provide. Education will open the doors of opportunity. As we follow the Lord’s admonition to seek learning, even by study and also by faith, we gain not only knowledge from our study but added light as we learn by faith. We should seek learning by studying diligently. Rarely will we be able to spend as much time dedicated to learning as we can now. The pattern of study we establish during our formal schooling will in large measure affect our lifelong thirst for knowledge. We must get all of the education that we possibly can. Sacrifice anything that is needed to be forfeited to qualify oneself to do the work of this World. Train your minds and hands to become an influence for good as you go forward with your lives. Be a good student. Arise and shine forth in your school with hard work, honesty, and integrity. If we are struggling or discouraged with our performance in school, it is important to seek help from mentors, parents, teachers, and helpful Church members. Never give up! Share your educational goals with your family, friends, and leaders so they can support and encourage you. This is the pattern of personal progress. When I was eight years old I was sent away from home to a boarding school in Sussex called Windlesham Board. #RandolphHarris 1 of 8
Many of the kids were their because their parents lived abroad, sometimes because their parents lived in London and always because people wanted their children to love the fun, friendly atmosphere where they could be encouraged to grow up as the Windlesham Family. On my arrival the first day I was introduced to an older boy, Hugh Stewart, and told that he was to be my moral guidance and would ensure that I gained the most from this unique environment. I said I was not in need of ‘looking after’, and he went away. However, I told a story. I needed it like anything, only not from him. Every night before lights-out in the communal dormitory, the Matron, Miss Chard, would stand in the doorway with an open notebook and ask each boy in turn, ‘Have you managed properly today?’ Each of us regularly said, ‘Yes, Miss Chard.’ But in the early days, when I was missing my parents particularly badly, sometimes I said, ‘No, Miss Chard.’ Usually nothing happened. However, one I said ‘No, Miss Chard’ two nights in a row. Then I asked to present myself in Matron’s room and was given a large spoonful of castor oil. It was only many weeks later that I discovered what Hugh Stewart might have told me, that Miss Chard’s concern was with whether I had moved my bowels that day, not with whether I had been moved to tears of loneliness. #RandolphHarris 2 of 8
It was a great school, where we learned during the day the difference between latitude and longitude, how to decline Greek verbs, about how science is caught rather than taught, we investigated the growth and reproduction of plants, and something about why the stars shine and something about the hearts of men (thought not of women). ‘To be learning something is the greatest of pleasures,’ Aristotle said, ‘not only to be a philosopher but also to the rest of humankind.’ At school we were getting learning in full measure and any of us found it passably pleasurable, dynamic, and interactive. The highlight of the week for all of us was ‘own jams day’, when at high teatime we were allowed the jar of jam that we brought from home. The jam had a nature so tender that it quivered when cut with a spoon and revealed sparkling, ruby-like faces. It was a reminder that someone somewhere cared for us. Most nights (and especially on the nights of own jams days) many of us were so happy we could hardly sleep. ‘With passion’, Klay wrote, ‘I have sought knowledge.’ But with equal passion ‘I have sought love. I have sought it because it relieves loneliness—that terrible loneliness in which one shivering consciousness looks over the rim into the cold unfathomable lifeless abyss. I have sought it because in the union of love I have seen, in mystic miniature, the prefiguring vision of the Heaven that saints and poets have imagined.’ #RandolphHarris 3 of 8
The passions for knowledge and for love cannot be expected to operate with equal strength. In the ideal World pictured by traditional religions—where the more you know, the more you can feel sure of being loved—the two passions compliment each other. However, in the World revealed by science—where the more you know, the less you can feel sure—they pull instead in opposite directions. Where once it was through knowledge, now it is love or knowledge. And, when people have to choose between one or other of these staples, it is pretty obvious what their priorities will be. There is a dilemma posed by scientific progress. People who have been brought up to believe that knowledge and love, explanation and assurance, would go together sometimes have to decide which to cling to: the rationality of scientific truth—the choice that feeds one’s intellect—or the comfortable optimism of traditional religion—the choice that still feels and smells right. Well, we have received the gift of the Holy Ghost and the Holy Ghost will teach us truth and prepare us of life’s challenges. God gave us moral agency and the opportunity to learn whole on Earth, and he has work for us to do. To accomplish this work, we have an individual responsibility to seek learning. We should permit our consciousness to range in the field of greater possibilities. #RandolphHarris 4 of 8
A certain time should be taken each day for the enlargement of consciousness. This is done by reminding our imagination that the field with which it deals is limitless, that the mind is the creator and the sustainer, that mind is infinite, ever available, and always responsive to us. There should never be any sense of finality in our self-discovery No matter how much good we experienced today, we should expect more tomorrow. Expectancy always speeds progress; anticipation of better yet to come helps to dissolve the overload of burdens which we now carry with us. We must learn to loosen our consciousness. Nothing it too good to be true when it comes to God. He never made a promise that was too big to keep. The Kingdom of Harmony is already an ever-present reality, but as far as we are concerned it waits to be perceived, and only as much good can come to us as we mentally receive. We must increase our receptivity, continuously extend and expand our comprehension. We should declare a hundred times a day: Good and more Good is mine. An ever-increasing good is mine. There is no limit to the good which is mine. Everywhere I go I see this good, I feel it, I experience it. It crowds itself against me, flows through me, expresses itself in me, and multiplies itself around me. #RandolphHarris 5 of 8
We have to have as strong a commitment to knowledge as any of our generation. Gaining knowledge now will pay huge dividends. Certainty, certainty, feeling, joy, peace, and greatness of the human soul. Everlasting joy in return for one day’s effort on Earth. It will do you no good in life if you wake up one day, after partying your life away chanting: ‘I am: yet what I a none cares of knows, my friends forsake me like a lost memory, I am the self-consumer of my woes, and yet I am, and live.’ The key to halt the poverty cycle is found in education. People who are educated tend to give birth to healthier babies, have children who are healthier, more confident, resilient and have improved reasoning and judgment. An education is part of nurturing and is a sacred responsibility. Bless your children and your future home by learning as much as you can now. Seek learning by faith. We learn by faith as we diligently gain spiritual knowledge through prayer, scripture study, and obedience and as we seek the guidance of the Holy Ghost, who testifies of all truth. If you do your part to gain knowledge, the Holy Ghost can enlighten your mind. As we strive to keep ourselves worthy, the Holy Ghost will give direction and added light to our learning. #RandolphHarris 6 of 8
Who am I to say what I a really? As the nineteenth century got under way, it became increasingly hard to dispute that science had got the measure of the stars and planets. However, perhaps it could still be argued that science would never get the measure of the human psyche. Are people obliged to take seriously the preposterous claim that human, that inextricable being, has been made known by brain physiology? Would it ever be necessary to accept statements such as this by modern philosopher John Searle: that even the most cursory investigations show that mental phenomena are as much a result of electrochemical processes in the brain as digestion is a result of chemical processes going on in the stomach and the rest of the digestive tract? Or this by the scientist Francis Crick: You, your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behaviour of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules. Alfred Tennyson was sure it would never be so. As he commented sneeringly in In Memoriam: I think we are not wholly brain, magnetic mockers. Not only cunning casts in clay: Let science prove we are, and then what matters Science unto human? #RandolphHarris 7 of 8
Can you imagine the consequences of being deprived of God’s presence and never again having a body? Just imagine how blessed we are to know that God is a being with a body of flesh and bones as tangible as ours, that we can worship a God who is real, who we can understand, and who has shown and revealed himself and his son to his people. He is a God who hears and answers our prayers; a God who watches us from Heaven above and is constantly concerned about or spiritual and temporal well-being. The obvious dangers without God is that, as happened to the state of the Virgin Mary in Hawarden, the tide would come up and carry the said people to some low land where they would be found the next day (or the next decade), drowned and dead. God gives us agency to decide for ourselves to follow him and obey his commandments without coercion. God gives us blessings and allows us to face trials so we can grow and become like him. He is a loving God who provided a plan through which we can enjoy happiness in this life and in eternity. We can be resurrected and, with sincere repentance and the making and keeping of sacred covenants, be once again in the presence of God. “Salvation to come to one who puts trust in the Lord, he will deliver you,” reports Alma 61.13. #RandolphHarris 8 of 8
Good ever can be divided against itself. The idea of argument and criticism cannot enter into this family life. It certainly cannot upset the equilibrium of the spirit which indwells every member joining them together in a community of spirit. They have a partnership with each other and with the eternal. We must also know that there is no sense of jealousy or any other kindred thought which can operate in the family life. The household of God is a household of peace and happiness, and nothing enters it but love, joy, and understanding. The crucial issue over which science and religion were distend to break ranks was—and is—the question of exactly what kind of explanation we do have to posit in order to explain the present state of things. When a group of people come together with one accord and with one thought, a greater power is generated. The power of a group is much like bonding in carbon compounds. Carbon is unique among the elements in its ability to form strong bonds to itself as well as to other elements such as hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen. The fact that carbon-carbon bonds are strong means that chains of carbon atoms can form and will be stable. The chains can be of varying length, leading to literally an infinite number of compounds differing in chain length. #RandolphHarris 1 of 8
Carbon bonds are similar to a family because there are unique types of people who make up a family, and generally large groups who love each other and bond tend to be strong and stable. Although the lengths of our life are different, through bloodlines and religion, we are bonded infinitely. Also, the creative principle responds to a number of people more than it does to one, and the combined faith of a group reaches a higher level of acceptance. Therefore, families should keep strong bonds with the purpose in mind at arriving at a deeper spiritual understanding. The best results are gained when all members of a family join together not for the purpose of acquiring any specific good but for the purpose of reaching a higher state of consciousness. There will be less confusion because of a greater degree of unity. Within a family, people will probably focus on such ideas as peace, joy, or general wholeness. They are taught the concept that there is one presence which is God, one perfect life which is right here, one divine intelligence guiding and governing, not for any particular or specific purpose in this case but just to imbibe the spirit of wholeness itself, to enter more largely into a complete acceptance of peace and poise and power. It is vital that we nourish those we teach and lead by focusing on the fundamental doctrines, principles, and applications emphasized in the scriptures. #RandolphHarris 2 of 8
Whatever laws of nature God has laid down must be worthy of their author, very simple and written in a mathematical language of love. The mental powers of human beings so far exceed anything that we could imagine as being within the capacity of a mechanical device, that we graciously allow that the human body must have a rational soul contingently associated with it. No body could ever have a soul by virtue of tis material constitution. While a person’s soul might indeed interact via a channel in one’s brain with one’s material body and so move it from its course, the soul as such would not be part of the material World and must belong to an entirely different realm. Most people do not come to church looking for a few new gospel facts nor to see old friends, though all of that is important. They come seeking a spiritual experience. They want peace. They want their faith fortified and their hope renewed. People want to be nourished by the good word of God, to be strengthened by the powers of Heaven. We live in a World that is rich with colour and sound, redolent with fragrance, filled with gladness, love and beauty, speaking everywhere of purposive harmony and creative ideals’. Our highest priority is an integrated effort to build faith in God and strengthen families and not simply a correlated calendar. #RandolphHarris 3 of 8
Divine intervention is necessary to keep the solar system stable. God is responsible for perfecting life on Earth, and human thought and consciousness involves non-mechanical spiritual powers. When we focus on God and harmony, the performance we see is a higher degree of consciousness is reached when there is a completely unified concept. For instance, a group of people could work together for an organization, or for the World purpose, or for their country, or for any public good; of they can work together for the purpose of acquiring a deeper consciousness of reality. Our ideas of our destiny, and the sphere of our activity must always desire to bring the spirit of the Lord into the hearts of the members in the room to produce faith and a determination to repent and to be clean. It is the spirit of God that is the most effective teacher in any given situation. The spirit of God speaking to the spirit of humans has power to impact with greater effect and understanding than the truth can be imparted by personal contact even with Heavenly beings. In fact so strong was the conviction in both classical and medieval Europe that everything that happens must have some sort of a deeper meaning, that accidental events could even be taken to the law courts to prove they were not really accidents at all but someone or something’s criminal responsibility. #RandolpHarris 4 of 8
There was a trial that took place at the village of Hawarden in Wales in the year 946, which illustrates how dramatically folk wisdom assumed there had to be a reason behind everything. It reports that there was a terrible drought in the locality and all the villagers prayed for rain, addressing their prayers to a wooden statue of the Virgin Mary in the loft of the village church. One day, with still no sign of rain, the Lady of the castle was praying long and hard when tragedy befell: the statue toppled from its loft, landed on her head and killed her. When news of this unprovoked assault on the good Lady spread, there was uproar in the village. The authorities decided to bring the statue of the Virgin to trial before a jury on a double charge: for the willful murder of the Lady and for not answering the people’s prayers. Accordingly the statue was brought to court, and after evidence had been heard on both sides, the statue was declared guilty on both counts. It was condemned to be hanged. However, in consideration of the fact that it was indeed an image of the Virgin Mary, the jury agreed that this sentence should be commuted to a lighter one. They decided therefore to place the statue on the sandbanks of the river Dee, to see what would become of it. In the event, the tide came up and carried the said statue to some low land near the walls of the city of Chester where, to everyone’s satisfaction, it was found next day drowned and dead. #RandolphHarris 5 of 8
How could this kind of reasoning (which at one level or another still characterize many modern people’s thinking) fare under the scientific regime? In this World in which we live, things are not always what they appear to be. We sometimes are unaware of the powerful forces pulling on us. Appearances can be very deceptive. We must at last wake out of our millenary dream and discover the material World is also full of other energies. We must realize that, like a nomad, we live on the boundary of an alien World. Much of our World is still in the experimental stage, and we are likely to work out new techniques and perhaps better ways than have been discovered do far. If this were not true, our work would become static and heavy. We must depend upon a certain inspiration rising from our own soul, but always keep this inspiration controlled through purposiveness, because no matter how great a power is generated it will not produce results unless it is tied to a purpose. We are now talking about group purposes rather than individual desires. Both are important and should be worked out under the inspiration of our own inward awareness. In addition to receiving the counsel that has been given by those who had spoken or who are yet to speak, we should also carefully listen for and record the unspoken impressions given by the Holy Ghost. #RandolphHarris 6 of 8
We must get our teachers to speak out of their hearts rather than out of their books, to communicate their love for the Lord and this precious work, and somehow it will catch fire in the hearts of those they teach. Through the right use of Law we may become free, but through a wrong use of it we may again be entangled in bondage. No plainer statement of the law of cause and effect could be given than this. We may a Victorian mansion, turn on the electricity, and have light. However, if the wire is short-circuited something will go wrong and then we shall again be entangled with darkness. The darkness was never a thing of itself; it was merely a confused state. The source of our supply is not really cut off; it stopped at our place of confusion and no longer functioned for us. This is a perfect statement of the mental law of cause and effect and it again warns us that we must be aware of the use we are making of the law; we must keep our thought straight. It is not always easy to do this, but the Law of Cause and Effect, being no respecter of persons and always working automatically and mechanically and with mathematical precision, must flow through each one of us in the terms of our own acceptance. When we become confused and short-circuit this acceptance we are cutting ourselves off from its supply, but we do not destroy the supply; it is still there. #RandolphHarris 7 of 8
It is a wonderful thought to realize that the Eternal bounty can be short-circuited only as far as we are concerned; it cannot be either exhausted nor depleted. We shall never be disappointed, for the Law is always operating. Believe in yourselves. Believe that you are never alone. Believe that you will always be guided. “Trust in the Lord with all thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths,” reports Proverbs 3.5-6. We have some tight places to go before the Lord is through with us and the World in this dispensation. If we listen to and do these things that God has commanded us to do, we will not be deceived and great blessings will be ours. Obedience is part of the plan of eternal happiness. Sometimes it is necessary to be obedient even when we do not understand the reason for the Law. It takes faith. Happiness is the object and design of our existence; and will be the end therefor, if we pursue the path that leads to it; and this path is virtue, uprightness, faithfulness, holiness, and keeping all the commandments of God. By patiently trusting in the eternal plan, we can experience daily happiness and have hope for ever-after happiness. Things will straighten out. There is great purpose in our struggle in life. We can experience a speedier and more sure course to our ever-after happiness by developing certain habits and attitudes that encourage happiness. Stop seeking out the storms and enjoy more fully the Sunlight. #RandolphHarris 8 of 8
Randolph Harris II International Institute 