LOUD LAUGHTER

LAUGHTER-DAY SAINTS

Initiates of the endowment ceremony which takes place in LDS temples accept a charge to:

“avoid all lightmindedness, loud laughter, evil speaking of the Lord’s anointed, the taking of the name of God in vain, and every other unholy and impure practice”

This charge is to be accepted by covenant “as it has been explained to you” but in reality it is never fully explained. It is assumed that we know what we are promising when we foreswear these things, but few ever bother to raise any questions as to what constitutes unholy and impure practices. Beside the fact that these oaths are to be made between a man and his maker, there have been more or less official interpretations put forth by LDS leadership in regards to taking God’s name in vain, and of course, evil speaking of the Lord’s anointed. But, although I am sure I am not the only one whom is struck a little strangely by the phrase “loud laughter,” rarely if ever have I heard any type of commentary offered by the clergy or the laity as far as what “loud laughter” entails and why it ought to be avoided.

For many it may seem a very straightforward phrase and spark neither uncertainty nor curiosity. Laughter is what people do when they think something is funny, and loud laughter is simply doing it at a volume of high decibels. But if that is the case then there can be no louder laughter than that of the crowd. The throng transforms the softest revelry issued as reverently and politely as possible into the loudest collective roar. The loudest laughter peals out like the laugh track that follows every one of Thomas S. Monson’s silly jokes, or like the obligatory laughter which Crown Prince Frederick Hoepnick queues from his court in the 1965 comedy The Great Race.

I am sure that the guys at Comedy Sportz in Provo, Utah aim to evoke the loudest laughter possible from their paying customers. Are they guilty of promoting covenant-breaking among the college students at B.Y.U.? If you are sure that you are complying with your oath to avoid loud laughter then I would ask you: what is laughter really? Can you explain it, or tell us why it happens?

LAUGHTER IS LANGUAGE

Laughter is a part of our native language, not the languages which we learn and inherit from our parents, but the native language of raw emotion which all humans speak fluently at birth, and which unfortunately gets suppressed and all but forgotten in favor of the limited language of the oppressor. What do I mean by “language of the oppressor”? It has been discussed in detail elsewhere on this blog, and bears repeating, that the priesthood of God is a language. Prior to the point where we are beseeched to avoid loud laughter, the temple drama introduces us to the rebellious character of the Devil in the form of a man wearing an apron. Adam as representative of mankind asks in his innocence and ignorance, what the meaning of that apron is and is told that it is an emblem of the Devil’s power and his priesthoods/languages. The Languages of Lucifer get placed over the holy garments of the endowment we receive from Heaven. Throughout the ceremony we are sure to always place the Devil’s Apron on top.

In life we do the same, insisting proudly on outward expression through the means of so much psychobabble in one or another of the many mixed up languages/priesthoods in use since the confounding and corrupting of man’s relationship to his fellow man in the days of Babel. That the Devil’s A-Pron representing his many languages/priesthoods takes A-Priori precedence in our symbolic, or spiritual manner of dress, can be clearly seen in the way we address one another. Laughter, though it certainly may stem from deep in our pre-conscious, is not randomly scattered throughout speech. For example, a speaker may say “What is that?…ha-ha,” but rarely, “What is…ha-ha…that?” For the most part, our laughter seldom interrupts the sentence structure of our speech. Rather it punctuates speech. Curiously we only laugh during pauses when we might typically cough or breathe. The occurrence of speaker laughter at the end of phrases suggests that a neurologically based process governs the placement of laughter in speech, and that different brain regions are involved in the expression of cognitively oriented speech and the more emotion-laden vocalization of laughter.

During conversation, speech tends to trump, and inhibit laughter. This is evidence of “the punctuation effect” – the tendency to laugh almost exclusively at phrase breaks in speech. This pattern indicates that worldly speech has priority over laughter which is a manifestation of the tongue of angels. Laughter is an unexpected resurfacing eruption of emotion, our first language. So laughter is in a sense a “speaking in tongues” in which we’re moved not by religious fervor but by a spiritual pre-conscious response to social and linguistic cues. Stripped of its variation and nuance, laughter is a regular series of short vowel-like syllables usually transcribed as “ha-ha,” “ho-ho” or “hee-hee.” These syllables are part of the universal human vocabulary, produced and recognized by all God’s people, the House of Israel, no matter where we find ourselves scattered across the diaspora of the world’s many cultures.

If emotion is the native language of little angels freshly arrived from Heaven and born into bondage where they must quickly adapt by adopting the language of their oppressors, then anyone with a genuine interest in establishing Heaven on Earth, or Zion as it is called, should be equally interested in the revival of the almost dead language of emotion. Note that as chaotic, unorganized, and broken as their attempts may be, still the meetings in which the gift of tongues most often manifests are called revivals. Dying languages among many indigenous tribes and cultures around the world today are a grave concern. But it is absolutely shameful, totally unacceptable, that all mankind become totally ignorant of and non-conversant in our first language – the language of the new-born – which connects us all as family. Feeling should not only come at the beckon call of words, our words should come as an answer to our feelings so that the two may share an egalitarian relationship. An obligation to feel can freeze feelings. If we let our native language of raw emotion die then we will be “past feeling”. The Book of Mormon warns against this and makes a direct correlation between spoken language and feeling.

“…and he spake unto you; yea, ye have heard his voice from time to time; and he hath spoken unto you in a still small voice, but ye were past feeling, that ye could not feel his words.” – 1 Nephi 17:45

It is not that languages like English, Chinese, Tagalog, or Arabic are inherently evil or serve no purpose in helping us to effectively reform and revolt till the world and its people are able to achieve Zion. However, to push certain communication skills over and onto the native language of human emotion is to enforce a backwards stereotype of superiority when it comes to the invader, and inflict a false burden of inferiority upon those meek ones whose birthright it is to inherit the earth. What we consider language may be a tool which is extremely effective, but without emotion it is not affective. Affective means – relating to moods, feelings, and attitudes. We cannot deliberately activate the brain’s mechanisms for affective expression. Try laughing on command, it is nearly impossible. To produce any authentic emotion on demand does not come naturally. Crying and laughing are usually considered opposites and thus are closely related, both audibly and emotionally. Mosiah 18:9 gives us the idea that we need to be “willing to mourn with those that mourn,” and other scriptures give the impression that we should also be willing to rejoice with those who rejoice in righteousness.

“Blessed are ye that hunger now: for ye shall be filled. Blessed are ye that weep now: for ye shall laugh.

Woe unto you that are full! for ye shall hunger. Woe unto you that laugh now! for ye shall mourn and weep.”  – Luke 6:21,25

Obviously Jesus is letting us know that laughter can be good or evil. There exists what we could call living laughter and there is also lying laughter. Laughter is a part of our native language, not the languages which we learn and inherit from our parents, but the native language of raw emotion which all humans speak fluently at birth, and which unfortunately gets suppressed and all but forgotten in favor of the limited language of the oppressor. True laughter is not a learned group reaction but an instinctive behavior we carry intact with us from Heaven for the preservation of the Heavenly Family during our sojourn here on Earth. Most people think of laughter as a simple response to comedy, or a cathartic mood-lifter. After more than 10 years of research on this little-studied topic, Robert Provine, PhD. concluded that laughter is primarily a social vocalization that binds people together. It does this bonding through the pre-learned heavenly order of humor and sacred play. True and pure laughter is an energetic ripple that runs through and cleanses the DNA strands. Were they to remain filthy the very links of our own DNA would pull us down to hell like the chain which the Devil is seen holding in Moses 7:26.

“…and he had a great chain in his hand, and it veiled the whole face of the earth with darkness; and he looked up and laughed, and his angels rejoiced.”

‘Cachinnation’ is a word that long ago fell out of use. It means “loud laughter”. It comes from Latin ‘cachinnationem’ – “violent laughter, excessive laughter,” a noun of action from the past participle stem of ‘cachinnare’ – “to laugh immoderately or loudly.” The word is of imitative origin, meaning it is a type of onomonaepia, a word which imitates the sound of the thing it describes. Its oldest root is in the Sanskrit word for ‘laughs’ –  ‘kakhati,’ from where the English word ‘cackle’ as well as the modern “ha, ha, ha!” ultimately derives. People often laugh using words like “Ha!” or “Hee hee!” Long ago, followers of geloscopy as a divinatory art believed the word you used to laugh revealed part of your personality. People who said “Ha!” when they laughed were considered to be honest but undependable, while people who said “Hee!” were considered to be sad or simpleminded, while people who said “Huu!” were supposed to be untrustworthy. People who said “Ho!” were thought of as brave and generous. That is why “Ho, ho, ho!” is the slogan of Santa Claus and the Jolly Green Giant – both products of the false prophets of a propaganda machine whose intent it is to coax mankind into giving life to the evil spirit of consumerism till it has consumed everything in its path. Remember to watch other people carefully when they laugh. Researchers have found that if a person is really laughing, he will close his eyes for a moment. If a person laughs without closing his eyes, he’s faking it!

Fake or disingenuous laughter is about the worst sound I can think of, yet it is all too common in today’s society. Having been subject to it from the earliest days of our childhood, on T.V. and in person, we are very susceptible to falsehoods. False laughter has the opposite effect of pure laughter. It will firm up the grasp that Satan has on us via that chain of our biological and fallen natures. Whether our laughter enforces or corrects the false traditions of our fathers comes as a revelation as to what we find funny. What we find funny is a revelation as to who is holding onto the other end of that long line of linkage that is our DNA make-up. Whether it is God or Satan in whom we place our trust and honor, either way, laughter can strengthen those bonds. Both Plato and Aristotle were concerned with the power of laughter to undermine authority, however – in the case of defying the general claim of authority that Satan lays to this world – this could be a very useful tactic. Diabolical laughter has the effect of paralyzing which is a type of binding spell. But on the other hand, righteous laughter invites to bind together freely, willfully, in love and cooperation. And this makes laughter by far the best banishing spell one can use when threatened, taunted, or tempted by the devil. So apparently laughter is a two-edged sword, and we will have to view it in the same way that C.S. Lewis, a Pentecostal, explains the phenomenon of glossolalia (the gift of tongues) – as something natural, in some instances pathological, at other times an organ of the Holy Ghost.

LAUGHTER IS LIGHT 

If laughter is language, then laughter is light. On the day of Pentecost, not only is the gift of tongues manifest but also tongues of flame above the affected participants in that group gathering. The two major Semitic languages, Arabic and Hebrew, are both said to have been born of flame. John explains the link between language and light when as a special witness he says that “The Word” was with God in the beginning and was God – then goes on to say that “The Word” contained life, and “The Life” he contained was “The Light” in men. This light, we are told, shines in darkness, but the darkness “comprehended it not” (John 1:1-5). The verb ‘comprehend’ comes from the Latin words, ‘com’ – meaning “together, with” and ‘prehendere’ – meaning “to catch hold of, to ignite.”  Thus, to comprehend means literally to catch fire, or to light together with a counterpart. This, the darkness failed to do, at least so far. But as an all-loving, all-wise father, God has his ways to cause capitulation to occur. He may preside above all creation, but he is not above tickling his children till they double up in laughter and confess that they are at his mercy. It is said that the laughter of little ones lights a home. This textual imagery may be more literal than we think.

A phosphene is a phenomenon characterized by the experience of seeing light without light actually entering the eye from any external source. The word ‘phosphene’ comes from the Greek words ‘phos’ (light) and ‘phainein’ (to show). Phosphenes are flashes of light, induced by movement or sound. These are what we see when we say we are “seeing stars”. Deep in our darkest moments the tickling movements of the Hand of God may provoke sudden sounds of laughter from us, which release in turn shows us the light we had stored inside us all along. Such light shows are divine displays that may be enhanced and more fully comprehended through consecrated use of psychedelics in concert with meditative practices and other reverent, but pro-active work within our temporal temples. Laughter can be a very healthy way of releasing the light within us. Giggles possess the power and potential of gigawatts if harnessed properly. Perhaps it is the proper mode of harnessing the latent and sacred spiritual voltage in laughter to which the officiator at the temple altar is referring when he tells LDS patrons to avoid loud laughter. “Loud laughter” in terms of volume would translate to “bright light”. Could it be that we are to avoid the flashy lights of this world, and turn our life’s focus toward true enlightenment, like Carl Jung said, by “making the darkness conscious”? If the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness! (Matt 6:23, 3 Nephi 13:23) We live in a jail called “Liberty”. The life of a prisoner can wear the spirit down, so to keep our minds sharp and clear, we should do as Joseph wrote to us from the confines of Liberty Jail, in Missouri. If our souls are going to get worn down while on this Prison Planet, let our lives at least not be a waste. Instead of drowning in misery, “we should waste and wear out our lives in bringing to light all the hidden things of darkness, wherein we know them; and they are truly manifest from heaven.” (D&C 123:13)

Laughter can light up our life. Used appropriately it can make us more aware of our surroundings. Used inappropriately it can actually leave us more delirious than ever, unconscious of the truth of our dire situation. Laughter as light may seem a ridiculous concept at first glance. But looking at the science we will see that laughter is much more visual than we Foolish Virgins tend to be aware of. As anyone who has ever laughed at the sight of someone doubled over can attest, laughter is contagious. Since our laughter is under minimal conscious control, it is spontaneous and relatively uncensored. Contagious laughter is a compelling display of homo sapiens, and we are a social mammal. Laughter strips away our veneer of culture ie. the false traditions/creeds of the fathers which have been riveted upon the hearts of the children (D&C 123:7) and challenges the hypothesis that we are in full control of our behavior.

From these synchronized vocal outbursts come flashes of insight into the neurological roots of human social behavior and speech. And from the same area of origin of humankind’s mitochondrial matriarch comes some possible insight into the revolutionary roots of the real Zion movement, and how we might cause it to spread like a contagion of hope from Ethiopia’s outstretched hands to the ends of the earth. Consider the extraordinary 1962 outbreak of contagious laughter in a girls’ boarding school in Tanzania. The first symptoms appeared on January 30, when three girls got the giggles and couldn’t stop laughing. The symptoms quickly spread to 95 students, forcing the school to close on March 18. The girls sent home from the school were vectors for the further spread of the epidemic. Related outbreaks occurred in other schools in Central Africa and spread like wildfire, ceasing two-and-a-half years later and afflicting nearly 1,000 people.

The irresistibility of others’ laughter has its roots in the neurological mechanism of laugh detection. The fact that laughter is contagious raises the intriguing possibility that humans have a neural circuit in the brain that responds exclusively to laughter. Scientists speculate that it may be triggered by auditory means, (similar to the way they think contagious yawning may involve a process in the visual domain), but I feel that there may be more than meets the physical eye in the case of laughter, (and possibly more meets the ear in the case of yawning). Spiritual ears to hear and eyes to see aside, what is clear is that once triggered, the laugh detector activates a laugh generator, a neural circuit that causes us in turn to produce laughter.

But how do we harness the power of the gigglewatt? How do we direct the laughter-laser so that it might work for the good of Zion? The awkwardly obvious answer presents itself in the form of our neighbors, our fellow beings. After all, Dr. Robert Provine’s research concluded that laughter is primarily a social vocalization that binds people together. And his work is corroborated by the findings of Dr. Robin Dunbar, another investigator in the field of geloscopy (the science of laughter). He suggests that social laughter, relaxed and contagious, is like “grooming at a distance,” an activity that fosters closeness in a group the way one-on-one grooming, patting and delousing promote and maintain bonds between individual primates of all sorts. In other words: it is a ritual that cleans our spirit bodies and promotes unity. God’s goals for Zion are achieved through this kind of laughter, not the tyrant’s cackle or the “polite titter” of awkward conversation. When we laugh, we’re often communicating playful intent. So laughter has a bonding function within individuals in a group. It’s often positive, but as we have seen, it can be negatively used as well. There’s a difference between “laughing with” and “laughing at.” People who laugh at others may be trying to force them to conform or casting them out of the group. Zion is Heaven on Earth, Zion is inclusive, not exclusive. If we want to establish Zion, one thing is for sure: we need each other.

For the Word to be made flesh it is necessary for the Light and the Dark to comprehend, or activate and discharge in harmony with, one another. Light made material manifests in many hues. Hue-manity is just that – the many hues of mankind in the flesh. For Mormons, the gathering of the 12 Tribes of Israel is a necessary precursor to the establishment of Zion and the return of Christ. In color theory there is a family of only 12 Original Hues, the purest and brightest, which form the basis for all the Many Colors which decorate the Coats of Man. White is not one of them, and neither is black. But there is no such thing as a truly black person or a truly white person. These are only general expressions which do not come close to describing the endlessly nuanced beauty and variety within the Hue-Man race.

Hue is a physically perceptible product of the dominant wavelength of light as it “shineth in darkness.” White Light can only be produced by combining all twelve tribes in spirit. What does the combining or gathering of the Twelve Tribes look like on a literal level? Black is the Color resulting on a physical level from an equal combination of all the 12 Tribes. The concept of one perfect pigmentation is a lie, and those who view themselves and others in terms of a gradient of glory somehow determined by pigment wallow in a pig–mentality. To admire one look above another is to add mire to the trough of racist thought which causes God’s black and white pearls alike to go unnoticed and unappreciated by swine and by their very selves. The only thing that will finally end this war between tints and shades is a mixing of the Twelve Tribes, which does not make an end of either side but simply ‘tones’ down the tension by adding both black and white.

When only white paint is added to a mixture it produces what we call pastel colors. ‘Pastel’ is derived from Italian ‘pastello’ – a word that means “material reduced to a paste” and is a diminutive form of the word ‘pasta’. A person who has a very light skin tone may be described as “pasty” and likely comes from multiple gene-rations of people who have subsisted off of a grain-based diet. (In Cain & Abel, Die-It & Diet, I cover the connections between the Mark of Cain and the grain-based diet) So-called white people live in a culture which in modern times has developed a serious addiction to sweetness. They pride themselves on their knowledge of good and evil obtained from years of rigorous scientific taste-testing of that forbidden fruit while seeking for a way to isolate and separate the bitter from the sweet.  Their “pasty” European forefathers advanced the art of “pastry” with their nutrient-low, bleached flour that tries to pass itself off as “enriched,” aristocratic, and enlightened even. Glazed over in icing, their collective voice clearly and coldly says: “Let them eat cake!” And masses of modern mankind are born sugar addicts under this white supremacy. The sugar, they claim, is “refined”. Granulated or Powdered, Crack or pure Cocaine; it has the same physiological affects, only on a much more subtle and devilishly delicious level.

The elements of art and design provide us with an excellent likeness of our cultural identity. Art can therefore help us dissect our own heads and heart to analyze and hopefully overcome the faulty phrenology of our schizoid social constructs and our relish for pseudo-sciences that segregate rather than integrate the spirit with the flesh, man with his fellow man, and mankind with their God. Within the context of art, we see the fraternal feeling makes itself known with bold strokes that strew the surreal landscape of a soft sororal sentiment with quasi pornographic classical Greek torsos and bloody foot prints leading away from abandoned pedestals where lesbian ladies of liberties once stood. It may not be a pretty picture, but seeing the canvas dripping with our true hues – blood red, washed out whites, and deep delta blues; allows us to come to terms with this Guernica of a dying Age of the Gentiles. Look upon it!

24 And when that day shall come, shall a remnant be scattered among all nations;

25 But they shall be gathered again; but they shall remain until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled.

26 And in that day shall be heard of wars and rumors of wars, and the whole earth shall be in commotion, and men’s hearts shall fail them, and they shall say that Christ delayeth his coming until the end of the earth.

27 And the love of men shall wax cold, and iniquity (inequity) shall abound.

28 And when the times of the Gentiles is come in, a light shall break forth among them that sit in darkness, and it shall be the fullness of my gospel;

29 But they receive it not; for they perceive not the light, and they turn their hearts from me because of the precepts of men.

30 And in that generation shall the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled.

31 And there shall be men standing in that generation, that shall not pass until they shall see an overflowing scourge; for a desolating sickness shall cover the land.

32 But my disciples shall stand in holy places, and shall not be moved; but among the wicked, men shall lift up their voices and curse God and die.

33 And there shall be earthquakes also in divers places, and many desolations; yet men will harden their hearts against me, and they will take up the sword, one against another, and they will kill one another.

D&C 45:24-33

The Devil is laughing loudly indeed as the Time of the Gentiles nears its inglorious end, but most do not seem to hear him. They are too busy laughing loudly themselves, mocking others from within that great and spacious building which has been condemned and is slated for destruction. Their laughter is Lucifer’s laughter. Among those who do hear it, many find themselves petrified with fear. They fail to realize that, just as in the movies, if the villain is “monologuing” it only means that he has not yet done what he says he will do. As the enemy gloats over his successes to this point, the real heroes always take the opportunity to act and change their fate at the last minute. We can overcome the Evil One and be Saviors on Mount Zion if we will but pull ourselves together – first individually, then collectively. To this end, we have at our disposal the underrated but valuable bonding agent of pure laughter. Long has laughter been used as a weapon in the hands of the wicked. And no doubt we will be laughed to scorn like the Sons of Mosiah should we seriously propose unification as those brave souls sought with their dark-skinned Lamanite brethren despite the ridicule of their fair-skinned Nephite brethren at Zarahemla (Alma 26:23). But, as promised by Jesus, we will surely have the last laugh.

HUE-MOORING HUE-MANITY

All these scattered points of light need not be lost to the New World Order. We shall use the pure laughter of children as hue-moorings with which the 12 Hues of Israel in the House of Israel may draw themselves in from the ocean of emotion and anchor themselves to the land. It may sound like some corny line from a Care Bear cartoon, but truly, laughter links us together by building rainbow bridges. We have to be hue-moored with this rainbow-rigging – spirit bodies to mortal bodies, and one to another in a Zion network. Rainbows show up frequently in folk traditions from Yoruban to Celtic, from Taiwanese to Nordic, as the bridge we must pass to reach together with our ancestors the perfect world of the New Earth. We need no more rearranged orders of this world, always doing “that which has been done in other worlds.” We want the New Heaven and New Earth that the New World could never give us. The “rainbow connection” between body and soul, ka and ba, is welded tight with an arc of light. Luminous laughter can send an electrical connection surging up through our kabod.  The medium, by which the gap is bridged between dense darkened bodies of dirt and dazzling bodies of light, is water from the emotional body. That is the way of the ancients whereby the perishable will clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality as per 1 Corinthians 15:53. Through mystical mists of emotion a person’s aura can be seen to adorn him or her like a “coat of many colors”. But it takes both sunshine and rain to make a rainbow. The rain is our emotion, the sunshine our eternal spirit.

The appropriately named Japanese energy scholar, Dr. Emoto showed through his experiments how human emotion has an effect on the molecular structure of water. His work specifically illustrates the energetic link between light and sound through language, and the role that water plays as a resonance retainer for any energy emoted at it. It should be understood that E-motion is nothing more or less than energy in motion. Laughter, being essentially erratic displacement of air, can bubble or burst through the watery current of emotion and affect its flow and direction. It can let the world in, or it can let Zion out. The fluidity of emotion makes it a difficult thing to map but that has not stopped many from trying. Theorists have come up with both somatic and mental models for attempting to locate the causation of emotion. But emotion washes over both body and mind and does not originate nor meet an end with either side. It is not easily managed by either side, neither is it unidirectional. E-motion is simply energy in motion and it is meant to flow like water. Positive and negative energy waves push and tug at the body, upwards of 70% of which is composed of water.

Like any body of water, the emotive body can become polluted with debris lodged in it. These emotional contaminants block energy from flowing smoothly and are felt as concomitants accompanying unpleasant emotion. In reality the movement of energy is neither good nor bad, but changes in bodily sensations can greatly alter our initial perception and experienced intensity of E-motion. Biofeedback between the brain and the rest of the body is all that can be tracked or explained by neuroscientists, but the cortex is only a middle-man (Dr. of chemistry Francoise Tibika likens it to a traffic cop) that can either function as a dam or an open gate for the constant tide of energy-motion forever flooding to and from mind and matter. In the case of laughter, which is generally associated with positive energy flow, the mind can unfortunately play the role of a party-pooper, or an outright tyrant. Mindful cherubim may see themselves as honorable life-guards along Life’s Beach who keep vigilant watch and prevent us from drowning in emotion, when in fact they are blocking the pearly gates and barring entrance into the Kingdom just like Jesus accused the Scribes and Pharisees, religious leaders in his day of doing. Sometimes we have to do as Brigham Young taught in his quote which is still repeated today at the veil in LDS temples. That is, we must slip past the “angels who stand as sentinels there” and dive in with joy and laughter. You will recall that the research reveals we only laugh during pauses when we might typically cough or breathe. Is it the laughter which threatens to drown us, or the stifling, and choking back of emotion that poses the real danger to our souls?

In the LDS temple endowment session we are admonished to avoid “lightmindedness” lest we judge lightly the things of the Lord. But that directive in no way ought to interfere with Christ’s command to “be of good cheer”. Lightheartedness should never be prohibited, for it is according to our hearts that we are judged at the pleading bar, as depicted on ancient temple walls. Those whose hearts are as light as a feather are granted entrance to the Kingdom of Heaven, those who’s hearts exceed that weight are judged too heavy for the Land of the Light. Laughs are like gasps for fresh air – the spirit of freedom – which fill our lungs and our heart with love and light that then shoots out to surrounding brothers and sisters like so many delightful sparks.

From a purely physical standpoint, hue-man laughter evolved from the panting behavior of our ancient primate ancestors. Apes laugh with a panting sound in the same conditions in which human laughter is produced, like tickle, rough and tumble play, and chasing games. From a spiritual standpoint, the laughter of hue-mans is capable of lighting the sky like fire-works. Light laughter is like a safety flare that can attract good spirits to our aid and ward off evil spirits. Remember I said laughter was an excellent banishing spell, and laughter coupled with colorful light is even better. Many are familiar with Holi, the Hindu springtime festival also known as festival of colors, but not many may be familiar with its origins. Holi celebrations start with a Holika bonfire on the night before Holi where people gather, sing and dance. The next morning is a free-for-all carnival of colors,where everyone chases and plays with each other, throwing brightly colored powder and colored water. One of the chief scriptural bases for this ancient celebration comes from a story in the Bhavishyottara Purana.

The legend says that there once was a good king named Raghu who was endowed with all good qualities, a kind speaker, and deep read in the Vedas. He treated his subjects as if they were his own children and during his reign there was neither famine, nor sickness, nor any iniquity, nor departure from the precepts of religion. So the man was a perfect picture of the LDS temple initiate who strives to live up to every covenant made within those hallowed walls, supposing he knows what it is to truly be of a regal caste. But despite his exceeding righteousness, one day a female demon appeared and started terrorizing the people, especially the little children of his kingdom. The demon could not be driven out by charmed bracelets, or magic garments; not even with water, olive oil, or by holy home teachers skilful in exorcisms. When the report came from the people to King Raghu, he consulted the Muni Narada. Narada replied:

“I will tell you by what means the fiend is to be destroyed. This day is the fifteenth of the light fortnight of Phalguna; the cold season has departed, the warm weather will commence with dawn. Let the people, freed from terror, laugh and sport; let the children go forth rejoicing, like soldiers delighted to go to battle, equipped with wooden swords. Let also a pile of dry wood and stones be prepared, and let it be lighted according to rule, while incantations are recited destructive of wicked fiends. Then let the people, fearless, thrice circumambulate the fire, exclaiming, ‘Kila, kila!’ (Flame, flame!) and clapping their hands. And let them sing and laugh, and let every one utter, without fear, whatever comes into his mind. In various ways and in their own speech, let them freely indulge their tongues, and sing and sing again a thousand times, whatever songs they will. Appalled by those vociferations, by the oblation to fire, and by the attahasa (loud laughter) of the children, that wicked Rakshasi shall be destroyed, and thenceforth the festival of the Holika shall be renowned among mankind.”

In Sanskrit ‘hasa’ means laughter, ‘atta’ means loud…‘attatta’ means very loud. So perhaps only ‘attattahasa’ – very loud laughter – was to be avoided in ancient times. Or perhaps more likely the moral of the story is that: even loud laughter has its appropriate time and place. Superstition and false traditions will over time attract and even create devastating demons which can be difficult to root out using the same religious dogma and social order that attributed to their being in the first place. The Church would have us guard against every unholy and impure practice. But while we are attending to all the do’s and don’ts, administering in complete righteousness like King Raghu, and avoiding the appearance of evil, then evil itself will sneak in and reek havoc – particularly among our poor children. I include this story, not only because of the striking use of the word ‘attahasa’ meaning “loud laughter,” plus various other more subtle parallels to Mormon culture, but to call attention to the observance of and credence given superstitions in the broader context of our cherished Christ-Shun cult-sure.

Attahasa is somewhat commonly used in India as a boy’s name as it is another name for Lord Shiva in Hindu religion. But of course, a good Christian must assume that Lord Shiva is the name of a pagan god, and possibly even one of the many titles of the Devil himself. There was a group of religious fanatics circulating a rumor recently on the internet; that when one types the letters ‘L-O-L’ they are really typing “Lucifer Our Lord” and thus unconsciously evoking the Lord of Darkness. Most people of course considered the idea humorous and took it and ran with it as a joke. I do not think that usage of this common communication trend is tantamount to summoning Satan. But like many things in the drama of life, while the practice may not be insidious, there is a comedic side, as well as a tragic side to it.

NO LAUGHING MATTER

The acronym LOL stands for “Laughing Out Loud” and is used online or in text messages to express the feeling or at least the idea of amusement. While thousands of people are prone to use this internet slang item multiple times weekly or even daily, of the countless occasions where one might type ‘LOL’ only a small number of those occasions are likely to actually involve any real laughter escaping the vocal cords. The initialism has crept into even our face to face speech in this spiritually dull digital age which is chock full of meaningless exchange. Is feeling going to become completely taken over by banality? If the Christian fanatics were right, then the irony for LDS would be that Lucifer actually helped them to stay true to their temple covenant not only to avoid loud laughter but to virtually avoid laughter altogether. LOL! Even though Jesus in the Book of Mormon explicitly states that anything more or less than his simple doctrine of believing on his name, repenting, and being baptized, comes of evil, still, going above and beyond is what Latter-Day Stains excel at as members of the broader scheme of Christ-Shun culture. Laughing in silence is just another extreme, every bit as unholy and unhealthy as laughing too loudly.

While these matters of silly superstition are surely to be laughed at with lighthearted laughter, I would hope we might simultaneously take the opportunity to reflect with a sober mind on the deterioration in the quality of feeling among men in today’s world. This deteri-oration is a detour-oration, an onslaught of empty speech steering us away from our hearts and our emotions. The coldest, longest emotional winter is setting in upon us with each passing year. It may be felt more harshly in some places than others but it is, on the spiritual plane, a bona fide ice age that calls for the ritual igniting of bonfires, bond-fires to ensure the survival of the huddling hue-man race. These cold days upon us have been prophesied for many centuries now. In Christian scripture it is known by the general title of the Last Days. Mormon scripture more specifically calls it the End of the Time of the Gentiles. And Old Norse prophecy gives it the name of Ragnarok – Final Fate of the Gods of the Nordic Peoples. All of these speak of the love of man “waxing cold.” In the Poetic Edda poem Völuspá goes into gory detail and tells us that:

“Brothers will fight and kill each other, sisters’ children will defile kinship. It is harsh in the world, whoredom rife – an axe age, a sword age – shields are riven – a wind age, a wolf age – before the world goes headlong. No man will have mercy on another.”

Stanza 46 of the same Scandinavian scripture states that the “Sons of Mím” are “at play” while “fate burns”. Though no further information about these “sons” has survived we can understand the reference to mean those mortals whose personalities correspond to the symbolic attributes of that god. Mímir is Old Norse for the “The Rememberer”. Mimir’s head is stuffed with knowledge, for which he is renowned and sought after. But, he ends up loosing his head, literally, in a battle; after which Odin carries it around with him and it recites secret knowledge to him whenever he seeks counsel. When the individual becomes enamored with the knowledge he amasses and the intellect he dispenses, then the head can easily become severed from the rest of the body. The “Sons of Mím” are the intelligentsia of our day. Whether they are the college educated fools, the YouTubeversity graduates, or the intelligence gathering NSA, and CIA agents on the other end – The Book of Mormon slams them all saying:

“When they are learned they think they are wise…their wisdom is foolishness and it profiteth them not. And they shall perish.” (2 Nephi 9:28)

Nephi’s doomsday prophecy often goes overlooked as simply hyperbole by the Mormon “Sons of Mím” who function in life as headless bodies, and who serve as bodyless heads in various Church and State positions. When Nephi tells them that “it profiteth them not” they know very well that he is not speaking of profit in the sense of money. But their heads are so immersed in the world of business, and so anxiously engaged, gainfully employed in the world of business that there there develops a detri-mental disconnect between so-called religious life and so-called real life. Neither realm is real in this derangement. For most Mímirs of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints either their dismembered body is “at play” while the head is “at work” or their haughty heads are play while their bodies slave away. Nephi continues in verses 29 and 30…

“To be learned is good if they hearken unto the counsels of God. But wo unto the rich, who are rich as to the things of the world.”

Some may think it is unfair and even inaccurate to make a particular case for these things against the LDS people, however there is undeniable corollary. When Nephi says: “Wo unto him that has the law given, yea, that has all the commandments of God, like unto us” (2 Nephi 9:27), when Nephi says: “Wo unto the rich, who are rich as to the things of the world” he is specifically addressing the LDS who are rich as to things of the world, not anyone else. If God arranges for your voice to cry from the dust through the words of a book entitled with the name of Mormon, then it is because your message is especially for Mormons. Mormons have for many years been numbered among the rich and today they are even to be found in no small representation among the elite ranks of the super-rich. And, contrary to Zeezrom Daft Benson’s eleventh point in his 14 Fun-dumb-mentals for Following the Profit, we’re not talking about ex-mormons or even inactive members here. The rich and super-rich LDS are our very own Snake Presidents and Area Fauxthorities. 3 Nephi 6:12 further establishes the connection between the learned and the rich. It says that:

“The people began to be distinguished by ranks, according to their riches and their chances for learning; yea, some were ignorant because of their poverty, and others did receive great learning because of their riches.”

So a societal portrait of the false god Mím begins to emerge with the working class as his body and the educated elite as the talking head. This specifically applies to Mormondom because from Brigham Young to Gordon B. Hinckley the Mormon people have placed a very high value on receiving a college education. Hinckley expressed it most succinctly when he said:

“The world will in large measure pay you what it thinks you are worth, and your worth will increase as you gain education and proficiency in your chosen field.”

Hinckley knew that we the people are classified by ranks, according to their riches and their chances for learning, just like the Nephites were only a few chapters before the pending destructions, and he honored that dishonest social order. He established the Perpetual Education Fund and in so doing, he put the money where the mouth is, where the hungry head and the mouth of Mím is. Hinckley’s Perpetual Debt-U-Cation Fund is undeniably poised to feed the rich while offering better training to the poor as their servants. In 1964 the Church established the Benemerito school in Mexico. In 1999 Church News referred to it as the “BYU of Mexico”. But by 2013, just over a decade after the PEF had been founded, the Church decided to discontinue the education of all the students of Benemerito to convert the facility into what the Church Office had determined to be the more lucrative venture of another missionary training center. What Hinckley meant when he said:

“You belong to a church that teaches the importance of education.”

was more explicitly expounded by J. Craig McIlroy as president of the BYU Alumni Association in his commencement address given to graduates on April 26, 2007. He prefaced the main body of his remarks with these words:

“Might I suggest that you consider wealth creation as a commodity made up of financial, human, and intellectual capital. Business people know that they must spend 70 to 80 percent of their time growing assets. In families, growing the human and intellectual assets is often overlooked. The members in the family are the human capital.”

Then McIlroy referenced the founder of the secret combination known as the Illuminati:

“Mayer Amschel Rothschild understood that two important elements of a family’s wealth are its human and intellectual capital. He saw to it that all family members were well educated and that they worked. He also provided specialized mentorship opportunities as his sons entered the workforce.

Like the Rothschild children, you have been given a figurative loan, if you will, in the form of a financial subsidy of your tuition by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. You represent the human and intellectual capital of your own families and, in a broader sense, of the Church.”

Hinckley himself was in attendance when these words were spoken, along with Vice President Dick Cheney. The presence of the Profit of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints at that commencement ceremony, his actions while there, as also his inaction, speak volumes, and voluminously. In short it said:

“You BELONG to a CHURCH that teaches the impotence of education.”

It is all a big joke. It’s okay to laugh. They are certainly laughing at you, and LOUDLY!

All of this ties in strongly with Ragnarok – The Final Fate of the Gods of the Nordic Peoples in many ways. Firstly, the Gods of the Nordic Peoples are just that, they are the Gods of Nordic people. They could be land and riches, or whatever else people of Nordic descent idolize. They could be the various names of the Old Norse pantheon, Odin, or Thor, or Mím (who we have discussed in detail here). But most importantly, they are the Nordic people themselves. We all have our heavenly counterparts dwelling in dimensions high above us. Something similar to the basic plot for the 2012 film, Upside Down – they live an existence of relative luxury while we struggle to survive here below in the lone and dreary physical world. For now we, like the characters in that movie who were inhabitants of “Down Below”, scavenge for bits of “inverted matter” from that better world overhead to warm our furnaces during the dead of winter.

The Bible foretells the day when Heaven and Earth will be rolled together as a scroll. It says that the stars will fall as they are shook from the sky. Literally this will come about as a result of a reversal of the Earth’s poles. Inter-dimensionally and spiritually speaking, this means that the hosts of Heaven will have to come down from their high places. If there are spiritual powers of wickedness in high places as Paul warned, and we do not struggle against them, then those forces will take us over as they fold into us, their mortal counterparts here below. I’ve written of the Lorentzian Manifold in What Makes the Book of Mormon a L.I.T.M.U.S. Test? pt. 2, and in We Are The Weather about the pole shift set to occur for this planet. Eurocentric interpretations of verses describing the Lost Tribes of Israel as returning from the “Countries of the North” will be shook. Even those few LDS who hold that Inner Earth beings resembling Nordic Gods will come to the rescue may want to do as Isaiah says and consider that which they have not heard (Isaiah 52:15). They can start with considering what ancient Norse prophecies like the tale of Ragnarok have to say about these matters.

The world tree Yggdrasil shudders and groans. The gnomes groan by the stone doors which are entrances to their inner earth dwellings. Rocky cliffs open and the Jötunn women sink. All this may seem like very strange and foreign imagery, but a side by side comparison between the legend of Ragnarok and Christian/Mormon scripture and even modern American news documents should serve to clarify. First of all, Yggdrasil is the World Tree of Norse mythology. In What Makes the Book of Mormon a L.I.T.M.U.S. Test? pt. 2, I make mention of the simple and universal concept of the Axis Mundi, and I endeavor to emphasize that this fractal fact applies not only to the planet but to individual people too. When the Old Norse legends tell us that the World Tree will shudder and groan, they are testifying to the same truth that the apostle Paul spoke upon in Romans 8. For, said he:

“I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.

For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God.

For we know that the Earth and all creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.

And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.

Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.”

Crying and Laughing are parts of that vibratory language which can not be uttered with words. These actions cause our sides to shake and our personal axis to align with the Spiritual North. This allows for smooth assimilation of the spirit body which is, esoterically speaking, the Nordic Man. Until perfect alignment is achieved, there is an unequal distribution of power between the world of the Fathers and that of the Children. The prophet Elijah was sent to remedy this injustice, and set things straight. Perhaps you will recall that the prophet Elijah laughed loudly in the faces of those priests of Baal when, in a showdown against the God of Israel, they failed to produce fire with which to light the sacrificial altar. We have apparently forgotten the power of the One God, and have subscribed to dumb idols who deny us that heavenly flame we all need. Under these present circumstances, as it says in D&C 123:7…

“The whole earth groans under the weight of its iniquity.”

Gnomes are also heard to groan at the onset of Ragnarok. There are good and bad gnomes. Gnomes are creatures which hide treasures deep in the Earth, either by placing them there, or by preventing those treasures naturally contained within Her from surfacing to see the light of day. They work in huge underground halls, away from the eyes of the world, but very much affecting events upon the face of the earth on a geological plus geopolitical scale. Many major cities have underground catacombs and some of these are very extensive and elaborate. There is a subterranean network of halls and rooms known to exist underneath the streets of Salt Lake City. It is also no secret that the Church has immense cavernous vaults in the mountains where they hide many treasures.

And speaking of mountainous country, according to the Norse eschatology, rocky cliffs are to open and the Jötunn (pronounced Yotun) women will sink. The Jötnar are a race of frosty, gluttonous, man-eating giants who live in Jötunheim. But why would their women specifically take such a hard fall during this apocalyptic scene? I believe that one reason has to do with the schemes of the Evil One in these last days which are specifically targeted at young women. The strange sounding name of the World Tree in Norse Mythology – Yggdrasil – may hold the answer to the mystery. Though its etymology is disputed, its pronunciation is indubitably known to be – ɪɡdrəsɪl. Without removing or adding any letters to the word, and by reversing the sequence of the first two letters, then flipping the third and fourth around, we get – ɡɪrdəsɪl – nearly an exact phonetic match for “Gardasil”, the Merck manufactured vaccine against HPV, the cancer-causing human papilloma virus. Gardasil received FDA approval in the summer of 2006, and by 2008 had been accepted in 41 states of the U.S. The vaccine garnered a great deal of controversy from the start. It was thought to be the cause of many cases of illness and several deaths even when it was first released and marketed for females ages 9 to 26. Since that time it has been shown to damage young girls’ ovaries to the point of being rendered useless, and causing premature menopause.

Within the first two years after the vaccine was introduced, the federal Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System, run by the FDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, collected 8,000 reports of problems after Gardasil shots, including paralysis, seizures and miscarriages. Earlier this month, national talk show host Katie Couric featured a woman on daytime TV who was the mother of the first girl whose life was claimed by this vile vaccine. Jessica Ericzon, 17, collapsed dead in her bathroom on Feb. 22, 2008. On the advice of her family doctor, Jessie had taken a series of three Gardasil shots. Seeing such uncanny parallels between Yggdrasil and Gardasil, it is chilling to note that the blond-haired, blue-eyed honors student bore the most famous and common Scandinavian surname of all time. And even more eerie is the fact that she died on Feb. 22^nd, the last day of the feast of Jolablot, the third of a series of tri-annual feasts celebrated by the Vikings. This is also the date when experts in Norse mythology estimate that Ragnarok will begin. The first two feasts of the Viking calendar – Sigrblot and Vetrarblot – happen to coincide with the summer season and harvest time. Jessica Ericzon got the first injection in July 2007 followed by her second shot in September.  Her mother, Lisa, said she complained of a pain in the back of her head which would subside after some time, but grew progressively worse with each injection.

In Utah, the controversy over Gardasil takes on very Mormon moralistic overtones which aren’t always distinctly addressed by members of the medical establishment poised to make decisions related to the issue. Utah’s Southwest Health Department says Gardasil is too expensive and questions its effectiveness while the Utah Scientific Immunization Advisory Committee pushes for its implementation state-wide. However, the generally conservative public does not particularly like the idea of issuing a vaccine designed to counter sexually transmitted disease to girls so young. They fear that it might reflect poorly on their morals. But this defense does not truly have the young women of Utah’s best interest in mind or at heart, nor does it truly provide for their safety and well-being. The LDS people are very open to the idea of vaccines as they are led by men who laud the so-called modern miracle of western medicine. As soon as the cunning doctors of death can find a presentation for their poison more in keeping with the people’s Victorian ideals, they will administer it and the Utahn/Jötunn women of the land in the mountains will fall.

Descendants of Scandinavians settled in the United States during the 19th and 20th centuries. There are about 2 million Americans of Danish descent. Like other groups of Americans of Scandinavian descent, many of them are Lutherans. However, they contrast with Norwegian and Swedish Americans in that a large percentage of them are Mormon converts who settled in Utah and southeastern Idaho. Early Mormon missionaries were particularly successful in Denmark, but there are also many families in Utah with Swedish ancestry. Nordic blood runs through the veins of many Utahns. What might be the effects when the blood of the slain Norse gods runs through their vain brains in the form of false traditions passed down from their fathers? Shall all of their “work for their dead” in Valhalla, the Hall of the Slain, amount to nothing more than “dead works” in defiled temples when their false gods finally die?

In 2010, former member of the 3^rd Quorum of the Seventy, Elder Hans Mattsson and his wife Birgitta made news when they came forward and expressed serious doubts and dismay about the history of the Church and how it has handled faithful and honest members who have questions. Many Swedish Mormons including a stake president then also opened up about their feelings and formed a group to discuss the faith crisis they were facing. This group seriously alarmed Salt Lake and a special “emergency” fireside was held for local leaders. Church historian Elder Marlin Jensen and his assistant Elder Richard Turley were sent from Salt Lake to Stockholm to attend the meeting and deal with the “problem”. It can not be denied that major stirrings are awakening many of the Scandinavian people. Whether they are stirred up to anger or to spiritual strength and liberty remains to be seen.

Vikings believed that as a prelude to the Ragnarok apocalypse, three freezing winters would follow each other with no summers in between. In The Thermodynamics and Eternodynamics of Desire – Continued, I touch on the elementary connection between temperature and time. In We Are The Weather pts. 1 & 2, I try to explain the spiritual, multigenerational and multidimensional facets of weather phenomena. Time cycles and weather patterns mirror each other, and can offer clues to those who know what to look for. Last year Utah experienced its coldest winter temperatures since 1978. Now as winter sets in again official statements from Salt Lake echo that time when the Church altered its policy on priesthood regarding non Caucasian males. Of course the Saltican city is only trying to keep in step with the Vatican city as they vie for publi-city. Their statements do not represent repentance in the present and therefore have no effect on the past. As for the future, the forecast looks grim.

What bitter winds blow from Angel Moroni’s horn? And do they portend a similar fate for European emigrants as that signaled by the blowing of the mythical Gjallerhorn said to herald the approach of Ragnarok? Solar activity as recorded by astronomers has entered a period of freefall, always a precursor to a cooling cycle, and scientists say 2014 could be the harbinger of a mini or even a full-scale ice age. Europe’s Little Ice Age was a period of cooling that took place between 1550 and 1850 AD. It brought about catastrophic consequences for peoples all across the European continent but was most drastic for the Vikings who suffered much death and total loss of their holdings in Greenland. Today people may not think that they are as susceptible to death and disease due to changes in the weather, but despite our modern lifestyle, the environment still has a way of adversely affecting our health by stealth.

In some accounts of Ragnarok it is foretold that: the soil and the sky will be stained with poison. As the spirits of deceased warriors gather on the ethereal battlefield, we see the militaristic and industrial forces of mortal men take to the sky in planes spilling mass amounts of poison which affects and infects not only the air quality but also the soil. Swedish parliamentarian Pernilla Hagberg has stood up and voiced growing concern over chemtrails on behalf of her constituents. She personally vows to do all she can to put a stop to the spraying of tiny particles of aluminum and barium chaff in the skies over Sweden. The U.S. military admits that “cloud seeding” as they call it has been going on since the late 90s. The expanding program was launched with the purpose of creating “clouds of microscopic computer particle all communicating with each other to form an intelligent fog that could be used for various purposes” according to a research paper produced for the U.S. Air Force. As chemtrails rapidly grow ever more prevalent in the skies over Utah, the Mormon people below would do well to review their scriptures and read in Mosiah 7:30 where the Lord says:

“If my people shall sow filthiness they shall reap the chaff thereof in the whirlwind; and the effect thereof is poison.”

Norse legend and Chrisian lore both tell us that an angel in heaven shall sound the trump. The sons of Odin are called to the battlefield, the whole of earth and creation anxiously awaits the manifestation of the sons of God. Apocalypse simply means revelation, and that which is to be revealed is our own future form. John 3:1-2 reminds us….

“Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God: therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew him not.

Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is.”

After the gloom and doom comes light and life! After the death of the Norse gods, after the Time of the Gentiles is finished, then a new and glorious earth will emerge.

THE SIDE (SPLITTING) EFFECTS OF LAUGHTER

Yes, Zion will E-merge, but before the new Heaven-N-Earth energy merge is possible, the world will be submerged in cataclysm, and all worldly creatures will be divided by multiple schisms. Mankind will be split into various opposing sides. Laughter plays a significant role in this societal side-splitting. This should be no surprise after examining its dual nature as a tool for simultaneous connectivity and corrosiveness. The charge to avoid loud laughter should make us aware of the powerful electromagnetic charge inherent in laughter. And with a basic understanding of electromagnetic principles we ought to recognize its potential for repelling as well as attracting, energizing as well as zapping. If we would tap into laughter’s healing properties and potential we have to be aware of the delicate nature of this spiritual technique.

Laughter is an energetic activity that raises our heart rate and blood pressure, but these physiological effects are incompletely documented and their medicinal benefits are even less certain. Lennart Levi, of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, reported that comedy activates the body’s “fight or flight” system, increasing catecholamine levels in urine, a measure of activation and stress. Lee Berk, DHSc, of the Loma Linda School of Medicine, countered with a widely cited study that reported that laughter reduced catecholamines and other hormonal measures of sympathetic activation. This reduction in stress and associated hormones is the mechanism through which laughter is presumed to enhance immune function. Unfortunately, Berk’s studies show at best a biological response to comedy. His reports included only five experimental subjects, never stated whether those subjects actually laughed, and were presented in only three brief abstracts. Does a sense of humor or a lighthearted personality add years to your life? Not necessarily.

A large-scale study by Howard Friedman, Ph.D., professor of psychology at the University of California at Riverside, found optimism and sense of humor in childhood to be inversely related to longevity. This may be because people with untempered optimism indulge in risk-taking, not so much believing, but thinking that the system of slavery we live under in this present physical reality will somehow not affect them adversely. And ultimately, not loving and valuing their souls enough because of long-term abuse, they do not care if their brash rebellious reaction does effectively free them or not. Of course the parable of the talents, if anything, teaches us that risk taking is crucial. But to indulge in untempored emotion is not in line with the scriptures which warn us to bridle our passions so that that they can be to us, tempered tools with which to build Zion. The warning against defiling one’s garments with “untempored mortar” was very prevalent in freemasonic teachings during the early part of the nineteenth century in the United States, and this provides a very accurate analogy and important lesson in regards to “loud laughter”. It is not good for building, and certainly not fit for building the type of familial bonds necessary to sustain Zion.

Pain reduction is one of laughter’s promising applications. Rosemary Cogan, Ph.D., a professor of psychology at Texas Tech University, found that subjects who laughed at a Lily Tomlin video or underwent a relaxation procedure tolerated more discomfort than other subjects. Humor may help temper intense pain. James Rotton, Ph.D., of Florida International University, reported that orthopedic surgery patients who watched comedic videos requested fewer aspirin and tranquilizers than the group that viewed dramas. Humor may also help us cope with stress. In a study by Michelle Newman, Ph.D., an assistant professor of psychology at Penn State University, subjects viewed a film about three grisly accidents and had to narrate it either in a humorous or serious style. Those who used the humorous tone had the lowest negative affect and tension. A problem with these studies is that none of them separate the effects of laughter from those of humor. None allow for the possibility that presumed effects of laughter or humor may come from the playful settings associated with these behaviors. And none evaluate the uniqueness of laughter by contrasting it with other vocalizations like shouting.

Loud laughter, similar to copious amounts of alcohol, might drown out pain entirely, in which case we are sure to miss the pricking effects of the Holy Spirit upon our soul. Loud Laughter could well be classified as laughter which solidifies a lie, rather than gently helping us cope with reality while we work to change it for the better. Laughter was developed in our species as it was adopted from heavenly helpers for beneficial bonding between brothers and sisters. It is not to be used as a drug. Yet this has become its primary usage in today’s society. The larger the group gathering these days, the louder the laughter – and we are not speaking in terms of mere volume. The more recreational our bouts of laughter, the less reconciliatory it becomes in its effects. A purely wreck-creation-all approach to laughter, like most of modern medicine, often ignores the side(splitting)effects. It only re-creates a false atmosphere of comradery by forcibly inducing mass release of endorphins. If we use comedy as a pill to mask the symptoms of social ills, then, like an anti-depressant with a 99% success rate, 1% of the time the built-up depression will suddenly erupt from the unconscious mind in violent fits as we have seen with the alarming, and growing frequency of infanticide and suicide in the U.S. lately, where a very high percentage of cases involve some kind of anti-depressant medication.

Mass media promotes laughter as medicine, and it certainly is. But today’s decadent culture does not promote responsible use of powerful medicine. Print and broadcast reporters produce upbeat, often frothy stories like “A Laugh a Day Keeps the Doctor Away.” A best-selling Norman Cousins book and a popular Robin Williams film Patch Adams amplified this feel-good message. But left unsaid in such reports is a jarring truth: Laughter did not evolve to make us feel good or improve to our health. Certainly, laughter unites people, and social support has been shown in studies to improve mental and physical health. But the presumed health benefits of laughter may be coincidental consequences of its primary goal: bringing people together. Bringing people together as family must be our focus. Without this focus, laughter is improperly used, and sorely abused to keep people from feeling sorrow for the sins of the world. Since laughter was intended to hold the human race together then any other use can eventually lead to condemnation in the spirit. This condemnation is hastened in our day by a new trend: Laughter as a carelessly administered vaccine or drug.

Laughter, in many ways, can be observed to behave similarly to a virus. A virus is a small infectious agent that replicates only inside the living cells of other organisms. Laughter can be highly contagious. In a study conducted by Dr. Robert Provine and associates, 1,200 people were observed laughing spontaneously in their natural environments. The results of their study surprised them because they suggested that the critical stimulus for laughter is not a joke, but the presence of another person. While we usually think of laughter as coming from an audience after a wisecrack from a single speaker, contrary to expectation, the speakers observed laughed almost 50% more than their audiences. The study also showed that laughter mostly follows comments which are not particularly clever or comical. Only 15% of laughter followed anything joke-like. Excluded from the study were all vicarious social effects of media (television, radio, books, etc.). The direct social nature of laughter was striking: Laughter was almost 50 times more frequent in social than solitary situations. In fact, a person laughing alone is sometimes judged to be mentally unstable. We’re much more likely to talk to ourselves or even smile when alone than to laugh. However happy we may feel, laughter is a signal we send to others and it virtually disappears when we lack an audience. Like a virus, the ripples of laughter can only ripple-cate themselves in other living organisms.

Just as live viruses are used in many vaccines, laughter is used similarly in modern social media. Earlier I mentioned that laughter has the potential to let the world in, as well as bring Zion out of us. In appropriate doses one’s external environment should be let in for purposes of building a spiritual immunity, but always through the filter of laughter, never taking in quantities that would prove lethal. For this reason we are told to avoid loud laughter and be prudent in our use of this potent practice. Most people these days do not go to God for their laughs. They go to mass media, and here laughter is isolated and mass produced like the active ingredients in most modern medicine. Technologically triggered mini-epidemics are produced by television laugh tracks. Laugh tracks have accompanied most television sitcoms since September 9, 1950. At 7:00 that evening, “The Hank McCune Show” used the first laugh track to compensate for being filmed without a live audience.

Canned laughter may sound artificial, but it coaxes TV viewers to laugh as if they were part of a live audience. Lying laughter promotes disconnection from our fellow man. Not only have live audiences become extremely rare, but viewing of live performances, up-close and in person, have become largely a thing of the past in today’s virtual world. We can see this same trend leading away from life-promoting laughter towards increasingly dead forms of social interaction in the area of LDS ritual. Live temple sessions are extremely rare, and dead works are rampant. Of course we may say that laughter seems completely inappropriate to us in such a sacred setting. I admit that laughter has been conspicuously absent from any temple session I have ever attended, but I am not entirely certain that this is as it should be, or as it was intended. God’s people are always infamous for missing the point of God’s teachings.

Joseph Smith’s sense of humor comes out very strongly in the lines of the original temple drama which has been slowly but significantly edited over the years. Joseph’s sense of humor reflected his sense of humanity. Here, through the symbolism of the Adam and Eve story, Joseph addresses the spiritual and physical beginnings of humans. Comical characters like the Preacher play along side the Lucifer character that constantly spews forth wickedly witty lines. We sit in complete silence, many of the audience members, from the geriatric to the youthful; experience acute drowsiness in the darkness of the theatre while watching the viral program which is projected on the video screen many times a day in temples throughout the world. Up till recently the Church had two temple “vids” catering to a corrupted race dominated by males who are in turn dominated by “visual” stimulation. Initiates basking in the soft glow of the video screen, illuminated by illusion, were offered the options of blonde or brunette to appeal to their vain and false sense of individuality. So-called individuals have been reduced to Indy-Visuals who are not independent, nor are they capable of seeing truth.

One truth that the temple drama was originally intended to convey was that humanity, as in physical mankind, can become separated by our minds from the spirit of humanity. Or in other words, humanity as a heavenly attribute may be either attained and expressed or suppressed and lost through cultural practices. The temple drama, like life was meant to rotate with the Prayer Circle of Life, not remain rote and mechanical. Once upon a time in humanity’s distant past, all the performers, including the witness couple, formed one interactive whole with the audience members. The whole point of RITUAL is to en-RICH-YOU-ALL! In the beginning, the ancient temple drama was infused with LIGHT and LIFE! Call and response chants, and raw animated acts kept the participants from simply “acting” as we see the practically emotionless figures do in the previously used LDS temple movies, or in the pretend emotion portrayed by the actors of the new temple film. I don’t know which is worse, but I know there is a more excellent way, and so do you.

When dealing with laughter our minds must remain sober if our hearts are to be freed. We need to always retain a remembrance of laughter’s sacred purpose – to connect human beings to one another. In his post, Connecting With Pixels, Justin explains that pornography addiction is so prevalent in this age, especially in places like the U.S., and it reaches its highest rates in the Mormon state of Utah. Justin says that pornography’s prevalence in latter-day culture is a question of technology making it so readily accessible and even pushed. And he identifies pornography addiction as a symptom of larger underlying social problems – namely: “poor socialization by parents on sexuality, unaddressed childhood abuse, an addictive personality, or feelings of insecurity.” LDS men may acknowledge pornography as a plague, they may even take measures to restrict online access and guard against such images, but sadly, for the most part it is their pre-dis-position to remain locked into and tied down by various aspects of the bigger pornographic picture projected by Satan onto humankind as they sit like a captive audience in Plato’s Cave. Sports, military service, and even manual labor are highly addictive hero-porn for the body. Schooling, political debate, and even reading can all be forms of intellectual porn for the mind. Church and temple attendance is religious porn for the spirit. Porn in all of its forms channels real energy into fake settings, encourages complacency, and replaces authentic human exchange of energy with holographic projections – hollow graphics dancing provocatively across the walls of our private porn prison cell.

Porn, like anything else, can be imp–properly used to prop up imp–personal personas. Our persons are poisons, and should be used with a certain degree of precaution. But the point is not to imagine that we may cast them off permanently, or cover ourcellves and our sins with pretentious priesthood garments of our own make. They may be more holy for a time, but over time they also may become more holey, moth bitten, and vain than the Emperor’s New Clothes – vain because of vanity, and vain in their ridiculously failed attempt to cover our nakedness. Holy and protective layers of being “may be conferred upon us, it is true; but when we undertake to cover” up…then we are not sealed as Heaven’s own but are left to ourselves (D&C 121:37). Why do we revel in a con-sealing when we could strip down to the bare-naked truth of all things as revealed by the see-through robes of the Holy Ghost? True success is never achieved by outward means, and herein lies the real power to protect and strengthen. Focus on outward appearances will only bring us suck-cess, and will forever be susceptible to spiritual and physical sickness. King Benjamin tells the people:

“And finally, I cannot tell you all the things whereby ye may commit sin; for there are divers ways and means, even so many that I cannot number them.” – Mosiah 4:29

But through shifting our awareness into the all-encompassing true order based on the first-born flow of the inward being, we are able to not only justify, but purify and eventually sanctify every action, and everything around us.

Ancient life-affirming ways have been hacked by a wedge shaped virus that is perverting sacred r-i-t-u-a-l into v-i-r-t-u-a-l reality. Virtue is lost in the present virtual reality, and the people are not even aware. Mankind and males in particular are spoken of as predominantly unaware beings in the Doctrine & Covenants section 121 in the succinct lecture on the rights of the priesthood that falls between verses 36-40. Why is man not aware when it comes to his inimical, enemy stance towards God? Man is not aware because he is not man enough to be. The simple and eternal truth is hidden from us behind the etymology of the word ‘man’ and the word ‘virus’. Although not “aware” in literal terms, literary examples from Anglo-Saxon writers in the 5^th to 12^th century show us that, in Old English, a ‘man’ was a ‘wer’. ‘Wer’ meant man, and from this word we get the modern English word werewolf (literally man-wolf). From the Old Norse – verr, through the Caucasian Mountains to the Ossetian – ир (ir), and Latin – vir, on back to its Proto-Indo-European root – wiHrós, and all the way back to the original Sanskrit cognate – वीर (vīrá); earlier linguistic roots all held the same simple meaning. And this ancient root word for man or male can be found today in the word ‘virility’, meaning manhood, or masculinity. It can not be ignored that it is also part of the word ‘virus’. The Latin word ‘virus’ means poison, venom, or slime. Its more ancient roots lie in the Sanskrit – विषम् (víṣam), which means “anything active” but has the connotation of “anything actively pernicious” such as poison, venom, or bane. विषम् (víṣam) is only a masculine a-stem declension of विष (víṣa), meaning ‘servant’.

Following a similar trail as the linguistics from the Indian subcontinent to the Mediterranean culture of ancient Palestine, Jesus, the greatest/least Master/Servant Teacher of all, brought us wisdom and presented us with the concept that:

“No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other.” (Matt. 6:24)

If a man is aware, Christ is awareness. Awareness is a virus. A virus spreads. It can spread in one direction or another. If a virus is aware of its self as awareness it knows it has the power to save or it can ravish, but it can not do both simultaneously. It can not serve God (All) and Mammon (Some/$um). Complete companionship with the Christ means at-one-ment, true enlightenment, or lightening the load rather than weighing one’s self down with more and more of “that which doth canker”. The difference between a lifestyle driven by the principle of seeking the Kingdom of Heaven first and a deathstyle driven by the habit of taking care of bu$ine$$ before tending to things of the spirit, is the same as the subtle yet decisive difference between all, and most. All/Most knowing God does not count. Mankind can either identify its self with God or it is an enemy to God. We are either fully aware or else we are at least partially unaware of the extent of our actions. From moment to moment in time we are either being human or we are acting as  poison. There are of course varying degrees in either direction, but generally speaking, when we are acting as poison we are acting prideful and we tend to Euro-neously call Original Hue-manity slime and despise it when we “see” it. The truth is we can’t see humanity for what we are while in the service of Mammon. Only while in the service of our fellow man are we in service to our God, like King Benjamin taught in Mosiah 2:17. PathoGen-tiles who remain unrepentant have a deadly effect on the Blood of Abraham, and they act as a scourge upon the House of Israel wherever they are found throughout the Earth. The extreme damage that an unaware man is capable of is truly devastating.

“Behold, ere he is aware, he is left unto himself, to kick against the pricks, to persecute the saints, and to fight against God.” – D&C 121:38

“Kicking against the pricks” paints the picture of a person whose awareness has become numbed to the point of not feeling the pain caused by his actions in either direction. Unwittingly fighting against one’s own creator and the sustainer of all life is a sign of a very pathogenic pathos. Unaware human beings are virulent in their emotional illiteracy. Father may forgive them, for they know not what they do. But when there is willful ignorance and a conscious acceptance of falsehood over real emotion, then those germs will be utterly eradicated in their physical form by the Mother’s immune system.

The modern phrase “going viral” has no greater consummation than the Biblical prophesy of Christ’s ultimate sovereignty, that: “Every knee shall bow, and every tongue confess.” In fact this scripture (Romans 14:11) is an expression of the viral nature of Truth. Like an unstoppable live Virus of Veritas, the Lord sayeth:

“As I live, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall give praise to God.”

And the preceding verse talks of the futility in resisting the Virus of Veritas, the True and Living Church of the Firstborn. In it Paul asks:

“why do you judge your brother? Why do you regard your brother with contempt?”

When one stops seeking his life, he then finds it (Luke 17:33). As soon as he succumbs to the Christ, the Virus of God, he instantly recognizes that there is no difference between his brother and his self. Through Christ we become aware that self does not end where our skin begins. When we awaken we abandon our destructive vices. We join as part of King Benjamin’s greater audience. His audience was surely wrought upon by a spiritually viral epidemic of conversion. Envision it; a whole huge crowd spontaneously crying out with one voice, and suddenly feeling “no more disposition to do evil” (Mosiah 5:2). We will no longer behave like vicious virions for we are at one with our environs. The Love of God exceeds even the speed of light and it completely takes us over as it explodes from our hearts and assimilates all creation. But until that moment when one feels and understands his unique position in the universe, then he is literally dis-positioned towards unrighteous dominion and all manner of evil. This is the unfortunate state of almost all men in the world as a study of D&C 121 will tell you. The study of viruses is known as virology and it has revealed to us that viruses are found in almost every ecosystem on Earth and are the most abundant type of biological entity.If man’s nature tends toward that of a vile, havoc-wreaking virus how then are we to be redeemed from our toxic attitude? What could possibly reconcile a man’s violently torn soul? Well, another hallmark of those who are found possessed of the Love of Christ in these latter days is recorded in Doctrine & Covenants 84:71, also known as the Oath & Covenant of the Priesthood.

“If any man (vir) shall administer poison (vir) unto them it shall not hurt them”

The Bible also testifies to the divine protection and immunity experienced by God’s servants. Harriet Tubman, who not only led over a thousand slaves to freedom at great personal peril, but also administered to Civil War soldiers who lay sick and dying with dysentery and small pox, was unafraid of death in any of its forms because she was on the errand of the Lord and stayed busy about her Father’s work. She acquired quite a reputation for her skill in curing dysentery with a medicine she prepared from roots which grew near the waters that gave the disease. She never once suffered even the slightest symptom of the diseases she was treating and it was said of her that the Lord was with her. The Hevajna Tantra contains several verses referring to men and their relationship with poison. On page 93 we read:

“With the very poison, a little of which would kill any other being, a man who understands poison would dispel another poison.”

Then on page 107 it says:

“If he drinks strong poison, the simple man who does not understand it, falls senseless. But he who is free from delusion with his mind intent on the truth destroys it altogether”

One more reference on page 117 delivers what it calls, “the profoundest secret of the beauteous purifier of existence”….

“Useless is a gem uncut, but once cut, it gives forth its brilliance. Likewise this gem of the saṃsāra (continuous flow), possessed of the properties of the five desires (five carnal senses), becomes like poison in its unpurified state, but when purified it becomes ambrosia (food or drink of the gods).”

The profound truth in all these scriptures, LDS, Christian, and Buddhist, is that a man of god may partake of the same things which an impure man does, but the effect will not be the same. One of the great mysteries of God is how holy men and women arrive at consecration and subsist by purifying themselves, by purifying poison. Transmutation is the key.

It may sound weird to hear the Word of God-to-Man articulated in terms of the Virus. But think of it; a virus is an active strain of DNA-altering particles and “As man is, God once was, as God is, man may become”. Even if Lorenzo Snow, who coined that phrase, and was in many ways a prideful product of his gene-ration, never considered it; the fact remains that at some point the agent that offers to take him from manhood to godhood is going to require some altering of those prideful genes. On April 6, 1844, Joseph Smith preached to a congregation of 20,000 saying:

“Here then is eternal life – to know the only wise and true God; and you have got to learn how to be Gods yourselves, and to be kings and priests to God the same as all Gods have done before you” (JOD 6:4; TPJS p.346)

Of those who have gone before us, few ever thought to attain to godhood, and of those few even fewer obtained it. I believe this is because, like the Founding Fathers, they too died holding firmly to a freemasonic belief in the “pursuit of happiness” which is perhaps the main lie underlying all of the Devil’s false doctrine. God suffers us to conduct experiments with life and liberty, hoping and trusting that we will one day tire of experimenting and desire now to enter his presence. From the Colonial English of the U.S. Constitution to the Latin of the Magna Carta, we should remember that in Old English ‘Wer’ meant ‘Man’, and “We the People” being a vir-us, must remember that our ancestors were-us and we are them. This is the real meaning of priesthood lineage.

Until we succeed in bringing past and future gene-rations into alignment the present will remain a perpetual prison to us. That is the curse with which the earth is to be smitten if not for the Spirit of Elijah. Only a turning/tuning of the heart signals of the Fathers to the heart signals of the Children and visa versa will result in the meeting in the middle which is necessary to eliminate the phase effect of sometimes constructive and other times destructive interference that varies with frequency, giving a series of peaks and troughs in the frequency response of the god-man system which in general do not occur in a harmonic series. Such are the uneven and troubled waves of spirit produced by the dis-positioning of all-most-all-most-all men, or the patronizing pattern-all pattern lamented in D&C 121:39 where it speaks about the patriarchal passing of priesthood. But there is hope. For, as verse 33 says:

“How long can rolling waters remain impure?”

Whether surface water waves, sound, or light; the ripples of laughter can be grasped to displace air waves which essentially help us begin to freely ripple-cate ourselves as children of the Divine rather than children of the Matrix. There is a way for us to dial in our hearts, and sync the radio receiver of mind. A way to shift our physical body to resonate in harmony with the high and low pitches of the Yahweh frequency as it goes, “^EEAA_OOAA^EEAA_OOAA^EEAA_OOAA^EEAA_OOAA^EE.” In audio engineering the technique is known as flanging. Flanging is done by taking the original signal and adding a uniform time-delayed copy of itself, which results in an output signal with peaks and troughs which are in a harmonic series. The flange effect was developed in the days of tape reels at EMI’s Abbey Road Studio. And it was first featured in the recording of the symbolically titled Beatles track, Tomorrow Never Knows from the album Revolver, which was recorded on April 6, 1966. This is symbolic of what Joseph Smith had proclaimed precisely 122 years prior to the date. He said that we have got to learn how to be Gods ourselves, and to be kings and priests to God the same as all Gods before us. He said that eternal life is here, now. It requires direct action in the present, or else you will be forever stuck in the revolving doors. As the Beatles sing; “Tomorrow Never Knows.”

THE LAST LAUGH

If tomorrow never knows then certainly the past is equally ignorant. The present is the true point of origin and the ultimate destination of all beings. The first shall be last and the last shall be first, and he who laughs last laughs best. We are all the same, age means nothing. Life’s pilgrim-age is cyclical like the Haj of the Muslims who come from far and wide to Mecca only to run in circles around a big black cube with a piece of meteorite in it.   This metaphor extends to (or from) the center of the galaxy. The galactic center is a dark void from our perspective. Around it spin stars and star systems, billions like (or unlike) our own. All of life, in this way, is a-void-dance – a dance around a void. But within the dark abyss is God. Light within dark, surrounded by swirling light enshrouded in more darkness, and so on and so forth, this is the fractal nature of reality. This cosmic dance around the throne of God is repeated throughout the Universe, and is addressed in the book of Job.

Is not God in the height of heaven? And behold the height of the stars, how high they are!

And thou sayest, How doth God know? Can he judge through the dark cloud?

Thick clouds are a covering to him, that he seeth not; and he walketh in the circuit of heaven.

Job 22:12-14

This was the laughable reasoning of earlier empires upon the face of the earth in the time of Noah. They laughed at Noah for counseling with an inner voice. But that global network of civilizations was cut off right at its peak. It was not the first time this had happened and would not be the last, but as far as the Earth’s cycles go, we are told that: As it was in the time of Noah, so shall it be in the end (Matt 24:37). Today we hear the loud laughter of the wicked, but who will have the last laugh?

Hast thou marked the old way which wicked men have trodden?

Which were cut down out of time, whose foundation was overflown with a flood:

Which said unto God, Depart from us: and what can the Almighty do for them?

Yet he filled their houses with good things: but the counsel of the wicked is far from me.

The righteous see it, and are glad: and the innocent laugh them to scorn.

Job 22:15-19

Our persons are our people self-replicated over time. Those fathers farthest removed from the present into our past are those most closely acquainted with our future. Our people are the peep-hole through which per-ception filters as per the con-ception of each individual being, who in turn subjects his or herself to new and everlasting in-ception of old ideas and revolving IDs which have been changed to protect The Innocent children; perSONS and perDAUGHTERS of the G.O.D.s in the whirl-P-O-O-L of consciousness which is one big L-O-O-P-whole of eternity and reality. We could liken it to a donut with a jelly-filled center of plasma discharging simultaneously in arc and dark mode. It is to that center that we must go if we wish to comprehend the whole configuration. Joseph Smith once likened it to a ring. Said he:

“I take my ring from my finger and liken it unto the mind of man-the immortal part, because it has no beginning. Suppose you cut it in two; then it has a beginning and an end; but join it again, and it continues one eternal round. So with the spirit of man.”

Being only a fraction of divine mind, the psyche of man sometimes suffers a fraction in its perception of the eternal round. To help us stay centered we can do as the Book of Mormon advises:

Cry unto him when ye are in your fields, yea, over all your flocks.

Cry unto him in your houses, yea, over all your household, both morning, mid-day, and evening.

Yea, cry unto him against the power of your enemies.

Yea, cry unto him against the devil, who is an enemy to all righteousness.

Cry unto him over the crops of your fields, that ye may prosper in them.

Cry over the flocks of your fields, that they may increase.

But this is not all; ye must pour out your souls in your closets, and your secret places, and in your wilderness.

Yea, and when you do not cry unto the Lord, let your hearts be full, drawn out in prayer unto him continually for your welfare, and also for the welfare of those who are around you.

Alma 34:20-27

Laughter is intimately linked with crying. Of course the verb crying is used in these passages to mean vocalize out loud and not necessarily to cry as in shed tears. Still, the point is to pray with emotion and out loud whenever and wherever possible. The last verse above deals with what we should do when it is not possible to cry out and it is a perfect description of Zen Buddhism. Zen Buddhist Thích Nhất Hạnh says:

“The moment of awakening may be marked by an outburst of laughter, but this is not the laughter of someone who has won the lottery or some kind of victory. It is the laughter of one who, after searching for something for a long time, suddenly finds it in the pocket of their coat.”

The reason why the wicked, whether in times past or times to come think that God is ignorant of their evil deeds, is because they themselves are not present to the fact that God exists in the midst of everyone and everything. They never think to look inside. They are convinced that there is nothing there in the dark pockets of life. Well, not exactly convinced, but the fear of the unknown keeps them from penetrating that cloud under which they go about in circles like the Israelites in the desert region around Sinai, afraid of their own God and unable to enter the Promised Land. Moses beckoned them, but they preferred to keep God at bay, and opted to obey Ten Commandments written on their stone hard hearts instead. Until we jump into the thick dark clouds mentioned in Job 22 and connect with God, our obedience is abeyance. We avoid the void and thereby keep God in a state of suspension, in a state of dormancy, in a state of uncertainty, up in the air. It is a classic case of the childish notion that: If I can’t see him he must not be able to see me. Oh, but he CAN judge through the thick dark cloud! It is only we who fool ourselves as we walk round and round in the circuit of heaven.

To testify of Christ is to be a prophet (Rev. 19:10). When we speak as prophets we have to understand that in many or most instances along this big spinning people-WHEEL one functions simply as a SPOKES-person for and in behalf of the ante-sensors (ancestors) as well as the un-born. I can’t expect people to always listen or even understand what I am saying until they actually disregard “me” altogether and look/listen past me, beyond the messenger to get the message its self. Alma 26:23 tells us that the Sons of Mosiah were laughed to scorn by their brethren back home. So, to all those who are or have desires to be traveling teachers of the gospel, I say: Be of good cheer. Learn to love and laugh at yourself, and when you have learned that all is self, you will laugh and love your way through life. Job 5:22 makes this grand promise:

“At destruction and famine thou shalt laugh: neither shalt thou be afraid of the beasts of the earth.”

I’m sure you have heard it said that God has a sense of humor. The figure of the Laughing Buddha is fairly well known. The Laughing Christ portrayed so often in the Gnostic Gospels, which were never admitted into our censored and perverted bibles, may be less well known; nevertheless we must come to know this laughing Christ. The name Isaac means ‘laughter’ and his character and back story in the bible reveal much about the Love/Laugh of God. Upon first hearing of foretelling of Isaac’s birth, both his parents’ first reaction is to laugh. Surely the idea of begetting a son in their extreme old age tickled their souls. Genesis 17:17 says that:

“Abraham fell upon his face, and laughed, and said in his heart, Shall a child be born unto him that is an hundred years old? and shall Sarah, that is ninety years old, bear?”

In the book Arcana Coelestia, Emanuel Swedenborg – a Swedish philosopher, theologian, chemist, anatomist, and visionary whose writings had a profound influence on the mind of Joseph Smith Jr. – wrote the following commentary on this bible verse.

“[…and laughed] That this signifies the affection of truth, may be seen from the origin and essence of laughter, for its origin is nothing but the affection of truth, or else the affection of what is false, from which come the gladness and merriment that in laughter display themselves in the face, which shows that the essence of laughter is nothing else. Laughter is indeed an external thing that belongs to the body because to the face; but in the Word interior things are expressed and signified by exterior things; just as all the interior affections of the mind are expressed and signified by means of the face, interior hearing and obedience being signified by the ear, interior sight or understanding by the eye, power and strength by the hand and arm, and so on, and in the same way the affection of truth by laughter.”

Swedenborg, who influenced Joseph Smith, was himself influenced by Ibn Sina aka Avicenna, author of Canonica Medica and The Book of Healing, to whom I make extensive reference in my Making SENSE of it All series. Each of these men did not rely solely upon the words or his predecessor for an understanding of these heavenly secrets, but were inspired by one another’s works to “experiment upon the word” in a direct, and personal, spiritually scientific manner as Alma advises and as all true men and women of God do. Remember we are talking about the curious and wonderful relationship between spiritual and physical, immaterial and material, being and form, and so these things are very literally a matter of life and death. In the previous section we looked at life and death on a microbial level and determined how spiritual intent begins to manifest on the physical plane at that microscopic level. It is wisdom to know the essentially viral nature of all things so that we may be conscious and choose either to operate for good or evil, to be one with God or an enemy to Him. Avicenna illustrates this in his Treatise on Love:

 “Every being which is determined by a design strives by nature toward its perfection, ie., that goodness of reality which ultimately flows from the reality of the Pure Good, and by nature it shies away from its specific defect which is the evil in it, ie., materiality and non-being. Therefore, it is obvious that all beings determined by a design possess a natural desire and an inborn love, and it follows of necessity that in such beings love is the cause of their existence. For everything that can be signified as existing belongs into one of these three categories” (i) either it has arrived at the specific perfection, (ii) or it has reached the maximum of defect, (iii) or it vacillates between these two states with the result that it is essentially in an intermediate position between two things….Beings in the real sense, then, are either such as are prepared for the maximum of perfection or such as are in a position intermediate between a defect occurring by reason of some cause and a perfection existing in the  nature itself. Therefore, no being is ever free from some connection with a perfection, and this connection with it is accompanied by an innate love and desire for that which may unite it with its perfection.

This becomes clear also from another aspect, that of causality and the “why”; since (i) no being which is determined by a design is devoid of a perfection specific to it; since (ii) such a being is not in itself sufficient cause for the existence of its perfection, because the perfections of the beings determined by a design emanate from the per se Perfect; and since (iii) one must not imagine that this Principle from which perfection emanates intends to cause a loss to any one of the particular beings….”

I want to interject here and demonstrate how Avicenna’s treatise is in alignment with the teachings of Father Lehi. I also intend to show how Lehi’s words borrow from the Asian tradition with which the Lord had brought him into contact along the way to the Americas, and how that ancient wisdom corroborates the new discoveries we have made here in our study of laughter as a poison which must be administered expertly – neither too much nor to little will do. Avicenna is firm on the point that all real beings must be determined by a design. Lehi reiterates this fact as he attempts to explain his Grand Theory of Unified Opposition in All Things. He says:

“Wherefore, the ends of the law which the Holy One hath given, unto the inflicting of the punishment which is affixed, which punishment that is affixed is in opposition to that of the happiness which is affixed, to answer the ends of the at-one-ment— For it must needs be [so], that there is [be] an opposition in all things. If not so….righteousness could not be brought to pass, neither wickedness, neither holiness nor misery, neither good nor bad. Wherefore, all things must needs be a compound in one; wherefore, if it should be one body it must needs remain as dead, having no life neither death, nor corruption nor incorruption, happiness nor misery, neither sense nor insensibility. Wherefore, it must needs have been created for a thing of naught; wherefore there would have been no purpose in the end of its creation. Wherefore, this thing must needs destroy the wisdom of God and his eternal purposes, and also the power, and the mercy, and the justice of God.” – 2 Nephi 2:10-12

When Avicenna defines real beings as: “such as are prepared for the maximum of perfection or such as are in a position intermediate between a defect occurring by reason of some cause and a perfection existing in the nature itself,” the “cause” to which he alludes and ascribes blame for the intermediate position, or “opposition” as Lehi calls it, between Per-Fect and De-Fect, is in fact poison and more specifically its mode of administration. We could identify it as “forbidden fruit in opposition to the tree of life; the one being sweet and the other bitter” for so does Lehi a little later in verse 15 of 2 Nephi chapter 2. We might suppose that the ‘bitter one’ is the forbidden fruit and comes from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and we could suppose that the ‘sweet one’ is the Love of God and comes from an entirely different tree – the Tree of Life. However these things are supposed to have played out in physical reality, the lesson is ONE, one of deadly poison and its anecdote. The “only way” we really have of discerning between the two is by noting the key difference between hurting and healing.

Thus we come to know the “Sun of Righteousness with healing in his wings” that is referred to in Malachi 4:2. And we may see that the rendering of this bible verse with the word “Sun” not “Son” purposely points back to the trunk of the Tree of Theology, the religion of ancient Egypt based on a firm understanding of the “Aten” sometimes called the Winged Sun Disc. Ancient Egyptian religion having stemmed from a deeper, Sub-Saharan root system of sacred regard for the interaction between the bright Sun and the dark Soil, it is vital to The Restoration of the health of hue-manity that we continue digging and reaching where the Prophet Joseph left off when his life was taken at Carthage. As Latter-Day Saints we take upon ourselves a vow more sacred than the Hippocratic Oath, to do no harm, but to build up Zion. Let us no longer mock God with hypocritical oaths. Let us compare the latter-day scripture of the Doctrine & Covenants side-by-side with the ancient teachings of Afrika, India, China, Scandinavia, Ancient America, etc. to discover just how long these devils have been doctoring covenants with malfeasance and priest craft.

Avicenna continues his treatise with these words:

“It is a necessary outcome of His wisdom and the excellence of His governance to plant into everything the general principle of love. The effect is that He thus indirectly preserves the perfection which He gave by emanation, and that He thus expresses His desire to bring them into being when they are absent, the purpose being that the administration [of the universe] should run according to a wise order. The never-ceasing existence of this love in all beings determined by a design is, therefore, a necessity. If this were not so, another love would be necessary to preserve this general love in its existence, to guard against its non-being and to retrieve it when it has lapsed, anxious lest it might disappear. But one of these two loves would be superfluous, and the existence of something superfluous in nature – which is divinely established – is impossible. Therefore, there is no principle of love other than this absolute and general love. And we can conclude that the existence of every being determined by a design is invariably accompanied by inborn love.”

Laughter and love are much more closely related than we may typically think, even at the basest of levels. Studies found that in cross-gender conversations, females laughed 126% more than their male counterparts, meaning that women tend to do the most laughing while males tend to do the most laugh-getting. Men seem to be the main instigators of humor across cultures, and this usually begins in early childhood. Think back to your high school class clown – most likely he was a male. Typically, women seek men who make them laugh, and men are eager to comply with this request. In 3,745 ads placed on April 28, 1996 in eight papers from the Baltimore Sun to the San Diego Union-Tribune, females were 62% more likely to mention laughter in their ads, and women were more likely to seek out a “sense of humor” while men were more likely to offer it. When Karl Grammar and Irenaus Eibl-Eibesfeldt studied spontaneous conversations between mixed-sex pairs of young German adults meeting for the first time, they noted that the more a woman laughed aloud during these encounters, the greater her self-reported interest in the man she was talking to. In the same vein, men were more interested in women who laughed heartily in their presence.

We may not always know why we laugh. Certainly there is a deep mysterious quality to the way in which our facial and abdominal muscles react to the unification of outward and inward stimuli from this world and the spirit world. But if we are in tune with the love of God then our laughter will have an uplifting effect. Laughter, like orgasm, should not be faked or forced. It should not be used to elicit self effacing techniques; rather it should come from a free heart shared in love. Laughter is a pressure valve and can let things in or out. When we laugh we are made vulnerable to higher powers and impregnable to seeds of faith. At the same time, some part of us is energized and empowered by the forceful release of raw emotion which pours out of us almost uncontrollably. Some knowing and confident presence deep inside us consoles and comforts us when we confront fear with faith. It is hard not to laugh when we feel our power, which is the power of love and goodness God has planted in our hearts. It is hard not to laugh when we realize the stupidity of society and its dictatorial die-wreck-tors. As it says in Psalms 37:13….

“The Lord shall laugh at him: for he seeth that his day is coming.”

May those who find themselves in a situation similar to Job – who complained that “Children despise me and laugh when they see me” – find comfort in knowing that after these Gentile brat oppressors which Isaiah spoke of have all died from off the face of the Earth, then will the laughter of children born to you during the glorious millennial reign of Christ fill your ears. From God the Father embedded like a seed of light within clouds of darkness, followed by the starry whirlpool of the Milky Way, then pro-seeded by more ominous darkness, etc. – the pattern is a playful one, and energy moves along best through the lovely vehicle of holy laughter.

“The Universe is the Practical Joke of the General
at the expense of the Particular, quoth Frater
Perdurabo, and laughed.
But those disciples nearest to him wept, seeing the
Universal Sorrow.
Those next to them laughed, seeing the Universal Joke.
Below these certain disciples wept,
Then certain laughed.
Others next wept.
Others next laughed.
Next others wept.
Next others laughed.
Last came those that wept because they could not
see the Joke, and those that laughed lest they
should be thought not to see the Joke, and thought
it safe to act like Frater Perdurabo.
But though Frater Perdurabo laughed
openly, He also at the same time wept secretly;
and in Himself He neither laughed nor wept.
Nor did He mean what He said.”

― Aleister Crowley, The Book of Lies

WHAT MAKES THE BOOK OF MORMON A L.I.T.M.U.S. TEST?–Pt. 2

THE FULLNESS OF TIMES

As we have seen, it is ultimately man’s own free will which determines if and when he chooses to evolve spiritually. But the turning, churning revolutions of time on this planet can be of great benefit to us once we have made up our minds to advance. The scriptural procedure of “fear and trembling” mentioned in the second section of part one of this piece is a personal earthquake. Baptisms of water and fire are purifying for the soul just as periodic floods and fires are for the soil. Eruptions, storms, and other cataclysmic activity may seem scary, but they can have a positive effect. Really, it is the individual who decides whether the effects will be disastrous or not. Such circumstances signal a shift in consciousness as they are high-energy events. One of the world’s foremost experts on OBE (Out of Body Experience), Robert Bruce, touching on the topics of spiritual sight, free will, and spirit guides, has this to say:

 “Lacking the acumen to tune clairvoyance to areas of interest, the novice clairvoyant will spontaneously tune into and see high-energy events. There is, by and large, no spirit or guide or higher power deliberately choosing the visions that are being seen. The energy of any event dictates how easily it will be seen. And future events involving loss of life and conflict generate a lot of energy in the future matrix.”

Writers throughout the Bible and Book of Mormon share their visionary experiences and corroborate the reality that they can often be dominated by glimpses of destruction first with the ability for more subtle energetic imaging coming later. Bruce continues:

“It is common for vision experiences to be short lived… lasting only a moment before fading, before some invisible force shuts them out, like turning off a TV… This is a direct action performed by your Higher-Self… By and large, your higher-self filters out the majority of subtle senses and abilities, including OBE, by default, to keep us grounded here in the physical world. Being able to notice this action, is, I think, the silver lining behind this frustrating experience. This may in fact be the whole point of the exercise designed to bring your attention to the fact that you have a Higher-Self, to encourage you to move in the direction of exploring your relationship with your Higher-Self. All of us have perfect natural psychic abilities already… But these abilities are not allowed by our default settings. So how do we change the default settings? – by exploring our Higher-Self connection, and by working with rather than against this great force, using clear and strong expressions of intention.”

Nowhere is this principle more succinctly illustrated than in Nephi’s plain and precious writing style.

“…as I sat pondering in mine heart I was caught away in the Spirit of the Lord, yea, into an exceedingly high mountain, which I never had before seen, and upon which I never had before set my foot. And the Spirit said unto me: Behold, what desirest thou? ” (1 Nephi 11:1-2)

The coming together in cooperation of a person and his or her Higher-Self is essentially the beginning step onto the Mountatin of the Lord and the final result of the dispensation of the Fullness of Times. IF one wishes to see what one’s Lord would reveal, expressing that desire is the first step. But, as the Brother of Jared’s encounter with the Holy One shows us, it will only be done through the Eye or I of Faith, which eye is the Imaginative Faculty. The I.F. is what puts one in touch with his Lord, with his Higher-Self. It puts this ‘I’ in touch with that ‘I’, the Individual in touch with the Infinite, so that the two may see I to I. When we speak of the imaginative we are not speaking of the imaginary. The world teaches the doctrine of the Devil who comes among them, saying: “Believe it not” (Moses 5:13) and “I am no devil, for there is none” (2 Nephi 28:22). With his focus on negative commandments he causes the world to worship the I-Mage-I-Nary (‘nary’ is an informal form of ‘not’). The Devil tells humans to never believe in themselves as sons and daughters of the Most High but rather to become carnal and devilish. But a core-rected self-image shows us the I-Mage-I-Native of that Promised Land who is the First Born aspect of our home-sick cellves that beckons us remember and return. The whole gospel is to repent/rethink and to return, like a little child, to Himagination.

The combined spiritual-spatial activation of temples of metal and stone as well as those of flesh and bone marks the summum bonum of the Lord’s work in the ushering in this Fullness of Times. “Indexing is Vital” for connection with your ancestors, proclaims the Church’s website, lds.org. But the Spirit of Elijah is not to be found on paper. If scripture can be tricky in our tendency to take it as the whole of the law, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, well then paper-work of the kind that goes on in today’s LDS Temples can be utterly deceiving. There are few people who are more wrapped up in the evil of the veil that pushes against the ushering in of the dispensation of the Fullness of Times than those so-called Temple Ushers and Veil Workers.

In the post, Mormon as a Restoration Prophet, LDSA writes:

“Mormon’s compilation and abridgment of the Nephite records is another pattern after which the dispensation of the fullness of times will be brought to pass. It is prophesied that that dispensation will have all things in heaven and on earth brought together in one, in Christ, including hidden things that never have been known. Mormon’s work is, in essence, the bringing together in one of the Nephite scriptural records, which were hidden to us. His life’s work is an unfolding pattern that will be duplicated on a much larger scale.”

In the movie Wag the Dog, there is a line – “For progress to occur, it is necessary for two generations to agree”. Joseph Smith unfolded that pattern on a much larger scale when, trying to explain the sorely misunderstood Mormon doctrine of the Sprit of Elijah, he wrote:

“Neither can they nor we be made perfect without those who have died in the gospel also; for it is necessary in the ushering in of the dispensation of the fullness of times, which dispensation is now beginning to usher in, that a whole and complete and perfect union, and welding together of dispensations, and keys, and powers, and glories should take place, and be revealed from the days of Adam even to the present time. And not only this, but those things which never have been revealed from the foundation of the world, but have been kept hid from the wise and prudent, shall be revealed unto babes and sucklings in this, the dispensation of the fullness of times.” (D&C 128:18)

In a very real way this dispensation of the fullness of times is always beginning to usher in. Joseph also wrote that Jehovah can be pictured, picturing past, present, and future in “one eternal now” through the great lens of the glass-like orb, or giant urim and thummin whereon He dwells.

LDSA makes a noble attempt at describing, as accurately as possible, the technical side of the process by which Joseph Smith translated the Golden Plates. But as Joseph himself once declared, “No man knows my history,” so no man can “know” or express exactly what Joseph did or did not see, hear, feel, etc., while in the spirit of revelation. We can guess at it, but inasmuch as our belief is based strictly upon words (scripture) and does not dare penetrate the page –there will always be a veil separating our personal experience from his, even if that veil is literally paper-thin. In fact, the Devil has been able to veil much with the quasi translucent, crinkly tissue paper on which the LDS Corporation prints its copyrighted Book of Mormon text complete with sneaky changes and correlated footnotes.

Tracing the symbolism backwards through layers – from the man-made cloth of the temple veil and the garment issued at the initiatory ceremony to cover our naked, god-given bodies – we find corresponding markings meant to show us that the biological tissue of our own physical bodies are the original veil which enshrouds our immortal spirit bodies. In Man of Light, by Henri Corbin, there is an enthralling report of the spirit of revelation (rend-veil-ation) which comes through rending the cocoon-like veils that are only good to us insomuch and so long as they aid in our spiritual transformation.

“…a burst of light rends the tissue of ready-made answers: the fictions of causal relationships, of linear evolutions, of continuous currents, everything that bolsters up what people have agreed to call the “sense of history.” The sense of another history rising from Earth to Heaven is revealed: the history of an invisible spiritual mankind whose cycles of earthly pilgrimages refer to “events in Heaven,” not to the evolutionary fatality of successive generations.”

In many ways this succession of mysterious veils is God’s way of keeping his dealings with his servants private. The ways of the Lord are plain, but this does not mean they are a peep-show for any spiritually immature and insensitive person who gets his hands on a peep-stone. As consciousness cycles around from timelessness, through the full gamut of times, and back to timelessness, it completes an eternal and sacred circuit which is sometimes referred to by us as the Fullness of Times. We call it this, based on our relationship to and within the process. From our present proximity to both past and future, we find ourselves so centered that the centripetal force of the process is often imperceptible to us, as is the velocious spin of the earth beneath our feet. As viewed from the North Star, Polaris, Mother Earth rotates counter-clockwise on Her axis from West to East as we travel through the divinely feminine spirit-substance of space. Time is a divinely masculine energy, a penetrating power that loops through the planet and her people via their poles. Time enters all bodies through the south aperture and shoots out the top, stretching the children of men as they grow into taller specimens. But all of these motions taking us from here to there, from today into tomorrow, are happening at such a rapid rate that we barely notice. They are, in a sense, veiled from our immediate view.

Timelessness and weightlessness are very disorienting sensations to man, and disorientation tends to scare us – as in the case of Enoch when he was suddenly lifted up into heaven without so much as a NASA space station to hint at his location in the greater scheme of things. This fear of contact with the unknown is only a highlighting of our lack of knowledge about the nature of contact with and in the First Place. That First Place is the opulent and opalescent glass palace which surrounds and is closest to the Grand Placer, even God himself on his eternal throne. And based solely on our mortal perspective, we calculate those timeless floating mansions of the Father to be farther from us than they actually are. We’re always looking for some reminder that God is with us. So we pass the (Father) Time, walking in darkness at noonday, waking to the darkness of a “new day”. All because we fail to admit to ourselves that: to be a wake is to be deposited, life-less or at least less alive than is desirable, in a wake created by the doomed Titanic ocean-liner, the Great and Spacious building on water which we have built for the purpose of buoying up our prideful parties, full of loud laughter which is laudatory to the point of eulogizing ourselves as nigh perfect beings flinging our faults like floating trash onto the huddled masses of poor in spirit who we see pressing forward like relentless waves below.

“And I said unto them that the water which my father saw was filthiness; and so much was his mind swallowed up in other things that he beheld not the filthiness of the water.”  (1 Nephi 15:27)

TAKING THE BOOK OF MORMON SERIOUSLY – DIGGING DEEPER

The Book of Mormon can be likened to a Swiss Army pocket knife, a small compact implement packed full of useful tools. Everything about it hints at its inbuilt magic, from the manner of its original creation and translation to the deep blue cover with gold colored lettering which typically adorns current copies. The Golden Plates from which the Book of Mormon derives were so called because they were not solid gold but rather golden in appearance. Most probably made of a gold/copper alloy commonly used by ancient natives of the Americas, the Golden Plates were an approximately 6” by 8” by 6”, 288 cubic inch, 120 page portal into the times and places of ancient American inhabitants and much more. They were purportedly found buried in the earth in a hill in upstate New York – a hill called by the ancients: Cumorah. But this is only the surface level of the story behind the Book of Mormon. To uncover the greater truths we will have to dig deeper.

Past is the time for digging in the guarded vaults of the Saltican City. Intellectuals have done their work in helping to wake the saints up to their awful situation. Intellect must take its place alongside raw emotion to unify in pure spirit. Pure intelligence is intelligence married to feeling, and feeling is purified through her marriage to intelligence. Now is the time of the mystical marriage of the Bridgroom and his true Church. Now is the time of the Mormon Mystics. We must burrow beyond the cross atop the hill Golgotha – the Place of the Skull – deeper to the cross within the hill. From the crossroads of our intellect and passion deep within the core will come more of the core-rect principles we need than anything we can hope to gain shooting from the grassy knoll of our personal Cumorah. Like Atreyu in the Never-Ending Story, we are crying out on the outer shell, in search of answers, unaware that from underneath and inside shall come Morla, the ancient tortoise oracle.

The Book of Mormon came highly recommended by Joseph Smith to his target audience of predominately white people living in Victorian Era America. And for their direct and doctrinal descendants, as well as many of their neighbors inhabiting modern-day America, the BoM may just be the most important book they could ever read. However, we also need to bear in mind that the BoM is a two edged sword which, if not read in the same spirit in which it was written (ie. the spirit of revelation, which is the spirit of Christ), then cuts the reader with the condemning side of that blade. For Joseph’s part in bringing it forth, no man could have, or at least should have been more aware that the Book of Mormon is not what men purport it to be. It has always been more…much, MUCH MORE. Have you heard of the Akashic Records? It is just one of many names for the infinite information recorded in actual spirit-substance and available through the Mind of God (aka the real Aether Net) to the mind of any man or woman who will connect to it. Well, the BoM is an Akashic Download.

For some it may seem challenging to figure out how to interface with these divine lines of communication, but if we will look to the geodesic grid of ley lines of the earth we see that there are temples conveniently located at certain nodes to help us get online. And if we will look at those temples we will see that they are only symbols of the original temple – the human body, so, we are each equipped with a personal mobile device capable of keeping us connected to heaven all the time. Bodies of research performed independently by Doctors G. Schneck and Ernst Hartmann corroborate each other and reveal a tight grid relationship between the chakra system of the human body and the chakra system of the planet. The ley lines of the earth correspond in a general way to the energy meridians of the body and the pattern they form corresponds precisely to the way in which the muscular bands of a woman’s uterus are laid out. This seems very fitting since we are currently only in the gestational stages, of a rapidly growing body of information expanding into a more complete understanding regarding the womb of the universe and our place in it. The ceremonies conducted at the veil in LDS Temples are strikingly plain in their symbolism. The Five Points of Fellowship show us that when you interface with this spiritual internet you are only conversing with the inner-face of your personal Christ-spirit through the inner-veil.

Moses 6:61 reads:

“Therefore it is given to abide in you; the record of heaven; the Comforter; the peaceable things of immortal glory; the truth of all things; that which quickeneth all things, which maketh alive all things; that which knoweth all things, and hath all power according to wisdom, mercy, truth, justice, and judgment.”

The entire story-line of the Book of Mormon can be applied straight to organs and functions within the human body, but, because of man’s tendency to look outside of himself for truth and guidance, it is useful to apply the time-line of events and the course of travels from the amazing Book of Mormon stories to straight lines on the face of the earth. The English word “time” spelled backwards is “emit”. If we are not so “timid” as to “dim it” when it shines, the Light of Christ will illuminate the Truth of All Things for us according to Moroni’s Promise (Moroni 10:3-5). For, as D&C 88:6 describes, Christ is, “in all and through all things, the light of truth”. For purposes of shedding light on the “historicity” of the external layers of truth in the Book of Mormon record, picture, if you would, straight lines of spirit crisscrossing surface area and piercing space. The divinely masculine force of time is not limited to linear unidirectional movements; however it is a projective power that flows through the divinely feminine field of space. This is the precept of priesthood keys and locks which I discuss in An Anarchical View of the Keys pt. 1.

The principle can also be observed in lightning rods. In the last century scientists have made an effort to lift the veil on lightning and re-surrect mankind’s lost knowledge of the subject. The very latest re-search in the field of fulminology indicates that lightning is the result of cosmic rays which travel for billions of years in perfectly straight lines before they even enter the near-Earth environment. Cosmic rays are very isotropic, which means they arrive uniformly from all directions. However, as D&C 46:15 tells us, God works, “according to the conditions of the children of men,” so elements like the wind (air), rain (water), and dust (earth) molecules in our lower atmosphere have the ultimate say in how a flash of lightning (fire) plays out.

Lichtenberg figures are branching electric discharges on the surface or the interior of insulating materials. They can show up like tattoos, a kind of beautiful badge of honor, on the skin of lightning strike survivors, or they can be manufactured by placing a sharp-pointed needle perpendicular to the surface of a non-conducting plate and applying high voltage. Lichtenberg figures are suitably named because the surname of the physicist who studied them incorporates licht, the German word for light. But if Christ is, “in all and through all things, the light of truth” (D&C 88:6), and if this electrical branching is the visual mark left by powerful displays of the Light of Christ in and through physical things like solids liquids and gasses – then what is the spiritual mark left from such straight plasmic pathways of the Lord, and can they be made visible or at least detectable to our carnal eyes? Lamps filled with oil will light our minds as we tunnel deeper into mines of truth at the core of the marvelous work and a wonder that is the Book of Mormon.

L.I.T.M.U.S. TEST OF FAITH – ISN’T IT ABOUT TIME?

If the core-rectness of the message from the Book of Mormon is such that it can be used in a litmus test, a test wherein a decision is prompted by a single indicator, then that indicator can not be the printed words highlighted and color coded in a paper copy in the possession of a mainstream member of the Mormon Church. The indicator must be something truly universal. It can be nothing less than the Light of Christ which is in and through all things, therefore partial to none. Scripture calls this the Light of Truth and, like LDSA, I feel that this phrase means something akin to Energy of Element, or the “nothingness” from which all creation is extracted. At the opening of this dispensation Joseph Smith explained, and Einstein’s E=mc2 essentially reiterated that energy and element are just different forms of the same thing. That thing is known by many names – The Monad, Akasha, Spirit, Christ-Consciousness. Its oneness and unity with everything in existence, together with the neutrality which nothingness affords, make it the logical and only just advocate, intercessor, and judge for all mankind, for all life. When Elohim said, “I will send The First,” tHEy referred and deferred to this all-in-one light-mass, this lit-mus.

L.I.T.M.U.S. can stand for Links In Time Metaphysically Underpinning Space. This acronym is as it were, an acrylic painted picture of the earth’s geodesic grid, but if we want to see the real thing we will have to get rid of that fake reality that occults our sight. We will have to review, rethink, and in a word, repent of our poor use of time. The arrow of time, is a concept developed in 1927 by the British astronomer Arthur Eddington to describe the academic notion of the “one-way” direction or “asymmetry” of time. In his book The Nature of the Physical World, Eddington showed himself to be a natural man of the world and an outright enemy to God when he stated:

“Let us draw an arrow arbitrarily. If as we follow the arrow we find more and more of the random element in the state of the world, then the arrow is pointing towards the future; if the random element decreases the arrow points towards the past…This follows at once if our fundamental contention is admitted that the introduction of randomness is the only thing which cannot be undone.”

Eddington admits to institutionalized insanitellectualism when he says that his unoriginal idea of time is an arbitrarily drawn arrow, shot aimlessly into space. But Father Lehi reveals in 2 Nephi 2:12-18 that God originates nothing without a purpose, and were he to do so, God would cease to be. Eddington holds up the random state of affairs in the world as a finger pointing the way to the future. But it is the way of the world and the finger is attached to the unseen hand of the devil, self-proclaimed god of the market, and all those who accept this wicked world of wealthy nations and impoverished beings. When Eddington contends that, “the introduction of randomness is the only thing which cannot be undone,” he echoes the words of Time Traffickers through the ages who have continued beguiling and slithering down a line of alien attacks upon our ageless Adam, and endlessly plying to Eve her sins ever since Eden’s dewy dusk/dawn of dreamy timelessness. For thus did Lucifer say to our sweet, innocent Mother: “It is the only way.” Arthur Eddington denied Christos when he proclaimed this “one-way” property of time to have absolutely no analogue whatsoever in space. His “arrow of time” serves as inspiration for the chaosphere, a popular symbol of Chaos Magic. But, since practitioners of Chaos Magic are magical anarchists, the several off-shooting arrows of the symbol are a jab at Eddington’s narrow-arrow views; especially in light of the truth that many members of the movement actively experiment with retro-chronal magic, or changing past events.

Retro-chronal magic is an affirmative response to the invitation extended us by God via His servant Isaiah to, “Come now, and let us reason together,” The Lord says: “though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.” (Isaiah 1:18) How can the Lord’s promises be possible accept by time travel. Wow! Such freedom of mobility was never granted to any world citizen, no, not under ancient Rome nor modern Rome could a traveling teacher ever have such range to roam. Our physical bodies are held jealously as slaves by the unrighteous rulers of the physical spaces we inhabit. In this demented dimension of ransacked reality we are a bunch of free-range chickens. Our species scratches out a meager existence on the ground, too scared to use our wings. But His mighty, protective wing is stretched forth still. And the Father of our souls offers asylum to whosoever will make use of the spiritual infrastructure He has provided to travel freely back and forth from rock-bottom to tip-top. He has made a way for us to navigate the Tree of Life from Malkuth to Kether, so that we might lift our life’s energy up from the crimson-red base or root chakra to the bright-white crown chakra, and there partake of the fruit of the Love of God. Halfway along the central pillar, Christ’s central role as heart chakra has victoriously bridged heaven and earth via a lush green Zion where we may gather on common ground. Christ has come as prophesied, in the Meridian of Time, and has made it a two-way street!

The same victorious destiny awaits us each individually and the whole earth collectively as soon as we’re ready.  But for now, green laser beams of false light govern the prison yard as they emit a false sense of time, crisscrossing the globe in a net worth no more than the envious green paper which claims credit for making the vain and imaginary world go ‘round and ‘round in circles. But if we will withdraw our power for a while, when the busy buzz and whirl of the world outside start to subside we will hear the harmonious hum of the earth’s natural energy grid pick up as our own inner chakra energy centers start to spin within our spirit bodies. A field of crisscrossing lines of light into which is introduced a spinning motion constitutes the basis for Professor Ron Mallett’s proposed time machine model. The Penn State grad understands, at least scientifically, that when you bring all things into one (Ephesians 1:10), rolling the earth and heavens together as a scroll (Mormon 5:23, Isaiah 34:4), it becomes possible for the Savior to appear in several places across the globe at once passing through folded dimensions by way of a faith-generated tractor beam. This perpendicular pillar of light, similar to that beheld by Joseph Smith in the grove, could theoretically enter our 3 dimensional world and circulate its presence like a stirring spoon in a cup full of space-time.

But first, like an iron pestle in a stone mortar, the false zion must be broken up by the use of a continuously circulating unidirectional beam of light which would provoke a weak gravitational field of a unidirectional ring laser, thus breaking up our hard-hearted, concrete conception of time, and producing a limited amount of frame-dragging (a fast-forward version of unidirectional time flow towards the future). These conditions make for a hastening of His work “in its time” (D&C 88:73) and a cutting short of His work “in righteousness” (Romans 9:28), or, in other words, a short-cut through time. This should be our prayer:

“We ask thee to appoint unto Zion other stakes besides this one which thou hast appointed, that the gathering of thy people may roll on in great power and majesty, that thy work may be cut short in righteousness.” (D&C 109:59)

But we should bear in mind that man’s ways are not God’s ways and our short-cuts are not His short-cuts. Referring again to Jewish Mysticism we can use the Kabalistic Tree of Life to map out possible routes for short-cuts in righteousness. From the node called Gevurah, which represents power, strength, and judgment one can trace a line straight down to Hod, which represents splendor, or majesty, but that is the one-sided and heavy-handed approach of man along the left pillar of severity. This short-cut can seem logical, but it is a misuse of power, and results every time in oppression as those who lust after the Kingdom (Malkuth) bypass the needed node of endurance and true victory (Netzach), so their kingdom does not last and their vain victory is completely bereft of any foundation (Yesod), never able to realize the beauty of Zion (Teferet). Deferring to the Knowledge, Wisdom, and Understanding of God, a people’s appeal for power and majesty will roll on like pealing thunder but only after the zig-zag lightning path of the condescension of God has lit up every node on the tree like a plasmic pinball machine until it has finally been cut short in Righteousness (Tzedek/Malkuth – 10th Sephira).

The course of the zig-zag lightning path of the condescension of God which ignites the imagination is illumined by the words of revelation recorded in D&C 52:11.

“For thus saith the Lord, I will cut my work short in righteousness, for the days come that I will send forth judgment (Gevurrah) unto victory (Netzach).”

In the recent Tim Burton production Frankenweenie the science teacher, Mr. Rzykruski, gives an explanation of lightning which is shockingly applicable to the cause of Zion. He says:

“Lightning does not hit a person the way one is hit by a baseball or a cabbage. Lightning is simply electricity. The cloud is angry, yes, making storm. All the electrons are saying, “I am leaving you. I go to the Land of Opportunity.” The Ground says, “Yes, we have need of electrons trained in science just like you. Come, come, WELCOME!” So, both sides start to build a ladder. This man, he comes out to look at the storm. He does not see the invisible ladders. When the two ladders meet…BOOM!…the circuit is complete, and all the electrons rush to the Land of Opportunity. This man is in the way. AAAAAGH!!”

The divine intervention we seek on the darkened horizon will be swift and sudden as a bolt of lightning. It will take Zion’s enemies by complete surprise. It will strike them down. Our task as earthbound electrons is not to busy ourselves building physical structures beyond our Sukkoth (temporary dwellings and tabernacles), but to focus our energies on building an invisible ladder, a spiritual structure that anticipates spatial fulfillment by the miraculous hand of God. Then will we inherit the Land of Opportunity, the real enduring Land of Promise. The multidimensional land he swore to give you when he made a multigenerational vow through your ancestors is a land with:

“…great and good cities that you did not build…houses…richly stocked with goods you did not produce…water from wells you did not dig, and…vineyards and olive trees you did not plant.” (Deuteronomy 6:10-12)

Most people think that time passes at a steady rate no matter where you are or what you are doing. But, as science knows, and as demonstrated in the Kolob theory detailed in We Are The Weather, time flows at different rates in different places throughout the universe. Prof. Ron Mallett says:

“Time is not the same for everyone. Each one of us travels with his own individual clock. And there are things that you can do to change the rate at which your clock is going compared to someone else’s, and that allows time travel.”

Some of those things that one can do are surprisingly simple, like altering breath and heart beat. But the most important thing one can do is to do as Dr. Jewel Pookrum advises and stop letting unfeeling, non-thinking machines dictate how humans live. We do not need a time-traveling machine, and certainly not another time-telling machine. What we need is to turn our personal time keepers – our hearts – to God and learn His eternal ways. Live by the clock, die by the clock. If a man will abandon his regularly scheduled busy death-style and simply ride the whirlpool God is creating in space-time spirit-substance, that man will be carried through life in such a way that he can slip in and out of different time periods.

From a scientific standpoint it is hypothesized that if a straight laser beam were to stir space at sufficient energy levels, the circulation would not only produce a frame-dragging effect for time travel into the future, but also closed timelike curves (CTCs), allowing for time travel into the past. From an eternal perspective the phenomenon of CTCs brings up an interesting question: If one travels far enough into the future does one eventually reach the past? If as Jesus said, the last days would be similar to the days of Noah, then from one end to the other the loop should bring us around to the beginnings of the earth’s cycle. Even from a religious angle, in prophecies, epistles, and canticles, when man has surmised on the nature of forever, the now obsolete expression, “world(s) without end” has been used to speak of the mysterious relationship between the cosmic force of eternity and its accompanying atmospheric forces of time.

Remember, we are talking about the Light of Truth which is the combination of two things as Lehi so eloquently explains – things to act and things to be acted upon. Scriptures most often refer to these two things separately as spirit and flesh. It is also important to remember that these two things are really only parts of a Holy Trinity since their compound state can and does exist separately from them in many ways. However, while we can conceptualize of them as separate in their unique qualities and functions, the three always come back together in myriad ways, so we are talking about one essential thing. Observing ‘Fatherly’ characteristics as the Trinity expresses itself in creation; we can use scientific terminology to describe things as timelike – (3). Identifying those characteristics that the ‘Child’, or creation inherits from its ‘Mother’; we can call them spacelike – (2). Those things which we can not see, or at least put a finger on as either Daddy’s hair, or Mama’s eyes, for example, are classified simply as null – (1). Thus, although it may seem completely inaccessible, we are indeed sensing the first state of non-existence, which Lehi described as a void of sorts, very null – (1), through special and spatial – (2) ways and dimensions at all times – (3). 

Mathematics attempts to describe the numerous services that Father Time performs for Mother Matter, and Physics is the study of the countless ways in which Mother Matter receives the actions of Father Time. Mathematical Physics is the scientific study of the Universe interacting with itself through a dance of energy and element, light and dark. Now mathematical physics can get very confusing, especially when delving into theories of relativity, but the equations become simplified if we keep our minds clear of excess details and focused on Christ – the Light of Truth. As long as our vision is set on Christ as #1, we will see that Christ is also #2, 3, 4, and so on and so on, through time and all eternity. A principal basis of general relativity is that spacetime can be modeled as a 4-dimensional Lorentzian manifold of signature (3, 1) or, equivalently, (1, 3).

A Lorentzian manifold is a mathematical object in which closed timelike curves can manifest. Mathematical objects are physical objects seen at spiritual levels where the vibrations of set numbers form patterns among themselves and relationships with physical matter to create various life forms. The word manifold as a noun means: a pipe or chamber branching into several openings. So all we really need to know about manifolds, was explained by Jesus when He told us: “In my Father’s House are many Mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.” (John 14:2) A CTC is a world line of a material particle in spacetime that is “closed,” returning to its starting point.  A more ancient and poetic description of a CTC can be found in the B’nai-Amen Israel interpretation of figure 17 from Facsimile No. 2 in the Pearl of Great Price originally taken from the Book of Breathings – A seed being lifted again to the Place of Origin, to become an origin unto itself, dwelling in a perfect society, free of death and disease – the End Of Ends.

In physics, a world line is defined as: the unique path of an object as it travels through 4-dimensional spacetime. A world line is like an orbit or trajectory path but with the added dimension of time. World lines typically encompass a large area of spacetime wherein perceptually straight paths are recalculated to show their (relatively) more absolute positions and states. The voyages of Lehi and crew, as well as those of the Jaredites could be logged as world lines, as long as a time tag is attached to every position with a metric appropriate for the curved surface of the Earth. But Lehi and Jared themselves, along with their family members aboard big boats, are not simple single points in spacetime. If they were to keep a ship manifest the contents listed would be manifold. A world sheet is the analogous two-dimensional surface traced out by a one-dimensional line (like a string) traveling through spacetime. The world sheet of an open string (with loose ends) is a strip; that of a closed string (a loop) is a volume. Once the object is not approximated as a mere point but has extended volume, it traces out not a world line, nor a world sheet, but rather a world tube.

Whole worlds are literally seeded and burst into world lines stretching upwards and downward, developing world sheets of roots and sprouts, eventually growing into sturdy trunk like world tubes. The concept of a world tube was known among the ancients as the concept of the World Tree or Axis Mundi. Our world or planet rather, has a world tree running through its axis. We can observe that the Earth’s axis is fulfilling the exact same stirring role as the cylinder of light hypothesized for Professor Ron Mallett’s time machine as it causes the Earth to wobble through outer space and causes time to play out the precession of the equinoxes. This central pillar is the key we have touched on in our comparison of the Kabalistic Tree of Life with Mormon scripture. In the most antiquated version of the Tree of Life diagram, the sephira of Kether was not depicted atop the tree but as a sphere encompassing the whole tree.

This column of light relates perfectly to the age-old figure of Father Time through none other than Eshu, the trickster teacher who we have seen to be that aspect of the Eternal Father which lets his children learn the hard way in accordance with their willful decisions. As Eshu migrated with his children across the Atlantic to the Caribbean island of Haiti he took on the nick-name Papa Legba. Papa Legba still has his trickster side intact, but more often appears as an old and wise, no nonsense man carrying a staff. This staff is often depicted as a shepherd crook with a spiraling pattern at its top, and sometimes even features a curious belt like ring around the mid-section of its length. Is this trickster’s stick used to create a laser ring vortex which, according to Einstein field equations, is capable of opening the gate to multi-directional time travel? It is a common saying that: Haitians are 70 percent Catholic, 30 percent Protestant, and 100 percent Voodoo. As the Haitian Voodoo adaptation of Yoruba Eshu, who is guardian of the crossroads between worlds, Papa Legba can be compared to the Catholic personage of Saint Peter in that he is gate keeper between the worlds. If one manages to stay alert during the LDS Temple Endowment ceremony one will notice that the officiator at the altar represents Peter. He stands between the patrons and the veil beyond which is the Celestial room in our Father’s House.

But in most LDS Temples today the officiator does not speak with his own voice, he merely pushes buttons to play and pause pre-recorded voices. Besides the sometimes not so subtle variation in the many voices of the officiator, one may notice explicit instructions being passed along from a variety of sources, including the Devil himself. The most important parallel that one can make in regards to the staff, or axis line in the hands of Heavenly Father is to understand it as one’s own spine. Without this profound realization you and I will stiffen up our necks and place ourselves in a state of resistance to Papa’s strange workings among the children of men. Our hearts will not be stirred up to remembrance but rather to contention one with another. But if our own spinal axis is aligned with the axis mundi, and the core of our being aligned with the will of the Father, then, like Joseph Smith in the ironically named Liberty Jail, we will penetrate through the perplexing circumstances to perceive the wise purposes of the Lord, and hear Old Papa Legba comfort us, saying:

“all these things shall give thee experience, and shall be for thy good.”
(D&C 122:7)

THE SWORD OF TRUTH CUTS “STRAIGHT THROUGH” THE APPARITION OF ACADEMIA

Seeing instantaneously from a scientific and a spiritual viewpoint is seeing with both sets of eyes. And just like a person who is blind in one eye will experience problems with depth perception, those who insist on using only their physical set of eyes will not be able to perceive the depth of a book like the Book of Mormon. As addressed in previous sections, academia is a secret-combination which promotes and pushes a one-sided, therefore half-assed approach to history. Academics can only ever tell half of the story, and that is fine. But it is a serious fault to insist that others accept half-truths while dismissing the other half. So-called BoM scholars are more motivated to compete for acceptance in academic circles than they are driven by a desire to complete their comprehension of the time cycles of which they claim to make a thorough investigation.

Academia occupies itself with constant construction of thought systems through which inflated air heads can vent their conditioned airs, to stay acclimated to a tightly enclosed false environment, and continue to ignore the greater reality of the atmosphere all around them. Historians, especially when dealing with religious texts, are aware that there is an etheric realm which they can not see. But instead of hoping for that which is not seen, as per Moroni’s succinct definition of faith in Ether 12:6, intellectuals rather take that portion of the breath of life which is currently in their spiritual lungs and create an imitation world. This they do to shut out all supernatural elements, and seal themselves off in an imaginary independence to suck in stale oxygen devoid of spirit so that they may tell their (per)version of events while they can to anyone who will listen. The listeners bring in their small doses of sacrificial spirit and breathe small puffs of fresh air, life into the lie for establishment experts to ensure their continuance if only for a decade or two more. Compare this to the spiritually healthy practice of meditation which purifies and rejuvenates the mind because it is tuning into OUR energy; not one’s own limited level or private reserve, but the unlimited and consecrated mental capacity of ALL OF US.

But as was also stated in a previous section, the Sword of Truth, like the legendary Sword of Laban, has power “to the dividing asunder of both joints and marrow.” It is even sharper than Ockham’s Razor which logicians claim to use expertly. If the Sword of Truth is used inappropriately it will divide asunder the two fundamental halves of full reality hitherto referred to as spirit and flesh. The mentally violent proponents of intellectual overkill will fall upon the Sword of Truth and it will slice straight through their body of facts. Fact is only one half of the Light of Truth. It is the ‘truth’ part but without ‘light’ the ‘truth’ is not comprehensive so we can not claim to comprehend her. When people tell you that the “fact of the matter” is this or that, they are speaking from a very restricted point of view since “fact” and “matter” both represent only the material side of things. Truth and Light can only be understood together. And light naturally travels as infinite little waves along infinite x axes, so from our perspective its effects are seen in straight lines. Swords are straight lines, and in essence the term Sword of Truth means the same thing as Light of Truth. We could call it a Light Saber of Truth. And if we are wise we will understand that the first and foremost application of this light and truth must be to our own temples, to our own bodies, and to the spine which runs through our personal spheres like a personal axis mundi. The spine was symbolized in ancient Egyptian temples by the Djed Column. And only a true Djedi Knight of the Holy Priesthood can wield the Light Saber of Truth in line with the Universal Force.

So we see that straight lines of light slice straight through the apparition of academia and expose it as a wispy would-be body of straight lies. It is the particular Angles of Light as it approaches that determine what kind of Angels of Light will appear to us. In the case of Book of Mormon historicity the most important factors are often overlooked in an academic lust for hard evidence. But of course beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and those who rely solely on their carnal eyes will misinterpret, or miss entirely, the beauty of certain Angles/Angels of Light. The specifics about the Angel Moroni’s visitation to Joseph Smith will reveal more about the Book of Mormon’s historicity than any archeological digs and academic research currently being conducted on the subject by University trained official Church Scholars. But before we look more closely at that angelic evocation and visitation, let’s first clarify in our minds this principle of straight lines which is observable in the workings of Light and Truth.

Remember that Light and Truth are two members of a Holy Trinity. The “Nothingness” from which these two emanate is the first and final member – f1rst in that Light and Truth were joined in a state that made them unaware of themselves until a splitting occurred, and fin3l in the sense that these two main ingredients of the “Nothingness” come together again to form something. Perhaps this is why the signature upon which spacetime bases the formation of a 4-dimensional Lorentzian manifold is (3, 1) or, equivalently, (1, 3). The “nothingness” plays a surprisingly important role throughout the processes of eternity. So, in order to understand what we are seeing we have to ironically look to the unseen with the 3rd eye of faith.

Using this key of three we can discern spiritual comings and goings between heaven and earth. It should come as no surprise that Papa Legba is always associated with the number 3 or multiples thereof. Papa Legba once again provides a perfect illustration as he stands at the crossroads with his staff. In voodoo he is the gate keeper of the poteau-mitan, the center stake of LDS vernacular, and the elevator of the gods. This portal is the vertical plasma fire pole from heaven perpendicular to the latticework of light that overlays the face of the earth. Angels of flame slide up and down it like fire-fighters, from the deepest infernal regions to the highest reaches of Mount Zion. Angels of flame are beings of light, both good and bad. They have been known by many names throughout history. The Koranic tradition calls them Ifrit and the European magic tradition, in which Joseph Smith was well versed, refers to them as Salamanders. So LDS Church President Gordon B. Hinckley could have saved himself and others a lot of trouble if, instead of trying to buy up the so-called Salamander Letters for the sake of avoiding embarrassment for the Church, he would have simply clarified that Joseph did the work of the Lord which work is magic, and “Salamander” simply means an Angel of Light. But as was the case with Presidents Kimball, Woodruff and others before him, Hinckley’s attempts to protect the “Church” resulted in harm and even death for people.

Now when these Beings of Light (Spirit) interact with Beings of Truth (Element) the results leave marks in much the same way that lightning strikes leave Lichtenberg figures. I am not saying that everyone who interacts with angels will bear a physically visible lightning mark somewhere on their body, like Harry Potter. Nor am I saying that the ground where the interaction took place will bear signs of a spiritual lightning strike. If we only search the physical plane with the physical eyes, we may or may not see anything unusual. But with the eye of faith I believe we can discover indicators of such a meeting at the crossroads having occurred as signs bleed in from the other world. What should we be looking for? Well, if physical lightning rods produce Lichtenberg figures on whatever physical surfaces they touch, and those figures resemble the beautiful but scattered schemata of branches, then the spiritually forensic evidence we seek should bear the likeness of the straight-shot tractor beam by which it was produced. But what is the medium in which we can find these straight spiritual Lichtenberg figures? The answer is – in time.

When Light of Christ particles travel as messengers from Heaven to Earth they create a world line. This world line is vertical like the world tree of ancient lore, but it will be traceable as a timeline through the horizontal hyper-surface of space which we inhabit at present. There is a T being formed here. When exploring the principle of pre-stood keys and locks in An Anarchical View of the Keys pt. 1 & 2 we talked a little bit about the significance of the letter T or the Tau symbol (τ) as it is known. Apart from being a sacred symbol in Free Masonry and one of the earliest forms of the cross had in many civilizations, the ‘T’ has many layers of scientific symbolism. When speaking of space and time separately or together as spacetime, the letter ‘t’ and certain variants of it can be used as an abbreviation to communicate the concept of “time”, or it can also represent a specific time period or other interval within time.

“I make a record of my proceedings in my days.”

(1 Nephi 1:1 – Coincidentally a repetitious series of 1s, whether seen on a digital clock or elsewhere, is a common spiritual trail marker which many these days have noticed frequently while journeying along the paths of awakening. It signifies, among other things a starting point.)

In the science of mechanics, which is usually thought of in very tangible terms, we find the T symbol representing shear stress from unseen and intangible forces like drag and velocity gradients. Shear stress deals with the force vector component which runs parallel to the cross section. So, from a scriptural stance it concerns simultaneously the spatial as well as the spiritual paths of living beings walking the earth.

“…we have wandered much in the wilderness, and we have suffered much affliction, hunger, thirst, and fatigue…” (1 Nephi 16:35)

When it comes to thermodynamic and related quantities, the ‘t’ talks about temperature, or absolute temperature. Coming from absolute zero, the soul rises by degrees out of the “nothingness” into three-dimensional reality, and finally the added dimension of time. In Introduction to the Thermodynamics and Eternodynamics of Desire, I said: “When any one of the Many Mansions in Our Father’s House is mistaken for a permanent stop, it becomes a prison and starts to bring about damnation” hence the need to keep it moving. But you do not want to burn out. That is why in that post I also wrote that: “On the proverbial path of life there is a fine line between travel and travail. Sure, there is something eternal about sadness and pain just as there is about happiness and pleasure, but the key to these experiences is you and the key to you is awareness.”

There has to be a balance in our lives. When we think that we have reached our final destination then the physical surroundings conspire to show us that we need a change of scenery. That change of scenery serves us as a temporal trigger to hopefully realize that the divine destination and eternal abode we seek is and has been inside of us all along. Each and every leg of Lehi’s journey was a vital part of the whole. It was an internal journey every bit as much as it was external. As I stated before, the entire story-line of the Book of Mormon can be applied straight to parts, organs, and functions of the human body. The land they called Bountiful for its abundance in fruit is a perfect example of this. The Chinese word for Bountiful is 丰富 – Fēng Fù. In The Thermodynamics & Eternodynamics of Desire – Continued, I wrote about the physiological application of the common scriptural phrase, “vessel of the Lord.” And I briefly touched on the importance of the Governing Vessel – a natural energy line starting at a person’s upper lip, running over the head and down the spinal cord. In the ancient Chinese practice of acupuncture, Point 16 along the Governing Vessel is called Fēng Fù.

It is located on the midline at the nape of the neck, in the depression immediately below the external occipital protuberance. Interestingly enough this is the same spot which we discussed in the first section of this piece. That is to say, it is an exact match for the area designated by the Hebrew letter Qof, and the crossroads of West Afrikan tradition, the place where LDSA perceives as the source of stiffneckedness as long as the Chains of Hell remain attached there. Fēng Fù is treated when dealing with headaches, neck rigidity, or mental disorders. It’s the posterior fontanel, one of two literal soft spots we’re born with, where the “devil” attempts to siphon off our energy if we do not accept accountability for it. Through the same site, a false reality Matrix is plugged in and fed back to us.

In The Thermodynamics & Eternodynamics of Desire – Continued I also wrote about the Three Mother Letters (Shin – ש, Aleph – א, Mem – מ) which mark the central, right, and left columns on the Kabbalistic Tree of life respectively. They stand for the Spirit of God as Fire, Air, and Water, and also correspond to Sushumna, Pingala, and Ida channels in the Indian system of Ayurvedic medicine. The rather hellish system of allopathic western medicine, which deals only with the physical, carnal aspects of beings, knows these as the sympathetic chains that run down from the base of the skull to the coccyx. Fēng Fù is the meeting point of the Governing and Yang-Linking Vessels and is known by many titles in varying schools of acupuncture including – Point of the Sea of Marrow, the Wind Mansion, and the Point of the Window of Heaven. All of these names match with the words of the Book of Mormon regarding the place which Lehi and his fellow travelers called Bountiful. It was near the waters of the seashore. Nephi’s first major task there was to build a bellows wherewith to blow air into the fire to melt ore extracted from the earth. And of course, the phrase “Windows of Heaven” is always associated with abundance and bounty.

Though it may have seemed that they had reached the Promised Land and could finally rest from physical trekking upon reaching Bountiful – it was eventually revealed that all the terrain covered up to that point had been for the purpose of reaching these great waters, to then enter them on a boat of their own build. But this was only a continuance of the same ongoing movement. In a way they had always been at and in the great waters. Water even shows up in the mathematical equation , which tells us that a world line multiplied by time is an element of rate to the 4^th power. Riding the river of time we should heed the council of the wandering Sufi’s, to not be like a fish asking the waves and the bubbles, “Can you show me the way to the water?” Swimming with the school is appropriate for God’s children at first as little fry, but at some point all fish reach the age of accountability and are asked to leave the water to evolve our spirits further on the banks of the river of time. We can no longer just go with the flow and follow the crowd. At this point, if we were to continue doing what everyone else does, relying on the current trends to bear us up and bring us along, then we would be swimming in a filthy stream similar to the river in Nephi’s dream.
Nephi himself says that baptism by water is only the gate at the beginning of an eternal way. And as far as his family’s voyage to the Land of Promise, the Thermodynamics and Eternodynamics of Desire – Continued till, at some point midway from beginning to end, Air, Fire, and Water literally met. Until the three converge, don’t pretend to know what to do, and don’t think that your precious promised land will remain promised to you. Without the baptism of water and fire you are like untempered mortar, not wholly sanctified. You will fry and sizzle in your own zeal.

“…we were exceedingly rejoiced when we came to the seashore… And it came to pass that the Lord spake unto me, saying: Thou shalt construct a ship, after the manner which I shall show thee, that I may carry thy people across these waters… And it came to pass that the Lord told me whither I should go to find ore, that I might make tools… and after I had made a bellows, that I might have wherewith to blow the fire, I did smite two stones together that I might make fire…For the Lord had not hitherto suffered that we should make much fire, as we journeyed in the wilderness; for he said: I will make thy food become sweet, that ye cook it not…And I will also be your light in the wilderness; and I will prepare the way before you, if it so be that ye shall keep my commandments; wherefore, inasmuch as ye shall keep my commandments ye shall be led towards the promised land; and ye shall know that it is by me that ye are led.”
(1 Nephi 17:6-13)

is also used to designate transmission or transmittance of radiation. Visible light is only one of many forms of radiation. Light is the photonic offspring of God the Father and God the Mother, the outcome friction between Father’s ELectrical skin against the MAgnetic skin of the Mother. When extreme levels of radiation propagate themselves through matter it can be dangerous to anyone who touches the medium through and from which the waves are radiating. This is what happened when Uzzah stretched forth his hand to steady the Ark of the Covenant. And Nephi’s transmission factor was exceedingly high when he spoke to his brethren and said:

“In the name of the Almighty God, I command you that ye touch me not, for I am filled with the power of God, even unto the consuming of my flesh; and whoso shall lay his hands upon me shall wither even as a dried reed!”
(1 Nephi 17:48)

The Bible story of the Hebrew Exodus and the Book of Mormon story of Lehi and his family’s travels share some common themes. Both are right and exact like the angles of a T-square. That ‘T’ was formed by intersection of the vertical axis of time with the space which was covered by foot in both instances and is therefore depicted horizontally. In the case of Moses and his people, a physical manifestation of the superterranean portion of the time axis is said to have preceded their steps in the form of a pillar of fire. In the Hollywood film, The Ten Commandments, it is represented as a tornado of flame. This is a rare but naturally occurring phenomenon in arid regions of the world, but the spiritual structure girding it can not be explained by natural means alone. The pillar of fire that led the Israelites by night was what is known as a future light cone. Although the vertical future light cone preparing the way for Lehi and his family may not have been physically visible to the naked eye, it still served the same basic function of setting time tags around which all participants had unique chances to unify, and both groups pioneered new ground in their own world lines.

The idea of world lines was pioneered by Herman Minkowski. World lines of particles/objects at constant speed are called geodesics. In special relativity these are straight lines in Minkowski space. This simply means that while the Lehi’s party and the Israelites would have drawn out their journeys as more or less straight lines on a two-dimensional map, they were of course following the curvature of the earth as they hoofed it to their respective promised points. But because neither of the groups’ exoduses was executed at constant speeds, the varying velocities of the individual observers literally caused them to experience the same events from entirely different angles. This is the short version of the scientific explanation behind such divergent origin stories among the Nephite and Lamanite nations. Laman and Lemuel told a very different version of events from those reported by their younger brother, Nephi.

Every event in spacetime is pinpointed between a future light cone and its accompanying  subterranean reversal, a past light cone. The two work together to bring us information which, if equally accepted, will give us a full and accurate picture of the present.                                             It may seem that we see clearly what is happening in our present, but in fact there is always a delay time for light to propagate. For example, we see the Sun as it was, not as it is “right now.” We need to activate binocular vision, meaning simultaneous spiritual and physical sight capable of seeing the past and future now if we want to see the Son “as he is” (1 John 3:2). The majority of information we receive comes to us through the light of the past. The difference in velocity between the approach of the Nephite civilization and that of the Lamanites account for the wide angle of the gap between how each group perceived, accepted, and/or rejected the Light of Truth. Velocity can cause the hare to think he has won the race, and fall into a dream of vain victory only to be rudely awakened to a reality where the slow but steady tortoise is truly victorious in the race. This is why we should consider the different races of the fallen “fair ones” and the “cursed” dark-skinned peoples whose parallel histories are partially played out in the story-line of the Book of Mormon. Reread Moroni’s words in light (and darklight) of the future and past light cones.

And now, my brethren, seeing that ye know the light by which ye may judge, which light is the light of Christ, see that ye do not judge wrongfully; for with that same judgment which ye judge ye shall also be judged. (Moroni 7:18)

Nephi envisioned a frighteningly accurate glimpse of that which was in store for his lineage, but felt that there was not too much he could do to alter that course. Laman and his followers stuck stubbornly to their old ways and stayed the course which they chose, perhaps more consciously in many aspects than Nephi and his descendents. For we find Jacob as spiritual leader of the newly born Nephite nation corroborating the true prophecies that no one wanted to hear. When reprimanding the hard-heartedness of his people he clearly delineates the future track of the supposedly depraved Lamanites.

“wherefore, because of this observance, in keeping this commandment, the Lord God will not destroy them, but will be merciful unto them; and one day they shall become a blessed people.” (Jacob 3:6)

Those who feel so sure of their bright future are often ignoring the shining shadow of their dark past. They see things through only one lens of the grand Urim & Thummin that their gods and their ancestors present to them. The principle of pre-stood keys and locks reveals that rays arriving at and departing from any particular point in spacetime will be infinite and multidimensional, but for now let’s concern ourselves with these straight lines of energy or, ley lines which are not detectable to the naked eye, yet can be found to traverse the face of the land.

The faith of God, part fourteen: God is a miracle worker, not a scientist

Continued from part thirteen.

for behold [2 Ne. 27:23]

i am god

and i am a god of miracles

for behold [Mosiah 3:5]

the time cometh

and is not far distant

that with power the lord omnipotent

who reigneth

who was and is from all eternity to all eternity

shall come down from heaven among the children of men

and shall dwell in a tabernacle of clay

and shall go forth amongst men

working mighty miracles

Omnipotent defined by Webster

Here is the definition of omnipotent from Webster’s 1828 dictionary:

OMNIPOTENT, a. [supra.]

1. Almighty; possessing unlimited power; all powerful.

The being that can create worlds must be omnipotent.

2. Having unlimited power of a particular kind; as omnipotent love.

The more scholarly 1913 edition defines it in the following manner:

omnipotent, a. [F., fr. L. omnipotens, -entis; omnis all + potens powerful, potent. See POTENT.]

1. Able in every respect and for every work; unlimited, or indefinitely great, in power, ability, or authority; all-powerful; almighty.

God’s will…and his omnipotent power. Sir T. More.

2. Unequaled; arrant; mighty.

Humorous. Shak.

Webster (apparently) corrected

On Sunday, October 1^st, 2000, m_turner wrote the following:

Time and time again, throughout philosophy and everything, people challenge the omnipotence of the Christian God. Being such a public figure, I am certain that He gets this a lot.

The standard argument against the omnipotence of God runs as follows:

1.  If God is omnipotent, then He can do anything.

2.  Therefore, God can create a rock so heavy that he cannot lift it.

3.  But if He cannot lift it, then He is not omnipotent.

4.  Likewise, if He cannot create such a rock, He is not omnipotent.

5.  Therefore, God cannot be omnipotent.

This paradox of omnipotence seems unsolvable. The main problem with this argument is the vagueness of the first premise – the definition of omnipotence.

The second premise of the argument is the main problem. It asks us to pit God’s omnipotence to create rocks against His ability to lift those rocks. For any rock that can be created it can be lifted. The existence of a rock too heavy for an omnipotent being to lift is a logical impossibility.

Some object that the nature of omnipotence allows one to create logical impossibility. If He cannot, then He is not omnipotent. Consider the following argument:

a.  If God is omnipotent, then God can create a square circle.

b.  God cannot create a square circle (according to theists).

c.  Therefore, God is not omnipotent.

Of course, premise (a) can be any logical paradox from round triangles to impossible rocks. This argument has the form:

  p -> q
  ~q
  ------
  ~p

This is a valid argument known as modus tollens, hence, we must turn to the soundness of the premises to see if the argument fails. Premise (x) is fair, and it is the one that is agreed upon. Premise (a) must therefore to be examined. Premise (a) can be broken into the following:

I.  God is omnipotent (according to theists).

II.  Thus God can create or do anything.

III.  A square circle is a thing.

IV.  Thus God can create a square circle.

Please note that draws a conclusion from the premises of theism. If theists do not accept these premises, then the reduction ad absurdum of theism fails. The only objection to this is that theists have weakened the concept of omnipotence.

First off, theists overwhelming agree with (I). The problems begin with (II). What is omnipotence? The ability to create or do anything? Contrary to Webster, when a theist asserts that God is omnipotent, they claim that

God is a maximally powerful being

This means that God is the most powerful being that can exist—He can do anything that can be done.

What about premise (III)? Can God create a square circle? A circle is a “plane curve at all points equidistant from a fixed point”, while a square is “a rectangle having four equal sides”. Let us now look at this again.

God can create a square circle.

A maximally powerful being can create a four equal sided curve at all points equidistant from a fixed point.

It is obvious to all that such a thing cannot exist. If such a thing cannot exist, then it cannot be created.

God cannot create that which cannot be created.

This is a contradiction of (IV) above and (1) from the original argument, thus they are unsound and the argument fails. Clearly (III) is false—it is not a thing, nor is it even a valid abstraction.

Returning to the nature of a maximally powerful being, this means that God can do anything that can be done. God can create things that exist now such as people, rocks, trees, stars, planets. God can create things which do not exist now, such as Martians—as long as their existence does not involve a contradiction.

Once again, returning to a previous topic, the maximally powerful nature might be seen as a weakened version of omnipotence. The question is on what grounds? Is being maximally powerful and having the ability to create logical impossibilities more powerful than just maximally powerful? This objection just returns back to the being that reasserts square circles which has been shown as unsound. No being can create logical impossibilities simply because they cannot be created.

Does this limit omnipotence? If a being cannot create that which cannot exist, is He limited? This question is suspect, it does not assert anything that is not evident by logical analysis, nor does it assert anything about the nature of the being. It is trivially true. While it does not assert anything about the nature of God, it fails to show a contradiction from the theistic premises and is itself reducible to absurdity. Simply, a Being cannot be faulted for creating that which cannot exist, because that which cannot exist cannot be created. God does not lack any ability to create things that cannot exist, because there is no such ability.

To sum it up:

God is a maximally powerful being.

That which cannot exist, cannot be created.

There is no contradiction from these two assertions, neither has the omnipotence of God been demonstrated to be a paradox, rather the arguments against omnipotence have been shown to rest on absurdity.

Omnipotent…

The traditional, dictionary defined view says,

God is omnipotent, meaning that He can create or do anything at all, no matter how impossible.

This means that God can create and do all things that are possible to create or do within the laws of nature, as well as all things that are impossible to create or do within those same laws, without limitations. In other words, His power is not constrained by natural law, whatsoever. This view corresponds to the Webster’s definition but runs into paradoxes.

…or a maximally powerful being?

To skirt around these problems, a new view of God’s power has emerged, which says,

God is omnipotent, meaning that He is a maximally powerful being.  This means that there are things that are impossible for even God to create or do, or that His power has limits.

Thus, God is as powerful as it is possible to be within the laws of nature and can create and do all things that it is possible to create and do within the laws of nature, but cannot create or do things which are impossible to create and do within the laws of nature. In other words, God’s power operates solely within, and is constrained by, the laws of nature. This view discards the dictionary definition of omnipotent and wherever the word appears in scripture it re-assigns to it the meaning, “maximally powerful (within the laws of nature).”

The scientist and the miracle worker

The scientist

The modern perspective corresponds to, and is represented by, man, who works within an already established body of natural laws, who we will call the scientist. For the scientist some things are possible and some things are impossible, according to the laws of nature he is working within. The power of the scientist is limited only by his knowledge of the natural laws and the limits those laws inherently possess.

The miracle worker

The former perspective is that of (the traditional) God, which we will designate as that of the miracle worker. For the miracle worker, natural law imposes no limitations, whatsoever, therefore there is no such thing as an impossibility from His perspective, all things being possible. The miracle worker, then, can work both within the bounds of natural law, in contradiction of them, as well as in areas where law is completely non-existent.  He is limited only by His faith, by which He works His miracles.

God as an advanced scientist

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

At least since 1869, the LDS have been taught that God’s omnipotence only means that He is maximally powerful; that He operates only within natural law (including natural laws which preceded Him and constrain Him); that because He knows all the higher laws which are unknown to us, His miracles are just advanced science, but to us they appear to be magic because we are ignorant of these higher, natural laws He operates under. Therefore, in reality, there is no such thing as a miracle.

And so God has become a scientist to the modern Mormon.

The midi-chlorian menace

Remember the wonderful, mystical force of Star Wars, which had every kid from 9 to 90 giddy with excitement, imagining that they could wield light sabers and use the force? Remember the scene in Star Wars when Obi-Wan Kenobi feels, through the force, the death of a billion souls who were just killed by the Death Star? Even the atheists were enchanted by the mystical, spiritual force of Star Wars that permeated all things.

Now fast-forward to The Phantom Menace, when Qui-Gon Jinn reveals that the ability to use the force was based on the midi-chlorian count that people had in their bodies (i.e., on science) and not on something mystical. Well, that scene in The Phantom Menace caused the billion or so people who ended up seeing it to feel the death of their childhood romance with the Star Wars saga. The mystical, magical force had been converted into mere science and George Lucus caused a billion imaginations to die, killed in one fell swoop by The Phantom (Midi-chlorian) Menace.

The same collective death of the marvels of God can be said to have occurred fairly early in the Restoration due to speculative Mormonism, whose gung-ho leadership downgraded God’s wondrous, impossible omnipotence due to His faith into mere maximum, possible power due to His knowledge. I suppose their speculations were understandable, since they were trying to present a knowable God to people, so they tried to bring God down and package Him as something a bit more understandable to the common man. Thus, we got the following, “scientific” teachings:

Mormon speculations running rampant

Beginning, apparently, with Brigham Young in 1869, latter-day saints began speculating that God was a scientist operating under higher laws of nature, which were as yet unknown to mankind.

Brigham Young taught that “there is no such thing” as a miracle, and that “God is a scientific character, … he lives by science or strict law.”  (Testimony of David H. Bailey)

According to Brigham Young, “there is no such thing” as a miracle and only “the ignorant” see the works of God as miracles. In 1869 he taught the following:

Yet I will say with regard to miracles, there is no such thing save to the ignorant — that is, there never was a result wrought out by God or by any of His creatures without there being a cause for it. There may be results, the causes of which we do not see or understand, and what we call miracles are no more than this — they are the results or effects of causes hidden from our understandings.

A year later, in 1870, Brigham taught that “God is a scientific character, that he lives by science or strict law,” that He exists by this science or strict law and that “by law (science) he was made what He is,” which would mean that God was made a God by a science which preceded (existed prior to) His existence, and thus God is a scientific creation.

It is hard to get the people to believe that God is a scientific character, that He lives by science or strict law, that by this He is, and by law he was made what He is; and will remain to all eternity because of His faithful adherence to law. It is a most difficult thing to make the people believe that every art and science and all wisdom comes from Him, and that He is their Author.

(See Modern science and the LDS doctrine of natural law)

James E. Talmage, in his book The Articles of Faith, wrote that “Miracles are commonly regarded as occurrences in opposition to the laws of nature. Such a conception is plainly erroneous, for the laws of nature are inviolable.” (Testimony of David H. Bailey)

Talmage made the above statement in 1899. More leaders followed suit on these speculations.

Several LDS leaders have expressed that miracles are part of higher natural laws. In a 1928 conference, for instance, Elder Orson Whitney said, “Miracles are not contrary to law; they are simply extraordinary results flowing from superior means and methods of doing things.” (Conference Reports, Oct. 1928, pp. 64-65.) Likewise, James Talmage once said:

Miracles are commonly regarded as occurrences in opposition to the laws of nature. Such a conception is plainly erroneous, for the laws of nature are inviolable. However, as human understanding of these laws is at best but imperfect, events strictly in accordance with natural law may appear contrary thereto. The entire constitution of nature is founded on system and order; the laws of nature, however, are graded as are the laws of man. The operation of a higher law in any particular case does not destroy the actuality of an inferior one. (Talmage, 200.)

In a similar vein, LDS researchers, Smith & Sjodhal, have written:

It is assumed that the so-called laws of nature are immutable, and that nothing can take place that appears to be contrary to such laws. To this objection the answer is, that we do not know all the laws of nature. We can, therefore, not maintain that the miracles performed by the servants of the Lord are not in perfect accord with some law of which we are ignorant. All we can say is that they do not belong to any of the classes of ordinary events with which men are familiar. But that is far from saying that they are impossible. As a matter of fact, violations of the best established laws of nature appear to be occurring constantly. We raise a weight from the ground. That seems to be contrary to the law of gravitation. …God directs and controls His universe and all that pertains thereto, not contrary to, but in conformity with, laws and forces known to Him, even though unknown to us. (Smith and Sjodahl, 516.)

Lastly, to quote Parley P. Pratt:

     Among the popular errors of modern times, an opinion prevails that miracles are events which transpire contrary to the laws of nature, that they are effects without a cause.

     If such is the fact, then, there never has been a miracle, and there never will be one. The laws of nature are the laws of truth. Truth is unchangeable, and independent in its own sphere.

     That which, at first sight, appears to be contrary to the known laws of nature, will always be found, on investigation, to be in perfect accordance with those laws. For instance, had a sailor of the last century been running before the wind, and met with a vessel running at a good rate of speed, directly in opposition to the wind and current, this sight would have presented, to his understanding, a miracle in the highest possible sense of the term, that is, an event entirely contrary to the laws of nature as known to him. Or if a train of cars, loaded with hundreds of passengers or scores of tons of freight had been seen passing over the surface of the earth, at the rate of sixty miles per hour, and propelled seemingly, by its own inherent powers of locomotion, our fathers would have beheld a miracle—an event which would have appeared, to them to break those very laws of nature with which they were the most familiar.

     If the last generation had witnessed the conveyance of news from London to Paris, in an instant, while they knew nothing of the late invention of the electric telegraph, they would have testified, in all candor, and with the utmost assurance, that a miracle had been performed, in open violation of the well known laws of nature, and contrary to all human knowledge of cause and effect.

      …The terms miracle and mystery must become obsolete, and finally disappear from the vocabulary of intelligences, as they advance in the higher spheres of intellectual consistency. Even now they should be used only in a relative or limited sense, as applicable to those things which are not yet within reach of our powers or means of comprehension. (Pratt, 103 – 104.)

(Miracles by Michael R. Ash)

Btw, Pratt wrote the above in 1891.

According to this view, God is just a really smart scientist who does everything according to some higher natural laws, which are as yet unknown to man, and He performs these feats through His knowledge of all things. Therefore, there is no such thing as a miracle and anyone that calls the things that God does a miracle is simply ignorant themselves of the knowledge it took to do such things. God, then, is a God of miracles only insofar as the audience witnessing the miracle is ignorant. Also, nothing He does contradicts natural law and therefore, is not impossible. This, of course, precludes creatio ex nihilo, since that would clearly contradict natural law, thus making creatio ex materia the only Mormon standard.

Moroni asked,

who shall say [Morm. 9:17]

that it was not a miracle

that by his word the heaven and the earth should be

and by the power of his word man was created of the dust of the earth

and by the power of his word have miracles been wrought

and who shall say [Marm. 9:18]

that jesus christ did not do many mighty miracles

The answer to Moroni’s questions is: Brigham Young, James E. Talmage, Orson Whitney, Smith & Sjodhal, Parley P. Pratt and many other Mormons who believe what these men have taught on this issue.

The Bible Dictionary on miracles

Such speculations have systemically affected the entire membership. As evidence of this, consider the Bible Dictionary entry on Miracles:

“Miracles should not be regarded as deviations from the ordinary course of nature so much as manifestations of divine or spiritual power. Some lower law was in each case superseded by the action of a higher.”

The scientific trap: creation by knowledge

Thus, Mormons have fallen into what might be termed, the scientific trap, which glorifies the acquisition of knowledge over all other principles. We have wrested the scriptures and converted the pure doctrine of creation and miracles by faith

for it is by faith that miracles are wrought [Moro. 7:37]

into a false gospel of creation and miracles by knowledge.

The scientific age has brought out fantastic discoveries, fanciful theories and marvelous new inventions, and this age, coupled with the wonderful new revelations God has given during the Restoration, has inspired the Mormon man to wonder about God’s vast knowledge, whether perhaps His knowledge of all things could be the cause of these miracles. This wondering has led to speculation, which has led to indoctrination, and now all Mormons are taught the satanic gospel of knowledge, leaving aside the divine gospel of faith.

First things first: some definitions

The adjective potential means “existing in possibility : capable of development into actuality” and also “expressing possibility,” while the noun potential means “something that can develop or become actual.”

The adjective impossible means “incapable of being or of occurring.” An impossibility, then, is “the quality or state of being impossible” and also “something impossible”.

With all of this in mind, let’s go back in time, to before the creation of all things.

Creatio ex nihilo

In the beginning, prior to the creation of all things, there was a compound-in-one Nothing, from which we came into existence. In the compound-in-one, non-existent state, the Nothing was without purpose and perfectly useless. So, to make it (the Nothing) have a purpose, God caused an opposition in all things by dividing the compound-in-one into two parts.

This division was impossible to do, but God did it anyway.
Now, the impossibility of the division cannot be stressed enough. Non-existence has no potential, whatsoever. The Nothing wasn’t merely something with untapped potential, like a gaseous plasma which is inert in its natural state but when a voltage is applied, it suddenly lights up. A gaseous plasma is something, and may react to external stimuli, but the Nothing was, quite literally, the lack of any sort of something. External stimuli does not elicit a response from absolutely nothing.

Nevertheless, God shone in the darkness and the Nothing began to split. This was not based upon knowledge of any laws, for laws did not apply to the Nothing. In other words, laws were non-existent at this point but also, even if they could exist at this point, they could not apply to the Nothing, for laws do not work on non-existence, only on things that exist.  This division, then, was an impossibility, yet it occurred anyway. Under what principle did it occur? Under the principle of faith, for God had faith that the Nothing would begin to divide if He shone a light; He shone a light and the Nothing began to split. It was a bona fide miracle, beyond the scope of any natural law, and like all miracles, was accomplished by faith, not knowledge.

Inner sphere of light=unnatural state of existence;
outer darkness=natural state of non-existence

The non-existent, uncreated, compound-in-one, Nothing state we were in prior to the creation of all things is our natural state. God, through the creation of all things took us out of our natural, non-existing state and placed us in a sphere of light, even the created Universe.

all truth is independent in that sphere [D&C 93:30]

in which god has placed it

to act for itself

as all intelligence also

otherwise there is no existence

However, the created Universe is not a natural state for us. It is an unnatural state. As we all are still living within the confines of the created Universe, what we today call the natural state is in reality an unnatural state.

Everything in the Universe is kept within this unnaturally existing, created, divided or split or opposition-in-all-things state by the power of God.

as also he is in the sun [D&C 88:7]

and the light of the sun

and the power thereof

by which it was made

as also he is in the moon [D&C 88:8]

and is the light of the moon

and the power thereof

by which it was made

as also the light of the stars [D&C 88:9]

and the power thereof

by which they were made

and the earth also [D&C 88:10]

and the power thereof

even the earth upon which you stand

and the light which shineth [D&C 88:11]

which giveth you light

is through him

who enlighteneth your eyes

which is the same light

that quickeneth your understandings

which light proceedeth forth from the presence of god [D&C 88:12]

to fill the immensity of space

the light which is in all things [D&C 88:13]

which giveth life to all things

which is the law

by which all things are governed

even the power of god

who sitteth upon his throne

who is in the bosom of eternity

who is in the midst of all things

Should God ever withdraw His power, or cease to exist, all things in the Universe would revert back to their natural state and vanish away back into the Nothing.

and if there is no god [2 Ne. 2:13]

we are not

neither the earth

for there could have been no creation of things

neither to act

nor to be acted upon

wherefore

all things must have vanished away

God’s omnipotence

This short prayer, given by the Savior in the Garden of Gethsemane, embodies the omnipotence and nature of God:

and he said [Mark 14:36]

abba

father

all things are possible unto thee

take away this cup from me

nevertheless

not what i will

but what thou wilt

It stands to reason that if all things are possible to God, then nothing is impossible to Him. But I will go further than that and say that:

God is omnipotent, according to His will and pleasure

By this I mean both that God is omnipotent because it is His will and pleasure to be omnipotent and that God’s omnipotence is dispersed according to His will and pleasure, which dispersal reveals the very will and pleasure of God, or His nature. (I will elaborate on this later.)

Suffice it to say that this prayer shows that God had power to take the bitter cup away from Christ, which is why Jesus asked Him to do so.  In other words, God had power to work out the atonement through Christ, thus preparing the way for our salvation, or to work out the atonement in some other way without Christ having to suffer.  His power is omnipotent, or unlimited, therefore, Christ’s sacrifice was chosen not because it was the only way, but because it was the appointed way, according to God’s will and pleasure.

Nothing is impossible with God

God’s miraculous power does not come from His knowledge, but from His faith. He is omnipotent because He has a fullness (infinite amount) of perfect, unshaken faith. His knowledge is finite, but His faith is infinite. I will quote the scripture again in case you missed this fact.

all truth is independent in that sphere [D&C 93:30]

in which god has placed it

to act for itself

as all intelligence also

otherwise there is no existence

God has placed all truth—which is all knowledge, for

truth is knowledge of things [D&C 93:24]

as they are

and as they were

and as they are to come

—into a finite sphere. But His infinite faith extends beyond the boundaries of the sphere of light, into the infinite, eternal regions of outer darkness, where the non-existing, compound-in-one Nothing is found. Because of this, there are no limitations to His power, nor can there be. The only impossible thing to God, then, is a limitation to His power.

The greatest feat God can do

If you are purporting to be omnipotent and want to demonstrate your matchless strength, how do you do this? Is it by lifting more weight than any man can lift? No. Is it by lifting more weight than any group of men working together and pooling all their resources and technology could lift? No. Is it by lifting all the weight there is or was or will be? No. If you have unlimited strength, then all of these feats are well within your strength (non-)limits. No, the only way to truly demonstrate your omnipotence is to go beyond your limitations. That’s impossible, right? And that’s the point.

In order for God to demonstrate His omnipotence, He must do the impossible.

Because the scriptures call God the Lord God Omnipotent—which, according to Webster’s 1828 and 1913 dictionary editions does not mean “maximally powered” but literally possessing unlimited power—the only way for God to demonstrate His omnipotent power is by performing a feat which is impossible for Him to perform. Nevertheless, even such a feat would be easy for an omnipotent God.

ah lord god [Jer. 32:17]

behold

thou hast made the heaven and the earth by thy great power and stretched out arm

and there is nothing too hard for thee

Regardless of its ease, though, going beyond His own limitations would most definitely demonstrate the full extent of His matchless power. Now, we must ask, what is impossible to a God that has unlimited power? The answer: a limitation on His power.

To glorify God

The purpose of the creation of all things was to glorify God. God, in the midst of the Nothing, took His unlimited power and created a limitation to His power, in the shape of a sphere of light. His power extends beyond the sphere (for it is faith-based power, which extends into the Nothing), but by creating the Universal sphere, He “gathered up” a portion of His unlimited power and created divisions and limitations on what He could and could not do within the sphere.

Prior to the creation, from God’s perspective, there were only possible things, for His power was unlimited. After the creation, His power was divided between the infinite Nothing, in which His power was still unlimited, and the sphere of light, in which He created limitations. In regards to the sphere, God created an unnatural state in which now there were unnatural laws (what we call the laws of nature) and according to these unnaturally made laws, there were now things that were possible and things that were impossible, both for God and man and beast and all other things.

These limitations on His power were His way of demonstrating that His power was so great that He could even bind Himself, an absolutely impossible feat. Binding God, or creating limitations on His own unlimited power was the greatest feat that God could do, hence the creation of the Universal sphere. It was meant to cause all that was in the Universe to wonder at His greatness, and to give glory to Him.

Giving impossible purpose to the impossible Nothing

wherefore [2 Ne. 2:12]

it must needs have been created for a thing of naught

wherefore

there would have been no purpose in the end of its creation

wherefore

this thing must needs destroy the wisdom of god and his eternal purposes

and also the power and the mercy and the justice of god

The genius of God is that He does the impossible. The Nothing is “a thing of naught” with no apparent purpose, therefore, God could not have created it, for He creates all things with a designated purpose in mind, which shows His great wisdom, power, mercy and justice. If God had created the Nothing, a thing with no purpose, whatsoever, its very creation (by God) would have destroyed God. As God still exists, we know that He did not create the Nothing, therefore the Nothing must be in its natural state of purposeless, impossible to use, non-existence. Nevertheless, even though God did not create the Nothing, and even though in its current state of non-existence, it is impossibly useless stuff, He still thought up a use for it, anyway.

wherefore [D&C 76:44]

he saves all except them

they shall go away into everlasting punishment

which is endless punishment

which is eternal punishment

to reign with the devil and his angels in eternity

where their worm dieth not

and the fire is not quenched

which is their torment

and the end thereof [D&C 76:45]

neither the place thereof

nor their torment

no man knows

neither was it revealed [D&C 76:46]

neither is

neither will be revealed unto man

except to them who are made partakers thereof

nevertheless [D&C 76:47]

i the lord show it by vision unto many

but straightway shut it up again

wherefore [D&C 76:48]

the end

the width

the height

the depth

and the misery thereof

they understand not

neither any man

except those who are ordained unto this condemnation

wherefore [D&C 29:28]

i will say unto them

depart from me ye cursed into everlasting fire

prepared for the devil and his angels

and now [D&C 29:29]

behold

i say unto you

never at any time have I declared from mine own mouth

that they should return

for where i am they cannot come

for they have no power

but remember [D&C 29:30]

that all my judgments are not given unto men

These scriptures show that God uses the Nothing as a holding place for the devil, his angels and the sons of perdition. This is, of course, impossible, for where is the Nothing? It is nowhere and everywhere at the same time. The most we can say is that it is outside of the sphere of light, but it contains no “end, width, height or depth” that man can understand, for outer darkness is a true eternal or infinite expanse. God can comprehend it, but we cannot.

Three impossible things, so far, and He’s just getting started

We see from this that God has accomplished, so far, three impossible feats. He created something from Nothing. He limited His own unlimited power by dividing it between within and without the sphere, and He has made use of the useless Nothing which He did not create.

None of these impossible miracles were accomplished by His knowledge, which remains in the sphere, but by His faith, which not only permeates the sphere but also penetrates into the darkness beyond.

But God doesn’t stop there, for He offers His children who now reside within the sphere the promise of eternal life, of receiving all He has. That includes His unlimited power. Now, this is entirely impossible, for how can we, who started out as the Nothing, go from the singular, undifferentiated, infinite Nothing to plural, differentiated, finite somethings to possessing unlimited power? We are finite beings in our current (unnatural) state, therefore it is impossible for us to comprehend the infinite.

and no man putteth new wine into old bottles [Mark 2:22]

else the new wine doth burst the bottles

and the wine is spilled

and the bottles will be marred

but new wine must be put into new bottles

neither do men put new wine into old bottles [Matt. 9:17]

else the bottles break

and the wine runneth out

and the bottles perish

but they put new wine into new bottles

and both are preserved

Thus, finite man must be made infinite again before the unlimited power of God can be put into him. Yet, such a conversion is also impossible, nevertheless, this is exactly what God intends to do, regardless.

To solve these impossibilities in our doctrine, those who have fallen into the scientific trap have opted to imagine that God’s power is finite, that He is merely maximally powered according to His knowledge, thus allowing for the possibility of man becoming like Him. According to this thinking, it will take a really long time and a lot of learning, but eventually we will be able to learn all that God knows, too, and become maximally powerful beings like Him.

The limitations created by God

Prior to the creation, all things were to God a set of infinite possibilities, a completely blank slate from which to do anything He desired. During the creation, God made a new set of possibles and also a set of impossibles, both for Himself and all created things.

Insofar as He Himself is concerned, the new set of impossibles consists of things in which He doesn’t exercise faith. Insofar as everything else is concerned, the impossibles set also follows the same principle and thus accord to the faith of God, meaning:

that the limitations of all things are the limitations that He has set by His faith upon all things;

that all things that we say God is able to do are still impossibilities made possible by His faith, meaning that it is all still a miracle;

that all things we say God is unable to do (or powerless to do) is another manifestation of his matchless power in creating impossible limitations in which there originally were no limitations; in other words, that the limitations of the Universal sphere and the laws given by God—along with all their bounds and conditions—are, themselves, miracles;

and that all talk of God being literally limited in what He can do comes from a limited understanding of how He wields His power, for He has all the power that exists in the Universe and uses all those powers according to the purposes He has given them, vicariously through agents, etc.

Now, having a power serves no purpose unless it is used. Therefore, God uses all of His powers, but not all of them Himself, for some of them He has delegated to agents who desire to use them, to further His many purposes. For example, God has the power to deceive and to destroy agency, but He has delegated this power to Satan and other agents. Because He has delegated these powers, we say and also read in the scriptures that God “cannot lie.”  Or that God cannot make slaves of people by destroying their agency, like Satan does.  These are true statements, but it merely attests to the delegated nature of these powers, they having been given to Satan and others inspired by the devil. This does not mean that God never had them, nor that He will never get them back, nor that He does not have power at this very moment to retrieve or take back these powers from Satan. He most certainly did, will and does. But it is the nature of God to use many agents to serve His many purposes.

Elder Chantdown recently wrote:

This is the strange act of the same Father who stood not in conflict but in conversation with Lucifer. Notice even in the super-sacred-secret, copyrighted, intellectual property of the Corporation of the President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Corporation Sole) video production of the Temple Drama, how cool and collect Elohim is in his correspondence with Lucifer. Lucifer ap-PARENT-ly sees his own PARENT as an enemy. But, God The Father appears to not be distressed in the slightest. Lucifer says “If you do that then I’ll do this!” God responds with a “Works for me” tone. Everything and everyone, including, yes, The Devil, works for Elohim.

Emphasis mine.

and worlds without number have i created [Moses 1:33]

for behold [Moses 1:35]

many worlds have passed away by my power

Therefore the Creator possesses all power, both to create and destroy, both to enliven and to kill, both to set limits and remove limits, both to bind and unbind. And He utilizes all His powers according to His divine purposes. What we see as a “limitation on His power” is a created limitation, meaning one of His creations. So, whenever people say God can’t do this or God can’t do that, claiming that He is not omnipotent because of these limitations, they are revealing their ignorance of His very nature, for it is in His very nature to set limitations and bounds to all things. Those bounds cannot be passed because no one or no group is more powerful than He is, meaning that nobody has more faith than He does.

So, when we find scriptures that state that God can’t lie or else He will cease to be God, this doesn’t mean that some greater power than God has bound Him, but that He has bound Himself, or set a limitation even to Himself, according to His nature. This is why He is both all-powerful, but not a dictator or tyrant. All things love and obey Him voluntarily because of His magnanimity in binding Himself to all things in these ways.

Reality altering faith

God’s unlimited power (agency) comes of His infinite, perfect, unshaken faith. If God exercises His faith in any way, He has power (agency) to do whatsoever that thing is. Because of this, He cannot be backed into a corner in which He has no out. He always has an out, for if He exercises His faith, reality is altered.

The nature of His faith is such that after binding Himself with an oath and covenant that He would not lie, if so He would cease to be God, and afterward changing His mind about the oath and deciding to lie and not cease to be God, He could violate the oath and escape the penalties invoked. How? By exercising faith to that end. Because His faith alters reality, God always has an escape clause. Square circles, rocks too heavy for Him to lift, lying and not ceasing to be God, violating and destroying agency and creating slaves like Satan does, ceasing to be God and then coming back into existence as fully God, etc. None of these things pose difficulty to Him, for He does not ever lose faith and faith is where His power to alter reality comes from.

The ability to alter reality is what created the Universe, for the Nothing is the state of nature, or the original, real reality, whereas the created Universe is an unnatural, or altered reality, made real by God’s faith. Any and every time God uses His faith, the action is always the same: reality is again altered and a new reality is created. This shows that every act of God, every miracle He does, is a new creation.

they [miracles] are created now and not from the beginning [Isa. 48:7]

None of these creative acts are done by natural means, meaning by science or knowledge of natural laws and their manipulation, but are accomplished by the miraculous power of reality-altering faith. This keeps all the acts of God firmly planted in the realm of the impossible (from man’s perspective), in order to keep man and the angels wowed, wondering and marveling at God’s matchless power, that they might give glory to Him. All things that come to know God are in a continual state of astonishment because of this infinite faith of His.

The principle is this: all things that God proposes to do, He does. Whatever He exercises faith in doing, is accomplished. Therefore, God’s power isn’t really limited in any way. All His so-called limitations are self-imposed limitations.

The movie Hancock had a Greek god, played by Will Smith, arrested and incarcerated, due to drunkenness, destruction of property, etc. He stayed in prison voluntarily. At any moment he could leave, but chose not to. In like manner, only God has power to limit His power, by choosing not to exercise His faith.

The nature of God is unnatural

i the lord am bound [D&C 82:10]
when ye do
what i say
but when ye do not
what i say
ye have no promise

Given the awe-inspiring, reality-bending faith God has, it is impossible to bind Him down with a contract or covenant. He can quite easily alter reality and get out of it by exercising His faith. So, how is it that God is bound when we do what He says? It is because of His nature, in which it pleases Him to be bound and so it is His will that He be bound.

Perhaps it may seem strange that God, the quintessential anarchist, possessing untrammeled freedom and unlimited power to do anything, with no restraints upon Him, whatsoever, as His very first acts creates beings so that He can be bound to them. Yet, this should not seem so perplexing, for just as there is a pleasure that comes from unbounded freedom, represented by the eternal expanse of the Nothing, there is also a pleasure that comes from being wrapped (bound) up in a warm blanket, all cozy and warm, represented by the created Universe. God, having all power, wanted all things, for what good is having power to experience all things if you aren’t going to experience them all?

So, the nature of God (in the Nothing) is to experience everything and He has created His will (the sphere) and determined what will please Him within it, in order to utilize His power to the fullest extent, granting Him both direct and vicarious experience (through agents) in all things. In other words, He determined a plan to obtain the fullest possible experience and then created His nature (the sphere) to accomplish it, which plan also manifests that nature, both within and without the sphere.

The created aspect of His nature shows, yet again, that He is not bound by even His nature, for at any moment, should it please Him to change His nature, He can do so, and can create a new nature, merely by exercising His faith in that direction. This is the nature of godhood, to ”do what thou wilt” and to “do as you please.” He chooses, then, what will be His will and what will be His pleasure. In other words, He determines His own nature.

Again, because His nature is a creation, it is unnatural, just as the Universal sphere is unnatural, for the only natural state is the Nothing.  If God’s nature was in a state of nature, it would be non-existent, like the Nothing.  We see from this that God’s power is absolute in the most literal of senses, for He can recreate Himself from scratch.

jesus answered [John 2:19]

and said unto them

destroy this temple

and in three days i will raise it up

So, even if God were to be destroyed, or become non-existent, becoming one again with the Nothing, He has power to come back into existence.

no man taketh it from me [John 10:18]

but i lay it down of myself

i have power to lay it down

and i have power to take it again

this commandment have i received of my father

This is obviously impossible, yet God does it anyway.  How?  By exercising His infinite faith to that end.  There is no science involved, there is no mechanism set up to bring Him back into existence.  He merely becomes non-existent, believing that He will come back into existence at whatever appointed instant He has determined.  His surety that He will awake is absolute, His faith perfect and unshaken, and so at the set moment, He comes back into being.  This exercise of faith has no match, yet God can do this, has done this, and will yet do this, for this is a power that He has, even power over life and death and rebirth.

God, then, and all that pertains to Him, is unnatural, for the natural state is non-existence, or the Nothing.

Impossible any way you look at it

Now, it is just as unnatural (and impossible) to go from existence into non-existence (annihilation), as it is to go from non-existence to existence (creatio ex nihilo)—for the law of conservation of energy states that energy can be neither created nor destroyed; it merely changes form—yet the one scenario (the doctrine of annihilation) we Mormons readily accept,

god would cease to be god [Alma 42:13,22,25 & Morm. 9:19]

and if there is no god [2 Ne. 2:13]

we are not

neither the earth

for there could have been no creation of things

neither to act

nor to be acted upon

wherefore

all things must have vanished away

while the other (creatio ex nihilo) we reject.  We console ourselves by saying that although God would cease to be God under that set of circumstances, which would cause all created things to also cease to be, that set of circumstances will never occur, therefore it is impossible for that to happen.  Nevertheless, we assign its impossibility not to a limitation of God’s power, but to a choice that God has made.  In other words, He has power to lie and cease to be God, but chooses not to, for then He and everything He created would vanish away.  But we do not apply the same principle to creatio ex nihilo.  With that doctrine, we say that creatio ex nihilo is impossible not because God chooses not to do it, but because He has no (and cannot possibly have any) power to do it.

We think, in this reasoning, that there is a fundamental difference between the two impossibilities, but there really isn’t, for if God has a power to cease to be God, which would cause all creation to vanish away, so that there is nothing that acts or is acted upon, you have just described a power as impossible as creating something from nothing, for if something vanishes away, so that it neither acts nor can be acted upon, you are describing the Nothing, or non-existence, which Mormons claim is, itself, impossible.

(Again, I repeat, for the sake of those who are still locked into the creatio ex materia idea: the death of God and subsequent vanishment of all things cannot mean that all things go back into a state of primordial chaotic matter, because Lehi’s words indicate that the resulting state would be one in which it neither acts nor can be acted upon.  Primordial chaos can be acted upon, therefore, Lehi is describing a state of Nothing, or non-existence.)

The truth is that the doctrines of annihilation and of creatio ex nihilo and of creatio ex materia and of creatio ex deo, are all true, but they are played out at the appointed time and in the appointed manner that God has before determined.  Just because they are true doctrines does not make them any less impossible, for all the doctrines of God are as impossible and unnatural as He is.  And just because they are impossible, does not make them any less true.

Ceasing to be God

How do we know that God ceases to be God from time to time? Because there is no power that He does not have and there is no power that He does not use, for to have a power and not use it would serve no purpose, which would destroy all His works. So we know, since He has all power, that He has the power to cease to be God. And we already know how this in accomplished. All He need to do is create something that has no purpose. And what has no purpose? The Nothing. How, then, does God cease to be God? By creating the Nothing, which has no purpose. This destroys Him, or annihilates Him, so that He becomes one with the Nothing again. And the cycle endlessly repeats with rebirth, life, death, rebirth, life, death, etc.

The word of God says that He is infinite and eternal.

which father son and holy ghost are one god [D&C 20:28]

infinite and eternal without end

amen

and behold [Alma 34:14]

this is the whole meaning of the law

every whit pointing to that great and last sacrifice

and that great and last sacrifice will be the son of god

yea

infinite and eternal

by these things we know [D&C 20:17]

that there is a god in heaven

who is infinite and eternal

As the Universal sphere is finite, the infinite nature of God must deal with the Nothing, which is infinite. So, God is connected to the Nothing, meaning that the Nothing is the infinite part of God. God, then, is all there is, and also all there isn’t. Of what, then, does God create? Of Himself. Sure this defies logic, but that’s to be expected.

Even trusting God is an impossible miracle

If a man has the entire deck stacked in his favor; if he’s holding all the cards; if he’s the only business and game in town; if there is nobody double-checking or verifying his facts; if all verification comes from him; if there is no regulatory authority over him, nobody supervising him, no external force or entity that can keep him in check, or guarantee that he will keep his word; and if he can enter into a binding contract but change or violate the terms of it whenever he wants without any consequences to him, whatsoever; if at any moment he could force you to do anything that he wanted; if such a man existed and said to you, “Hey, just trust me! I won’t let you down!”; wouldn’t you find it absolutely impossible to put your trust in him?

This is the very situation we find ourselves in with God and His omnipotent, miraculous power to alter reality. He’s got a monopoly on everything. Heck, even the Nothing belongs to Him! These omnipotent, miraculous abilities do not instill confidence in Him, for He has power to do exactly the opposite of what He says and get away with it, without us even knowing it. Those who bring themselves to trust in God do so as a leap and act of faith. God’s omnipotence, then, serves to develop faith in us by creating an environment of distrust so that He can produce the miracle of trust.

In like manner, all gospel principles are impossible miracles, God turning things upside down from what we would expect as the normative way of doing things, all so that we might praise His greatness.

The works of God defy logic

Faith is not logic-based. Therefore, the logical paradoxes to God’s omnipotence pose no problem whatsoever to Him. That we cannot understand how such-and-such a deed can be possible, given the rules of our reality, does not limit God from working miracles through His faith. Perhaps it can be asked, “Can God work miracles through knowledge alone?” The answer would be, “Yes.” In fact, the principle of God’s omnipotence can be summed up with two questions and their answers.

Question: Does God have power to do [fill in the blank]?

Answer: Yes, He does.

Question: Does He exercise this power?

Answer: Yes, He does, either personally or vicariously.

Paradoxes do not matter because reality is created on a foreseen basis. So, no matter what scenario one comes up with to test the validity of God’s omnipotence, God has already foreseen it and accounted for it in the present reality, if need be. In other words, if the test is to have God do something impossible using only current reality laws, without the exercise of reality-altering faith or any other godlike “cheat,” such as by having Him work miracles through knowledge alone, without altering reality, He could still do it because His foreknowledge of all things would have seen the test beforehand and provided a way in the current reality (by creating the reality with an “impossible law” exception that only applies to Him or to whomever the test subject is to be) to accomplish the task under the assigned rules. There is simply no way to back God into a no-way-to-escape, paradoxical corner.

It is His will and pleasure to be omnipotent

The will of God corresponds to His left-brain-mind, which is the Universal sphere, while His pleasure corresponds to His right-brain-heart, which resides in the Nothing.  The one is infinite and the other finite.  The one boundless and free, the other bounded and limited.  Because of this dual nature to God, His omnipotence must, of necessity, please or appeal to both halves of His being, therefore, it remains unlimited outside of the sphere and limited within the sphere.  The will craves confinement and limitations and conditions and bounds, by giving a law to all things, whereas the pleasure craves just the opposite.  Nevertheless, the will (sphere) expands into pleasure (Nothing) territory and what occurs within the will (sphere) is always according to the pleasure, for all things that happen in the will (sphere) were pre-planned (foreordained) by God’s pleasure as He looked out into the Nothing with faith, bringing His will into existence.

God must, of necessity therefore, be omnipotent, because of His will and pleasure.  His pleasure demands omnipotence because the Nothing, being a true infinity, can only be split and made into all the endless varieties of things that God sees by His eye of infinite faith, which produces unlimited power.  And His will demands omnipotence because it is expanding into the Nothing in an ongoing creation of a never-ending variety of newly existent things.  Also, because the exercise of God’s faith within the sphere alters its reality, which transcends the already established laws found therein, His will requires that He be able to do any impossible thing, even within the confines of the sphere.

Therefore, because it is God’s will and pleasure to be omnipotent, He exercises His faith to that end.

Dispersing His omnipotence reveals His nature

Inside of the sphere, God’s omnipotence is dispersed according to His will and pleasure.  This dispersal, which we can observe or learn about through our mortal existence and also through the word of God and the manifestations of the Holy Spirit, reveals the very will and pleasure of God, or His nature.

The nature of something is determined by observation of what it does. We can view lots of lions and see patterns that they all follow and then, when we see one lone lion do something different, that no other lion does, then we are justified in saying that that lion went against the nature of lions. But in the case of God, what do we have to compare Him with? He is the only God that we know of, therefore, all that He does, even when He does something different than what we’ve seen before, must all be part of His nature. We are not ever justified in saying that what He does goes against His nature.

So what do we see?  We see the powers of God delegated to three groups of people: the devil and his angels, men and women, and God and His angels, with a subset of the godly powers reserved for the Supreme Being to use alone.

All of God’s creations use delegated powers of God to do whatsoever it is that they do, even Satan himself.  The demonic powers, then, are simply a subset of God’s infinite set of powers, which He loans to the devil because of an expressed desire that he had to use them.  While the devil remains within the sphere of light, he and his angels may use these powers to tempt man and destroy agency, captivating and compelling the souls of men.  But once they are evicted and cast into outer darkness, their powers remain in the sphere and return back to their rightful owner: God.

The same scenario plays out with man and the angels.  As long as they remain in the kingdom of light (the sphere), their delegated powers remain with them.  If ever they get evicted, whatever power was lent to them stays in the kingdom.

This shows us the nature of God by which powers He reserves to Himself for personal use and which He delegates.  Some powers he delegates to devils, some to men, some to angels and others He uses Himself.  Even though the delegated powers are not used personally by Himself, He ends up using them vicariously through the agent to whom the power was delegated.  In this way, God uses all His powers, even those that we would say are “off limits” to Him, such as the demonic powers.

So, God lies, steals, murders, breaks covenants, and does every other horrible thing it is possible to do, vicariously, through the power He has delegated to agents who have asked to receive and use such powers.  Although the agents have received authorization, or priesthoods, to use these demonic powers, they have been instructed not to use them, therefore they are not on the Lord’s errand when they use them.

ADAM: What is that apron you have on?

LUCIFER: It is an emblem of my power and priesthoods.

ADAM: Priesthoods?

LUCIFER: Yes, priesthoods.

Thus, the saying that “God cannot lie” does not mean that God has no power to lie.  He has such a power, but has delegated it to others.  Eventually, that power will return to him, but at any moment He can exercise faith and get it back immediately.  Nevertheless, the nature of God is to always delegate that particular power.  So, the saying, “God cannot lie” isn’t saying that God’s power is limited, but is attempting to reveal the nature of God, which is that He never, personally uses this power, or gives anyone else instruction to lie, but He does disperse this power to those who desire it.  The same principle applies to other dispersed powers.

Infinite faith produces unlimited power (omnipotence)

Every dispersed or reserved power that is found within the sphere was produced first by God exercising His infinite faith to obtain it. The principle of the Nephites

having power given them to do all things by faith [2 Ne. 1:10]

equally applies to God, for the principle is patterned after Him. No power ever came into existence without God first exercising His faith to bring it into existence.

ELOHIM: I will place enmity between thee and the seed of the woman. Thou mayest have power to bruise his heal, but he shall have power to crush thy head.

LUCIFER: Then with that enmity I will take the treasures of the earth, and with gold and silver I will buy up armies and navies, popes and priests, and reign with blood and horror on the earth!

Where did the devil get the enmity? From God. Who created the gold and silver? God did.

Taking the extreme example of the demonic powers, we see that the devil received all his powers from God, who first exercised His faith to obtain these powers, and then delegated them to those who desired to use them. Thus, even though the devil has no faith, the powers he uses are of God and came of God’s faith. Should God ever exercise His faith to remove those powers, the devil would be stripped of them. This shows that all things, even the kingdom of the devil, are dependent upon the sustaining will and faith of God. The dispersed powers are lent because it serves the purposes of God, to further His plan. When it no longer serves His purposes, that is the end of the probation and everything returns back to Him, to give an accounting of what they did with what He dispersed to them.

Not restricted in the least

It is inappropriate and a misunderstanding, then, to view the limitations that God has created on how He operates within the sphere as a restriction of His matchless power.  He still is not restricted in the least and He still gets to experience the exercise of every single power that He has.  Also, all the powers that He disperses to others, which are then used to fight Him and His work, have no effect on frustrating Him, but actually end up serving His purposes.

the works and purposes and designs of god cannot be frustrated [D&C 3:1]

How is this possible?  It isn’t.  In fact, it is impossible.  The whole plan of God is stacked against Him, for He works using only agency, allowing all of creation to vote Him out of existence and delegates a large portion of His powers to the devil so that he can fight and attempt to frustrate His work and then He takes a more or less hands off approach (except when men exercise faith in Christ).  Logically, God’s plan ought to be easily frustrated, but it never is nor can be.  Why can’t it be?  Because God’s faith is absolutely infinite and is the means by which He accomplishes His miraculous works and purposes and designs.

God as a miracle worker

Agency is defined in the scriptures as “power to act and not to be acted upon.” So God’s omnipotent power is agency, which, as I explained in a previous post, comes only of faith.  Since God has all power to act and nothing can act upon Him, or force Him to do something against His will, He has a fullness of agency, meaning He’s omnipotent.

Now, since the consent of the governed is needed in the kingdom of God in order for Him to remain just, which is the law of common consent, one must ask, when the vote was taken and one-third rebelled, did God lose 33% of His agency?  In other words, is God’s agency tied to the agencies of the things that make up the Universal sphere?

The answer is: No.

Agency is only tied to faith.  As God’s faith is infinite, anything He exercises His faith towards will come to pass, regardless of what it is.  Our faith is centered externally in Him, or in His Son, but God’s faith is centered internally, in Himself.  This means that His faith is independent of the environment He finds Himself in.

So, if the entire sphere should vote God off the throne, and afterward He were to exercise His faith to get them to vote Him back on, they would do it.  Not because He compels them to have a new election, but because His faith causes miracles to happen.

The faith of God is equally miraculous inside the sphere, among the things which have agency, as well as outside of it, where the non-existent Nothing is (not).  The Nothing does not act, nor can it be acted upon, thus it has no agency, yet when God exercises faith to make it split, it splits.  If non-reacting Nothing miraculously reacts to God’s faith, how much more would somethings, which have the innate ability to react (for they have agency), react to it?

Thus we see that God is only a miracle worker.  He does nothing but miracles.  There is no science involved in anything He does.  Although He knows all the finite things that exist within the Universal sphere, this knowledge does not translate into power, because He operates solely on faith, which produces agency.

Nevertheless, as He possesses unlimited power, He has power to work by knowledge.  Does He use this power?  Yes, vicariously.

The devil as an advanced scientist

Satan has no faith, therefore, he cannot obtain agency through faith.  Where, then, does his agency come from?  From the one-third, who voluntarily gave up their agency to him and also through all those who transgress the laws of God.  He also obtains agency through force, the application of scientific principles and deceit.

The spirit of the devil is likely patterned after the spirit of the Lord, which is in the shape of a sphere or expanded toroid (a doughnut shape).  Like hanging, rotten fruit, the one-third and sons of perdition are attached to it by filaments or branches.  All of the light and truth these spirits once had is taken away by the devil.

and that wicked one cometh [D&C 93:39]

and taketh away light and truth

through disobedience

from the children of men

and because of the tradition of their fathers

Now, light is wisdom, which the devil converts, through his devilish alchemy, into dark cunning.  And truth is knowledge, as explained above.  (Which truth he converts into partial truth, lies and other falsehoods.)  So, like a vacuum cleaner, the devil has sucked up the combined wisdom and knowledge of all the one-third and all the sons of perdition.  In addition, he has collected light and truth of varying degrees of every living mortal sinner.  Finally, every person who has died in their sins and gone to hell have been vacuumed, as well, of every last bit of light and truth they ever had, causing their spiritual deaths.

Given that the hosts of heaven are spoken of as being innumerable to man, just taking the one-third of them alone we arrive at a body of light and truth incomprehensibly great.  If 100% of the number is innumerable, then 1/3 of “innumerable” is probably not countable, either.  Added to that is the combined knowledge of all the sinners who died in their sins from the time of Adam to now, which knowledge concerns the earth and heavens, and you end up with a devil whose cunning and scientific knowledge might as well be considered godlike.

This would give the devil an almost perfect knowledge of the earth, as well as of the heavens.  Although he is trapped here, he is, for all intents and purposes, the god of this world.  Using scientific principles of knowledge, the devil would be able to imitate, to a degree, many of the miraculous works of God done by faith.

For example, whereas God has power to prophesy of the future using His eye of faith, whereby he sees all possible futures and chooses the future He has faith in, the devil has power to predict the future, using his knowledge of all the variables that make up the past and present, and also the prophecies of the Lord concerning the future.  One causes the appointed future to come to pass by His faith and the other predicts the most logical future, given all the facts.  One creates a miracle contrary to the facts or science, while the other predicts the logical outcome based on the facts or science alone.

The way the devil makes it appear that he “performs miracles” is by keeping his knowledge hidden.  This occult knowledge is the great secret that allows the audience to remain ignorant, like a magician’s trick.  The audience is not aware that a natural or technological occurrence has happened and the event is presented as a miracle, thus allowing them to be deceived.

Because of his vast knowledge of the earth sciences, the devil can send forth false prophets to predict many things with uncanny accuracy.  For example, the devil can use his knowledge to predict earthquakes, eruptions, and other disasters, because he has been working with a full data set since the time of Adam and has been tracking all of the patterns and systems of this planet.  Coupled with secret, advanced technology, that his servants in sin have been fervently working to develop, the “miracles” the servants of Satan will perform at the appointed times are sure to deceive the masses and almost even the very elect.

These deceptions come of science, not faith working miracles, for the god of this world is not a god of miracles.  He’s a phony baloney, a pretender.  Nevertheless, the cunning mind of the devil is so smart that he could best all the men who ever lived on this planet, and all the computing power on it, combined, in a test of logic, strategy or knowledge, for he draws on the combined brain power of an innumerable host of captured spirits, making his IQ beyond measure.

Demonic and divine technologies

Whenever God gives a “technological” device or “technological” instructions to mankind, He does so after a patterned manner.  First, the commandments to build (by the hand of man), when accompanied by detailed, revealed instructions, always produce something remarkable, curious (skillful) and “not after the manner of men.”  Second, whatever the build is, it only ever works according to the faith of the children of men using it.  So, ships designed by God (Noah’s ark, Jaredite barges, Nephi’s ship) work by faith.  Have faith and they float.  Lose faith and they sink.  Temples designed by God also work by faith.  Have faith, and the presence of the Lord and angels and other manifestations of His glory attends and the ordinances are accepted.  Lose faith, and the miracles cease, the ordinances are rejected and the temple is eventually destroyed.  (Not every commanded edifice comes with such detailed building instructions, so I’m only talking of those things which God, Himself, designs from start to finish.)  Then, there are the devices that God, Himself, prepares by His own hand.  For example, the Liahona, which operated according to the faith and heed and diligence Lehi’s party gave to it.  When they were slothful, it ceased working.

All these divine “technologies” were faith-based, created by the hand of man through miraculously-given revelations, which contained the divine building instructions, or by the hand of the Lord, through His faith, creating the miracle object,

the miraculous directors [D&C 17:1]

which were given to lehi while in the wilderness

and also the ball or compass [2 Ne. 5:12]

which was prepared for my father by the hand of the lord

according to that which is written

which, in turn, produced a structure or an object that operated contrary to the laws of nature.  The temples produced sealings that reached beyond death, the ships floated miraculously, the Liahona guided in a way that wasn’t possible, the Urim and Thummim allowed the seers to read languages that they didn’t know, etc.  Faith was required in their making and in their use.  The object, then, in all these divine “technologies” was and is always the development of faith.

The devices and edifices of man have no such faith-to-work-miracles requirement to build or design, nor require such faith to work, nor necessarily produce or develop faith in God when used.  So the bulk of all technology can only be ascribed as either human ingenuity or satanic inspiration.

Keeping in mind that the devil is this world’s resident scientific expert on all subjects, we can presume that at least some of today’s technologies have been inspired directly of the devil, either entirely or partially.  It plays into the devil’s hands if every device or technology spiritually or physically harms us in some way, even if the harm is minimal.  Devices that poison by degrees, through radiation, or that hypnotize, or that distract, or that create pride in man’s genius, all such technologies are useful to the devil’s plans and so we must expect him to take an active part in guiding man’s ingenuity in directions he would like it to go.

Among the LDS, there is an idea that the upswing in technological inventions and scientific knowledge corresponds with the restoration of the gospel through Joseph Smith, as if this was abundant evidence that the Spirit of the Lord was being poured out upon the people.  Another possibility, though, is that this apparent increase in technology may have been the devil’s response to the restoration.  The restoration restored the possibility of faith and miracles to the earth.  How does a devil respond to that?  Through imitations, by giving them “technological miracles” and thus keeping them firmly grounded and relying upon the arm of the flesh.

The scientific age in which we currently live may be a time when the spirit of the devil is poured out upon the people, giving them non faith-based technologies and precepts, in order to keep the masses turned away from faith.  Although we tend to idolize science as noble and pure, if this age has had as its main inspirational source that quintessential scientist, the devil, that assessment might be misguided.  Suffice it to say that God does not appear to be overly concerned about science or knowledge, only about faith and miracles.  It might not be entirely correct to ascribe God, the miracle worker, as the author of all this scientific knowledge and all these technological marvels.

But enough talk about the devil.  Let’s return to the topic of God’s faith.

Faith exercises faith

God corresponds to each man according to what He perceives. When He sees a man seeking faith in Christ, He corresponds by giving him a portion of His own faith. The faith obtained is a gift of God, had through His mercy, kindness and generosity, and not through the man’s own efforts. This takes away all cause a man might have to boast and allows him to fully acknowledge the greatness and hand of God in all things, which is one of the purposes of our creation, even that we might glorify His name. And when He sees a man seeking to exercise that given portion, He corresponds by exercising a portion of His own faith in their behalf so that they obtain the witness that they seek. The result is that God ends up doing everything, both supplying the needed faith and exercising it, too. All we are required to do is to show our own willingness. This principle is demonstrated by the following scriptures:

draw near unto me [D&C 88:63]

and i will draw near unto you

seek me diligently

and ye shall find me

ask

and ye shall receive

knock

and it shall be opened unto you

for intelligence cleaveth unto intelligence [D&C 88:40]

wisdom receiveth wisdom

truth embraceth truth

virtue loveth virtue

light cleaveth unto light

mercy hath compassion on mercy

and claimeth her own

justice continueth its course

and claimeth its own

judgment goeth before the face of him

who sitteth upon the throne

and governeth

and executeth all things

o god the eternal father [Moro. 4:3]

we ask thee in the name of thy son jesus christ

to bless and sanctify this bread to the souls of all those

who partake of it

that they may eat in remembrance of the body of thy son

and witness unto thee o god the eternal father

that they are willing

to take upon them the name of thy son

and always remember him

and keep his commandments

which he hath given them

that they may always have his spirit to be with them

amen

Conclusion

Knowledge (or law) requires existence, which requires a sphere, which did not exist before the creation, therefore God must not have created the Universe using knowledge, but by faith.  This shows that God is a miracle worker, capable of working outside of established law, and not a scientist, and also that God has faith.

Previous Faith of God article: The faith of God, part thirteen: How charity fits in

Complete List of Articles authored by LDS Anarchist

SPIRITUAL GIFT GIVING AND RECEIVING

Preface –

I have taken the liberty of writing on such a sacred topic but doing it in the typical banal style and cheesy tone of today’s consumer culture. I do not do this to make light of very real and very sincere things. But by the juxtaposition of something so heartfelt with something so mindless, I hope to bribe and trick our selfish minds into passing along a meaningful message to our imprisoned hearts. Enjoy!

THE IMPORTANCE OF BEINGS – EARNEST LIVING

What to wear? Where to go?  Who to be with?  Life is full of so many questions. Sometimes it’s hard to know how to make the best impression. One thing is for sure, we should place the most importance on people. “People, places and things,” we will remember from back in our school days, are all nouns. But only people and places are pronouns. So, if we want to be a pro at things, we should literally and figuratively CAPITALIZE on people and place.

“Without People You’re Nothing.”- Joe Strummer

People and place work together to produce things. So when you see something you want, know that it will take a combination of people and place to get it. Everybody wants to be hip to the latest and greatest, so keep your eye on everyone. Everybody is the same, but every body is different. Everyone wants to feel accepted but we also want to stand out in the crowd. This shared desire to get our share is a common bond between all of us. Unfortunately it is commonplace to see people get all bound up with things. These days, charity and giving are all too uncommon. People are trying to take it with them like Tut-ankh-amen. But that’s what happens when you get wrapped up in it like ancient mummies. Chasing money is not where it’s at. Keep your eye on the people! That’s where it all starts. So don’t just look at the cool clothes that come and go. Look at the people wearing and look at the people who are making those clothes. Get the big picture. Otherwise, in your attempts to be noticed as an individual you will end up being just another indy-visual.

Looking at only the clothes we will miss the bodies. And if we’re attracted only to the bodies then we will be distracted from the beings  which inhabit those bodies. The beings out there are in reality the only ones with anything to offer us. Refusing to look at the being because you’re hung up on the behavior; sells others and yourself short. Besides, when it comes to behavior, all you can do is be-have yourself. When you look past another’s behavior you will find what you’re looking for. Seeing beings — always a good look!

Earnest living or living honestly is not the same as making an “Earnist Living.” Are you an Earnist? Do you like to pay or overpay for things to let other people know or think that you spend and have a lot of money? Maybe you don’t even care what other people think but you feel like you’re getting a better product if you always pay the maximum marked up price. Perhaps you’ve seen someone who had something and got caught in the thought that they didn’t deserve it. If your main focus is on money and markets, you are probably an Earnist. When you’re too busy earning a living you are not learning from living. Existence has its own type of economics.

GENIUS / GENIE – US

In the economy of existence there are two camps  – Flesh/Corporeal and Spirit/Ethereal. But unlike Capitalism/Corporatism vs. Socialism/Communism, which work together to create chaos; the dual nature of existence promotes order.

Spirit is thankfully not confined to the same laws as the flesh is. That’s what makes it possible for God to send or leave a “portion of that spirit” to dwell in us. (Alma 18:35) The LDS sacrament prayer for the water/wine/spirits is almost identical to that which is uttered over the bread/bodies, except that any mention of commandments or obedience to them is conspicuously absent. In high-school, you might have learned a little bit about physics but you probably weren’t taught anything about metaphysics. But don’t worry. You don’t have to be an expert to understand it. In fact, a lot of so called experts don’t get it. It’s not about trying to be a genius. Just know what genius is.

Genius is a genie in us. Solomon the Wise, who knows a thing or two about working with Djinn (Genies) says: “With all thy getting, get understanding.” (Proverbs 4:7) This is the best thing you can get or give this season or any season for that matter. You want exclusive? You can’t get this gadget from The Apple Store. Technically, it’s available to anyone but so few posses it. And it’s the perfect gift for the man who thinks he has everything. It will appeal to your desire to fit in with others and your urge for uniqueness. It is the ultimate networking tool. And the settings can be completely personalized. It’s more than just the latest technology from Silicon Valley. It is the spirit of Silicon Valley and the soul of the Indus Valley, where Steve Jobs went to get his original inspiration. Trace the products (things) that inspire you, back to the places and people that came together to man-u-facture them. That way you will secure a life-time supply of treasures.

By now you’re probably wondering how you can take advantage of this incredible offer. I’ll tell you. But first you need to understand something about daemons. Despite what the Big Three companies advertise in their desperate, orthodox scams, designed to keep you in lifetime customer relationships which favor the middle man and preach that the customer is never right (unless of course he does what he’s told) – Dæmons are benevolent forces – not so much devine beings but rather a non-personified, peculiar mode of their activity. They can also assume the form of guardian beings who dispense “riches” among mortals. If you order any of the Gifts of The Spirit from God’s catalog of free goodies, it is one of these guys who will deliver it. So if you’re tired of paying up to 10% charges for your current church service, then you are ready for a direct relationship with God, and ready for what I’m going to tell you.

Rub that magic lamp. Everybody has an old lamp (pineal gland), stashed away in their attic (head), just collecting dust. Don’t be fooled by those merchants that advertise “new lamps for old.” They run commercials to try to con the general public into turning in their magic lamps for shiny gimmicks. Your old lamp will work just fine. It only needs to be cleaned up a bit. Don’t be a Foolish or Fuel-less Virgin. Rub it, decalcify it and then make sure to put oil in it! Wise virgins use E.V.O. (Extra Virgin Olive Oil), Skate Liver Oil, Cod Liver Oil. Any of these will have your light “so shining,” that men and women who see you will consider you a distributor of God’s Gifts to the world. Don’t be bashful. Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine!

Warning –We’re talking about unlocking and releasing your god potential, so you need to be fully prepared and even expect that people will one day form cults around your name. Hopefully they will eventually look past the persona and catch the vision themselves. Certainly your closest friends will. Then multi-level miracle campaigns will spring up everywhere you go. But even in the humble initial stages of your accumulation and distribution of gifts, you have to be comfortable with being emulated. When we magnificently magnify our callings in life we do not feel threatened in the slightest by copiers or even freeloaders. We respect them as equals and care for them as we would a newborn baby, who cries and eats and does not contribute in the same ways an adult would but is no less valuable in our sight.

TURN SHOPPING LISTS INTO SWAPPING LISTS – SHARING WITH THE STARS

Some of the best, shining examples we have available to us are the celebrities or stars of our day. Many of them put it all out there into the Universe. Yeah, sure they may have their faults, but don’t we all? Remember what we said about getting self-righteously stuck on critiquing others’ behavior. Look past those character flaws to the essence. It might be helpful to make a list of attributes you bring to the table and combine it with a list of characteristics you admire in a particular singer, actor or even historical figure. They can be dead or alive, male or female. If you can establish any type of strong mental/emotional link to that person, you can merge and make it work. Jesus Christ, the biggest Super Star of them all understood this very well. As Lord Jesus Krishna, He left us with an ancient Indian text called the Bhagavata Purana, that catalogs many of the toys available to children of the Most High. He dipped into the magic sack of good gifts often to make use of such cool tricks as anūrmi-mattvam: Being undisturbed by hunger, thirst, and other bodily disturbances, and sva-chanda mṛtyuh: Dying when one desires. He showed that He possessed these two particular powers when He said, “Man shall not live by bread alone,” (Luke 4:4) and when He spoke the words, “No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself.”(John10:18)

George Bernard Shaw said:

“If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.”

Ideas can be so much more than the metaphorical light bulb or flash of inspiration. Spirit is made of consolidated ideas. Letting ourselves be inspired by our fellow man is the self same act as letting our light shine. You literally have nothing to lose and everything to gain.

There’s a famous song by Earth, Wind & Fire that says: “You’re a shining star – no matter who you are – shining bright to see – what you can truly be.” Musicians are magicians and I always wondered why EWF, omitted the magical element of Water from their band name. But if we think of this Aquarian Age outfit’s masterful music as the water that they bear to the world, we can learn much about the way this spiritual gift giving and receiving works.

F*I*L*E  SHARING  IS  L*I*F*E  SHARING

Osmosis is: The tendency of a fluid, usually water, to pass through a semipermeable membrane into a solution where the solvent concentration is higher, thus equalizing the concentrations of materials on either side of the membrane – A subtle or gradual absorption or mingling. When you get that pineal cone secreting, what you’re doing is properly consecrating. Once your lamp is lubed up and consecrated, then your efforts will be concentrated more equally among both camps of the Economics of Existence – Spiritual and Physical. Genius is also known as the activating spirit. It is downloadable and dilutable. In the mundane market of mammon, non-dilutable shares are preferred. But in the mundus spiritus, the more diluted, the more desirable. To get the ball rolling with that activating spirit, it can’t remain still. It needs to be dis-stilled. The idea is, that disturbance of the vital force concentrates the spirit-like, essence of any substance, situation or abstract idea. Osmosis is the wave of the future. Concepts like College Courses and Social Security are so passé. Why spend thousands of dollars and hours on something which will never give you an immediate return and in many cases will never pay out as much as you put into it? But even though Osmosis is being applied in exciting, cutting edge ways today; it is by no means a new science.

Moses, one of history’s most famous self-made men, employed the art in some very impressive dæmon-strations. ‘Moses’ means ‘Son of’ in ancient Khemetian and can be seen in names like Ramses (Son of Ra) and Thutmose (Son of Tut). Are we expected to believe that the single most important role of the Old Testament is played by a guy  named simply “Son of”? How is it that he has only half a name? This child of destiny who was passed back and forth from the king’s court to a people in poverty, similarly to Nathan Jr. in the Cohen Bros. classic, Raising Arizona, should we call him Nothing Jr.? Or is it more likely that the Judeo-Christian re-writers of history purposely masked the man’s moniker in mystery, to demon-ize the real power by which such amazing miracles were performed? We’re told that Pharaoh’s daughter named him Moses because she “drew him from the water.” The Nile was thought of as the backbone of Ausr, who the Greeks called Osiris. Might then Moses’ real name be Ausrmoses or Os-moses?

On this side of the impregnable veil between worlds we may find materials lacking but on the other side there is abundance. Going from lack to luck? The secret is in ‘U’. Let’s say you need a new house. You may not be able to pull a house out of your magic hat (pineal gland), but you can pull out the idea of a new house from that region. And that will pull the desired house and yourself into the same space. Here’s how to order: Fill out the thought form with as much information as you can without worrying about every last detail. All requests should be like a woman’s skirt – long enough to cover everything but short enough to keep it interesting. If you like, you may include images, audio/video files, text, whatever. Simply attach them with the thought form and “submit.” (James 4:7) It is not necessary to address them to any particular department but if you know the name of someone who works on the other side and feel to bring the matter to their attention for a faster response time, then please, feel free to do so.

If you follow these general guidelines and let spirit flow, you should receive what you ask for. If your genie brings curses instead of blessings then the problem is with the application process. Remember, you should be maintaining a lovely feeling of the “I” and the “We” together. When the moon hits your I ‘Am’ coinciding with what We ‘Are’ – that’s Amare (to love).  Unless you are asking from that in-between place of Am-Are then you are asking Am-Is (amiss). (James 4:3) Do you sometimes have difficulty shaking that “me vs. the world” mentality? Do you feel like you’ve been souled a lie? Just calm down, play some soulful aRe&Be one -with everyone… One with everything he or she wants and needs!

You will start to develop, by osmosis, the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. According to followers of the Coven of Covey, these fit into 3 imperatives which start with Independenceor Self-Mastery, progressing to Interdependenceor Unity with Others, and finally looping back around to Self Renewal. This corresponds very well with our universal desire to experience simultaneously the synergy of the group and the power of the individual. Whether the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, the 5 Siddhis of Yoga and Meditation, the 8 Siddhis of Hinduism or the Christian Gifts of the Spirit with their 2 complimentary groups of 7 each combining for a grand total of 14 – the point is not to get stuck in this ideology or that tradition but to “covet earnestly the best gifts.” Hey I thought we weren’t supposed to covet. I’m telling you, this is the “more excellent way” (1 Cor.12:31) of the new æon of Ma’at. The trends are all moving toward a balance between collectivism and individuality.

If you haven’t done it yet, don’t get left behind, get updated, and upgraded in heart and mind. If you’re like most of us, you have been a member of one of the many file-sharing communities that are buckling and breaking up, under the pressure of the State. You feel the life-sharing that you crave starting to cave under ever tighter controls. Don’t fret and definitely do not delay. Link into the saving network of our common spiritual lineage now. At this point the institution is working endlessly to keep a F–I–L–E on you+your kindred dead but is itself, almost entirely devoid of L–I–F–E. When we see such a dire dearth of the Spiritual Gifts in The Church, it’s like watching a poisoned puppy die a slow painful death. That poor D–O–G is in need of men who heed G–O–D and can, with love, fulfill the wise purposes of the Generator Operator Destroyer of Heaven and Earth.

DON’T BE ASHAMED – KEEP IT MOVING WITH NEW ASHE!

It is impossible or at least silly to speak of the Spiritual Gifts without talking about that which keeps all the Gifts in circulation.

Ashé! is the power to make things happen, the spiritual life force. Ashé! takes the foundational energy of the other world and ((BAM)) makes it available in this world. But wait, that’s not all! Ashé!’s versatile nature also makes it possible to effect change in the realms beyond from the comfort of your own home.

Are you tired of the same old religious routine? So many churches claim to be true and living but they’re all rigor and no vigor. Stop settling for rigormortis! Get out of that annoying contract with Death & Hell and get into Ashé! Or should we say let Ashé! get into you. Ashé! provides an amazing body/mind workout. Just listen to this satisfied practitioner….

“I do a lot of traveling, from Jerusalem to Thessalonica, from Corinth to Rome. I’m always on the road. I take Ashé! with me wherever I go. Since I started using Ashé! back in Damascus, I’ve felt this deep connection both to the Greeks, and to the Barbarians; both to the wise, and to the unwise. I make connections between Jew and Gentile, male and female and [it] keeps me connected, that I may be comforted together with my friends by the mutual faith of both them and me. It’s great! I just make a request, if by any means now at length I might have a prosperous journey and the results are astounding every time. Ashé! makes a great gift. I impart it to all my family and friends. For I am not ashamed of the testimonial of Jesus Christ that is in me…ASHE!”

–  Paul, Apostle of the Lord

The word ‘Ashé’ is Yoruba but the actual energy it describes is universal. Whereas in the ancient Afrikan tradition the tendency is to internalize the Holy Spirit, today’s Christ-Shun culture clings to a “hitherto shalt thou come, but no further” attitude as touching (or should we say, almost but not quite touching) any matter of the spirit. Hence, Christ-Shuns, as well as a sad group of saints who actually have genuine desires to follow the Christ to the fullest, are tempted to attempt to divide the indivisible. Don’t they wonder why their God remains invisible to them when He is supposed to be invincible in their lives and through their bodies? As long as we persist in perverting AsHé into As He, obsessed with doing as he would do, trying to live as he lived, then we will be truly living in sin, which is not living at all but constitutes the committing of slow spiritual suicide. No wonder so many people of the world, whether of European, Afrikan or Asian heritage are ripening for destruction.  They’re so miserable, so removed from the roots (or to paraphrase Jacob 5 in the Book of Mormon: Burdened by lofty branches) that they practically beg the posthumously deified king, Xangô (Shango) to intervene with his double-bladed axe (aXé) via his earthly and earthy devotees.

THE LORD GIVETH AND THE LORD TAKETH AWAY WITH HIS DOUBLE EDGED SWORD WHICH IS CALLED ASHE

Before one can continue in the Circle of Life, he or she must commence the Spiritual Gift Exchange for themselves and their household. But if one refuses to personally participate in the very power by which that flow is generated and labels such spiritual/paranormal activity as voodoo or native superstition, saying it is of the Devil, all the while promoting a soulless version of family history record keeping and lame, stiff dance steps, to replace the spontaneous movements of the dance of life, then I ask you….Who is the devil, who is the zombie? Once you have hardened your heart to such a point; once you’ve set your heart like a flint against H.I.M (His Imperial Majesty); that’s when, in the symmetry of the universe, the poetic justice of the Lord, He will set His face like a flint against you. You’ve probably seen Him staring you right in the eyes and didn’t even know it. Traditional Afrikan art often depicts the carved figure of a woman holding her bosom as a gift to God with a single double-bladed axe sticking up from her head. Yep, just like He did through the “foreheads” of His prophets Ezekiel (Ezekiel 3:9) and Isaiah when He possessed them and made them unashamed to preach against the rebellious House of Israel. (Isaiah 50:7)

Here is where the gloves come off. A-SH-E becomes A-CH-E. And the Ori’shas – literally ‘owners of heads’ – become a headache if we deny them. This has a very real physiological effect that is not to be ignored. Neurotransmission is the process by which spiritual signals get propagated throughout the physical body. It is necessary for the regulations of bodily secretions and organ functions critical for the long-term survival of multicellular vertebrate organisms such as mammals. There is an enzyme called AChE (Acetylcholinesterase). This is a perfectly appropriate name for it, since it functions like a “small axe” that cleaves peptide bonds by means of hydrolysis. If it becomes inhibited in its function, it creates serious problems for the flow of important spiritual messages across the synapses. AChE is specifically intended to aid in the smooth flow of a neurotransmitter called Acetylcholine (often abbreviated ACh). ACh has a variety of effects as a neuromodulator upon arousal and reward. ACh has an important role in the enhancement of sensory perceptions when we wake upand in sustaining attention. If AChE is not able to function correctly, the ACh and the messages it carries, literally clog up the synapses. Irreversible inhibitors of AChE may lead to muscular paralysis, memory deficit and Alzheimer’s disease or even death by asphyxiation.

If that sounds bad, check out the drastically negative spiritual effects: When ASHE turns to ACHE, the softer, even soothing sound of consolation, signified by the letters ‘S–h’ and whispered by Our Mother to quiet fears in our formative years, now changes to the harsher, chastising sound of the ‘C–h’, from The Father. Shango retains cool self-control but subtly shifts to Chango.  Suddenly, Ere we are aware, our vain shopping for shoes at City Creek Mall turns to chopping block blues for any and all cocky heads that refuse to ‘choose the right.’ One of Shango’s sacred colors is white. It symbolizes the logic He gets from His Grandfather, Obatala. Oh, but alas He will not spare the stubborn head that has not inherited some of Aganyu’s blood red. Past all feeling and passion, unrepentant hearts will wither. Like the Lion of Zion, Bob Marley, sings in the song “Small Ax,” It is the small acts of the righteous that eventually “cut down” the “Big Tree”. And in a Jamaican accent ‘Big Tree’ could be understood to mean ‘Big Three’. Let the pride of the Jews, the Christians and the Muslims fall like a great and spacious building in an earthquake! The Lord of the Vineyard uses Aché like a hatchet to prune and cast into the blaze, all lofty branches who do not acknowledge the roots. If this seems un-fair to ye so called ‘fair-ones’ remember, Nephi said, “If ye ask not….ye are not brought into the light, but must perish in the dark” (2 Nephi 32:4) In other words, “If you don’t aks, you get axed.” Brethren, are we therefore justified in lingering while the Spiritual Gifts fall completely out of use for fear that some might misuse them? Seems to this author, that the Master employed the metaphor of money in the parable of the talents to show us that, abstaining from using them is in fact (ab)using the Gifts of the Fathers.

SHARING IS PREPARING

Do we need to be commanded in all things? What are we, a bunch of high-school girls (foolish virgins) before prom? Don’t wait to be ‘axed out.’ Ask for your gifts today and start giving and getting in the United Order right away! There have been many, many groups who have sought to live as one and establish Zion. The Oneida Community in New York, New Harmony in Pennsylvania and Nauvoo in Illinois are only three of endless defunct examples from the past. There is no shortage of people trying today either. From southern Utah to Canada, California to Russia, gathering for the purpose of spiritual enlightenment and good living is ‘in’. Organization and reason figure heavily into the planning of these communities. Polygyny and even polyandry in some cases are working themselves into mainstream culture as polyamory peaks the public’s interest. Everywhere, the word ‘Share’ is in the air.

Even within virtual realms so far detached from physical people and places, there is a great meeting of the minds taking place. If you know how to read the signs you will find memos from God popping up in the strangest of spaces. Key words are everywhere surging up from the collective consciousness to clue you into the New Multidimensional Jerusalem where all are intimately linked. Verizon Network has recently revealed a “Share Everything” plan for the family. Could the Logos spell it out any more plainly for us? A whole generation of ambitious and admirable attempts at community based on sharing were spawned by Napster, who lived up to its name as it succeeded in its purpose to stir us from our napping. And speaking of naps, extremely esoterically coded messages, probably with deeply intended dual meaning, appear before our eyes and ears in the advertisements for the new feature film, Paranorman. It is an animated zombie [movie] set for release right on the day of the new moon (8-17-2012). Norman Babcock, a misunderstood boy who speaks with the dead, takes on ghosts, zombies and grown-ups to save his town from a centuries-old curse. One specific ad being run is not your ‘normal’ preview. Only spiritually awake and alert audience members will notice what the foolish and sleepy virgins fail to see. The young hero, who symbolically represents the hearts of the children that must be turned to the hearts of the fathers to avoid the curse, tells us that he is promoting something called NAPZ (National Alliance of People and Zombies). He says, “Life shouldn’t just be for the living.” Nap time is over folks!

MAKING THE CHOICE BETWEEN DECREES OF DECAYING DEATH AND LAWS OF LOVING LIFE

You don’t have to be a fan of the band to agree that ‘The Grateful Dead’ sounds a lot better than the ‘Ungrateful Undead.’ In “Friend of The Devil,” Garcia gives some good advice on how to nec-romance the nasty nuisance of not so kindred dead by killing them with kindness. He suggests keeping it moving but never running in fear from the ghosts of our past. Spending “a night in Utah, in a cave up in the hills,” while lighting out on the lamb, wending our way from one wife to the next, as the lyrics indicate, might just transform any shy man into a Sha-man. Without shamanic elders after the likes of Alma, how would we understand that, “that same spirit which doth possess your bodies at the time that ye go out of this life, that same spirit will have power to possess your body in that eternal world.” (Alma 34:34).  To the same degree that a man or woman was a terror or a tyrant to his or her own family and fellow man during life, that same foul spirit will resume reeking, and wreaking havoc from the great beyond. At this very moment you and your family most likely have relatives, both dead and alive, who are involved in your life either as a help or a hindrance. If you do not recognize them, then you can not fully accept the goods they bring, nor fully reject the garbage they bring. What non-tribally structured utopians do not grasp is the firmness of the grip that spirit holds on flesh and the irresistible draw that the flesh holds for the spirit. Upon death, the disembodied spirit becomes very clear in his understanding of this fact as he can clearly see how the flesh is unable to wield any influence independently of the spirit. When we love our bodies right, we do indeed become one with them but if we aint’ lovin’ ’em right,  then we will feel  unable to resist the evil urge to break that eternal law of our Mother Matter who says – “Love Me Or Leave Me.”

Mother Earth moans and groans under oppression of evil spirits who buy up false priests to exercise unrighteous dominion over the elements. (D&C 123:7) Afflicted since the dawn of civilization along the Indus Tributaries by men of renown and their giants of in–dus–try who, in dust, try to subjugate the womanly wilderness under their man-ipulation. The saints will in dust, cry against the monstrous men strewing their blood like a morbid menstrual cycle of mortal combat. But the beautiful body of Christ is starting to exercise her rights and exorcise the demons who torment her. Just as Jesus said through Isaiah:

“Shake thyself from the dust; arise, sit down, O Jerusalem; loose thyself from the bands of thy neck, O captive daughter of Zion.”  – Isaiah 52:2

Or as Jesus said through a young, full of life, Michael Jackson in a chiasmic channeling during the break down of one of the most popular songs sung by him and his brothers:

“Sit down girl, I think I love ya? No, get up girl, show me what you can do Shake it, shake it baby, come on now. Shake it, shake it baby” – Jackson 5:ABC 1:50

Alma, (Soul in Spanish) tells us that, though all gifts are by definition freely offered some are automatically received in this life due to prior arrangements. But even the great gift of resurrection is made available by and through LOVE which must be accepted before the gift takes effect for the individual. He also mentions that, meanwhile, the soul who did not accept part nor portion of the Spirit of the Lord will be weeping, and wailing, and gnashing its teeth. (Alma 40) And the reason he gives for this is that, due to their wicked choices and also their abdication of choice, the spirit of the devil enters into them and takes possession of their house.

THE TRUE LAW OF THE JUNGLE – CHOOSE OR LOSE

Possession must be thought of as a neutral term. It is up to us as individuals to choose between demonic or angelic influences. But remember that demons are only fallen angels. Nothing can compensate for a lack of personal righteousness. So while a proper understanding of possession opens us up to an endless universe of possibilities, if we decline to work consciously with cohorts and instead hand over our will to another, we are left with zero excuses. The Real King of The Jungle has clearly delineated the True Law to us. He will gladly work with us if we are either hot or cold, But if we won’t choose, the Conquering Lion chews us up and spews us out. When we gingerly nibble and sip at the Body and Blood of Christ rather than being enthused (en “in” + theos “god”), literally possessed of God, then we eat and drink to our own condemnation.

Possession is nine tenths of the law. But still, many would-be inheritors of Zion focus all their attention on the one tenth of the law of tithing. And this they usually pay out to others in cash or kind as a religious duty rather than a natural, free and fractal continuance of the fractions of infinity. It is said that a human being typically only uses ten percent of his brain, leaving nine tenths to be possessed by whatever entity has a mind to do so. We must allow ourselves to be spatially and specially occupied by the Spirit of Christ. Because, “charity is the pure love of Christ, and it endureth forever; and whoso is found possessed of it at the last day, it shall be well with him.” (Moroni 7:47)  The true church of Christ is waking up to the power she alone holds and the people have taken to occupying places from Wall Street to Oakland. And yet, these well meaning 99 percent masses have not fully realized that no one mighty and strong like moses can or will free them from the 1 percent masters. Until we all step up to fulfill our role as saviors on Mount Zion, our sad state will be reflected in both ecology and economy. Millions in debt could be instantly transmuted into millions in death benefits through the death of the ego. From ego, we go to a mutually beneficial, cooperative relationship with our dead, a simple symbiotic bond with nature and a planetary paradise. To achieve this, we have to stop waffling and just ‘leggo’ our ‘eggo’. This truly is eternal life insurance. The verb insure derives from the Latin word securus, meaning “safe” or “secure,” which itself derives from se, meaning “without” and caru, meaning “care” – literally “without care or worries.” Before the Lion King of The Jungle can reclaim his throne and restore the Circulation of Life’s Gifts, he must learn to live the law of “Hakuna Matata!”

RICH-U-ALL – SNACKRAMENTS & BATHTISMS

It is good to get. It is good to give. The two actions are really one and the same as they form a balance. There is absolutely no need to obsess over rules, traditions or laws, even good laws can turn bad real quick if they are not kept simple. Love is the law and sharing of our own volition is how we show our love. You should know that the only reason for Lucifer’s fall was because he did not want to share. In essence, the only thing we have to share is our will and that is freely given to us and must be allowed to operate freely through and around us. So Lucifer had to invent a scenario wherein we are conned into giving up our will and thereby limiting love.

There are endless ways in which we can share love. Rituals as seemingly unimportant as a midnight snack or a shower after work can serve to revitalize the individual. And that vitality can be shared with the group through meals or sexual intercourse. But how do our routines regain that vital spark that transforms rote ritual into rich-u-all? How can a snack become a snackrament and a bath become a bathtism? We have to make our spiritual intent more intense. Many have hoped to establish a heaven on earth and have failed because their focus was on arranging the external in such a way, in hopes that following formula would provide security and comfort. I’m not saying that it doesn’t work from the outside inward at all, that fractal alignment of temporal things can not draw down the blessings of heaven. I’m saying if we are going to have all things in common, let’s not skip any steps. That we must meet the Lord halfway is true but unfortunately when only a trickle came through, as opposed to the pouring promised in scripture no one seemed to notice. And why did they not notice? Because they had never done the internal work of wanting, desiring, dreaming and imagining heavenly blessings. They relied and focused too much on ‘laws unto themselves’ rather than eternal law. They followed the double-minded tradition of their fathers  – “Pray as if it all depended on the Lord, but work as if it all depended on you.”

The Law of Consecration outlined in canonized LDS Church scripture and its attempted implication in the early days of the Church, provide a perfect example of an imperfect understanding of spiritual law. D&C tells us to “consecrate our properties” and that this will help God’s people to establish equality and bring security, then prosperity to all. We could start with money, cars, and canned goods in an honest desire to care for one another and tend to the poor. But if we never take consecration to a deeper level then all our efforts will be temporary in their effects. Why don’t we read “properties” as a scientific term, as in our physical and chemical properties? Is it because we do not believe it possible to share such things? Is it that we are SELFish and are happy to give away extra cash as long as we can remain detached from the poor “in spirit”? If we can donate so called non perishable food items at the drop of a dime, then why not move one step closer to the truly non perishable qualities of the spirit? Would ‘sister wives’ in a polygynous situation or ‘brother outlaws’ in a polyandrous family structure, be more likely to share and share alike, not only their spouse, but material things as well, out of an external expectancy to comply with household rules? Or do you think maybe a greater motivation would be heart to heart spiritual connection, which would dispense with the need for any lists of do’s and don’ts ruling over their minds. This is why men seem to so easily set aside differences and assimilate when they are told that it is for the defense of women and children. This is why women more naturally share in the role of raising children than in the sharing of the clothes of their wardrobe (providing they are the right size). But I have seen strange and wondrous shape shifting override our physical programming. With my own eyes, I have witnessed how one superconscious size fits all. What if I told you it was possible to share physical attributes by uploading the pre-seeding spiritual attributes and participating in a non jealous potluck of properties?

The term potluck is very similar to potlatch. The potlatch was a big celebration among Native Americans of the northwest, which involved some serious gift giving and receiving. Often the host would give all his possessions away. This continued until European settlers outlawed the practice. The settlers’ problem was in their settling for less, for a world view severely lacking connection to the unseen world, instead of hanging on to their own lucky tribal traditions extending back before the Middle Ages, in Europe. Going from lack to luck, as it turns out, actually has a science to it. Remember it’s people coming together in a place that produces things. Viewing ‘luck’ as some kind of arbitrary thing, will not get us anywhere. Anytown U.S.A. would be wise to wake up to distinctly American mixes of Afrikan, European, and Native spiritual sanitation practices like Hoodoo, which are extremely practical in their applications and will serve the people in the approaching Greatest American Depression. In order to weather the stormy times ahead we will need to make sure we are on the right side of the right law.

LEGAL MATTERS & LAWFUL SPIRITS – DON’T MISS THE MYSTIC MARRIAGE…DIVORCE THE DEVIL

In a 1973 interview, when asked his opinion of all the crime and violence going on in the world, Bob Marley stated that it was laws that caused crime and violence and that any man could know that fact. The Pharisites tried to ensnare the prophet by asking him if there were any of man’s laws in particular which he wished to publically decry. To which he responded: “Every law! The only law which is law is the law of life.” That same year, Marley demonstrated his knowledge of and love for the law of life when he recorded the infamous “I Shot The Sherriff.” IF you want to SHARE in “all that the Father hath,” (John 16:15) then you will have to shoot the ‘SHARE-IF.’ He is the impish being who enforces the “death & taxes” mode of business among men to stifle and kill good will. There is only one real way you can steal; and that is to uphold a policy of force. And a police force does just that. The Share-If will only let you share IF, your papers are in order, IF you are a member of the club, IF his masters don’t decide to completely mono-polize it. The Sherriff is an enemy to Zion. While this single track eventually served to make a mixed Marley sound militant and look iconic, the following year, it provided a caucasian, cowboy-hat clad Clapton with an ironic #1 hit on the charts. Both versions had their own lives. Both came from the same divine creative spark. Bob deserves praise for the original revelation. Eric deserves credit for bringing the message in some level of purity to other sheep in the fold. This is how The Good Shepherd works. Linking through Christ Consciousness is ultimately The Way we are gonna’ run the devil outa’ town. Of course, the Sherriff is always trailing strong, long-haired types like Sampson, Jesus and Bob with his hellhounds. The head imp himself sent imposters with a devilish counterattack.

Ashé is a chain that, if unbroken, ensures eternal connection between the creator and the creation. While writing the preceding paragraph, the spirit of Bob Marley, who was guiding my hand, reminded me of a personal revelation regarding “I Shot The Sherriff” which had impacted me as a teenager. In part of the lyrics, Bob explains that the Sherriff always hated the singer and he tells us:

“Everytime I’d plant a seed, He’d say, Kill it before it grows.’ He’d say, ‘Kill them before they grow.”

When I first heard those lines, my mind supposed that they could very well be a thinly veiled reference to cultivation of marijuana plants. But from behind the innermost veil, the Holy Spirit bore witness to my heart and mind, that there was a deeper meaning. The seeds referenced were unborn children.

The creator in this case, had guided my hand from the beginning paragraph of this section, when he cited the correct year of these scenes from his life, leading my fingers to type it in spite of my skeptical mind, which was sure they must have occurred later. Now as the doubting Thomas in me double checked the date online, the consciousness of the creator indulged me and then whispered that there was more he wished to reveal to me at that time. So, having brought this previously released information about the scripture of the song to my memory, and I having brought myself to an online search engine for the purpose of proving the more subtle and recent received details; my mind was sufficiently humbled to hear a still small voice.

It told me to enter the words “birth control” alongside the numbers of the year in question, “1973.” To my surprise, this resulted in the discovery of an obscure prog-rock band from Germany whose name directly related to the prior revelation regarding the slaughter of innocents and gave me a foreboding feeling. Birth Control came out with a song that very year entitled “Gama Ray.” The name of the song was equally scary since gama-rays have everything to do with those decrees of decaying death which we spoke of above in contrast to the law of loving light and life. Gama-rays are associated with radioactive decay and DNA damage. In addition to radioactive decay, there are also some non-nuclear sources that are known to produce gama-rays, for example, thunderstorms. This then is a summoning of Shango’s bad side, since apart from his axe, Shango is known to throw lightning bolts. Shekinah is a Hebrew word that means the dwelling or settling, and is used to denote the dwelling or settling of the divine presence of God, especially behind the veil in the Temple. Shekinah is a parallel idea to Sophia (wisdom) in Christianity. Imagine the Shekinah or Shock n’Awe I felt come over me when I clicked on the video clip before me and saw images of mass destruction. Even more awesome was the wisdom which distilled upon me as I heard and read between the lines, a not so cleverly disguised eugenicist message calling Afrikans out by name. Then most chilling of all, was the music. The notes of the transitional breakdowns were slightly off but nonetheless unmistakably close to the famous chords in the transitions of Marley’s lively anthem. The notes contained, hidden within them, the indisputable evidence that this had been the Devil’s direct response to the Reggae Renegade, who must have been to the forces of evil, a devastating Bo[m]b Marley, on the battlefield of spiritual warfare in that year of 1973.

The immediate seizing upon the powerful life force which was born into the world with this one Bob Marley song, is a perfect example of the truth that: Even in the humble initial stages of your accumulation and distribution of gifts, your journey to godhood, you have to be comfortable with being emulated. I know we expressed these things earlier but it is worthy of bearing bolder witness again and again. When we magnificently magnify our callings in life, we do not feel threatened in the slightest by copyright infringers, freeloaders or even detractors. We respect them as equals and care for them as we would a newborn baby, who cries and eats and does not contribute in the same ways an adult would but is no less valuable in our sight. Even when those babies become annoying adolescents, willfully rebelling against us as creative beings and sometimes hijacking our dear creations to serve nefarious purposes for which they were never intended; we remain calm knowing that truth & righteousness always prevail. For so persecuted they the prophets and righteous men that came before us. Why should we be afraid? We stand on the shoulders of the ancestors. We maintain perfect clarity on this point, that we are where we are today, and forever, because we were allowed the complete freedom to emulate or rebel against God according to our wills. Then why not see good and perfection in ourselves? We know and we understand that mighty God is a living man. We have been granted a glorious vision from Heaven, wherein we can see ourselves simultaneously as God’s and as GODS. Yes, we know that all things shall work together for our good. AMEN.

 

Special Thanks –

I would first and foremost like to thank God/Christ for making this special, spiritual collaboration possible. As for God’s specific aspects who’s combined efforts helped to write this piece, I sincerely thank my good friends, Frederick Douglass, Joseph Smith Jr., Robert Nesta Marley and The Honorable Marcus Mosiah Garvey.

P.S. Hugh Nibley, if that was you, then I thank you for your brief appearance and pointers.

Falling to the Earth as a Sign of Conversion

And now the astonishment of Alma was so great that he became dumb, that he could not open his mouth; yea, and he became weak, even that he could not move his hands; therefore he was taken by those that were with him, and carried helpless, even until he was laid before his father.

And they rehearsed unto his father all that had happened unto them; and his father rejoiced, for he knew that it was the power of God.  [Mosiah 27:19-20]

and

And it came to pass that they did call on the name of the Lord, in their might, even until they had all fallen to the earth, save it were one of the Lamanitish women, whose name was Abish, she having been converted unto the Lord for many years, on account of a remarkable vision of her father — Thus, having been converted to the Lord, and never having made it known, therefore, when she saw that all the servants of Lamoni had fallen to the earth, and also her mistress, the queen, and the king, and Ammon lay prostrate upon the earth,

she knew that it was the power of God;  [Alma 19:16-17]

When Alma saw his son being carried home by his friends, rendered completely unconscious – his first reaction was to rejoice because he recognized that as a manifestation of the power of God working.

When Abish saw the Lamanite queen and king, all their servants, and Ammon laying prostrate on the ground, unconscious – her first reaction was that this obviously meant the power of God was working.

Falling to the earth in this manner is a sign that the power of God is rending the veil of unbelief and breaking the chains of hell that are on that person:

Alma and Abish share one thing in common that explains why their first thought after seeing someone fallen to the earth unconscious was that the power of God was at work – they both had first-hand experience with the miraculous works of the Father.

Alma had witnessed the word of God delivered by Abinadi in the spirit of prophecy and revelation:

…the Spirit of the Lord was upon [Abinadi]; and his face shone with exceeding luster, even as Moses’ did while in the mount of Sinai, while speaking with the Lord.  And he spake with power and authority from God;  [Mosiah 13:5-6]

Alma went on to organize a church of believers gathered in the wilderness, himself and the church manifesting the miraculous works of the Father:

…both Alma and Helam were buried in the water; and they arose and came forth out of the water rejoicing, being filled with the Spirit…

…Alma, having authority from God…  [Mosiah 18:14, 18]

Abish had witnessed a miraculous vision that had been given to her father in the spirit of prophecy and revelation:

…she having been converted unto the Lord for many years, on account of a remarkable vision of her father…  [Alma 19:16]

Falling to the earth is a result of the fear of the Lord coming upon that person:

And behold, he spake unto us, as it were the voice of thunder, and the whole earth did tremble beneath our feet; and we all fell to the earth, for the fear of the Lord came upon us.  [Alma 36:7]

It accompanies true recognition of one’s unjustified state before God, which is received when the word of God is preached in its fullness — in the spirit of prophecy and revelation, by the power of the Holy Ghost:

And now, it came to pass that when king Benjamin had made an end of speaking the words which had been delivered unto him by the angel of the Lord, that he cast his eyes round about on the multitude, and behold they had fallen to the earth, for the fear of the Lord had come upon them.

And they had viewed themselves in their own carnal state, even less than the dust of the earth. And they all cried aloud with one voice, saying:

“O have mercy, and apply the atoning blood of Christ that we may receive forgiveness of our sins, and our hearts may be purified; for we believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who created heaven and earth, and all things; who shall come down among the children of men.”  [Mosiah 4:1-2]

Once the fear of being cast off forever from the presence of the Lord sinks into the right-brain-hearts of believers, it works there to create this “fear” spoken of in the scriptures.  Trembling/shaking and weeping/shedding tears follow next – working to rend the veil of darkness and remove the chains of hell attached to the brain of all sinners, and to manifest a broken heart and contrite spirit.

But, “They that sow in tears shall reap in joy.”  [Psalm 126:5]:

Meaning the Lord is quick to hear the cries of his people and answer their prayers [Alma 9:26].  The conversion pattern found in the Book of Mormon shows that once the fear of the Lord comes upon a person/people, they’ve been overcome and have fallen to the earth, and have shed tears of sorrow and anguish for their carnal and sinful state – joy follows:

And it came to pass that after [the people of King Benjamin] had spoken these words the Spirit of the Lord came upon them, and they were filled with joy, having received a remission of their sins, and having peace of conscience, because of the exceeding faith which they had in Jesus Christ who should come, according to the words which king Benjamin had spoken unto them.  [Mosiah 4:3]

and

And it came to pass that [Abish] went and took the[Lamanite] queen by the hand, … ; and as soon as she touched her hand she arose and stood upon her feet, and cried with a loud voice, saying:

“O blessed Jesus, who has saved me from an awful hell! O blessed God, havecmercy on this people!”

And when she had said this, she clasped her hands, being filled with joy, speaking many words which were not understood; and when she had done this, she took the king, Lamoni, by the hand, and behold he arose and stood upon his feet.

[…] And it came to pass that when Ammon arose he also administered unto them, and also did all the servants of Lamoni; and they did all declare unto the people the selfsame thing—that their hearts had been changed; that they had no more desire to do evil.  And behold, many did declare unto the people that they had seen angels and had conversed with them; and thus they had told them things of God, and of his righteousness.

And it came to pass that there were many that did believe in their words; and as many as did believe were baptized; and they became a righteous people, and they did establish a church among them.

And thus the work of the Lord did commence among the Lamanites; thus the Lord did begin to pour out his Spirit upon them; and we see that his arm is extended to all people who will repent and believe on his name.  [Alma 19:29-36]

and

I [Alma] was racked with eternal torment, for my soul was harrowed up to the greatest degree and racked with all my sins.  Yea, I did remember all my sins and iniquities, for which I was tormented with the pains of hell; yea, I saw that I had rebelled against my God, and that I had not kept his holy commandments… the very thought of coming into the presence of my God did rack my soul with inexpressible horror.

[…] And it came to pass that as I was thus racked with torment, while I was harrowed up by the memory of my many sins, behold, I remembered also to have heard my father prophesy unto the people concerning the coming of one Jesus Christ, a Son of God, to atone for the sins of the world.

Now, as my mind caught hold upon this thought, I cried within my heart:

“O Jesus, thou Son of God, have mercy on me, who am in the gall of bitterness, and am encircled about by the everlasting chains of death.”

And now, behold, when I thought this, I could remember my pains no more; yea, I was harrowed up by the memory of my sins no more.  And oh, what joy, and what marvelous light I did behold; yea, my soul was filled with joy as exceeding as was my pain!

Yea, I say unto you, my son, that there could be nothing so exquisite and so bitter as were my pains. Yea, and again I say unto you, my son, that on the other hand, there can be nothing so exquisite and sweet as was my joy.

Yea, methought I saw, even as our father Lehi saw, God sitting upon his throne, surrounded with numberless concourses of angels, in the attitude of singing and praising their God; yea, and my soul did long to be there.  But behold, my limbs did receive their strength again, and I stood upon my feet, and did manifest unto the people that I had been born of God.  [Alma 36:12-23]

We must follow the example of the king of the Lamanites after he received the gospel from Aaron:

And it came to pass that after Aaron had expounded [the gospel] unto him, the king said:

“What shall I do that I may have this eternal life of which thou hast spoken? Yea, what shall I do that I may be born of God, having this wicked spirit rooted out of my breast, and receive his Spirit, that I may be filled with joy, that I may not be cast off at the last day?”

Behold, said he, “I will give up all that I possess, yea, I will forsake my kingdom, that I may receive this great joy.”

But Aaron said unto him:

“If thou desirest this thing, if thou wilt bow down before God, yea, if thou wilt repent of all thy sins, and will bow down before God, and call on his name in faith, believing that ye shall receive, then shalt thou receive the hope which thou desirest.”

And it came to pass that when Aaron had said these words, the king did bow down before the Lord, upon his knees; yea, even he did prostrate himself upon the earth, and cried mightily, saying:

“O God, Aaron hath told me that there is a God; and if there is a God, and if thou art God, wilt thou make thyself known unto me, and I will give away all my sins to know thee, and that I may be raised from the dead, and be saved at the last day.”

And now when the king had said these words, he was struck as if he were dead.

[…] Now when the queen saw … she also began to fear exceedingly, lest there should some evil come upon her.  And she commanded her servants that they should go and call the people, that they might slay Aaron and his brethren.

Now when Aaron saw the determination of the queen, he, also knowing the hardness of the hearts of the people, feared lest that a multitude should assemble themselves together, and there should be a great contention and a disturbance among them; therefore he put forth his hand and raised the king from the earth, and said unto him:  “Stand.” And he stood upon his feet, receiving his strength.

Now this was done in the presence of the queen and many of the servants. And when they saw it they greatly marveled, and began to fear. And the king stood forth, and began to minister unto them. And he did minister unto them, insomuch that his whole household were converted unto the Lord.  [Alma 22:15-13]

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The Baptism of Fire

The following is my current understanding of the baptism of fire.

One baptism in three parts

The gospel of Jesus Christ has one, tripartite baptism consisting of the baptism of water, the baptism of fire and the baptism of the Holy Ghost. The purpose of baptism is to witness that there exists a covenant between God and the man being baptized. Unless all three witnesses have occurred, the covenant between him and God is not binding.

The doctrine of re-baptism applies equally to all three

Anyone who enters into an agreement with another is free to witness or affirm the fact of the agreement by attestation for as many times as desired. There is no law of man or God against this. In fact, under the law of God, we are to “stand as witnesses of God at all times and in all things, and in all places” that we may be in, even until death. So, the principle of witnessing and re-witnessing is a part of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

The manner in which man witnesses of his covenant to serve God is through water baptism. This means that in order to re-witness his covenant, he must be re-baptized. Therefore, he may receive the baptism of water whenever and as many times as he desires and must, per his covenant, be ever ready to be re-baptized at all times and in all places, to re-attest of the validity of his covenant. This is the doctrine or principle of re-baptism and it applies equally to both water, fire and Holy Ghost baptisms.

Order: fire and Spirit, then water, then fire and Spirit, etc.

Re-baptism being a principle of the gospel, the order in which these baptisms are received is not all that important. The only necessary thing is that each one is received, for these are really three parts of one baptism. Nevertheless, the scriptural, ideal order is first the baptism of fire and of the Holy Ghost (see D&C 20: 37), followed by the baptism of water, followed by another baptism of fire and of the Holy Ghost, and thereafter, any part may be repeated multiple times throughout one’s life.

Another thing that the gospel states is that after a baptism of water, the baptism of fire and of the Holy Ghost is supposed to follow on its heels, either right after coming out of the water, or right after confirmation by the laying on of hands.

To demonstrate these principles, Joseph Smith received a baptism of fire during the First Vision, then a baptism of fire during each of Moroni’s visits and during the visit of John the Baptist, then a water baptism by the hand of Oliver Cowdery, followed by a baptism of the Holy Ghost after he came out of the water. Later he received other baptisms of fire with the visits of Peter, James, John, Moses, Elijah, etc. He also received another water baptism after the church was legally organized, etc.

Simultaneity

A baptism of fire is always accompanied with a baptism of the Holy Ghost, but a person may be baptized with the Holy Ghost without an accompanying baptism of fire. This is why the baptism of fire is always called the baptism (singular) of fire and of the Holy Ghost, and not the baptisms (plural) of fire and of the Holy Ghost. These two parts of the tripartite baptism occur simultaneously as a single baptismal event whenever there is a baptism of fire.

Jesus alone performs the baptism of fire

Unlike the baptism of water, which can be performed by the hand of a mortal man under priesthood power and authority, the baptism of fire is reserved for Deity alone to accomplish and is based upon the state of a man’s heart and his faith in Him. (See 3 Ne. 12: 1-2; 3 Ne. 9: 20; Matt. 3: 11; Luke 3: 16; JST Mark 1: 6; JST John 1: 28.)

Confirmation is not the baptism of fire

The scriptures say that elders are “to confirm those who are baptized into the church, by the laying of of hands for the baptism of fire and the Holy Ghost.” This is the ordinance of confirmation. Laying hands on someone’s head for the baptism of fire does not baptize anyone with fire. Only the Lord can do that.

When the scriptures say that this ordinance is “for” the baptism of fire, it is using that word “for” to mean “indicating the end with reference to which anything is, acts, serves or is done.” Specifically, the word “for” in that sentence means “as a preparation for” or “with the object of.” So, elders lay hands as a preparation for the baptism of fire, or they lay hands with the object of the baptism of fire.

The ordinance of confirmation, then, is a preparatory ordinance, which precedes an actual baptism of fire. This ordinance is called confirmation because it is intended to confirm the believers’ faith, both that of the one being confirmed and that of those doing the confirming. This is because true priesthood is “inseparably connected with the powers of heaven,” so when true priesthood is exercised as an ordinance of the gospel, there will be a corresponding manifestation of heavenly power. So, after the ordinance of confirmation, there is supposed to be a baptism of fire that occurs, showing that the covenant of the newly baptized person is accepted of God, as well as the priesthood of the one who is doing the confirming.

Binding and accepted covenants

The baptism of fire serves to witness to the new member, to the priesthood holder(s) confirming, and to the church that is present, that the covenant that the man has entered into with his God, witnessed by his water baptism, is accepted by God and is now in force. In other words, that it is binding, both upon the man and his God.

To put another way, water baptism is man’s way of witnessing to God that he has entered into a covenant to serve Him, whereas fire baptism is God’s way of witnessing to man that He has accepted that covenantal relationship.

(Jesus said, “Whoso believeth in me believeth in the Father also; and unto him will the Father bear record (witness) of me, for he will visit him with fire and with the Holy Ghost.” See 3 Ne. 11: 35.)

Plasma is the medium

To serve as a witness to all these people, the baptism of fire must be a visual sign. The medium used is not the fire of a gas stove or match, but discharging plasma in appearance as fire. Depending upon where one is located in relation to the plasma display, it may look like the flame of fire, like a palpable or living light, like lightning, or just as immense glory or brightness.

Specifically, the baptism of fire consists of twin plasma filaments, rapidly rotating around a central axis, creating a plasma tube or sheath, or plasma column, in other words, a cylindrical shape around the person being baptized. When viewed from the outside, it appears to be “a pillar of fire.” When viewed from within the tube, the fire aspects may or may not be discerned, but its bright light or glory is apparent. Thus we have the various accounts of Joseph Smith’s First Vision, which was a baptism of fire, using the words “fire,” “flame,” “light,” “brightness” and “glory” to describe the discharging plasma he was witnessing.

Sometimes the twin filaments themselves can be discerned, and so we get a description of “cloven tongues of fire,” meaning twin tongues (or filaments) of plasma flame. Other descriptions are of fire “encircling” the persons being baptized, showing that the filaments rotate around the person.

All of these scriptural accounts are describing the same plasma manifestation observed from different spatial perspectives, and so accounts vary. But even with everything before a person, sometimes details can still be missed, as in 1 Ne. 15: 27.

Other aspects

Fire baptism is by complete, or cellular, immersion. Plasma both surrounds and enters the man, so that he becomes “filled with fire.” The fire can be seen and felt. To the one immersed in it, it initially feels like he is burning to death, in an incomprehensibly complete and rapid manner, as every part of the body seems to have caught on fire. Great fear instantly comes upon the man as he fully believes he is about to die. But in the next instant his mind realizes that death has not occurred, that there is no pain and that there is no apparent cellular damage or harm. The fear leaves just as suddenly as it comes, only to be replaced with a feeling of awe and gratitude as the mind realizes that this same destroying fire, which should have instantly atomized the body, is somehow keeping the body protected from its own destructive power.

The divine plasma has the effect of cleansing the heart of man, purifying it of all dross (sinful desires), so that he no longer desires to sin, but instead abhors it. In this swept clean condition, the Holy Ghost then unexpectedly and suddenly enters the man and causes the individual bits of his soul to shout for joy, because of the presence of Deity.

Fire baptism allows other heavenly manifestations to occur

The baptism of fire purifies a person’s heart and Jesus said that all the pure in heart shall see God. So, whenever a person receives a baptism of fire, chances are real good that they will also see either an angel, vision or God Himself. At the very least some revelation or prophecy will occur along with the baptism of fire, or some other manifestation of one of the gifts of the Spirit.

Fire remits sin

Whenever a person receives a baptism of fire, his sins are automatically remitted. In other words, he becomes justified, or guiltless, before the Lord. Nephi said, “For the gate by which ye should enter is repentance and baptism by water; and then cometh a remission of your sins by fire and by the Holy Ghost.”

Fire brings forth a new tongue

Nephi also said that when a man receives the baptism of fire he then can speak with a new tongue, even the tongue of angels, and that “angels speak by the power of the Holy Ghost; wherefore, they speak the words of Christ.”

There are only two, definitive, scriptural examples

There are plenty of scriptural verses that mention the doctrine of baptism of fire, but there are only two accounts in our current standard works in which it is definitively stated that actual baptisms of fire occurred. Of those two accounts, only one applies to us in the latter days. They are:

Adam’s baptism of fire
After Adam was baptized by the Spirit of the Lord, as recorded in Moses 6: 64-68, he heard a voice saying, “Thou art baptized with fire, and with the Holy Ghost.” Nevertheless, there is no mention of any manifestation of fire in the account. Although quite interesting, this experience was, apparently, Adam specific and is not the template for the baptism of fire among the modern masses.

The Lamanites’ baptism of fire
When the Nephite missionaries Nephi and Lehi preached among the Lamanites and were imprisoned, about 300 souls received a baptism of fire, as recorded in Hel. 5: 20-49. This is the scriptural template of a baptism of fire for all mankind. We know this because the voice of Jesus Christ said so:

And ye shall offer for a sacrifice unto me a broken heart and a contrite spirit. And whoso cometh unto me with a broken heart and a contrite spirit, him will I baptize with fire and with the Holy Ghost, even as the Lamanites, because of their faith in me at the time of their conversion, were baptized with fire and with the Holy Ghost, and they knew it not. (3 Ne. 9: 20)

So, the Lord categorically states in the above scripture that the experience of the 300 souls was a baptism of fire. Additionally, He states that all baptisms of fire that He performs will be “even as the Lamanites… were baptized with fire.” The Lamanites’ baptism of fire, then, is the standard, the rule, and NOT the exception. It is the event that the Lord points to for us to determine whether a baptism of fire has occurred.

(The word “even” in the phrase “even as the Lamanites” means “in or to such (indicated) degree or kind.”)

What the baptism of fire consists of

Based upon the Lamanites’ experience, there are six characteristics of any baptism of fire. They are:

1. Fire encircling an individual, forming a cylindrical shape, such as a column or “pillar of fire” or plasma tube. This would be twin Birkeland currents (plasma cables or filaments) rotating rapidly around a central axis, in appearance like a fire tornado. This is the visual sign to all those witnessing the baptism.

2. The presence and ministration of angels.

3. Justification, meaning a remission of sins.

4. Purification, by fire entering the heart.

5. Sanctification, by becoming filled with (baptized in) the Holy Ghost.

6. Speaking with a new tongue (the tongue of angels, meaning speaking by the power of the Holy Ghost.)

Two more scriptural examples

Using the six characteristics above, we find two more scriptural examples of baptisms of fire which exactly match that of the Lamanites, although the text does not specifically say that they were fire baptisms. They are:

The Nephite little children’s baptism of fire
Jesus baptized little children with fire, as recorded in 3 Ne. 17: 21-25 and as witnessed by 2500 people. These children were encircled by fire, had angels minister to them and spoke in new tongues (see 3 Ne. 26: 14, 16.) Also, we know that they were justified, purified and sanctified, for they were little children and all little children are alive in Christ.

The 12 disciples’ baptism of fire
The fire baptism of these men is recorded in 3 Ne. 19: 11-15. They were encircled about by fire, filled with fire, had angels minister to them and prayed by the power of the Holy Ghost. From the text it is clear that they were justified, purified and sanctified.

Other intimated baptisms of fire

Joseph Smith’s baptisms of fire
As mentioned above, each of Joseph’s angelic ministrations was attended by a baptism of fire (plasma), including the First Vision.

For example, one First Vision account says, “A pillar of fire appeared above my head; which presently rested down upon me, and filled me with un-speakable joy. A personage appeared in the midst of this pillar of flame, which was spread all around and yet nothing consumed…I saw many angels in this vision.”

Another First Vision account says, “while in [the] attitude of calling upon the Lord [in the 16th* year of my age] a pillar of {fire} lightabove the brightness of the Sun at noon day come down fromabove and rested upon me and I was filld with the Spirit of God”. In this account Joseph couldn’t decide whether what he saw was fire or light. He finally decided on light and crossed out fire. The reason for his confusion was that he was witnessing discharging plasma.

I believe that it is reasonable to conclude that the plasma nature of the angel Moroni’s visit (see The plasma aspects of the First Vision and Moroni’s visit) was typical of all angelic ministrations to Joseph, and thus all such events in his life were likely baptisms of fire.

Moses’ vision of God
In Moses chapter 1 it says that “the glory of God was upon Moses.” That sounds to me like a plasma event and that he received a baptism of fire.

Lehi’s pillar of fire
1 Ne. 1: 6 mentions Lehi seeing a pillar of fire. It is obviously a super-duper abridgment of all that occurred, but it sounds like a baptism of fire.

Nephi’s visit from the Lord
Nephi mentions in 1 Ne. 2: 16 that he was visited by the Lord. He doesn’t elaborate but my guess is that this was Nephi’s first baptism of fire. Jesus states in 3 Ne. 11: 35 that when the Father visits people, He visits them with fire and with the Holy Ghost.

Cloven tongues on day of Pentecost
As recorded in Acts chapter 2, there appeared “cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them.” They were filled with the Spirit, spoke other tongues and spoke by the power of the Holy Ghost. It’s not an exact match of the Lamanite experience (angels are missing), but pretty darn close.

Gentile cloven tongues
In Acts 11: 15 we read Peter’s words about how the Gentiles also received the Holy Ghost. He said, “And as I began to speak, the Holy Ghost fell on them, as on us at the beginning.” That, to me, seems to be saying that the Holy Ghost fell on the Gentiles in the same way that the Holy Ghost fell on the Jews, namely, with accompanying manifestation of cloven tongues like as of fire. This could explain the astonishment of the Jews who witnessed the manifestation of tongues among the Gentiles. (See Acts 10: 44-47.)

Downgrading the baptism of fire

Now, when you compare the scriptural accounts of the baptism of fire to our modern, LDS definitions, it becomes obvious that we have downgraded the sudden, rapid changes effectuated by the marvelous, visual, power displays of the real deal to something gradual, drawn out, imperceptible and nondescript. For example:

While one definition of this expression (the baptism of fire and the Holy Ghost) refers to a cleansing by the Holy Spirit as if by fire, still the scriptures and the writings of the prophets indicate there is something more.

The new convert who has accepted the gift of the Holy Ghost with the right spirit will experience not only a cleansing but a feeling that will give him a new heart and make of him a new person. Sometimes this is immediate, and sometimes it happens over a period of time.

…

The scriptures, and even our church history, record miraculous instances when visible flames encircled the humble followers of Christ—literal manifestations of fire and the Holy Ghost—but more often this fire works quietly and unseen in the hearts of those who have received the gift of the Holy Ghost.

…

The witness, the change, the cleansing that comes gradually is no less powerful to the person with the right heart, and he or she is impelled to action whether the experience was a sudden, miraculous manifestation or the quiet workings of the Spirit.

(Fire and the Holy Ghost, Loren C. Dunn, Ensign, June 1995)

We have taken away the majesty of the Father’s witness and replaced it with something that goes entirely against nature. Nature is cyclic, cycling between periods of rest and periods of activity. All things work on this principle, including spiritual things. Baptism (all three parts) are designed to be moments of spiritual intensity. You cannot perform a baptism of water over a period of time, or gradually, quietly and unseen. No, you are outside of the water (which can be visually discerned), then you are immersed, and then you come out of the water. There is nothing gradual about it. A single water baptism cannot be performed over days and years. In like manner, the baptism of fire is a punctuated, spiritually intense event.

No one’s spirituality is designed to grow gradually. Gradual spiritual growth is the same as no spiritual growth. There is no such animal as gradual spiritual growth. You either have intense spiritual experiences from time to time or you are spiritually dying. This is why we are commanded to come together often, to intensify the Spirit so as to be capable of growing spiritually.

Joseph Smith’s life was meant to be an example to us. He had multiple, very intense spiritual experiences. It began with a baptism of fire, it continued with more baptisms of fire and it ended in a volley of gun fire. John Taylor said that Joseph lived for glory, died for glory and glory is his eternal reward. Glory = plasma = the baptism of fire. Joseph did, indeed, live for those fire baptism experiences. He had a lot of them, he saw a lot of angels and who knows how many visions, and he wanted to have more of the same. And he tried ceaselessly to get the saints to experience what he was experiencing. So did Moses and all true prophets.

You are either immersed in plasma or you are not. You are either in an intensity phase or in a rest phase of the cycle. There is no such thing as non-cyclic gradualness. If you think you are growing spiritually for the past ten years without any intense spiritual experiences, you are kidding yourself. It means that you have been in a spiritual rest phase of the cycle during this time. No one can remain at spiritual rest for any extended period of time before spirituality begins to decay. It is an impossibility. So, the LDS concept of a gradual, life-long, imperceptible baptism of fire is patently false and leads to spiritual death.

Everyone will receive a baptism of fire

It is not a question of if, but when and how. If a man humbles himself before the Lord and enters into a covenant to serve Him, he’ll receive a baptism of fire in this life, one that will purify and justify him. But there are other baptisms of fire that can be received. For example, one is the baptism of fire that the earth and all those that do wickedly upon her will receive at the Second Coming. Another is the baptism of fire that occurs when the sons of perdition are immersed in the lake of fire and brimstone. One way or another, we are all eventually going to have to go through some type of baptismal fire.

And they knew it not

In closing, let me address one other thing. Jesus said that the Lamanites “were baptized with fire and with the Holy Ghost, and they knew it not.” Some have taken that to mean that the Lamanites experienced a change upon their hearts which they did not perceive, because it happened gradually, over time. In other words, that the Lord meant that there was no great manifestation during the Lamanites’ fire and Holy Ghost baptism. And also that the Lord was not referring to the 300 Lamanites who were in prison with Nephi and Lehi, but was referring instead to other Lamanite converts.

This is an incorrect interpretation.

The real meaning of the Lord’s words is that the Lamanites (the 300 souls in that prison) had a magnificent, visual baptism of fire and of the Holy Ghost, but did not know what it was. That is all that the Lord meant by what He said.

Any time someone experiences a baptism of fire without first being taught about it, they go through the experience without knowing what it is. Joseph’s First Vision fire baptism was performed on him while he was still a boy totally ignorant of such a thing as a baptism of fire. In my own life, I remember that the first time that I had a baptism of fire (prior to my water baptism) I was blown away and didn’t know what it was. The missionaries that had taught me the gospel had not explained this doctrine, so it came as a complete surprise to me and it was only years later, as I studied and learned more of the gospel on my own, that I was able to determine what the hell it was. Prior to that time, it was always an anomaly to me and when talking to others about the various spiritual experiences I had had over the years, I would always set it apart by saying something like, “The second time the Holy Ghost manifested itself to me was quite different than the other times. It was, well, a really big manifestation with a lot of power and I thought I was going to die, or I did die and came back to life. I’m not really sure what happened. All I know is I was consumed in fire but somehow survived unharmed.” Such were my ignorant descriptions. But of course it was a different manifestation than the others. It was a baptism of fire, for crying out loud! But I knew it not.

And in the same manner, neither did the Lamanites.

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Connecting with Pixels

By way of full disclosure, I volunteered to write this post because I have personal experience with the topic.  I’ve viewed online pornographic movies both before and since I joined the church.  I felt no guilt associated with viewing it before joining the church (which was also before I was married), but when I began to view it after joining (which was also after I had been married), I desired to repent and have since studied the topic to better understand it.

Pornography:

When I use “pornography” in this post, I will be referring to video or photographs of adults engaging in sexual relations.  Currently, there are more than 300 million pages of pornographic material on the internet, an increase of 1800% over the last five years.  More than 70% of American men, ages 18 – 34, visit a pornographic website in a typical month.  Further, in 2006, the pornography industry netted just short of $100 billion – more revenue than that of Microsoft, Google, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo, Apple, and Netflix combined.  The state that contributes the most to those profits – Utah.

The inhabitants of the earth have been made drunk with the wine of her fornication.

Porneia is rendered “fornication” all 26 times it is used in the New Testament.  It is from the word used to designate the temple prostitutes the Gentiles used for fertility worship.

Dehumanizing:

The popularity of pornography relies on dehumanizing the subject, which is typically a woman.  The characters in pornography are not depicted as children of God with intellects and personalities – but as a collection of anatomical features that can be used to induce a physiological response.  Ask a man who watches pornography if he would want his wife or daughter to be in videos like the ones he watches – and 68.2689492137% will say, “No.”  (Note:  this figure was edited from 100% per comments below)  They want somebody else’s wife or daughter.  They prefer to do unto others’ daughters what they would not want done to their own.

The sexual climax is intended to be the sequel of the unification of two real persons.  The fact that the pleasure associated with the discharge can be produced in solitude demonstrates that the feelings are designed to conclude the sexual act – and are not a part of the unifying aspect of sex.  This is what I find most troubling about pornography use.  The release that ends sexual unification is designed to bind a person to the other person he or she is having relations with.  What are pornography users binding themselves to – a computer screen, pixels?  Humans are meant to make real connections with real people.

Hiding:

Recent discussion indicates that Satan introduced the concept of shame for nudity.  It is the same with sexuality.  Satan either covers up sexuality, teaching that it is too private to discuss openly, or he teaches only the physical biology of it, leaving out the spiritual connection that takes place.  He motivates sinners to hide from God and from others.  On the other hand, God sees all things, and thus He motivates sinners to be open, in full-fellowship and intimacy with Him and with others.

Sites like FightTheNewDrug promote addressing pornography by letting it into the light to be seen for what it really is – much like the “Truth” ads did for changing the discussion on cigarette smoking.  Having progressed, we can now look back on old cigarette ads as a deceptive venture to make an unhealthy practice popular for the sake of making money.  FightTheNewDrug focuses on addressing pornography by reducing demand – not supply.  When something is banned – rather by states, religions, etc. – without addressing the underlying motivations, the behavior is just pushed underground, becoming darker in the process.  When people learn that, for example, the reason for pornography actors shave their pubic hair is to make them look more like large children – people can choose to turn away from such perversions.  Instead of demonizing sexual expression or victimizing “porn addicts”, the rhetoric should focus on re-humanizing the people involved with pornography and re-emphasizing the sexiness of humans connecting with humans.

Intimacy is the opposite of what Satan suggested Adam and Eve do when they discovered their nakedness in the garden.  Before he found them, they were naked and were not ashamed.  Adam was fully exposed to Eve – and Eve to Adam.  This is the light that pornography should be seen in.  Humans are not meant to experience sexuality in front of computer screens, alone, feeling cycles of shame and guilt.

Confessing:

Boyd Packer told members during the most recent General Conference that:

The priesthood holds consummate power. It can protect you from the plague of pornography—and it is a plague—if you are succumbing to its influence. If one is obedient, the priesthood can show how to break a habit and even erase an addiction. Holders of the priesthood have that authority and should employ it to combat evil influences.

I think the evidence on this site should make it clear that you do not have to do anything with your bishop if you have viewed pornography.  A person that has viewed pornography has most likely committed adultery in his heart – if he were married, then confession to a spouse would be warranted.  But whether or not a person chooses to talk to his or her bishop is a personal decision – and it should be made in light of what will be the most helpful to the person.  When confession to a bishop is not expedient – as it would be in cases of unrepentant sin brought to the authorities by witnesses – then confession should be treated only as a tool to help the person.  One should weigh the risk of opening up grounds for a witch-hunt from an unprepared or unrighteous priesthood leader with the comfort that being completely open with a trusted and capable bishop can bring.  For example, I spoke with my bishop in the past when I had fell into a habit of viewing pornography – because I knew him to be a man of integrity and Godly love.  I received no formal or informal disciplines.  It was hard to speak openly about it with my wife, and I used my time with him to get many things off my chest.  I, unlike Packer, would not recommend confession to a bishop to everyone.  Many bishops are unprepared for dealing with such a nuanced situation and have been conditioned to use extreme measures with pornography because of inflated rhetoric about the subject.  So tread carefully.

Moving on:

I don’t mean to say porn can’t be a problem for some people.  However, it is more often the symptom of a different problem – e.g. poor socialization by parents on sexuality, unaddressed childhood abuse, an addictive personality, or feelings of insecurity.  The visual depiction of a man and women engaging in sexual relations is not, in and of itself, sinful – not any more than shopping is, or spending too much time on the computer.  The current state of pornography is a complicated issue and calling it evil or a plague doesn’t help anybody.  All you do is demonize something that, unless you have some dependence on it, isn’t bad for you.  Proclaiming some moral absolute on a mental health issue is just harmful to those involved.

We should take comfort in the fact that, for our generation, pornography is largely a problem of technology.  Just 30 years ago, to obtain pornography, a man would don a trench coat and sunglasses and go to the back of a dimly lit store to secretly purchase a VHS tape, hoping no one would see him walking back to his car – then he’d have to keep the tapes hidden at home, hoping kids or spouse didn’t find them.  However, today, I can type in a URL in the privacy of my home or office, instantly steam hours of free videos, and then delete my browsing history.  That’s it.  The reason this is a good thing for anyone who finds themselves habitually viewing pornography – if technology is the reason it is so available to you, then use technology to make it less available.  Effective webfilters are as readily available as free porn sites.  Humans should choose to connect with people — not pixels.

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A note from Stan Tenen

Note: The following is a private message that Stan Tenen sent to me on March 17th, 2010, via my Facebook account, concerning the post Bringing Stan Tenen and The Meru Foundation to the Attention of all LDS [alternate title: Doing what4anarchy’s Job] and its comment section.

While searching for something else, I ran into your LDS Anarchist website, and found the materials related to me and my work.

This is all very sad. It’s a sad commentary on the state of education, and on the emptiness of our society.

Instead of engaging a new idea, it just gets picked to death by children.

This is why I’ve pulled away from LDS (which previously was a strong supporter of my work from several quarters) and other religions. People involved in religion — with rare exception — are, as Marx and Freud taught, merely hiding from their own mortality. Intellectual honesty is not possible from people who are “scared to death of death”, and don’t even know it.

For people who don’t understand why I’m elucidating the fluid rabbinic form of the alphabet, all I can say is, you really haven’t a clue about how science is done. I follow the data.

I didn’t know that the letters at the beginning of Genesis would form a particular geometry. I didn’t know it would be a model hand. And I didn’t know it would be related to the alphabet, or any particular alphabet. I followed the data.

The letter-text led to a particular geometry.

I first took this geometry to represent a model light or flame.

Later, I realized that this was not functional, even though it generated shapes that matched all the Hebrew letters of a particular alphabet.

Later, during an exploration of the Jewish ritual of tefillin, I realized that what I had taken to be a flame was actually a model hand, and given the known properties of our hands, everything else then fell in place.

I didn’t choose the alphabet. I found the shapes that matched, and then identified them. I’m sorry if religious believers and scholars have become fascinated by many other alphabets. I didn’t have a choice. When you’re doing science, you don’t force-fit. You take what you find and try to make sense of it.

Anyone going to the trouble of actually checking out more than the headlines of what I’m proposing would know the audit trail from the Canaanite to the modern letters. (I’m proposing two separate lines of development.)

I’m no Newton, but I like his methods. Newton taught how gravity worked, but said he didn’t have a clue as to why it worked that way.

It’s for critics to explain how come one alphabet comes from hand gestures and the others don’t.

I found the alphabet in the letters of the first verse of Genesis. I found the letters matched a particular alphabet, and not other alphabets; and I provided a theory that makes sense of this — i.e., hand gestures are universal among all self-aware creatures. (All intelligent creatures know that when you point to something, you’re drawing attention to it — etc.)

Please feel free to post any or all of this if you’d like.

If there are any serious responses, please pass them on to me via email. I don’t do websites, and I don’t do blogs. (Life’s short.)

Have a happy LDS Passover/Easter. Whichever, whatever.

Be well,
Stan

Previous Stan Tenen article: Bringing Stan Tenen and The Meru Foundation to the Attention of all LDS [alternate title: Doing what4anarchy’s Job]

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What The Priesthood Is

Note: I found this essay while surfing the Internet this past week.  I took it from the mormon_anarchy Yahoo group.  Wake_Up posted it there on Sun Oct 8, 2000, as the third message and now I’m re-posting it here in a slightly edited fashion (I tried to correct some typos). I have also re-posted three more of his essays.  (See Why Father is an Anarchist, Congruence vs. Obedience, and Agency: The Single Principle for a Continuous War.)

Please keep in mind that I did not write this article. I tried to contact the author, (whose real name, according to Stirling D. Allen, is Jahnihah Wrede), but my email was returned as “Undelivered Mail Returned to Sender.”  If you want more information about him or his views, I suggest you visit his (now defunct) web site, which you can view by using the Way Back Machine.

What The Priesthood Is

Whenever I ask this question, people invaribly answer with,

“The Priesthood is the authority to act in the name of God.”

Unfortunately, this rhetorical regurgitation does not even address the question.

To explain ‘what’ the Priesthood (PH) is requires first to know what its substance is. Only then can one understand its purposeful use. One must come to realize that the PH has parts and attributes to it that define ‘what’ it really is before one can be capable of attempting to ‘use’ PH power.

It would be very much like trying to use an automobile to convey one’s self down the street when lacking an understanding of what it is, or the manner in which each component functions to utilize it as it was created for – to safely travel down the street. Can you remember any time in your life when you were completely perplexed by something totally foreign to your knowledge? All of us have experienced this. Learning about the pro-creative powers of our bodies and the truth behind the ‘birds and bees’ astonished us all when we found out what ‘it’ was for. Coming to an understanding of ‘what’ the PH is, is no different.

Allow me to ask you a simpler question to help define where our focus should be in answering ‘what’ the PH is.

“What is a credit card?”

If your answer begins to explain what you can ‘do’ with it, or the responsibilities attached to it, or who can use one, then you have not told me the first thing to answer my question which should be an explanation about it being a piece of plastic. How perplexed would a person be 70 years ago in their attempt to describe a piece of plastic? Could anyone have conceived of such a substance that was neither wood, metal, leather or glass, yet was a substitute for them all? It didn’t exist then, but we take plastic for granted as it is everywhere a part of our daily lives now. It’s the same with the PH. Now you see that any answer that does not begin to define the nature and substance of the PH is a stumbling block to truly being able to function within it, or operate congruent to it.

So then, ‘What is the PH ?’

In reading the Holy Writ of God, we typically find certain nouns being used, but we rarely associate attributes to these nouns.  Further more, we don’t compare the sets of attributes of each noun with one another to obtain a much larger perspective on what God is telling us. Take ‘Truth’ for example. Like defining ‘PH’, we are stuck with rhetoric instead of enlightenment. ‘Truth’ has certain attributes as does ‘Spirit’, ‘Light’, ‘intelligence’, ‘charity’, ‘faith’ and of course, ‘PH’.  When we discern the attributes and nature of each these nouns, we begin to discover something odd – that they all share the same attributes and nature, though some are merely sub-sets of the others. In other words, God has apparently been holding our hand in a very detailed manner to explain to us everything about who He is, and how He operates ALL though scripture.  We just haven’t taken advantage gathering up all these details, and then standing back to look at them for what they are, and their relationship to each other.

All through this article, which is admittedly my own personal paradigm, you’ll find that each subject doesn’t really have a clear beginning and end because each item of discussion are all inter-related to the others and consequently I am talking about only ONE thing by taking several different perspectives in order that I might be understood. Consequently, my weakness in writing only compounds the already difficult task. My apologies, please bear with me through all of this.

Several times in scripture we are told about the attributes of PH, but we mistake them for ‘how’ we ought to be behaving BEFORE exercising the ‘PH’. The reality is that those attributes ARE the detailed description of the ‘PH’, and until we are indeed living congruently within those Godly attributes ourselves, we can forget about ‘using’ the powers “inseparably connected” to the PH.

Instead of listing those attributes here, I listed them above as ultimately ‘charity’ contains the exact same set of attributes as PH, because it is indeed “inseparably connected” – even the same thing with a little different descriptive perspective. Charity is ‘what’ Priesthood is – provided that you know ‘what’ charity truly is, you also know ‘what’ PH is.

While this turns authoritarian mindsets upside down, I want to remind you that men have consistently reversed the meaning of the truth of the Gospel. Sometimes unintentionally out of ignorance; most other times intentionally in attempts to obtain or maintain control upon men rather than to ‘let them go’ after the presentation of the truth. While it is true that a ‘church’ is an assembled body of believers, the intention was to refrain from stifling growth toward mankind’s pinnacle of potential – being Joint-Heirs with Jesus Christ; Godhood.

As long as men maintain control of ‘PH’, and only hand salvation out piecemeal to those who are required to believe a specific dogma before obtaining it, all mankind will remain in bondage. While it is true that PH authority is conferred, even that person can not hold onto it if they become incongruent to PH itself. NO ONE, by mere virtue of having been ‘ordained’, can justify acting in any Godly authority if they are incongruent to the attributes and methods of operation of PH. A person’s ‘calling’ or ‘office’ does not give them PH, and it can not sustain them in acting incongruent to the very powers they wish to violate or disassociate themselves from in ANY DEGREE.

Many people fear this paradigm because of the idea that God is somehow ‘inferior’ to PH. God is congruent to PH as He Himself has developed the nature and attributes of Godliness, which attributes and nature are those He has described as ‘charity’ or PH.

God ‘surfs’ the wave of PH. He doesn’t attempt to change it, or fight against it. The very principles that allow the entire universe to exist is the method of harmony God has found to be Eternally True, and thus He has made every effort to explain them to us, also.  Invariably, everything that Christianity teaches about Jesus being a person full of love is exactly the harmony existing in the universe.  Becoming congruent to that existence is what God has done, and what we must also discover for ourselves. We could fight against it, but we would then be like Lucifer. It’s our choice.  We have complete freedom to choose it just as God or Lucifer does.

The ‘spirit’ or ‘PH’ is not withdrawn from us the very moment we exercise any degree of unrighteous dominion, but we ‘fall’ from it.  When we choose to be incongruent to those attributes, we disconnect ourselves from the very powers of Heaven. God can also suffer the same consequence because He is just as free to choose as we are, but it would require Him to do something totally outside of His nature and character. It would require Him behaving in a manner that is totally unlike Himself. Just as it is inconceivable to the vast majority of us to commit murder, it is for God to become incongruent to PH. God can fall from being God, just like Lucifer did, and just like we can freely choose to become congruent to PH or to fight against it, and consequently God, too.

Wake_Up

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Deep Waters: Creatio ex nihilo, creatio ex materia and creatio ex deo are all true doctrines

For background on this post, please first read Lehi’s model of the universe.  This article begins where that one left off.

creatio ex nihilo (creation out of nothing)

Everything originally came from outer darkness, or out of the lake of fire and brimstone, into the inner light or sphere which is the kingdom of God (the created Universe.)  Everything in the created Universe (the sphere) has agency.

All truth is independent in that sphere in which God has placed it, to act for itself, as all intelligence also; otherwise there is no existence.  Behold, here is the agency of man, and here is the condemnation of man; because that which was from the beginning is plainly manifest unto them, and they receive not the light.   (D&C 93: 30)

This means that everything placed by God within the sphere of light exists, while everything without the sphere of light (in outer darkness) has no existence. In other words, what exists outside of the sphere of light?  Nothing exists outside of the sphere of light. The sphere of light is all there is. There is nothing else outside of it.  And yet, it is just from this “nothing” that God created the Universe and it is from this “nothing” that He is continually expanding His kingdom, for the sphere is growing.

Existence, as used in the above scripture, does not mean life. It does not mean that within the sphere of light things are alive and outside of it things are dead.  Instead, existence means “the state or fact of having being especially independently of human consciousness and as contrasted with nonexistence.”  A dead thing, after all, although dead, still exists. However, an empty spot, in which there is nothing there, has “no life neither death,” which is Lehi’s description of what is found outside of the sphere of light, meaning that an endless void is out there.

Creatio ex nihilo, therefore, is a true doctrine, as God created (past) the whole created Universe from that which does not exist (the “nothing”) and is continuing (present) to expand His Universe by creating more Universe from that same “nothing.”  This creative act out of “nothing” will continue on forever (future).

Note: more information concerning this non-existent state outside of the sphere of light can be found in the article Lehi’s model of the universe.  That article described the “nothing” in terms of a material or an existence.  Nevertheless, in actuality, there was nothing out there, not any substance, material or existence.  Each time you read in that Lehi article the words exist, existence, substance, material, compound or any other term that indicates some type of material or thing in regards to outer darkness, it should be read as if there were quotation [“”] marks around it.

Also, the Lord makes it plain that if there is no agency, there is no existence, therefore all things inside of the sphere of light have agency and existence, whereas outside of the sphere of light—which is the location known as outer darkness—there is no agency and no existence, in other words, there is nothing. Agency is a gift of God given to us at the moment we came into existence (when we entered the sphere of light from outer darkness.)  When the Lord states “otherwise there is no existence” it presupposes that there are things that exist (on the one hand) and that there is also nonexistence (on the other hand), in other words, that there is an opposition in all things, including the state of existing and not existing.  Not existing is just as real as existing is and by giving us His definition of what are things that exist (independent truth and intelligence placed by God within the sphere of light and given agency) God has also given us the key in determining where such nonexistence is located (outer darkness.)  For a more in-depth treatise on agency, see The role of free agency in political systems, as well as The faith of God, part ten: The relationship of faith to agency (power) and Deep Waters: What would have happened if Lucifer had won the vote? )

Lastly, all truth and intelligence placed in the sphere is independent, meaning that these are individual bits, or individuals. Outside of the sphere, the void is a single mass, with no individuality or independence.  Inside, the Universe is made up of independent individuals.

creatio ex materia (creation out of pre-existent matter)

The Spirit of truth is of God. I am the Spirit of truth, and John bore record of me, saying: He received a fulness of truth, yea, even of all truth; and no man receiveth a fulness unless he keepeth his commandments. He that keepeth his commandments receiveth truth and light, until he is glorified in truth and knoweth all things. Man was also in the beginning with God.  Intelligence, or the light of truth, was not created or made, neither indeed can be.  All truth is independent in that sphere in which God has placed it, to act for itself, as all intelligence also; otherwise there is no existence.  Behold, here is the agency of man, and here is the condemnation of man; because that which was from the beginning is plainly manifest unto them, and they receive not the light.  And every man whose spirit receiveth not the light is under condemnation.  For man is spirit.  The elements are eternal, and spirit and element, inseparably connected, receive a fulness of joy; and when separated, man cannot receive a fulness of joy.  The elements are the tabernacle of God; yea, man is the tabernacle of God, even temples; and whatsoever temple is defiled, God shall destroy that temple.  The glory of God is intelligence, or, in other words, light and truth.  Light and truth forsake that evil one.  Every spirit of man was innocent in the beginning; and God having redeemed  man from the fall, men became again, in their infant state, innocent before God.  And that wicked one cometh and taketh away light and truth, through disobedience, from the children of men, and because of the tradition of their fathers.  But I have commanded you to bring up your children in light and truth.  But verily I say unto you, my servant Frederick G. Williams, you have continued under this condemnation; you have not taught your children light and truth, according to the commandments; and that wicked one hath power, as yet, over you, and this is the cause of your affliction.  (D&C 93: 26-42)

There are but two fundamental materials that make up the created Universe: spirit and element.  The scriptures call these two materials by different names according to what aspect of the material is being described.  And so we have fire (spirit) and brimstone (element), light (spirit) and truth (element), intelligence (spirit) and truth (element), wisdom (spirit) and knowledge (element), that which acts (spirit) and that which is acted upon (element).  We also have Spirit of truth (spirit of element) as well as descriptions of intelligence as both the light of truth (spirit of element) and light and truth (spirit and element).  (It is interesting to note that the scriptures never speak of truth of light or truth of spirit [both element of spirit], only of light of truth and spirit of truth [both spirit of element].)

The term “intelligence” throws everyone off.  For most LDS, when asked what an intelligence is, according to the scriptures, they would probably say it is the third part of us that is neither spirit nor element, that is our fundamental being, and which is neither created nor made but exists from all eternity.  This definition, of course, is an invention on their part, as the scriptures do not describe a third part of our being.  The scriptures only describe two parts of us: spirit and element.  The reason why the word “intelligence” is so confusing is that the Lord uses it to mean more than one thing, even in the above quoted scripture.

Intelligence, or the light of truth, was not created or made, neither indeed can be.  (D&C 93: 29)

Intelligence, in this sentence, is referring to the “nothing” that has no existence located in outer darkness.  It is the compound-in-one, good-for-nothing “substance” described by Lehi and referred here by the Lord as intelligence.  (It is useful to refer to “nothing” intelligence as a “substance,” although a substance would technically be something.  Just keep in mind that I’m not actually saying it is a substance when I use the term “substance.”)  This “nothing” intelligence has no purpose and cannot be created or made, as it would destroy God and His purposes were He to create nothing (“something” that has no purpose according to Lehi.)  This “nothing” intelligence is also described as the “light of truth,” which allows us to understand that it is the compound-in-one substance from which the light (spirit) part was extracted from the truth (element) part, in the godly splitting operation which continuously makes an opposition in all things at the lake of fire and brimstone.

All truth is independent in that sphere in which God has placed it, to act for itself, as all intelligence also; otherwise there is no existence. (D&C 93: 30)

Intelligence in this sentence refers only to the spirit material that is split from the compound-in-one “nothing” intelligence.  Truth (element) and intelligence (spirit) are then the fundamental building materials, preexisting prior to the creation (formation or organization) of the Universe.  This process is creatio ex materia and is ongoing as the Universe both expands and is re-organized into its various stages of development.

There are two other uses of the word “intelligence.”  One meaning is of a spirit body, such as the spirit bodies of men, which were “organized before the world was.”  (See Abraham 3: 22.)  Another meaning of intelligence is “something” intelligence, as opposed to “nothing” intelligence:

The glory of God is intelligence, or, in other words, light and truth.  (D&C 93: 36)

Whereas the “nothing” intelligence is the light of truth, the “something” intelligence is light and truth.  To recap: the “nothing” intelligence is the original “nothing”, namely, spirit and element compounded into one “substance,” good for nothing, not existing, and found outside the sphere of light in a region called outer darkness.  This “nothing” intelligence cannot be created or made by God (or anyone else.)  Creatio ex nihilo occurs at the lake of fire and brimstone whereby this “nothing” intelligence is split into two fundamental materials: spirit and element (or light and truth).  This creates the opposition in all things.  It is now “something” intelligence, meaning, it has purpose, existence, agency and can be useful for constructing or organizing an entire Universe (creatio ex materia.)

creatio ex deo (creation out of the being of God)

There are two ways or senses in which all things were and are created out of the being of God.  One is that everything came from the same nothingness, the “nothing” intelligence, including God:

Man was also in the beginning with God.  Intelligence, or the light of truth, was not created or made, neither indeed can be.  (D&C 93: 29)

The “beginning” referred to in this scripture is the very first beginning, when we were part of the compound-in-one “nothing” intelligence that cannot be created or made.  We were there, in our uncreated nothing state, and God was there, too, in His uncreated nothing state.  We were all as one body. We did not exist as individuals, but as part of a single mass of nothingness, and in fact, we did not exist at all.   A portion of this mass was brought out of outer darkness before us, becoming the individual we now know as God.  Thus, God was brought out first.  Then, later, He brought us out along with all of the rest of the created Universe, so that we now all exist as individuals.  But keep in mind that originally, we all were part of the same whole, the same mass of nothingness, including God.  Thus, as the “nothing” intelligence literally was/is a part of the being of God and we were/are a part of it, too, creatio ex deo is a true doctrine.

Another way we are created out of the being of God is through the Light of Christ.  The Light of Christ is the (extended) body of God.  Through it He is able to both be in one single location at a time and also everywhere at once (omnipresent).  Although the Light of Christ is a creation of God, it has been endowed with all of His vast powers, knowledge and all other attributes in their fullness.  This is one of the reasons why the Light of Christ is indistinguishable to modern Christians from the real God that created it.  Nevertheless, as it is the arm of His power, extended throughout the Universe, it can be considered an extension of His very being, allowing Him to be both the one and the infinite at the same time.  It is the Light of Christ that has organized (creatio ex materia) and that maintains the entire Universe.  In this sense, creatio ex deo is a true doctrine:

Wherefore, I now send upon you another Comforter, even upon you my friends, that it may abide in your hearts, even the Holy Spirit of promise; which other Comforter is the same that I promised unto my disciples, as is recorded in the testimony of John.  This Comforter is the promise which I give unto you of eternal life, even the glory of the celestial kingdom; which glory is that of the church of the Firstborn, even of God, the holiest of all, through Jesus Christ his Son—he that ascended up on high, as also he descended below all things, in that he comprehended all things, that he might be in all and through all things, the light of truth; which truth shineth. This is the light of Christ. As also he is in the sun, and the light of the sun, and the power thereof by which it was made.  As also he is in the moon, and is the light of the moon, and the power thereof by which it was made; as also the light of the stars, and the power thereof by which they were made; and the earth also, and the power thereof, even the earth upon which you stand.  And the light which shineth, which giveth you light, is through him who enlighteneth your eyes, which is the same light that quickeneth your understandings; which light proceedeth forth from the presence of God to fill the immensity of space—the light which is in all things, which giveth life to all things, which is the law by which all things are governed, even the power of God who sitteth upon his throne, who is in the bosom of eternity, who is in the midst of all things. (D&C 88: 3-13)

God does it all

To summarize, God splits the nothingness of outer darkess into its two component parts, spirit and element, bringing the single-mass nothingness (singular intelligence) into individual somethingnesses (a plurality of intelligences), from nonexistence into existence, placing the individual spirit and element bits within the growing sphere of light (the created Universe) and granting both components agency.  This creative act occurs at the lake of fire and brimstone, is in reality creatio ex nihilo and is ongoing.  As the singular nothingness was/is part of the being of God, this creative act is also creatio ex deo.

Once inside the sphere of light, split into spirit and element and granted agency, God organizes these fundamental bits into spirit and physical bodies.  This creative act is creatio ex materia and is ongoing.  As the Light of Christ is (essentially) part of the being of God (an extension of Him) and as we are organized (created) by and of the Light of Christ, it being in us, powering us and maintaining us (and all other things), this creative act is also creatio ex deo.

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