Spencer Heath Archive

Item 1123

Penciling on notepad paper. Retitling Suggested by Editor: “Transcendence of Beauty”

No date

 

 

 

 

BEAUTY, TRUTH, GOODNESS

 

All things are the infinite variants of One Thing — Energy — Action — Process — Function — Change. What we call matter, substance, is but structured energy, energy in which the process — change — is relatively obscure to us — relatively stabilized energy. What we call organism is structured energy in which the changes are rhythmic and repetitional, including repetition of its own struc­ture. All structures constantly take on and give off energy — increase and diminish their structure content. In organic structures, the energy that is taken on and retained is called growth. The energy that is taken on, transformed and given off without modification of structure is called function. Function always modifies the structure of environment.

     Man is the most complex of all organisms, composite of myriad parts in rhythmic co-operation, symbiotic process. He is evolved out of and does epitomize the universal pro­cesses of the total environment from which he springs. He is the finite replica of universal process. He is a sub­structure of the infinite energy into which its essential nature, process, mode of action metaphorically has been breathed.

     Beauty is that which is of the essential essence of the universal environment, energy — its quality of process, change, into ever more complex structures and forms. It is the essential nature of man’s origin and environment, hence of him. Man knows the universal when it enhances his nature towards it, when its energy flows through him in ways that preserve his structure unchanged while improving his (outer) world. This is called Beauty, esthetic rapture, spiritual experience. This is his creative process, divine prerogative, spiritual power and estate.

     When men have intuitions of the universal, they feel it as joy and describe it as beauty. They themselves are inspired, literally as well as metaphorically. Under this inspiration men feel only Beauty, see only Truth, and act only Goodness. They become incorporate in the universal process, in the infinite and divine. Without this inspiration, men feel only pain, see only error and act only evil. With it they see only truth, not truth and error, and they act only goodness, not goodness and evil. They have no knowledge of good and evil.

     Without inspiration of Beauty, they know only pain. This pain they call both good and evil, according to its degree. Less pain they call good, more pain they call evil. The good person or thing is that which reduces pain. The evil is that which increases it. To the uninspired there is always good and evil. These are ever at war, and uninspired men array themselves against each other in perpetual war under claim of goodness and truth on both sides. Without deliverance from this all must eventually die.

     Deliverance comes not as salvation or escape, but as inspiration and achievement. Every inspirational element in nature, every divinity of order and grandeur, every esthetic art, speaks to the divine in man and makes him a part and partner in the pageant of creation. With inspiration comes vision, imagination, discovery, reason and right action.