Spencer Heath Archive

Item 464

Taping by Spencer MacCallum from conversation with Heath in Albuquerque NM

May 1959

Original is in item 431

     All human action springs from human emotion, gross or refined. It wells up spontaneously out of the unconscious, often called the psyche. When the reaction is instantaneous, the effect is immediate in behavior either destructive or creative, according to whether the emotion has been raw or refined. When the reaction is delayed, seeing enters into what was only feeling. The rational or understanding part of the mind takes over and either refines the emotion on the one hand, or turns it efficiently towards diabolical ends. A positive emotion, in the manner of inspiration, requires no refinement and can be elaborated indefinitely through exercise of the intellect. A negative emotion is implemented crudely and in the rough or, refined by the intellect, becomes a high agent of destruction.

     Thus it is the office of intellect vastly to multiply the good or evil springing either from positive or negative emotions. Yet the fountainhead of all behavior, be it creative or destructive, is the human psyche. The vital crux is between the positive psychic impulse and the negative. The intellect can magnify the power of either or both. Yet they are not of equal power in the cosmos; for the positive emotions of men inspire them to the kind of conduct that gives them more and more hold on life — raises their subsistence and lengthens their days. Such inspired behavior is dominant; for, those emotions which lead to negative behavior impoverish and shorten men’s lives. It is thereby recessive and ever giving ground to those men and races of men who most practice the creative behavior, the life-enhancing behavior that springs from the admonitions of the ideal. For Life is ever Lord of death.