Spencer Heath Archive

Item 63

Penciled by Heath on notepad paper.

No date

 

 

 

 

     In this attempted interpretation of the world there are but two primary postulates: the self and the not-self, the individual and the environment.

     When either of these is taken of itself and alone, it is an abstraction, abstracted from the totality and the other is abstracted from it.

     Since, by postulate, the self and the not-self are two it follows of necessity that the two are actually and always in being. Neither, therefore, can possess total reality in any manner or matter of fact — literally any how or what of doing — except as part of and in relation to the totality, to the total or absolute reality.

     Notwithstanding that the two finite parts of total or absolute reality when taken as apart the one from the other are thus wholly abstract, it is still possible for us abstractly and in thought to disregard all other or else than a particular abstracted individual or organization. Thus taken, each self is found to be unique and peculiar, accord­ing to its particular organization and having correspondence with the like subjective and abstract reality of other indivi­duals only to the extent that the several individual organizations in their constitutions, intrinsic properties, and inner or subjective experiences correspond.

 

     The energy of environment flows into the individual and the energy of the individual flows back upon the environ­ment. Experience is thus a dynamical relationship between the self and the not-self. It does not involve any part alone but is a process that involves the total reality. In this lies the validity — the reality — of experience. Furthermore, the duration of its experience is the entire existence of an individual or of any integration of energy as an organization. This duration therefore is the term of and marks off the abundance as well as the existence of its life.

     It must be remembered, however, that what is considered to exist or occur alone and separately within the constitution of the individual is something abstracted from total reality and therefore without any complete actuality or experiential reality. The conceptions of an individual regarding himself or regarding other individuals or organizations, or even regarding all of the not-self are never anything but abstrac­tions. It is only in active relationships between the self and the not-self that any reality concretely and in actuality exists. For man, apart from nature, is abstract, and nature, all environment, all the rest of existence apart from man, is likewise abstract. Only in their inter-relations, only in experience, does any actual reality exist.

     EXPERIENCE

     The relationships in which any two (or more) abstracted parts of total and absolute reality are continually and in being united is experience — action with reaction — a flow of energy in one form, linked with a reciprocal flow of energy in another form (or direction) — a double transformation or metamorphosis of energy. The energy of environment flows into the individual and the energy of the individual flows back upon the environment. Thus experience is life. This experience is the process, the manifestation of life in the individual and in the environment and thereby in the total reality. It is a dynamical relationship between the self and the not-self. It does not involve any part alone but is a process that involves the total reality. In this lies the actuality, the validity, and the reality of objective experience.

     Consider now in what this actual energy of experience consists. It presents itself in the world of sense-percep­tions always in a complex of three aspects that may be separately apprehended by consciousness but are experienced only and always in unity. In disunity they may be conceived either singly or in pairs without the remaining member but they cannot be thus experienced. Any conception of less than the whole trinity as one is a mere abstraction, only a subjective experience at the most. Only when the conscious conception unites in some degree each of these three aspects of energy as reality does the conception rise to any correspondence with the actualities that characterize the totality of self and not-self, the experiential, the ever-flowing, world.

     The three aspects of reality which, taken in unity, constitute the actual energy of the total, absolute and experiential world — the self and not-self — are variously named. Among theologians, including, perhaps, philosophers, they are considered only in their absolute magnitudes, as infinite substance, infinite power, and infinite time (eternity). Among scientists, both theoretical and practical, they are taken as relative and finite magnitudes in units of mass (as weight or inertia), motion (as distance or space), and duration (as interval, frequency or time). In both cases the three aspects of reality

 

 

 

     This discovery was made by Prof. Max Planck in 1900. He found that energy, in terms of mass and motion, was discontinuous; that it flowed out of an incandescent atom not in an unbroken radiant stream but as a succession of pellets. Moreover, those bundles of energy were of equal magnitude only for the particular element emitting them and that their magnitude was related inversely to the duration or time-period of a single one of the associated radiant waves. It was further discovered that when the energy of each pellet, taken as its mass-motion product in ergs, is multiplied by its associated wave-length or interval in terms of its duration or time the product is always the same. When the energy pellets are large the wave interval is small and when they are small the wave interval is large, so that the product of Mass, Motion and Time, when taken in their smallest pos­sible dimensions, is constant for all transfers of radiant energy when accepted as active and actual events by the inclusion of time. This quantity of energy as an event, of which all other events are either equal or multiples, is called /the Quantum of Action/.

 

 

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Commentary by Alvin Lowi, Jr.

III, VII A.5, B.1-2, D.1, E.1, F.1

 

SUBJECT: Primary Postulates — Self and Not-Self

Epistemology of experience. The two entities are abstracted from the whole — some consequences. Reality consists of the interaction between the two as a unity —

 

Hence, experience (real) as either an idea or an actuality requires the unity (of self and not-self as well as the trinity (of mass, motion and time).

 

Also Review of Planck’s quantum discovery.

 

REMARKS:  Real volition can now be interpreted more clearly (see Item ____) as an actual phenomenon which is neither classically deterministic nor classically locally controlled (e.g. “free will”). Incomplete. Good review of the quantum but incomplete.