Spencer Heath Archive

Item 473

Taping by Spencer MacCallum from conversation with Heath

June 29, 1954

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/IS THERE LIFE AFTER DEATH?/

If there is a future life it will have had a past out of which it grew. Likewise, the present life must have had a past out of which it grew. Consciousness is a func­tion of the biological organization. We know in the main how the organization develops, and with its development its consciousness and other psychological functioning. We have but little if any reason to suppose this functioning as anterior to the structure. We have as little reason to sup­pose that such functioning will continue after disintegration of the present structure.

This is not to say that life ceases to exist but only that the particular organization of life has integrated itself into a specific structure having specific functions, which functions are dependent on the organization and will cease when it disintegrates. But life itself is patently continuous. The beginning of a life is only the beginning of its specific embodiment and form. The body and form dis­integrates and like all events passes into a different form or forms. Life is a form of energy manifesting itself exclu­sively in structures and events which are constantly changing. Like all energy it is not subject to creation or annihilation, only to changing forms, and the predominant change is into forms ever more enduring than those before. This is evolu­tion; for, saith Life, “I am that which must always transcend itself.”  (Thus spake Zarathustra.)