Spencer Heath Archive

Item 411

Random taping by Spencer MacCallum from conversation with Heath on “Why and How.”

Spring 1955

 

 

 

 

We definitely have purposes, and we observe those purposes in our own behavior. The cosmos has certain behavior. So, looked at in the same manner as we look at a person, we can say that what that behavior is manifesting is cosmic purpose, the same as human behavior manifests human purpose.

 

 If, on the other hand, we mean by “purpose” something that can only be imputed to personality, then it cannot be imputed to the cosmos, because personality, by definition, is limited as distinguished from other personalities. So when we are dealing with personality we are dealing with purpose, or vice versa, but when we are dealing with the universal we cannot be dealing with purpose, because personality cannot be imputed to the universal. Personality distinguishes one personality from another and so cannot be universal.

 

 It hinges on what we mean by “personality.” If we mean by it something that distinguishes one person from another, or if that is part of your definition, then a person must be finite. So an infinite purpose could not be ascribed to a finite person. When we speak of the personality of God, we are distinguishing it from our personality, which makes them both finite.

 

 We are speaking of how and why. Other attributes of personality than having a purpose are not relevant to how and why. The how does not necessarily imply purposed ends, but the why does, and that is why science can deal in the how so much, but not in the why. The whole dilemma of Newton was between the how and the why. His why depended upon his universal God being personal, notwithstanding the impossibility of God being both personal and universal.

 

 The transactions of the market I have been speaking of — the objective love — these transactions owe their divinity to their being impersonal, because only by being impersonal can they be universal, and thus divine. The transactions between intimates are only within the scope of the intimates and therefore merely human, or rather animal, practices, since only the human can be divine. There is where the unregenerate man comes in, the man who has not exercised the divinity of becoming impersonal as well as personal in his love.