Spencer Heath Archive

Item 644

Random taping by Spencer MacCallum from conversation with Heath

January 30, 1956

At All Levels, Energy Units Combine

to Create Favorable Organizational Environment, But Only Man Creates Favorable External Environment.

Everything that is to be cherished is dependent absolutely on its environment. The only way things of similar kind can strengthen themselves is through consti­tuting their own environment. They do this by relating themselves to one another in a manner that is called organization. The atom must suffer a general environment not necessarily favorable to itself until it joins other atoms and forms a molecule. The molecule then is a self-created environment, created cooperatively by the various atoms which entered into it.

The same is true of biological cells. When the cell must shift for itself alone in whatever environment it en­counters, it has no aid in making its adjustment. But when the cell binds with other cells to form a higher form of life, then it has created an environment of its own. It has made itself into a part of its own environment. And in this cooper­ative relationship, we have the higher forms of life. And the higher forms of life are marked by the fact that they can do for themselves and for their constituent parts what no part can do for itself.

The principle still obtains when we come to the highest forms of life, like the human being. An isolated human being is absolutely dependent on his external environment, which may or may not be, and most likely will not be, very favorable to himself. But by combining with other, similar forms of life, we get the cooperation of the social form, beginning perhaps with the family form and other group forms characteristic of animals and insects. Of course the human being is able to unite in such a form that he has two new kinds of environments. He has an environment which consists of himself and his fellow members, his social environment, which is more favorable to himself; so he saves himself through union and cooperation with his fellow men. And second, he has an external environment upon which he is no longer dependent, because this social form has a function which no other form of life has. No other living thing can make its environment consistently and progressively more favorable to itself. It must change itself, make itself more accommodative, shall I say, to its environment. But the social form of life not only can do that, it also can modify the environment in ways that are /not/ ultimately injurious to itself; it can modify its environment in ways that are favorable to itself.

In other words, the social form of life is where life comes into its creative capacity. So it is a marvelous thing to think that man, and man alone, can create its social environment as other units create their own environment — as the atoms create themselves into molecules, which is a new kind of environment for the individual. But man can not only do that; when he has done it, he has established a form of life which can create, in which he can desire and dream a different kind of environment, and instead of pull­ing his environment down as other forms of life do, he can build it up and make it a new kind of world for himself to live in.

Collective man can do that. And in doing that, he is serving the individual man. The individual man, then, in a social organization, has two great advantages. The first is that he creates by combination, he creates himself a social environment as other combinations do. But beyond that, this social environment re-creates, builds, the world in which it lives. In doing this, the human creature ceases to be merely a creature and becomes a creator. In other words, in the social organization, men enter into the spiritual power of creating the world in which they live. And in this alone, they demonstrate their divine capacity of being, God-like, creators.

I hadn’t had that thought just that way before, because I hadn’t thought of the molecule being a new environment for the atom — favorable to the atom. I hadn’t felt the contrast: the molecule, or the individual, animal creature, or the pre-social man, while he has created a social environment for himself, which is helpful, he has not created an external environment which he can make more and more favorable to himself.

“You’re pursuing further the parallel between modes of behavior from the organic all the way down into the in­organic — elaborating on it.”

Yes, but the great big thing is, that man is unique. He forms himself a Social environment, then he becomes an instrument of divine creative power. It’s a sharp, tremen­dous picture, isn’t it.

Now in the CMA /Citadel, Market & Altar/, all these facts are there, and I’ve shown that in the social-ized form man is a creator. I’ve got all that there, but I haven’t pictured men in association as the environment of the individual, or the atom in association. I haven’t called it that. I have referred to the social environment some place or other, but I haven’t set up the comparison between the social environment through association (that’s what I’d call it, for organizational environment), and that organizational environment which is distinct from them and called social. And _________ that organizational environment has a higher function, a creative and thereby a spiritual power.

Whenever a unit combines with other units, it thereby creates out of themselves an environment more favorable to the individual. It should be said, however, that this combination must not be a forced one, but must be a spontaneous combination. Among men, it must be contractual, and not political. Proprietary, and not governmental.

“It’s never imposed from the outside of the organization; it’s always…”

That’s where he is subject, enslaved to his environment. When it’s imposed from the inside, then if some part domin­ates another part, if it subordinates it, then that’s slavery again — and destruction. When the parts through their innate nature of the individual, when the atom through its innate nature unites with another atom to form a molecule, then you have a stable structure. But when they are thrust together by some external force, or when one molecule eats up another or undertakes to do so, they become a good deal like Eugene Field’s gingerbread dog and calico cat. /Chuckling/ And what do we call that? Explosion. And energy is now reduced to a simpler form, or primordial form, of organization known as radiation, in which the units are waves rather than atoms.

Speaking of collision, this unhappy collision with Mr. Berman tended to disintegrate his parts and send him back in the direction of radiant energy in some degree. So now it is necessary for him to be hospitalized and give the individual cells an opportunity to re-organize themselves in the way in which they were organized before — to reverse the process of disintegration. You may say this is reversing the entropy. The collision reversed the /negative/ entropy which brought him into his normal condition. Now the growth will reverse that entropy back into a re-organization of the cells by means of which his bones are knitted together again.

“The collision was an application of external force, and the re-organization a matter of internal, spontaneous process.”

That’s a fine observation. The collision was destruc­tive energy from without, disorganizing and sending it back to a less organized form. Now the healing, recovery, is the reverse; it is the re-organization of the cells in their proper relation to one another /whereby/ they can best main­tain themselves and, thereby, best maintain Mr. Berman.