Spencer Heath Archive

Item 832

Random taping by Spencer MacCallum from conversation at the kitchen table, Apt. 11C, 11 Waverly Place, New York City, about purpose

January 11, 1955

Whenever an end has been achieved, we can assume from that accomplishment a prior purpose. This may be said of anything that is accomplished, and if so, a separation of end from purpose has no significance. Everything becomes sequence and there is no place left for consequence. Consequence is only sequence.

Purpose in an embryo is not necessarily antecedent. It may be implicit. And if there is purpose in the cosmos, certainly that purpose is implicit in the cosmos, and whatever is or whatever happens may be said to have been purposed, because implicit throughout (with what went before and what precedes — throughout whatever is being considered.)

To have human significance, “purpose” must be related to something that is distinctively human. That thing is the capacity to imagine events that have happened, are happening or have not happened — imagination — the power to experience subjectively and independently of objective experi­ence. When events that have not happened are conceived and desired, any activity directed towards that event is in pursuit of a purpose. Purpose is an attribute exclusively of beings capable of imagining desired things and of putting forth conscious effort toward their accomplishment. (Conscious goes with imagination; if an embryo were doing it, it would be unconscious.)

“So to speak of purpose in the cosmos is only to say that the cosmos exhibits sequence.”

It is what it is; it does what it does. Whatever is self-sufficient can have no character outside of itself. That is the character of God, you know, self-sufficiency. You can see how we would not have any purposes if we had everything we wanted, if we were self-sufficient. God is just being what He is, and He is a dynamic thing that is moving within itself.

“Then to call the whole cosmos ‘God’ must be that the whole cosmos and its direction and development has meaning for mankind, the future is involved in it. And that is not surprising since we are the crest of its development, the farthest point of its advancement or proceeding. … To speak of purpose in the cosmos is only to say that the cosmos exhibits sequence.”

/Should this last paragraph be in quotes? check original/