Spencer Heath Archive

Item 2994

Fragment of random taping by Spencer MacCallum of conversation in which Heath invited MacCallum to challenge him with a difficult-to-answer question.

No date

 

 

MacCallum: Why is there evil in the world?

 

Heath: That’s something like asking the man whether he has left off beating his wife, because the question carries with it an assertion that there is evil in the world.

If evil is conceived of as a relative retardation of the creative process of the cosmos, then it can be said to occur.

There is only one thing constituting the cosmos. All scientific experiment, achievement or discovery shows the world is not a chaos but a cosmos. And it is a cosmos not merely of things, but of happenings, or events. This happening of events is a process of creation, for an event is a composition of interdependent entities into the unity of the event.

Then destruction is a process of creation?

Now wait a moment. As in all the arts, creation is composition, the arranging of elements in such mutual and reciprocal relationships that a new creation emerges. This is called, also, organization. When parts combine so that a new kind of action emerges from their inter-action, then they are organized. The new creation is organic, which means that it is alive. In this sense, and truly, all organization is life. But since our universe is a cosmos instead of a chaos, then for that reason everything is life.

How is the event of war or the burning of organic matter “life”?

Let’s come to that a little later. Hold it. It has been truly said, life is that which must always transcend itself, for all things are moving into higher organic relationships. This does not require that each and every minute part all be advancing equally or at the same time. When of two ships moving in the same direction, one moves faster than the other, the slow ship appears to be going backwards. But the retardation is only relative and not actual. The events that we call negative or evil are only so with respect to those which proceed more rapidly. They are only negative because there is something else going beyond them. There is always a positive with respect to them, and they are negative only because they are less positive.

Moreover, there is rhythm in all events. The ever-rising tide of creation has a rhythmic movement. It Is when we look at the backwashes of the rising waves that we delude ourselves that the tide of life and of creation has gone negative and into reverse.

Well I accept the fact that the tide advances, but why must part of it reverse?

Because it is rhythmic. Because time proceeds in the cosmos.

Couldn’t it be rhythmic with cessation, or rest, without reverse of direction?

 

 

[Penciling by MaccCallum: “We ended the conversation with the thought that the cosmos proceeds by alternating current instead of by pulsating current, and pursued the question no further.”]