Spencer Heath Archive

Item 221

Taping by Spencer MacCallum from conversation with Heath at home of Ian Crawford MacCallum, Spencer’s father, on Beechwood Road, Ellicott City, Maryland. Transcription very slightly edited by Spencer. Purpose of the conversation was to prompt ideas for a new chapter in Citadel, Market & Altar to accompany the Philosophic Diagram.

September 1955

     This Diagram is meant to represent the whole cosmic reality, whether of conceptual or experiential, subjective or objective, character. The whole is repre­sented by the conception of the universe, and as the uni­verse is examined, we find that it exhibits what we call “cosmic energy.” That is to say, it is not chaotic energy but energy in orderly process. In analyzing or examining this energy, we find at the center, and prior to all else, something that we experience as mass, or force, or inertia. And we find on closer examination that it has another attribute, which we call motion, or velocity, and then we find lastly that mass having motion and velocity has another quality, of how long it continues to exhibit this motion or velocity, and which taken in its absolute or infinite aspect is called “eternality,” and in its limited aspect is called duration, or durationality.

     On the left hand side of the Diagram, we have taken an absolute, or an abstract view of the central whole. On the right hand side we have taken a finite and objective view. The one on the left we call conceptual, as against the one on the right which we call experiential.

 

     On the conceptual side is embraced everything that is subjective to the mind and imagination, and which is therefore unlimited——except so far as the imagination might be thought to be limited. This embraces the whole world of religion and philosophy. It exhibits itself to us subjectively in what we call synthesis, in that we take it in its totality of effect upon us. And since we are taking it in its totality, we can call it absolute, and infinite, or what the philosophers call the noumenal, the unconditioned, the unlimited.

     Moving for the moment to the experiential side, we have correspondingly an objective world which, unlike the world of psyche and the imagination, is limited, limited in the sense that it is made up of specific elements or specific units. It is examined in terms of those units, scientifically and mathematically, by a pro­cess that we call analysis, as against the process called synthesis, on the other side.

     So now we have the two realities, the infinite reality on the left side and the finite reality on the right side, the difference being, so far, only a difference in quantity. We are dealing only with quantity. We are not dealing with quality at all up to this point, so quantity here becomes the middle term of our Diagram.

 

     From this point, analyzing further, we find that our conception of the total synthesis has itself three aspects, one of which we call Father, the second of which we call Son, and the third of which we call Holy Spirit. These three, taken together, constitute the Absolute Unity, the Divinity, or the Godhead. In their abstract designation, Father corresponds with Substance, Son with Power, which is mass and motion, and the Holy Spirit cor­responds with Eternity. These constitute the indivisible Christian Trinity.

     Proceeding now to the objective, the finite and limited side, we can experience these things scientifically and analytically in the current scientific terms of mass, motion and time. (I had some thought of turning this around and making this vita-physical, but I’ve never known vita to be used as a prefix like meta. It balances so nicely, you know. Or vital-physical.)

     These three are the fundamentals of the finite and relative world, not the noumenal but the phenomenal world. Under the heading of Mass, we include matter, the most general term, gram, as one of the measuring units of matter, and structure, which is the organization of these units. Under Motion, we have the entire conception of space, which we find analyzes into direction, movement having direction, the centimeter being the unit of motion, or space, precisely as gram is the unit of matter, or mass. But just as mass always exhibits motion, so motion always exhibits time, and the time aspect of motion gives it the character of velocity (speed). Motion is related to time in terms of velocity. But this is only its relationship, its ratio, to time. Its actuality requires that it be multiplied by the quantity of time involved in a particular event. For this we use the unit of the second, the number of seconds involved giving the degree of continuity or durationality, or the totality of the particular event. For the purpose of its analysis, we employ not only the single units, which are gram, centimeter and second, but also, for con­venience, other units, such as the quantum, which is the least of all units of energy, or energy-in-action, which is properly called action, and which constitutes in whole numbers all other units, such as the erg-second, the com­pound unit of energy and time, or the kilowatt hour, which is another compound of the same character but of larger dimension, or when human energy or action is involved, the man-hour or the life-year. These are the finite unities tending ever towards the Absolute Unity in a process or tendency which we may call a continuing creation.

“What do you mean by tends toward the absolute? Do you mean that they increase, that they’re always getting bigger?”

 

     Yes. They’re always getting bigger in the sense that those events which achieve the greatest durationality are those which supersede all prior events having less durationality. So that there is a tendency for all the finite to take on the character of the infinite, of all the material to take on the character of the spiritual, and that tendency in process is called and designated on the Diagram, continuing creation. This continuing creation is the interaction between the absolute aspect of things and the finite, between the subjective and the objective. And the synthesis of the subjective and the objective constitutes, out of the world of quantity, a world of value, a world of quality and a world at its highest, or inspira­tional beauty. These three achievements of events into higher and more durational characters is what creates con­tinually and evermore an ever-enlarging spiritual world of value and quality and beauty.

                              “Now what do you mean by an ever-                               enlarging spiritual world, since all                          the world is spiritual, it all is in                           pro­cess of continuing creation?”

     All the world is spiritual, but all the world is becoming more spiritual; so that value, quality and beauty are constantly being created in this universe.

“That’s right, you’re always getting higher organiza­tion, greater beauty, not more beauty, the quantity of the universe — well now yes.”

 

     More lasting beauty, more enduring beauty, more enduring forms of beauty are constantly being evolved, because whatever events possess greater durationality, those events will be continuing when other events of less durationality have ceased — or have been evolved into the higher synthesis.

“Well beauty, then, just seems to go along with lastingness, with wearing-quality, or enduring-quality.”

     Value, quality and beauty all go along with dura­tionality. And so it might be well to examine what we mean by value, quality and beauty. We represent, presum­ably — insofar as we have information — we represent the highest organization of life, we humans. And those things which contribute to the immortality of the race are the highest things. They are the most qualitative things, most positively qualitative things. And so we value all those things which actually do, or which we feel to give us a greater hold on life, which means a greater approach towards immortality.

     Quality in the positive sense, is that which most conduces to life, and value is a term that we use for how we esteem the things of more positive quality as contrasted with things of less positive quality. There are a lot of things that we value very much, or esteem, such as flying and such things that don’t have any relation that we recognize to the survival, to the continuing, to the durationality of the race. People have dreamed about flying a long, long time, and yet we would have been hard put then to see how that would con­tribute to the continuation of the race.

     It has been the ideal dream that men through a coming spiritual being should achieve flight, like the flight of angels, and that men could live better in a world in which they had learned how to fly wasn’t consciously in our mind. It was there more as a desire or as an intuition, an instinct for flight. It isn’t necessary that we know the practical foundation of our instincts for any of these things, for quality, value or beauty, or for flight. It is implemented in us by the nature of the cosmos, of which we are a highly evolved portion, and whose properties are all innate in us if not actually conscious to us, so that men’s aspirations and dreams, struggle towards the light, so to speak, are not because they consciously understand that that is what they are doing. It is only when we come into the analysis of things in quantitative terms that we can under­stand them rationally. We can feel vastly greater worlds of being and becoming than we can ever be conscious of.

 

     The greater subjective consciousness that we have of life, the more it stirs us to our depths, when we are so stirred by that in ourselves or in our environment, or among one another, when we are so stirred by such, we have always one word for it. We always lift our eyes, inhale our breath, assume positive, expanding postures of the body. We stand on our toes, so to speak, and we say, “Ain’t that beautiful!”

     So while these three terms, quality, value and beauty — and I usually put them in that order, quality being the central one; quantity of course is the more fundamental…

“Oh, I see quality here as opposed to quantity above in the Diagram.”

     No. Quantity is not human in any way. Quality is that which conduces to human life. Quantity might conduce to the life of elephants or ants, but quality, for us, relates to human life. And it is only in the world of quality that there is any place for value, which is a com­parison of qualities one with another, and beauty, which is that which brings us most out of our limited selves, gives us a cosmic consciousness.

 

“Is it the carrot before the

 donkey?”

     That’s not beauty. That’s maintenance and survival. The donkey knows nothing of beauty. The donkey doesn’t get inspired. He lives, and when he lives, he’s satisfied.

“Then beauty is more some kind of carrot inside of us that prompts us to go along.”

     It is implanted in us by our divine or our cosmic origin, and it becomes conscious of itself not only in ourselves but of that from which it is abstracted in our outer cosmos, and when we feel a sense of unity between the beauty that the cosmos has wrought into us and the univer­sal beauty with which it is totally informed, then that consciousness causes us to step out of our limitations. We call it ecstasy, and the word for that which gives us ecstasy is beauty, both inside and outside of us, but when the two feel their complementary character, or when we achieve a mystic unity in our consciousness. It exists always whether we are conscious of it or not, but when we achieve a con­sciousness of that mystic unity, then we stand spiritually aside from our limited selves and have a cosmic conscious experience that is called ecstasy, which springs from the beauty within in its conscious integration with the beauty without, above and beyond.

“Do you want to mention anything about this title at the bottom, the Spiritual World?”

 

     No. The evolution in its human aspect is from the universe as one of quantity into a spirited world. From quantity to quality.

     If we were ants or elephants, we would prize what is good for ants or elephants, and quality would have a different character in relation to us. As elephants and ants, we wouldn’t think much of the human species. But we have a warrant for setting ourselves at the top of the world so to speak, because we and we alone are endowed with something we call imagination that gives us a subjec­tive life that transcends all the limitations of our objective experience and enables us to build a world of quality, value and beauty——with respect always to ourselves and our part in the Cosmic Whole.

 

     God made first all the inferior creatures, but He made man in His own image——that is, according to His own imagined ideal, in His own image. And He gave to this creation in His own image or imagination a power of creation by means of which he was to have dominion over all else, all the lesser creations of the world. This gift of dominion proceeds from the gift of imagining, because he has the faculty of the Divinity, of conceiving things and then creating the things which he has conceived. And so through man’s long, toilsome history he has been learning how to enter into his divinity by ceasing to be merely a creature of his environment and taking control or dominion over all things about him, thereby creating a more perfect world for his own uses and purposes. That’s what distin­guishes the spiritual man——man as a spiritual being——from all of the mere creatures. He has the endowment wherewith to pass from his creaturehood into his creativity, which of course means into a likeness of his origin, or the likeness of the Father as is commonly said in religious circles. He enters into his divinity because he receives the same powers and purposes, performs the same creative functions, that his own Creator performed in creating him and giving him the power of perpetual creation——his at-one-ment, his ever-advancing transcending of himself into unity with the divine.