Spencer Heath Archives

Item 24

Penciled fragment by Heath on notepad paper on psychology, will.

No date

     All experience is primarily and finally, begins and ends as emotion. The beginning and the end is feeling and will. In all science and all nature there are only two signs, minus and plus, negative and positive. All is com­pounded of these two; there is no third sign or aspect differing from either of these.

     When the forces of environ­ment subordinate the will, when there are no acceptable alternatives, then the emotions are negative; fear dominates and drives the whole being to seek escape or to make attack. The technique of personality becomes the technique of war — to escape or to attack. The level of existence is reduced. Destruction and decay are hand in hand; creation is unknown.

     But when the environment, external conditions, afford many possible and acceptable alternatives of conduct, then is the will liberated. Conduct becomes optional, the will is not subordinated or enslaved, it is fulfilled; and it fulfills itself.

     The world of external nature unmodified by man is his determiner, the master of man. He is its pawn and slave. His alternatives are few. Until he in some measure rebuilds his world he must modify himself to it. It must rebuild him in accordance with its nature. He cannot grow and unfold in accordance with his.

     How, then, can man, how does man, measurably, break his bonds, redeem himself from the thralldom of his external world?

     The answer is simple,                                                                  /Breaks off/