Spencer Heath Archive

Item 687

Random taping by Spencer MacCallum from conversation

March 1956

 

Original is in item 685

 

 

Human minds, in all their diversity, unite absolutely in one field of abstractions. We all use the same arithmetic, and in the same manner. Rationality of numbers, therefore, is inherent in human nature. Examination of the objective world reveals that it has the same rationality. Without that, science could not write a mathematical description of any fact or even. Reliance on this rationality of nature, corresponding with that of human nature, is what gives science its technology – its engineering and other applications.

 

Whence comes this rationality of human nature, this standardized arithmetic? Obviously, the ephemeral self is derived from the universal not-self. Human nature is rational by reason of the rationality whence it is derived. Plato was right. All rational knowledge is reminiscence, the soul awakening to the knowledge it possessed in the cosmos out of which it was born. This accords also with the Christian view of atonement – the human spirit discovering itself in the universal whence it came, discovering its unity, achieving its at-one-ment with the universal.

 

Mathematics is man’s key to the nature of his cosmos. Nature exhibits her rationality to him. He finds the processes of nature and the processes of his mind each reflected in the other. And they are not static but dynamic, uniform processes and sequences. It is therefore possible for man to discover his own nature in the nature of his cosmos, and to discover the cosmic nature through the knowledge of his own nature. The last is philosophy. And unlike science, it is primarily subjective as Descartes contended. Science depends on philosophy for background and platform. From this vantage point onward, science is objective; it depends on induction – the experiencing of an event. The rationale of the event is exposed in its quantitative, that is, mathematical description. This description can be manipulated according to known mathematical laws. We thus have descriptions of events consistent with but different from the event first described. Objectifying these conceptions is exercising the kind of knowledge that is power. Scientific technology thuse enables man to become the creator of the things he dreams. This creative power is of course spiritual power. It is collaboration with the creative principle in nature – unity with God through functioning creatively and at-one with God.

 

God being universal, man is automatically a part of God.