ANTONIO MERCURIO

THE ULYSSEANS

The Theorem and the Myth

for traveling from one universe to another

Sophia University of Rome

Copyrighted material

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 Published by

The SOLARIS INSTITUTE

of The SOPHIA UNIVERSITY OF ROME. (S.U.R.)

Copyrignt 2009 by SOPHIA UNIVERSITY OF ROME

All rights reserved.

Original title: Gli Ulissidi: il teorema e il mito per viaggiare da un universe all’altro

ISBN 978-88-95806-04-4

Translated from Italian by Martha S. Bache-Wiig 2009.

Chapter XV translated by Alice Pinto and Martha Bache-Wiig, 2009.

All translations authorized by the Author.

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Note from the translator:
In this text, several of the author’s books are mentioned. Some are already
available English, and their titles are only in English. Some are in the process of
being translated, and their titles are also in English. Some are available as of this
time only in Italian: these titles have been translated into English and placed in
brackets { }. A list of all the authors books with a specification of those that already
are or soon will be available in English is found at the end of the book.

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 It is everyone’s duty
to work towards those things
that can improve the future,
rather than sit there and predict bad things.
Karl Popper

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 This book is dedicated
to my wife
and to everyone who participated
in my seminars on Sophia-Art
and the group laboratories on Existential Anthropology.
They were a precious stimulus
in the development of my ideas
and my continuous search
for truth and beauty.

I ask you to love this book of mine

that required great sacrifice to write,
great energy to put together in this form
and great courage to publish.

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 A Warning for those who wish to Travel from one Universe to Another

This book deals with the main themes regarding human existence and its content
is the result of both an existential and a philosophical approach, even when it takes the
form of myth and fable.
This is not a simple interpretation, it is a journey. If you want to grasp all the
wealth of concepts it contains I suggest that besides reading it individually you discuss it
in groups, together with other people who are enthusiastic about the ideas it proposes.
Even though there may be times you do not immediately understand the meaning
of what I am saying, keep on reading and chew on these ideas slowly, as though they were
morsels of food. One day you will find you have developed new thoughts and behaviours
that will surprise you and that will bring you out of the mental positions that currently
imprison your minds and your lives, even though you are not aware of it.
It is not by chance that I have been able to think about what no other philosopher
up until now has been able to imagine.
The other philosophers are capable of reasoning only in a linear fashion, whereas I,
instead, have learned to reason both in a circular and a linear fashion, and then make a
synthesis of the two, thus creating spiral thinking. Every spiral contains both a line and a
circle. Together they form a spiral but a spiral is completely different from the line and the
circle taken separately. ∗
A concrete example of linear thinking can be found in Saint Augustine’s linear
concept of time and in Nietzsche’s cyclical concept of time.
One opposes the other and both are terrible prisons for humanity; one creates
absolute thinking and the other creates nihilism and our lives carry the weight of both of
them. It is not easy to shake ourselves free of them but we must try to do so.

                                                            
∗
 On the cover of my book “L’Inconscio Esistenziale” {The Existential Unconscious} you will note a double spiral inside of 
two pyramids, one that descends towards the lower depths and the other that ascends upwards. 

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 Table of Contents

A Warning for those who wish to Travel from one Universe to Another .............................. 6

Introduction - Invitation ....................................................................................................... 9

CHAPTER I:

The Myth of Sophia-Analysis: Life as a Work of Art ....................................................... 13

What does “Life as a Work of Art” Mean for Me? .............................................................. 32

CHAPTER II:

Choral Group Research on Life as a Work of Art ........................................................... 34

CHAPTER III:

Choral Group Research on Life as a Work of Art

with an introduction and commentary .................................................................... 39

CHAPTER IV:

The Religious Conception of the World and the Sophiartistic Conception of the World ... 59

CHAPTER V:

The Cosmological Vision of Sophia-Art ......................................................................... 65

CHAPTER VI:

The Cosmological Vision of Sophia-Art

with an introduction and commentary ..................................................................... 83

CHAPTER VII:

The Art of Creating One’s Soul ................................................................................... 117

CHAPTER VIII:

Anthropology, Cosmology and the Soul ...................................................................... 127

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CHAPTER IX:

Thinking of Human Beings as Persons and as Artists of their own Lives and of the Life of
the Universe .............................................................................................................. 141

CHAPTER X:

The Cosmo-Art Theorem ............................................................................................ 179

CHAPTER XI:

The Cosmo-Art Myth................................................................................................... 185

CHAPTER XII:

The Myth of Ulysses contains the Cosmo-Art Myth ...................................................... 192

CHAPTER XIII:

Exploring the Myth of Ulysses ..................................................................................... 207

CHAPTER XIV:

The Ulysseans: the Creators of the Cosmo-Art Myth .................................................... 215

CHAPTER XV:

Rules for the Ulysseans' Nocturnal Navigation

................................................................................ 234

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 Introduction - Invitation•

Just as a tree transforms energy

(it transforms light energy into chemical energy),
it also synthesizes energy
(it makes a synthesis of the energy it takes from the earth with the energy it takes from
the sky)
and it is a creator, condenser and transmitter of energy
(it produces flowers, fruit and seeds and produces oxygen that keeps the ecosystem alive),
human beings can also, if they wish, transform, synthesize, create, condense and transmit
energy.
In fact, human beings transform biochemical energy and mechanical energy into
relationship, individual and cultural energy;
they make a synthesis, both within themselves and outside themselves, of all the types of
energies that exist on the face of the earth;
and by doing so they produce every type of handicraft
and they create every type of familial, social and cultural works,
especially those we call works of art,
that are actual centers of condensed energy;
energy that is then transmitted outward through time and space without end.
But while a tree must only follow the laws of nature to create and must not
face any type of internal conflict or internal tribulation, this is not true for human beings.
At birth, human beings are reactive and they are controlled by the iron law of
action-reaction and stimulus-response. Many remain there for their whole life and they
devour energy and create none at all.

                                                            
•
 This text was written in 1995 for the celebration of the commencement of courses at the I.A.P.E. – Istituto di
Antropologia Personalistica Esistenziale (Institute of Existential Personalistic Anthropology) of the Sophia
University of Rome.

** For a better understanding of this definition, see the interpretation of the film “Scent of a woman” (see “I
Laboratori corali della Cosmo-art”, Sophia University of Rome S.U.R. 2006).

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 But there are instead those who wish to become persons, and they individuate and
they differentiate themselves from the masses. They are able to break free of the law of
action-reaction so they can elevate themselves to the spiritual dimension where they can
transcend reactions and live according to values, virtues, ideals and projects that they
wish to realize.
The reactive human being becomes a human being who can make plans and
create.
This is the type of human being who can transform and synthesize the energy
found in nature and who can then also create a type of energy that is not found in nature.
I would like to give the name soul to this very special energy and I would like to
define it as follows:
“The soul is a field of energy which is both material and immaterial at the same
time. It is made up of freedom, of love, of truth and of beauty that are created day after
day; it condenses and concentrates around a central nucleus that is the I of an individual
or the I of an entire populace, because this is the goal that the individual or the populace
has set for themselves and they are willing to give their life so as to reach this goal”. **
Works of art are such because they have a soul; and they have a soul because the
artists that created them were capable of giving them a type of energy that they didn’t
have before, through a painful and ingenious process of materialization and
dematerialization.
Every work of art is a field of energy where material and spiritual forces combine to
create life that is superior to natural-biological life, because it is a type of life that is no
longer subject to the law of death and entropy.
Not every populace has a soul or is capable of creating one for itself. Those who are
capable of doing so develop and prosper and those who are not capable decline or
disappear forever.
A populace distinguishes itself from another populace by the type of culture it has
been able to create and for the type of soul it has managed to instill in its culture.
Experts say that humanity is moving towards a terrible conflict between cultures;
cultures that have a soul and cultures that don’t have one at all because their only value
is money.
The fear that the West no longer has a soul is well founded, because the one that it
had has been incapable of passing the test of time.
For years we have been working to create centers of energy that are capable of
giving a new soul to tomorrow’s Western World; a soul that can handle the massive
invasion of cultures that are different from ours or the barbarians that are advancing, not
from the borders of the empire but from within its confines.
We ask you to unite your strength with ours.

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 We ask you to see if our goals coincide with your goals; if the suffering and the life
crisis you feel inside is a potent stimulus, rather than an illness that must be cured, that
is pushing you to get out of the ignorance and laziness or the depression and desperation
that attack you from all sides; a stimulus to become transformers, creators and
transmitters of this energy that does not fear death, nor time or space, because it can give
life and continuously regenerate it.
Our goal is to become PERSONS and ARTISTS of our lives and of the life of the
universe.
This is an impossible project that can only become possible with the help of a
group.
It is a project which unifies human beings within themselves and with the life of
the cosmos.
We call those who are capable of freely loving themselves, of loving others and of
being loved Persons.
Artists are those who are capable of making their own life and the life of the
universe into a work of art, and they also work together with others to transform a group
of strangers into a single living organism that is capable of creating truth and beauty by
following the laws of life.
Persons that are Artists of their own lives and of the life of the universe can give
rise to a new kind of people: people who have a soul, a soul made up of the energy of love
and the energy of art, who know how to face pain and death and to transform them into a
source of eternal life.
Our dream is that the Western World can become a single living organism made up
of Persons who are capable of putting truth and beauty in first place instead of money
and power; they are capable of choosing life as a gift instead of life as something to be
stolen, life as a work of art instead of life as violence.
Our dream is that not only the West but the whole planet Earth can begin to move
towards this goal.
And then we have an even bigger dream.
We all know by now that the trees and the forests are necessary for life to develop
on earth. But why do human beings exist? To destroy life on earth? It is by now certain
that humanity has this kind of power but we also know that it doesn’t only have the
power to destroy; it also has the power to create. And while mankind is incapable of
producing “good-smelling flowers” like trees do, it is capable of creating a type of immortal
beauty that does not die like flowers when they wilt. This is the beauty of life as a work of
art, which never wilts.
Perhaps the universe needs this type of beauty to keep it from dying and, perhaps,
the universe needs human beings to produce this beauty, because only this beauty can
give the universe a soul that will make it immortal.

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 If there has been life and there will be death, if there was a Big Bang and there will
be a Big Crunch, what difference does it make?
Only one thing is important: that the universe has had the time to create an
immortal soul that will continue to exist beyond the physical confines of this universe,
together with those that have participated in its creation, before the natural course of life to
death is completed.
If this is true then the universe will not have existed in vain and all the pain that
fills the lives of human beings won’t have been in vain either. And it will become obvious
that all the art that has been created up to this point had a hidden meaning that can now
come to light: to prepare the path so human beings could one day become artists of their
lives and artists of the life of the universe.

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 CHAPTER I

∗
The Myth of Sophia-Analysis: Life as a Work of Art

It is impossible to give just one definition of Sophia-Analysis that would contain all
its complexity and wealth of knowledge.
Among the many definitions possible, I will choose just three of them:
1) – Sophia-Analysis is a new discipline whose goal is to unite the four fundamental
forces that make up the history of humanity, Religion, Philosophy, Science and Art, in
a single field of energy.
This attempt can be compared, historically speaking, to the current efforts of nuclear
physicists to unite the four fundamental forces found in nature: the weak nuclear
force, the strong nuclear force, electromagnetism and gravity.
2) – Sophia-Analysis is a method of individual and group work that helps people become
Persons, people who have their own identity, are internally free and thus are capable
of loving themselves and others so they can experience joy and develop life.
3) – Sophia-Analysis is an existential and group project that aims at reproducing within a
human group, through years of work, the same processes that come about when a
star is born: condensation, collapse, thermonuclear reactions and the transformation of
one element of matter into another, with the production of atomic energy as a final
result.
The goal of building this star in a human laboratory of Sophia-Analysis is to create a
continual transmutation, within the single individuals and within the group itself, which
constantly produces the energies of love, truth and freedom in quantities that are
sufficient for everyone involved. This energy, then, can be funneled toward the
transformation of human life into a work of art.

                                                            
∗
 This chapter is taken from a paper presented in a conference in Milan, Italy, in September 1985, at the IV
National Congress of the Sophia University of Rome. It was published for the first time in French, in my book
“La vie comme oeuvre d’art”, Sophia University of Rome, 1988.

** On this theme see my book “Teoria dell’inconscio esistenziale” {Theory of the Existential Unconscious} and
my interpretation of the film “The Silence of the Lambs” in my book : “La vita come opera d’arte e la vita come
dono spiegata in 41 film” {Life as a work of art and life as a gift explained in 41 films}.

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 I should now define what humanity is, choosing one definition from many possible
ones:
Human beings, with their sharpness and their intelligence,
with their tenacity and consistency,
with their love and their freedom,
with their creativity and their courage,
with their ability to transcend themselves and transmute themselves
are those who render what is impossible, possible, in every field in life.
During the last millennia, human beings have made an uncountable number of
impossible things possible, both in the area of knowledge of and transformation of matter
and in the area of knowledge and transformation of the spirit.
At one time martyrs, ascetics and saints were inconceivable, and then along came
the religions, which produced a great number of them.
There was a time when it would have been impossible to imagine that works of art
of the enormity of those produced by Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci could be
created, or that music could reach the level of perfection and complexity that it did in the
works of Bach or Mozart. And yet all of this has happened.
Today, many fear that such prodigies will never come again and there are many
authoritative representatives of contemporary culture (Argan, Guttuso etc...) who do not
hesitate to speak of the death of art.
I am not able to say whether they are right or wrong but, as the title of my article
states, I do have something new and impossible to propose, regarding matter, spirit and
art.
I want to propose the realization of a very specific myth, that of giving a new
meaning to the life of humanity and, more precisely, that of living one’s very life in such a
way that it is completely transformed into a work of art.
The reason I talk about a myth is because I want to reach everyone, and not just
an elite, even though I am fully aware that only a small number of people will be capable,
historically speaking, of making what is impossible today possible in a short period of
time: living one’s own life like a unique, marvelous work of art.
A myth is something that is aimed at the masses. The particular individuals who
will be able to give form and substance to the myth’s content are distilled from the
masses, once the myth has been created.
At that point, not just those few who have embodied the myth will benefit from its
creation, everyone will.

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 This is the case because there is a perfect type of osmosis that occurs between
those who create the myth and those who embody it, just as what happens, for example,
between rock stars and their fans.
An artist is someone who makes the impossible possible, more than anyone else.
He or she performs the miracle of extracting
unity from what is fragmented
harmony from chaos
beauty from nothingness
joy from pain
strength from weakness
the positive from the negative
good from evil
love from hatred
life from death
poetry and grace
from the banality and drama
of daily life.

An artist creates unity and harmony by making a synthesis of opposites and by

establishing a proper balance among the various parts.
Balance is the result of the ability of artists to transcend themselves, and the
synthesis of a whole is the result of their ability to transmute themselves.
Through transmutation, artists change themselves and then they transform inert
matter into a field of energy (for example, a block of marble becomes an artistic statue), or
rather they transform an energy field, subject to entropy (marble) into an energy field that
goes beyond entropic dissipation (the statue as a work of art).
This does not happen only with art.
An ingenious idea, for example the ability to light a fire, will always produce
ingenious results.
Entropy means that fire can never go back and re-ignite itself once it burns out.
But entropy can do nothing against the invention of being able to light a fire and spread it
from one fire to the next, and to one hundred thousand more.
An idea that is philosophically or scientifically valid produces a field of energy, on
the level of thought, which will never die (psychoanalysis, for example).

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 But a work of art produces an energy field that not only affects thought; it affects
the whole human being on every level, mind, heart and willpower.
- A work of art challenges, provokes, smashes and builds.
- It creates dissent and assent but it doesn’t let anyone remain passive or
indifferent.
- A work of art creates freedom and truth; it creates new spaces, new forms, and
new languages.
- A work of art summarizes the past, interprets the present and opens the door to
the future.
- A work of art is not static, it is dynamic. It is in a continuous state of becoming
something new and it contains the secret of an unstoppable chain reaction. It is
the result of a transformational process that once it is started it never stops.
- A work of art is love. Love in action. Love as a gift and not as possession. Love
that knows how to give of itself and take itself back. Constructive love and
circular love.
- A work of art inspires admiration and emulation. It both divides and unites. It
invites
one to transcend oneself and transmute oneself.
The kind of transmutation that comes about in a work of art has its equivalent in
the transmutation of matter into energy and vice-versa.
Nuclear physicists concentrate high levels of energy and then they bombard atomic nuclei
either to divide them or to fuse them, releasing even greater levels of energy.
But there is a profound difference between the energy produced by the nuclear
physicist and the energy created by an artist.
The first is a type of energy that, even though it is enormous, it dissipates and runs
out. The second neither dissipates nor runs out: it is continuously active and present and
it transcends time.
The similarity between them lies in the fact that both of them operate by reaching
the heart of matter.
The difference lies in the fact that the first, the physicist, extracts energy only from
the nucleus of an atom; the artist, instead, extracts energy first from himself and then
from the medium he has chosen to express himself through.
Therefore the artist must penetrate the heart of matter twice, once inside of himself
and once inside the matter that is his means of expression.
An artist must penetrate, besides the heart of his own matter – his emotions, his
sensations, his experiences – the heart of his spirit, because it is there that he will find

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inspiration and creative intuition. It is with the spirit that he will discover secrets of
matter and form that others have not yet discovered.
The physicist is subject to the law of entropy and the space-time dimension.
The artist goes beyond the space-time dimension: he acts throughout all epochs. A
work of art is immortal and eternal. It has been victorious over not only time but also
death. Perhaps the secret of overcoming entropy lies in these two victories.
Time and death dissolve everything, but they cannot dissolve a work of art and the
field of energy that it contains. Nor can they dissolve a work of art’s ability to create new
transformative energy fields in whoever looks at it, listens to it, or lives it.
Immortality is the impossible dream of every human being.
Can we deduce that every human being aspires to become an artist?
In the West, immortality has been promised to the saints for the last two thousand
years. Before that, in Egypt, it was promised to the Pharaohs and to those who were good.
But not everyone aspires to become a saint or to be good, even when they are
threatened with the terror of final judgment or the weighing of souls (psychostasia).
Too many sacrifices and renunciations are required.
The life of an artist also requires renunciations and sacrifices, but there is a
notable difference. Anyone who decides to follow the path of making their life a work of art
is not required to mutilate any part of him or herself and does not have to avoid any area
of life or of the world.
Everything must be affirmed and transcended, but not negated nor castrated.
Everything is useful for the creation of the work of art. If it is life itself that must be
transformed into a single, immense work of art, it must be a complete work of art that is
the expression of the globality of life and of the totality of one life.
In the search for sainthood, knowledge of evil or its presence are a tragedy, an
accident to be abhorred, an enemy to be fought against, a wrong that must be expiated
through continual penitence.
The artist has a completely different way of looking at the presence and the effects
of evil.
Artists face it with pain and anguish but also with serenity and courage, down to
the deepest recesses of their being. They accept getting their hands dirty so they can
know it and pull it out of hiding and so they can learn to extract good from evil. Above all
they face it so they can learn to blend good and evil together, just like white and black
and light and dark colors are mixed together on a canvas to create the objects, the figures
and the secret life that animate it.
If you want to follow me along this path of life as a work of art, I propose that you
imagine your life to be like a castle that has 100 or more rooms, that you will want to

  17
paint with frescoes, one each year, starting with the ground floor and then passing to the
basement and the higher floors, or you can do the exact opposite if you prefer.
We must first choose the subject and then prepare the drawings and then, when
the plaster is ready, we must transfer the drawings to the walls and ceiling.
How do we choose our subject?
Often life itself will show us, with urgent necessity, which subject is most
important, according to the historical and personal circumstances we find ourselves in.
Sometimes we are dealing with a relationship problem; sometimes there is a
conflict with our parents or children that torments us; sometimes, instead, a neurosis or
a psychosis or a psychosomatic illness explodes suddenly; sometimes a profound
existential crisis brings us to the brink of desperation, or suicide, or continuous
depression. Yet other times it is simply the lack of meaning in the life we are living and
that we are destroying, exactly because since we have no meaning to give it we believe it is
not worth living.
Wherever it is that each one of us might start out from, Sophia-Analysis proposes
that we transform our life into a work of art, and this is the meaning we can give to life.
Sophia-Analysis has a method for being able to achieve this, and it has its own
vision of life and of the world and of the basic coordinates for each.
For further understanding of Sophia-Analysis I suggest you read my other books
and the “Lettera agli uomini” {Letter to Humanity} of the Sophia University of Rome.
Here I will describe some of the more essential points.

1) - The goal of one’s life as a work of art is within us and not outside of ourselves.
It is found within our Personal SELF. Journeys outside of ourselves are much easier than
the journeys we take within ourselves. And yet it is not too difficult to learn how to travel
within so as to learn to know our Personal SELF, which is our inner artist, which contains
the complete design of our life as a work of art and the drawings for our frescoes that we
must paint day after day, year after year.

2) – The Personal SELF, the inner artist, cannot do its work alone: it can make
proposals but it cannot carry them out. It must work together with another element,
which I call the I Person and that I can briefly describe as being the conscious I that is
deeply in touch with the SELF, when it is free of the opacity of the Psychological I and of
the Corporeal I but not separated from either of them.
The I Person is present within a human being from the time they are conceived
and it is a free subject, capable of making choices and of deciding between love and hate;
it has the power to create itself, to transcend itself and to transmute itself. These powers

  18
do not belong to the SELF but to the I Person, along with the power to oppose the SELF
(hatred and the desire for revenge), to isolate it, to paralyze and destroy it.
If the SELF is the inner artist, the I Person is the craftsman, the main artist;
together, the I and the SELF make up the complete, mature artist.

3) – The Personal SELF and the I Person are the great unknowns in human life. To
discover them, to get them to emerge and to strengthen them is the goal we have set for
ourselves by creating the Institutes of Sophia-Analysis and of Existential Personalistic
Anthropology, that are currently spreading throughout Italy and abroad. They offer the
knowledge and the practice of the Sophianalytical method, so as to create life as a work of
art.
We work with the students in these Institutes to help them prepare the drawings
that they will then transfer on the walls and on the vaults of the castles of their own lives.
We don’t just prepare drawings for frescoes, we also prepare scores for choral
symphonies.
These institutes are stellar laboratories of Sophia-Analysis. Stellar, because here
we are able to reproduce the equivalent of stellar processes within the human sphere:
condensation, collapse, high temperatures, high pressure and thermonuclear reactions,
which all are necessary for the birth of a star. We are capable of producing and
concentrating great quantities of the energy of love, freedom and truth. With these we are
able to reach the heart of matter and of the spirit of humanity, and set off a chain
reaction of continuous transmutation, which is the secret to transforming a human life
into a work of art.
In my opinion, the life of a human being must contain these elements for it to be
seen as a work of art in process;
1) – it must have reached a substantial level of harmonious unity between the
various parts
of its being.
This step is of primary importance.

2) – This process of harmonious unity is not stagnant, it is an energy that is

continuously
being created. There will always be new parts that must be unified and one can never
stop in this process, except for some occasional rest.
This means that an unstoppable process of transmutation has begun, not
superficially, but at a deep level, that produces evidence of change visible to both the

  19
subject and to others. This doesn’t happen immediately, but through time, and it comes
about through a dialectical movement of thesis, antithesis and synthesis.

We must note that the spiritual growth of the ascetics and the saints is rigidly
linear and not dialectical. We can also note the normal growth process of a human being
is made up of only three phases; childhood, adolescence and adulthood. When this third
phase is reached, growth is no longer expected, only decline is. Death, then, is
understood by all, saints and ascetics included, to be the final end of growth.
A person who knows they must make their life into a work of art has broken away
from this concept. New growth, new lives and new worlds await them both on this side of
death and on the other side as well. The concept of reincarnation is viewed as being rigid,
punitive and devoid of imagination. This is not the only world where we can reincarnate:
there are infinite worlds. It all depends on discovering the secret of how we can move from
one world to another, from one life to another, rather than winding up into nothingness.
The concept of life as a work of art could very well represent the discovery of this secret.

3) – We call this type of energy that is continuously being created, this process
of harmonious unification that never stops and that is the synthesis and unification of
previous infinite worlds, that is capable of unifying also infinite future worlds, an energy
that transcends time and an energy that transcends the law of entropy. These are two
more essential characteristics of a work of art.

To those dreamers who dedicate themselves to research on perpetual motion we

could say that their dream is correct, but they are mistaken in the choice of the field they
want to realize it in.

This next requisite is, thus, necessary: that human beings learn how to dedicate
themselves to doing research on this new type of energy, and producing it. It can not be
bought in a marketplace nor can it be reproduced in laboratories of chemistry or physics.
It is certain that it can be found in the laboratories of Sophia-Analysis, but nothing
keeps it from being produced in other human laboratories, whether they have already
been invented or have yet to be so.

The parts of human life that must be unified are many, and this is what shows us
how vast our job ahead really is:
1) – The Cosmic SELF, the Personal SELF, the Psychological I, the Corporeal I and
the I Person (microcosm with macrocosm together with mind, heart and will).

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 2) - The I and the You, the I and the Us the I and the Others, the I and the Polis,
both the one the individual belongs to and the planetary one (the I and the
Choral SELF).
3) - The I and the mother, the I and the father, the I and its ancestors, both recent
and
far back in time (the I and its roots).
4) – The I and history, both modern and ancient. The I and science, the I and
philosophy, the I and religion, the I and art. The I and the West. The I and the East (the I
with its trunk and branches).

The path of today’s wisdom, and of life as a work of art, is represented by the
ability to make all these unifications, which require a continual synthesis of opposites, a
continual transcendence and a continual transmutation.
It could seem like a utopian project, if not altogether megalomanic and absurd.
It all depends on what your mentality is and what you want to hold on to.
It is not the first time that courageous people who actually changed history were
initially judged and rejected as being visionaries and madmen.
Here we could remember Christopher Columbus as well as the man who opened
the Northwest passage, who is less renowned.

It is not easy to give up the mental categories that we are accustomed to. It is
much easier to consider them sacred and inviolable and use them to judge and condemn
those who step away from them and disturb our certainties and our vision of life and the
world.
Today, thousands and thousands of people travel back and forth across the route
opened up by Christopher Columbus. All of this could not be foreseen a few hundred
years ago, and yet, now in the age of the jumbo jet, it is happening.

Thousands and thousands of people travel today the route opened up by Freud as
well. This, too, was unthinkable only fifty years ago.

On the pathway of living life as a work of art that I am indicating, how many will
want to try to make possible what today is impossible?
It is impossible to answer this question, but I believe that one day there will be
thousands.

  21
 If we now limit the number of unifications that must be done, it is without question
that the first, most urgent step for many people is to unify their personal history.
This history begins with the trauma experienced around the time of our conception
and continues on with the various facts, both traumatic and non-traumatic, that have to
do with our intrauterine and post-uterine experiences from birth onward.
Our artistic ingenuity must be put to good use to be able to creatively unify all
these various experiences into a new form, the artistic form that we will impress on our
matter and our spirit. The form of our matter and spirit were not chosen by us, they were
assigned to us by history, but they do constitute our essence as well as our very
existence.
Changing and transforming this essences as well as our very existence can only be
the result of a work of art.
I would here like to tell you how Michelangelo created his David.
The long block of marble from which he made his statue had been laying
abandoned for years in the courtyard of the Opera del Duomo in Florence. It had already
been partially sculpted and there was a large hole in it.
The previous sculptor had begun sculpting the block and made the huge hole in it,
but was unable to complete the work that he had planned. Others after him were also
incapable of finishing it.
Michelangelo had gone to the authorities more than once to ask them to give him
the block of marble, but they had always refused him. It was only thanks to his
stubbornness that they finally gave him the marble, almost as though it were an insult.
This block of marble, that had already been cut and hewn according to other
people’s choices, and then was chipped and abandoned in a courtyard by presumptuous
and inexpert hands, seems to be very similar to our own lives. We receive our lives from
history and from our parents, with a huge hole in our I and another, even bigger one, in
our hearts.

We are never happy with ourselves nor with how we are and how they made us
become. We are full of conditioning of all types and of thousands of traumatizing
manipulations.
At this point it would be easy to decide to lie abandoned like victims in the
courtyard of history, passing the time by blaming others and by making them the object
of our hatred and our need for revenge.

If by chance our inner artist, our Personal SELF, should come to knock with both
humility and insistence at the door of the authorities, our prideful and narcissistic I , and

  22
it should ask to use our life creatively instead of egotistically wasting it, what will we
answer?
Will we give our consent, or will we mercilessly deride the artist?
Our life destiny lies in this choice.
Our destiny is created by our own hands and not by others’. It does not depend on
hands that belong to the smaller powers like our parents, or great powers, like those who
rule nations, or even the Omnipotent, who is said to rule history but which is, in essence,
only a projection of our own theomania.
Yes, every one of these hands can mold and condition our lives in a thousand
ways, but they cannot keep the SELF, the inner artist, from molding and recreating
everything that the others have made and destroyed. They cannot keep the SELF from
giving us a new life, one that is immortal and eternal.

But the I Person can keep this from happening. It all depends on its decision, based
on either love or hatred, to either follow the plans of the primary artist, the SELF, and
work together with it, or to systematically silence it, tie it up and destroy it.

Meanwhile, Michelangelo’s David is there like a powerful, vital energy field that can
unmask our passivity and our existential lies. It is there to show that indeed the
impossible can be made possible, not only once but an infinite number of times.
This statue tells the story of David, a young shepherd, who used a single river rock
to knock out Goliath the giant and with him the arrogance of the Philistines, despite Saul
and the Jews’ derision.
Here is something that was considered impossible and that was made possible
thanks to Michelangelo’s genius, strength and courage. It seemed impossible that a
useless block of marble could become a masterpiece that thousands of visitors from every
age and every part of the world have lined up to see.
I myself saw it many years ago, and I have never forgotten it.
Today I have a copy of it sitting on my desk that reminds me, when I need to be
reminded, that I can always make the impossible possible. I can always knock down the
omnipotence of the various Goliaths that I encounter both within myself and outside of
myself, with humility, strength and courage, and thus try to make my life become a work
of art.
Here you could very well ask me: but are you doing what you are proposing to us?
And I could answer: what difference does it make?
Leonardo da Vinci studied the laws of flight but he was unable to fly.

  23
 Today we can.
Or I could also say to you: yes, by using a very rudimentary caravel I have landed
on the shores of the new world I am proposing to you. But you could build not just a
caravel, you could build a Concorde or even a spaceship.
Why not give it a try?
There is no doubt that if your highest goal and your most important ideal is to just
reach psychological, physical, spiritual or economic wellbeing, this project is not for you.
But if your most pressing ideal is to truly become yourselves, to learn how to love others
with truth and authenticity, to learn to be loved by others like you have never been loved
before, to experience joy and to develop life, then dedicate yourself body and soul to this
project. It will be the most exciting and passionate journey that you have ever dreamed of
making.
If your most noble ambition is to become immortal and to have a life that
continuously renews itself; if living in only this world is not enough for you because you
are hungry for others, then you will enjoy living your life like a work of art and you will
enjoy working night and day, like artists do, on the masterpiece of your life. You will know
how to accept all the anguish and pain, the fatigue and discouragement, the conflict and
tension, the love and the hate, the solitude and abandonment. But you will also
experience ecstasy, joy and success.

Artists’ lives are often disorganized, if not downright tragic or at least dramatic,
especially in the realm of relationships.
Their works might be immortal masterpieces but their lives are disasters.
It may seem paradoxical that I propose to you to become artists and not wise men
and women, when it is the artists who are those who have most mistreated the art of
living by preferring to couple their genius with dissoluteness rather than with wisdom.

Well, doesn’t it seem like the time has come to change something?

Artists give us great gifts and they have opened a very important route before us:
the route of art, which truly exists and is not just in our imagination.
We are now ready to commence this same route, to see whether or not it is possible
to realize the opus of our lives, not through alchemy or asceticism, sainthood or
philosophy, but by transferring the principles of art to life itself and by working on our
lives with artistic techniques.

  24
 If art is dead because it no longer produces masterpieces, we want to make use of
art and make it live for us so we can make ourselves works of art. As Persons, not as
masks of ourselves, or as puppets and robots.
By now there really isn’t much difference between ourselves and artists: our lives
have become just as dramatic, if not more so.
We must learn to work on the drama of our lives and the urgency we feel to do so is
great.
We cannot live like saints or gurus, these are paths that are full of dangers, they
are inaccessible and they are often ambiguous. We want to try to live like artists. This
possibility has not yet been explored. And we can become artists of ourselves even if we
start as late as eighty years old.
It is possible to do if every one of us gives up trying to be the very best, divine,
exceptional artist.

I don’t want to be what I am not.

I want to be myself and for me to become an artist of myself I have all the genius
and creativity that I need.
They are both found within my Personal SELF; all I have to do is to let it emerge,
day after day, year after year, freeing myself of all the obstacles that suffocate and pollute
it.
And even if I am not a great artist, I can always work together with other artists
and create a great work of group art that is unique in all the world!

The true obstacle is not whether or not I have enough talent and geniality to be an
artist of my own life.
To be brief, I will indicate here only three of the various true obstacles that can be
found.

The first is hatred which has been repressed since the intrauterine experience,
which splits a human being with a division that is even more dramatic than the one
between reason and feelings or between mind and heart. This is because repressed hatred
splits the very spirit of the individual, which then disintegrates into a thousand fragments
and causes a loss of contact with the deep SELF.
But while repressed hatred on one hand creates a splitting, on the other it
expresses a need for security. It maintains the unity of both the internal and external love
object and it is very difficult to give this security up.

  25
 If I repress my hatred, I convince myself that the love object is still whole and that I
have not yet destroyed it with my hatred. And, if I haven’t destroyed it I am not guilty of
anything, and if I am not guilty I can continue to live.
So then, is it not possible to give up repressed hatred?
Yes it is, but only after one has regained the security of their ability to make
amends, which today has been lost. This ability has paradoxically been both encouraged
and very much compromised by the Christian religion.

If humanity is partially (as the Catholics say) or completely (as the Protestants say)
corrupted by original guilt and only Christ, who is God, can repair this wrong, what
ability to make such amends does an individual have?
If my original, primordial guilt is for having attacked and destroyed my maternal
love object since the time of my paradisiacal intrauterine life, and I have no ability to
make amends to my mother because I am full of only hatred and have no love, who could
ever save me? If my salvation does not come from myself but only comes from outside
myself, if I am still inside, that is still inside the womb, who could possibly save me?
God cannot save me inside the womb and I am still inside my mother’s womb. Nor
will I ever be able to get out of it alive, if I first don’t forgive her and make amends and
rebuild her as a love object that is whole. The mother must become a whole love object
that I have both attacked and also repaired and re-unified within myself, with my own
love and not with the love of another, even if the Other is with a capital O.
If, instead, my Personal SELF is already with me inside the womb, and it is the
source of my ability to love, it will be sufficient that my I Person decides with every ounce
of conviction it has to use this source to save me from my hatred, be it in the present or
in the future.

Nicodemus, more than any other, asked a crucial question of Christ: “can a man
return to his mother’s womb so as to be reborn?”
Only today is humanity becoming capable of finding the answer that Nicodemus
couldn’t find.

There is no need to go back into the maternal womb. The fact is that we have never
really come out of it completely. We are partly in it and partly outside of it. Either we have
been born only half way or we haven’t been born at all.
Only those who undergo the strenuous task of individual analysis know what it
means to go completely back into the maternal womb so as to be able to leave it
completely, safely and soundly, after having faced and resolved the trauma they
experienced during their intrauterine lives.**

  26
 If immersing ourselves in religion means looking for a substitute mother so we can
escape our problems with our real mothers, no salvation will ever be authentic.
Human beings will always be split. They will be dogged by their hatred, their lies
and their need for revenge even though they may become known and venerated as saints
by thousands and thousands of people.
If we had greater freedom in our way of looking at things, we would see that many
historical figures that we consider to be our fathers are no longer worthy of our love.

We can no longer walk away from the truth that is within us.
Mankind is the only subject that is responsible for all the evil and all the good that
it is capable of creating.
Humans can hate and destroy or they can love and make amends to that which
they have hated and destroyed. To do so there is no need for indispensible external
intervention. All we need is to have full faith in ourselves and in our infinite ability to love.

While others need to project the source of love that can save them outside of
themselves and this can help them rebuild faith in themselves, this is all well and good.
But if it is exactly this projection that destroys people’s faith in themselves, then it is
important to recognize this projection as being toxic, and that as a strategy it must be
abandoned.

Can the Christian religion transcend itself and give people back their truth and
their freedom? Transcendence does not mean negating oneself, it means losing oneself to
be able to find oneself again. It is hard to give up the idea of God that has been passed
down to us by the philosophers and the theologians, but it is not impossible. Buddhists
have no God and yet they constitute one of the most important religions in the world.

Atomic destruction is not an ineluctable event, nor should averting it be left to

divine grace that will come to illuminate the hearts of the powerful. We shouldn’t wait for
an extraterrestrial civilization to come and save us either. That would be sheer madness.

The destiny of humanity lies in the hearts of each one of us. And in each one of our
hearts there is enough hatred and enough love to either destroy us or save us.

  27
 We are all inside of the planet earth’s womb. We can attack and destroy our mother
earth for all the bad things it has done to us or we can love her and forgive her, we can
love and forgive ourselves and then wish to detach from this womb – grateful for the life it
has given us – and leave it in tact, so we can go to populate this universe and others as
well.

This could very well be the soul of a new religion that has its roots in space, that is
authentically concerned about saving the planet and the human beings that live on it,
rather than just about saving and perpetuating itself.

Coming back to repressed hatred, beyond the need to preserve life in a desperate
attempt to deny any type of wrong, there is another reason why we could prefer to not
give it up: this has to do with our hurt pride and our need to be repaid, rather than
mended, and remain in the satisfaction we get when we hold on to our need for revenge
with tenacity and increasing subtlety.

What prevails here is a sense of security that is derived from power.

One can maintain one’s inner division for their whole life and suffer the
consequences until they die, but they can never give up the security they derive, be it
conscious or unconscious, from having at least one type of power: the power of revenge.
This is an unhealthy type of power but it is, nevertheless, power. It safeguards the
apparent unity of the I and it gives it the security of being able to survive.
Hatred chooses to survive, and not live.
This type of choice wants nothing to do with life as a work of art.
The power to get revenge has been built on the model of the vindictive God of the
Bible.
If God, who is love and forgiveness, was not placated and did not forgive Adam and
Eve their sins until after the holocaust of his favorite son dying on the cross, what will
human beings need to placate and forgive all the evil that befalls in life, from the first
moments of their existence? What holocaust will they have to go through?
Will an atomic holocaust be enough?
In the meantime, who will be the chosen one who will have to pay for all the
offenses inflicted on the narcissistic I?
Our mother. Our father. Our children. Our partners, ourselves? Or all of these,
passionately entwined in a slow but inexorable daily martyrdom?

  28
 The second great obstacle in becoming artists of ourselves is the one that has to do
with another choice. This choice is made when we either cannot or do not want to give up
our repressed hatred and rather than creating a unity within ourselves and the world we
opt for the strategy of maintaining a symbiotic connection with our mothers and with the
world.
This type of strategy inevitably transforms a healthy symbiosis into an unhealthy,
sadomasochistic one, where sadomasochism, which inextricably ties the torturer and the
tortured together, guarantees that the connection remains and that the pleasure that
comes from it is also safeguarded.
This is an unhealthy type of pleasure, but it is, nevertheless, a pleasure that allows
us to live and to calmly give up the joy and pleasure of living life as a work of art.

Repressed hatred and unhealthy, symbiotic enmeshment are the main enemies
that can keep us from creating unity within ourselves and with the world outside
ourselves. They are, thus, the greatest obstacles to our ability to make our lives a work of
art.
But there is yet a third one that is actually the cause of the first two.
If we want to detach from our mother and at the same time we hate her deeply and
we repress this hatred, there must be one essential reason why we do so.
My whole thought regarding life as a work of art is based on the constant thread of
death and on the search for the best way to conquer it.

Every human being has a deep fear regarding death and every human being is
forced to invent a solution for this problem, whether it is a good one or a bad one.
If we ask ourselves what the very worst solution to have been invented so far is,
which is also one that has been universally taught, we can perhaps agree that it is the
creation of a phallic identity.
The essential characteristics of a phallic identity are, in my opinion, two: love
based on power and possession and life lived as a constant search for power over others
and the power to kill other people.
Said in a simpler, more linear way: every time human beings are faced with the
fear of death, they immediately try to find a way to kill someone else (and the worst death
is not necessarily a physical one, it is often a moral or existential one).
This is the essence of a phallic identity: how to kill someone else so as to create the
illusion that we can avoid it ourselves.

  29
 When it is expressed in an intimate relationship it becomes: how can I kill the
other’s freedom and take over my loved one’s life? If the other person’s freedom dies, I
don’t die, because I possess the other person’s life, I possess life.
The fact that this eventually reveals itself for what it is, an illusion or a lie, has no
importance whatsoever. Even though I haven’t been able to completely win over my fear,
at least I have been able to put off facing it, and that is enough.

When a mother conceives a child and this mother has assimilated from her own
mother and father the basic choice of a phallic identity, in response to the problem of
death, obviously her goal is going to be how she can kill her child’s desire for freedom.
This goal strikes the child from as early on as the embryonic and fetal stages. It is there
that the child’s hatred for its mother begins, and it is there that the child begins to
repress its hatred, due to the presence of its love both for its mother and for itself.

Repressed hatred is a defense mechanism. If on one hand it creates a splitting, on

the other it also assures that the process of symbiotic union will continue, which is a
process that is absolutely indispensable in the development of fetal and post-fetal life. But
this union, in this manner, is created around the phallus of the mother, which is the
power with which she invades and violently penetrates her child’s life so she can possess
it, and make it her shield against death.

The child’s life is then structured, on one hand, around its hatred for the mother’s
phallic violence, and on the other it is based on the assimilation of the same phallic
identity. This comes about through the defense mechanism known as identification with
the aggressor.
Then, when faced with the fear of death, the child, too, assimilates the solution
that the mother has adopted, and will try to kill the mother.

From trying to kill the mother to trying to kill life the distance is very short, and
practically ineluctable.
Our era is just one step away from doing this in a completely irreparable way,
unless we stop ourselves in time.
If these ideas of mine seem to be very difficult to verify and you feel that you cannot
accept them, reflect for just a minute about what happens when you use the power to
judge and condemn your partner’s, your parent’s or your children’s actions.
Isn’t a condemning type of judgment a way to kill someone because of your own
refusal to face the death of some part of your own way of thinking, and your own way of
looking at life?

  30
 And how many times a day is your mind busy with such judgmental
condemnations and death sentences?
Do some research in this direction, and there you will find the presence of your
phallic identity.

If you want to free yourselves of it, now you will know what you can tell yourselves:
an artist is someone who faces death and who transforms it into life for themselves and
for others.
A phallic person is one who is afraid of creatively facing death and so decides to kill
themselves and others as well.
If by chance you want to start becoming artists in this very moment, I beg you to
not kill me with your judgments and condemnations for what I am proposing to you here;
face the death of your old ideas and your old identity creatively, and give birth to a new
way of living.

  31
 What does “Life as a Work of Art” Mean for Me?∗

When I came into life we were in the midst of a full-blown war and my first
imprinting came from that: the fear of death, physical and moral violence, horror, terror, a
continuous feeling of guilt, life to be hated and castrated in every way and desire.

We all know that once we acquire certain imprinting we can overcome it only with
great difficulty.

In this kind of landscape, thinking of life as a work is like saying: let’s grow roses
in the desert or cultivate flowers on a glacier.

And even so, when I came to know about Sophia-Analysis and how it was inviting
me to live life as a work of art, I immediately held on to this hope and I committed myself
fully to the realization of this project that seemed like a complete absurdity.

After having dedicated many years to this goal I still have not completely changed
my imprinting. It would be absurd for me to hope to do so. But I have built many new
ones to set alongside the old ones, day by day, with tenacity and perseverance. I have
never given up, even though I have often felt discouraged and disheartened.

Life as a work of art has meant and continues to mean for me that I must
continually make a synthesis of opposites, which in my case are:

Life and death,

hatred for life and love for life,

                                                            
∗
 Presented by Paola Mercurio at the IV National Congress of the Sophia University of Rome in Milan, Italy, 
in  September  1985,  and  published  for  the  first  time  in  French,  in  my  book  “La  vie  comme  oeuvre  d’art”,  
Sophia University of Rome, 1988.

  32
 a closing into trauma and an opening out of it,

bit by bit, so as to exhaust its power;

fear of life and a desire for life,

fear of others:

- everyone is an enemy –

and the desire to encounter others:

the horror of anything dirty, ugly and evil

and the enjoyment of what is pleasurable, beautiful and good:

the terror of violence and of being invaded by others

and trust in others’ ability to love.

I haven’t made Penelope’s shroud, nor have I invented the art of counterpoint. I
am making my Persian carpet and I have before me a great mess of threads and patterns;
I know that I will see the totality of its beauty when I will have finished.

This will be my work of art.

  33
 CHAPTER II

∗
Choral Group Research on Life as a Work of Art

(text only)

How should we educate our children?

What ideals and goals should we transmit to them?

What should we teach them regarding life?

We want to educate them and make them full of energy, capable of earning money and
being successful. This is fine, but what then?

Do you want to unconsciously force them to live so as to satisfy your needs that have not
been satisfied?

Health, money, attachment to the family and a good reputation: are these the only things
that you hope for your children?

Can’t you imagine something more?

If you have been attracted to the adventures of Jonathan Livingston Seagull, as

poetically described by Richard Bach, maybe you will also be attracted to the adventures
of life as a work of art that I want to propose to you.

“Make your children into artists capable of living their life like one great
work of art”.

What does that mean?

What does that mean in practical terms?

                                                            
∗
 This was originally a paper presented in a conference in Prato, Italy, on April 30th, 1987. 

  34
 If you start to learn to do it for yourselves, you will become precious role models for
your children to imitate.

First of all we must ask ourselves: what is a work of art?

And how can we become artists?

Everyone who wants to become an artist first of all signs up to follow art courses.
There, by following the masters of the past as well as the present, one learns what art is,
what techniques one must perfect and how one must work with constant discipline and
tenacity, day after day, to reach the goal of art.

Do art courses exist for learning to become artists of your own life?

They do exist and they are organized by the Sophia University of Rome and its
Institutes.

One needs talent as well as an education to become an artist.

What kind of talent does one need to become an artist of their own life?

It takes the courage to be authentically oneself,

the decision to want to learn about one’s deepest self

and the decision to learn to love oneself, love others and be loved, in freedom and in
truth.

What is a work of art?

Take a block of marble, transform it with your labor and give it a shape that inspires
admiration for its beauty, its strength and for the life that you have been able to instill in it
and you will have created a work of art.

If you do this with any type of matter: wood, bronze, weaving, stone etc. ... you will
have created other works of art.

Now take your life and work on it in such a way as to imprint upon it a new shape, which
is original and which expresses beauty, strength and harmony and you will have made

  35
your life into a work of art. You will have saved it from the banality of daily life and by the
anonymity of the masses.

Otherwise, let’s take the example of a musical instrument: a violin, a standup bass
or an entire orchestra. Someone who knows nothing about it would not be able to do
anything with them, but an artist who has talent and who has studied at length would be
able to pull out a theme, a melody or a symphony.

If we want to, we can imagine our lives like a musical instrument that has four
strings: the body, the psyche, the I Person and the SELF.

It is a work of art to be able to harmonize these four strings and make music with
them.

If you want to try to do so then you must learn to:

- experience and understand the Corporeal I,

- experience and understand the Psychological I,

- experience and understand the SELF, the Personal SELF, the Choral SELF
and the Cosmic SELF,

- experience and understand the I Person.

In the movie Ben Hur we are shown the idea of how each one of us has four horses
that we must harmonize if we want to win in the race of life. This is an idea that I really
like and I would like you to see this film or at least the part that shows the race.

Once we have learned to understand and explore these four strings, or these four
fabulous horses, the first thing we must do is create harmony between the I Person and
the SELF.

This harmony, which is a fundamental one, will guide us and give us the push
towards all the other possible harmonies found in human life.

Life as a work of art means living in harmony with oneself, with others and with life.

It is an even greater work to know how to produce harmony around oneself.

  36
 Inner harmony emits vibrations that irradiate outwards and are perceptible from
outside ourselves.

Inner and outer music are two indispensible elements for a better quality of life.

But be careful, because the obsession to obtain moral perfection and the type of continual
feeling of guilt that comes from it restrict life to only one relationship: that between the I
with the Super Ego and the Ideal I, which produces a cacophony that does not allow the
production of any type of music or harmony, nor does it allow us to listen with pleasure.

What do we have to do to free ourselves of this obsessive, deafening cacophony?

Can the help of a group be an effective answer? Our experience tells us that it can,
as long as the group is structured in the following manner:

a) the group is a place where the ideal of perfection is demolished through a process of
implosion and explosion;

b) the group is a place where one can experience the body, the psyche, the SELF and the
I Person and learn how to refine the ability to listen to each one of these four voices;

c) the group is a laboratory where one can listen to one’s own music (deep emotions,
both one’s own and those of others);

d) the group is a privileged space where one can train the I Person to make decisions;

e) the group is a place where one can unify all one’s various parts and synthesize all the
opposites in life, while learning how to respect the rhythm of the dialectical process
inherent in every growth process;

f) the group is a source of truth, freedom, love and creativity and of the joy that springs
from the unification and utilization of these four specific types of energy;

g) the group is a concentration of higher energies that alone are capable of helping us
learn what our historical essence and existence is and what kind of power we have to
transmute them into a new essence and a new existence.

This transmutation is part of the creative act that produces a work of art.

Marble has its own essence and existence before it is worked on by a sculptor and
afterwards it acquires a new essence and a new existence: the ones that the artist is
capable of instilling in it.

  37
h) the group is like a star, where the same life processes of a star are reproduced, which
are: condensation, collapse and thermonuclear reaction.

How often have you called your children: “my little star”?

When they were little it was easy to say this to them. Then they grow up and become
turbulent, difficult, restless, rebellious, lazy and unwilling to do anything. How difficult it
is to now call them “my little star”.

You probably don’t know that stars are also turbulent and restless, but they never
lose sight of their purpose which is to shine and give energy to the whole cosmos.

Don’t lose sight of your purpose, which is to make your children into artists of their
lives, to make your children into stars that shine their own light for themselves, for you
and for others.

Keep on working on this, don’t give up when you come up against difficulties and
the big and little dramas of life; keep your ideal high for yourselves and for your children.

Stars continuously die and are reborn: this is why they live forever.

Try to learn their secret and teach it to your children.

Follow the example of the stars, you yourselves have within you the same purpose
and the same ability as the stars.

Astrophysics tells us that we are all children of the stars. The atoms that we are
made up of were created by the stars over billions of years.

We are all stardust and not mud. And inside ourselves we carry an infinite quantity
of energy of truth, of love and of freedom.

It’s true, we do not yet know how to use this energy wisely and often we use it
wrongly and we hurt ourselves and we hurt others terribly as well.

If we want to follow the ideal of becoming artists of our lives so we can teach it to
our children, perhaps we will know how to better use our energies and we will also learn
how to artistically compose evil with good and pain with joy.

  38
 CHAPTER III

∗
Choral Group Research on Life as a Work of Art

with an introduction and commentary (text in italics)

I have my paper written out, but first I would like to talk “off the cuff” about the
main concepts I would like to share with you, and then I will read my paper.

As you can see there is also a television; I will have you watch a segment of a film
(Ben-Hur) and I will share with you some ideas I think are important there.

The essential concept I want to share with you is this: you all know what an artist
is; an artist is someone who works on something, for example marble, stone, wood or
bronze and creates works of art. Or an artist can be someone who has a musical
instrument, such as a violin, a trumpet or a guitar and is capable of playing music on
that instrument which is also a work of art.

What I want to ask you is this: do you think it is possible to apply the field of art,
which artists have created over many centuries of human history, to our personal lives? Is
it possible to live as though our very life were a musical instrument and we were asked to
produce music and harmony with it?

Is it possible to make such a leap?

And the second question is: is it possible today to not only study this step for
ourselves, but to also pass it on to our children or to the children we work with?

Is it possible, in this historic moment where there is a collapse of many ideals and
it is not clear what ideals we can grasp on to so our lives have meaning, so young people’s
lives have meaning, so our children’s lives have meaning as they grow up, to propose to
them a new ideal such as life as a work of art? And if this is possible, how can we do so?

This is what I want to address in this paper.

I know that many things are quite heavy and a bit difficult to assimilate right away
and that is why I have decided to first write and then read to you. While we go forward I
will stop every once and a while and explain some things better. Afterwards, during the
question and answer period, you can ask me questions and I will better elaborate on what
                                                            
∗
 This was originally a paper presented in a conference in Prato, Italy, on April 30th, 1987. 

  39
I have said. For now I will read my paper, which is entitled : Choral group research on
life as a work of art.

How should we educate our children?

What ideals and goals should we transmit to them?

What should we teach them regarding life?

We want to educate them and make them full of energy, capable of earning money and
being successful. This is fine, but what then?

Do you want to unconsciously force them to live so as to satisfy your needs that have not
been satisfied?

Health, money, attachment to the family and a good reputation: are these the only things
that you hope for your children?

Can’t you imagine something more?

If you have been attracted to the adventures of Jonathan Livingston seagull, as

poetically described by Richard Bach, maybe you will also be attracted to the adventures of
life as a work of art that I want to propose to you.

“Make your children into artists capable of living their life like one great
work of art”.

What does that mean?

What does that mean in practical terms?

If you start to learn to do it for yourselves, you will become precious role models for
your children to imitate.

First of all we must ask ourselves: what is a work of art?

And how can we become artists?

  40
 Everyone who wants to become an artist first of all signs up to follow art courses.
There, by following the masters of the past as well as the present, one learns what art is,
what techniques one must learn to perfection and how one must work with constant
discipline and tenacity, day after day, to reach the goal of art.

Do art courses exist for learning to become artists of your own life?

They do exist and they are organized by the Sophia University of Rome and its
Institutes.

One needs talent as well as an education to become an artist.

What kind of talent does one need to become an artist of their own life?

It takes the courage to be authentically oneself,

the decision to want to learn about one’s deepest self

and the decision to learn to love oneself, love others and be loved, in freedom and in
truth.

What is a work of art?

Take a block of marble, transform it with your labor and give it a shape that inspires
admiration for its beauty, its strength and for the life that you have been able to instill in it
and you will have created a work of art.

If you do this with any type of matter: wood, bronze, weaving, stone etc. ... you will
have created other works of art.

Now take your life and work on it in such a way as to imprint upon it a new shape, which is
original and which expresses beauty, strength and harmony and you will have made your
life into a work of art. You will have saved it from the banality of daily life and by the
anonymity of the masses.

  41
 Otherwise, let’s take the example of a musical instrument: a violin, a standup bass
or an entire orchestra. Someone who knows nothing about it would not be able to do
anything with them, but an artist who has talent and who has studied at length would be
able to pull out a theme, a melody or a symphony.

If we want to, we can imagine that our lives are like a musical instrument that has
four strings: the body, the psyche, the I Person and the SELF.

It is a work of art to be able to harmonize these four strings and make music with
them.

If you want to try to do so then you must learn to:

- experience and understand the Corporeal I,

- experience and understand the Psychological I,

- experience and understand the SELF, the Personal SELF, the Choral SELF
and the Cosmic SELF,

- experience and understand the I Person.

In the movie Ben-Hur we are shown the idea of how each one of us has four horses that
we must harmonize if we want to win in the race of life. This is an idea that I really like and
I would like you to see this film or at least the part that shows the race.

Observe carefully the first scenes of this film.

As soon as the horses appear watch Ben-Hur’s behavior with his horses.

Look at the four horses and at Ben-Hur on the chariot.

These are the preparations for the race that will be held later on.

What I want you to observe carefully is how Ben-Hur goes up to each horse and how he
speaks to them.

  42
Each one is named after a star: Aldebaran, Righel, Antares ...

Look at how Ben-Hur manages to enter into deep contact and get on to the same
wavelength with each of the horses.

Those who have seen the film will remember the story of the conflict between Messala and
Ben-Hur. I would like to ask you to not look at only the director’s intention in showing us
this race, his symbolic and artistic intention which has to do with presenting the battle
between Good and Evil.

I would like to ask you to not read it in this way but rather to look at it as the battle of life
against death and the way death can be overcome.

Not the battle of Good against Evil but life’s ability to overcome and transcend death.

This is possible only if we make our lives a work of art. Works of art have overcome death
and they live forever, even after the artist who has created them has been dead for
centuries or millennia.

This is the theme I would like to suggest while watching the race.

There are nine contestants and nine chariots, each one pulled by four horses.

And here comes Messala.

His horses are all black and he himself is dressed in black, while Ben-Hur’s horses are
white. Black is a color which symbolizes death and white is a color that symbolizes life.

The wheels on Messala’s chariot are “doctored”.

Just watch and see what it is capable of doing.

And have you noticed that Messala has a whip and Ben-Hur doesn’t?

The relationship that Messala has with his horses is a violent one, whereas Ben-Hur
communicates with his horses and has a harmonious relationship with them.

Let’s try to reason in this way: the director’s artistic intention in making this film, and in
particular in showing us the chariot race, was to tell us: “Here, I am showing you a
synthesis of what human life is all about”.

  43
The race could very well be the image of what human life is like, of what men and
women’s lives are like.

What happens?

There is a bit of everything during life.

First of all, our lives must face the problem of death.

We know that we want to affirm our lives, but we also know that there is death and we
must learn how to face this reality, which dominates human life.

Time that keeps on ticking is death’s ally.

In the film, we can see time ticking away in the nine rounds that must be done in the
Arena during the race.

How often do we say: “Life is like an Arena”, or “The Arena of life”?

So we have death, we have time ticking away and then we have unexpected events, we
have traumatic events and all sorts of things that happen; we saw all kinds of things
during the race.

Then we have the problem of destructive aggression, of both our own and others’
wickedness.

Think of what Esther, the female protagonist in the movie, says to Ben-Hur: “You have
Messala inside yourself”. Messala is the Roman horseman dressed in black.

We have to look at life not as a race against other human beings; in this case, the other
contestants represent various parts of life or of ourselves.

We must combat against death, against time, against unpredictable events, against
chaos, against destructive aggressiveness, against evil, the evil that we have within and
the evil that we encounter outside of ourselves.

And then yet again, don’t forget, who is it that made their presence known with all their
yelling in the Circus?

The whole populace, which was sitting in the seats of the Arena.

How can this be translated in terms of human life?

I would suggest looking at it like this: the continuous, constant torment of other people’s
judgment of us and of our actions. In other words, the constant torment of the judgment
that we ourselves make towards ourselves, about our actions and decisions, that either
we own as how we ourselves are judgmental, or we project it onto others as judgment of

  44
them. As a consequence we are continuously afraid of others’ judgment and we are
continuously conditioned by it.

In what sense conditioned?

Conditioned if we want to make decisions or choices, if we want to authentically be

ourselves or if, instead, we want to just put on a mask because that way we can better
face judgment.

So, here we have found the symbolic meaning of the populace that is sitting around and
is continuously yelling so its presence is felt.

And this we have looked at as being similar to the judgment that continuously yells inside
of us and that we hear others yelling at us, by those who are around us and whose
judgment heavily conditions our actions and our lives.

Can you see how many things are present in life and how many things we must face? But
what tools do we have available to do so?

In the film, Ben-Hur had four horses and so did the others.

As I was saying before, the human being has four horses and these four horses can be
seen as being the body, the psyche, the SELF and the I Person.

And now I would like to slightly modify what I said so we have an even greater resonance
with the scenes in the film.

Let’s imagine we have four horses: our body is a horse; our psyche is a horse; then we
have the Personal SELF (which I will define in a minute) as the third horse; the fourth
horse is the Cosmic, Choral SELF. The I Person is the charioteer (I will define this as well).

You all know what the body is, or at least you have an understanding of it that is more or
less correct. It may be an approximate definition of the body, but you all know more or
less how to recognize the existence of the body.

It is more difficult to understand what the psyche is, or the Psychological I.

When I speak of the psyche I am referring to everything that allows us to feel our desires,
our passions, the judgment mentioned above, both our own and that of others, and to
make decisions based on these elements: our desires, our passions and ideals and
judgment of these ideals, both our own and that of others.

The psyche is also mental activity. It is the ability to perceive things through our senses;
the psyche is our ability to reason, to think and to fantasize.

How can I help you understand the difference between the psyche and the body?

  45
It is important that you understand how these two horses can run in opposite directions
from each other, instead of running together.

One very simple example can be the following: according to you, the need to follow fashion
is a need of the body or of the psyche?

Can you see how simple this is?

The body needs to be clothed when it is cold, and to be undressed, or dressed as little as
possible, when it is hot. These are needs of the body.

So, is fashion one of the body’s needs?

No. Who is it that needs it?

Fashion is a need of the psyche, of the Psychological I.

And the Psychological I can impose itself on the Corporeal I, on the body, to the point
where it forces the body to undergo extenuating diets because the Psychological I
demands that it do so, can’t it? Or because other people’s judgment of us, or our own
judgment commands us to.

Is this clear to everyone?

Good. Now you have seen how, in this case, the Corporeal I and the Psychological I are two
horses that can either get along or can not get along at all, because the Psychological I
forces the Corporeal I to follow its laws, instead of harmonizing the laws of one with those
of the other.

Here is another example.

Let’s take it from politics.

In a while a political campaign will begin. Imagine what the life of a politician is like
during a campaign, when they are going all over the country, twenty-four hours a day, so
as to get votes for their candidacy.

How do you think they live?

Do they live following the body’s needs?

They live according to their desire to get as many votes as possible so they can be elected.

Is this a need of the body?

For now let’s say that it’s a need of the Psychological I, but we can also say that it is a
need of the I Person.

  46
Let’s try to understand the relationship between these two horses: the body on one side,
the psyche on the other.

And now let’s introduce the third horse, represented by what I have called the Personal
SELF, and the fourth, which is the Choral Self and Cosmic SELF.

What is the SELF in my theory, in my conception of humanity?

You can understand it quickly by looking at it in the following way.

We live on the Earth; the Earth is a planet and it belongs to the solar system.

There is the sun and there are nine planets; the Earth is one of these nine planets.

How does life develop on Earth?

By being in a position where it can receive the rays of the sun; this is the only way that
life can develop on planet Earth.

Earth has its own elliptical orbit around the sun and it also rotates on itself. According to
the composition of these two elements, the orbit around the sun and the rotation on itself
the Earth exposes itself to the sun’s rays, sometimes more and sometimes less, according
to the alternation of the four seasons, or of two seasons as is happening in recent times
here in Italy.

Now let’s look at another example.

Right now we are in a room and at the moment we are nearing sunset, so we cannot see
the sun.

If it were morning, who would it depend on to let the sun into this room or to not let it in?

It would depend on whoever should decide to lower the curtains or to raise them, right?

Thus, in this room there is someone who decides whether or not to let the sun in, right?

Said in another way, who is it that decides whether we want to go on vacation at the
beach or in the mountains to get some sun?

We are the ones who decide whether or not to spend the whole day closed up in a room,
or to alternate staying inside with going out, and thus expose ourselves to the rays of the
sun and receive its energy in such a way that it is good for us and is not so much that it
burns us.

And what is it that we do with food?

We nourish ourselves. What does that mean?

  47
We nourish ourselves with all the energy that the sun has concentrated in the food we
eat. The foods we eat are full of solar energy; this is why they are nourishing. Otherwise
they would not be.

It depends on us whether to allow the sun into our lives or not, and how much we let it in
, whether it be a lot or a little.

If you have understood this so far, now try to make this next step.

Imagine that there is a solar system inside each one of us. Imagine that there is a sun
within us, and that there is a subject within each one of us that can make the decision to
contact our own sun and how often to do so.

What does this mean?

This means that I call the SELF the sun, and it corresponds to the sun in our solar
system.

Within each of us there is an energy, a solar center full of the energy of freedom, of
creativity and of purposefulness. All the projects we want to carry out in our lives are
found within our SELF, in our sun, and all the energy that we need to realize these
projects is also found there.

Now, the problem is this: if we have been taught since we were children to learn to listen
deeply to ourselves, to come into contact with our SELF, then we will know how to live our
lives.

If instead we have not been educated to cultivate this type of communication with our
SELF things become much more difficult; sometimes we know how to recognize it and
listen to it, and others we end up spinning around like a top.

Thus we have to undertake a learning process, if it has not been taught to us already, so
we can understand how to contact our SELF , our inner sun that is deep within us. This
type of contact generally happens through our intuition and not through rationality.

Rationality belongs to the psyche, whereas intuition belongs to the realm of the SELF and
is the SELF’s way of communicating with us.

With whom, exactly?

With what I have called the I Person.

What is the I Person ?

  48
The I Person is the charioteer who holds the reins of the four horses, it is the one who
decides how to steer them, how to harmonize them or whip them; how to get them to run
or how to stop them.

The charioteer is what I call the Personal Subject, the I Person, the I that decides how to
communicate with each one of these four horses.

Let’s look now at the fourth horse, the Cosmic SELF.

What is the Cosmic SELF?

Earth is part of our solar system and our solar system is part of the Milky Way galaxy and
the Milky Way is just a tiny little part of the Universe.

Why so small? Compared to us it is enormous; it has billions and billions of stars. But
compared to the Universe, where there are still billions and billions more galaxies, it is
very small.

We are all part of the life of the Universe.

The life of the Universe, which we cannot separate ourselves from, represents the Cosmic
SELF, the fourth horse; we are at one with the Universe, because together we make up
one living organism. Through our Personal SELF we are connected with the Cosmic SELF,
as long as we want to maintain this connection and not destroy it.

If you have been following me since the beginning, when I told you that it is possible to
make our lives a work of art, I will here say that it is yes possible, if we learn to harmonize
our four horses, which are the body, the psyche, the Personal SELF and the Cosmic SELF.
All these must be guided by the I Person, the charioteer, represented in the film by Ben-
Hur.

As I pointed out earlier, from the very beginning Judah Ben-Hur has a special
relationship with his horses. He has a relationship of love. He loves all four of his horses;
he doesn’t prefer one over any of the others, he loves all four of them and he asks the four
to love each other, to be harmonious among themselves, otherwise they cannot win the
race.

Then, during the race his approach is not one of violence. He does not use his whip like
Messala and the others do: he encourages them lovingly.

Let’s try to bring this, too, into relation with ourselves.

We can use violence against ourselves, besides all the violence that others perpetrate
upon us. We must reflect on the violence we perpetrate against ourselves, because the
violence we do to ourselves is much greater than what others do to us.

Previously I gave you an example of how the psyche can use violence against the body.
Another example of how we have been violent towards our bodies is how we have decided

  49
for centuries that the body is the seat of wrong, the seat of evil, and so we have felt we
had to punish it, mortify it and whip it; we had to continuously do penitence and negate
the life of the body, because only by doing so we would be saved from guilt.

Today we don’t use this type of violence, but we use many other types. For example, what
kind of food do we give our bodies today? What is the quality of the foods we eat?

Everything is polluted.

What is the quality of the air we give our bodies?

It is almost all polluted.

What is the relationship between our bodies and the environment, between our bodies
and the natural world?

We force ourselves, at times, to sit on a chair for eight hours, or to stay in the same place
for eight hours, uncaring of the tools we have available to help us work less or to help us
take care of our physical health.

Can we affirm that today we express a true love for our bodies, for the life of our bodies? I
don’t think so.

Now let’s look at what we have called the Personal SELF and the Cosmic SELF.

What do we do with these two horses?

Are we aware that they exist?

For many of us they are completely unknown entities; we were not taught that we have
these energies, that we have these important abilities within us. Nor were we taught what
we can do to create harmony with these energies within us, with this creativity that lies
within our inner sun, our Personal SELF, or with the creativity found in the human group
that we live with.

At the very least we have been taught to either defend ourselves from others or to attack
others, but not to live harmoniously with others.

And now, let’s examine the I Person.

Have we been taught to properly use the I Person, this Subject that is within us, that we
are, and that is able to make decisions that are of fundamental importance for our lives.

What are our most important decisions?

Life, both in our inner life and in our relationships, is constantly challenging us to make
decisions that can be based on either love or hate towards ourselves or towards others.

  50
In this case, training the charioteer to steer the chariot means training ourselves to be
able to understand what decisions based on love we must make, what decisions based on
hatred we have made in the past or that we are making in the present, and learning how
to reason wisely with ourselves and say: “Do I really need to make this decision based on
hatred? In this moment, am I loving myself? Am I making decisions based on love of myself
and my life that are necessary for me? Or, instead, am I hating myself?”

By continuously training ourselves to understand whether we are making decisions based

on love or on hate we become good charioteers.

Then, by becoming capable of communicating with our four horses, we are able to perfect
ourselves as charioteers, ready to take on the race of life.

What follows is another part of my paper and after this we will open up the question and
answer period.

Once we have learned to understand and explore these four strings, these four
fabulous horses, the first thing we must do then is create harmony between the I
Person and the SELF.

This harmony, which is a fundamental one, will guide us and give us the push
towards all the other possible harmonies found in human life.

Life as a work of art means living in harmony with oneself, with others and with life.

It is an even greater work to know how to produce harmony around oneself.

Inner harmony emits vibrations that irradiate outwards and are perceptible from
outside ourselves.

Inner and outer music are two indispensible elements for a better quality of
life.

But be careful, because the obsession to obtain moral perfection and the type of
continual feeling of guilt that comes from it restrict life to only one relationship: that
between the I with the Super Ego and the Ideal I, which produces a cacophony that
does not allow the production of any type of music or harmony, nor does it allow us to
listen with pleasure.

  51
Here I would like to explain what the Super-Ego and the Ideal I are.

It is actually very simple, just a bit ago I spoke to you about how we are conditioned by
others’ judgments of us and by our own judgment of ourselves. In psychoanalytical terms,
we would say that when we are children we introject our parents’ judgments as well as
the judgment of the society in which we live.

Freud described this introjection as being the Super-Ego, that is, something that
overpowers the Ego and imposes itself on the Ego in an oppressive, authoritarian manner,
both for good and for bad.

Why both for good and bad?

Because there are authoritarian judgments from our parents or from surrounding society
that are positive, for example when a parent tells a child, “don’t go near the electrical
socket because you can get killed”.

This is a positive judgment, a positive imposition.

But if a parent says: “Don’t ever go out of the house to play because there are cars and you
could get hurt”, this is a judgment that stands between positive and negative. It is positive
in the sense that it wants to preserve the child’s life, but it is negative because it imposes
a type of castration that will have no end, in that it keeps the child from interaction with
the external world, with other people.

And then there are judgments that are clearly negative: “Don’t do this, don’t do that”. Why
are they negative? Because they are unfair? No, the reason they are negative is because
they are imposed because “It bothers me”, and the me who is the father or the mother or
an authority decides whether things are good or bad based on what affect it has on them.
When it bothers them then it is bad, when it doesn’t bother them it’s good.

Here there is plenty of room for a long series of negative judgments that, once they are
introjected, become our Super-Ego, which at this point is also persecutory, since it
persecutes us continuously.

The Ideal I is that which we are not, but we expect ourselves to become at all cost.

We expect ourselves to be perfect, we expect ourselves to be good, we expect ourselves to

never make any mistakes, we expect ourselves to never commit any wrongs. And if
someone dare tell us “It’s your fault”, the answer can only be “No, it’s your fault”. The
Ideal I is what we build up within ourselves and through it we say: “I am perfect, I am
immaculate, I am not guilty of anything, I am good, intelligent, and beautiful and to heck
with anyone who questions it”.

  52
The Super-Ego and the Ideal I alone make more noise than the whole crowd that was in
the arena and was yelling to urge the contestants on or to condemn them.

If our life becomes occupied by all this noise, it is impossible to make music and create
harmony.

What do we have to do to free ourselves of this obsessive, deafening cacophony?

Can the help of a group be an effective answer? Our experience tells us that it can,
as long as the group is structured in the following manner:

i) the group is a place where the ideal of perfection is demolished through a process
of implosion and explosion;

These are not difficult words. Implosion means the ability to increase our trust in
ourselves and to accumulate judgments that are positive.

But these positive judgments can become negative ones if for all our lives we stay stuck in
the implosion of this type of judgment: that I am perfect, good, intelligent, without guilt, I
never make mistakes etc. etc..

If we leave inside ourselves only the phenomenon of the implosion, or of the accumulation
of these judgments, and we never go on to the phase of explosion, which is how we blow
these judgments up, we end up ruining our lives.

Life needs this type of dialectical process, it needs to on one hand build up the ideal of
perfection and on the other hand it must be able to blow it up, at the right time and in the
right way.

We need both implosion and explosion.

Where can we learn to do this?

We can learn in a group of Sophia-Analysis.

Here it is important that I explain why everything becomes negative if we stay stuck in the
phase of implosion.

The reason this happens is because this is the best way that we can find to build a mask
for ourselves and end up living in such a way that is not authentic. We become false and
full of lies, towards ourselves and towards others.

  53
If we build our lives on falsehood and lies, do you think this is a life well lived?

By the same token, if in the beginning of our lives, before we are aware of our potential,
we don’t build up any type of judgment regarding perfection, this would not be a life lived
well either.

The dialectical process requires that we build on one hand the ideal of perfection and on
the other, when it is the right time to do so, we are capable of blowing it to pieces, of
overcoming and transcending it.

Otherwise we become masks of ourselves, and not human beings who live their lives with
authenticity and who know how to interact with others in an authentic and gratifying
manner.

j) the group is a place where one can experience the body, the psyche, the SELF
and the I Person and learn how to refine the ability to listen to each one of these
four voices;”

I completely agree with you that it is not easy to get to know these four horses that I have
described.

In group work done appropriately, it is possible to learn to understand these four horses
of ours, or rather these four strings that we are made up of and which we must make our
life’s harmony with.

k) “the group is a laboratory where one can listen to one’s own music .....”

What is our music? It is:

...... “deep emotions, both one’s own and those of others.”.

With the help of a group we can eliminate all the noise and connect, at a profound level of
communication, with ourselves. We can start feeling our deepest emotions; this is what
hearing our own music is about.

  54
When we feel the deep emotions of others that are expressed in the group, this is like
hearing other people’s music and resonating and harmonizing with this other music.

l) “the group is a privileged space where one can train the I Person to make
decisions;”.

All decisions, no matter what they are, can be boiled down to essentially two types. They
are either decisions based on love or decisions based on hatred.

There are no half-way decisions; whatever we decide regarding our lives or the lives of
others either comes from love or it comes from hatred. There is no escaping this reality.

Learning how to recognize when we are in fact making decisions based on love and when,
instead, we are making decisions based on hatred, so we can reinforce the former and
eliminate the latter, is also an important process that can be developed in the group
context.

m) “the group is a place where one can unify all one’s various parts and synthesize
all the opposites in life, while learning how to respect the rhythm of the dialectical
process inherent in every growth process;”

This might be something that is a bit more difficult to explain.

What is a dialectical rhythm?

Earlier on I gave you an example when talking about the implosion and explosion
regarding the Ideal I.

Try to assimilate the following idea: we absolutely cannot grow in a linear fashion.

A linear process means: “If I want to be good, I must be good always.”, “If I want to be
intelligent and able I must always be intelligent and able.”.

Linear process means going along the same line from a minimum to a maximum, without
interruption. There is no possibility for me to go over to another line and explore my
negative qualities.

And why should we explore our negative traits?

It is very important that we do so, and I will explain why.

  55
Do you know how fruit trees are created?

All fruit trees are created through a graft done on a wild trunk.

Both are necessary for the tree to produce fruit.

If you don’t respect this law you will never be able to produce fruit that is good to eat. Nor
will you ever be able to taste wine, because grapevines are also made by grafting a wild
trunk.

But I could express this same thing in another way:

an artist that paints on a canvas needs all the colors, right?

Could an artist paint a painting only with either white or black?

No, this would not be possible.

If we say that what is positive within us, our positive traits, correspond to white and our
negative qualities correspond to black, if we are unwilling to get to know our negative
traits and use them as well, we cannot possibly make a work of art out of our lives.

It would be impossible. We could only make either a spot that would be all white or a spot
that would be all black, and that is certainly not a painting, it is not a work of art.

Let’s look at another example.

Light-bulbs that give us light, and televisions that show us images function thanks to two
wires that carry electricity, one that has a positive charge and one that has a negative
charge.

Only by synthesizing a positive charge and a negative one can we obtain light or make our
household appliances and all the other machines that we need work.

Our quality of life is based on the ability to synthesize positive and negative energies, and
the more we are able to do so the better our lives are.

A dialectical growth process means that I can express my positive qualities and I can
express my negative ones and to do so I must act them out. But if a child can never make
a mistake, if I can never make a mistake of any kind, if I am expected to always be
perfect, how could I ever possibly explore my negative qualities?

I will never really get to know them; I will act them out but I will never own them as being
a part of me, nor will I ever be able to make a synthesis of them with my positive qualities.

In this light, a dialectical growth process is one that affirms that I can use everything I
have within me, just like a painter can use all colors and shapes to make her painting.

  56
 n) “the group is a source of truth, freedom, love and creativity and of the joy that
springs from the unification and utilization of these four specific types of energy;”

o) “the group is a concentration of higher energies that alone are capable of helping
us learn what our historical essence and existence is and what kind of power we
have to transmute them into a new essence and a new existence.”

This transmutation is part of the creative act that produces a work of art.

Marble has its own essence and existence before it is worked on by a sculptor and
afterwards it acquires a new essence and a new existence: the ones that the artist is
capable of instilling in it.”

And, finally, the last point:

p) “the group is like a star, where the same life processes of a star are reproduced,
which are: condensation, collapse and thermonuclear reaction.”

Our sun is a star that was created through a process of condensation, concentration,
collapse, explosion and thermonuclear reactions, where hydrogen atoms fuse together
and become helium atoms. They then free different types of energy, light energy, thermal
energy, kinetic energy, etc.

To conclude with again taking from the previous chapter :

How often have you called your children: “my little star”?

When they were little it was easy to say this to them. Then they grow up and become
turbulent, difficult, restless, rebellious, lazy and unwilling to do anything. How
difficult it is to now call them “my little star”.

  57
 You probably don’t know that stars are also turbulent and restless, but they never
lose sight of their purpose which is to shine and give energy to the whole cosmos.

Don’t lose sight of your purpose, which is to make your children into artists of their
lives, to make your children into stars that shine their own light for themselves, for
you and for others.

Keep on working on this, don’t give up when you come up against difficulties and the
big and little dramas of life; keep your ideal high for yourselves and for your
children.

Stars continuously die and are reborn: this is why they live forever.

Try to learn their secret and teach it to your children.

Follow the example of the stars, you yourselves have within you the same purpose
and the same creative ability as the stars.

Astrophysics tells us that we are all children of the stars. The atoms that we are
made up of were created by the stars over billions of years.

We are all stardust and not mud. And inside ourselves we carry an infinite quantity
of energy of truth, of love and of freedom.

It’s true, we do not yet know how to use this energy wisely and often we use it
wrongly and we hurt ourselves and we hurt others terribly as well.

If we want to follow the ideal of becoming artists of our lives so we can teach it to our
children, perhaps we will know how to better use our energies and we will also learn
how to artistically compose evil with good and pain with joy.

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 CHAPTER IV

The Religious Conception of the World

∗
and the Sophiartistic Conception of the World

THE RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD

The pre-Christian religions generally follow this basic scheme:

In the beginning of the universe there was order,

then came disorder,

so we have to re-establish order

and this is the task of religion.

The Jewish religion has this basic scheme:

First there was order (the creation and paradise)

and then there was Adam and Eve’s wrong, which was followed by divine curses and
divine promises.

Order will be re-established with the coming of the Messiah.

While waiting for the coming reign of the Messiah,

                                                            
∗
 This paper was written as a comment on the film “Mission”, in March 1988, and published in my book “La
vita come opera d’arte e la vita come dono spiegate in 41 film”, {Life as a work of art and life as a gift explained in
41 films} Sophia University of Rome, 1995, and here slightly modified.

  59
it is necessary to make use of punishment, revenge,

mercy, to find a scapegoat, and finally,

to create a pact between God and his chosen people.

This is how the concept of an elite is born and this is the basis on which every type of
future racism is justified.

The fear of God is also born and with it the fear of divine judgment is consolidated.

The Christian religion adopts the basic scheme of the Jewish religion and it transforms it
in the following manner:

The Messiah has come and order has been re-established through the Redemption of
Christ.

Now penitence, restoration, forgiveness and participation in the divine order that Christ
has restored become possible.

Adam and Eve’s wrong is a “felix culpa” {a happy guilt} (Saint Augustine), because it
introduces the divine in what is human through the Incarnation and the Redemption.

But the order of the Redemption is not for everyone.

Many are called to it but there are few who will be chosen.

Universal judgment will separate the good from the evil forever.

Therefore the kingdom of grace is born but so is the kingdom of terror.

The universe of guilt becomes larger

and the universe of terror is expanded,

so that the universe of Grace and Redemption can triumph.

It was this way for more than a millennium,

but today grace has disappeared and only the violence of terror remains

and the violence of feeling guilty,

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the violence of the neurosis of perfectionism and the violence of daily life.

THE SOPHIARTISTIC CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD

Order exists in the universe and it has been gradually created since the Big Bang. At a
cosmic level no one has broken this order up until now.

Order existed on the planet earth as long as only vegetable and animal life lived on it.

When human life appeared, it is mankind who introduced both order and disorder on the
earth.

The order introduced is of a cultural, spiritual, technological and artistic type:

a new order that does not exist in nature was created.

Disorder was introduced by humanity’s ability to not only create new order by breaking
the former balance, but also to destroy the existing order, at the level of nature and the
environment, at the level of culture and human relationships and at the level of the laws
of life.

Humanity, with its actions, introduces “divine” forces to the world and also introduces the
forces of evil.

With both of these forces the existing energy is enriched with new energy.

The energy of irrationality, the energy of spirituality, the energy of good and the energy of
evil are all added to this natural energy.

Art is the human invention that blends all of the types of energy that exist together,
including the energy of evil.

But artistic creation is not only that which has to do with works of art.

A human being who transforms himself and his very life into a work of art, and various
people who work together to transform themselves into a group work of art, or who work
together to create a group work of art that transforms the quality of life around them

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create the miracle of a new artistic creation, which is superior to that which existed
before. They have created the Sophiartistic conception of the world, whose basic scheme
is:

order>disorder>artistic creation = a type of order which is superior to the order and

disorder that already exist.

In this conception evil is still a “felix culpa”,

not because it calls for the Redemptor but because it invokes the artist,

the artist of Sophia-Art, the creator of life as a work of art,

instead of the creator of nature or the restorer of the order of grace.

By being able to contemplate life, that is gradually transformed into a work of art through
an intensive effort, these people contact a new creation, a new order: divine harmony that
flows out from the laws of life and from the purpose of the Personal, Group and Cosmic
SELF. And all this blends together and becomes possible through the actions of the I
Person, both the individual one and the group one.

The evil that the individual must face when living his or her life as a work of art can be
metaphysical evil (nothingness and limitation), physical evil and moral evil.

For the Sophia-Art artist, every type of evil is essentially seen as a source of energy that
can be used to create a new order, a new type of beauty, new harmony and new life.

The more Sophia-Artists are capable of blending many different types of energies and
including them in their work of art, the more successful they are.

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Their main problem is not how to control evil or how to make amends for it (even though
this remains a task that must be undertaken), but what they can create and how they
can create from nothingness, from emptiness, from evil, with the energy that comes from
nothingness, from emptiness and from evil.

It is no longer necessary to continuously judge, condemn and separate.

It is instead necessary to compose and recreate, by unifying and transmuting.

In this way the problem of guilt and of salvation from it is solved.

Humans must no longer be saved or save themselves.

They must only recreate themselves, working constantly towards making their lives a
work of art.

The reign of judgment and terror comes to an end.

The reign of continual creativity is born.

The reign of entropy comes to an end

and the reign of inexhaustible energy, the type

that pertains to every true, authentic work of art, is born.

There are no more good and evil, saints and sinners,

but artists hard at work, intent on creating,

individually and together,

not like in the times of the Egyptian pyramids

or the Gothic cathedrals,

  63
because now, if everyone is an artist,

there are no more slaves nor masters, damned or chosen,

but only people who are free and creative, despite their traumas and their

conditioning, their vices and their virtues, and these people are connected to each other
not by terror or by money but by a new way of living art: art applied to life and not just to
paintings and instruments.

No longer are religion, art, philosophy and science separate fields,

but religion, philosophy, science and art are fused together, and they become one, a
completely new reality, at the time of their fusion.

No longer is God on one side and humanity on the other

There is the universe and the artist, humanity and Sophia-Art.

Now the choice is no longer between grace and guilt

But between human beings that want to become artists of their lives

and artists of the life of the universe

and human beings that prefer to remain cultural animals;

between human beings who want to become Persons and Sophia-Artists

and human beings who demand to become God and they dehumanize and alienate
themselves with the ideal of perfection and theomania

and the will to dominate,

which leaves them panting to try to become the masters of the world, of the earth and of
other people’s lives.

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 CHAPTER V

∗
The Cosmological Vision of Sophia-Art
(text only)

The cosmologies that we are familiar with so far in our history are of four types:
mythological, religious, philosophical and scientific. Generally these cosmologies were
created independently from one another. Sophia-Art poses the question of whether it is
possible to create a new one, and blend together elements that pertain to religion,
philosophy, science and art.

Let’s take this affirmation as a basic assumption: “just as ontogenesis mirrors

phylogenesis, the microcosm mirrors the macrocosm, so by understanding the microcosm
we can reach knowledge of the macrocosm”.
By macrocosm we here mean the universe. By microcosm here we are referring to
the human being, because it seems that we can say with sufficient certainty the human
being represents the most complete microcosm in comparison to all the other microcosms
that exist in nature.

We also have much more knowledge about this microcosm than we do about any
other microcosm. In fact, while we do have inner knowledge of the human experience, no
one will ever be able to give us inner knowledge of other living organisms.

Does following such criteria mean that we are building an anthropomorphic

cosmology?

It’s obvious that we run such a risk and we must continuously check ourselves so
it doesn’t happen. The best way we can avoid this from happening is to base our research,
as mentioned above, on the ability to unite the essence of this subject as explained by
religion, philosophy, science and art, where each explanation both corrects the others and
integrates them.
                                                            
∗
  This paper was presented for the first time in French, during an international congress of scientists
pertaining to various fields, near Marseilles, in autumn of 1988. It has already been published in Italian in the
magazine Persona, n. 16, in December 1989, in an issue that sold out almost immediately.

  65
 For example, it’s obvious that a cosmological vision that doesn’t take the data
offered by physics and astrophysics into account would have absolutely no value. But by
the same token, it would not be of much value if only these scientific approaches were
utilized and others were ignored.

Here we want to affirm that every world view that is created by looking at only one
type of data, be it religious or philosophical or scientific, produces a view that is fallible.
This is the case because it would be a view that is both true and false at the same time, it
would always be incomplete and reductionist, and it could never explain the complexity of
the universe all by itself.

The point of view expressed in Sophia-Art makes sense in that it allows us to:

a) proceed in a dialectical manner;

b) blend together the contributions from other points of view into a unified one by
either purifying them of their falsehoods and keeping their truths, or by
concentrating their contributions through a synthesis of opposites, thus
reaching a concentration of truths that will never be linear but will always be
complex;

c) maintain the complexity of the human phenomenon as a constant reference

point, and thus have a guide that is based on fact and not on unverifiable
fantasies.

Point c) establishes what Sophia-Art defines as being its “cosmoanthropic

principle”.

The Cosmoanthropic Principle

“ To every question that we ask about the universe and that at this time does not
have an answer, we will ask an equal one regarding humanity. The answer we consider as
being valid for humanity we will consider it as being valid for the universe as well”. We
will not assume a definitive and acritical position towards the answers we find. Analogies
are precious tools but they must be used heuristically, as an invitation to formulate
daring new hypotheses and as dialectical departure points, not givens.

Scientific discoveries are the fruit of hypotheses and of research that confirms
these hypotheses, or of theories built upon constant observations.

  66
We must use this same approach when we are utilizing the cosmoanthropic principle.

d) question a truth that has been taken as valid, every time that humanity
dismantles one of its illusions or false perceptions so as a new, more complete
vision of truth can be reached, that beforehand was unthinkable. This is what
happened, for example, with Galileo Galilei.

Here is a recent example to illustrate this point. Nuclear physics affirms that it
knows with certainty what has happened in the universe starting from one second after
the Big Bang, and it is working ardently at trying to understand what happened during
the first second. It also affirms, quite uncautiously, that it will never be possible to know
what happened before that, since time began existing only during the first second and not
before that.

And what if one day all this should end up being revealed as false, just as the idea
that the sun orbited the Earth was revealed as false, or that it was not possible to divide
the atom into smaller parts was discovered as being false? Who can keep us from
thinking (and here the Cosmoanthropic principle comes into play) that perhaps one day
we will be able to demonstrate that in the beginning the universe was like a female ovum,
and that if it is like it is today, this happened because something similar to the sperm of a
man fecundated it and made it explode into the Big Bang?

Today there is no proof of this but one day there could be (just as it happened with
Galileo's telescope) and we could see that just as billions of humans exist billions of
universes exist, and just as a man unites with a woman to give birth to another human
being, it could very well happen that one universe unites with another and gives birth to
another universe.
But for us to be able to proceed in this way, that is undoubtedly quite dizzying, we
must first overcome the authoritarianism of philosophy, which inevitably supports the
authoritarianism of theology. Such purification is necessary if we want to free science and
art and allow them to move beyond the columns of Hercules that philosophy and theology
impose.

The philosophy of Aristotle affirms:

a) that the principle of causality cannot be put aside;

b) that it is impossible to proceed infinitely from one cause to another but that at
some point we must come to an uncaused cause, a primum movens that is moved

  67
 by none other except God, or the Absolute, an Ens a se and not ab alio, to the
uncaused Being, without beginning or time, that is, though, the cause of every
beginning and every time.

The error in this second affirmation lies, in my opinion, in the affirmation that it
can be demonstrated, philosophically and scientifically, that any event can be brought
back to a single cause, even with infinite steps, instead of to a complexity of causes or at
least to two.

I don’t believe that philosophy can ever make such a demonstration and I do
believe, instead, that science can show that every event always has a complexity and a
multiplicity of causes. It can do so and it already has done so in many different cases.

If, then, we apply the Cosmoanthropic principle, we see that every child is born
from two distinct causes: the father and the mother. This is also true for every animal and
for every plant. And I also know that the father and the mother are not two absolute
causes, but they are immersed in multiple causes that keep them alive and make them
act. At the same token, both the ovum and the sperm need many other causes to develop,
either as sources of ulterior energy or as stimuli.
To further shift our perspective regarding the principle of a single and absolute
cause, I would like to ask you: first of all, is the genius of Einstein or Michelangelo or
Mozart only the fruit of the single cause of their parents? And secondly, if this is the case,
how is it possible that from the lesser, the banality of these parents, comes out something
greater, which is the genius of these people?

I could ask the same question regarding life. How is it possible that superior, more
complex forms rise from inferior, less complex ones? Human beings from animals,
animals from plants, plants from minerals, and all of it reduced to a single cause, not a
multiplicity of causes.

To correct and complete Aristotle’s thought I would here like to affirm the principle
of circular causality, which states that reality is circular, just like a wheel is circular.
Linear realities can only exist as being part of a circular reality, that is, as a part of a
whole.

The spoke of a wheel can exist only if it connects to the axis of the circle. It can
never exist otherwise. From this we can see that linear causes can exist only if they are a
part of a circular cause and, in particular, it follows that the linear demonstration that
Aristotle uses to deduce the Ens a se from the ens ab alio, based on the principle of
causality, is false because it affirms that the line is an absolute.

I have no doubt that this brief reasoning can clear the mind of philosophers and
scientists from their unquestioned dependence on Aristotle and theology.

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 Einstein spent half of his life looking for a way to confute quantum physics, only
because “God cannot play dice” and he could not give up the idea of God.

The same thing seems to happen today with Stephen Hawking, the greatest
researcher on black holes and astrophysics, because he too is obsessed by the presence
or the absence of the idea of God.

What in philosophy is called Being and Nothingness, in theology is called God and
Nothingness, and in physics is called quantums of energy and the quantum void, in
Sophia-Art all these names indicate two distinct causes, which have always existed and
which have always mated to give birth to new universes. They represent the Yin and the
Yang, the masculine and feminine principles that the Chinese Tao and the Hindu religion
speak of.

There is no reason to make these two entities into divinities or to hypostasize them,
which only creates all kinds of unsolvable contradictions in the lives of human beings.

Now that I am an adult, I no longer need to make my father and my mother into
divinities, but when I was a child I had to do so.

Nor do I need to make myself into a divinity to give my life or anyone else’s life
meaning, or to give spirituality and love an important place in my own life and in my
relationships with others. Nor do I need to do so to figure out if I will have an immortal
destiny or not. According to Sophia-Art all I need to know is if I will be able to make my
life a work of art or not, and not all by myself but together with many others.
I believe that at this point I can trace the essential lines of my cosmological vision.

1. The origins of the universe

There is no God who created the universe from nothing.

I am sorry to have to disagree with the Bible (a book that I love very much for many
reasons) but this is not the first time this has happened in history.

The universe had a mother and a father, just like every human being does.

This father and mother can be called in many ways. I prefer calling them Masculine
Principle and Feminine Principle and I don’t have to make them into divinities but I do
have to free myself of any idea of uncaused and absolute cause that sits there and
observes and judges what I do with my life. My life belongs only to myself and I am
completely responsible for it, both for good and bad.

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 2. Is this the only universe that exists?

Many universes exist besides this one and nothing tells me that I have to know
only this one I am living in now. If I transform my life into a work of art, I could find that I
have discovered the key that will allow me to go from one universe to the next. To the
contrary, if I refuse to transform myself, I could remain simply a man animal that falls
into the nothingness and annihilation of its subjectivity once its biological form and
physical form that incarnated it dissolves, just as what happens to plants and animals.

3. Life after death

This is a development of point ‘2’. There I affirmed the existence of other universes
and of the idea that those who transform their lives into works of art can go from this
universe to another universe, and begin a new life there.

How could this be possible?

I have already explained this thoroughly in my book La vie comme oeuvre d’art {Life
as a work of art}.

Here I want to indicate another possible answer.

Men produce sperm and women produce ovules. To create a new life these sperm
and ovules must detach themselves, begin to move, encounter each other and fuse
together.

I think that every human being detaches from this life and its earthly identity dies,
just like an ovum or a sperm detaches and dies, so as to acquire a new identity that
comes about when it fuses with a partner in another universe.

Not all sperm and ovules that are produced end up generating new life.

Not all human beings who die are thus capable of beginning a new life. Those who
remain profoundly egotistical are incapable of melding with another being and
beginning a new life. An egoist will never accept losing his or her individual identity,
thus he or she can never be part of a couple, whether it be in this life or in the next.

It is also true that it takes art to find the right partner; it takes art to bring them
out of their shell and obtain their agreement to fuse together. It takes art to make sure
that this fusion completely extends into a complex project, such as life as part of a

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 couple, and it takes art to face the many obstacles that could transform a life project
into an abortion and overcome them together.

It is not enough, therefore, to not be egotistical, as the religions tell us, to be able
to incarnate in another universe. One must also become an artist and an artist of
one’s own life. This is what Sophia-Art proposes.

Most animals, plants and human beings – maybe not all, but most – use forms of art
to court each other.

Some use visual effects, full of color, like flowers, and some use song, like birds.
Some use olfactory effects and others use rhythmic movements that express the
strength, grace and beauty of a dance.

Human beings who want to incarnate into another universe must learn, before
they die, to transform themselves into visual, sonorous, rhythmic and perhaps even
olfactory and taste artistic vibrations.

The purpose of the wide range of human arts that artists have created is to move
people, and inspire wonder in them through their five senses. There is a form of art for
the eyes, one for the ears, one for the mouth, one for the olfactory sense, perfume, and
one for the body, which is dance. These forms attract people and create fusions,
fusions among human beings and fusions between human beings and art. These
fusions always produce new life.

Perhaps this is the way to the other side: knowing how to produce artistic
vibrations in all kinds of ways so as to court and enchant our twin souls in other
worlds, and thus assure new life.

4. The problem of evil and pain

If a God exists, the God of the philosophers and the theologians who created the
universe and the presence of both physical and moral evil, we will never find an adequate
response to why these things exist in this world. We are faced with so many philosophical
and theological contradictions, that to find a coherent way of thinking we are forced to
either draw all kinds of far-fetched conclusions, or to simply attribute these things to the
mysterious will of God. Either that or we must simply accept the brutal coherence of
Saint Thomas of Aquino, which states that the damned are necessary to glorify God, or
Saint Paul’s, who states that Christ’s death was necessary to save the world from guilt,
because God had no better solution.

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 But the worst contradictions arise within the hearts of men and women, not in their
minds, when the hour of drama, pain and evil strikes and they are faced with their
unbearable weight.

Camus was horrified by all the pain in the world, but he was especially horrified by
the pain and death of innocent people.

Today no one perhaps is as horrified as he was but this is certainly not because people
have greater faith.

But if it wasn’t God who created the world, then there is no absurd, unjust world
which we must fight against. There is instead a world without meaning that only an artist
can give meaning to.

An artist who has not been faced with evil and with pain is a mediocre one, and his
or her art is mediocre as well.

Instead, whoever has learned to transform evil and pain into artistic creativity is
capable of creating great works of art.
Even greater is the type of art created by those who transform their whole life into
a work of art, using the energy contained in evil and in pain, both that which is
experienced directly and that which pertains to the outside world.

5. Is the universe contracting?

Physicists ask themselves if this universe that is today expanding will continue to
expand forever or if one day it will stop doing so and will begin an endless collapse.

Sophia-Art offers the following answer to this, by using the Cosmoanthropic model.

The entire universe is a single living organism, just like a human being is. A
human being expands from conception until adulthood, but then it does not contract, it
stops expanding at the point it had reached until after quite some time physical death
overcomes it.

Why should the universe contract like some sort of magic trick? This universe will,
of course, one day die. But human beings generate children and many other things before
they die. Therefore, how many other universes will it have generated and how many other
things that today cannot be imagined will be created before it collapses and dies?

6. Does the universe have an I Person?

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 If the universe is a single living organism, like a human being, it is feasible that
like humanity it has a central subject, an I that thinks, desires, loves, makes plans and
creates. Thus the universe would have its own I that is a central subject and that thinks,
loves and acts: in other words, an I Person.

But just like my I Person is not God, neither in a philosophical nor in a theological
sense, why should the I Person of the cosmos be one?

As a living being, I am made up of billions of cells and billions upon billions of

atoms. Every cell and every atom each also have a central subject that thinks, loves and
creates.

How can I possibly think that my conscious I does not communicate with my cells
and atoms and vice-versa?

I can, of course, separate myself from them and I can oppose them with my
madness, or I can transcend myself and ask my cells and atoms to follow me in my
process of transcendence and in my work of art. In this manner we could create together
a total joy of being.

In the same way I can unify my conscious, global I with the Cosmic, global I of the
universe and become part of the cosmic harmony. Isn’t this what the mystics from all
religions throughout the ages have done?

Following my personalistic metapsychology, outlined in my book Teoria della

Persona {Theory of the Person}, I can attribute to both human beings and the universe a
Psychological I, a Corporeal I, a Personal SELF and an I Person.

Or, being even bolder, I could think that the systemic whole containing these four
components found in human beings, which is not a simple sum of the various parts,
represents the Corporeal I, the Psychological I, the I Person and the SELF of the whole
universe.

All together they represent the being and the future of the totality of the Cosmic I
that moves continuously from one form to another, from one creation to another, from
one transcendence to another, from one work of art to another. This happens so as to
bring the many to the One, without cancelling the many, and the One to a contemplation
of the Beauty that is thus created and to the ecstatic joy that is experienced when this
happens.

7. Does life in this universe exist only on Earth?

I believe that this question is not asked quite in the correct manner. Let me
explain. If the universe is a living organism, just like human beings are, life in the

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universe exists everywhere, in every part, just like life is present in every part of a human
being.

The correct way to ask this question could be as follows: does life reproduce only
on Earth, or does it do so elsewhere as well?

Let’s again look at human beings to find the answer. The reproductive organs of
men and women are found only in one area of their organism, not in more than one. The
uterus is found only in one place within the woman, not in more than one place. It would
be counterproductive for the proper function of the whole organism, if there was there
more than one uterus in a single body.

I believe that the Milky Way, which the solar system containing the Earth belongs
to, represents the male and female reproductive organs for the life of the entire universe.
Other galaxies have other functions.

In the universe there is only one uterus and this uterus is the Earth.

We can continue thinking and hoping that other living beings exist but if we do so I
would suggest that we look for them not within this universe, but within other universes
that are developing within infinite space, beside and beyond our own universe.

8. Did time exist before this universe did?

Before I was conceived, my time didn’t exist but my father’s time and my mother’s
time did, as well as that of many others.

Therefore, before this universe was born its own time did not exist but the time of
previous universes did, which mated and created this one.
Is it so difficult to accept such a simple idea?

Or is it too simple to be appealing to the complicated minds of the philosophers?

But who were they themselves born from?

Aren’t they also children of a father and a mother?

One would think not. And just like so many children refuse to consider themselves
children of their parents and they fantasize about who knows what kind of origins, many
philosophers, who cannot accept the essential simplicity of life, wrack their brains with
metaphysical speculation so that they make it seem they are different and very much
better than the rest of us poor mortals.

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 I really like how Davide Lopez, in his book La vita nella selva {Life in the jungle} ,
tears them apart by declaring how miserable their phallic, Napoleonic and megalomanic I
really is.

Then, thanks to Einstein, we know that time and space make up a whole, so what I
have said about time refers to space as well. My own space-time begins existing with the
beginning of my existence, and it will end when my life does.

And just like my space-time is within a space-time that is greater than mine, the
space-time of this universe is part of a much bigger one.

What’s the problem if the human mind cannot manage to explain and even imagine
this greater space-time? Is the human mind by chance capable of imagining four
dimensions? And does this mean that four dimensions don’t exist?

9. The role of art in the universe

Sophia-Art has an even more interesting question for the philosophers.

The history of philosophy is very vast and it stretches across the centuries. Have
philosophers yet managed to explain to us what art is, what is art and what isn’t art, and
why? One philosopher steps up and says: this is art. The next one comes along and says,
no, all of you who came before me have been wrong, I’ll tell you what art is. But even this
last one’s discourse is garbled and so no one has ever really managed to tell us yet what
art really is. Art, though, has continued to exist and develop and it never dies, whereas
philosophical systems do.

What is the great mystery we are dealing with here?

For me, art is a creation that is even greater than the creation of the very universe
itself. I will attempt to demonstrate this.

In a work of art what did not exist before now exists, and it does not exist like an
inanimate thing but like a living subject. It is not just any living plant, animal or human
subject, that lives, reproduces and dies. It is a living subject that lives forever. It
generates unending energy and it never dies even after the artist who created it is dead.
Let’s try to put the artist in the place of the God of the philosophers and
theologians, and we will find that an artist creates everything out of nothingness.

Here the nothingness I refer to is not in terms of being, but in terms of a quantum
void from which all forms and all possible potentials come

This nothingness is intended as totally not being, in the sense that before the work
of art was created it was truly nothing, it did not exist at all. Then the miracle happens

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and the artist creates its non-being into being, its non-existence into existence, non-
living into living and into an immortal living being.

And the artist that existed previously only at the level of a biological being is now
transformed, as it is incarnated into the work of art and the matter that is the work of
art’s medium. Before there was just one and now they are three, which are both fused
together and distinct from each other: the medium, the work of art and the artist.

What a synthesis of opposites and what harmony arises from this synthesis!

According to theology and philosophy, God is eternal and cannot die, because he
lies beyond time. At the same time he is nonetheless present in the time of this universe.
The theologians say that the contingent being, the universe, could not remain alive, could
not keep on existing if the necessary being, God, should withdraw his support from the
universe.

Instead, artists can die. They die when their biological time is over. But, strangely,
they never die completely: they continue to live, to be present and to act, within their
works of art and through their works of art, which were created within time but which are
beyond time as well. They can pass through all time, as long as there is a material
medium that can sustain their existence and as long as there will be other human beings
to appreciate a work of art and give it new life and new continuity.

And, contrary to the universe in relationship to God, a work of art can exist all by
itself, once it has sprung from the mind of an artist. If the artist is not there, if the artist
dies, the being and the existence of the work of art suffers no damage at all.

It is there forever.

How strange is that! Does the artist have more creative power than God? And does
the work of art have a quality of being than the one this universe has?

So how big, exactly, is the power of an artist?

One could say that it would be better to be an artist than to be God!

But there is at least one point on which we could argue it would not be better to be
artists than to be God.

When artists create something, when they are completely involved in the creative
process, there is a long, terrible moment in which they must face death and emptiness.
They must empty themselves of everything their existence has been up to that point so
they can make space for the fullness that is the work of art that springs out of
nothingness, out of emptiness, out of the heart and total being of the artist.

God knows nothing of this death and knows nothing of this emptiness.

God is and does not become anything else.

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 God is and doesn’t have to die.

God is eternal beatitude and he doesn’t have to suffer.

God creates instantly and knows nothing of labor pains. The labor pains of a
woman giving birth; the labor pains of an artist who is creating. Oh how wonderful it
would be to be God in those moments!

10. Is the I Person of the universe an artist?

If up until now we have spoken critically of philosophy and theology and have been
enthusiastic about art, now the time has come to integrate the historical influence of
philosophy and theology with that of art in our conception of the universe.
We embrace the philosophical and theological idea of the existence of God as the
creator and first cause, but we want to try to reformulate it in an artistic way, by using
once again the Cosmoanthropic principle and the principle of circular causality.
Everything that we know about human beings as artists we can apply not to he
who has created the universe but to he who is creating this universe. We will try to apply
this idea according to circular causality.
As science tells us, the universe, in fact, is not completely created, it is in a phase
of being created. It is in a phase of expansion and growth and it is just fifteen years old. If
we consider a billion years as being one cosmic year, and if fifteen billion years have
passed since the Big Bang – although science is still cautious about establishing this
number precisely – we can say that fifteen billion years are the same as fifteen cosmic
years. Therefore, the universe is fifteen cosmic years old.

Here we are inspired by the Cosmoanthropic principle to utilize what philosophy

and theology tell us, be it in another context and by using a different modality.

If we reflect on how a human being is born, as a biological being, we have to

recognize that there are essentially two generating causes: the father and the mother. But
if we reflect on how a human being creates himself or herself as a man or a woman, we
know that they are a single cause of themselves in the moment they decide to become a
man or a woman or to build themselves as a man or a woman.

If we reflect on how human beings act with regards to morality or growth, we know
that here, too, human beings are essentially a single cause of their actions. They are the
sole ones responsible for their ability to give an artistic form and content to their
creativity.

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 Now, this universe has a spiritual life as well as a biological one, just like human
beings do.

If we postulate that at its beginning there are two causalities, a masculine principle
and a feminine principle, which are central causes flanked by a number of other causes,
the origins of this universe’s spiritual life must necessarily have a single central cause: a
single subject that decides as a causa sui, as a cause of itself and as an uncaused cause.

My father and my mother are the cause of my life but they are not the cause of my
actions. The cause behind my actions is my I as a subject, my I Person. The cause of my
biological I lies in my parents and in the human species, but my parents are not the
cause of my I Person.

My I Person generates itself. I am the cause of my actions and my decisions, I

create myself. I generate myself as creator of myself, I am a single cause, I generate my
own works of art.

At this point, by analogy, it would appear to be necessary to reintroduce into the

creation of the universe the first cause that the philosophers and theologians speak of. It
becomes necessary to do so if the universe must have a spiritual life as well as a
biological one, and if this spiritual life can only be in a process of being created, like it is
for humanity, and not already completed from the first moment that the universe began
to exist.

A first, single cause that is immanent to the universe, is within the universe and
not outside of it, just like my I Person is within me and not outside of me. Others would
speak of the soul of the universe, whereas I am speaking of the Cosmic I, the I Person of
the universe that is in a process of becoming. I want to do so not speculatively, but rather
by applying everything I know about the I of human beings as artists, artists of their own
lives and artists of themselves.

This procedure cannot be linear, it must necessarily be dialectical. First we will

affirm one thing and then we’ll negate it with other arguments, not to destroy what we
affirmed before but to make a synthesis of concepts and realities that are opposite to each
other.

This will also serve to affirm the presence of the principle of circular causation.

We can all agree on the fact that every artist is a creator.

But if we ask the question: is every artist a first and only cause of his or her work
of art? We could answer that this is partially true and is partially untrue. The paternity of
a work of art most certainly lies with the artist who made it but the artist is not the only
one at work.

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 Every artist is part of a communications network whose roots are in the past and
whose branches are in the present. Every artist expresses both continuity with and a
breaking away from the artists who preceded them; every artist is influenced by the
culture they live in at the present time, and they can also connect with any cultural
thread that pertains to the past. Their intuition can also propel them into the future and
make them capable of seeing what does not yet exist.

In this sense, artists are not and cannot be the first and only cause of their works
of art. They work together with many non-causes, but there is a time when they
synthesize all these causes into a single cause, together with their selves and their own
perceptions, when they are actually creating. At that point they then become a first and
only cause of their work.

Everything that exists before the artist’s own existence, and there are multiple
factors, fuses together and unites with the artist’s own creative inspiration. Therefore the
artist then becomes its own essential first cause.

Beside the artist, however, there is always empty space, the nothingness of all the
works of art that have not yet been created. We have also said that the artist must be able
to empty him or herself of everything they have been up to that point to be able to create,
so as to give their work an autonomous existence and an immortal, artistic life.

When interacting with this emptiness, the artist is neither omnipotent nor
omniscient, nor is he absolutely perfect. By creating he expresses his power and he
becomes powerful, he expresses his art and he becomes a field of different energies; of
knowledge and life, of love and beauty for both himself and for many others.

Coming back to our universe, it would seem wiser to postulate a God who is in the
processes of creating the universe and who has the same qualities of an artist, rather
than to postulate a God who has already created the universe and has the qualities that
philosophers and theologians attribute to him.

This could be the departure point for a new cosmology. Matter and energy can pass
continuously from fullness to emptiness and from emptiness to fullness. This movement
can be either chaotic or artistic. It is chaotic if there is no personal or impersonal force
that organizes it and thus the movement occurs according to the laws of chaos and
necessity; it is artistic if there is an I Person that molds and structures it so it becomes an
art form, following the laws of art.

If we look at the physical structure of this universe we could decide to affirm that
this universe is a work of art. But if we look at the “human phenomenon”, that is part of
this universe, in all of its complexity and not only from a biological standpoint, how can
we possibly affirm that it is a work of art?

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 We can only come to the conclusion that we must consider the qualities and the
limitations of the Cosmic Artist. If on one hand it has shown itself to be powerful, on the
other it has shown its impotence. It has been powerful regarding nature and powerless
when it comes to humanity and human society.

But we could also look at things from a different point of view.

Perhaps the most arduous and most beautiful project that this Artist God – as
postulated by Sophia-Art – has undertaken is to transform over time both itself and
human beings from a mineral, plant and animal state to one of an artist. Not in the image
of the God of the philosophers and the theologians, but in the image of an Artist God that
is in a state of becoming.

An artist that creates his own happiness, not before he has created the world, but
while he is in the act of creating it.

An artist that realizes he cannot be perfect on the first try, like it seems instead the
God of the Bible did when he created everything perfectly with his word, but that it is
impossible to understand how he created his own happiness.

An artist that creates through trial and error, through continual attempts, and
while he is trying he perfects himself and by perfecting himself he improves the quality of
his work.

Just like Leonardo da Vinci, who always took his Gioconda with him as he moved
from court to court, so that every day he could add some brushstrokes and touch it up a
bit.

And here we could also imagine that the ideas for these touch-ups don’t just come
from Leonardo, but at some point are inspired by the Gioconda itself, who communicates
with Leonardo, sometimes graciously and sometimes arrogantly, suggesting the best
touch-ups of all.

God, the artist, who models himself as a human being, over a long evolution lasting
millennia, so he can give himself first a biological life and then a spiritual one, made up of
intelligence, wisdom, love and artistic creativity.

God the artist who incarnates in humanity and gradually blends with its being, day
by day, one step at a time, one transcendence at a time, one metamorphosis after
another.

God that creates himself with human beings and in human beings with a quality of
being that did not exist previously and that emerges in the moment of decision making,
which only the I is the absolute Lord of, the sole first cause, the uncaused cause that has
no beginning and that originates the fusion between human beings and the God that lives
in them. This creates an incredible synthesis of opposites, a wonderful work of art, where

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one is not confused with the other but where the fruits belong to both, spring from both,
show the best of both, so that joy and the fullness of life can spring forth and from life
new life can continue to emerge.

God, the artist that first shapes human beings and then begins to speak with
them, because they are two artists working together and no longer one working alone, as
according to the principle of circular causality.

Just like what happens on the set of a movie or on the stage of a theater or in the
orchestra pit.

There is no longer just one artist at work, such as the director of the film or the
orchestra; there are more than one artist who create together – both as individuals and as
a group – a work of art together with the audience who is not there just to watch but to
participate, and is thus an integral part of the work of art.

Here there is room for human history, for human actions and human freedom and
for the actions of God as well, if God is just an Artist and this artist is the I Person of the
universe, which speaks to the I Person of human beings.

In conclusion, it was not necessary that there be a God to create this universe in
its physical and biological reality. To create this universe in its spiritual reality, however,
it is necessary that there exist a God that creates it by creating himself, just like a human
being creates him or herself, like an artist creates him or herself.
On one hand this God is the I Person of the world, and on the other in part we are
this God and in part we are yet to become it.

We have a lot of time ahead of us to do so.

In essence we, along with the universe, are just hitting adolescence.

Have I made up a fairy tale?

I certainly hope I have been able to do so.

I believe that all the cosmologies, from the mythological ones to the scientific ones,
last through time as long as they are reassuring and illuminating to mankind.

A fairy tale is also a work of art, in a certain sense, and the ones which contain
greater artistic qualities last through time, until they become immortal fairy tales.

I hope I have created an immortal fairy tale: the fairy tale of the cosmological
conception of Sophia-Art.

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 This is only a first draft of it, a first attempt. To learn how far it has succeeded in
its intent and where instead it hasn’t, I now have to speak with those of you I have told it
to and then afterwards with those to whom I will tell it to in the future.

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 CHAPTER VI

∗
The Cosmological Vision of Sophia-Art

with an introduction and commentary (in italics)

Before I start reading my paper I would like to make a brief introduction. I have very
much admired the comments you made yesterday evening and this morning, both in the
small groups and in the big one. Allow me, after having expressed my admiration for all of
your thoughts, to share with everyone what Giorgio brought up. Last night, he said that ever
since the horse has been domesticated humanity has been divided into two categories:
those that get into the horse’s saddle and become horsemen and those who instead remain
stall boys. It takes courage to go from working in the stalls to becoming a horseman, and
Giorgio pointed out that I was asking you to be courageous, with a capital ‘C’. So. If you
want to follow me in my reading of the paper I am about to present to you, I will have to ask
you to be even more courageous; I have to ask you to be courageous with capitals on all the
letters, not just the ‘C’. To help you better understand what type of courage I am asking you
to have, let me use a historical example.

In a few years, in 1992, the whole world will celebrate Christopher Columbus and
his discovery of America. But we all know perfectly well that it was not Christopher
Columbus’ intention to discover America. In his mind there was the profound conviction that
the earth was round, not flat like everyone else thought, everyone except for a few
scientists. Since he was absolutely convinced that the earth was round and not flat, he had

                                                            
∗
  This paper was presented in Frascati, Italy, on December 8, 1988, at the 1st National Symposium on
Personalistic Anthropology and Sophia-Art. It was later presented in video form in French and Italian at the II
International Congress of the Sophia University of Rome in Paris, in July 1988. This is the first time the text
with commentary has been published.

  83
thought up a very arduous and ambitious project: to get to the Indies by crossing the ocean
instead of by land.
Columbus presented his idea first to the King of Portugal, then to the King of Spain,
and neither one of them listened to him. Don’t be surprised by this, because in those days
everyone was convinced that the earth was flat, and to think of the earth as being round
was considered madness. The only person who listened to him, ten years after he had first
presented his project, was queen Isabella. So, with her help, Christopher Columbus was
able to equip three caravels and leave Porto, sailing towards the realization of his dream. It
was very, very difficult, during the trip, to keep his crew’s faith up so they could get to their
destination. And when they finally came to land, Christopher Columbus had not found the
Indies, but a new continent.
I believe that since that day not only a new continent, America, has begun to be
explored, but from that day on the unification of the East with the West began in a vast,
global way. Another Italian, Marco Polo, had already begun this unification some years
before.

I believe that Christopher Columbus’ enterprise had, among many others, the
purpose of unifying the whole earth into a single organism, and this goal is being reached
every day a bit more.
I mentioned Marco Polo, who created the first connection between West and East; I
mentioned Christopher Columbus; I also want to mention Marconi, because if today we can
communicate from one end of the globe to the other, it is again possible thanks to another
Italian, Guglielmo Marconi.

You all know how all of our ways of communicating via radio, via television, via
telephone etc. are also thanks to another Italian genius. I think that if you can try to
imagine the gigantic effort that the earth is making through us human beings to become one
unified organism, if you can see this project of the earth’s as an organism, then what I want
to present to you today contains an even greater project.

I want to propose the unification between human beings and the universe, the
unification of the entire universe. I realize that what I am saying is very difficult to accept.
You will have to be very patient in following me during each step.

Let’s go back to the idea of courage, so that it is clear to you what kind of courage I
am asking you to have. On one hand I am asking you to set off on a journey with our three
caravels, the Institute of Analytical Psychotherapy, the Institute of Existential Personalistic
Anthropology and the CERVOA {Center for Research on Life as a Work of Art}, towards the
discovery of a new continent, but on the other I am asking you to set off towards the project

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of unifying the human universe with the universe itself and the entire universe in all of its
parts, so as to create a whole.
Do you realize how much courage such an enterprise requires?
I do have the courage to ask you to have this courage.

The cosmologies that we are familiar with so far in our history are of four types:
mythological, religious, philosophical and scientific. Generally these cosmologies were
created independently from one another. Sophia-Art poses the question of whether it is
possible to create a new one, and blend together elements that pertain to religion,
philosophy, science and art.

Let’s take this affirmation as a basic assumption: “just as ontogenesis mirrors

phylogenesis, the microcosm mirrors the macrocosm, so by understanding the microcosm
we can reach knowledge of the macrocosm”.

By macrocosm we here mean the universe. By microcosm here we are referring to

the human being, because it seems that we can say with sufficient certainty the human
being represents the most complete microcosm in comparison to all the other microcosms
that exist in nature.

We also have much more knowledge about this microcosm than we do about any
other microcosm. In fact, while we do have inner knowledge of the human experience, no
one will ever be able to give us inner knowledge of other living organisms.

Does following such criteria mean that we are building an anthropomorphic

cosmology?

It’s obvious that we run such a risk and we must continuously check ourselves so
it doesn’t happen. The best way we can avoid this from happening is to base our research,
as mentioned above, on the ability to unite the essence of this subject as explained by
religion, philosophy, science and art, where each explanation both corrects the others and
integrates them.

For example, it’s obvious that a cosmological vision that doesn’t take the data
offered by physics and astrophysics into account would have absolutely no value. But by
the same token, it would not be of much value if only these scientific approaches were
utilized and others were ignored.

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 Here we want to affirm that every world view that is created by looking only at one
type of data, be it religious or philosophical or scientific, produces a view that is fallible.
This is true because it would be a view that is both true and false at the same time, it
would always be incomplete and reductionist, and it could never explain the complexity of
the universe all by itself.

The point of view expressed in Sophia-Art makes sense in that it allows us to:

a) proceed in a dialectical manner;

Our way of thinking cannot be only linear, where things are seen as being either in black or
white. It must be, instead, dialectical, and not only dialectical but circular. Thus we must
adopt a linear way of thinking, a dialectical thought process of thesis, antithesis and
synthesis, and then a circular way of thinking that integrates both linear and dialectical
thinking.

b) blend together the contributions from other points of view into a unified one by
either purifying them of their falsehoods and keeping their truths, or by
concentrating their contributions through a synthesis of opposites, thus reaching a
concentration of truths that will never be linear but will always be complex;

c) maintain the complexity of the human phenomenon as a constant reference

point, and thus have a guide that is based on fact and not on unverifiable
fantasies.

Let’s look for a moment here what I mean by Cosmoanthropic principle.

The formulation of this principle was created in my mind as a development of my reflections

on the anthropic principle created by a group of American scientists.

Anyone who would like to know more about the anthropic principle can read Stephen
Hawking’s book “A Brief History of Time”, and the book “God and the New Physics” by Paul
Davies.

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 My own Cosmoanthropic principle is the formulation of a principle whose roots lie in
the anthropic principle but then detaches from it completely.

The Cosmoanthropic Principle

“ To every question that we ask about the universe and that at this time does not
have an answer we will ask an equal one regarding humanity. The answer we consider as
being valid for humanity we will consider it as being valid for the universe as well”. We
will not assume a definitive and acritical position towards the answers we find. Analogies
are precious tools but they must be used heuristically, as an invitation to formulate
daring new hypotheses and as dialectical departure points, not givens.

This means that if I make affirmations on the basis of the cosmoanthropic principle,
these are to be considered not definitive truths but rather as points of departure for
research.

Humanity contains within itself all the truths of the cosmos. By asking ourselves the right
questions we will continually find new answers that will complete this truth. What are the
questions we can ask ourselves?

What follows are some examples, such as : how was the universe created?

This is a fundamental question. Science does not know how to answer this question,
rather, for now it has formulated a hypothesis that affirms the creation of the universe
through the explosion of the Big Bang. Science up until now has been able to explain what
happened starting from one second after the Big Bang. Scientists are working to try to
understand what happened during the first second, but, as Stephen Hawking, one of the
greatest contemporary scientists, affirms, science tells us that we will never be able to know
what happened before the first second. In a moment I will confute this affirmation and I will
explain how and why.

I could add another question: where does the universe come from? If science is not
yet able to answer this question, but I want an answer to it, what can I do? If I follow the
Cosmoanthropic principle, I turn towards humanity and I ask: where do human beings
come from? How was the human being created?

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Therefore, for all the questions that we ask about the universe that science has not yet
answered, we can formulate the same question regarding human beings, regarding their
essence and their existence.

We will ask what the answer is that we get regarding human beings and, according to the
answers we get, we can then make the leap from the microcosm of the human being to the
macrocosm of the universe.

Now I will give you some simplifications of this idea and some various ways of looking at it.
This principle has numerous possible ways it can be used and you will become aware of
this with time.

Scientific discoveries are the fruit of hypotheses and of research that confirms these
hypotheses, or of theories built upon constant observations.

What does this mean? When Einstein created his theory of relativity, first of all
special relativity and then general relativity, he started out from a hypothesis. He worked
around this hypothesis using mathematics. Einstein could not offer experimental proof of his
hypothesis! He could offer no proof. Proof was found later on by other scientists who
embraced Einstein’s hypothesis and worked so as to verify if this hypothesis was true or
false. His theory was confirmed later on, not by Einstein, remember, but by other scientists.
Therefore, one starts out with a hypothesis and then goes on to look for an experimental
confirmation of the hypothesis; if such a confirmation comes, then the hypothesis is
considered to have either a partial or a complete truth to it. The general theory of relativity is
a partial truth, it is not a complete truth.
Why is that? Because in the meantime quantum mechanics was developed and there
is no agreement between quantum physics and general relativity, even though scientists are
working to try to find one. This means that Einstein’s theory is a partial truth, just as Max
Planck’s is, who discovered quantum physics. We still need yet another scientist or another
set of scientists who can complete these two partial facets of the truth. Therefore, scientific
discoveries are the result of hypotheses, of research to confirm hypotheses or of constant
observations on which theories are developed.

The first scientist who worked in this manner was Aristotle. Aristotle observed the
world of nature with infinite patience; he observed and observed and he then started
building his theories on what he had observed. Many of his theories were very important

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ones, whereas many others were damaging. There is one which was particularly damaging
and which I will try to confute in just a minute.

We must use this same approach when we are utilizing the cosmoanthropic principle.

Therefore, the integration we must make is clear: if on one hand we make an

affirmation that comes from the cosmoanthropic principle, on the other we can say that this
affirmation can make sense if it integrates the scientific method, which takes a hypothesis
and then attempts to verify its truth, or if one begins making a series of observations and
then builds a theory based on these observations. Newton, who worked in the following
manner, is a good example of this second method: he observed what happened with solids
and he later formulated the law of universal gravity.

d) question a truth that has been taken as valid, every time that humanity
dismantles one of its illusions or false perceptions so as a new, more complete
vision of truth can be reached, that beforehand was unthinkable. This is what
happened, for example, with Galileo Galilei.

What do we perceive? That the earth stays still and that the sun goes around it. Only
with the help of Kepler, Copernicus and Galileo were we able to convince ourselves – and
still not everyone is convinced, sometimes polls are made where large numbers of people
are randomly asked when walking down the street whether they know if the earth orbits
the sun or if instead it stays still or if the sun orbits the earth or if it stays still, and there is
still a large percentage of people who are convinced that the sun is in orbit and the earth
stands still. This is true as of 1988, and not in Europe but also in America, of all places.

Therefore, since we are convinced by our sensory perceptions, we say that the sun goes
around the earth and the earth stands still; only by using reason do we realize that this
perception is false and that reality is completely different from what we perceive it to be.

Now, throughout human history we have made many of these types of conquests
that have allowed us to realize that many of our perceptions are one hundred percent true,
and many others are only partially true, so we must modify them. The same thing is true for
what I am proposing to you. What I am telling you is the result of all of human experience
up until now, as far as I know, but humanity will continue to progress in the future. How

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many other things will change in our way of thinking, in how we perceive things, in how we
reason? We will have to again integrate all of the elements from the past with what is
emerging in the present, and go forward from there.

Here is a recent example to illustrate this point. Nuclear physics affirms that it
knows with certainty what has happened in the universe starting from one second after
the Big Bang, and it is working ardently at trying to understand what happened during
the first second. It also affirms, quite uncautiously, that it will never be possible to know
what happened before that, since time began existing only during the first second and not
before that.

And what if one day all this should end up being revealed as false, just as the idea
that the sun orbited the Earth was revealed as false, or that it was not possible to divide
the atom into smaller parts was discovered as being false? Who can keep us from
thinking (and here the Cosmoanthropic principle comes into play) that perhaps one day
we will be able to demonstrate that in the beginning the universe was like a female ovum,
and that if it is like it is today, this happened because something similar to the sperm of a
man fecundated it and made it explode into the Big Bang?

Today there is no proof of this but one day there could be (just as it happened with
Galileo’s telescope) and we could see that just as billions of humans exist billions of
universes exist, and just as a man unites with a woman to give birth to another human
being, it could very well happen that one universe unites with another and gives birth to
another universe.

But for us to be able to proceed in this way, that is undoubtedly quite dizzying, we
must first overcome the authoritarianism of philosophy, which inevitably supports the
authoritarianism of theology. Such purification is necessary if we want to free science and
art and allow them to move beyond the columns of Hercules that philosophy and theology
impose.

The philosophy of Aristotle affirms:

c) that the principle of causality cannot be put aside;

d) that it is impossible to proceed infinitely from one cause to another but that at
some point we must come to an uncaused cause, a primum movens that is moved
by none other except God, or the Absolute, an Ens a se and not ab alio, to the

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 uncaused Being, without beginning or time, that is, though, the cause of every
beginning and every time.

Let’s stop and look for a moment at these ideas.

God=Ens a se: the necessary being that depends on nothing else.

Let’s clarify this first concept.

Ens a se. This is a Latin phrase that translates Aristotle’s Greek ideas. “Ens a se” means
that it is a being that is derived from itself and from no other being.

“Ens ab alio” is a being that necessarily comes from another being and, while the ens a se
is the necessary being, the ens ab alio is a contingent being. What does necessary mean?
Necessary is whatever necessarily exists; thus God, who is the ens a se, necessarily exists.
Humanity and the universe, which are ens ab alio, and I will now explain why, are
contingent beings.

What does the word contingent mean? That it can either exist or not exist. It is not
necessary.

Thus God, the ens a se, is the necessary being; everything that is created, that is the result
of creation, is a contingent being. To be contingent means that whether it exists or not
makes no difference at all. And if it does exist, it exists by pure chance and just as it exists
it can not exist and it is completely unimportant.

Do you see the difference between being necessary and being contingent? Good. Now let’s
look at the connection between ens a se and ens ab alio.

What is an ens a se? An ens a se is the Being, that is God, that doesn’t depend on
any cause outside of itself, and for this reason we say that God is causa sui, the cause of
himself.

What is, instead, the ens ab alio? Ens ab alio is the being that receives its being from
another, not from itself. Thus this being, whatever being that might be here, including all of
us, are beings that have a cause, according to this philosophy. Who made this watch? The
watchmaker; and who made the watchmaker? and so on and so on.

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 Therefore, everything that is created, everything that is contingent, everything that is
finite, is always the effect of a preceding cause; that preceding cause is the effect of a yet
earlier cause and so on and so on. But the first principle that Aristotle formulated says that
we cannot proceed infinitely from one effect to its cause, from a cause to another effect and
so on. It is not possible. At some point we have to necessarily stop; at some point we must
necessarily postulate a being that creates all other beings but who has not been created by
any other being.

Is this clear up to this point? Now let’s look again at the earlier text to make the
connection with the following phrase clear.

The philosophy of Aristotle affirms:

e) that the principle of causality cannot be put aside;

f) that it is impossible to proceed infinitely from one cause to another but that at
some point we must come to an uncaused cause, a primum movens that is moved
by none other except God, or the Absolute, the Ens a se and not to ab alio, to the
uncaused Being, without beginning or time, that is, though, the cause of every
beginning and every time.

Why? Because if the contingent being exists, if humanity exists, if the universe
exists, it

exists because God created it.

Because the ens a se generated the ens ab alio. Do you follow me?

The error in this second affirmation lies, in my opinion, in the affirmation that it
can be demonstrated, philosophically and scientifically, that any event can be brought
back to a single cause, even with infinite steps, instead of to a complexity of causes or at
least to two.

My confutation consists in affirming the following:

it is not possible, neither philosophically speaking nor scientifically speaking, to prove that
any event originated from one single cause.

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 Philosophy will never be able to offer this demonstration, nor will science be able to.
To the contrary, science continuously demonstrates the exact opposite. What is its opposite?
That there are instead a multiple number of causes that originate every event, there is never
one single cause. To simplify it all what I say is: if it is difficult to demonstrate the
complexity involved in multiple causes, can’t we at least say that there are two causes at
the origin of every event? Let’s just start from this more simple affirmation. At the beginning
of every event there are at least two causes, not one. Demonstration.

I don’t believe that philosophy can ever make such a demonstration and I do
believe, instead, that science can show that every event always has a complexity and a
multiplicity of causes. It can do so and it already has done so in many different cases.

If, then, we apply the Cosmoanthropic principle, we see that every child is born
from two distinct causes: the father and the mother. This is also true for every animal and
for every plant. And I also know that the father and the mother are not two absolute
causes, but they are immersed in multiple causes that keep them alive and make them
act. At the same token, both the ovum and the sperm need many other causes to develop,
either as sources of ulterior energy or as stimuli.

Is it clear what I am affirming here? With a mental abstraction we can say: I am the
child of my father and my mother; I am the child of two causes; and I could very well stop
there, but I will make a mental abstraction because history tells us something quite
different. What does history tell us? That my father was also the son of a father and a
mother and my mother was the daughter of a father and a mother; here we already have
two plus two equals four plus two equals six, and if I keep going back how many causes
will I have? To touch on this just briefly what I want to say is: I am the child of a father and
a mother, and I have only named two causes, but what is behind these causes?

An infinite number of causes. Where did my father and my mother live? Didn’t they
live in a specific geographic area? And the geographical area, the land, the city of Messina
where they lived, isn’t this a cause? And the air they breathed, isn’t this a cause? And I
could go on and on ad infinitum. Is this example of what multiple causes are behind a
single or double cause clear?

To further shift our perspective regarding the principle of a single and absolute cause,
I would like to ask you: first of all, is the genius of Einstein or Michelangelo or Mozart
only the fruit of the single cause of their parents? And secondly, if this is the case, how is

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it possible that from the lesser, the banality of these parents, comes out something
greater, which is the genius of these people?

I could ask the same question regarding life. How is it possible that superior, more
complex forms rise from inferior, less complex ones? Human beings from animals,
animals from plants, plants from minerals and all of it reduced to a single cause, not a
multiplicity of causes.

To correct and complete Aristotle’s thought I would here like to affirm the principle
of circular causality, which states that reality is circular, just like a wheel is circular.
Linear realities can only exist as being part of a circular reality, that is, as a part of a
whole.

The spoke of a wheel can exist only if it connects to the axis of the circle. It can
never exist otherwise. From this we can see that linear causes can exist only if they are a
part of a circular cause and, in particular, it follows that the linear demonstration that
Aristotle uses to deduce the Ens a se from the ens ab alio, based on the principle of
causality, is false because it affirms that the line is an absolute.

Now, so we can assimilate well these concepts, let’s say that the principle of a single
cause is equal to a straight line; the principle of a circular cause equals a curved line, a
circle.

Is this comparison clear? Then let’s say that a straight line can exist only if it is part of a
circle and here we must stop, because we immediately come to the point where all
arguments fall through.

If we look at any room, we can see that there are many straight lines; a table has a
horizontal straight line and another one that is vertical. We have only straight lines and
none that are curved. But so how does what I am saying pan out? By steps. If I ask you to
use your imagination to leave this room and think of the space in the universe, think of the
sky and all the stars and tell me, would you be able to find a straight line in the sky? One
that really exists, not just in your imagination. There are no straight lines in the sky. Sorry,
none exist in the universe either.

The truth is that while on earth straight lines can exist – and we will look at why in a
moment – beyond earth no straight lines can exist.

You can look for them as long as you like, but you will never find any of them! If you want
to draw the starry sky on a piece of paper, you can trace a straight line, for example, from

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one star to another, but this is an invention of yours. A straight line does not exist in the
universe. But so how is it that they exist here on earth? Think for a moment about the
ramps where missiles are launched into space; a launching pad looks straight, it’s vertical,
right? And when the missile takes off it goes straight up according to how we perceive it,
but after a few seconds, what happens to the missile? It starts to curve. Why is that? Here
we have the clearest demonstration that every straight line can exist only as part of a
curved one. Otherwise it cannot exist. We can create straight lines only on a small scale,
where they clearly exist and we see them. On a universal scale straight lines do not exist,
they cannot exist unless they are a part of a curved line, of a circle or of a spiral. Is this
clear?

Comment from the audience: “The force of gravity comes into play though”.

That doesn’t matter. What is important is that straight lines cannot exist. This is what really
counts.

Comment from the audience: “Why do there have to be either circles or spirals?”

It is a law of the universe, I can’t tell you why.

Every straight line is always a part of a circle or a spiral.

Let’s look at some examples, first regarding earth and then regarding the universe.
On earth we have examples of straight lines that are part of a circle, like in a wheel. A
wheel is made up of a circle that has a central axis, the spokes of the wheel connect the
central axis with the peripheral circle and here we have straight lines, which are the spokes
of the wheel, but they are a part of a circular reality.

Is this image clear? Let’s say then that as far as our perception goes, straight lines
do exist, but they exist only because they are part of a circular reality. There are some
instances in which this circular reality is immediately evident, like in a wheel, and there are
others in which it is less obvious and we have to use our reason to find it.

What conclusion can we draw here? That if we have made the analogy that says that a
single cause equals a straight line and a circular cause equals a curved line, we can
conclude that single causes cannot exist as separate from circular ones.

Now we must try to take another step forward. Later on I will again talk about single
cause and I will affirm that single causes do exist. My discourse must be dialectical and

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thus you must be patient with me. For now I’ll say that a single cause can exist in that it is
part of a circular cause, just like the spokes of a while are straight lines which are a part of
a circular reality.

To return to my confutation of Aristotle, if I remain convinced that straight lines can

exist by themselves, then I can affirm along with Aristotle that the ens a se exists as a
single cause. If instead I recognize that they cannot exist, through the reasoning
demonstrated here, I must recognize that this is false. It is an arbitrary abstraction that
Aristotle created and every philosopher and theologian since he first made it has followed
along with it. And not only have the philosophers and the theologians followed along with it,
so have each one of us. Even though I am here telling you these things, I still do not
consider myself as being free of thinking or being tempted to think that absolute straight
lines exist. I know this is a fallacy, but I tend to think this way because this is the way of
thinking I was born into, this is my cultural background. It is not easy to change our way of
thinking, it is indeed very difficult.

Now, try to follow along with me in this other digression. I told you in the beginning
that after Christopher Columbus all of humanity accepted to be convinced that the earth is
round and not flat. Today everyone is sure that the earth is round and not flat even though
what we see is a flat earth. We can’t see that it is round, right?

We are also used to thinking that God is flat and I want to ask you to begin convincing
yourselves that God is round and not flat.

I have no doubt that this brief reasoning can clear the mind of philosophers and
scientists from their unquestioned dependence on Aristotle and theology.

Einstein spent half of his life looking for a way to confute quantum physics, only
because “God cannot play dice” and he could not give up the idea of God.

The same thing seems to happen today with Stephen Hawking, the greatest
researcher on black holes and astrophysics, because he too is obsessed by the presence
or the absence of the idea of God.

His whole book, From the Big Bang to Black Holes, is based on this dilemma: is
there a God or is there not a God?

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Can you see how the way of thinking that Aristotle initiated continues to influence the
minds of the greatest scientists?

What in philosophy is called Being and Nothingness, in theology is called God and
Nothingness, and in physics is called quantums of energy and the quantum void, in
Sophia-Art all these names indicate two distinct causes, which have always existed and
which have always mated to give birth to new universes. They represent the Yin and the
Yang, the masculine and feminine principles that the Chinese Tao and the Hindu religion
speak of.

There is no reason to make these two entities into divinities or to hypostasize

hypostasize in this case means the same thing as making into a divinity

them, which only creates all kinds of unsolvable contradictions in the lives of human
beings.

Now that I am an adult, I no longer need to make my father and my mother into
divinities, but when I was a child I had to do so.

Nor do I need to make myself into a divinity to give my life or anyone else’s life
meaning, or to give spirituality and love an important place in my own life and in my
relationships with others. Nor do I need to do so to figure out if I will have an immortal
destiny or not. According to Sophia-Art all I need to know is if I will be able to make my
life a work of art or not, and not all by myself but together with many others.

I believe that at this point I can trace the essential lines of my cosmological vision.

Now I would like to change my tone. Up until now I have spoken philosophically and
scientifically, from now on I want to ask you to take what I am saying as though it were a
fairy tale. I am asking you to listen to a fairy tale, and if you like what you hear you can
accept it, if you don’t like what you hear you are more than welcome to not accept what I
say.

Here is my fairy tale.

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 1. The origins of the universe

There is no God who created the universe from nothing.

I am sorry to have to disagree with the Bible (a book that I love very much for many
reasons) but this is not the first time this has happened in history.

The universe had a mother and a father, just like every human being does.

This father and mother can be called in many ways. I prefer calling them Masculine
Principle and Feminine Principle and I don’t have to make them into divinities but I do
have to free myself of any idea of uncaused and absolute cause that sits there and
observes and judges what I do with my life. My life belongs only to myself and I am
completely responsible for it, both for good and bad.

2. Is this the only universe that exists?

Many universes exist besides this one and nothing tells me that I have to know
only this one I am living in now. If I transform my life into a work of art, I could find that I
have discovered the key that will allow me to go from one universe to the next. To the
contrary, if I refuse to transform myself, I could remain simply a man animal that falls
into the nothingness and annihilation of its subjectivity once its biological form and
physical form that incarnated it dissolves, just as what happens to plants and animals.

3. Life after death

This is a development of point ‘2’. There I affirmed the existence of other universes
and of the idea that those who transform their lives into works of art can go from this
universe to another universe, and begin a new life there.

How could this be possible?

I have already explained this thoroughly in my book La vie comme oeuvre d’art {Life
as a work of art}.

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 Here I want to indicate another possible answer.

Men produce sperm and women produce ovules. To create a new life these sperm
and ovules must detach themselves, begin to move, encounter each other and fuse
together.

I think that every human being detaches from this life and its earthly identity dies,
just like an ovum or a sperm detaches and dies, so as to acquire a new identity that
comes about when it fuses with a partner in another universe.

Not all sperm and ovules that are produced end up generating new life.

Not all human beings who die are thus capable of beginning a new life. Those who
remain profoundly egotistical are incapable of melding with another being and
beginning a new life. An egoist will never accept losing his or her individual identity,
thus he or she can never be part of a couple, whether it be in this life or in the next.

It is also true that it takes art to find the right partner; it takes art to bring them
out of their shell and obtain their agreement to fuse together. It takes art to make sure
that this fusion completely extends into a complex project, such as life as part of a
couple, and it takes art to face the many obstacles that could transform a life project
into an abortion and overcome them together.

It is not enough, therefore, to not be egotistical, as the religions tell us, to be able
to incarnate in another universe. One must also become an artist and an artist of
one’s own life. This is what Sophia-Art proposes.

Most animals, plants and human beings – maybe not all, but most – use forms of art
to court each other.

Some use visual effects, full of color, like flowers, and some use song, like birds.
Some use olfactory effects and others use rhythmic movements that express the
strength, grace and beauty of a dance.

Human beings who want to incarnate into another universe must learn, before
they die, to transform themselves into visual, sonorous, rhythmic and perhaps even
olfactory and taste artistic vibrations.

The purpose of the wide range of human arts that artists have created is to move
people, and inspire wonder in them through their five senses. There is a form of art for
the eyes, one for the ears, one for the mouth, one for the olfactory sense, perfume, and
one for the body, which is dance. These forms attract people and create fusions,

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 fusions among human beings and fusions between human beings and art. New life is
always produced through these fusions.

Perhaps this is the way to the other side: knowing how to produce artistic
vibrations in all kinds of ways so as to court and enchant our twin souls in other
worlds and thus assure new life.

4. The problem of evil and pain

If a God exists, the God of the philosophers and the theologians who created the
universe and the presence of both physical and moral evil, we will never find an adequate
response to why these things exist in this world. We are faced with so many philosophical
and theological contradictions, that to find a coherent way of thinking we are forced to
either draw all kinds of far-fetched conclusions, or to simply attribute these things to the
mysterious will of God. Either that or we must simply accept the brutal coherence of
Saint Thomas of Aquino, which states that the damned are necessary to glorify God, or
Saint Paul’s, who states that Christ’s death was necessary to save the world from guilt,
because God had no better solution.

But the worst contradictions arise within the hearts of men and women, not in their
minds, when the hour of drama, pain and evil strikes and they are faced with their
unbearable weight.

Camus was horrified by all the pain in the world, but he was especially horrified by
the pain and death of innocent people.

Today no one perhaps is as horrified as he was but this is certainly not because people
have greater faith.

But if it wasn’t God who created the world, then there is no absurd, unjust world
which we must fight against. There is instead a world without meaning that only an artist
can give meaning to.

An artist who has not been faced with evil and with pain is a mediocre one, and his
or her art is mediocre as well.

Instead, whoever has learned to transform evil and pain into artistic creativity is
capable of creating great works of art.

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 Even greater is the type of art created by those who transform their whole life into
a work of art, using the energy contained in evil and in pain, both that which is
experienced directly and that which pertains to the outside world.

5. Is the universe contracting?

Physicists ask themselves if this universe that is today expanding will continue to
expand forever or if one day it will stop doing so and will begin an endless collapse.

Sophia-Art offers the following answer to this, by using the Cosmoanthropic model.

The entire universe is a single living organism, just like a human being is. A
human being expands from conception until adulthood, but then it does not contract, it
stops expanding at the point it had reached until after quite some time physical death
overcomes it.

Why should the universe contract like some sort of magic trick? This universe will,
of course, one day die. But human beings generate children and many other things before
they die. Therefore, how many other universes will it have generated and how many other
things that today cannot be imagined will be created before it collapses and dies?

6. Does the universe have an I Person?

If the universe is a single living organism, like a human being, it is feasible that
like humanity it has a central subject, an I that thinks, desires, loves, makes plans and
creates. Thus the universe would have its own I that is a central subject and that thinks,
loves and acts: in other words, an I Person.

But just like my I Person is not God, neither in a philosophical nor in a theological
sense, why should the I Person of the cosmos be one?

As a living being, I am made up of billions of cells and billions upon billions of

atoms. Every cell and every atom each also have a central subject that thinks, loves and
creates.

How can I possibly think that my conscious I does not communicate with my cells
and atoms and vice-versa?

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 I can, of course, separate myself from them and I can oppose them with my
madness, or I can transcend myself and ask my cells and atoms to follow me in my
process of transcendence and in my work of art. In this manner we could create together
a total joy of being.

In the same way I can unify my conscious, global I with the Cosmic, global I of the
universe and become part of the cosmic harmony. Isn’t this what the mystics from all
religions throughout the ages have done?

Following my personalistic metapsychology, outlined in my book Teoria della

Persona {Theory of the Person}, I can attribute to both human beings and the universe a
Psychological I, a Corporeal I, a Personal SELF and an I Person.

Or, being even bolder, I could think that the systemic whole containing these four
components found in human beings, which is not a simple sum of the various parts,
represents the Corporeal I, the Psychological I, the I Person and the SELF of the whole
universe.

All together they represent the being and the future of the totality of the Cosmic I
that moves continuously from one form to another, from one creation to another, from
one transcendence to another, from one work of art to another. This happens so as to
bring the many to the One, without cancelling the many, and the One to a contemplation
of the Beauty that is thus created and to the ecstatic joy that is experienced when this
happens.

To help your minds concentrate on the topic I will give you another example of yet
another reality that can become an analogy of what we have already said about single
cause and circular cause or multiple single causes, and about circular causality and
multiple causes.

Think about a genealogical tree; a genealogical tree is made up of single lines. If you
think about it, think above all about, for example, the genealogical tree of a monarchy, or a
king that descends from another king and so on. What I want you to notice is that a
genealogical tree is only a mental abstraction that does not take history into consideration.
As one of you has pointed out, the female element is always eliminated in a genealogical
tree. I mention this to bring you back to where we started when we were talking about
causality, about Aristotle’s principle of causality, which is also an abstraction that does not
take reality into account.

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 And just like a genealogical tree does not take reality into account, because reality
has multiple causes, we use straight lines in them to make it easier for us, but at the cost of
skipping over elements and thus not truly reflecting the reality of a family history.

Now let’s look at another discourse that I want to undertake.

In the beginning I mentioned Christopher Columbus and how his voyage began the
unification between East and West and the unification of the earth as a global reality. I also
asked you to have the courage necessary to undertake a new enterprise. An enterprise
which entails unifying humanity with the universe and the universe in all its various parts.

Someone mentioned how hard it is to follow this line of thought and I told him that
he’s absolutely right. If earlier we had to find the courage to jump in the saddle of a horse,
and we know what horses are like, now I am going to ask you to jump into the saddle of a
winged horse, not just a simple horse. You are going to need even more courage, because I
am asking you to jump onto a winged horse and ride it so we can undertake this type of
unification.

Here is another idea that we can use as the basis for our discussion. A human being
is made up of a central nervous system and a peripheral one. The central nervous system is
found in the brain and in the spinal column; all the connections to the peripheral nervous
system come out from the spinal column.

So, now let’s ask ourselves a question: where is the universe’s central nervous
system and where is its peripheral nervous system?

Second question: if we look at the evolution of life on earth, we know that early on
there was no nervous system, then a peripheral nervous system developed and after that a
central nervous system came into being. Later on, the connection between the peripheral
nervous system and the central one was brought about. If this is what happened regarding
the evolution of life on the earth, then what is it that must happen so that the universe’s
peripheral nervous system and its central nervous system become connected?

I still don’t know how to answer these questions.

7. Does life in this universe exist only on Earth?

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 I believe that this question is not asked quite in the correct manner. Let me
explain. If the universe is a living organism, just like human beings are, life in the
universe exists everywhere, in every part, just like life is present in every part of a human
being.

The right way to ask this question could be as follows: does life reproduce only on
Earth, or does it do so elsewhere as well?

Let’s again look at human beings to find the answer. The reproductive organs of
men and women are found only in one area of their organism, not in more than one. The
uterus is found only in one place within the woman, not in more than one place. It would
be counterproductive for the proper function of the whole organism if there was more
than one uterus in a single body.

I believe that the Milky Way, which the solar system containing the Earth belongs
to, represents the male and female reproductive organs for the life of the entire universe.
Other galaxies have other functions.

In the universe there is only one uterus and this uterus is the Earth.

We can continue thinking and hoping that other living beings exist but if we do so I
would suggest that we look for them not within this universe, but within other universes
that are developing within infinite space, beside and beyond our own universe.

8. Did time exist before this universe did?

Before I was conceived, my time didn’t exist but my father’s time and my mother’s
time did, as well as that of many others.

Therefore, before this universe was born its own time did not exist but the time of
previous universes did, which mated and created this one.

Is it so difficult to accept such a simple idea?

Or is it too simple to be appealing to the complicated minds of the philosophers?

But who were they themselves born from?

Aren’t they also children of a father and a mother?

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 One would think not. And just like so many children refuse to consider themselves
children of their parents and they fantasize about who knows what kind of origins, many
philosophers, who cannot accept the essential simplicity of life, wrack their brains with
metaphysical speculation so that they make it seem they are different and very much
better than the rest of us poor mortals.

I really like how Davide Lopez, in his book La vita nella selva {Life in the jungle} ,
tears them apart by declaring how miserable their phallic, Napoleonic and megalomanic I
really is.

Then, thanks to Einstein, we know that time and space make up a whole, so what I
have said about time refers to space as well. My own space-time begins existing with the
beginning of my existence, and it will end when my life does.

And just like my space-time is within a space-time that is greater than mine, the
space-time of this universe is part of a much bigger one.

What’s the problem if the human mind cannot manage to explain and even imagine
this greater space-time? Is the human mind by chance capable of imagining four
dimensions? And does this mean that four dimensions don’t exist?

9. The role of art in the universe

Sophia-Art has an even more interesting question for the philosophers.

The history of philosophy is very vast and it stretches across the centuries. Have
philosophers yet managed to explain to us what art is, what is art and what isn’t art, and
why? One philosopher steps up and says: this is art. The next one comes along and says,
no, all of you who came before me have been wrong, I’ll tell you what art is. But even this
last one’s discourse is garbled and so no one has ever really managed to tell us yet what
art really is. Art, though, has continued to exist and develop and it never dies, whereas
philosophical systems do.

What is the great mystery we are dealing with here?

For me, art is a creation that is even greater than the creation of the very universe
itself. I will attempt to demonstrate this.

In a work of art what did not exist before now exists, and it does not exist like an
inanimate thing but like a living subject. It is not just any living plant, animal or human

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subject, that lives, reproduces and dies. It is a living subject that lives forever. It
generates unending energy and it never dies even after the artist who created it is dead.

Let’s try to put the artist in the place of the God of the philosophers and
theologians, and we will find that an artist creates everything out of nothingness.

Here the nothingness I refer to is not in terms of being, but in terms of a quantum
void from which all forms and all possible potentials emerge.

According to quantum physics, a quantum vacuum is the ability to contain packets of

energy, but at an unfathomable level of condensation. Thus a quantum vacuum is an
infinite ability to maximum concentration of packets of energy.

This nothingness is intended as totally not being, in the sense that before the work
of art was created it was truly nothing, it did not exist at all. Then the miracle happens
and the artist creates its non-being into being, its non-existence into existence, non-
living into living and into an immortal living being.

And the artist that existed previously only at the level of a biological being is now
transformed, as it is incarnated into the work of art and the matter that is the work of
art’s medium. Before there was just one and now they are three, which are both fused
together and distinct from each other: the medium, the work of art and the artist.

If we look at this practically, thinking of a painting, what is it on? It is on a canvas.

And what is the work of art? We don’t really know, but it is visible and we can enjoy it.
Think of Botticelli and of his Primavera, or think of Leonardo da Vinci and his Gioconda; in
each one of these works both the art and the artist that created them are inside of them.
They are both three and one: the medium, the work of art and the artist.

What a synthesis of opposites and what harmony arises from this synthesis!

According to theology and philosophy, God is eternal and cannot die, because he
lies beyond time. At the same time he is nonetheless present in the time of this universe.
The theologians say that the contingent being, the universe, could not remain alive, could
not keep on existing if the necessary being, God, should withdraw his support from the
universe.

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 It is easy to make this concept clear. Here I have my key chain and I am holding it up
in the air with my hand; if I take my hand away, my key chain cannot stay up in the air
and so it will immediately fall to the ground. This is the image of the relationship that exists
between God who is ens a se and the universe that is ens ab alio, according to philosophers
and theologians. The universe which is a contingent being cannot exist if God is not always
holding it up, because as soon as God takes his creative action away the universe will fall
into nothingness.

But now let’s look at the comparison between the artist and the work of art.

Instead, artists can die. They die when their biological time is over. But, strangely,
they never die completely: they continue to live, to be present and to act, within their
works of art and through their works of art, which were created within time but which are
beyond time as well. They can pass through all time, as long as there is a material
medium that can sustain their existence and as long as there will be other human beings
to appreciate a work of art and give it new life and new continuity.

Imagine here the power that not only the artist who created the work of art has, but
also the power that those who enjoy it have, because if there is no one to enjoy it the work
of art cannot exist, nor can the artist. If we look at it this way we can begin to understand
the concept of circular cause between the artist who creates and those who enjoy the work
of art.

Let’s look at an even clearer example. Do you like rock music? I don’t like it, but at this time
millions of people like it. Could a rock singer exist if he didn’t have millions of fans who go
to listen to him sing, who buy his recordings or who go to his concerts?

He can exist by himself but in that case he is the only one who listens to his music. If he
wants to exist publicly he needs his fans. The same thing is true for a soccer player. If no
one goes to the stadium to watch the game, a soccer player will exist only for his team
mates.

Now can you understand circular cause? What it really means? Without someone to
appreciate works of art, artists cannot exist, a soccer player cannot exist without his fans,
nor can a rock singer exist without his.

So it is important that we not only look at the power the artist, the soccer player or
the movie star has, we have to see the essential relationship that each one has with their

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fans. We must understand and deeply comprehend how important the artistic power of
those who connect with a certain artist really is. Because if this does not happen the artist
cannot exist, either on a public level or socially or historically. The artist can exist on his or
her own, but no one will ever know that he or she has existed.

And, contrary to the universe in relationship to God, a work of art can exist all by
itself, once it has sprung from the mind of an artist. If the artist is not there, if the artist
dies, the being and the existence of the work of art suffers no damage at all.

Try to look at this with respect to the difference between a philosophical, a

theological and an artistic conception of things.

We have said that if I hold my watch up with my hand it will stay there as long as I hold it;
if I take my hand away, the watch will fall. According to the philosophers and the
theologians we cannot exist if God does not keep holding us in existence. If he does not
keep us in existence we will disappear into nothingness. This is the power of God. It seems
to me to be a very limited kind of power; if he doesn’t stay there holding our hands his
creation will disappear into the void.

Is it this way for an artist and a work of art? No, it is not the same type of power!
Once Leonardo da Vinci created the Gioconda, it will exist for as long as the canvas exists,
until it has been destroyed by an earthquake or a fire or by who knows what. The work of
art will continue to exist even if Leonardo da Vinci isn’t right there holding it up. This is the
power of the artist.

According to you, which is greater, God’s power or the power of the artist?

I hope you can understand the difference!

It is there forever.

How strange is that! Does the artist have more creative power than God? And does
the work of art have a quality of being than the one this universe has?

So how big, exactly, is the power of an artist?

One could say that it would be better to be an artist than to be God!

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 But there is at least one point on which we could argue it would be not be better to
be artists than to be God.

When artists create something, when they are completely involved in the creative
process, there is a long, terrible moment in which they must face death and emptiness.
They must empty themselves of everything their existence has been up to that point so
they can make space for the fullness that is the work of art that springs out of
nothingness, out of emptiness, out of the heart and total being of the artist.

God knows nothing of this death and knows nothing of this emptiness.

God is and does not become anything else.

God is and doesn’t have to die.

God is eternal beatitude and he doesn’t have to suffer.

God creates instantly and knows nothing of labor pains. The labor pains of a
woman giving birth; the labor pains of an artist who is creating. Oh how wonderful it
would be to be God in those moments!

And God said: let there be light, and there was light. That’s easy, right? But for us it
isn’t so easy. Whoever has spoken at a conference knows something about it, right? How
easy it would be to be God instead of being a person presenting a paper at a conference,
where you have to get up in front of a room full of people who seem like a monster ready to
eat you up: one’s stomach becomes a battle field! This is what I mean by labor pains. And
God, the God of the philosophers and the theologians, what does he know about labor
pains?!

10. Is the I Person of the universe an artist?

If up until now we have spoken critically of philosophy and theology and have been
enthusiastic about art, now the time has come to integrate the historical influence of
philosophy and theology with that of art in our conception of the universe.

Here is an example of my way of thinking in a dialectical, circular fashion. If earlier I

was speaking sarcastically of the philosophers and the theologians, now I would instead
like to start talking about the wonderful things they have done.

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 We embrace the philosophical and theological idea of the existence of God as the
creator and first cause, but we want to try to reformulate it in an artistic way, by using
once again the Cosmoanthropic principle and the principle of circular causality.

Everything that we know about human beings as artists we can apply not to he
who has created the universe but to he who is creating this universe. We will try to apply
this idea according to circular causality.

As science tells us, the universe, in fact, is not completely created, it is in a phase
of being created. It is in a phase of expansion and growth and it is just fifteen years old. If
we consider a billion years as being one cosmic year, and if fifteen billion years have
passed since the Big Bang – although science is still cautious about establishing this
number precisely – we can say that fifteen billion years are the same as fifteen cosmic
years. Therefore, the universe is fifteen cosmic years old.

Here we are inspired by the Cosmoanthropic principle to utilize what philosophy

and theology tell us, be it in another context and by using a different modality.

If we reflect on how a human being is born, as a biological being, we have to

recognize that there are essentially two generating causes: the father and the mother. But
if we reflect on how a human being creates himself or herself as a man or a woman, we
know that they are a single cause of themselves in the moment they decide to become a
man or a woman or to build themselves as a man or a woman.

If we reflect on how human beings act with regards to morality or growth, we know
that here, too, human beings are essentially a single cause of their actions. They are the
sole ones responsible for their ability to give an artistic form and content to their
creativity.

Is this idea clear to you?

If we look at how a man or a woman goes from the stage of infancy to the stage of
adulthood, not in a biological sense, which happens automatically, but in an interior way
(think about it, how is it that we transform ourselves from children into adults?), can anyone
else do this for us? Can our parents do it for us? They cannot. Can our therapists do it for
us? No, they can’t. Can teachers do it for their students? Of course not.

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A child, an adolescent can only decide to do it him or herself. No one from outside can
decide whether or not we will become adults or whether we will stay children.

Comment from the audience: “A child can be taught how to do it, though”.

Yes this is true, but that doesn’t necessarily make any difference. A teacher is important;
however, at the time the decision must be made, an individual is alone with him or herself.
If he or she decides to become an adult they will do so, if not, they never will.

Comment from the audience: “But can’t the individual be helped to make the decision?”

Yes, the teacher can help, adult role models can help, but only those who are adults
internally can do so.

Here’s another example: let’s think about a person who has to own up to a moral
responsibility. Who is it that decides whether to do something moral or something immoral?
Does anyone else decide for me?

Only I can decide for myself. And I am the single cause of my moral actions.

And what about an artist who creates something? Can the artist call someone else to come
and substitute her in the act of creation?

Now, this universe has a spiritual life as well as a biological one, just like human
beings do.

If we postulate that at its beginning there are two causalities, a masculine principle
and a feminine principle, which are central causes flanked by a number of other causes,
the origins of this universe’s spiritual life must necessarily have a single central cause: a
single subject that decides as a causa sui, as a cause of itself and as an uncaused cause.

Uncaused cause means that no other has generated it. Let’s look again at the case of
an adolescent who is becoming an adult. The adolescent who is becoming an adult is a
causa sui and an uncaused cause, because the parents or the teachers cannot cause the
effect of an adolescent becoming an adult if the adolescent does not decide to do so him or
herself. In the moment in which an adolescent transforms himself into an adult, he is the
sole cause of his transformation and of his creation of himself.

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 My father and my mother are the cause of my life but they are not the cause of my
actions. The cause behind my actions is my I as a subject, my I Person. The cause of my
biological I lies in my parents and in the human species, but my parents are not the
cause of my I Person

My I Person generates itself. I am the cause of my actions and my decisions, I

create myself. I generate myself as creator of myself, I am a single cause, I generate my
own works of art.

At this point, by analogy, it would appear to be necessary to reintroduce into the

creation of the universe the first cause that the philosophers and theologians speak of. It
becomes necessary to do so if the universe must have a spiritual life as well as a
biological one, and if this spiritual life can only be in a process of being created, like it is
for humanity, and not already completed from the first moment that the universe began
to exist.

A first, single cause that is immanent to the universe, is within the universe and
not outside of it, just like my I Person is within me and not outside of me. Others would
speak of the soul of the universe, whereas I am speaking of the Cosmic I, the I Person of
the universe that is in a process of becoming. I want to do so not speculatively, but rather
by applying everything I know about the I of human beings as artists, artists of their own
lives and artists of themselves.

This procedure cannot be linear, it must necessarily be dialectical. First we will

affirm one thing and then we’ll negate it with other arguments, not to destroy what we
affirmed before but to make a synthesis of concepts and realities that are opposite to each
other.

This will also serve to affirm the presence of the principle of circular causation.

We can all agree on the fact that every artist is a creator.

But if we ask the question: is every artist a first and only cause of his or her work
of art? We could answer that this is partially true and is partially untrue. The paternity of
a work of art most certainly lies with the artist who made it but the artist is not the only
one at work.

Every artist is part of a communications network whose roots are in the past and
whose branches are in the present. Every artist expresses both continuity with and a
breaking away from the artists who preceded them; every artist is influenced by the
culture they live in at the present time, and they can also connect with any cultural

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thread that pertains to the past. Their intuition can also propel them into the future and
make them capable of seeing what does not yet exist.

In this sense, artists are not and cannot be the first and only cause of their works
of art. They work together with many non-causes, but there is a time when they
synthesize all these causes into a single cause, together with their selves and their own
perceptions, when they are actually creating. At that point they then become a first and
only cause of their work.

Everything that exists before the artist’s own existence, and there are multiple
factors, fuses together and unites with the artist’s own creative inspiration. Therefore the
artist then becomes its own essential first cause.

Next to the artist, however, there is always empty space, the nothingness of all the
works of art that have not yet been created. We have also said that the artist must be able
to empty him or herself of everything they have been up to that point to be able to create,
so as to give their work an autonomous existence and an immortal, artistic life.

When interacting with this emptiness, the artist is neither omnipotent nor
omniscient, nor is he absolutely perfect. By creating he expresses his power and he
becomes powerful, he expresses his art and he becomes a field of different energies; of
knowledge and life, of love and beauty for both himself and for many others.

Coming back to our universe, it would seem wiser to postulate a God who is in the
processes of creating the universe and who has the same qualities of an artist, rather
than to postulate a God who has already created the universe and has the qualities that
philosophers and theologians attribute to him.

This would help us overcome omnipotence, omniscience and absolute perfection,

which are all human needs and projections.

This could be the departure point for a new cosmology. Matter and energy can pass
continuously from fullness to emptiness and from emptiness to fullness. This movement
can be either chaotic or artistic. It is chaotic if there is no personal or impersonal force
that organizes it and thus the movement occurs according to the laws of chaos and
necessity; it is artistic if there is an I Person that molds and structures it so it becomes an
art form, following the laws of art.

If we look at the physical structure of this universe we could decide to affirm that
this universe is a work of art. But if we look at the “human phenomenon”, that is part of

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this universe, in all of its complexity and not only from a biological standpoint, how can
we possibly affirm that it is a work of art?

We can only come to the conclusion that we must consider the qualities and the
limitations of the Cosmic Artist. If on one hand it has shown itself to be powerful, on the
other it has shown its impotence. It has been powerful regarding nature and powerless
when it comes to humanity and human society.

But we could also look at things from a different point of view.

Perhaps the most arduous and most beautiful project that this Artist God – as
postulated by Sophia-Art – has undertaken is to transform over time both itself and
human beings from a mineral, plant and animal state to one of an artist. Not in the image
of the God of the philosophers and the theologians, but in the image of an Artist God that
is in a state of becoming.

An artist that creates his own happiness not before he has created the world, but
while he is in the act of creating it.

An artist that realizes he cannot be perfect on the first try, like it seems instead the
God of the Bible did when he created everything perfectly with his word, but that it is
impossible to understand how he created his own happiness.

An artist that creates through trial and error, through continual attempts, and
while he is trying he perfects himself and by perfecting himself he improves the quality of
his work.

Just like Leonardo da Vinci, who always took his Gioconda with him as he moved
from court to court, so that every day he could add some brushstrokes and touch it up a
bit.

And here we could also imagine that the ideas for these touch-ups don’t just come
from Leonardo, but at some point are inspired by the Gioconda itself, who communicates
with Leonardo, sometimes graciously and sometimes arrogantly, suggesting the best
touch-ups of all.

God, the artist, who models himself as a human being, over a long evolution lasting
millennia, so he can give himself first a biological life and then a spiritual one, made up of
intelligence, wisdom, love and artistic creativity.

God the artist who incarnates in humanity and gradually blends with its being, day
by day, one step at a time, one transcendence at a time, one metamorphosis after
another.

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 God that creates himself with human beings and in human beings with a quality of
being that did not exist previously and that emerges in the moment of decision making,
which only the I is the absolute Lord of, the sole first cause, the uncaused cause that has
no beginning and that originates the fusion between human beings and the God that lives
in them. This creates an incredible synthesis of opposites, a wonderful work of art, where
one is not confused with the other but where the fruits belong to both, spring from both,
show the best of both, so that joy and the fullness of life can spring forth and from life
new life can continue to emerge.

God, the artist that first shapes human beings and then begins to speak with
them, because they are two artists working together and no longer one working alone, as
according to the principle of circular causality.

Just like what happens on the set of a movie or on the stage of a theater or in the
orchestra pit.

There is no longer just one artist at work, such as the director of the film or the
orchestra; there are more than one artist who create together – both as individuals and as
a group – a work of art together with the audience who is not there just to watch but to
participate, and is thus an integral part of the work of art.

Here there is room for human history, for human actions and human freedom and
for the actions of God as well, if God is just an Artist and this artist is the I Person of the
universe, which speaks to the I Person of human beings.

In conclusion, it was not necessary that there be a God to create this universe in
its physical and biological reality. To create this universe in its spiritual reality, however,
it is necessary that there exist a God that creates it by creating himself, just like a human
being creates him or herself, like an artist creates him or herself.

On one hand this God is the I Person of the world, and on the other in part we are
this God and in part we are yet to become it.

We have a lot of time ahead of us to do so.

In essence we, along with the universe, are just hitting adolescence.

Have I made up a fairy tale?

I certainly hope I have been able to do so.

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 I believe that all the cosmologies, from the mythological ones to the scientific ones,
last through time as long as they are reassuring and illuminating to mankind.

A fairy tale is also a work of art, in a certain sense, and the ones which contain
greater artistic qualities last through time, until they become immortal fairy tales.

I hope I have created an immortal fairy tale: the fairy tale of the cosmological
conception of Sophia-Art.

This is only a first draft of it, a first attempt. To learn how far it has succeeded in
its intent and where instead it hasn’t, I now have to speak with those of you I have told it
to and then afterwards with those to whom I will tell it to in the future.

***

Comment from the audience: “I would like to say just two things. I feel that this vision is
very, very revolutionary. It seems truly original. The importance of the I Person’s actions is
a wonderful thing. But do you realize how free we are?!! Just the thought of being so free,
of being no longer tied down, is so exciting. This gives me even more energy to do so
many things. I find it really exciting that we are the cause of ourselves and that our
parents are a cause only at a level of the biological and psychological I, but not of the
spiritual I. I am free!

And then there is another thing: when you spoke of making a step into a new life, I said to
myself: well, then dying is like a passage, it’s an orgasm. I had already felt this, but now I
know it’s true”.

Thank you, I hope that many others like you can feel the breeze of freedom that this new
vision of the world brings along with it. It is our duty to conquer our freedom. But freedom
cannot be an end unto itself. It must be part of a larger goal so that it can be of service to
life. Today I indicated two goals: the first is unifying humanity with the universe; the second
is artistically transforming the life of humanity and the life of the universe, to create a form
of immortal life from a form of mortal life.

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 CHAPTER VII

∗
The Art of Creating One’s Soul

I call “spirituality” everything that human beings have done and have invented
throughout the history of their evolution to create a soul for themselves.

This definition is based on the supposition that human beings are born with only a
potential soul, and not with one that has already been created. This is very different from
what the religions affirm and especially the Christian religion, which states that
humanity’s fundamental problem lies in how to save their soul, not how to create it.

In his Dictionary of Philosophy, Voltaire already pointed out how absurd it is to

think that God is always there to spy on every human act of mating that produces a
fertilized egg, and is ready to create the soul of the new baby.

Nor is it clear what the best time would be for God to create it after that point. On
the other hand, always according to Christianity, baptism serves only to redeem the soul
from original guilt, and not to create it. But so when was it created, then?

To me it seems correct to say that at this point in time in the course of human
evolution every human being is born with the ability to create their own soul, but no one
is born with a soul already made by God.

Nor do I like to imagine a limbo, where all the souls of the children who die of
hunger in Africa supposedly go, along with all the fetuses and embryos that die from an
abortion or from natural death. Where would God’s justice be?

                                                            
∗
Letter written on Sept. 15, 1989, in preparation for the III International Congress of the Sophia University of
Rome on the theme: “Da Cristo a Gandhi: un modo nuovo di concepire la spiritualità e la politica” {From Christ to Gandhi: a
new way of looking at spirituality and politics} (Martina Franca, Italy - 30 June/6 July 1991).

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 Having said this, it is important to make it clear that it is very difficult to give an
exact definition of what the soul is. First of all we will look at images and realities that we
are all familiar with, and then we will try to define it.

A symphony orchestra, by itself, does not have a soul. It depends on which

conductor will work with it and will direct it. There are conductors who will not be able to
give it a soul and there will be conductors who will be able to create a different one for it
for every performance it gives.

The same is true of painting. There are paintings that are flat, because they do not
have a soul. There are others, instead, that have a huge soul and they fascinate millions
of people. It all depends on who painted them.

There are paintings that were praised at the time they were first exhibited in public
and that today no one pays any attention to whatsoever. They had a fleeting soul, like
time, fashion and habit are fleeting; they did not have an immortal soul.

What does it take for a painting, a symphony and an orchestra to have an immortal
soul?

They have to be alive forever. The artist must have had the ability to impress on the
matter, on the medium the work of art was created on, a life form that was not present
before, and this type of life must not be fleeting, it must last forever.

Just like this happens for works of art, the same must happen for every human
being.

A human being can create many different kinds of souls and there are many
human beings who don’t create any at all.

Some create a patriotic soul,

some have a business soul

some have a pious or a good soul or the soul of a saint

and some create the soul of an artist

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and some don’t create any type of soul for themselves and they die like animals or plants
die, which certainly don’t have immortal souls.

I believe that to be able to create a soul, one must first be aware of their own value.
Then, they must choose those values that have a soul and that can be incarnated in a
human being. In fact, not all values have a soul.

The values that have a soul, because they can be incarnated in and developed by a
human being, require that certain specific virtues be acted upon.

For example, the Thebans at Thermopylae, and even before that, had chosen a
value: they chose the value of the defense of their civilization against the invasion of the
barbarians. For this value they had chosen the virtues of warriors: courage, strength and
fidelity. They all died, but they did not lose their soul, because today we still celebrate
them.

There are those who choose the value of friendship and they practice the virtue of
fidelity even at the cost of losing their own lives.

This is what Achilles did with Patroclus. The two of them had decided to create a
soul of friendship and this soul is still alive today, even though their bodies are dead or
they may have never existed except in Homer’s verses.

The values that human beings can choose are many and each value requires
specific virtues. To mention some of the most important that people have chosen
throughout history: the value of truth, the value of beauty, the value of freedom, the value
of Justice, the value of the defense of the poor, of the oppressed and the outcasts.

The Jews chose the value of the alliance with God, and the specific virtues relative
to this value were: fear of God, obedience to the Mosaic Law and fidelity to the pact of
Alliance.

In this manner they created a soul, the soul of being a chosen people, a chosen class.

Christians chose the value of otherworldly life and sanctity, and the specific virtues
are many but the favorites have been obedience, chastity, poverty, sacrifice and charity.

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And they, too, created a soul for themselves. An immortal soul either in hell or in
paradise.

After having looked at these examples, maybe it’s a bit easier to accept this
definition of the soul:

1) The soul is the ability to choose one or more values and the ability to dedicate one’s
life to practicing the virtues required by the values that have been chosen.

2) The soul is a field of spiritual energies that are both unified and able to unify (a
vibrational energy field), that are distilled by a body and condensed into a body as
the result of a transformational process. Its special vibrations do not dissolve with
the dissolution of the body or when they detach from the body that is their
medium.

We can all be born with different potentials and develop either one or another type
of soul, but no one is born with a pre-made soul. Throughout the history of peoples and
nations, many different types of souls have been chosen and they all vary according to the
era they were a part of.

Gandhi showed us, with his writings and his actions, that the supreme value chosen by
him was truth, and the specific virtue he chose to reach it was “non violence”.

When Gandhi defines God, he defines him as Truth and when he wrote his
autobiography he entitled it:

“The Story of My Experiments with Truth”.

He asks his nation and then the whole world to create a soul for themselves, a soul
of TRUTH, and to take on the search for Truth for oneself and for others, not through a
Revelation made by the prophets, but rather through the constant practice of
nonviolence.

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 To describe exactly what nonviolence is for Gandhi cannot be done in just a few
lines and many have argued about the meaning of this term. A very careful study of
Gandhi’s thought and actions is necessary to understand what he means by nonviolence,
if one is going to be able to speak about it with some knowledge.

The goal of nonviolence is to make one’s adversaries feel that they are the cause of
the evil they do to others, and the action that can break through the shell of egotism and
indifference they are hiding behind is nonviolence and not prayer.

In A. Manzoni’s “The Betrothed”, Lucia Mondella convinces the Unnamed to free

her through prayer.

Gandhi convinced the English to free the Hindus with the violence of nonviolence,
not with prayer. What would he have been able to obtain with only prayer?

Practicing nonviolence means being violent with oneself according to what Truth
requires (and not to follow masochism or victimhood), because this violence causes a
crisis in the other which does not leave him alone until his egoism and violence towards
others begins to crumble. Gandhi says that the nonviolent are like soldiers and they fight
their battles with all the intensity they need so they can win. The first violence these
soldiers must do towards themselves is to transform themselves from mice into cats:
“because it does not make sense for a mouse to forgive a cat, unless it first becomes a
cat”.

Now, what is important to keep in mind here is that Hindu spirituality boasts a
history of thousands of years, but before Gandhi came along it only helped them to free
themselves from their karma and unite with God, but it didn’t help them become a single
great people, instead of a colony of the British Empire. It hadn’t helped them create a soul
of a people who were free and equal among themselves instead of having different levels of
human dignity according to their caste.

Gandhi changed the course of spirituality as well as its meaning, for India and for
the entire world. Where the warrior priests and theologians of liberation have failed, the
followers of the ideas of Gandhi will not fail in the next millennium.

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 Even the current Dalai Lama decided to follow Gandhi’s lesson and he was
rewarded the Nobel Peace Prize as a result.

The spirituality created by Christ and by the Christians has always had
otherworldly bliss as its goal, rather than dealing with the problems in this life. Its
objective is moral perfection so as to obtain eternal bliss: “If you want to be perfect, go,
sell what you have and give all your money to the poor, then come and follow me”. Where?
“My kingdom is not of this world”.

Martyrs, hermits, ascetics and monks have all professed to abandon this world and
go off to pray and wait for the other world.

As far as I know, in the history of Christianity there is only one exception to the escape
from the world practiced by monastic orders. The Benedictines in their Abbeys created
true islands of culture, of work and prayer while being in contact with the world and not
separate from it. Europe was born from these Abbeys.

Gandhi longed for union with God and he spent hours and days fasting and in
prayer, but his world was not the hereafter: his world was the one of the slaves and the
outcasts of this earth and that is why he dressed like them and lived like them. He was
not fighting for the salvation of their souls but was fighting to give a soul to millions of
miserable people who didn’t have one. He fought for their political, as well as their
human, dignity.

Gandhi was very political but his politics didn’t have anything to do with the
Kingdom of Heaven, which would have meant separating the soul from the body and
separating life here on earth from life in heaven. His politics were geared at creating a
kingdom on this earth where human beings, with their souls and bodies united, could live
freely and completely, free from any type of slavery, be it spiritual or physical.

In Gandhi there is no contradiction, like we instead find in Christians who are

involved in politics and are divided between waiting for the celestial Jerusalem, where all
the injustices will be solved by the judgment of God, and being condemned to the earthly
Jerusalem where injustice will never end, because this is what the laws of the state
declare or this is what the impenetrable, mysterious will of God wants (see the film
“Mission”).

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 Will the world understand that there is a huge difference in the way Christ and
Gandhi look at spirituality and that the solution does not lie in putting these two great
men in opposition to each other, but rather lies in unifying their messages?

Gandhi managed to achieve this unification in his life and his actions. He took the
concept of forgiveness from Christ but he gave the weapons of nonviolence to an entire
populace so they could obtain dignity and freedom in this life, not in the next.

He forgave the English of the crimes they committed against India, but he did not
forgive them until after they had given up their domination over India.

In Gandhian spirituality the acceptance of God’s will does not mean accepting
slavery, misery and other people’s injustice. This is because God is Truth and Truth is
complete tolerance of everyone, but not of what is unjust. What is considered unjust is
not defined by the laws of the state, nor by religious laws, but by the laws of life. And life
is one life, there are not two lives opposed to each other, the one here on earth and the
one in the afterworld; instead there is a continuum that goes from this world to the next.
Spirituality and politics cannot be built in opposition to each other, split amongst
themselves, yet humanity (both in the East and the West) has been making this mistake
for centuries.

The God of the Christians is “purest spirit” and does not have a body. Gandhi’s
God, instead, has a body, just as life has a body and truth has a body: there is the body
of humanity and there is the body of the universe, and this body is not an illusion, nor is
it matter opposed to spirit. Nuclear physics has by now freed us from the pseudo-truths
of those who espouse extremes in both spirituality and materialism. But there are still
millions of people who do not yet know that there is no divide between matter and spirit,
that there is no ultimate brick that makes up matter and that spirit has no other source
than matter itself, because spirit exists within matter. If we want to separate the two, this
can be done by redefining matter itself.

Don’t we obtain alcohol from wine? And is it only a linguistic coincidence that
alcohol is also called “spirits”?

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 Or does this point to a populace who expresses its own wisdom through its
language? If the soul is spirit and the body is matter, the soul can only be obtained by
distilling it from the matter of the body, not from divine infusion.

Our forefathers liked to tell us that this was so, but they did not notice how full of
contradictions their story really was.

It is not possible to say that God created the body from mud and the soul from
nothingness. Because the question that arises is this: does God create some things that
are superior and others that are inferior? The creation of matter would be inferior, and
the creation of the soul would be superior? Is there any theologian that can reconcile this
contradiction in the diverse qualities of the God’s creations?

Existential Personalistic Anthropology chooses the heart of Gandhi’s teachings as

its highest value in the creation of one’s soul: the constant search for Truth:

- Truth that is dialectical and not absolute, that reveals itself step by step
throughout the history and the life of humanity.

- Truth that is global, because everything is greater than the sum of the single parts.

- Truth that is accessible to everyone and not just to those who are initiates, or are
rich and powerful.

- Truth that unifies and does not create religious, political, relationship or family
warfare.

- Truth that unifies instead of separating the mind, the heart and the intuition.

- Truth that follows the laws of life above all other laws and that is justified and
verified only in these laws of life.

- Truth that is capable of gradually freeing itself from the trap of the existential lie.

The specific virtues that are required to actualize this value are many. Here we will
list the main ones:

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The courage of freedom

Only a constant expansion of inner freedom allows us to break down our illusions,
our prejudices and our false or limited perceptions. From this greater inner freedom an
ever greater truth can emerge, which progressively moves the limits of the I from lies
towards truth. Our courage to work towards freedom grows every time we make a decision
to do what the SELF dictates from within.

The courage of group participation

The lies we make up for ourselves are many, and they are much more numerous
than the truths we possess. Only when we have an intense relationship with the Choral
SELF can we ever hope to unmask and destroy these lies, so the space for truth within us
can expand.

Listening to one’s Personal SELF

The SELF communicates to us continually, both within us and from outside

ourselves. By cultivating the virtue of listening to the voice of the SELF, so we can hear its
voice both within ourselves and from outside ourselves, we become capable of building
our own truth, both our personal and existential one. This truth contains both our
madness and our wisdom and it can encourage us to decide to abandon one and choose
the other, or, hopefully, to blend one with the other.

But right alongside the actual search for the Personalistic Anthropological Truth,
there is a second factor that must be connected with the first and this is the creative
search for BEAUTY.

We are all tyrannized by the Ideal of the I and by our expectation that we are perfect.
These demand that we find a beauty that already exists, rather than looking for the
beauty that can be created within ourselves and within others.

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 We all expect our parents to be beautiful and perfect and, the less they are so, the
greater is our hatred towards them and our desire for revenge. We all expect ourselves to
be “the fairest in the land”, to be pure, perfect and without any darkness, and the less we
are perfect, the greater is our hatred towards ourselves and towards life.

We all expect our partners to be beautiful and perfect, and the less they are, the
greater is the hatred with which we judge, condemn and persecute them.

This is true of all human relationships, be they personal or social.

How can we break this spiral of perfectionism and hatred?

I know of only one way, and that is to decide with all our might to become artists of
our own lives. A true artist works towards and is passionate not about the beauty that
has already been created by others (the museums are already full of it), but about the
beauty that only he or she can discover and invent.

This is where we can find a limitless source of joy. This is the key to immortality,
and we can find it, for our own grace and for the grace of others.

Our spirituality and our politics have one and the same soul: in every sphere of life,
be it personal or social, we want to blend together TRUTH and BEAUTY, like artists know
how to do only in their own field. We, instead, want to do this in the field of daily life, in
the field of human relations, be they interpersonal or social.

I hope that every Existential Anthropologist can say, at the end of their lives:

“Within this person Truth and Beauty met

Love and Art kissed

Beauty, Wisdom and Truth embraced each other”.

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 CHAPTER VIII

∗
Anthropology, Cosmology and the Soul

I have decided to write this paper so as to respond to the need to clear up some
fundamental concepts in preparation for the congress of the Sophia University of Rome in
Martina Franca, Italy.

1) Why is Existential Personalistic Anthropology interested in this problem of the soul?

2) How does the theme regarding the soul tie in to Personalistic Metapsychology?

3) What is the relationship between the soul and the cosmology laid down in Sophia-Art?

As far as the first question goes, Existential Anthropology is based on the concept
of the Person (see “Teoria della Persona” {Theory of the Person} by Antonio Mercurio). The
Person is based on the concept of freedom and love according to the definitions I have
given: “A Person is someone who is capable of freely loving themselves, loving others and
being loved”.

When we are talking of the freedom of the Person we are talking about the freedom
to actualize the individual purpose that each individual carries inside, and of the freedom
to be conquered with regards to the various types of slavery that every individual is
subject to.
                                                            
∗
  Paper presented in Frascati, Italy, during the 2nd SIMPOSIO DI ANTROPOLOGIA PERSONALISTICA
ESISTENZIALE {2nd Symposium on Existential Personalistic Anthropology) (1-4 November, 1990) and
already published in the volume “Da Cristo a Gandhi: Un nuovo modo di concepire la spiritualita’ e la politica”
{From Christ to Gandhi: A new way of looking at spirituality and politics}, with the title ‘L’Antropologia
Personalistica Esistenziale e l’anima” {Existential Personalistic Anthropology and the Soul}, here slightly
modified.

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 When we speak of loving freely we are speaking of love that does not act under the
threat of terror (eternal punishment), nor is drawn by the desire to win a reward (eternal
bliss), as terror and rewards are two other types of slavery that negate human beings’
freedom.

If we speak of the soul we are also speaking of the freedom of the Person and
speaking of freedom is the same thing as speaking of humanity’s deepest need.

If we look at Plato’s ideas, we see that he considers the soul as a prisoner of the
body from birth onward, and only death restores the soul’s freedom, as it frees it from the
body.

This is why Socrates could drink the hemlock so easily, because his belief was that
he was going towards the liberation of his soul, he was going towards freedom. Freedom
from the senses that are a part earthly life, so that he could finally open himself to the
extra-sensorial Hyperuranium, which is the kingdom of truth and beauty.

Earthly life is the kingdom of ignorance, deceit and illusion.

The only way one can obtain this liberation within one’s lifetime is by practicing
virtue, so as to overcome ignorance.

The discourse put forward by Socrates and Plato is perfectly coherent once we
accept the concept of the soul as being immortal and as having fallen into the prison of
the body, even if we don’t know why that happens.

If we look at the ideas of Jesus Christ and the whole Christian tradition, we know
that here, too, the soul is the same thing as freedom.

Christ is “the way, the truth and the life”. If one believes in Christ, one has access
to the whole truth, and as a consequence, through one’s faith in Christ one is freed from
ignorance, doubt and error.

This is no small thing. Christ actually offers way more than Socrates and Plato do,
who can only free humanity from ignorance and error but cannot guarantee access to the
whole truth.

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 Christ offers other types of freedom that are even more important. He frees
humanity from guilt: the original sin committed by Adam and Eve and all the sins a
person can commit today or has already committed: the sin of adultery, the sins of the
Samaritan, the sins of Zacchaeus and Matthew and many others.

And since, according to the beliefs of the time, physical ailments were caused by
moral corruption, if Christ frees an individual from their sins he also frees them of their
physical ailments: see the healing of the paraplegic or of the man who was born blind.

As far as this last one goes, the disciples asked their Master: “Who is it that sinned,
was it him or was it his parents?”

This question shows us that in those times there was the belief that whoever was
not in good health was ill because of either their own sins, or the sins of their parents.

Guilt first of all dirties the soul, and because of this the body is damaged.

A soul that is freed from guilt makes the individual free from the slavery of moral and
physical evil.

In those days, kind of like in our own times, the type of salvation that really
counted was salvation from physical evil. Freedom from moral evil was dealt with only by
a few and the salvation of the soul was still something unknown to most. Christianity has
the merit of having introduced it.

The history of Christianity fully demonstrates en eruption of freedoms that

suddenly became part of the life of Christians, freedoms that were hitherto unknown and
never before exercised:

- freedom from hatred and revenge

- freedom from sex and the passions

- freedom from wealth and material goods

- freedom from the world

- freedom from the fear of death

- freedom from the fear of the powerful

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 - freedom from the law (the Sabbath is for humanity and not humanity for the
Sabbath!)

- freedom from egotism

- freedom from blood ties and relatives (whoever does not hate their father and
mother is not worthy of me! Or: who are my mother and my brothers? They are
those who do the will of my Father!)

- freedom from the misery of being a slave. The poor and the slaves become “blessed”
if they follow God’s will, which wants them to be so, and every humiliation and
rebellion are eliminated all at once, because all men are equal in the eyes of God.
Moreover, Lazarus the beggar will end up having a destiny in the hereafter that the
rich man Epulone envies.

All these freedoms, along with many others I could name, are the result of a very
difficult personal accomplishment on the part of the Christians. However, the enthusiasm
their faith gave them made the pain they had to go through to achieve these freedoms
almost nothing.

Each one of these accomplishments created the souls of the martyrs, of the virgins,
of the ascetics and the saints, and whereas first their adversaries were full of anger upon
witnessing them, they were eventually moved when they saw that what was impossible
can become possible. Their fascination was so great that they themselves were
transformed into followers.

These men and women created a soul for themselves while saving their souls and
in doing so they became free men and women and no longer slaves.

But if over the centuries faith diminishes (and Christ had predicted that this would
happen), all these freedoms are no longer possible, and humanity falls back into its old
slavery. This is what is happening in our own times.

Why faith has diminished can be attributed to many different possible reasons. I
have one that I have never heard anyone else talk about, because my approach is

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centered on the soul and on freedom. This is the key I will use in offering my reasons for
this loss in faith.

Paradoxically, over the centuries it came about that the same Christian dogma that
encouraged the development of the freedoms and of the soul as mentioned above, ended
up undermining the foundations of humanity’s possibility to become free. This has
generated such a terrible, suffocating prison that people cannot live, and so the same
profound need for freedom that gave rise to Christianity and made it expand so
extensively is now causing its slow decline.

So as to remain brief I will now touch on just one dogma, the one regarding
universal judgment, or the “second death”, as Saint Francis of Assisi calls it in his famous
Canticle of the Creatures.

Wherever there is terror there cannot be freedom. Think of dictatorships. In the

beginning a new order is established, and terror is not too obvious. Many people’s
freedoms grow while some people’s freedoms are taken away. Then, slowly but surely,
things turn around: freedom becomes something that only a few have, and terror is the
destiny of most.

At that point, the tension that has built up in the majority explodes, and the
dictatorship is overthrown. This is what happened in the countries in Eastern Europe.
This is what is happening in Christianity.

Why did Luther rebel against Rome?

The terror of eternal damnation had already created a huge amount of tension,
already back in the 1500’s.

Millions of people had an incessant question that had taken over their consciences.

Who was damned and who was chosen? Was it the Church of Rome who decided,
or did each person decide for themselves? Luther decided, for himself and for many
others, that every person must feel that they are free to decide this for themselves.

So, historically speaking, the first solution to the terror of religious dictatorship
based on the terror of eternal damnation was found: to have faith in Christ was enough to

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be chosen and each person judged him or herself, based on their own faith. With this
decision millions of people freed themselves from the terror of eternal punishment.

The second solution came with the announcement that “God is dead”, proclaimed
first by Positivism and then by Nietzsche. This was a second step ahead in freeing people’s
minds from the terror caused by Christianity.

The third solution is being offered up today. There are no loud announcements
about it but that doesn’t mean that it is not spreading quickly. It consists of the
disappearance of guilt and the death of the soul.

No one has decided this but everyone affirms with their daily actions that the soul
and guilt no longer exist.

If the soul doesn’t exist, neither does guilt that can blemish the soul. And if the
soul and guilt don’t exist, neither does universal judgment, because no longer are there
any souls to either be rewarded or condemned, so the terror is over! Hurray to freedom
from terror!

Here one could say that what has killed the soul is the race for success and power.

No objections to this affirmation. But I am convinced that the determining factor

that has brought about the death of the soul has been the need to get rid of the Christian
idea of the soul. It has become so weighed down with so many burdens, instead of being
synonymous with freedom like it had been for so many centuries, that it has become
synonymous with oppression and loss of freedom. It has especially meant the loss of some
fundamental freedoms, of which especially:

the freedom to think, the freedom to act, the freedom to desire and the freedom to
play.

It had become impossible to exercise any of these freedoms without bumping

immediately into some mortal wrong, thus becoming overwhelmed with the fear of eternal
damnation. But life does not tolerate muzzles or blackmail for long. And the blackmail of
the Christian soul towards life had become so intolerable that the best thing to do was to
decide to lose the soul instead of trying to save it.

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 And isn’t it written in the gospel, anyway, that those who are willing to lose their
soul will find it again, and those who want to preserve it will lose it?

This is what the West has decided to do for the last few centuries.

Dostoyevsky worried that if God were dead, everything would be permitted. And he
was right to worry about this. But we can add that if the Christian God is dead, terror is
dead too, and if terror is dead then finally we can base love on freedom instead of on
terror.

Today we are historically in the phase of “everything goes because God is dead”
(see Woody Allen’s film : “Crimes and Misdemeanors”), but this phase is necessary for
humanity to be convinced that the dictatorship of terror is also dead. Only then will it be
possible to step into a new phase where it becomes possible to base love and the soul on
new terms that are no longer based on rewards and punishment.

This is where Existential Personalistic Anthropology fits in. It can contribute to

preparing us for the passage to this new phase. I hope that I have cleared up why
Existential Personalistic Anthropology is interested in the problem of the soul, how it
looks at it and with what purpose. If we care about the development of freedom we must
recognize all the power we have to create our own soul and the power we have to make it
become immortal, without having to depend on the will or the judgment of someone else. If
the equation between the development of freedom and the creation of the soul is clear, it
will also be clear how we can answer the question I have asked and that you are starting
to ask yourselves:

“Do I have a soul?”

Every time we conquer a new freedom a little flame of soul is created. A strong
ability to conquer freedom is proof of a strong soul. A great capacity for freedom assures
the presence of a great soul.

If Gandhi was called “Mahatma”, the great soul, now you know why: it is because
he had acquired a great capacity for freedom.

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 If you want to know the difference between a great soul and a common one, the
answer can always be found right there: a common soul has little freedom whereas a
great soul has a lot of it.

We must underline, however, that the freedom of Gandhi was never an end unto
itself (that instead could concern us regarding the Christian soul, that essentially tries to
save itself and no one else), but was always geared towards obtaining and developing the
freedom of others, both on the political and the spiritual levels.

His freedom was always connected to a constant search for truth.

This is why he could not only oppose the English and their truth, but also the
Hindu religion, which considered the caste system a necessity and the exploitation of the
untouchables a sacred truth.

The type of freedom that Existential Personalistic Anthropology proposes is

connected not only to the constant search for truth. It also proposes a constant search for
beauty and wisdom.

Wisdom that comes from research done on the Laws of Life, on the ability to listen
to the SELF, and on the search to create beauty that is the result of individual and group
artistic action.

Here we return to the definition of the soul that I gave in Chapter VII , where it is
seen in two different ways that indicate two different realities: one that is in the process of
being created and one whose creation has been completed.

3) “The soul is the ability to choose one or more values and the ability to dedicate
one’s life to practicing the virtues required by the values that have been chosen.”

4) “The soul is a field of spiritual energies that are both unified and able to unify (a
vibrational energy field), that are distilled by a body and condensed into a body as
the result of a transformational process. Its special vibrations do not dissolve with
the dissolution of the body or when they detach from the body that is their
medium.”

***

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 Now let’s look at how the soul fits into the context of Existential Personalistic
Anthropology.

Here we have the postulate of a unitary structure made up of an I Person, a

Psychological I, a Corporeal I and a Transcendental I or SELF.

If we take each one of these elements separately, none of them can be the soul,
especially if we think of the soul as being a level freedom that has been accomplished or a
field of energy that is the result of distillation.

In the history of humanity the soul has had many different meanings; I am trying
to create a new one.

The subject who decides to distill his soul or his freedom is most certainly the I
Person. The sources of energy from which the soul is distilled and created are the
Psychological I, the Corporeal I and the SELF.

These three subjects are all predetermined and they are not free.

Not even the freedom of the I Person is a given, it is potential freedom. Through
practice and training it can create freedom by overcoming the deterministic laws of matter
and the psyche, and even those of the SELF, whose deterministic nature is harder to
grasp.

Let’s look at a practical example.

If someone does us something wrong, it is impossible to not have a first reaction

where we feel anger, hatred and a desire for revenge. This is what the law of action-
reaction and stimulus-response requires. Here there is no room for freedom, the freedom
to act differently than getting even. In such a situation the Psychological I, the Corporeal I
and the I Person are intertwined together.

The SELF can propose its modality of forgiveness, but for its proposal to be
accepted and not transformed into a gesture of cowardliness or hypocrisy, one must first
of all free oneself from fear (the fear of the other’s revenge that could well be much worse

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than our own) and then free oneself from one’s wounded pride, that accepts no other
solution than revenge.

Also, as Gandhi says, it makes no sense for a mouse to forgive the cat unless it
first becomes a cat. I know, through personal experience, how much pain must be faced
to transform oneself from mouse to cat. I don’t believe that Christians are familiar with
this type of pain. Their faith does not allow them to do so nor does it ask them to. They
are, instead, masters in the art of making the body and the psyche suffer so as to
increase the pleasure of the spirit.

Certainly Gandhi helps me when he suggests I learn to transform myself from

mouse to cat. Christ never asked me to do that, at least not in such an explicit manner.

But how do we make this transformation?

We must learn the virtue of courage. We must challenge our fear of those stronger
than us and our fear of death, not so much with prayer, but with strength.

Athletic strength is the result of training and practice. The strength of true courage
is the result of practice. The decision to practice and to keep it up is one that only the I
Person can make, which must then convince the Psychological I and the Corporeal I that
their well-being is connected to this practice, or at least the well being of the Person is.

Many acts of courage make many acts of freedom. A lot of freedom makes a lot of
soul. The soul creates unity within the individual and around the individual.

The soul is a distillation and condensation of a particular type of energy field,

which is oriented toward a personal choice of values made by the I Person, with the help
of the Corporeal I, the Psychological I and the SELF.

The soul is not any one of the four, but, on one hand it is the synthesis of the
unified action of all four together, whereas on the other it is what connects the four
together in a unified structure, making a whole.

This is why it was important to add these considerations regarding the soul to
Existential Personalistic Anthropology.

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 Just like in Pirandello’s play there are six characters in search of an author who
can give them life and unity, in every individual’s life there are four characters, the I
Person, the Psychological I, the Corporeal I and the SELF, who need to create a soul so
they can live together within a unified structure instead of in a divided one.

This is where Existential Personalistic Anthropology overturns the Christian idea

that the soul is already a given and must be saved, and to save it there must be a division
between body and soul, between life here on earth and life in the hereafter, between the
kingdom of heaven and the kingdom of man.

Those of us who have suffered tremendously because of these divisions refuse this
type of soul that is supposedly the cause of them. Instead, we want to create a soul that
helps us unify our own lives and the lives of others as well.

***

We still must answer the third question: what is the relationship between the soul
and Sophia-Art, between the soul and life as a work of art, between the soul and
Sophiartistic cosmology?

If we speak of the relationship between the soul and Sophia-Art it is like speaking
of the relationship between humanity and beauty, according to Sophia-Art’s principles.

In Sophia-Art there are two types of beauty:

a) static beauty (or aesthetic beauty) and

b) dynamic beauty (or ecstatic beauty).

The first entertains us and gives us pleasure, but it leaves us at the stage of life we
are already in. The second, instead, attracts us, shakes us up and forces us to move, to
get out of the dimension we are currently in and step into a new one, one where we have
never been before and that requires pain and joy to get there.

Static Beauty gives us pleasure but it does not produce movement. You stay
exactly where you are.

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 Ecstatic Beauty gives us both pleasure and movement. You don’t stay the way you
are because you are caught up in the vortex of the movement created by beauty, and this
movement leaves an impression forever within you. From there it generates
transformation, without you ever noticing that it has happened.

This can happen in two cases:

The first is when you are before the beauty of a work of art that has been created
by others but that needs you to complete it by looking at it, listening to it, or experiencing
it.

The second is when it is not the others who propose their works of art and you are
invited to complete them by actively participating in them, but you yourself, either alone
or together with others, create a new work of art and a new form of beauty.

For Sophia-Art this is what happens during our weekend seminars and the other
group activities organized by the Sophia University of Rome.

Ecstatic beauty can create movement in that it is movement in itself, for itself and
by itself. This type of movement is like perpetual motion, that once it starts, never stops.
This movement, that is intrinsic in the beauty found in every authentic work of art, is
created by the freedom that the artist is capable of and was able to condense into his or
her work, in a circular, ascensional form. Freedom from matter, freedom from death,
freedom from time and space, freedom from pre-existing artistic guidelines, etc. .

I repeat, ecstatic beauty contains movement because it contains freedom in a

unified and unifying form.

Freedom within human beings is not innate, it is something we acquire.

To create a soul means to acquire freedom and values. Freedom plus beauty create
the life of the work of art, which is a field of unified energy.

Freedom plus beauty are what make up life as a work of art. Freedom is acquired
with the virtue of courage. The beauty of Sophia-Art is acquired by creating a stellar
process of condensation, collapse and thermonuclear reaction around a unified center of
gravity, just like we do in our groups.

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 The more courage we have, the greater the freedom we will be able to have. The
greater the freedom we have the greater the soul we will have.

A soul that desires truth and beauty creates life as a work of art and creates a
center of energy for itself and for others.

Courage plus freedom plus life as a work of art create a life that holds within itself
inextinguishable energy in a unified form. Inextinguishable movement, says Plato, is what
makes something immortal.

So, in synthesis we can say that: freedom plus beauty plus truth make up the
essence of an immortal life.

An immortal life is one that is continuously dancing. Beauty is the music that
makes life dance. Freedom creates the forms of dance that life will then dance. Dance
creates joy.

Molecules dance, atoms and subparticles dance and by uniting and separating in
continuously different forms they create the origins of the universe.

Life creates the universe. The universe creates life, life creates humanity and
humanity creates infinite works.

The soul is a creation of humanity.

Art is a creation of humanity.

If truth and beauty join together, that is, if the soul and works of art join together
and make up a whole thanks to the works of humanity, a form of life is created that can
make the leap from being a caterpillar to a butterfly, it can make the leap from this
universe to another universe, from the universe of the caterpillar to the universe of the
butterfly.

Here we come back to Sophia-Art’s cosmology, where we had postulated infinite

universes, along with the possibility that humanity can create, with love and art, a form of
life that can pass from this life in this universe to another life in another universe, forever
after, instead of dying when physical death comes along.

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 For Christians, the soul has already been given to us and it is also immortal, from
conception onward. The only thing that is needed is love, and then the passage from this
life to eternal life is made. Only love and one passage are required.

For Sophia-Art, the soul is not a given, it must be created.

And once the soul has been created, it must be incarnated in a work of art, with
the courage of freedom, which is the gift of love that human beings give to themselves and
to the entire universe.

Love plus art frees human beings from the egoism of the I and from dependence
upon biological life. From there life can fly from this universe to another one, when the
body dies and dissolves.

Life has meaning, and its meaning is that each person must create their own
butterfly, just as an artist creates their own masterpiece. Dante had already said this,
and he had already modified the beliefs of the Christians in his poem; while universal
judgment is something everyone else believes in, he doesn’t. What mattered for him was
the decision to go through the inferno and to create an angelic butterfly. Once that is
done, paradise is certain.

The ability to create a soul for oneself and incarnate it in a work of art, as proposed
by Sophia-Art, cannot be achieved without going through the atomic inferno of the stellar
process.

In the sky, the stars are macerated by fire to create the elements that are
necessary for life on earth. On earth, human beings are macerated by pain, so they can
create through the fusion of pain, wisdom and art, the basic elements of a life form that
can fly beyond the confines of the I of this world, on to other worlds.

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 CHAPTER IX

Thinking of Human Beings as Persons and as Artists of their own Lives and of the
Life of the Universe ∗

People who free themselves from the terror of religion,

from the tyranny of philosophy,

from the subjugation of science,

are people who can freely take care of themselves

and define themselves in anthropological terms only.

This is the path that I have followed in my life and this path is what has allowed me to
refute the definition of humans as being “sinners and children of God”, as “thinking
subjects” but only thinking, as “sorcerer’s apprentices” and “digestive canals”, and to
think of them, instead, as “Persons”, as “artists of their lives”. As Artists together with
other artists who want to make the planet earth and the whole universe a single living
organism made up of Persons who freely love them selves, love others and are loved.

THE NEED TO REDEFINE WHAT HUMAN BEINGS ARE

We are at a turning point in history where we must redefine what human beings are.

The definitions that have been given so far by religion, philosophy and science are no
longer valid.

All of humanity is going through a profound crisis and it is an identity crisis, even more
than a crisis regarding values.

Many people have already said it.

If God is dead, humanity is dead.

                                                            
∗
 This text was written in the summer of 1990. 

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The humanity that found its substance in the divinity and that built its own meaning and
all of its actions around its definition of God, is dead.

The ideologies, which are children of philosophy and of science, are dead as well, along
with the people who grasped on to them.

A new type of humanity must be created, and to do so first we must redefine what
humanity is.

In fact, a definition is like a milestone that marks the starting point and the finish line.

The starting point defines the horizon and it allows one’s sight to rest and one’s mind to
ask what is beyond it.

The death of God is traumatic, but it also represents a liberation.

When a newborn detaches from the placenta, it is traumatic, but it is also a liberation,
because this must happen so its body, arms and legs can continue growing.

Whoever doesn’t want to give up their intrauterine life knows they would die in there.

The human condition has always meant having to go from one birth to another, otherwise
the penalty is death. And since every time we face one of these births there is no one who
can reassure us that our lives will be better afterward, every birth ends up being
dramatic.

We are living through the terrible drama of this historic moment marked by the death of
God and yet we still can feel great joy in being able to walk under our own power.

Our reason tells us, though, that if God dies, the terror that his threats have generated
will die along with him. And if our values crumble along with the terror, what quality did
those values really have, if they were held in place only because of terror? They were
infantile.

Once freed from terror, humanity can build values that will most certainly be better than
the ones we held on to in the past.

Besides, the terror had gotten so bad that no one could any longer tolerate recognizing
their responsibility for any guilt, nor do they yet today, even when the facts make such
responsibility completely evident.

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How can a society that is made up of people who cannot admit that guilt and error are
present in their lives ever improve in any way?

Everyone claims that they are innocent and that they are bearers of the truth. Wrongs
and error are something that everyone else is guilty of.

Can’t anyone see that all this has to do with the fear of universal judgment, that has been
repressed in the conscious sphere and relegated to the unconscious?

No one is guilty, yet everyone suffers from feeling guilty. Evidently, within the
unconscious God is not dead at all. To the contrary, the I has become God and persecutes
us internally, while we wait for death, judgment and punishment.

Now, even if God is dead, guilt still exists, because it is not the God of the theologians and
of the philosophers that define what is good and what is bad. The laws of life do, and
those who break them are guilty of going against themselves and against life.

The laws of life are written within each human being and no one can cheat with impunity,
pretending they do not exist.

Nor is there any need to call what are simply the laws of life God. What is important is
that we know how to recognize them and follow them.

The laws of life are what give dignity, quality and profound peace to those who observe
them.

They are different from moral laws, from natural and biological laws; they are what
regulate human development in its evolutionary spiral.

This is what Dante was talking about when he wrote:

“You were not born to live like brutes,

but to follow virtue and knowledge”.

A new definition of humanity could be based on the laws of life that would be valid for
everyone, always.

The laws of life have another characteristic that distinguish them from any other type of
law. They are not linear, they are dialectical. What does that mean?

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We can understand better by using an example. It was important for all of us to stay in
the womb for nine months (ten at most). Had we remained any longer we would have died.
Thus, what it is good to do up until time x, is no longer good for us after time y. What is
good for us up until a certain time becomes bad for us a moment later. If we want to live,
if we want to go from one dimension to another, we must learn how to do a somersault,
and leave behind what was before an ideal condition and has now become fatal to us.

Religion, philosophy and science have been like a womb for humanity, a precious womb
that we must now leave behind if we want to continue to grow.

Leaving the womb behind does not mean leaving the mother behind, it means
encountering her in a new dimension. Religion, philosophy and science, when they are
unified and not opposed to each other, are the mother we can encounter once we have left
the womb.

This is a law of life.

Existential Personalistic Anthropology (E.P.A.) specifically works with the laws of life.

Existential Personalistic Anthropology is a new discipline, founded by myself, whose task

is:

1) to unify religion, philosophy, science and art, by making them into a dynamic
whole instead of a static one;

2) to discover what the laws of life are that regulate human development;

3) to define human beings as Persons and as artists of their own lives;

4) to create specific places and experiential methods where it is possible to

experiment with and verify the basic assumptions of E.P.A..

So far three disciplines have been created : Sophia-Analysis, Sophia-Art and Cosmo-Art.

The specific places where our research is carried out are many. In particular, I will here
name the Sophia University of Rome (SUR) with its home base in Rome, Italy, and about
twenty Institutes that are connected to it, both throughout Italy and in other countries.

In these Institutes all the various problems that human beings can encounter, from the
most to the least difficult, are dealt with by using innovative, creative solutions.

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From this it is clear that Existential Personalistic Anthropology is not the result of the
initiative of just one person, its founder, but instead is the result of group work done by
many different people.

MY LIFE EXPERIENCE

The definition of humanity I am proposing here is not based on an intellectual construct.

It is the result of my own life experience, and it has been studied in the Institutes
connected to the Sophia University of Rome for over forty years.

It was first proposed in my book : “Teoria della Persona” {Theory of the Person}, published
in 1978 and now in its second edition.

From this volume, that includes some lessons taught by me in 1975, I will take some
essential points.

In this introduction I will offer a concise recount so the reader can have a global vision of
my own path and of my ideas.

In a context in which faith in God loses meaning more and more every day, it is necessary
to save our faith in humanity and safeguard the faith that humanity must have in itself.

God cannot be defined, and whoever tries to do so is the cause of the death of God.

My life experience was marked by the discovery of the irreparable contradictions that
come from the definition of God as infinite Love together with being the absolute Lord of
the universe, and implacable judge of the living and the dead. These contradictions were
not only unsolvable, but they also had the effect of paralyzing my own life, and they
continue to have the effect of paralyzing the very life of humanity.

That humanity wants to eliminate this God, in my opinion, is a choice that is preferable to
the one Pascal made, who saw that he faced even greater contradictions should he have
opted for the non – existence of God.

So as to make my discourse even clearer, I believe it is necessary to briefly share some of

my own life experiences.

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I was raised for more than thirty years in a religion, the Catholic religion, that preached
love and terror at the same time.

The love of God, who, to expiate my sins, had died on the cross for me.

The terror of this same God, who was waiting for me at my final judgment to decide
whether to send me to hell or heaven, for ever after.

This terror was constant and continuous and it paralyzed my every thought and action,
because temptation and wrong could come forth at any moment from both my thoughts
and actions.

I knew that the mercy of this God was infinite, but so was his ability to get revenge.

His love was complete, but if I did not give him all my soul and all my life in return, he
was going to send me to hell.

For this God, who was indignant and offended by my sins and by the sins of the world,
nothing I could do could repair any damage done. I had the power to offend him but I
could do nothing to make amends for my offenses. Only the amends made by Jesus
Christ had any value.

This means that if I am good I am worth nothing; if I am bad, I can make a God go to his
death.

Why did I only have a negative type of power?

The theologians say that God created me for his glory. I could not understand why God
needed glory nor could I understand why humans had to suffer so much so as to glorify
God.

The Jesuit motto is: “For the greater glory of God”.

I was a Jesuit for 23 long years.

To free myself of this God who was both loving and a terrorist, both giving and possessive,
understanding and implacable, who seemed a lot more like me than like a God, the task
of Sisyphus seemed like a joke in comparison. The anguish of the damned was nothing
compared to the anguish I had to go through.

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Now that I have come through this process, I can speak easily about it, and reassure
anyone who might still have to go through it that it is worth the pain to do so, and
become free of it.

You end up understanding many things and your life gets better. You begin to
understand the immense thirst for power that human beings have in wanting to take over
the lives of others, and the very refined pleasure that is found in controlling the very
conscience of someone else.

But you also come to understand the feeling of being lost, the solitude of a person who no
longer has the reference point of someone above them, no longer knows what is good and
evil, no longer knows where they come from nor where they are going, nor where they can
find the strength to be able to reign in their tremendous passions.

All this explains both the greatness and the misery of the religions, of all religions, both
the Eastern ones and the Western ones.

Can something be done so we can conserve the greatness of religion without having to put
up with its misery, after millions of people have had to carry the weight of it?

My current efforts are all concentrated towards this end. Perhaps other forces are being
concentrated in other parts of the world with the same goals in mind.

Life knows what it needs in every historical era that humanity lives through and we are
here only to be of service to life.

HUMAN BEINGS AS PERSONS

The first definition that I formulated regarding humanity was not as artists of their own
lives. My first definition was human beings as Persons.

Once I understood that it didn’t make any sense at all that my life was finalized to the
promotion of the glory of God, because the glory of God is an empty concept that doesn’t
have any meaning, I had to find what else my purpose could be.

In those days, the theme of “self-realization” was very popular, just like it still is today.

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I felt, though, that in this self-realization a new trap was hiding, the trap of ending up
striving for one’s own glory instead of the glory of God.

If that were the case, I would have ended up going from one void to another one, and this
just did not seem like it could be the right purpose for my life.

By listening closely to myself, I had the feeling that my deepest needs were yes, to realize
my self, but to realize my self as a Person. This meant, essentially, accomplishing my
ability to be free and my ability to love myself, to love other people, and to be loved by
others.

The term Person was also very popular in those days. Blue collar workers were telling
their bosses: “ I am a person, I am not a thing” and women were saying the same thing to
their husbands. Both groups of people didn’t want to be considered as objects that could
be owned, they wanted to be considered persons to be respected, and they were right in
wanting this.

I felt, however, that the true depth of the term Person did not lie just in the necessity to
receive respect from others, it lay instead in the necessity to respect oneself and to love
oneself.

Because only on the basis of a decision to love myself could I respect myself, and thus
request that others respect me as well.

The first necessity of the Person, then, was the ability to love him or herself, not God or
others, as it had instead been taught me.

But how was it possible to recognize this as a truth, when all of Christian tradition, from
Saint Augustine onward, taught the necessity to love God and to despise oneself? And
that love of self was only egoism?

And then there was the fact that God’s last judgment rested completely on one’s
demonstrated ability to have been able to love and not on the ability to have learned to
love oneself and to be loved.

This God had no interest in the deep pain I experienced in being an object that my mother
wanted to possess, to make a slave to her own will and castrated in every action that was
not in agreement with her either obvious or secret desires.

What God worried about whether I was a Person, or an object manipulated by my

mother’s will?

When I discovered this reality it was a tremendous shock for me.

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It was even worse to realize that the God of the Christians cared nothing about what had
happened to me, to the contrary, he could only have completely agreed with my mother,
because her greatest wish was that I become a priest, at the service of God and his glory.

If I wanted to be a Person and not just an individual who was not the master of his own
life, because God, my mother, the State, the Church etc., are the masters of my life and I
am just a tool in their hands, I had to be able to affirm with every bit of strength I had
that I was an end and not a means to an end; that my life was finalized to my own SELF
and to no one or nothing else.

This is the only way that I could free myself of all the guilty feelings that my mother had
generously instilled in me since I was a child, always waving the threat of hell in front of
my face.

I will speak at greater length on the SELF later on. I came upon the discovery of the SELF
through long hours of prayer and meditation. It became my inseparable companion, my
inner “captain”, during the passage from the darkest years to the brightest years of my
life. Without its help I would have never been able to turn my life around like I did, nor
would I have been able to undergo all the transformations that made me into a completely
different man.

The SELF taught me the art of loving myself, an art that I knew nothing about. It is a
difficult art, that requires immense courage and a continual determination to die to what
one is, so that life can expand and flow according to its own laws, and not according to
what fear, pride and stupidity would instead rather have us be.

The hardest task in learning the art of loving myself was to become aware of how much
hatred was hiding inside of me, towards myself and towards life. Then, once I had
discovered it, I had to come to understand its deepest causes and dismantle each one of
them, so I could make new decisions based on love and no longer on hatred.

A less difficult goal, even though it was still extremely overwhelming, was to build my
freedom of being, of thinking and of acting, according to what the SELF was telling me to
do, despite all the frightening feelings of guilt and endless anguish that I felt in doing so.

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But accomplishing my freedom most certainly meant realizing myself as a Person and I
wanted to be a Person and not a thing.

By conquering my freedom I was conquering my true identity at the same time, which was
buried under centuries of deformations and encrustations. Slowly but surely I was able to
allow the purpose contained in my SELF to emerge.

At this point it was easy to understand that there was a connection between Saint
Augustine, who preached self disdain, Descartes, who had defined humanity only as a
thinking subject, and my lost ability to love myself and to love others.

If a human being accepts a definition of itself as being completely concentrated in the

ability to think (cogito ergo sum), it is inevitable that only this ability is developed at the
expense of all others.

As children of the XX Century, we became wonderfully adept at thinking and completely

incapable of loving ourselves and others. The causes of this are many and cannot all be
attributed to how Descartes defined us, but this is one cause whose importance cannot be
underestimated.

By thinking up a definition of human beings based on their ability to love themselves and
to love others was something that not only corresponded to a greater truth, but it was a
way to correct Descartes’ and Saint Augustine’s negative influence.

The ability to think undoubtedly gives humanity a sense of accomplishment, but if along
with this there is not the sense of accomplishment that comes from loving oneself and
loving others, our lives become miserable and sad and we race towards self destruction.

The great success that E. Fromm’s book “The Art of Loving” had is a great indication that
what I am writing is true not only for me, but for many others as well.

To be able to recover the ability to love there were two more huge obstacles that I had to
overcome, that had to do with the Christian idea of love.

The first was that we were supposed to love others because it was an obligation, a
commandment, that held a threat in it: if you don’t love, you’ll go to hell. In this way of
looking at things, whose origins lie in the parabola in the gospel which speaks of

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universal judgment (see Matthew: 25, 31-40), the greatest motivation for loving was
inspired by terror, not by the joy of realizing one’s ability to love.

Terror takes away freedom, and love without freedom is not love, it is only charity and
hypocrisy.

Today there are many charitable organizations in the world, but how much love is there in
human relations, that can contrast the cynicism and violence that so affect our lives in
this day and age?

Only if we manage to free ourselves from this terror can we go back to loving freely and
can we go back to discovering that the greatest accomplishment we are looking to achieve
is not based on power and money, but on the joy of knowing how to love ourselves, to love
others and to be loved in return.

The second obstacle had to do with the fact that we were obliged to love everyone, without
being able to choose, without being able to say yes to one and no to another; and this was
because everyone was in the image of Christ.

With this type of obligation we again are led into a complete confusion about what it
means to love and what, instead, it means to be charitable.

We can be charitable and available towards anyone but it is impossible to love everyone, if
loving means actively promoting the wellbeing of those we love and having them do the
same for us.

Love is always based on free choice and not on an obligation.

Love means a lasting relationship, not a fleeting one; it means deeply encountering the
differences of the other.

This encounter is what will help me see if I have really stepped outside my narcissism
rather than simply being charitable with others.

Only if I enter into a dialogue with a real You, one that I meet on the plane of his or her
real needs, can I verify whether or not I am capable of stepping outside the confines of my
I and authentically giving of myself to the other. Only in this manner can I really know if I
am accomplishing the ability to love in such a way that is valid and convincing.

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Only if I decide with determination to carry out a common project, which is for my own
good as well as for the good of others, can I choose which people to love and which not to
love.

THE ESSENCE OF HUMAN BEINGS

The essence of a human being is made up of two types of relationships.

One is the relationship with ourselves, and the other is the relationship with a you, with
others and with the world.

The quality of these two relationships determines the quality of the life of a human being.

Someone who is owned by someone or something else and does not own him or herself is
not a man or woman. Those who do not own themselves cannot give of themselves.

Someone who cannot give of themselves is like a sterile seed that dries up and dies.

Only the quality of our relationships with a you, with others and with the world around
us can show us with certainty if we have ever truly given ourselves to another, without
running the risk of living a colossal lie.

The quality of this relationship will determine the quality of the joy I will be able to
experience in my life.

My relationship with myself is built through my ability to love myself. This love is the
basis of my existence and my subsistence and assures my freedom from a dependence on
others that would place my security outside of myself instead of within me.

This love is what helps me be able to face death and overcome it, every time I must break
off from the past that possesses me. It helps me every time I become aware of my
complicity with the will of those who want to possess me and who assure me, in exchange
for my dependence on them, their protection and the security of their love.

This kind of love of self cannot be confused with egoism.

Egoism has various forms.

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One is when we do not want to open up to the flow of life. Everything must remain
unchangeable, according to our own will.

Another is the will to dominate over other people’s lives.

Yet another is not wanting to give anything of one’s self to others.

Another is giving of oneself to then better dominate others.

And again another is affirming: only I exist, no one else does.

Loving oneself means accepting oneself so as to transform oneself; self transformation

means dying and being reborn. An egotist doesn’t ever want to die.

Loving oneself means overcoming pain to be able to experience joy.

Egotistical people never renounce their own pleasure and they can’t accept going through
pain to conquer joy.

Loving oneself means being able to give oneself gifts. Egoists can only give themselves
presents. Presents satisfy material desires, whereas gifts satisfy our needs of wholeness.

It is not possible to confuse love of self with egoism.

There are too many differences.

The ability to love oneself and to love others are like two arms. No one wants to be without
either one of them.

Only those who know how to love themselves know how to love.

Those who have learned to love themselves and know how to realize their own wellbeing
know what love is, and know how to realize others’ wellbeing too.

Many believe they are loving others when they annul themselves to the advantage of the
other. These people don’t do any good to either themselves or to anyone else. They are
victims of a terrible need to possess others and they empty love of any true content.

They often realize that their love does not produce love in return, but they attribute this to
the other’s ingratitude and not to the false quality of their own love.

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The image of the two arms is only an analogy. In reality, reason tells me that the ability to
love others is an intrinsic necessity to the ability to love myself. This is true for two
reasons.

The first I already mentioned when I said that a person who does not love is a sterile seed
that produces no life. Anyone who truly wants to love themselves cannot possibly be
happy to be a sterile seed. They will most certainly want to reach full maturity and this
requires that they become Persons.

The realization of oneself as a Person is truly accomplished only when we are genuinely
capable of giving ourselves to another, and thus love another.

Loving another is the legitimate complement to the ability to love oneself.

The second reason: those who truly love themselves cannot limit themselves to love of self
and love towards others. They will want to be loved back. They will want to not only give
love but receive it. How can we deprive ourselves of the need to be loved? And how can we
receive love if first we don’t give it?

The desire to be loved thus becomes the powerful impetus to authentically love others,
because this is the only possible way to receive love.

Not everyone, it’s true, responds with love to the love they receive. But it is still true that
no one loves those who don’t love. Nor is it love what is given to those who are powerful,
only because they have power.

If I want to be loved by someone, I will obtain the love I desire only by cultivating my
ability to love, and not in any other way.

And I will always have to be ready to purify my ability to love of a lot of waste and
impurities.

But those who have decided that love can only be disinterested, with no desire for a
return, end up castrating their desire to be loved back, and by doing so they lose the
stimulus to keep purifying their love, which over time makes it ever stronger and more
effective. What is worse, they make others remain egotistical.

By the same token, those who have decided that they will receive their return on their love
in heaven will not care if this happens while they’re on earth. In this manner they will
forever lose the ability to verify if they have truly loved or not. They also end up losing the
stimulus to push others out of their egoism so they, too, can become capable of loving.

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So in conclusion what we have is just another affirmation of narcissism. What really
counts is that I am good, what difference does it make if others don’t know how to love?

But in this manner we end up becoming accomplices of others’ egoism, and not only does
growth stop in both ourselves and others, but sadomasochism continues to increase.

What good does this do for humanity?

We are used to a society made up of a few saints and many sinners. From my point of
view, this, too, is unjust.

I would like my life to be a contribution to a society made up of Persons, and not of saints
and sinners.

After this long premise I can now lay down what my definition of a Person is.

A Person is: “A unifying spiritual principal that is endowed with its own freedom and
identity, it is an end unto itself and to no other and its constituent elements are: the
ability to love him or herself and the ability to love others”.

Said more concisely: “Persons are those capable of freely loving themselves, loving others
and receiving love”.

Freedom is essential to love, whether we are talking about love from one partner to the
other , whether we are talking about love towards others, or we are talking about love
between parents and their children and vice-versa.

Love in each one of the forms mentioned above is based on the ability to give of oneself
and the ability to then take oneself back, so as to be able to give oneself once again.

If I am not free to own myself I am not free to give myself.

If someone uses force to possess me, with threats or blackmail or any other way, my will
is not free to decide what I want to do with myself and my things. If I cannot decide with
an act of freedom to belong to someone or to give myself to someone, I will never be whole
in whatever it is that I am doing. A part of me will always be missing, the most precious
part: my ability to make free decisions, which is what makes me a Person and
distinguishes me from a slave or from an animal.

Slaves and animals cannot give gifts.

Perhaps only horses, after they have been trained, are exempt from this limitation.

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The duty to love one’s children or parents, if it is not based on an act of freedom, becomes
a routine and a sacrifice. It will never be a gift from the heart.

Those who give themselves but no longer have the freedom to take themselves back cease
being a Person and become the other’s private property.

Those who are not free to take themselves back will be unable to give of themselves again,
and if there is no gift to give, love has nothing left to nourish itself with.

And since the freedom to give of oneself and to take oneself back are ever more difficult to
accomplish and maintain, love in this world has become ever more rare.

ANALYSIS OF THE DEFINITION OF A PERSON

I will now look again at the definition of a Person so as to analyze every aspect of it.

When I say that a Person is a spiritual principle , I am affirming the presence of a central
subject within human beings that I call the:

“I Person”.

This central subject is a principle in two ways. It is a vital Principle that gives rise to a
human being’s senses, its intellect and its will, and it is a unifying Principle that must
reorganize into a whole:

A) all the components of the individual human being

B) all of the individual’s perceptions and representations of reality

C) all of the human organism’s biological, cultural and cosmic history, that it carries
within it from the beginning of its existence

D) all of the historical actions of humanity that make of it a single living organism.

There are many components within a human being that must be unified. In my
conception of human beings, there are four main ones and they are:

The I Person – the Psychological I – the Corporeal I – the Transcendental I or the

PERSONAL SELF and the COSMIC SELF.

These four components, as human existence demonstrates, are usually in conflict, and
often an entire lifetime is not enough to harmoniously unify them in a single entity, which
is a synthesis of all four and not a suppression of one to the benefit of another.

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THE PSYCHOLOGICAL I

The Psychological I represents the psyche and its two principle activities, psychological
mental activity and affect, plus the two drives, the sexual drive and the aggressive drive.

The psyche has been masterfully explored by Freud, by Jung and by many other
ingenious authors who came after them.

The psyche is the seat of the Psychological I.

THE CORPOREAL I

The Corporeal I represents first of all the biological and physiological reality of the human
being. But beyond that it is still a continent to be discovered.

Reich and Lowen are two important explorers of this unknown world.

The Corporeal I is usually treated like a slave by the Psychological I and by the I Person,
who destroy its health and integrity in a thousand different ways.

In Sophia-Analysis and Sophia-Art the Corporeal I is a free subject and not a slave, and
its wisdom is one of the most precious elements in life.

The body is the seat of the Corporeal I but it is also the seat of the SELF and it contains
the whole universe.

THE PERSONAL SELF

The Personal SELF in relation to the I Person is like the sun to the earth in our solar
system. I see human beings like a solar system, or, better yet, human beings have been
created by nature so that they become a solar system.

Just like the sun is at the center and all the planets orbit around it, the SELF is the sun
at the center of the Person, and all the other components should orbit around it. In reality
this rarely happens. Unlike the Corporeal I, the Psychological I and the I Person are free to

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orbit around the SELF or not. What is certain, though, is that the wellbeing of the Person
is possible only when the I Person and the Psychological I orbit around the SELF.

Just like the earth could not live without the sun, the I Person without the SELF cannot
live, it can only survive. Many allow their Psychological I to tyrannize them, and, by living
only according to its needs, they survive, but they do not live.

The SELF is a source of love just like the sun is a source of heat.

It is a source of truth, just like the sun is a source of light.

It is a source of the Person’s unifying will just like the sun is the source of cohesion in the
solar system.

The SELF contains the principle of joy and of death-rebirth, which corresponds to the
principle of thermonuclear fusion within the sun.

Just like the sun belongs to the Milky Way galaxy, the Personal SELF belongs to the
Cosmic SELF. One is correlated to the other and one is contained within the other.

The SELF contains the identity of the Person, its purpose and goal. Just like the earth
moves through space following the movement of the sun, the I Person’s purpose is
contained within the SELF.

The SELF is a source of wisdom. Wisdom corresponds to cosmic harmony.

With the concept of Personal SELF I want to indicate the heart of humanity’s being. I
consider the SELF a transcendental reality, not in a metaphysical sense, but in the sense
that the SELF, together with the I Person, constitutes the spiritual dimension of human
beings and this transcends the psychological and biological dimensions. I will discuss
further the spiritual dimension later on.

The encounter between the I Person and the SELF can be direct and immediate, like our
contact with the sun is, but it requires the ability to concentrate and to listen, and these
abilities are not habitual in most people.

Inner dialog is, in my experience, the key to learning to listen to the SELF.

THE COSMIC SELF

In this particular phase of human knowledge, I can only make a supposition that the
Cosmic SELF exists as the center of the universe, from which the energy necessary for the
spiritual life of human beings and the universe itself emanates.

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I can formulate a hypothesis, and that is that the universe is a single living organism,
that lives together with other universes in infinite space. Just like every spiritual, living
organism, the universe has its own energetic center that is the SELF and a decision-
making subject which is the I Person.

An even more daring hypothesis is that the I Person of the universe is actually the I
Person being created on earth.

According to this hypothesis, the universe is in its adolescence, and so is humanity.

If we observe adolescents while they are growing up, we can see that as long as they are
adolescents, their actions and their decisions don’t greatly affect the environment around
them or the community in which they live. When, instead, they become adults, and they
come into their own power, things change radically. Some can even turn the world upside
down, as, for example, Alexander the Great did.

This example could help us understand what could happen in the universe the day the
human I Person becomes adult and fully comes into its power, both for good and evil.

THE I PERSON

This is the central subject and the Psychological I, the Corporeal I and the Personal SELF
all belong to it. The seat of the I Person is the soul. In its mortal form, the soul exists from
conception onward, and it makes up a whole with the body. The soul becomes immortal
only after a long, creative process and I believe that it can detach from the body, just like
works of art can detach from the artists that create them.

The I Person is a spiritual principle.

I want to offer a very specific definition for the word spiritual, which is different from the
one usually given for it.

If we contrast the material and the spiritual, what I call material is everything that
requires an external catalyst to go from one stage to the next or from one form to the next.

Instead, whatever is spiritual contains within itself everything it needs to make any kind
of passage or transformation, it has no need for an external catalyst.

Water needs heat to pass from a liquid state to gas, it can’t do it all by itself. Heat is an
agent that is external to water.

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A plant needs the energy that it receives from the earth and the sky for it to grow.

The human body needs food to grow and to stay alive, which is a type of energy that
comes from outside.

Instead, no external agent is required for a human being to go from the stage of childhood
to adulthood. It contains within all the energy it needs to make this step forward, which is
not a biological step, it is a spiritual one. Furthermore, no amount of influence from an
external agent can replace the fact that a free decision must be made by those who are at
a point in their lives in which they must make such a step.

The ability to make free decisions, and the ability to bring something into existence that
does not yet exist, and make it take on a life of its own that is one of the results of such
types of decisions, is something very peculiar to human beings. I use the term spirituality
to indicate this peculiar ability.

A tree can bring into being a flower or a fruit that didn’t exist before, but to do so it takes
substances from the earth and from the sky and it synthesizes and transforms them,
according to a pre-established plan determined by what kind of tree it is.

Human beings are like trees when they are growing biologically, but when they want to
grow spiritually they have no need for anything outside themselves.

Freely made decisions are the result of their own freedom and their own will. If they want,
they can decide, and the decision itself means that a part of themselves is called into
existence that did not exist before.

This is also true for an act of freedom that increases freedom, an act of love that increases
love, an act of truth that increases truth and so on.

The artistic beauty of a painting does not exist until it is created by an artist. Colors exist,
canvasses exist, but beauty does not exist anywhere. The creation of beauty is solely the
result of the spiritual activity of the artist.

The film “The Great War” tells about how two fearful and cowardly soldiers can suddenly
transform themselves, with an inner decision, into courageous people who face death with
dignity. Life is full of these events, which testify to the existence of humanity’s spiritual
dimension and to the immense resources that it contains.

This is a precious element, which can help human beings develop faith in themselves.

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The spiritual dimension transcends the psychological one.

The psychological dimension is one that is held up by the pleasure principle in an

absolute manner. The pleasure principle tolerates only that pleasure can be deferred in
time, but it does not tolerate having to give up pleasure. The pleasure that cannot be
obtained today remains as a fixed goal that must be obtained tomorrow.

The spiritual dimension, instead, is held up by the principle of joy. Joy is qualitatively
different from pleasure.

Joy is developed with this type of sequence: giving up pleasure, accepting pain, reaching
the goal, joy for having reached the goal.

Accepting pain is a necessary step in making a step forward and reaching one’s goal.

The goals to be reached to grow spiritually make up the principle of individuation (see
Jung) and the principle of individuation is coded within the SELF; the principle of
individuation erupts from the SELF into consciousness and shows the will what steps
must be taken. The I Person, with its ability to freely make decisions, decides whether to
answer yes or no to what the SELF proposes.

In my own experience I have seen that the growth of the Person can be divided into three
steps.

The first one has to do with going from childhood to adulthood. In indigenous tribes this
passage comes about through initiation rites that take place after the adolescent males
have been separated for a time from the family and the village.

In Western civilization this passage is entrusted to the period of obligatory military

service, in a violent and often stupid way.

In some Eastern civilizations this passage is stimulated, in a more intelligent way,

through the use of martial arts.

But what about the girls? Who takes care of stimulating them to become adults?

It would seem that today, both in the East and the West, the Peter Pan Syndrome is very
common. Many don’t want to have anything to do with growing up and becoming adults.

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What is certain is that this passage is not automatic for anyone, and today the tendency
to look for refuge through the use of drugs and alcohol is ever more common.

The SELF pushes us in many ways to make this passage, often in ways that are obscure
and painful. For some, the path of drugs and alcohol, paradoxically, has become a way to
mature, through the recovery process.

In the second step, the SELF organizes a catastrophe that attacks the megalomanic I, so
that its tendency towards power and control over others is put through a crisis.

Those who have a good guide can learn to recognize the actions of the SELF and can try to
bend the will of their Psychological I and their I Person , and follow the SELF’s plan,
instead of opposing it.

Those who do not know how to recognize the SELF’s actions rebel against them and they
end up becoming victims, wallowing in their misery instead of growing.

If these first two steps have been successful, in the third step the I Person tends to
become ever more centered on the axis of the SELF, instead of on the Psychological I and
its short-sightedness.

Slowly but surely the I Person melds with the SELF and they become one, opening the way
for the Person to experience serenity, creativity and joy.

THE I PERSON IS A SPIRITUAL PRINCIPLE ENDOWED WITH FREEDOM

There are many definitions and types of freedom.

Here I want to talk only about some types of freedom:

The freedom to choose between Good and Evil;

The freedom to overcome one’s conditioning;

The inner freedom and ability to own one’s own evil and transfigure it.

I define Good as being everything that helps a human being become a Person.

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I define Evil as being everything that brings about the destruction or the manipulation of
the Person, in oneself and in others.

I affirm that no one is forced to do evil deeds, in everyone there is always at least a small
bit of freedom that allows us to freely choose to do evil or not.

This affirmation is supported by the following argument:

The fact that human beings exploit other human beings exists. Exploitation of another
human being means using the other as a means and not respecting them as an end in
themselves. Thus they are reduced from a Person to an object.

Human beings have the ability to decide whether or not to exploit another human being.
No one who is mentally sane can doubt the existence of this ability.

Therefore, human beings are capable of deciding whether to adhere to Good or to Evil.
This capability affirms our freedom. This freedom is both a potential freedom and a
freedom that is present at any time.

Now let’s look at whether human beings are endowed with freedom in the transpersonal
sphere as well, or if they have freedom only in the interpersonal sphere.

Here, too, the topic of freedom is very broad and here we are forced to look at only some
aspects of it.

Let’s consider the presence of physical and psychological conditioning within us.

What kinds of freedom can we develop with regards to both types of conditioning?

We can face psychological conditioning through therapy, we can understand its deep
roots and we can make new decisions so as to change the relationship between the
Psychological I and the I Person.

Therefore with every new decision we can create a wide area of freedom that modifies,
either completely or substantially, the power that psychological conditioning can have
over us.

It can be complete, if the said conditioning is completely eliminated (for example the fear
of enclosed spaces, the fear of driving etc. ...); it can be substantial if the fear does not
disappear completely, but is no longer paralyzing like it was before, because we have
trained ourselves to accept its presence. Instead of allowing it to control us, we gradually
overcome it and are able to do what we wish to do.

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This is a freedom that we now have that we didn’t have before, and that we were able to
acquire.

Since experience clearly shows us that this happens with many people, we can rightly
affirm that we also have this intrapersonal freedom and that it is possible to make it go
from a potential state to an actual one.

Physical conditioning can be something that is momentary, or, instead, it can be

irreversible.

Freedom here does not consist in the ability to eliminate it, either partially or completely.
It lies, instead, in the ability to internally accept it in a different way, moving from a state
of rebellion to one of deep acceptance of the limits that a physical handicap imposes on
us.

The I Person can heal the wound that a disability inflicts on my narcissism if, instead of
focusing on the pride of the Psychological I , I can center myself on the unknown wisdom
contained in the SELF, and I choose to look for the reason the SELF placed me in a
condition of limitation and disability.

Oftentimes this situation of having a disability, if I can elaborate it and accept it, is what
frees within us a creative power that changes our entire life.

But the most important thing regarding intrapersonal freedom has to do with internal
freedom.

This freedom is enhanced every time the SELF presents the I Person with a goal that
requires us to face and overcome the fear of death.

We have an enormous fear of death within us that we continuously deny.

The SELF tries to force us out of our denial, sometimes with little suggestions and other
times with much bigger ones.

If the I Person does not turn a deaf ear to the SELF’s suggestions, and instead chooses to
listen to them, death becomes a door to life, according to the principle of death and
rebirth, which states that those who face death obtain access to life, and instead those
who negate death, negate life.

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Here I am not talking about the fear of physical death and of the recklessness of those
who rashly challenge it. Here I am talking about the death we face when we must change
and transform who and what we are and how we think, so we can open ourselves to a
deeper and more enriching way of being and of thinking, according to the laws of life.

An excellent example can be taken from the plant world, which undergoes the cycle of the
four seasons so as to renew itself and make sure life remains fertile. This cycle is a
continual death and rebirthing of life. Biologically, our bodies also follow this same
rhythm every year, even though we might not be aware of it. In the spiritual dimension of
the I Person, however, there is no cycle that has a regular rhythm like this.

Life with its many circumstances, with its unpredictability and its demands on us,
presents us with an irregular and discontinuous cycle.

If a dialogue between the I Person and the SELF exists, it is possible to use these
circumstances to be able to make frequent transitions from death to life, and gradually
increase our inner freedom.

Otherwise we will become rigid with fear and pain, we will put a mask on, and we will
force life to never go beyond the boundaries of our mask. In this way, though, life will
never be fertile, it will be sterile. Human relationships will become rigid and alienation will
set in, causing cynicism and neurosis.

Once we have acquired inner freedom we can cultivate the freedom to own our own evil so
we can transform it.

Once we have acquired that first freedom, we can have access to this second one, which is
even more difficult to cultivate than the first.

Accepting my negative parts requires an ability to overcome a huge obstacle, but

accepting the evil that I myself commit requires an even greater ability to overcome an
even greater obstacle.

We have all become very adept at justifying everything that we do. We have alienated
ourselves from our guilt and it is difficult that what happened to Lady Macbeth in
Shakespeare’s tragedy can happen to us.

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There is an explanation for this: we do not tolerate being judged by anyone, nor do we
accept being condemned. On the other hand, we live in a time where no one accepts
amends from anyone nor is anyone deemed capable of making proper amends to someone
else.

Guilt, repentance, reparation and forgiveness have become impossible and obsolete.

We must invent a new path.

If the evil I have committed is seen as a new type of energy that I introduce into the world,
it is always possible to use this negative energy produced by my evil together with a
positive energy, produced by good. When the two are brought into a synthesis, are unified
and operate together, a superior good can be produced, or at least one that is different.

Electric energy is a recent invention that is the synthesis of two opposing energies that
operate at the same time.

What we must invent is something similar in the field of good and evil.

If we are capable of this then each one of us can be free to own our evil, instead of
negating it, because we know that we can insert this evil in a context which allows us to
use the energy our evil has produced together with another energy that is its opposite. We
are the ones who must create this other type of energy; we must invent the union of the
two energies; we are the ones who must come up with how to make them operate together
so we can obtain a greater good.

It is a fascinating experience.

I myself have experienced this many times. And my evil is no longer that irreparable
transgression that weighs on my life and alienates me, nor do I need someone else’s
mercy or condemnation to free myself of it.

I can forgive myself, because I can transfigure myself with art and with creativity.

THE I PERSON IS A SPIRITUAL PRINCIPLE ENDOWED WITH ITS OWN IDENTITY

Each individual has an identity which comes from the culture he or she lives in and also
has an original identity which comes from his or her own goal to be and to become a
Person.

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If I want to ask myself : “Who am I?” , I can answer that I am a Person and not a thing.
But I cannot stop here, even though this answer helps me find a proper position in my
relationships with others. I must also find a proper position in my relationship with
myself and in my relationship to human history, as my own life is part of this larger
scheme of things.

To my goal to be and to become a Person I must add the goal of being myself and not
anyone else. The mental activity of my Psychological I brings me to confront myself
continuously with other people either to show that I am less than others or to show that I
am better than they are. Every time I give in to this temptation I am betraying my goal of
becoming myself and I become someone else.

I know well that it is difficult to not fall into the need to imitate others and to compete
with others, yet I also know that this need makes me run the risk of losing my true
identity.

The purpose of my true identity is found in my Personal SELF. My SELF reveals my

purpose to me day by day, not all at once and once and for all. My purpose is deeply
connected to my way of being and my way of dealing with life, to my choices and my
actions.

My purpose is related to the specific qualities that I posses and to how I can express them
in a specific area of my life.

There is the fact, however, that my parents can impose an identity on me that responds to
their needs and does not respect the identity that is encoded in my SELF. Their ability to
manipulate me and my own need for their love are two forces that are sufficient in
themselves to keep me from owning my own true identity.

Many human dramas are caused by this loss of identity.

There are those who submit to it and others rebel against it, and there are yet others who
both submit and rebel at the same time, on various levels.

From both reactions what emerges, though, is hateful and destructive revenge against
one’s parents, against oneself and against life itself. Life becomes a drama.

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The desire for revenge overcomes the SELF’s goals and since the wounded pride felt by the
Psychological I and the I Person make us want to justify it, it gets very difficult to become
aware of this and to realize how we destroy our lives with our own hands.

In this case, the Psychological I and the I Person are like two forces that pull in the same
direction, and what happens is like when a ship in a channel is pulled by two different
ropes, one to the right and one to the left.

Another loss of identity comes about when we assimilate the current parental models.

We are living in a historical phase where a phallic identity has taken over both the
masculine identity and the feminine one.

In the world today the will to exercise power and control over others has reached
extremely high levels. Power and control are tendencies of the Psychological I, which
subjects the I Person and the Corporeal I to its own desire for power and crushes the SELF
along with its goals and identity.

This is what I call imperialism of the psyche. Its practical expression is called phallic
identity.

The Phallic identity makes a man take on feminine traits and makes a woman take on
masculine ones, making them incapable of harmonizing with each other and condemning
them both to relationships where reciprocal violence and control become the rule.

The phallic identity arises as a false solution to the fear of death, the fear I mentioned
earlier.

Every time that the laws of life require us to look at this fear of death and overcome it, the
Psychological I and the I Person refuse to do so, and the growth process of the Person is
overtaken by a process of how we can kill others, based on the illusion that those who
have the power to kill others are freed from death themselves. In reality, when we kill
others either in a symbolic or a real way, in that moment we avoid having to die within
ourselves and we instead kill someone else. But the pain of death that we have avoided
does not increase the life either in ourselves nor in others; to the contrary, it impoverishes
it, and the ghost of physical death has only been pushed away, not overcome.

THE I PERSON IS AN END TO ITSELF AND TO NO OTHER

With this phrase what I mean to say is that the Person is an end to itself and not a
means, as Kant says, and as such it cannot be enslaved or defined by other people’s
needs by some will that is externally imposed from outside of human beings themselves.

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But I also want to add that the Person’s purpose is defined only by its own Personal SELF
and by the Cosmic SELF.

And the purposes of both are connected to the life of the universe.

Human beings cannot be enslaved to other people’s wills, but they cannot be enslaved,
either, to their own will when it is an expression of the Psychological I and the pleasure
principle.

When this happens, and unfortunately it happens often, it means that we squash our
own identity or we let someone else do so, and we become accomplices to other people’s
evil.

By choosing values with which we can serve life, we can become ends and not means and
we can bend the pleasure principle and affirm the laws of life.

Freedom, love, truth and beauty have been valid values for all time, but in every epoch
these values must be redefined. We must be able to have the sensitivity to adapt to the
changes that humanity goes through throughout its history.

The purpose of the Person is found in the Personal SELF, which is in communion with the
Cosmic SELF.

The I Person is the means by which this purpose can be actualized. The SELF alone could
never do it.

THE BASIC ELEMENTS OF THE PERSON ARE THE ABILITY TO LOVE ONESELF AND
THE ABILITY TO LOVE OTHERS

There could be some debate as to whether the most basic element of a Person is freedom,
rather than love. It is true that freedom is essential in defining people as Persons, but
freedom cannot be an end in itself. Freedom is indispensible when we are committing to a
goal, but freedom without a goal is like a ship without a destination. The goal of freedom
is love; love of self and love for others.

Freedom is necessary to love so that love is authentic and not confused with possession of
the other. Love is necessary to freedom so that freedom has a goal to reach and a way to
express itself.

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There are many people who are free but they do not know how to love. But there are no
Persons who know how to love that are not free. There are people who pretend to know
how to love, but as they don’t know how to meld love and freedom they imprison
themselves and their loved ones in an addictive relationship that is either passionate, or
enmeshed, or sadomasochistic. This is not a love relationship that can build the Person in
relationship to him or herself or in relationship with a You or with others.

ESSE IN (= SUBSISTENCE)

For the Person to develop and base itself on its relationship with itself, the individual
must be able to love him or herself.

Loving myself means moving gradually away from the spontaneous love I have of my
narcissistic I to a love that I am capable of building, with artfulness and courage, for my I
Person and my SELF.

While the first type of love is spontaneous and natural, this second type must be
discovered and created, along with a correct type of love for the Psychological I and the
Corporeal I.

For the I Person to love itself, it must know itself and have self-esteem. I can know myself
by exploring and affirming my positive attributes, through communication and exchange
with others.

To know myself, I must act.

To act, I must accept the fact that I make mistakes and I also must have the humility to
learn from them, instead of shutting myself into my wounded pride after I have made a
mistake.

I reach the most important goal in loving myself when I learn to love my SELF more than I
love me. But since the narcissistic I is in exact opposition to the SELF, only when the first
dies can I allow the second to emerge in such a way that the I Person shifts its orientation
and centers on the SELF rather than on the Psychological I.

When this happens, we stop being children and we become adults, governors of ourselves
and responsible for our actions.

Adulthood is the material expression of the love that the I Person has been able to show
for itself.

It is this love that makes us become Persons in relation to ourselves.

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ESSE AD (=RELATIONSHIP)

The love for a You and for others is what makes up a Person with respect to others.

Throughout Western history, love for another has never been considered a necessary step
for individuals to become Persons with respect to others.

Men and women could simply lock themselves into a monastery and dedicate themselves
to service to God and to mankind. This was enough to reach perfection and to feel fulfilled
and actualized.

I do not believe that an individual can completely become a Person if they are not capable
of loving a partner, besides loving others.

The reason I say this is simple. Love for others in general never means that my egoism or
my narcissism is challenged, whereas love for a partner challenges me continuously.

Nothing like a couple relationship challenges our will to exercise power and control over
another person.

Love for others can easily grow and develop in the shadows of the desire for power and
control, in such a way that this desire is never unmasked.

Now, the will to exercise power and control over others is what defines our phallic identity,
not our identity as a Person.

And this is not at all what humanity today needs if we want to improve our quality of life.

By the same token, love for a You is not enough either, if this love does not open up to
others, to be certain we have broken out of the prison of our narcissism. There is always
the risk that we are deceiving ourselves.

By being faithful to our SELF and to the purpose contained within it, we can be
guaranteed that we are actualizing our true identity as a Person.

Love for a partner is not the phase of falling in love, nor is it the symbiotic love or
passionate love that is so amply described in literature.

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It is, instead, a decision to build a couple relationship, moving from first the inability to
love to the ability to love, and then from possessive love to love as a gift.

Love is a decision, it is not a sentiment.

Love is action, not passion. It is activity and not passivity.

It is the will to cultivate the loved one’s wellbeing together with one’s own.

It is the will to accomplish a harmonious synthesis of the masculine and feminine

principles.

For centuries it has been possible to only unify these two opposites, now only the fusion
of these two opposites is possible, otherwise the couple doesn’t last and it breaks up.

Unity without synthesis is no longer sufficient.

Love is not a naturally acquired ability, it is an art that we must learn, says Erich Fromm
(see The Art of Loving by Erich Fromm and Amore e Persona {Love and the Person} by A.
Mercurio).

A common expression of love for others was once service to the poor, the sick and the
defenseless, according to the indications laid out in the parable on the final judgment.

It is certainly a good thing to be charitable, and many today express this in their doing
volunteer work, but this is not the type of love that makes a human being become a
Person.

In a time when humanity is making itself into a planetary organism, love for others
cannot be limited to works of charity. It must be even more courageous and demanding
and have two reference points. One is the small group, and the other is the planetary
group or the global village.

In a small group, people must learn, by loving, to actualize the common good, and to
transform a group of people that are complete strangers into a living organism that
assures the good of each individual and of the group as a whole. Creating a living
organism of this type is a work of art, which is not a merely individual effort, but is a
group effort.

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What we can learn in the small group must later become a model that can be transferred
to the planetary group, with a greater level of love along with the same principles and the
same actions that can make humanity into one great living organism, made up of human
beings who are capable of becoming Persons.

Today our bodies are whole, living organisms. Millions of years ago, they did not exist.
Only single-celled organisms existed.

Who was it that pushed single-celled organisms to organize into multiple-celled

organisms, convincing them to insert their individuality into a multi-cellular function?
Who told the cells to differentiate and create the cells of the heart, of the brain and all the
other organs? And who made them all work together for well-defined purposes? Was it
someone who decided from without, or did they decide within themselves to do this?

Did they know then that they would end up inventing humanity?

Did they know they were artists who would end up creating an organism that was so
complex, so extraordinary?

Did they know that human beings, too, would be artists?

Artists that create themselves throughout the centuries and the millennia?

How much love this immense work must have required!

And where did this love come from, except from the decisions made, day after day, of
minuscule, insignificant beings?

We, too, are minuscule, insignificant beings when compared with the universe, but inside
ourselves lies an immense power and an immense amount of love. We too, if we want to,
can bring extraordinary projects to life.

HUMAN BEINGS AS ARTISTS OF THEIR LIVES AND AS ARTISTS OF THE LIFE OF THE
UNIVERSE

In 1984 I came to the conclusion that human beings were artists who had created
themselves with a constant commitment across the millennia, on the biological, cultural
and historical levels.

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Within a period of about 20 years, I myself created a new identity for myself, which I
could have never imagined or even dreamed of twenty years before.

Today, while I write, in August 1990, Russia has been transformed in a way that was
unthinkable even just a few months ago.

It doesn’t often happen that we can witness the result of a process that has been going on
underground for a long time and that suddenly explodes outward.

All of this is the result of the artistic power of human beings, which at first is carried out
in silence and then materializes in such a way that everyone can see it.

One thing that always strikes me, though, is how the average person is always so
skeptical regarding this artistic, transformative power that we all have.

No one is aware of their artistic power and everyone believes that only those who make
works of art and exhibit them to an audience can be called artists.

My intuition told me that everyone could become an artist in various areas and that all
that was necessary was to apply an artistic technique not only in working marble, or
wood, or canvas etc., but also to our every day lives, so that we could all transform our
own lives and our own way of living into an authentic work of art.

In 1985, during the Congress of the Sophia University of Rome held in Milano, I spoke of
these ideas of mine for the first time in a paper I presented there. It was then published in
French in my book , “La vie comme oeuvre d’art” {Life as a Work of Art}. A few years later I
created Sophia-Art, a method with which these ideas can be put into practice.

While as a species we can see the result of the artistic works of the generations that have
preceded our own, but not of those that are happening now, as individuals, if we decide
to apply the principles behind artistically creating our own lives, we can see the results of
our decision within our own brief lives. This happened to me in only twenty years.

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If we decide to live like artists of our own lives we can create in a brief amount of time an
energy which emanates beauty that is visible to many and that can benefit them.

This happens especially every time we are capable of synthesizing one or more opposites
which, as long as they remain as opposites, tear our lives apart, but as soon as they have
been worked on using the principles of art, they stop being contrasting opposites and they
become an energy that can unify our lives and the lives of those around us.

At this point, I was surprised to realize that when I had come up with the definition of a
Person, I had already implicitly included the definition of artist. I also realized that by
working for years to become a Person, I had also been working to become an artist of my
life.

By defining the I Person as a unifying spiritual principle and by attributing to it the task
of unifying the four major components found within each individual, the I Person, the
Psychological I, the Corporeal I, and the Personal and Cosmic SELF, I was already
indicating something that is specific to art: the ability to unify things that are opposed to
each other.

There is no doubt that the I Person and the Psychological I are often in opposition to each
other, and the Psychological I and the SELF almost always are. Sometimes the Corporeal I
opposes the SELF and the I Person through the violence of its passions.

To unite these four components is truly a work of art, because here we are not talking
about suppressing one component in favor of another, as happens with ascetics, but of
being able to fuse them together without destroy any one of them.

This also requires a lifetime to bring about, but we can reach substantial levels of
accomplishment that are, in themselves, complete works of art.

It is also a work of art to be able to learn how to love ourselves and to love others and
receive their love, even though here the word “art” takes on a different meaning, in the
sense that I can learn an art and with the art I have learned I can create new works of art.

Art in the sense of the technique I must learn and art in the sense of a completed work of
art, according to how they are defined in the field of artistic creation.

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A completed Person is a completed work of art. The I Person that learns to work together
with the SELF learns an artistic technique that will allow it to create not only the Person
as a work of art, but numerous other works of art that will be the creative expression of
the Person.

At this point, just as I had created Sophia-Analysis as a method for resolving conflict
between the conscious and the unconscious, by unifying them through the use of inner
wisdom, it was now necessary to create a new method, Sophia-Art, so as to unify all the
other opposites that are part of human experience and create a type of beauty that could
make life and the universe dance.

And while in my first method the group facilitators were artists who taught the group
members to become artists, by learning how to govern the unconscious and the unknown
wisdom found in the SELF, in my second method everyone is an artist, who explores their
artistic power and uses it in creating works of art during group itself and then in their
own daily lives.

In nature, we are all aware of two opposites that are synthesized and create works of art,
even though we don’t look at it like that. One is the synthesis that comes about between a
sperm and an ovum, which, once they fuse, create plant, animal and human life. The
other is the synthesis that occurs between the energy of the earth and the energies that
come from the sky and creates plant life. Have we ever really looked closely enough at the
creative miracles that trees and plants are capable of?

From astrophysics we have learned that there is another miracle that occurs in nature,
and this comes about not from the synthesis of two opposites, but from the synthesis of
two equals. This is what happens when a star is born.

Two hydrogen atoms, through a process of condensation and collapse, fuse together and
initiate a thermonuclear reaction. A chain thermonuclear reaction creates a star.

The fusion between two equal elements comes about through a process of condensation
and collapse. This is also what happens when two opposite elements fuse.

If in a group of people we are able to create a phenomenon analogous to condensation

and collapse, there too we can obtain a fusion of equals and of opposites, and this fusion
sets off a transformation of the group’s energy. The energy that before was chaotic and
dispersed now is organized in a unified way, and it sets off a creative, transformative
process.

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Up until this point we have been able to imitate nature, in a way. But what does an artist
do besides this, beyond imitating nature? An artist like Michelangelo, for instance.

The life of a plant lasts a certain amount of time and then it dies. So does the life of a
human being, and the life of a star.

The life of a work of art, instead, does not die until the medium on which it was created is
accidentally destroyed.

This is a type of life that is superior to the type of life found in nature.

The type of life created by an artist is immortal. It wins over the laws of entropy and
death.

What is the artist’s secret, which makes him or her capable of creating immortal life?

To be able to discover this secret and then transfer it to one’s own life, instead of to an
external medium, is the secret of Sophia-Art.

We could define an artist in many different ways. The best one, most certainly, is the one
that affirms that an artist is someone who can transform something that is mortal into
something that is immortal.

Since Plato, in the West we have all said that human beings are endowed with an
immortal soul.

I, instead, say that human beings are born with a mortal soul and that it is within our
artistic nature to be able to transform it and make it become immortal.

This is the highlight of my faith in the power of humanity.

And when a human being becomes immortal, what does he or she do?

According to Christian thought, we must do nothing else except spend the rest of eternity
in bliss.

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According to Buddhist thought, those who reach nirvana completely annul their
individuality and lose themselves in the One.

According to my idea, human beings who create an immortal soul will have many things
to do after their death, and will live in joy and not in pain.

Artists that create immortal works of art continue to be present in the world, even after
their death; this is certain.

I cannot believe that someone who is capable of creating an immortal soul ceases to exist
in this world and in the next, after their death.

Eternal rest is eternal boredom.

A work of art is never at rest. To the contrary, it is constantly, incessantly active.

From wherever it is, a museum, a home, a town square, it continuously sends out energy
that influences those who look at it. This energy goes into the spectator and it shakes him
or her with deep emotions, leaving an indelible impression.

The work of art itself becomes a new center of energy that has been transferred to within
the spectator and from there inspires deep transformations that can become evident even
after many years.

If I manage to create an immortal soul and a life that is a work of art, this is how I want to
imagine my life in the hereafter: I will continue to have an influence, just like a work of art
does, even though I have no idea in what kind of places I will be kept and who will receive
my energy , what transformations I will continue to make and what kinds of new lives I
will give rise to.

I do think, though, that all this will have something to do with the life of the universe that
created me, and with the life of other universes that I do not know of yet.

This is why I know that as a human being I am not only called to become an artist of my
own life, but an artist of the universe.

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 CHAPTER X

∗
The Cosmo-Art Theorem

This theorem affirms that if we ask ourselves why the universe exists, we can find
an answer that is acceptable and sensible, as long as we also ask ourselves four
questions at the same time, rather than just one.

These four questions are:

1) why does the universe exist
2) why does humanity exist
3) why does pain exist
4) why does art exist.

We cannot answer the first three questions unless we first find an answer to the
fourth one.
According to this theorem, the answer to the fourth question will be correct only if
it can help us justify at the same time the existence and the interdependence that there is
between the universe, humanity, pain and art.
If we make a distinction between primary and secondary beauty, we can say that
art exists so that secondary beauty can be created.
Let’s call primary beauty the type of beauty that is found in nature.
Let’s call secondary beauty the type of beauty that is created by human beings.
Primary beauty, or natural beauty, is subject to time and to death.
Secondary beauty, beauty that is greater than the type of beauty created by nature,
is not subject to either time or to death.
The first is mortal, the second is immortal.
The beauty of a woman is mortal.

                                                            
∗
 The Cosmo-Art Theorem was presented for the first time in a question and answer session held during the
3rd Group Laboratory of Existential Anthropology that was held in Frascati on November 4-5, 1995. 

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 The beauty of a work of art is immortal.
The beauty of the models used by Raffaello, or by Leonardo da Vinci or by any
other painter, is now dead. The beauty of the paintings that these painters created is still
alive today and it will continue to live on for many millenia.
In our relationship with life and with beauty, as creative artists we human beings
have a type of power that nature does not have.
Nature holds the secret of how to put life into a seed and make sure it germinates.
But every life that germinates ends up dying, and with it dies the beauty of its life.
Human beings, instead, possess the secret of how to infuse a work of art with life
and beauty, and this life and this beauty, if they are found within a masterpiece, don’t die
and they never will.
Nature creates mortal lives.
Human beings create immortal lives, when they reach the highest forms of art.
It is not possible to reach the highest levels of art without having to necessarily
face pain and death. Just like fire fuses atoms and creates stars, pain fuses the opposing
forces that lacerate the life of human beings and from this pain we create harmonious
syntheses that did not exist before. But while the stars are mortal, works of art created by
human beings are immortal.
We cannot create any authentic work of art unless we overcome pain.
Human beings are the only living subjects who are capable of facing pain,
overcoming it and transforming it into a powerful force that, together with other factors,
bring about a condensation of the energies that give birth to authentic works of art.
Therefore, human beings are necessary for works of art to be created that contain
secondary beauty, the type of beauty that never dies. Human beings are necessary for the
creation of a life that is immortal throughout time.
Life found in nature is continuously regenerated and, through the cycle of birth,
reproduction and death it can even last forever. But the beauty contained in this life cycle
will never be immortal in the same way a work of art’s life and beauty are, a work that
was created by a human being.
If life, that can last forever, wants to exist in an immortal form, it can do so only
through art.
Therefore, art is necessary to life if life wants to acheive a form of immortal life.
Consequently, Life creates human beings so that art can exist; the universe must
exist so human beings can exist; it must be a universe where the presence of humanity is
possible, a universe where there is also pain.

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 The universe, humanity, pain and art are all necessary to life, that has always
existed and always will exist, so life can acheive a form of immortal life that rises from life
that has a mortal form, after a long and painful process.
No form of immortal life is possible without this process. Plato can make the
affirmation that immortal souls exist, but this is only an affirmation and nothing more.
Immortal life is exclusively found in secondary beauty. And no one besides human
beings can create secondary beauty.
Both human beings and the universe are beings that are subject to death, but both
of them can overcome death if together they manage to create secondary beauty, a form of
life that from being mortal becomes immortal.
According to the philosophers Democritus and Anaximander, there are infinite
universes, not just one. Our modern physicists are coming to the same conclusion.
We do not know what characteristics those other universes have, but as far as our
own is concerned, with the Cosmo-Art Theorem we know that it is necessary for the
creation of secondary beauty, and secondary beauty is necessary to Life if Life wants to
acheive a form of life that is finally immortal. A form of life that once it is created it no
longer needs to either die or to reproduce for it to keep on living.
Three relevant objections can be made regarding this theorem:
1) How can we possibly affirm that pain is necessary to create an authentic work
of art? Aren’t there works of art that are created solely through the prodigious
talent of the artists that create them?
2) Works of art do not die unless the medium they are created on is destroyed and
unless there are no longer any living observers to appreciate them. But what
happens if these two conditions are missing?
3) What will happen when this universe dies? Can a work of art go beyond the
confines of the space-time of this universe and continue to live?
To the first objection I would like to respond as follows:
If we take the creation of Ulysses and the myth regarding him as an example of a
work of art, we know how important pain is in the life of Ulysses. Ulysses is the man of
many woes, and the poem The Odyssey is full of stories of all the woes he had to go
through. If Ulysses were to resist the pain he had to face he would never have made it
home to Ithaca and we would know nothing about him, nor about the myth that he
inspired and that Homer narrated through his art.
Homer is the artist that narrates Ulysses’ adventures, but Ulysses is the artist who
creates himself every time pain takes over him and he must transform it into creative
action. With art, wisdom and courage he creates new ways of acting, ways that surprised
both the ancient world and the one that came afterwards. But Ulysses does even more
than this; he doesn’t only transform the pain that comes over him from external

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circumstances. With Circe, Calypso and Nausicaa, and last but not least with Penelope,
Ulysses, after having tasted pleasure, chooses to face the pain of detachment and
departure so he can continue on towards his destination. His destination is not only
virtute e conoscenza {virtue and knowledge} but it is, above all, the search for secondary
beauty that he can create through his own efforts, not that he is just given through Circe
and Calypso.
What immense pain did Ulysses have to face so he could make a synthesis of the
opposites within him and that set him apart from all the other Greek heroes? How much
pain did he have to go through so he could transform himself and transform others?
Is it possible that Homer didn’t have to face any pain at all so that he could give us
his wonderful verses? We don’t know this nor can we know, but we do know that all
artists put all of themselves into what they create, and they are reflected in their creation.
It is up to us to be able to read between the lines.
How could an artist make his work become immortal without first winning over
death himself?And how is it possible for someone to face death without actually dying,
unless they face pain, which is like dying without actually ceasing to exist?
Death is concentrated in pain and it is condensed in an experience that can be
lived through and overcome. Pain is a type of death that can either drive us to insanity or
to physical death, or it can take us to the threshold of a new life, a life where we no longer
fear death.
This is the secret found in every true work of art. A grain of wheat dies and from
this death a new life is born that is richer than the previous one, but wheat does not
know what pain is.
An artist dies before she creates something, but in the creative act itself there is a
form of life that will no longer have to experience death.
I think I have sufficiently answered the first question.

To the first part of the second objection my answer is that if, as of today, we should
lose every trace of Homer’s verses, Ulysses would not die, because his myth exists and is
transmitted in thousands of different ways from generation to generation.
To the second part of the second objection, at this time I have no answer.
If humanity should die, all myths would die as well, and so would all the works of
art created by human beings. This would happen unless before the human species dies
off there is another species capable of passing on the tradition.

To the third objection my answer is:

If we establish an analogy between humanity and the universe by following the
cosmoantropic principle, we can think of things in the following manner:

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 Just as human beings die, the universe can die as well. But just as human beings
that are artists can produce an autonomous, immortal life before they die, such as life as
a work of art , the universe, before it dies, can produce a form of autonomous, immortal
life too, that also has the same qualities as a work of art.
Of course the universe, without humanity’s help, can never become an artist of
itself and of its life, but the universe unified with humanity can.
This last step assumes that Sophia-Art and Cosmo-Art will continue to exist and
continue to be developed, as they deal specifically with human beings becoming artists of
their lives and of the life of the universe.
As far as Sophia-Art goes, I have described it in detail in the book: “La vita come
opera d’arte e la vita come dono spiegata in 41 film” {Life as a Work of Art and Life as a
Gift Explained in 41 Films}.
I will be describing Cosmo-Art in Chapter XI of this book: “The Cosmo-Art Myth”
and in Chapter XII: “The Myth of Ulysses contains the Cosmo-Art Myth”.

The myth of Ulysses contains the essence of both Sophia-Art and Cosmo-Art and if
one is understood, the others can be understood as well.
I don’t think that the works of art created up until now can, by themselves, give the
universe an immortal life; I do think, instead, that many human lives, if they are lived
both individually and collectively as works of art, can create, when they are summed up,
that particular energy field that will be able to endow the universe with immortal beauty,
and thus an immortal soul that is capable of going beyond the physical confines of this
universe’s space-time.
Many human lives, when they are united socially and historically, create a
language and a culture. From the heart of this culture art and artists emerge. Many
human lives, that give rise to the historical events that make up human history, in time
create the anima mundi that the philosophers talk about. This soul, which is historical
and temporal, can slowly but surely produce an immortal soul that is no longer temporal,
as history is. It is immortal in the sense that it is transtemporal, capable, that is, of going
from one space-time to another, without having to either die nor continuously be born
and reproduce.
Hawking says that light cannot get out of black holes, but particles and radiation
that are produced by their specific energy field can.
Couldn’t the universe create an energy field that is capable of producing a work of
art that has an immortal soul?
When in describing Cosmo-Art I speak of secondary beauty, it is this possible
energy field and this possible immortal work of art that I am referring to.

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 Biological life dies not when the atoms that it is made up of dissolve, it dies when
the energy field that keeps it alive dissipates.
We still know very little about energy fields and we know nothing, really, about
energy in itself.
What kind of energy is concentrated in a work of art? What energy fields is it made
up of? And why don’t these energy fields dissolve, once they have been created?

Every work of art contains within itself the secret to the answer to these questions.
Every artist knows, either intuitively or based on inner inspiration, what they must do to
create their work, but if they try to express with words what they have done they can do
so only in a very approximate way.
We do not know the secret of life and we do not know the secret behind works of
art. The ability to define them both has always been just beyond our reach.
Meanwhile, though, life and art continue to exist.
And the fact that art by itself cannot unify the existential life of the artist through
the works of art that he or she creates is undeniable as well. Often between the two
realities there is a profound division that only a few artists have managed to overcome.

Sophia-Art and Cosmo-Art talk about a new art form that is capable of
transporting the secret of art into the very life of human beings and make it possible for
this very life itself, and not only what has been painted on a canvas or sculpted into
marble, to become a work of art.
Everyone, just like Ulysses, can make their life into a work of art and can create
secondary beauty, which is unique for the fact that it is capable of remaining intact when
faced with time and death.
This means that human beings truly can transform their mortal souls into
immortal ones, and with them they can go beyond the confines of this universe and travel
to other universes, forever.
In this manner our pain has a purpose; human life is not lived in vain, nor is the
life of this universe.

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 CHAPTER XI

The Cosmo-Art Myth∗

Creating a myth is a work of art; it’s a work of art that emerges from the collective
unconscious of a people or an individual, or from the creative action of an individual that
collects and transforms the myths of a people and gives them a form that is the
expression of his or her own artistic creativity.
The two examples from classical literature we have of this are the Iliad and the
Odyssey, written in poetic form by Homer, and the Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri. We
no longer know who created the single myths that Homer collected in his poems. We no
longer know what the “divine comedies” were that were popular in the time of Dante
Alighieri.

A myth, too, in and of itself, is a work of art.

It is a work of art that requires that an artist create it in such a way that it
contains enough vital energy that it can survive through the centuries and stay alive
forever.

Every work of art contains, without a doubt, Truth and Beauty, and it is capable of
communicating both to those who observe it.

There are various types of truth:

revealed truths (for example the Bible and the Qur’an)
philosophical truths (the product of philosophical thought that lasts through the
centuries)
scientific truths (the product of scientists’ research and genius)
artistic truths (the product of artistic genius)
existential truths (the product of individual or group research on existential
problems).

                                                            
∗
 This paper was prepared for the 3rd Group Laboratory on Existential Anthropology, held on November 4-5,
1995.

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 Every myth contains some truths that are most certainly artistic truths, truths
that are intuitive and not reached through reason like philosophical or scientific ones are.
Intuitive truth is subjected to reason but reason alone, with its own means, can never
reach a full understanding of the kind of intuitive truth that is expressed through artistic
means.
Reason can only explore it, describe it and compare it to other truths, but it can go no
further than that.

If we are convinced of the fact that every myth contains some truth and that every
myth must be structured like a work of art for it to be able to last through time, we must
now ask what the structure of a work of art really is.

A work of art is a unified field of energy which also has a unifying ability.
It is unified if it is a synthesis of opposing energies.
It is unifying if it creates in its audience the effect of unifying the audience with the
work of art itself, either in the short or the long term, and if its content manages to unify
in some way the inner life and the external experience of those who observe it.
A work of art is also a field of energy that is the result of transformational processes
that the artist had to go through so as to create it, and is the motor that initiates similar
transformational processes in the life of those who observe the work of art.

In 1985, during the Congress of the Sophia University of Rome in Milano, I spoke for
the first time of the myth of life as a work of art. 10 years later, in 1995, we can now agree
that this myth is making headway and is becoming a unifying factor within the Sophia
University of Rome, thanks to the kind of group participation that has been behind the
creation of this myth.

I now want to propose the creation of another myth that is even more important: the
Cosmo-Art myth.
The proposal comes from me but it can be created only through a group effort.

The truth within this myth is one that rises from an intuition that I have had.
I have formulated it, though, in the form of a theorem, which is the result of
reasoning. This means that I have tried to put together intuition and reasoning: my
intuition and my reasoning first of all, and then my intuition together with your ability to
reason. I have tried to create a synthesis of opposites: intuition on one hand, reasoning
on the other. Every synthesis of opposites contributes to the creation of a work of art.

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Scientists often have an intuition and then they develop it and share it by using their
reasoning; after this they create experiments that are appropriate to demonstrate the
validity of their discoveries, or rather they entrust to others the research and the
experiments that can prove or disprove their affirmation.
This is what Einstein did, for example, to demonstrate the validity of his theory of
relativity.

The type of reasoning we will be using in our case will not be deductive or inductive
reasoning. We instead will use reasoning by analogy, which is often used in philosophy.

The strength of using analogy is based on the cosmoantropic principle, which affirms
that whatever is valid for the human organism is equally valid for the cosmic organism,
because one is made in the image of the other and vice-versa.

For this reason, if you find the cosmoantropic principle unacceptable, the Cosmo-Art
Theorem won’t be acceptable either, and you will not be able to work on the creation of
the Cosmo-Art myth.

The Cosmo-Art myth states, essentially, that the universe is looking for a way to give
itself an immortal soul that can allow it to continue to exist beyond its physical and
space-time confines, should it ever die in a Big Crunch, which seems to me to be
inevitable. To create this immortal soul that can allow it to go beyond these confines that
we currently know of, and to be able to continue to live elsewhere, the universe has a
definite need for human beings, who are capable of becoming artists of their own lives
and of the life of the universe.
This is because by analogy we know that only artists are capable of drawing vital
energy out from themselves and of infusing an external medium with it. They are able to
give this energy such a vital strength that it can win over death and can continue to not
only exist, but to influence possible audiences that will be born millennia after the artists
themselves have died.

***
Neither philosophy nor science knows how to define what life is. They can only
describe the characteristics of the life of a living being, according to the various species,
but they cannot say what the actual essence of life is. For any definition to be truly valid,
it must contain the essence of what it defines.
In general, anything that can reproduce itself is considered living. Therefore trees,
plants, animals and human beings are all living beings, because they can reproduce. But
an atom or an electron cannot be considered to be living beings, because they don’t have

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the ability to reproduce. A stone, therefore, is not a living being, just as anything that is
made up only of atoms could not be considered to be alive.

And yet the sun, that is a star, is made up of atoms that burn and create yet other
atoms that have different atomic values. How can we affirm that the sun is not a living
being?
Galaxies are made up of billions of stars and the universe is made up of billions of
galaxies.
How can we say that galaxies, or the universe itself, are not living beings?
But if the stars, the galaxies and the universe are living beings, then they are also
necessarily mortal ones, because every living being is mortal.
And just as every living human being is obsessed with the problem of how to become
immortal, at least as far as we can tell from as far back as the time of Gilgamesh or
during the more recent era of the Pharaohs, it is completely possible that the universe is
just as obsessed with this problem of immortality.

In my opinion, the real problem is as follows: that which we call Life with a capital L,
and that finds expression in all the forms of life that we are aware of, is what is trying to
find an answer to the question of how it can go from being mortal to becoming immortal.
And if through biological reproduction in plants and animals it has managed to find a way
to become immortal, this solution is not completely satisfactory. Otherwise there would be
no explanation for why humanity, which is the highest form of life that we know of, must
be so worried about its own immortality.
Life is not satisfied with having created the possibility to express itself through life
forms that reproduce and die over and over again. Life is looking for a way to exist in
forms that don’t die, but that by conquering death they can be transformed from being
mortal to becoming immortal.
For me, this explains why art appeared in human history; this explains the principle
meaning of art: the creation of a life form that can go from being mortal to becoming
immortal.

***
If these reflections are convincing to you, then you will be able to understand the
importance of asking ourselves what form of life characterizes a work of art, which is
different from any other form of life found in nature.
A work of art can, essentially, be defined as such only when it demonstrates its
ability to win over death and to create immortal life for itself. This happens without it
having to make use of the mechanisms of generation and reproduction, but rather of
those inherent in artistic creation, that have yet to be studied carefully and understood.

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 This brings me to reflect on the topic of the soul that is found in every work of art as
a center of vital energy that never dies, and that we can thus call immortal.
Plato’s conception of an immortal soul which is prisoner of the body is one that does
not satisfy me and it does not help us solve the problem that, in my opinion, Life is so
concerned with. At the same time, the oriental conception that the soul is immortal and
that it is forced to incarnate many times into a body until it has not been completely
purified doesn’t satisfy me either, because it is full of contradictions. Before this immortal
soul incarnated for the first time, was it pure or impure?
And if it was pure, why would it have to incarnate? What use did it have for the body?
And, instead, if it was impure, how could it have been immortal?

***
A work of art contains beauty, as well as truth.
If a myth is a work of art, it must, therefore, contain beauty as well as truth.
What beauty really is no one can say, even though many have tried to define it.
One thing is certain, though. Everyone has inside, innately, a sense of what beauty
is and a need for it.
Nuclear physicists, for example, as well as mathematicians and cosmologists, never
accept a new theory unless they are convinced that this theory is beautiful, as well as
correct or convincing. Often when scientists must choose between two theories, they will
choose the one that contains beauty, and leave out the one that doesn’t.
At the same time, no one accepts the creation of a myth if the beauty it contains is
not as obvious as the truth it expresses.
There is an important consideration we must look at, though. The history of art
shows us that sometimes it takes a while for a work of art’s beauty to be recognized as
such. We all know that Van Gogh died before any of his paintings were appreciated by his
contemporaries, while today they are worth millions of dollars. And not everyone might
know that the opera Carmen, by Bizet, was a complete failure the first time it was put on.
Certain oriental myths mean nothing to us, while they are, instead, essential to the
life of entire populaces. Every society chooses its own myths and we don’t yet really know
what makes one group choose certain myths that instead mean nothing to others.
We only know that entire societies and religions are formed around myths, and the
rites created are essential for the myths to be perpetuated, beyond its intrinsic value as a
work of art.
As you can see, the topic we are dealing with is very complex, and it is not easy to
understand in a fast and easy way.

I ask you, therefore, to not be impatient and to proceed slowly when assimilating the
ideas that I am proposing here. If they are valid, they will continue to grow. In the
meantime, don’t give up cultivating them.

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 ***

One inevitable question:

what will the creation of the Cosmo-Art myth bring to us on a practical level?
I will answer this question step by step.
A first answer is as follows:

Those who unify their I and their SELF , and unify their I and the Cosmos within
their SELF,
create a work of art with an immortal soul.
Those who unify their disjointed, conflictual parts within
make their life into a work of art and create an immortal soul for themselves.
Those who unify the masculine and feminine principles, within themselves and
outside of themselves, create a work of art and a double immortal soul
produced by a synthesis of opposites.
Those who unify themselves with a group, create a group soul.
Those who unify themselves with a large group, create a great soul (Gandhi)
that is a synthesis of equals and of opposites.
When they are unified at the same time internally and externally, in one’s inner
actions
and one’s actions towards the outside, around a group purpose, a work of art is
created
that can transform people who are complete strangers into a single living organism,
endowed with its own specific purpose in life and in the history
of the world’s soul.
Those who create an immortal soul
contribute to the great work of the universe
whose goal is
to create an immortal soul for itself.
They become a part of the whole
and they join the flow of life
in an unending search for how to break
the continual cycle of passing from one form of life to another
so they can be definitively transmuted
from their mortal form, where they are subject to death,
to an immortal one, that always is and always is becoming,
and never has to die.

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 By creating the Cosmo-Art Myth
I am inviting you to join a group work of art,
a work that is the product of many and not just of one,
that will be good for us,
will be good for all of humanity and the entire universe.

At this point I can repeat the Cosmo-Art theorem in its simpler form:

given that the universe exists,

given that humanity exists,
given that pain exists,
and given that art exists,
reasoning on the basis of the cosmoantropic principle
we can deduce that
humanity is necessary to the universe
so the universe can create an immortal soul for itself
and, in a perfect relationship of reciprocity,
the universe is necessary to humanity,
so humanity can reach
the same goal.

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 CHAPTER XII

The Myth of Ulysses contains the Cosmo-Art Myth∗

Is intrauterine life a paradise, or is it traumatic?

I would like to ask this question to the great poet Homer, the author of the Iliad
and the Odyssey.
I certainly don’t want to imply that in composing his poems Homer intended to talk
about intrauterine life and that he was aware of it. He was only making a choice among
the hundreds of myths that were being passed down orally during his time, and, guided
by his poetic intuition, he composed the poems that we know today and that we admire
for being two great works of art. Now the comprehension of a work of art can never be
completed with a single interpretation. There are many possible interpretations and they
are all very different from one another. I think, therefore, that I can make an
interpretation that connects these poems with intrauterine and intracosmic life, which
does not mean that all the others that have been offered throughout time are not valid as
well.
Those who study literature know that there is the so-called “Homeric question”,
which tries to establish if the two poems were written by the same author or if, instead,
they were written by two different people.
What I want to point out, though, is that these two works have always been
considered as being written by the same author, from antiquity on, and there is a very
close connection between the two of them.
I have wondered for years about the meaning of this connection and suddenly one
day I came up with this answer.
I think that the Iliad is a symbolic representation of what happens when an ovum
is fertilized by a sperm, and that the Odyssey is a symbolic representation of what
happens from the moment the ovum is fertilized up until birth, that is, of what happens
to an embryo inside the maternal womb, that must become a baby that is able to be born.
To understand this comparison I suggest that you watch a film about the voyage
undertaken by sperm towards the egg (The Miracle of Life), and then to think about it in
this way:

                                                            
∗
 This paper was presented during a conference held at the Universita’ Cattolica in Milan, during the congress
of the A.N.E.P., April 29th, 1996, with the title: “Progettualita’ e saggezza del nascituro nella lettura
dell’Odissea” {The life purpose and wisdom of the newborn in an interpretation of the Odyssey}, and later
during the 4th Group Laboratory for Existential Anthropology, May 25th, 1996. 

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 The Iliad talks about a great army that leaves Greece and goes to Troy to conquer it
and bring Helen, Menelaus’ wife, back home.
In the film you can see also a great army made up of approximately 300 million
sperm, that enter the vagina and from there, with great effort, swim to meet the ovum
that has just left the follicle. Hundreds of thousands of sperm are destined to die along
the way and only a few reach their destination alive.
Those few thousand that manage to reach the egg all surround it, and through
their pushing and shoving they make it rotate anti-clockwise until just one sperm, with
great cunning but also with the consent of the ovum’s membrane, manages to find a way
to penetrate the egg and fertilize it.
The Greek army was also decimated during their long war against the Trojans, and
it never would have been able to conquer the city if Ulysses hadn’t thought up the trick of
the wooden horse, and the gods hadn’t encouraged the Trojans to open the city doors and
bring the horse in and welcome it as a gift to be celebrated.
But Ulysses and 23 warriors were hiding inside the horse (this number was
indicated by De Crescenzo in his book on Greek myths) and, at the right time, they
jumped out and burned the city down.
Within the head of a sperm there are 23 chromosomes, and as soon as they enter
the ovum they initiate the process of cariocinesis. This process is like a great fire, that on
one hand destroys and on the other hand creates a new life.
It destroys the identity and the form that the ovum has had up until that time and
it creates a new identity and a new form, that first becomes the blastula and later
becomes the embryo and then the fetus.
The beginning of a new human life is a beautiful miracle. At Troy the beauty to be
reconquered was Helen. When an ovum is fecundated the beauty of life must be
conquered, the beauty that is formed in the moment a human being begins its own story.

Thus, just as Ulysses overwhelms the city of Troy, the genes contained in the
chromosomes overwhelm the life of the egg cell. Feverish activity begins immediately and
with unsettling rapidity one single cell is transformed into billions of cells, each one
differentiated and yet all united together to reach a specific goal: the life of a human
organism.
In the Iliad, Homer believed he was recounting Achille’s destructive rage, but
instead he was also recounting the drama, the miracle and the celebration of human
fecundation, even though I doubt he knew that.
***
Now let’s look at the Odyssey and continue on with the same reasoning, while
creating new analogies.

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 After Ulysses left Troy, full of treasures and glory, it took him 10 years of sailing
all around the Mediterranean and having one adventure after another to finally reach
Ithaca, where Penelope was waiting for him.
Penelope is also a beautiful woman, and, just like Helen, she has many admirers
who are competing for her attentions, just like the sperm compete to win the right to
penetrate the ovum.
Whomever it was that created these myths based on Ulysses, and there are many
different versions which are not all similar to the one that Homer transcribed, most
certainly must have been in touch with the emotions that come from deep within human
beings and can also be traced to the very origins of life itself. Our cells have a memory as
well as the neurons found in our brains, and everything that happens from the time of
our conception on is recorded within them. This is the basis on which I intend to
formulate my analogies.
The voyage of Ulysses and the development of the fetus both take place in water. It
shouldn’t be difficult to see the analogy between the Mediterranean Sea and the uterus of
a woman. They both have a very similar shape.
What is more difficult is to establish an analogy between the dramatic and
pleasurable experiences Ulysses has with the equally dramatic or pleasurable ones that
the fetal I goes through during its voyage from conception until birth.
I became aware of this analogy because I have seen how both I myself and others
go through prenatal stages, and re-live both the painful and the pleasurable emotions
that were experienced during that time.
When Ulysses leaves Troy, he has a large number of companions with him. But
along the way he ends up losing all of them, along with all the treasures that made up his
war booty, and this causes him immense pain. He alone is saved, and first he lands on
Ogygia the island of the goddess Calypso, and then on the island of the Phaecians, and
then, finally, on the island of Ithaca.
He loses the first part of his crew in the battle with the Cicones, right after leaving
Troy; he loses some more in the battle against the Laestrygonians, more yet when they
cross the strait between Scylla and Charybdis, and the last ones are lost during the storm
that overtakes them just before he is thrown up on the coast of Ogygia.
In a television special regarding the beginnings of life, it was shown how when the
fecundated egg is passing through the fallopian tube it already starts losing a great
number of the cells that protected the egg’s membrane. When it is in the tube it already
faces mortal dangers and it must try to save itself. We also know that the life of the fetus
develops by continually creating one form and then losing it so another one can be
developed, and this happens while there is the continuous risk that the life process can
be suddenly interrupted.
But the most painful loss that the fetus must go through is losing the placenta at
birth. The placenta can not be saved; it must necessarily be destroyed.

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 Stefano D’Arrigo, the author of Horcynus Orca, in another novel tells the story of a
pharaoh who could not tolerate the pain of having lost the placenta, and so he makes his
army carry an effigy of it on all of their flags.
Losing the uterus is also painful for the newborn, and it is painful for the mother to
let her baby come out of it.
The goddess Calypso keeps Ulysses on her island for more than seven years, and
she would have never let him go unless Zeus had not ordered her to let him go. She tries
to seduce him in a thousand different ways and even goes so far as to promising him
immortality if only he will marry her.
The Sorceress Circe also uses all her spells and tricks to try to get Ulysses to marry
her and stay with her forever.
Calypso and Circe are two powerful symbols of the fatal attraction that the
intrauterine world and the primordial mother have over a newborn. This is when the first
encounter between a human being and beauty comes about. But this is a beauty that
brings death with it, if the fetus isn’t able to detach itself in time.
The tie between the mother-uterus-child is so strong and seductive that even the
risk of dying becomes insignificant.
The film director Jane Campion described this powerful attraction with beautiful
imagery in her film “The Piano”, where she shows how it can draw a human life into the
depths of the sea, where there is only a profound silence, and beauty that brings death
with it and not life.
In the Odyssey, Homer describes the beautiful song of the Sirens, that sailors find
irresistible even though they know that afterwards they will be devoured.

The English psychoanalyst Fairbairn was the first to describe the tremendous
impact of the seductive, frustrating mother in his books. It is an impact that ties the child
to the mother forever. There can not be seduction without a promise of beauty, but often
what is offered is a beauty that is poisonous.
The Jungian analyst Neumann described, on the other hand, the terrible
consequences of a devouring mother. It is hard to imagine that even a devouring mother
can contain beauty, but it must certainly be this way, because otherwise there is no
explanation for why so many children find pleasure in being devoured and have so much
trouble detaching themselves when they want to save themselves.
In the Odyssey, we find not only the seductive mother but also the devouring one.
The tremendous pleasure and anguish that are experienced when the devouring
mother is confronted are described in the encounters with the Sirens (pleasure) and
Polyphemous (anguish). In the encounter with the Sirens, Ulysses has himself tied to the
mast of the ship, while his crew rows quickly past with their ears plugged with wax.

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 In the second encounter, with Polyphemous, it takes a lot more courage and
cunning for Ulysses to save himself. Ulysses and his companions had recklessly gone into
Polyphemous’ cave while looking for food. But once they went in they could no longer get
out, because Polyphemous kept them as prisoners so he could eat them one at a time.
Polyphemous has only one eye. The devouring mother has only one eye: her children exist
only to satisfy her insatiable hunger.
Entering the cave is like entering the uterus. Unless we enter the uterus, life
cannot be developed. And so that life is developed completely, it must also face death and
the fear of death. It is important to realize that for a fetus the maternal womb contains
both life and death; both a welcome and a rejection; both containment and the risk of
being devoured.
Statistics have shown that four women out of ten end up losing their babies in a
miscarriage. About 85 per cent of miscarriages occur during the first trimester. 12
percent of women wanting children end up having up to three “natural” miscarriages.
Medical scientific research on the causes of these miscarriages affirms that 5-6 per cent
are due to genetic causes, 10 to 65 per cent have anatomical causes, 10 to 20 per cent
are caused by alterations in the endocrine system , and 5 percent are caused by disease.
There is no mention of any type of cause that has to do with the relationship between the
mother and the child.
This relates our current situation, but three thousand years ago, about when
Homer’s poems were written, it was probably not much different. We obviously have no
statistics from those times but we do have archeaological remains, which include
thousands and thousands votive statues left in the various sanctuaries by women who
were thanking the gods because their pregnancies happily reached term.
***
Let’s go back to Ulysses. His dramatic adventures, after he escaped from the jaws
of Polyphemous, were not over yet. To the contrary, they multiplied, because
Polyphemous was the son of Neptune, who swears to get revenge on Ulysses for having
blinded his son. The devouring mother does not easily give up her rights and she is deeply
offended if her children affirm their own rights over hers. Human history is full of
examples of tyrannical, possessive mothers. I suggest you watch the movie “Like water for
chocolate”, if it can help refresh your memory.
As the god of the sea, Neptune will attack Ulysses, his ship and his crew many
different times, by stirring up frightening storms which throw them around the
Mediterranean.

If this is a poetic representation of the life of a foetus in the amniotic liquid, it is

difficult to imagine that intrauterine life is a paradise, except for the periods of time spend
with the goddess Calypso, the sorceress Circe and Nausicaa’s parents .

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 For Ulysses it is not enough to avoid being devoured by Polyphemous or the Sirens
or being swallowed up by the waves; he still must face the anguish of how to get by Scylla
and Charybdis and how to get rid of the Suitors that threaten his life, his home and his
woman. All these tests can give us an excellent analogy of what happens to a baby when
it is moving towards the birth canal.
Scylla and Charybdis face each other in the Strait of Messina. The boats and ships
that want to pass through the strait have a very hard time unless their captains are not
excellent pilots. Here the analogy with birth is very clear.
But also the one we can see with the Suitors can be easily understood if we think
of the challenge with the bow and arrow and the massacre that follows. The archery
competition requires not only the ability to string the bow, but also requires an ability to
shoot the arrow through twelve axe rings set up one after another. Doesn’t this arrow
that must pass through all twelve rings with absolute precision remind us of how a baby
must pass precisely through the neck of the uterus and the birth canal?
And if earlier we compared Ulysses’ crew to the friendly placenta that nourishes the
fetus for nine months, doesn’t it seem right to compare the Suitors to the placenta that
becomes an enemy to the mother and the child, if it is not destroyed after birth?
What was formerly very precious can suddenly become a mortal threat, and to be
able to get rid of it at the right moment requires readiness and ability.
We built up a whole series of analogies between Homer’s poems and the adventures
of a newborn. To complete this process we must now explore the symbolic meaning of
Athena and Hermes. The poem, in fact, is full of many different interventions by Athena,
and Hermes intervenes twice when Athena requests him to.
The first time, Zeus orders Hermes to go to Calypso and tell her to let Ulysses go,
after she has kept him with her for seven years. In the second, Hermes explains to
Ulysses in what ways he can avoid the tricks and spells of Circe the Sorceress.
We could imagine that in the first episode Hermes represents the “vis curativa” ,
the ability to heal and to heal oneself.
In the second case, instead, divine will is represented, divine law or the laws of life,
which regulate how human life develops.
According to the laws of life, it is good and just that Ulysses, the symbolic
representation of a human being from intrauterine life up until full maturity, faces all the
stages of his growth and maturation and does not remain stuck in any of them, which
would arrest and compromise his evolutionary process.
After Hermes arrives, Calypso transforms herself from being a force that is trying to
hold Ulysses back, into a creative one, that can help him build a raft that will be able to
handle the sea.
We can thus deduce that human beings are endowed with curative power and
creative power all along, even from before birth. With the first we face our traumas and we

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neutralize them; with the second we invent the strategies we need to pass from one
evolutionary stage to the next. It is extremely important to recognize that a gestating fetus
is endowed with these powers.
It is essential to affirm that the prenatal I has a purpose and also has the inner
wisdom it needs to be able to face all the dramatic events that can traumatize it and
impede its growth.
If in Hermes’ presence we can identify the “vis creativa” and the “vis curativa”
found within the fetus, in Athena’s presence we can identify the presence of the inherent
wisdom that each baby has, the wisdom that comes from the Personal SELF and the
Cosmic SELF.
In fact, Athena has always been a symbol for the wisdom that comes from Zeus
and is given to human kind, so they can use it properly.
In the 24 books of the poem, Athena is mentioned 160 times and actively
participates in 22 out of the 24. Without her beneficial presence, Ulysses would have
never been able to finish his journey and Zeus would have never forced Neptune to stop
punishing him.
If we interpret the poem in layman’s terms, we can deduce that Athena’s wisdom is
actually Ulysses’ wisdom and that every time Ulysses prays to the goddess Athena, he is
making a decision to gain access to his own inner wisdom.
Up until now we have always seen Ulysses as being a man of great cunning and
deceit. We have thought little about how, instead, Homer shows that he is also a man who
knows how to pray and how to listen deeply to his own inner wisdom.
In the beginning of the first book, Homer makes a comparison between Aegisthus,
Clytemnestra’s lover, and Ulysses. He says that Aegisthus was crazy. Hermes was sent to
him, as well, carrying wise messages from Zeus, but Aegisthus did not want to listen to
him and he acted madly by assassinating Agamemnon.
Ulysses, instead, is a man who acts wisely. There is a part of madness in him, as
well, and it shows up when his companions imprudently decide to eat the oxen sacred to
the Sun. By now we know that every character in the poem represents a part of Ulysses,
like in a play where all the actors are portraying various aspects of the playwright. It is
only fair, then, that Aegisthus is punished, and that Ulysses’ companions are punished,
which are actually parts of Ulysses himself.
The Greeks believed that world order should never be upset, and if this ends up
happening because of the bad behaviour of humans, the goddess Nemesis must intervene
with her punitive revenge so that world order can be restored.
Ulysses’ goal is to return to Ithaca. This return can indicate both the goal to be
born, as well as the goal to experience a rebirth. The first birth is biological, and the
second is the birth of the man who, as Dante says in speaking specifically of Ulysses,
follows “virtute e conoscenza” {virtue and knowledge} and not the “viver bruto” {living as

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beasts} that pertains to the Suitors and to all those who are like them (we Westerners, for
example, who are dilapidating not the goods in Ulysses’ home but the planet earth’s most
precious resources, and we have no intention to invert our mad race towards our own self
destruction).
Both the first type of birth and the second are not one bit easy, and the obstacles
that must be overcome to reach both of them are enormous. For us to overcome the
obstacles and reach these goals a great amount of wisdom is essential, otherwise our
homicidal urges and our suicidal urges will prevail. Within the uterus homicidal and
suicidal urges merge and cause miscarriages, or, in some cases, the death of the mother
or the death of the baby or sometimes even the death of both, at the time of birth.
Once a baby has left the uterus, different things can happen, and the child can
either follow the road of suicide or of homicide or sometimes of both at the same time. The
newspapers are full of stories of both types. Sometimes it means homicide or suicide in a
physical sense, and other times homicidal and suicidal urges end up only affecting the
quality of life. And unfortunately, since very few people believe that wisdom and madness
are not deterministic events but are the result of a free choice, very few decide to give
their life a human value, rather than one that is like that of an animal.

***
Let’s now discuss further the life project of the fetus and also the second birthing.
It is important to be able to get out of the uterus alive. But there is another goal we must
reach, once we are born. Homer talks about the beauty that must be conquered, but he
also talks about the beauty we must create, secondary beauty that nature cannot create
but human beings can.
The Greeks went to Troy because they wanted to get Helen back, who was the most
beautiful woman in the world. Ten long years of a very trying war must go by before they
manage to conquer that lost beauty, but it surely must have been worth it, because
otherwise wouldn’t they have abandoned the effort? Biological life, in its continual
evolution, has been facing a war that has lasted billions of years, so it could go from the
beauty of a flower and end up reaching the beauty of a human body and a human face. It
doesn’t worry one bit about all the deaths that come about along the way.
Ulysses wants to return to Ithaca, where Penelope is waiting for him. Penelope is
Helen’s cousin, and she is just as beautiful. She has more than one hundred suitors who
hope to be chosen by her. Ulysses as well, forced to leave for Troy, must go through the
bitter experience of having to lose the beauty that Penelope had brought to him, and he
must toil for twenty years (10 in Troy and 10 during his return home) so he can get it
back and also recreate it.
What does this beauty represent, that must first be lost and then reconquered?
What kind of symbolic meaning can we attribute to it?

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 Penelope is the symbol of the passage from a type of beauty that is found in nature
to secondary beauty, which is the result of the creative action of human beings. This
beauty belongs to Penelope, but it is created by the conjoined efforts of Penelope and
Ulysses.
A second project is added to the first one that is based on the beauty of being born
and coming into the world, and it is the goal of learning how to create new beauty; a
beauty that is superior to the kind that even the Olympian gods have.
It is superior because otherwise we could not explain why the promise of
immortality that the sorceress Circe and the goddess Calypso make to Ulysses is not
enough to persuade him to marry them and stay with them forever.
Although it may seem very strange, Ulysses is convinced that the beauty waiting
for him in Ithaca is one that contains a type of immortality that is superior to that of even
the gods. Penelope is superior to Calypso and Circe, who are two divine beauties, and she
is superior to Nausicaa, who represents the blossoming of youth and beauty in all its
freshness.
To help you better understand this concept, I’d like to invite you to reflect on this:
both nature and humanity are capable of creating beauty, but natural beauty is
changeable and mortal; today it’s there and tomorrow it’s gone. Instead, the beauty found
in the works of art created by human beings is unchangeable and immortal.
A masterpiece never dies. It can stay buried under the sea for millennia, as
happened to the bronze Riace statues, but when it re-emerges, its overwhelming beauty is
just as powerful as when it was first created by the artist.
The Greek gods cannot, according the very Greeks who invented them, offer a type
of beauty that is superior to natural beauty. But the Greeks didn’t only invent their gods,
they also created immortal masterpieces of beauty, in sculpture, architecture and poetry.
The Greek gods symbolically represent nature as a divinity, but they are nothing more
than nature itself. Human beings, and Greek artists in particular, even though they are
expressions of nature they are capable of creating a type of immortal beauty that is
superior to that which nature can produce.
Helen and Penelope are symbols of primary and secondary beauty; the first is a
product of nature and can be lost; the second is a product of the actions of human beings
and it becomes immortal, capable of crossing the centuries and the millennia without ever
getting lost.
It is worth all the toil of an interminable odyssey, along with all the woes it brings
with it, to create this second type of beauty.
The wisdom and purposefulness that are behind the first type of birthing, biological
birth, are a preamble to the wisdom and purpose that bring us to be born a second time;
the birth of life as a work of art; the birth of human beings who become artists of their
own lives and who, by transforming their lives into a work of art, create immortal beauty
that can live forever.

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 Ulysses is not a sculptor or a poet, nor has he left works of art behind him; he only
left his life as a work of art. And if Ulysses is not really the creator of himself, but was
created by someone else, or by many others all together (those who created the myth,
which was the prime matter that Homer then used to work with), they most certainly
must have first thought about how they wanted their life to turn out. They either
imagined it, or they had a specific wish for it, or they perhaps even were capable of
actualizing their ideas, incarnating them into their own lives, their own actions. In this
manner, they managed to make their lives a work of art that could last throughout the
centuries.
If the myth of Ulysses is still alive today after millennia have passed, this is
because Homer managed to infuse his hero with the beauty of an immortal soul.

***
Let’s now make a summary and translation of what we have been discussing.
Menelaus married Helen, who was the most beautiful woman in the world. Ulysses, too,
would have liked to have married Helen, but as she did not choose him, he could not.
Helen is the symbol of the beauty of life. Menelaus represents all those who, at their birth,
are in possession of the beauty of life. But then Paris comes along, and he steals Helen
from Menelaus. The beauty that Menelaus was in possession of is a beauty that is
transient, and it is vulnerable to being stolen by thieves.
The real thieves that threaten Helen’s beauty are time and death. The thief that
threatens the beauty of life is the pain experienced for the violence that everyone
experiences in life at one point or another, and it is the pain for the violence that we
perpetrate against ourselves every day with our homicidal urges and our suicidal urges.
If Menelaus wants to come into possession of a type of beauty that is not transient,
he must be courageous enough to face death. He must go into the battlefield against
death, win over it and conquer the type of beauty that is eternal. This is a beauty that is
no longer subject to death. Now Helen can return home with Menelaus and stay with him
forever.
But those who, besides being able to face the pain of loss, are capable of mustering
up the courage to face the death and the violence that come from without as well as from
within, are the ones who rediscover life in all of its possible splendor.
Ulysses married Penelope, who is another symbol of the beauty of life, and he
would have been happy to stay in Ithaca and enjoy the beauty that was given to him. But
instead he is forced to leave his bride Penelope and to leave for Troy against his will,
where he will be faced with death. During the years of the seige, Ulysses not only accepts
that he must face death, but he ends up being the main force behind Troy’s conquest.

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 This is a victory that gives him glory and wealth, but it does not return Penelope to
him.
Ten more long years will have to pass, during which time he will have to experience
anguish, emptiness and death, before he can return to Ithaca and his beautiful wife. The
time that passes before Penelope becomes a symbol of a type of beauty that can no longer
be lost, because it is beyond death just like the beauty found in works of art, is full of
toils and many woes.
What is it that makes Ulysses’ destiny different from that of Menelaus? If Ulysses’
wandering around the Mediterranean represents the wanderings of a human being in the
tramautizing waters inside the womb, full of anguish and terror, it won’t be enough for
this person to face just death so as to reconquer the beauty of life and secondary
beauty¸as I pointed out in my first interpretation of the Odyssey. For such a person it will
be necessary to face many more deaths so they can become an artist of their life and
create the immortal beauty of a life that is superior to biological and natural life. This is
my second interpretation, that I introduced a bit earlier. Most certainly, the most
important death they will have to face is the death of their homicidal and suicidal urges.
In their intrauterine experience, a person like this experienced fullness and
emptiness, pleasure and anguish, nothingness and terror (Calypso and Polyphemous,
Nausicaa and the Sirens, the Sorceress Circe and Neptune, the monster who suddenly
and violently emerges from the bottom of the sea), but it was all condensed during the
compressed time span of when the fetus was growing at amazing speed.
In intracosmic life (the cosmos, too, is like a great womb), this person will go
through their intrauterine experience again, but this time with a different purpose. What
was once a life governed by defensive and offensive mechanisms must now dissolve and
allow time to dilate (a day becomes ten years and nine months become twenty years) and
their creative artistic ability to emerge, so they can extract beauty from ugliness and
transform a natural type of beauty into a supernatural kind.
Penelope, with her shroud that she weaves by day and unravels at night, is the
symbol of fullness and emptiness and of beauty that is created and undone, that first is
there and then is gone, until the day when the work of art can be completed.
The same is true of Ithaca. It appears and disappears suddenly; it is close and then
is very far away; it is within one’s reach and yet can never quite be grasped. This beauty
that first is here and then is gone, that Ulysses obsesses about within his mind and
heart, must be transformed and become visible, stable and lasting, and no longer subject
to attacks from time and death.
There are many obstacles that must be faced during such a transformation, and
Ulysses is a man who never gives up, he never loses hope, he stays on track towards his
goal to conquer not only a type of beauty that already exists in nature, but also the type
that he can create with his own pain and his own ability.
In this sense, Menelaus ends up being a character of small importance.

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 Ulysses, instead, becomes a powerful mythical image and a role model for future
generations. He is strong and cunning but he is most especially full of wisdom and
creativity, and he has a task to fulfill that is more important than that of Menelaus.
Ulysses represents the celebration of the myth of the return to beauty and the
fullness of life; a return that is possible only after one has experienced the bitterness of
exile, that represents the anguish produced by emptiness and the fear of death that must
be faced before anything is artistically created. In this manner, both the emptiness of
powerlessness and homicidal and suicidal urges are overcome.
Ulysses is a man who does not succomb and become a victim of destiny or of the
uterus that attacks him, nor does he give in to his own violence. He knows how to become
the craftsman and artist of his own life: an artist that is capable of unifying and piecing
together fullness and emptiness, death and life, destructive hatred with constructive
hatred, the fear of emptiness and death with secondary beauty. He is an artist that is
capable of descending into Hades to meet Teireisias and receive the wise advice that will
help him finally return to Ithaca. He is an artist who can transform his destructive power
that is only destructive, into a power that can both destroy and create.
Every true artist knows how to descend into the abyss of their own hell, and find
their own deep wisdom that can help them reach their goal. This is why it is essential that
intrauterine and intracosmic life interact with each other, so that the pain from one is
added to the pain of the other and instead of becoming an immense weight that crushes
the heart, this pain becomes a powerful motor behind the creation of immortal beauty.

***
The cosmic, not merely individual, dimension of this type of artistic action that
human beings are capable of is pronounced by the continual action of the gods together
with humans.
Ulysses is an artist who is aware of the connection that exists between his trials
and the divinity’s actions (Athena), which continuously guide him and offer him support
in facing his task. The prayer that Ulysses often sends to Athena helps to permanently
establish the connection between the Personal I and the Cosmic I, which are both intent
on creating secondary beauty.
If we develop an analysis of the cosmic dimension and the human one found in
Homer’s two poems, we can make the following statements:
The Iliad represents the myth regarding conception, the conception of humanity
and of the universe, where the Greek army who leaves to conquer Troy represents the
sperm that journey to conquer the ovum, or the army of subparticles that are
continuously running after each other, cancelling each other and fusing together. The
fusion of the Yin and the Yang, that according to Oriental thought preceded the creation
of the cosmos and all other forms of creation, requires that before the fusion can take

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place a long, bitter battle must be fought between the fundamental components behind
any creation: the masculine element and the femminine element.
The Odyssey, instead, on one hand represents the long gestational period the
fertilized egg spends within the waters of the amniotic liquid, up until the fetus is ready to
be born; on the other, it represents the long gestational period and the suffering that is
necessary for a human being to become capable of creating a type of beauty that is
superior to the type created by nature. Nature creates the beauty of biological life; human
beings create the beauty found in works of art and the beauty of life as a work of art.
But this gestational period and the suffering inherent in creative action do not just
pertain to human beings; they are also fully a part of the life of the cosmos, that
intertwines with the life of humans. Life has always existed and it continually reproduces
in the cycle of death and rebirth: one species dies and another is born, one generation
dies and another is born. It is my strong conviction that Life carries within it the
aspiration to break the cycle of death and rebirth and to create a form of Life that is no
longer subject to this continual cycle.
As far as we know, only Life as a work of art is of the type that is no longer subject
to this cycle. Only in works of art do life and beauty perpetuate without having to
reproduce through the biological cycle of death and regeneration. And therefore, it is
legitimate to think that Life has brought humanity and the cosmos into existence so
together they can become capable of creating a form of Life that is immortal, both in
terms of existence and in terms of beauty. Cosmic life and biological life make up a whole
that is functional to the ability to create a new form of life that always is and always will
be, without having to be subject to the law of death or the law of entropy. When biological
life or cosmic life will cease to exist, the life that has been artistically created will not
cease to exist, just as works of art do not cease to exist after the artist that created them
has died. This is what Cosmo-Art affirms.
During this long gestational period, the pleasure of paradise alternates with the
anguish of emptiness and the terror of death, until the work of art has been created. The
life of the work of art is no longer subject to pain, just as it is no longer subject to death.
Human history and its evolution within the cosmic womb, which is given by the
universe in which we live, leave no doubt about the constant presence of pain and
anguish that everyone experiences, or about the aspiration that everyone has to reach a
stage where life no longer causes torment of any sort.
From human history we also know that human beings are endowed with an artistic
creative power with which they can transform death into life, extract beauty from ugliness
and transform beauty that can decay into a beauty that always remains intact and is
immortal.
This is the true purpose of every newborn and it is up to its own wisdom or
madness whether or not it will choose to turn its back on it, or will instead actualize it for
its own joy and for the joy of the whole universe.

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 We can say that the Suitors represent those who make the choice to turn their
back on this goal, and Ulysses represents those who choose to actualize it, even if it will
cost them enormous suffering. The Suitors are those who arrogantly demand to have the
right to use and consume the beauty that already exists.
Ulysses is one who accepts to undergo the suffering that is necessary to create new
beauty; a tye of beauty that confers an immortal soul to those who create it; a type of
beauty that always is and is always becoming; a beauty that can continuously attract new
imitators and thus generate new beauty through them. Suitors are those who are born to
die. Ulysses instead is born for immortal Life, his own and that of the universe.
In the life we are familiar with, there is a type of beauty that seduces us and
devours us, leading us to death. The attraction is irresistable, and many succomb to it.
The task assigned to anyone who is capable of escaping the seductive power of this
poisoned, mortal beauty so they can devote all their energies to the search for and the
creation of immortal beauty that leads not to death, but to life that frees itself forever of
its domination, is immense.
***
The narrative which describes the Suitors’ actions while Ulysses is on his journey
at sea can help us see what type of journey Penelope is making inside of herself. The band
of Suitors that has besieged her home and her life is a symbol of the inner doubt that
besieges her: should she keep the symbiosis that has kept her tied to the devouring
mother, from as far back as her intrauterine life, alive? Or should she cut the ties? How
long will she have to remain a victim of the seductive mother and the devouring mother ,
and how much time will have to pass until she decides to break away from this fatal
attraction, and recognize Ulysses as the man of her life?
The Suitors are arrogant and gluttonous, like Polyphemous. They are just as
seductive as Calypso, Circe and the Sirens are put together. We could think that this
relationship between Penelope and the Suitors refers to the fact that, even though many
years have passed, Penelope still has not decided to grow up and become a woman, the
woman of just one man. And also, for her narcissism it must not be easy to give up the
pleasure of seeing a whole band of young, rich and handsome suitors courting her with
such vehemence, even though they spend all their time devouring her household’s and
her life’s assets.
The laws of life push her from within to grow and complete the creation of her
inner beauty, but she wavers, resists and invents strategies to stave off the day when
she’ll finally have to decide. The shroud she weaves by day and unravels at night is like
the yes and the no that alternate in an exasperatingly slow manner. And since she cannot
decide whether or not to separate from her inner maternal symbiosis, the Suitors that
invade her home become the persecutory anxieties that invade her existence.
There is only one way to get rid of the mother and the Suitors: to pick up the bow
of Ulysses and shoot them down, one after another, saving none. What a long journey she

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must undertake, though, so she can decide to give herself to a man and create the beauty
of the fusion of the femminine and the masculine principles! In the nuptial bed, in the
embrace between Ulysses and Penelope, the long suffering of this transformation is finally
ended, and the beauty of life as a work of art that they have both managed to create,
finally appears.
***
The Iliad and the Odyssey are two cosmogonic poems that tell about the creation of
the world and the creation of human beings. They also explain what each one’s purpose
is. It is up to us to know how to recognize these essential goals and unify and choose
them with determination and without doubt, so we can give meaning to our lives. This
meaning is something that no one else has pointed out to us before, and it’s a meaning
that allows us to transform ourselves from victims of life and history into artists of our
lives and of the life of the universe.
Our own lives and the life of the universe make up an indivisible whole. This is
what Homer is trying to tell us, when he shows us the continual intertwining between the
actions of the gods and the actions of humans, and in showing us also both the power
and the powerlessness that each one has. Only when the power of the gods merges with
the power of humans is it possible to create the great power, that is the power of the artist
that creates human and divine beauty, of a type that the gods alone cannot aspire to, nor
humans can reach without the gods.
The gods are not lacking in beauty and even still Zeus, first among them, is
continuously falling in love with human, mortal beauties, with whom he generates new
beauty. Now the gods don’t exist anymore, but the works of art that humans have created
inspired by them do, and so does the hope for all those works that can still be created.
The Cosmo-Art Theorem asks the questions: why does the universe exist, why does
humanity exist, why does pain exist, why does art exist; the answers can be found with
the help of the cosmological vision of Sophia-Art. We don’t know if Homer explicitly asked
himself these questions, but, in my opinion his poems offer an answer to these questions.
It is found in condensed form in the characters of Ulysses and Penelope, in the way I have
described above.
I believe that it is possible to assimilate the myth of Cosmo-Art and the myth of
Ulysses, and I also believe that if we act out the myth of Ulysses, we can also celebrate
the myth and the rite of Cosmo-Art.

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 CHAPTER XIII

Exploring the Myth of Ulysses∗

- Ulysses and Athena. Athena is a symbol of the wisdom which comes

from the Personal SELF and the Cosmic SELF.
Athena does many different things to help Ulysses while he is under her
protection, without him ever knowing about it. But Ulysses shows through his
actions that he is always in communication with Athena by listening to his
inner SELF.
Of all the qualities that Homer attributes to his hero, this one is the
most important, and is the one that Homer emphasizes the most.
Many times the SELF does things for humans, but if not only do they not
listen, but they even oppose what it does for them by following their own drive
for power, like Aegisthus and the Suitors do, the only thing that can come of it
is disaster. It’s a different story for those who, like Ulysses, use communication
and prayer and they stay in continual contact with their SELF.
When they do this, they can face thousands of trials and tribulations,
knowing that eventually they can become artists of their own lives and of the
life of the universe.

- Ulysses and pain. Ulysses is described as being the man of many

woes.
Homer mentions the pain that Ulysses suffers 70 times.
Ulysses accepts his pain with infinite patience, but it is not the kind of
patience Job has, it’s a different kind; I would like to call it the patience of an
artist who knows that he must make the passage from primary beauty to
secondary beauty, and he knows that such a passage is not possible unless he
accepts his pain and transforms it into a creative artistic force.
Ulysses does not play the victim, neither of his destiny nor of the hostile
gods who keep him away from Ithaca for ten long years. He patiently tolerates
the delays and in the meantime allows himself to be shaped by events, taking
the best of each adventure and misadventure for his own use.

                                                            
∗
 This paper was originally prepared for the 4th Group Laboratory on Existential Anthropology, held on May
25-26th, 1996.

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 - Ulysses and the Cosmos. After he returns to Ithaca, Ulysses leaves
again to explore unknown lands, just like Teireisias had told him he
would.
Could the fact that he goes beyond the columns of Hercules, which was
beyond what was then the known world, mean that he went beyond the limits
of the world we know, beyond the boundaries of this universe?

- Ulysses goes from being full to being empty, again from emptiness to
fullness.
Ulysses leaves Troy with twelve ships, with many treasures and many
companions. By the time he gets to Calypso’s island, he has already lost
everything, but when he gets to Ithaca with help from the Phaecians, he is
again full of treasures, even more than he had gotten from conquering Troy. It
is wonderful to know how to travel over far away lands and seas, but it takes
even more courage to travel from fullness to emptiness and from emptiness to
fullness. Ulysses knows how to find this courage and faith in himself, instead
of giving in to self-pity.
- Ulysses and the Oedipal complex. From the Oedipal position as theft to
living the Oedipal complex as a gift.
The poem opens with Zeus’ harsh judgment against Aegisthus, who, in
following his own madness and not the wise council sent to him by the god,
first stole Clytemnestra from her legitimate husband, and then killed
Agamemnon upon his return from Troy. Orestes vindicates his father by killing
both Aegisthus and his mother Clytemnestra.
The poem closes with the massacre of the Suitors, those who arrogantly
besieged Penelope, Ulysses’ wife, and stole all her goods from her home.
It is not the gods’ whims that cause human suffering, it is the madness
humans choose to act on instead of following the wise council that Zeus sends
us.
Homer doesn’t mention the myth of Oedipus, but the poet most certainly
ponders the meaning of the Oedipal tragedy, and he expresses his opinion and
his condemnation of those who, when experiencing oedipal tensions, attempt to
resolve them through theft, instead of developing an ability to understand the
importance of love as a gift.
His hero Ulysses also goes through these tensions, but he learns to
follow the laws of love and life as a gift, rather than acting out an arrogant
demand to receive what he needs. For this reason he is wise, and not mad like
Aegisthus.

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 Homer conceals his ideas on the way to experience Oedipal tensions as a
gift in his description of the relationship between Ulysses, Nausicaa and her
parents. Most certainly Nausicaa has fallen in love with Ulysses, and he very
well could have seduced her and taken her to Ithaca with him, but this is not
what he intends to do. He does not seduce anyone, but he does enchant both
Nausicaa and her parents with the tales of his trials and tribulations. They all
fill Ulysses up with gifts and, even though by doing so they are risking inciting
Neptune’s rage, they take him home richer than when he had pillaged Troy of
its treasures.

- Ulysses and his transformation. If we should want to make a portrait of

Ulysses, as nature made him, and then another portrait of how he created
himself with his own creative, transformative power, we would be able to see a
great difference between the two. The Iliad tells us how the first Ulysses was,
and the Odyssey tells us how he transformed himself. The first was a man who
was full of cunning and deceit; he was a man who arrogantly destroyed
fortresses and human lives. The second Ulysses is a wise, patient man whose
insatiable hunger takes him on a journey to explore both his inner and his
outer worlds, not so he can accumulate material goods, but so he can follow
virtue and knowledge.
- Ulysses, artist of his own life. The art of loving oneself, of loving others
and of creating beauty.
Ulysses faces and deals with his homicidal urges and his suicidal urges
and he transforms himself. He goes from viver come bruti {living as beasts} to
living according to virtute e conoscenza {virtue and knowledge}:
a) when he meets Polyphemous
b) when he meets the Sorceress Circe
c) when he meets the Sirens
d) when he meets Scylla
e) when he meets the Suitors
- He could have killed Polyphemous, and instead he only blinded him.
He knows that if he had killed him he would have never left the cave he was
imprisoned in alive, because only Polyphemous was strong enough to move the
boulder that blocked the entrance. Ulysses manages to put a brake on his rage
and anger that are blind and destructive, and thus can channel them in a
direction that is both destructive and constructive.
- He could have killed the Sorceress Circe, and instead he follows Hermes’
advice and manages to subdue her and get her magical powers for himself. He

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also manages to save his companions and receive precious advice as to how he
can descend into Hades.
- He could have, like many other reckless sailors, end up victims of the Sirens,
and instead he finds a way to listen to their song, absorb its beauty and walk
away free of harm. This, too, thanks to how he manages to listen to the
Sorceress Circe’s advice.
- He faces Scylla and avoids Charybdis, and he accepts having to pay the price
of losing six of his companions as it means he can get out alive along with
others. It is not possible to transform oneself without accepting to lose precious
parts of oneself.
- Polyphemous must not be killed, but the Suitors instead must. The devouring
mother must be conquered first with cunning, and then she must be destroyed
at the right moment.
- The Suitors who, perhaps, also represent the thousands of arrogant demands
of a woman who does not want to give herself completely to a man, must be
destroyed with ability and strength at the right moment. Otherwise, a woman
will never give herself to a man and the man will never build his virility, or his
ability to penetrate into a woman and into the secrets of life, so he can create
new beauty. Men, too, have infinite arrogant demands that must be conquered
if they want to learn to truly give themselves to a woman.
- The fusion between the masculine and the femminine principles is not a
peaceful event, either on a biological level (Troy) or on an emotional one
(Ithaca). The beauty that is created with every fusion (think of the beauty of the
stars, which is the result of atomic fusion) is always the result of a great battle
and a great amount of suffering. Ulysses is the master artist that is capable of
realizing the fusion between the masculine and the femminine principles. He
wants to return to Ithaca, not so much because he misses his homeland, but
because the greatest task of his life awaits him there: the task of creating
immortal beauty, the result of the impossible fusion between the will of a
woman, Penelope, and the will of a man, Ulysses.
- Ulysses is also an artist who knows how to make a synthesis between the
beauty and the beast: for example, Calypso, on one hand, and Circe on the
other, are two phases of the same process. He like no other is aware of the fact
that this process must happen within himself, and not outside himself.
- Ulysses and the women¸ the divine ones (Athena, Calypso, Circe, Ino), the
mortal ones (Helen, Penelope, Nausicaa) and those that have been turned into
monsters (Scylla and the Sirens). A famous bullfighter, named Dominguin, has
said that women were worse than the bulls he fought in the arena. What types
of women dwell in our hearts and who life shows us by having them materialize

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outside ourselves? And what good would all this do if we weren’t capable of
creating new beauty out of it?
- Ulysses, from the purpose of the mother to the SELF’s purpose.
The mother says: satisfy my thirst for riches (auri sacra fames) and become a
plunderer (pillage Troy, the Cicones, and, if you can, the Laestrygonians).
Satisfy my libido and turn into a pig (Calypso and Circe).
Satisfy my emotional greed: eat me and let yourself be devoured by life;
eat me and become meat to be eaten (the sun god’s cattle, Polyphemous, the
Sirens, Scylla).

The SELF says: go beyond this, always go beyond this, don’t let yourself be
seduced, don’t let yourself be devoured, don’t let yourself be enchanted; listen
to your inner wisdom, not your inner madness.
I gave you your life, not your mother, so you could create secondary
beauty.
I put you in your mother’s womb, so you could learn to know life and
transform it.
It takes no intelligence to viver come bruti {live like beasts}, it takes a lot
of it to live according to virtute e conoscenza {virtue and knowledge} or as the
artist of your own life.

- What is virtute {virtue} and what is conoscenza {knowledge}?

Virtue is the courage to dare the impossible. Virtue is patience. Virtue is
wisdom. Virtue is the ability to detach. Vistue is the ability to lose oneself and
find oneself again. Virtue is always taking action towards one’s final goal: the
second birth; creating beauty that never dies.
Knowledge is the exploration of what is known and what is unknown,
both within oneself and outside of oneself.
- The exploration of one’s positive and negative parts so a synthesis
can be made.
- The exploration of one’s personal purpose and cosmic purpose, so
both can be actualized.
- The exploration of the madness and the wisdom that we all have
inside ourselves, so we can achieve a higher level of being.
- The exploration of our creative artistic ability, so we can transform
ourselves and the cosmos, make a synthesis of opposites and create

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 an energy that does not exist in nature and can only be created by
human artistry.

- Penelope between womanhood and myth. Who really was Penelope,

and what was her journey like, parallel to Ulysses’, that makes her a part of the
myth too? Homer says that she, too, suffered greatly, and that she is wise and
patient. But what is this never-ending shroud, that she weaves by day and
unravels at night? And why did she let the Suitors come into her home? Which
suitors, which arrogant demands, dwell inside of her and devour her life? And
why is it so difficult to let go of them by herself? Has she truly decided to
become a woman and to give herself to a man, or is this only the result of a
long process of going back and forth between childhood and adulthood,
between an inability to love and the decision to love one man forever?
- The Greeks and beauty
The Achaean princes are all in love with beautiful Helen, and they would all
like to marry her.
When Paris kidnaps her, the Greek leaders leave for Troy so they can
reconquer this lost beauty.
During Helen and Menelaus’ wedding, Ulysses had suggested that everyone
who had wanted to marry her should make a pact, sealed by a solemn vow, to
help Menelaus if something should ever happen to Helen.
We all want beauty, but it has been stolen from us and our lives have been
without it for many years.
Why don’t we, too, make a pact, to fight together against ugliness, and to bring
beauty back into our lives.
One beauty, Helen, is a prisoner within Troy’s walls, and another beauty,
Penelope, is in Ithaca, an island that does exist but that is impossible to reach.
It is a beauty that is held within the walls of the royal palace, held hostage by
the Suitors who have besieged it . The Suitors are a symbol of the arrogant
demands of the ideal of perfection we use to keep the beauty of life hostage, as
well as keeping beauty to be created at bay.

Troy is like the maternal womb that we don’t want to leave, because we don’t
want to be born. We are seduced by its lethal beauty and it brings us to death.
Troy is also the theomaniacal womb that we don’t want to abandon, because
we want to be God and we don’t accept the human essence that we were given.
Troy is also the wall of the existential lie which protects us from truth.

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Ugliness is the prison of living like beasts. Of living reactively, like animals,
instead of with an ability to make decisions that can help us rise above the law
of stimulus-response and allow us to become creative.
Ugliness is repressed hatred, that we have carried within us since our
intrauterine experience. It poisons our lives with the pleasure of revenge and
with the swamp of our ambivalence between love and hatred.
Ugliness is the prison of our homicidal and suicidal urges, which we make
recourse to when we are faced with the obstacles, the limitations and
powerlessness that Life often places before us.
Ugliness is stupidity, violence, arrogance, self-righteousness, victimism and
sadomasochism.
What pact could we make to help each other extract beauty from ugliness?
Beauty is hidden in the folds of time and they open up only to those who know
how to climb the ladder of creative power and cosmic wisdom, like Miro’s
paintings suggest.
Beauty is hidden in the unknown of unknown worlds and it does not reveal
itself to those who are afraid to let go of the world they know.
The devouring mother and the seductive mother are the world we know. The
rest is unknown to us.
Only those who face death can create beauty that never dies.

- There are many islands in Ulysses’ journey: the island of the

Laestrygonians, the island of the Sun god, the island of Aeolus, the island of
the Cyclops, the Sorceress Circe’s island, the goddess Calypso’s island, the
island of the Phaecians and, finally, the island of Ithaca. Every island is a step
in facing homicidal and suicidal urges, that are caused by violence, greed and
destructive envy. No human being can consider themselves free of the need to
become aware of these urges and of the decision to either give in to them or to
create a new identity.
- Ithaca as the island of secondary beauty, beauty that never dies:
Beauty that transforms ugliness into beauty
Falsity into truth
Madness into wisdom
Disconnection into unity
Stealing into giving
Mortality into immortality

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 What is natural into what is supernatural.

Beauty that arises from a transformative journey

and generates, in those who experience it, new transformational
processes.
Beauty that helps life overcome the continual cycle
of death and rebirth
to transform it into life
that always is and is always becoming
into life that no longer has to succomb
to stillness and death
heaviness and pain.
Beauty that can transform
its own essence and existence
as well as that of things and the world
and so can create
an immortal soul
in what is mortal.

Sophia-Art and Cosmo-Art want to create

this beauty that is like a unified energy field
an overwhelming energy
that captures beings who have no soul
and animates and transforms them
into a single living organism
that no longer follows the laws of death
but the laws of life.

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 CHAPTER XIV

The Ulysseans: the Creators of the Cosmo-Art Myth∗

The Ulysseans are the new descendants of Ulysses, the most recently born in
temporal terms, since Homer first told of his actions and adventures in the Iliad and the
Odyssey about three thousand years ago. These new descendants rise out of the blending
of Sophia-Art and Cosmo-Art together with the myth of Ulysses.
Sophia-Art describes human beings as artists of their lives, as those who make
their own lives a work of art. Cosmo-Art proposes that we become artists of the life of the
universe, transforming not only our own lives but that of the very universe into a work of
art.
In the earlier chapter on Ulysses and the Cosmo-Art myth, I tried to show how
Ulysses acted as an artist of his own life and the life of the universe. Ulysseans are those
who decide to take on the task of demonstrating, through their words and their lives, how
one can read Homer’s poems according to this new interpretation of them, both to the
many who already are familiar with Homer’s work and to all those other people who ask
themselves: Who are we? Where are we going?
Humanity represents the most complete microcosm in existence, and the universe
is the macrocosm in which we live. The cosmoantropic principle that I have formulated
states that one is made in the image of the other and vice-versa. If we learn about one we
learn about the other, and by transforming one we transform the other as well.
Cosmo-Art states that if the human microcosm aspires to immortality, this is due
to the fact that the macrocosm has this same aspiration. The macrocosm, though, cannot
actualize its own immortality without help from the actions of human beings. Their
actions are such that if they achieve human immortality in the way explained by Cosmo-
Art, they achieve the universe’s immortality at the same time.
We all know that if human beings excel in some art form they become immortal.
Their lives, that have been incarnated in the works they have created, continue unharmed
throughout the centuries and the millennia. Most importantly, artists who manage to give
their works of art an immortal soul through their artistic work become immortal
themselves.
Cosmo-Art states that Ulysseans will move through both time and the space-time
of this universe with a form of immortal life that they have created. They will go beyond

                                                            
∗
 Paper presented during the 5th Group Laboratory on Existential Anthropology, held in Marino, Italy, on
November 3rd, 1996.

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death and beyond the space-time confines of this universe, just like a baby leaves its
mother’s womb, and will continue to live in the space-time of parallel universes and of
concentric universes.
It also states that before this universe contracts in a total Big Crunch as
hypothesized by some scientists, it will be able to create an immortal soul and thus will
be able to go beyond the space-time confines that contain it, so it can go to live in other
universes, or to fecundate other universes’ lives.
Since the time of its beginning, this universe has had a soul that animates it, but
this soul is different from the material it is made of. This soul is not immortal nor eternal,
and it cannot become so because that is just the way it is. For this to happen, human
action is essential.
A newborn can only cry and move in an uncoordinated way.
A tribe that has just been created can only produce children and a rudimental
language; an evolved type of humanity can produce a type of immortal language, culture
and spirit that will animate the time they live in and also the future.
Since we don’t know how many billions of years this universe still has to live, we
cannot establish whether the approximately fifteen billion years that scientists say this
universe has been in existence for correspond to 15 years or 15 months. We cannot know
whether this universe is a newborn or if it is an adolescent.
We don’t expect, however, that a newborn or an adolescent be capable of producing
an immortal work of art, but we do know that an adult is capable of doing so. Therefore,
we believe that as this universe becomes an adult it will become capable of creating an
immortal form of life, no longer just inorganic life that is continually changing and organic
life that is always reproducing, but is always also subject to death and rebirth. We are
convinced, though, that the universe will be able to achieve a form of immortal life only if
human beings will do the same.
We must also add that religions aren’t very interested in what the destiny of our
universe is, but we are. As far as I know, religions really are only interested in saving the
individuals, not the whole, the living organism that all the individuals belong to.
We can all see with our own eyes that artists manage to give their works of art an
immortal soul; whether there truly are immortal souls created by God and incarnated in
the body is something that no one can prove, so it must be accepted on blind faith alone.
It is a fact that within a mass of billions of human beings, very few are artists.
Therefore, I can understand perfectly why the masses prefer to believe that they have an
immortal soul already at birth. But this is an illusion, and the time has come to wake up
from this illusion that has endured for millennia both in the East and the West.
I understand why it is convenient to believe in a God that, besides giving us life,
also gives us an immortal soul at birth, because this is a much easier place to be than to
have to toil for a lifetime to create an immortal soul for oneself.

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 We would like to say to the masses that not all eggs and sperm created by nature
are transformed into human life, but they are still necessary for the human species to
reproduce and remain in existence. In the same manner, the masses are necessary so
that artists can be born that can create immortal forms of life. The masses need artists
and artists need the masses. A work of art is born from the encounter between the artistic
force of one merged with the artistic force of the other.
We therefore invite the masses to encourage the arts, and, especially to encourage
Sophia-Art and Cosmo-Art, because in this way they, too, can find meaning for their lives.
A meaning that goes beyond the simple urge to live, reproduce and die, which is an urge
that, according to Schopenhauer, is the only real definition of the human being.

Let’s go back to talking about the Ulysseans.

If we look at Sophia-Art and Cosmo-Art, we know that Ulysses was someone who
was capable of creating secondary beauty. Secondary beauty never dies, because it has
faced pain and death and has transformed them into life. It is very different from natural
beauty, primary beauty, which, instead, is born, ages and dies.
We also know that Ulysses was someone who refused to accept that someone else
give him immortality. He preferred to create it for himself.
Secondary Beauty, which is the result of both human artistic action and – most
especially – the harmonious fusion of pain, wisdom and art brought about by those who
want to make their life a work of art in a Sophiartistic and Cosmoartistic sense, has the
power to transform mortal life, such as the human I, into a form of immortal life that can
last forever. It no longer suffers the torments of time nor of death and nothingness.
Whoever created Ulysses’ character knew all of this and so did the masses who
immortalized his myth. Otherwise a completely different importance would have been
attributed to him. The secrets contained in the myth were preserved in this way, and now,
with the help of Sophia-Art and Cosmo-Art, we can bring them back to light.
Ulysses was not an artist who wrote verses, nor did he paint, or sculpt. He was an
artist of his own life and he created beauty not by transforming things, but by
transforming himself and others.
It is the task of artists to transform matter, and this in and of itself is a very
difficult thing to do. What Ulysses did, though, was to transform himself and his own life
story, so as to create a work of art that emanates beauty. The beauty he created has never
died and it remains an eternal gift for himself and for others.
The type of beauty that he created is fascinating, it inspires admiration and
incredulity in others and also their desire to emulate it.
It is not aesthetic beauty, it is ecstatic beauty, which shakes those who
contemplate it out of their immobility, while allowing them to grasp its most intimate
secrets and give a new shape to their thoughts and their actions.

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 If at first we think, like Ulysses did, that our greatest aspiration is to possess
primary beauty, such as Helen, or artistic beauty, such as Achilles’ weapons, or military
glory and conquer Troy, or divine beauty, such as the nymph Calypso or the beautiful
Circe, after witnessing ectstatic beauty we realize that all this is nothing in comparison
with the creation of secondary beauty. Secondary beauty is a fusion of pain, wisdom and
art; it is a synthesis of opposites such as the positive and negative sides of ourselves; it is
a fusion of the masculine and femminine principles; it’s a beauty that is created when we
transform ourselves and unify ourselves within ourselves, with a You, with others and
with the entire cosmos.
If before we acted according to viver bruto {living like beasts}, which is based on
violence, cunning, deceit and predation – and Ulysses knew how to do this very well, as
illustrated by the Iliad – now, instead, we know we can act differently, and follow virtute e
conoscenza {virtue and knowledge}. This is what Ulysses learns to do throughout his long
Odyssey.
Not many people realize how different Ulysses is in the Odyssey compared to how
he is in the Iliad. In the first poem what prevails is the law of the predator and of egoism.
In the second poem the laws of life that lead to the creation of secondary beauty take
precedence. In the first poem, Ulysses is the way he is when nature made him; in the
second poem, he becomes a man who creates himself, a man who wants to be an artist of
his life and of the life of the universe. We are all egotistical and individualistic by nature.
We can become artists, capable of giving ourselves to all of humanity, only by making
painful decisions that bring us to awareness.
Ulysseans, then, are people who want to go from a first birth, their natural one, to a
second birth, the birth of those who follow virtue and knowledge and create secondary
beauty with them.
To do so we must go through:
the pain of our intrauterine trauma, a pain that imprisons our best energies, and
the pain of intracosmic life, which is a pain that stimulates us to transcend ourselves and
create ourselves, so we can effectively be born a second time;
the pain of losing our will to dominate, our will to excercise control and our will to
be God, so we can go from living life as thieves and full of arrogant demands, to living life
as a gift and as a work of art;
the pain of giving up our homicidal and suicidal urges, so we can move towards the
wisdom of wanting to destroy only when we are creating something new, and not just
destroying for the sake of destruction. This requires an immense effort so as to learn how
to use the love force¸ the difficult synthesis of hatred and love, because love alone is
ineffective, and hatred alone is powerless;
the pain of having to go into nothingness and allowing ourselves to be stripped of
everything we have accumulated, like Ulysses lost his beloved companions, the women he
met and the immortality they promised him. We must be willing to lose parts of ourselves

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that are dear to us and that would never want to separate from the seductive mother and
the devouring mother, which are enormous forms of refuge and keep us from feeling our
fears about life and our fears about loving and of being loved;
the pain of losing the subtle pleasure of considering ourselves victims of destiny so
we can become artists, and not just actors, of our lives and of the life of the universe;
the pain of losing primary beauty, which is given to us through the beauty of life,
natural beauty and the beauty of material goods, so we can concentrate on creating
secondary beauty;
the pain of breaking away from our narcissism and our egoism, so we can worry
about not only our own salvation and personal wellbeing, but can accept becoming a part
of a greater organism. Only in this way can we spend our lives and our best energies to
contribute to the wellbeing and the development of this greater organism, of which we are
only a small part.
Who is willing to accept going through so much pain? Human nature wants
nothing to do with it and it doesn’t hesitate to scream out its rebellion and its opposition
to it.
Ulysses did not rebel. By obeying the laws of life, he overcame his human nature,
and by daring the impossible, he managed to bend it so he could make his life a work of
art.
When speaking of his hero, Homer continually says he is a man of many woes and
great suffering. But these woes are not caused by a whim of destiny nor are they
sadomasochistic. Their purpose is to create secondary beauty, which can be obtained by
following virtute e conoscenza, virtue and knowledge, as Dante Alighieri said so well.
Which virtue and which knowledge can help us create a synthesis of good and evil,
of love and hatred, of cunning and wisdom, of male and female, of need and freedom, of
life and death, of the depths of lows with the depths of highs, of humanity and the
cosmos?
Ulysseans’ actions contain both virtue and knowledge and they also take on the
task of explaining them to the rest of the world.
They will explain them and they will also “unexplain” them.
Because what is necessary are living examples, not words.
Our actions create secondary beauty, not our words.
There is a huge difference between the beauty Homer created with his words and
the beauty Ulysses created with his actions. The first type of beauty is a necessary
medium so the second type can be narrated, but it is only a medium. These two types of
beauty have the great merit of having united the Greeks, who did not want to become a
single nation, into one people. Now we humans have many nations, but we are not yet a

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people, and perhaps the beauty of Homer’s verses, plus the beauty of Ulysses’ actions,
can help us become one.
The words I use to speak with you are only a medium; my actions in my own life
are what unveil the meaning of the secondary beauty I am talking about. This meaning
can stay hidden in the words I use, but in the end someone will understand and they will
fall in love with it, and they’ll want to make it their own so they can become one of
Ulysses’ new descendants.
There are many Ulysses who explore the known and the unknown and who are
capable of undertaking impossible physical feats, but these are not the kind we need.
We need new virtues and new knowledge, and we need to fuse together virtue and
knowledge, instead of keeping them separate, like the saints, the ascetics, the artists and
the scientists do.
Secondary beauty is the result of harmonious and daring syntheses, not of
alienating and paralyzing divisions. The beauty that saints and artists create can go
beyond death, but it cannot overcome the type of division that a saint poses between
himself and the world or that the artist poses between his works and his own life.
Besides, both these types of beauty often are in contrast to the laws of life instead of being
in harmony with them, and they keep humanity from growing and evolving.
We have a great need for secondary beauty, both so we can unite into one single
populace, and because since we believe that infinite parallel universes exist as well as
infinite concentric universes, we want to have access to all of them.
If we want to be able to travel from one universe to the next, we can do so only if
we incarnate our lives into the medium of secondary beauty. A space ship can move
around only within this universe, it will never be able to leave it and go into another one.
The faith of believers and of those who follow Plato’s ideas says that human beings
are endowed with an immortal soul, that when it dies will leave this universe and go up
into heaven, which we no longer know where it is. How it might, then, be possible for a
soul to leave both time and space and enter into eternal bliss or nirvana, and exist
forever, is a mystery that is even greater than the one regarding how we can have an
immortal soul since birth. But faith can accumulate all the mysteries it wants; they are
not a barrier to the continuing existence of religions.
To travel from one century to the next, artists incarnate themselves in their works
of art that become immortal with the help of their admirers. To travel from one universe to
the next such works of art are no longer sufficient.
As long as the energy fields of works of art are necessarily dependent on the
material medium they are created on, this medium will never be able to go beyond the
limits of this universe’s space-time. Thus the artistic beauty that is found within it cannot
go beyond them either.

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 What must be created is an even more powerful energy field, as well as a new type
of beauty whose medium is almost immaterial and can escape the space curvature of this
universe. Such a medium must no longer be subject to the law of entropy nor to the
universal law of gravity. Rather, a new energy field must be created that is so powerful
that its waves or radiation cannot be contained within the limits of this universe.
Stephen Hawking discovered that particles and radiation can emerge from a black
hole. These particles and radiation most certainly are not subject to the black hole’s field
of gravity. How this happens no one knows yet, but we do know that it happens.
I believe that those who transform their mortal I into a form of immortal life and
create secondary beauty , are capable of going beyond the curve of space and can then
move from one universe to the next, from one sky to the next, from one time to the next,
throughout eternity.
To create secondary beauty we need new virtue and new knowledge and the
Ulysseans are those who want to learn the secrets of both.
This is the goal of life as a work of art and this is why Sophia-Art and Cosmo-Art
were created. Life as a work of art is not intended here like Neitzsche or the Romantics
intended it. It is the creation of a unified and unifying field of energy , that emanates
immortal beauty for oneself and for others, that is capable of generating transformational
processes that bring with them new beauty.
One of the most pragmatic goals of the Ulysseans is to create, first of all, the
Cosmo-Art myth. If we create a myth, everyone can dip into it, according to each person’s
abilities.
The creation of a myth already makes its creators immortal, and such creation is
always the result of a group working together, and not just an individual.
The Cosmo-Art Ulysseans, who will incarnate in the myth they will create, will have
already opened a door towards their own immortality within the time of this universe.
If they are also capable of creating the secondary beauty of their life as a work of
art, this will open the way for them to travel from one universe to the next and to
guarantee their eternal immortality, within the space-time of other universes as well.
To understand how this is possible, we can reflect for a moment on the fact that
the human I needs a material medium for it to exist and act, but the I itself is not
material, it is not made up of atoms.
The light of a star travels from its own world and it then reaches our world. We
know what kind of enormous struggle a formless cloud of hydrogen must go through
before it becomes a star, before it becomes light. Our eyes receive this light and we are
delighted by it. Astronomers tells us that the light of a star that has already died can still
reach us.
This fact is important when trying to understand how a body of matter can
produce something that is almost immaterial, such as light, and that this something has

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a life span that is not always constantly connected to what created it. Only when it
departs and when it arrives must there be a material medium that is capable of receiving
this almost immaterial thing that exists.
There are also other celestial bodies, called pulsars, that don’t emit light, they emit
radio waves of an extremely high potency. Scientists have picked them up with radio
telescopes. Radio waves can reach us too, even after the neutron stars that emitted them
no longer exist.
Can radio waves travel beyond the curvature of space? We don’t know this, but it is
certain that they can go where light cannot. If light comes to an obstacle, it stops and
goes no further. If radio waves hit an obstacle, they bounce off it and go around it, or else
they just go through it.
If we hypothesize that the light produced by stars is comparable to the light given
off by works of art created by artists, and the radio waves produced by pulsars are
comparable to the vibrations that life as a work of art created by Sophia-Art and Cosmo-
Art emit, would this analogy help us see the inherent possibilities of secondary beauty as
an energy field which is almost immaterial, capable of traveling beyond the space-time of
this universe?
Once it has been created, light travels on its own and reaches its destination. Radio
waves do the same. But what is their destination? We only know a part of the answer. I do
know, for example, that stars create the atoms of the 92 elements that exist in nature,
but I don’t know what the purpose is of the enormous quantity of light produced by the
billions of stars that make up the possible 5 billion galaxies travelling through the
universe. I don’t believe it is created just to delight our eyes.
And in any case, couldn’t we create our own vibrations and travel with them, just
like light and radio waves travel after they have been created?
It could be that these ideas of mine are too fanciful, but it could be that they hold a
hidden truth, just like it happened with Leonardo da Vinci’s inventions or the stories of
Jules Verne. This is a field of research that is open, now that a route has been defined.
Everything I wrote in earlier books were things that I experienced myself and then
passed on to you to have you verify them in person.
What I am proposing now cannot, unfortunately, be verified. When I described the
Cosmo-Art theorem, every step was based on reasoning. The Cosmo-Art myth, instead, is
based more on intuition than on reason. You can trust it or you can decide not to; this is
a personal choice you must each freely make. The step that must be taken to go from the
Theorem to the Myth requires a more aware decision, and greater creativity.
It is my aspiration to become immortal through time and immortal beyond the
space-time that I exist within today. I hope it is not just my aspiration.
I want to live a life that can go from this universe to another one, and to yet
another one, eternally, without having to go through pain and death any more, without

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having to annul myself either in nirvana, or be bored in eternal bliss after having gone
through the terror of judgment day.
And another great difference that my new vision of the world offers me is that to
acheive my goal I no longer have to subject myself to the ideal of sainthood, like
Christians do, or empty myself of my individuality and of my being a part of this world,
like those in the Orient do. Many find these options sublime, but I find them to be
alienating. I wonder what India would be like today if Gandhi had chosen to become a
guru and to only worry about saving people’s souls.
To actualize my life as a work of art, I only have to follow every day the laws of life
that are written in my SELF. It isn’t easy, but it can be done.

Ulysses’ life was continuously affected by Athena’s influence and by the dialogue
he kept up with her. Athena is the symbol of the wisdom contained in the SELF, to whom
Ulysses constantly turns every time he must make an important decision.
Pain can not be faced recklessly. We must do it when our inner wisdom requires us
to and we must learn to distinguish between pain that is fertile and creative, and pain
that is instead sterile and destructive.
Pain is like fire. It takes art to make fire creative and not destructive. Sometimes
we need a slow fire, that can cook our flesh and spirit. Sometimes we need a huge fire,
like a furnace, to melt the I just like we melt metals, and to give it a form that it didn’t
have before.
The SELF speaks to us through our inner voice and it speaks to us from outside
ourselves. Every event in our daily lives is our SELF speaking to us. Every event contains
a gift, a challenge and an opportunity to transform ourselves, to unify ourselves, to unify
ourselves with others, and create the energy field of secondary beauty.
Athena is not only a symbol for wisdom, she is also Zeus’ daughter; she is the
daughter of the God who goes after human beings and gives them a task that he can not
complete by himself: the creation of secondary beauty. This God can turn nature upside
down with his lightning strikes, but he cannot change himself, he cannot transform
himself, because he cannot, face pain and death and transform them into life, like
humans can.
This God can make the cosmos emerge from his forehead and he can offer wisdom,
but he cannot produce the artistic action that only humans are capable of. This is why
the cosmos needs humanity so it can save itself from death.
Ulysses transforms himself because he transforms his I. He transforms others
because he transforms the will of their I. The I is not made up of matter, it’s made of
energy. It is a band of chaotic, divided, disorganized and blind energies that are always in
conflict and are often slaves of passion. This I can decide to let itself be devoured by the

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Sirens or by Scylla, or it can decide to adhere to a project and a goal: its return to Ithaca,
at any cost. A true encounter with a woman, between a man and a woman, at any cost.
This I can decide to hold a man hostage, like Calypso does with Ulysses, and then
can decide to set him free. This I can decide to transform a man into a wolf, into a lion or
a pig, like the Sorceress Circe does, or can decide to give him back his human form and
use its magical powers to help Ulysses descend into Hades.
This I can decide to be undecided for a long time as to whether or not to totally give
itself to a man, like Penelope does, and can decide, finally, to recognize Ulysses as the
man of her life and create with him the miracle of a fusion, and not just a union, of a man
with a woman, of the will of one with the will of the other.
This I, the I of Ulysses, could have decided, once it had killed the Suitors, to kill
Penelope as well, because she was guilty of having allowed the more than one hundred
Suitors into her house. This is where Ulysses must have battled most against acting out
his homicidal and suicidal urges.
Killing the Suitors was a necessary action, because he had to kill both his own and
Penelope’s arrogant demands; but the decision between either killing Penelope or
continuing to love her must have been a terribly difficult one to make. Ulysses was faced
with the choice between preferring the pleasure of destroying for destruction’s sake and
satisfying his wounded narcissism, or preferring the joy he could experience if he
managed to bend Penelope’s narcissism and make her into a woman capable of loving
while he, at the same time, became a man capable of doing the same.
The newspapers are full of sad stories that tell about how, when many couple
relationships end because they don’t work anymore, homicidal and suicidal urges
explode.
The story of Ulysses is completely different and it was an authentic work of art. He
transformed himself, he gave up his desire to vindicate his wounded pride and he instead
invested all his energies and all his ingenuity into figuring out how to make Penelope
recognize him and love him, instead of giving up or killing her or sending her into exile to
Mantinea, as other versions of the myth recount. He didn’t act like Clytemnestra did with
Agamemnon, when he returned home from Troy. After her mother’s heart was wounded
because of Iphegenia’s death, from that day forward she only lived to be able to get her
revenge. But had she ever really loved Agamemnon?
A poet doesn’t have to transform his I; he must only create metaphors that can
grasp the secret of life.
In the film “The Postman”, the metaphors of the poet Pablo Neruda are capable of
shaking up the life of a postman, Mario Ruoppolo as played by Massimo Troisi, and they
help him conquer the beauty of Beatrice Russo. But Beatrice is a metaphor for another
type of beauty.

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 Dante places Beatrice in the Empyrean Heaven as a reward and as the
achievement of her highest level of inner transformation. Poetry is important, but by itself
it can not create secondary beauty.
Just as hydrogen burns in the furnace of the stars and becomes gold, after various
steps and infinite torment, the I must burn in the flames of underground worlds before it
can become the gold of the alchemical opus.
Beatrice, gold and the opus are all metaphors for secondary beauty.
Ulysseans create the myth of secondary beauty and by doing so they incarnate in
history and they guarantee themselves a first type of immortality.
Then they create secondary beauty and their I is transferred from the energy field
of the human body into the energy field of secondary beauty.
This step, once it has been completed, transforms the human I and from being
mortal it becomes immortal, just as secondary beauty is immortal. This is how the second
type of immortality is created.
When the body dissolves, the energy field that sustained its atoms dissolves, but
the energy field of secondary beauty doesn’t, as it is made up of pure and powerful
vibrations that were originally created with the help of the body but are no longer
dependent upon it.
Secondary beauty is not a product of the mind and it won’t always have an
agglomeration of atoms as its medium. It is a product of the whole I and the body has a
fundamental role in this wholeness. And the body is made up of atoms. The I , instead, is
not made of atoms but it is like a band of uncoordinated energies that are looking for a
purpose.
In Existential Personalistic Anthropology, an I exists, an I Person that is a
spiritual unifying principle, capable of unifying itself and its parts, itself and the cosmos,
through love, freedom, truth and beauty, every time it follows the laws of life and decides
to accept facing pain and death, and to make them a door into life. The I, though, could
never experience pain and death if it were only a spiritual essence that is detached from
the body.
What is spiritual cannot exist without matter and if the spirit wants to transform
itself it cannot do so without help from matter, just as matter cannot transform itself
without help from the spirit.
Energy is not made of atoms but yet it is never completely indipendent of atoms.
Ideas, too, contain energy, and ideas aren’t made of atoms either, but they move
along with atoms and they animate the bodies of those who live in them. This is also
where they are produced and where they develop.

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 The goals and dreams to be achieved that come from the SELF also contain a lot of
energy, but we can’t say what exactly the SELF is made up of. It is certain, though, that it
exists, that it lives within the body and that it works in collaboration with the I .
In a group of Sophia-Art, the energy that is unleashed is enormous. We can
become aware of this because of the transformations that it produces. We work on how to
make this energy emerge, but we don’t really worry about what it is actually made of.
Science tells us that energy can be transformed into matter and matter can be
transformed into energy, but not even scientists really know what energy is. They are
always dealing with it, though.
When atoms disappear, energy appears in the form of powerful and overwhelming
vibrations.
This doesn’t always happen, it happens only in a few cases.
It happens only when we know the secret to make it happen.
Artists were the first to have lifted the veil from this secret. Nuclear physicists have
figured it out just recently.
Ulysseans, the new artists of Cosmo-Art, passionately commit themselves to
devoting their lives to explore the intense energies of secondary beauty and they entrust
their aspiration for immortal life to it. The immortality they are striving towards is
immortal in a temporal sense and also in the sense of going beyond the space-time of this
universe.
Man can not live on bread alone, we need bread and beauty; bread and
immortality.
Now that we have cleared up the fundamental point that satisfies what is by now a
vital human need, to know what happens to us after death, we must immediately clear up
a second one. It is no longer possible to continue to think of ourselves as absolutes who
don’t have to think about what happens around us or in the great organism, the universe,
to which we all belong.
Every I must own up to its responsibility towards the whole, just as every cell in
our bodies actively collaborates with the rest of the body and works towards not only its
own well-being, but the well-being of the whole body.
For our cells this is something that has been acquired over millions of years and is
codified in our DNA.
To think of ourselves as a cell in the great organism that is the universe, and that
we must take care of the whole universe, is a mental attitude that we must create from
the ground up, and it won’t be an easy task.
It is already difficult to take care of our planet earth on a global level. Imagine how
difficult it is to take care of the whole universe. It seems like a fairy tale.

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 I have gotten to the point where I am able to do this step by step, through constant
communication with my SELF, which first tore me away from the Christian conception of
the world, something that caused me enormous pain, and then introduced me to this new
vision. It seemed only right to share it with you.
Bees take care of the well-being of the whole hive, and every artist knows they are
working for the whole world and not just for themselves.
Every work of art is a product of a group effort, otherwise it isn’t art.
Secondary beauty is always a result of a group effort, otherwise it doesn’t exist at
all.
I have spoken about a new form of art and a new identity for men, women and the
universe in which we live. I now leave to the Ulysseans the task of daring the impossible
and acheiving both.

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 CHAPTER XV

Rules for the Ulysseans' Nocturnal Navigation

Homer narrated that Calypso taught Ulysses the rules on nocturnal navigation
while on the high seas.

BOOK V – from verse 270 to 280

270 And so he sat and skillfully held the tiller steady:

his eyes never drooped with sleep,

he held them steady on the Pleiades, steady on Boötes that sets late,

and on the Ursa, that they also call the Dipper, (italics are mine)

and that goes round and round watched fearfully by Orion,

the only one not a part of Ocean’s waters;

this is, in fact, what Calypso the shining goddess had told him, (italics are mine)

to keep to his left while crossing the sea.

For seventeen days he sailed across the abyss,

on the eighteenth day the shadowy mountains appeared

of the land of the Phaeacians: it was very close […]

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 Seventeen days without ever sleeping either by day or by night is a very long time,
and yet Ulysses, who wants to reach Ithaca at any cost, crosses the sea this way, skillfully
holding the tiller.

Sometimes the Ulysseans will also have to cross the abysses of life, and for this
reason, they must learn the art of nocturnal navigation on the high seas.

I have prepared some rules to follow while doing so, which I consider of the utmost
importance.

RULE I

Choose your destination

It makes no sense to set sail if you do not know where you are going.
Ulysses' destination was Ithaca. We Ulysseans have the same goal, but we call it
"secondary beauty", and with it, we want to enter into immortality so we can travel from
one universe to another, forever.

We cannot leave Calypso and Ogygia, the island of our daily certainties, and travel
towards infinity, unless we are deeply convinced that the goal we have chosen is the right
one for us.

It is thus necessary to take all the time we need to choose our destination on both a
conscious level and on a deep one, renewing often the decision we have made on a choral
group level.

RULE II

Set your course

We cannot see our destination until we have actually arrived there.

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Nevertheless, since we know what direction we must take to reach our goal, we can set
our course, and use, as Ulysses did, the stars found in the Big Dipper.

Those who learned to navigate in ancient times looked at the sky for a long time while
they were still on land, and they discovered the connection between the North Star and
the destination they wanted to reach.

We can choose to make our SELF our north star. But we must learn to listen to it for a
long time so we can understand what the connection is between it and our goal, and then
know how to confidently establish our route.

Four stars other than the North Star comprise the "cup" of the Big Dipper, and unless we
look at them as well, we cannot know where the North Star lies.

Therefore, when we are establishing our destination we need a more complete knowledge
of the four stars that make up the "cup" of the Big Dipper.
We can decide that they represent the four fundamental values that guide us along our
Cosmoartistic path: Love, Freedom, Truth and Beauty (both the lost beauty of life that we
must reacquire and secondary beauty, which does not yet exist and must be created). We
must also take into account the seven stars found in the Pleiades, which show us the
value of choral group work.

RULE III

Correct your route every day.

What is it that makes us stray from the route we have established?

In the sea, the marine currents and winds can take us off our course.

And during our voyage?

The drive to dominate, the drive for power and the homicidal and suicidal drives are some
of the main reasons we can get off course.

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Prideful arrogant demands and the drive for revenge, which we never overcome
completely, sometimes cover our sky with thick clouds, to the point that we can no longer
see the North Star, our SELF.

We must thus strip ourselves of our demands, and this is the same thing as the decision
to kill the Suitors dwelling in our hearts.
When we do so, the star reappears.

RULE IV

Set your cardinal directions.

We cannot set the route if we do not also set the four cardinal directions.

Our cardinal directions are the values we mentioned earlier, when we were talking about
the stars found in the Big Dipper: Love, freedom, truth and beauty. Like stars, they are
grouped together, and as cardinal directions they are set in four different areas of space:
North, South, East and West.

Truth is like the North, cold and pungent.

Love is like the East, luminous and warm like the sun in the Orient.
Freedom is like the West, that the sun runs towards every day.
Beauty is like the South at midday, which is always radiant and full of splendor.

Love is the result of a decision that we must renew every day to love ourselves and love
others.
Freedom is the art of the courage of wanting to become free, at whatever cost.

Truth is the result of a decision to look directly at our masks and our lies, and it is also
the result of the knowledge we gain through experience.

Beauty is a unified field of energy, and it is the result of an inner transformation that
happens when we go from hatred to love, from slavery to freedom, from knee-jerk
reactions to creativity. It is also the result of our ability to make a synthesis between love
and freedom, love and hatred, love and truth, pain and creativity, life and death. These
are all couples of energies that are completely opposite to each other.

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The I Person, the Psychological I, the Corporeal I and the SELF are all fields of energy that
are opposite to each other, just as the I and the You, the I and the We, the I and the
Universe are.

Secondary beauty is the result of artistic action that is able to unify these opposite fields
of energy. It is also capable of creating a single unified and unifying energy field out of the
many disjointed fields we are made up of. This field goes beyond time and space, beyond
every time and every space.

RULE V

Determine your position.

Where are you now? And where does your conscious I want to go?

North, South, East, West, or nowhere?

If we want to travel towards secondary beauty, we cannot travel in a straight line. We

travel, instead, following an ascending spiral. There are actually two spirals; one goes
towards the depths above, and the other goes towards the depths below.

Imagine two cones of light that have the same vertex, and each cone represents a spiral in
which light moves in all four directions, East, West, North and South, at the same time.

The two cones of light are in two opposite dimensions.

The higher cardinal points are opposite the lower ones.

Hatred is opposite love, the desire to remain slaves is opposite freedom, lies are opposite
truth, and ugliness is opposite beauty.

Now imagine a ray of light that first explores these opposites, and then unifies them.

The Art of Sophia-Art and Cosmo-Art consists of the ability to make a synthesis of
opposites and we have many opposites to unify. Even our values oppose each other and
we must learn how to unify them.

The higher world and the lower one oppose each other and we must learn how to unify
them like Ulysses did. Some other opposites we must learn to unify are male-female,

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intrauterine and intracosmic life, the I and Others or the I and the Universe. Unless we
manage to fuse them, we cannot create secondary beauty.

Where are you now, and were do you want to go?

RULE VI

Accept the dark night.

Accept the darkness and turn your gaze to the bright spots that appear in the sky.

Do not say that you cannot do it.

Be artists, not victims.

You will have new eyes.

RULE VII

Feel the life of the universe pulsating within you.

You are not alone and you are not travelling only for yourself.

You must feel that you are part of the universe; otherwise, you will never become travelers
of the universe or artists of the life of the universe, as Cosmo-Art describes.

Grab on to the handle of the organismic principle.

This is our tiller.

The universe knows what you need and every day it will give you what you need for that
day.

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 RULE VIII

Decide to transform your heart.

The homicidal and suicidal drives not only darken the sky but they also often stir up
frightening storms.

This happens because we have a heart of stone.

When you are in the midst of a storm, this is the moment you must decide to have a heart
that loves instead of a heart that hates, rejects and destroys.

It isn't easy to do this, but do whatever you can to make the impossible possible.

RULE IX

Learn to eliminate your guilty feelings.

Guilty feelings do not create storms, but they are like dogs that bark and bite, or like
huge waves that can suddenly strike the side of a ship, trying to sink it.

Learn how to sail over them with a firm grip on the tiller, and do the right thing without
letting them pull you off course.

Help yourself by listening to Louise Hay's "You can heal your body".

Ask for help from your Personal SELF and from the Choral Group SELF so you can
understand what is right.

Don't allow your Super Ego or your Ideal I to dominate you.

They are bad teachers.

The deepest causes of hatred towards ourselves, towards life and towards others lie in the
ideal of absolute moral perfection and the ideal of sainthood.

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The roots of our guilty feelings lie in our hatred inside of us.

The origins of this hatred lie in our expectations of absolute perfection that we have been
carrying around inside of us for millennia.

RULE X

Serve the tyrant and force him to kill himself with his own hands.

Neptune is always lurking somewhere, which is our intrauterine tyrant or our

intrauterine incest, and he does not want you to leave his universe and fly off into another
one.

This is the most difficult trial: to leave what we know to go towards what we don't know,
to leave the prison we live in and are familiar with, to sail towards secondary beauty,
which is a universe that is unfamiliar to us.

This is the moment when we must transform our utopia must into a hope that is certain,
desired and determined.

Dante has Ulysses drown so he can affirm that he alone is the only one who knows how
to fly.

This is untrue. Homer tells us the complete opposite.

You choose who you want to follow.

RULE XI

Accept the sea.

Accept pain, when it is healthy and is not masochistic, or the result of hatred towards
yourself. Transform it into energy you can use to create and to travel.

Life doesn't always go the way we want it to, and there is always another new identity
waiting for us that we don't yet know about.

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Open yourself to the inexhaustible complexity and richness of life that can appear at any
time, in the most unpredictable ways.

Open yourself to Life's goal to create immortality and secondary beauty with you.

***

Assimilate these rules by going over them in your mind repeatedly, until they have
become flesh of your flesh and blood of your blood.

Now you can set sail. And if you should end up shipwrecked, don't worry too much: there
is Nausicaa and there are the Phaeacians who are ready to welcome you and fill you with
wonderful gifts.

*****

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   OTHER BOOKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR
 

AMORE E PERSONA {Love and the Person} * 

3° ed. Costellazione d’Arianna, Rome 1993 

AMORE LIBERTA’ E COLPA {Love, Freedom and Guilt} * 

2° ed. Sophia University of Rome (S.U.R.), Rome 2000 

ANTROPOLOGIA ESISTENZIALE E METAPSICOLOGIA PERSONALISTICA ** 

Ed. Sophia University of Rome (S.U.R.), Rome 1991 

THEORY OF THE PERSON AND EXISTENTIAL PERSONALISTIC ANTHROPOLOGY  

Published by The Solaris Institute of the Sophia University of Rome, 2009 

GLI ULISSIDI – Il teorema e il mito per navigare da un universo all’altro**        

Ed. Sophia University of Rome (S.U.R.), Rome 1997 

THE ULYSSEANS – THE THEOREM AND THE MYTH FOR NAVIGATING FROM ONE UNIVERSE TO ANOTHER     

Published by The Solaris Institute of the Sophia University of Rome, 2009 

I LABORATORI CORALI DELLA COSMO‐ART {The Cosmo‐Art Group Laboratories} 

Ed. Sophia University of Rome (S.U.R.), Rome 2006 

IL MITO DI ULISSE  E LA BELLEZZA SECONDA** 

Ed. Sophia University of Rome (S.U.R.), Rome 2005 

THE MYTH OF ULYSSES AND SECONDARY BEAUTY 

Published by The Solaris Institute of the Sophia University of Rome, 2009 

  237
 

IPOTESI SU ULISSE** 

Ed. Sophia University of Rome (S.U.R.), Rome 2008 

HYPOTHESES ON ULYSSES 

Published by The Solaris Institute of the Sophia University of Rome, 2009 

LE LEGGI DELLA VITA {The Laws of Life} 

Ed. Sophia University of Rome (S.U.R.), Rome 1995 

LA NASCITA DELLA COSMO‐ART {The Birth of Cosmo Art}  

Ed. Sophia University of Rome (S.U.R.), Rome 2000 

LA SOPHIA‐ANALISI E L’EDIPO {Sophia‐Analysis and the Oedipal Phase} 

Ed. Sophia University of Rome (S.U.R.), Rome 2000 

LA VIE COMME OEUVRE D’ART {Life as a Work of Art} 

Ed. Sophia University of Rome (S.U.R.), Rome 1988 

LA VITA COME OPERA D’ARTE   

E LA VITA COME DONO SPIEGATA IN 41 FILM 

{Life as a Work of Art and Life as a Gift Explained in 41 films} 

Ed. Sophia University of Rome (S.U.R.), Rome 1995 

TEOREMI E ASSIOMI DELLA COSMO‐ART  ** 

Ed. Sophia University of Rome (S.U.R.), Rome 2004 

  238
THEOREMS AND AXIOMS OF COSMO‐ART 

Published by The Solaris Institute of the Sophia University of Rome, 2010 

TEORIA DELL’INCONSCIO ESISTENZIALE {The Theory of the Existential Unconscious} 

Ed. Costellazione d’Arianna Rome 1995 

TEORIA DELLA PERSONA {The Theory of the Person} 

2° ed. Costellazione di Arianna, Rome 1992 

* The books that have one asterisk are in the process of being translated into English.  

**  Those  with  two  asterisks  have  already  been  translated,  and  their  English  titles  are  shown  without 
brackets.  

  239