Antonio Mercurio

The Cosmo-Art

Theorems and Axioms

A New Poetic and Fascinating Cosmological Viewpoint of Human Life in this
Universe

1
 Published by the Solaris Institute of the
SOPHIA UNIVERSITY OF ROME

© Copyright: Sophia University of Rome, 2009

All Rights reserved

Original title: Teoremi ed Assiomi della Cosmo-Art

Translated from Italian by Alice Pinto and Martha S. Bache-Wiig.

Translation authorized by the Author.

ISBN 9788895806068

2
 TO MY WIFE
with infinite gratitude
for all her
profound beauty
which I have
amply drawn from

3
 Table of Contents

Forward 5

Chapter I : The Cosmo-Art Theorems

Preface on the Beginning 7

First Theorem 11
Second Theorem 13
Third Theorem 14
Fourth Theorem 16
Fifth Theorem 19
Sixth Theorem 22
Seventh Theorem 26

Chapter II : The Cosmo-Art Axioms

Axiom 1 31
Axiom 2 33
Axiom 3 35
Axiom 4 37
Axiom 5 42
Axiom 6 44
Axiom 7 46

Chapter III : Principles of Prenatal Anthropology

The Search for Beauty that has been lost, Primary Beauty;
and the Search for Beauty to be created, Secondary Beauty. 49

Chapter IV : The Rules of the Ulysseans' Nocturnal Navigation 64

4
 Forward

The Cosmo-Art Theorems and Axioms represents the apex of my anthropological and cosmological
ideas.

In his book "Masks of the Universe", Edward Harrison amply describes humanity's ability to create a
new cosmological vision for every changing historical epoch.

It seems to me that Pope John Paul II gave the last blow to the old Christian cosmology when, in a
discourse proclaimed from the window that opens onto Saint Peter's Square, he said that Paradise is not
a place but a state of being.
I spoke of this in detail in my books "The Ulysseans - the Theorem and the Myth for traveling from
one universe to another" and "La nascita della Cosmo-Art" {The Birth of Cosmo-Art}.

I wrote about the close connection between my anthropological and cosmological ideas in my paper
"Principi di antropologia prenatale" {Principles of Prenatal Anthropology}, presented at the OMAEP
International Congress held at the "La Sapienza" University in Rome, which has been included in the
present volume.

Starting from the "Lettera agli uomini" {The Letter to Humanity} of the Sophia University of Rome
and my book "Teoria della Persona" {Theory of the Person}, up until this most recent publication, one
can see the entire path my ideas have travelled along and that I now can define with the name of
Cosmoartistic Anthropology.

These ideas were first incarnated in Existential Personalistic Anthropology and Sophia-Analysis,
then in Sophia-Art and now in Cosmo-Art. Anyone who is interested in having an experiential
knowledge of these ideas, as well as an intellectual one, can do so by contacting any of the Institutes
associated to the Sophia University of Rome, in Italy or abroad.

My most profound gratitude goes to all the students, teachers and Directors of these Institutes who
have put my ideas into action and have verified their validity in their own lives.

5
 Cosmo-Art is an artistic movement that is accessible to anyone who has enough strength and
courage to detach from the Fetal I they still carry within, and move upwards towards the cosmic artistic
dimension of the Adult I . This second dimension is present during the entire life of a human being: from
the first moment of conception up to ultracosmic life, it is possible to make one's life and the life of the
cosmos into a work of art that creates immortal beauty, just as Ulysses did. Homer's account of this
process is found in his Odyssey, and I explain these correlations in my book "The Ulysseans" and in a
successive one “Hypothesis on Ulysses”.

Antonio Mercurio

6
 CHAPTER I

The Cosmo-Art Theorems

Preface on the Beginning

We can speak of the origins of the infinite universes only with a poetic image.

At the beginning of the beginning, there was a little girl, LIFE, a Puer Eternus¸ as other poets have
called it. She liked to play with soap bubbles, just like little girls throughout all the ages have loved to
do.

LIFE blew on the wand dipped in soapy water and she was amazed to see infinite bubbles appear,
that were born one from the other or in sequence. They danced in the light and they brought great joy to
her eyes and her heart.

Every bubble was a universe.

Then it happened that LIFE, which is powerful but is not omnipotent, intelligent but not omniscient,
was deeply pained to realize that she was eternal, but not immortal. She had to continuously incarnate in
different forms to stay alive, and each new form could appear only after the previous one had died.

Her bubbles could last an eternity, but it was an eternity that passed by in an instant. They all were
born and then they died. Not one of them came to life without dying later.

Her pain was immense!

Until one day she had an ingenious idea. In one of the bubbles LIFE placed human beings. She then
taught them how to fuse pain, wisdom and art together, and from them a work of art was created. This
work of art was endowed with eternal life, that broke away from the bubble and started to fly from one
bubble to the next, from one universe to another, into infinity.

7
 It was as if it could come to rest on each of the other bubbles, with a Rose in its hand, one that no
longer had thorns. It was like a "Little Prince" that could now go on dancing happily, and no longer had
to be bitten by a snake so it could fly from one universe to the next.

All it had to do was to imagine it could fly, and it was able to do so.

The Little Prince was immortal, LIFE with him and inside of him was immortal, as was the bubble
that had given him life, even though it had ceased to exist as a bubble.

Now LIFE was happy and no longer felt any pain; now it was both eternal and immortal.

It could still change shape, just like a work of art can change shape if you look at it from one side or
the other, if you read into it from one perspective or another.

But now changing shape no longer meant having to die: it meant being able to continuously gain
new life and new meaning.

This all happened in the past, but it unfolded into the future that was yet to come.

We can tell the story of what has happened in the past, but we can only hope for what belongs to the
future.

***

(This forward on the beginning is based on the fact that the Author, when speaking of LIFE, is
speaking of a concept of life that no longer is solely identified by biological life. Instead it has to do with
something immensely different and unknown, which biological life is only a small expression of).

***

8
 FIRST THEOREM

An infinite number of universes exist, but they are not all the same. Together they all make up a
single, unique, and living super-organism.

SECOND THEOREM

The universe we live in is intelligent, free and creative, even though it has limitations. It has its own
special purpose to fulfill that Life has entrusted it with: the goal to create Secondary Beauty.

THIRD THEOREM

The third theorem is coherent with the first two, and arises out from them. This is the Cosmo-Art
theorem or the Theorem of Secondary Beauty (see A.M. "The Ulysseans - the Theorem and the Myth to
Travel from One Universe to Another" published by The Sophia University of Rome, 2009).

FOURTH THEOREM

Secondary beauty is the result of a fusion between human and cosmic forces. They are both
indispensible to each other. They are both present within each human being, but the ability to fuse them
together is found only in the Choral Group SELF.

FIFTH THEOREM

All of the universes together form a living system. Every system contains a network of sub-systems
and of emergent properties. These emerge only as the result of the action of many causes fused together,
which belong to the entire system.

An emergent property never belongs to the sub-system in itself, but rather to the entire system.

9
 SIXTH THEOREM

The basic building blocks of Life are intelligence, freedom and creativity. Truth, love and beauty
are blocks that are added later.

Life comes before anything else, and it existed before the living system made up of all the universes.

Life existed even before the existence of both the personal and cosmic SELF.

Life is and it is becoming and it knows the art of fusing death with life, and the art of fusing being
with becoming to create, in time, what it can not get from eternity: a life form that is both eternal and
immortal.

This is because Life is eternal as it is, but it is not yet immortal.

SEVENTH THEOREM

Life is not the Supreme Being. Life is not God.

FINAL CONSIDERATION

Life generates infinite universes with different forms of life for each one.

As far as I am concerned, I am convinced that our biological parents are only intermediaries
between ourselves and Life, between ourselves and the universe.

Life is my mother and the universe I live in is my father.

Life gives me creative and vital energy so I can live and create.

The universe gives me everything I need so I can fulfill its purpose and my purpose, if I align myself
with its axis.

10
 FIRST THEOREM

An infinite number of universes exist, but they are not all the same. Together they all make up a
single, unique, and living super-organism.

(This theorem and the others that follow are based on analogical reasoning, rather than on
mathematical calculations).

On planet Earth an infinite number of species exist, and they are all intelligent, but not in the same
way.

Every species chooses the niche it lives and evolves in, and it adapts to the needs and resources of
that particular niche.

Therefore, every species is also endowed with freedom and with creativity as well as intelligence,
although these are qualities that have specific limitations.

Every species takes on a task that is different from the tasks of the other species. No one imposes it
on them; each species chooses their own task freely.

The tasks of each of the species are harmoniously organized so that what we call the biosphere can
be created and maintained, just like it were a single living organism.

There is constant communication that takes place between all the species and within each of the
species.

We are aware of only a few types of communication and not all of them.

There are continual mechanisms of action and retroaction that guide how a species proliferates with
respect to the others.

Every species fights for its own existence but not all of them are destined to survive. There is a
circular causality that guides and determines how some are successful and some are not.

Whatever is valid for the species in general is also valid for each individual that belongs to the
species. This is most certainly true for each individual that belongs to the human species as well.

11
 Each individual is also a super-organism with respect to its smallest components: its cells,
molecules and atoms.

Every universe is free and creative besides being intelligent, even though these qualities are
constrained within certain limitations and conditions.

Every universe has its own specific task to fulfill, that harmonizes with the tasks of all the other
universes that exist today and will exist in the future.

All the universes communicate with each other even though today we still do not know how.

The law of general gravity tells us that all the atoms in this universe communicate to each other, and
quantum mechanics has taught us that the same thing is true of all the atomic particles and sub-particles.

Just as all the individuals within a species make up a super-organism we call species, and just as all
the species put together make up the super-organism of the biosphere, all the universes together make up
a single super-universe, a single, unique, living super-organism.

12
 SECOND THEOREM

The universe we live in is intelligent, free and creative, even though it has certain limitations, and it
has a special purpose to fulfill that Life has assigned to it: the goal of Secondary Beauty.

When this universe was forming, it chose for itself certain physical laws instead of others (see Lee
Smolin: "The Life of the Cosmos"). No one imposed them on it. These laws made it possible for cosmic
life, biological life, cultural life, spiritual life and artistic life to appear and evolve.

This could not have happened if the universe were not intelligent, free and creative.

Biological life is based on carbon chemistry. There is no reason why other universes could not exist
that have life forms based on other physical and chemical laws that we are unfamiliar with.

We do know that the life of a work of art depends on carbon chemistry, which the human organism
is based on and is what eventually takes on the identity of an artist. However, we also know that the life
of a work of art is not based on carbon chemistry. How this happens is a mystery, but we know this is
true.

The answer to the question "is it possible that the lesser contains the greater?" is yes, as long as the
lesser is part of a system's circular causality, and the greater is the result of various causes, not just one.

Just as all the species that live within planet Earth's biosphere have a harmonious and functional
role in its maintenance and development, there is also a harmonious purpose for the various different
universes, which we are not yet aware of.

This theorem's first proposition is that the life of this universe is not an end to itself, but has a
harmonious role with respect to all the other universes.

The second proposition is that this universe has specific laws and tasks that are different from
the other universes, and the universe chose these tasks itself, even though it was Life that asked it
to do so.

The specific task of this universe is to create Secondary Beauty, without which Life cannot travel
from one universe to the next.

13
 THIRD THEOREM

The third theorem, the theorem of Cosmo-Art or the theorem of Secondary Beauty, is coherent with
the first and the second theorems (see A.M. "The Ulysseans - The Theorem and the Myth for Travelling
from one Universe to another" published by Solaris Editions of the University of Rome, 2009).

There is primary beauty, which is created by nature, and there is secondary beauty, which is created
by human beings in harmony with the laws of Life.

The first type of beauty is mortal, the second is immortal.

If Life wants to be not only eternal but also immortal, it can only do so if it entrusts to humanity the
goal of creating secondary beauty.

Humans, artists of their own lives and of the life of the universe, have been asked to create a type of
beauty that does not exist in nature and that will never be subject to death or to entropy, nor is it subject
to the laws of gravity that pertain to the space-time of this universe.

This type of beauty is made up of a field of energy that is inextinguishable. It can travel from one
universe to another and we can go with it.

For the creation of this beauty it is necessary that pain exists, it is necessary that death exists, it is
necessary that art exists and it is necessary that wisdom exists (see A.M. "The Ulysseans", Chapter V).

An artist that does not face pain and death cannot create anything that is immortal. But those who
face only pain and not death do not know the secret of art, nor can they create any beauty.

At the same time, only those who are wise will decide to be artists of their lives and not victims,
when they are faced with pain and death (see Charlie in the movie "Scent of a woman"; A.M. "La
nascita della Cosmo-Art: Primo Laboratorio di Cosmo-Art {The Birth of Cosmo-Art: First Cosmo-Art
Laboratory}).

Every silk worm creates a certain amount of silk threads. Then along comes a human being who,
artisan and artist that he is, unites those threads together with those of thousands of other silk worms,
and creates a beautiful garment.

14
 Each single silk worm will never see the completed garment.

But does it think that its life hasn't had any meaning?

Will it refuse to make silk threads?

The silk worm knows nothing about the human being who will come and transform its silk into a
garment or a scarf that ends up beautifully draped around a woman's neck.

We also don't know who will weave the beauty we have created in our lives into something else, nor
do we know what the end result will be. But we can think about it, we can imagine it, and we can hope
as we entrust ourselves to Life's goal.

It depends on us whether we want to remain at the level of intelligence of the silk worm, or whether
we want to reach the level of intelligence of an artist.

If Life entrusts itself to us, can we entrust ourselves to Life?

Without oxygen we cannot breathe and we cannot live. But who ever thinks about the fact that
oxygen was transformed and created, long before the trees did so, by a legion of "insignificant" cells,
cyanobacteria, millions and millions of years ago?

Are we insignificant cells or are we silk worms and artists of life, who first spin the silk and then
weave it, creating immortal beauty?

It is up to us to decide what we want to do. But one thing is certain: Life needs us, and it created this
specific universe, different from all the others, so human beings could be created and evolve to the point
of becoming artists of their lives and artists of the life of the universe.

When S. Hawking in his book "A Brief History of Time" asks : "Why does the universe bother to
live?", he can't find an answer. Cosmo-Art has found an answer that is ingenious, beautiful and elegant,
and if Hawking knew about it he would most certainly like it.

15
 FOURTH THEOREM

Secondary Beauty is the result of a fusion between human and cosmic forces. They are both present
within each human being but the way to fuse them together is found only within the Choral Group SELF.

The Choral Group SELF does not exist unless it is created. For it to be created it is necessary that
the I of two or more persons gradually fuse together, guided by a common goal to create beauty. This is
true for the Choral Group SELF of a couple as well as for the Choral Group SELF of a group.

The fusion of the I with a You and the fusion of the I with Others is the result of a constant action
of human forces. The action of nature and the action of the cosmos alone cannot create this type of
fusion. This is obvious if we look around us.

A note about cosmic forces.

A star does not exist unless it is created. For it to be created, a cloud of hydrogen atoms must
condense around a gravitational center to the point of collapsing. Then, the hydrogen atoms fuse and a
thermonuclear reaction begins.

There are many factors and causes that contribute to the birth of a star. All these factors operate
together towards a single common goal; they operate as a single living organism that is born of a Cosmic
Choral Group SELF.

Scientists (see Lee Smolin) say that elliptical galaxies are created from the fusion of two spiral
galaxies. An elliptical galaxy can give rise to a great black hole that is fed by the mass of the stars that
fall into it. Within this black hole a new universe can be formed.

Two galaxies that fuse together create an immense cosmic force that originates from the Choral
SELF of the Cosmos.

The ways that cosmic forces interact with human forces is still unknown to us, and our intuition can
only grasp a few of them.

16
 The beauty that artists create is also the result of a Choral Group SELF, even though it is usually
attributed only to the artist that gave it its final shape.

When we read, however, the analyses of the art critics, we discover another truth, we learn that
there were many other factors that concurred to generate, all together, a work of art.

One of many possible examples: the Sistine Chapel would have never existed if it hadn't been for
the stubborn insistence of Pope Julius II, who wanted it so bad that he sent his guards after Michelangelo
to bring him back after he had run away to Tuscany.

We common mortals know how cosmic forces fuse with human forces only through astrology,
which explains how planets and constellations influence our ways of being and of acting.

But astrophysics is becoming ever more understandable to many, and from this discipline we can
learn many things that are no longer the exclusive knowledge of scientists.

According to Cosmo-Art, cosmic forces are already acting along with human forces from as early as
intrauterine life. The type of pain that the Fetal I is struck with when it experiences a trauma is a cosmic
force; the temporary way that the Fetal I faces it, by using defensive and offensive mechanisms so it
doesn't succumb to it and die, is a human one.

Nevertheless, it is clear to an ever growing number of people that life based only on the type of
security offered by our defensive and offensive strategies means that we are only surviving, not living. It
is also becoming ever more clear that no matter what, sooner or later life forces us to abandon these
mechanisms. When this happens, we have two possibilities: either we find radical, creative solutions to
our traumas, or else, in one way or another, they will destroy us.

In a group of Existential Personalistic Anthropology or of Cosmo-Art, one can learn the method for
creating a Choral Group SELF, which is like a furnace for human and cosmic energies put together.
Here one can learn how to fuse them together and create secondary beauty.

In these groups one can also learn how to create a bridge between intrauterine life and intracosmic
life, and from there on to ultracosmic life. An infinite number of energies pass across such a bridge, and
they can radically transform a human life.

In summary:

17
 Since there are many universes, it is necessary to have an immortal life that can travel from one
universe to the next.

Some dream of obtaining an immortal biological life, but Cosmo-Art dreams of an immortal life
that pertains to secondary beauty.

Secondary beauty can be created by a Choral Group SELF and by the organismic principle, and not
by a single Personal SELF alone.

The I must therefore create a Choral Group SELF together with others that is the synthesis of two
(an I and a You) or more (an I and Others) people.

Every synthesis produces a quantum of secondary beauty. A complexity of quantums of beauty

produces the immortal life of secondary beauty.

These syntheses are created with the energy of wisdom, of pain and of art, which defines the goal
and gives it its final shape.

Synthesis is fusion. Fusion is the result of a complexity of causes that all work together according to
the guidelines of the organismic principle.

In organisms, the force that wins over repulsion is its purpose.

The force that assures continuity of attraction is love.

Primary beauty is created by nature; secondary beauty is created by a life that continually
transforms itself by means of fusion.

Fusion requires that the parts that must fuse macerate, and there can be no maceration if there is not
pain.

Pain is the cosmic force that can macerate the I , its absolutism and its drive for power, so it
becomes capable of fusing with another.

The Artistic I , both on an individual and a group level, knows how and when the fusion must take
place, so that its result is beauty, and not madness or death.

The Cosmic I, without the help of the individual and group Artistic I, cannot create any type of
immortal beauty.

18
 FIFTH THEOREM

All of the universes together make up a living system. Every system contains a network of
subsystems and of emergent properties that emerge only as the result of the action of many causes, fused
together, that all belong to the whole system.

An emergent property never belongs to the subsystem alone, it belongs to the totality of the whole
system.

A system is alive if it is endowed with intelligence, freedom and creativity, however great or small
the presence of these three conjoined factors may be at any time within the system itself.

A system is made up of sub-systems. (The whole is composed of many parts: the whole of the parts
is greater than the sum of its parts).

If a subsystem is living, then the whole system must necessarily be living¸ because the life of the
subsystem is an emergent property (see F. Capra: "The Web of Life") that is the result of the circular
causality of the whole system. If human beings are alive, then the universe must necessarily be a living
being as well.

If the planet Earth is a living being (see the Gaia Theory of James Lovelock), the solar system is
also alive, and, moving on, the system of the Milky Way galaxy is living, this universe is a living system
and the whole of all the universes is a living system. This is because the whole as a system is endowed
with intelligence, freedom and creativity that already exist, and that are being and are becoming.

A biological organism (human beings, animals, plants or bacteria) is alive because it is a subsystem
that is part of a living system, in this case planet Earth's biosphere, which is endowed with intelligence,
freedom and creativity.

A biological organism becomes a cadaver when it loses the energy field that is made up of
intelligence, freedom and creativity , that interact together as a whole throughout the entire system.

If this energy field breaks down or dissolves, the life breaks down or dissolves.

19
 If a virus now resists certain drugs whereas before it was overcome by them, it means that it is
endowed with intelligence and thus it is capable of learning, with freedom that allows it to choose which
defensive mechanisms to use, and with creativity, because it creates a new structure it didn't have before,
and that now allows it to resist the drug.

If a system is living, it is endowed with life, and, therefore, the concept of life cannot be referred
only to biological life, because the whole of the universes cannot be reduced to only biological life, nor
can a galactic or a solar system be reduced to only biological life.

In our solar system, biological life is only one of the "emergent properties" that are potentially
contained within the system. We can deduce from this that it is a grave error to reduce the concept of life
to biological life alone.

Emergent properties belong to the system and not to the single parts that it is made up of, therefore
they cannot emerge except as a result of the whole system.

The properties of water are not contained in the properties of hydrogen or oxygen taken separately.

But if hydrogen and oxygen fuse with the proper quantities (two parts of hydrogen with one part
oxygen), water is created: then, and only then, do the properties of water emerge.

On a planetary scale we could say that biological life is only one of the "emergent properties" of
planet Earth.

Some other emergent and self-creating properties that have already appeared on Earth are:
language, culture, art and civilization. These are all forms of non-biological life that are self-created and
self-evolving, because they are part of the flow of circular causes of the whole system.

The spiritual life of a populace is also a form of emergent life, just as its cultural life is.

Looking at it in another way, we could also say that cultural and spiritual life are two emergent
properties of biological life, properties that have emerged over millions of years.

Here a question arises: couldn't we discover one day that a form of immortal life is also one of the
possible emergent properties of biological life?

The universe we belong to has been evolving for billions of years.

It took time before the galaxies appeared, which are an emergent property of the universe.

20
 It took time before the solar system appeared, which is also most certainly an emergent property of
the Milky Way galaxy.

It took some time, but then planet Earth appeared, an emergent property of this solar system.

It took time, but then biological life appeared, an emergent property of planet Earth.

It will take some time, but why couldn't an immortal form of human life that is not biological appear
as an emergent property of biological life?

Our universe is a subsystem of the whole of all the universes.

The heart, like the brain, the liver and the intestines, are subsystems of the system that makes up the
whole human organism.

The whole of these subsystems form a network that make life capable of carrying out specific tasks
that go beyond biological life: creating culture, art, and beauty.

Our universe has a specific task that one day will connect with those of the other universes.

Cosmo-Art asserts that this specific task is the creation of secondary beauty, a type of immortal
beauty that is an emergent property of biological life, fused together with other causes.

Looking at only this universe, we can imagine a cascade of emergent properties that arise from a
preceding emergent property, no longer following the principle of cause and effect according to linear
causality, but following the principle of circular causality. This means that when the specific energies of
many causes are put together, a super energy is created that is capable of producing effects that an
isolated cause arising from the others never would have been able to produce.

We can deduce that this is what happens in group work in Existential Personalistic Anthropology
and Cosmo-Art, when a Choral Group SELF is created.

Many individuals united together create a synergy of special forces. This synergy of special forces
is like a superforce, which, once created, penetrates each individual and produces transformations that
are emergent properties of the individual, but that the individual alone would never have been able to
create.

21
 SIXTH THEOREM

Intelligence, freedom and creativity are the fundamental building blocks of Life.

Truth, love and beauty are building blocks that are added later.

Life comes before anything else and it comes before the living system of the whole of all the
universes put together.

It even comes before the existence of the SELF, both the personal and the cosmic one.

Life is and it is becoming and it knows the art of fusing death with life, and the art of fusing being
with becoming to create, in time, what it cannot get from eternity: a life form that is both eternal and
immortal.

This is because Life is eternal as it is, but it is not yet immortal.

We don't know and we may never know what the true essence of Life is, but one thing we do know
for certain: it is endowed with intelligence, freedom and creativity. We also know that every living being
coming from Life is a being that is also endowed with intelligence, freedom and creativity.

Now, every living being, because it is living, has both being and becoming within it.

Therefore we can also deduce that Life is and is becoming; it has within itself both being and
becoming. In many of its forms Life is subject to death, but, then, in the course of history, it invents new
life forms that face death and overcome it forever. For this reason its being and its becoming become
eternal and immortal.

Aristotle's God is but is not becoming, it is immobile and immutable; therefore it is not a Living
being.

In the same manner, human beings who are but who are not becoming, that is, who never change
and never transform themselves because they stay rigidly fixated in the old ways of thinking they were
born with, and in their old behaviors they have always identified with, are shadows. They are not living
beings, even though they may think they are.

22
 To reconcile being and becoming is an art, a high form of art, the art of Life; Aristotle's God does
not posses this art and many human beings who have forged themselves in the image of this God know
nothing of this art. Therefore, they know nothing about Life.

They possess their lives like a shadow possesses a life, but they will never know anything about the
fullness and beauty of Life, just as a shadow knows nothing about such fullness and beauty.

The wise Chinese are masters of the art of change and transformation, and they dispensed their art
and wisdom in their immortal book of the "I Ching".

Sophia-Art and Cosmo-Art are a new way of conjugating art and wisdom and of making being and
becoming exist together in a form of immortal life. This form is secondary beauty, a beauty that never
dies.

A tree is and is becoming, but then, one day, it will die.

The human body is and is becoming and then, one day, it will die.

A star is and is becoming but then, one day, it too will die.

And not only the stars, but also the galaxies and the universe that contains them all will, one day,
die.

A work of art is and is becoming, but, by its very nature, it will never die. This is the great power of
art, which is immensely superior to the power of nature.

A life that is lived both individually and within a choral group as a work of art creates secondary
beauty that will never die. The power of art and of wisdom, fused together, is a power that is even
greater than that of art alone.

Use your own imagination to follow the path of a work of art throughout history (Leonardo da
Vinci's The Last Supper, for example?), and then use your imagination, if you can, to imagine the future
paths of a life that has been lived as a work of art. Dante Alighieri will no longer be enough for you, nor
will the writers of science fiction.

23
 The Eastern way of thinking that affirms that only being is and becoming is pure illusion, is not a
way of thinking that can be of much help to Sophia-Art and Cosmo-Art. Eastern thought has two grave
weaknesses. First of all, it solves the problem of opposites by eliminating one of the opposites. By doing
so, it eliminates in one fell swoop the art of reconciliation of opposites and the mystery of Life.

Secondly, it eliminates the meaning of pain and its importance throughout history, both on an
individual and a societal level, because according to it, pain is also an illusion. It also eliminates death
and its important and indispensable significance which is of service to Life, because also death is
illusion. And last but not least, it eliminates the individual as well, because it, too, is an illusion, and it
eliminates the immense value of individual artistic creation. If the individual is a part of the SELF and
its destiny is to become annulled into the SELF like a drop of water is annulled when it meets the sea,
then the SELF exists, but the individual no longer does. The sea exists, but the drop exists no longer.

History ceases to exist and at this point it becomes incomprehensible as to why we humans are here
and keep on suffering. This is immensely cruel on the part of the SELF and this was also the immense
poverty of India, until Gandhi came along and restored hope and dignity to the pariahs; hope, dignity
and creativity to the individual and to its power to change history and the life of the universe, to the life
of Life itself and of the SELF as well.

Line by line text and commentary:

Intelligence, freedom and creativity are the fundamental building blocks of Life.

Truth, love and beauty are building blocks that are added later.

Commentary:

The Energy that transforms itself into matter, and the matter that transforms itself into energy
possess intelligence, freedom and creativity. Scientists know that the atom possesses intelligence,
freedom and creativity, just as a virus and a spore do.

Human beings have today reached the power to add new intelligence, new freedom and new
creativity to energy and matter.

Humanity has always had the power to add new building blocks to the fundamental ones of life,
such as truth, freedom, love and beauty. These are among some of the most important values that human
beings can add to their lives.

24
 Whatever human beings add to their lives they also add to Life. Among all living forms only human
beings can add values to Life. The other life forms can only add intelligence, freedom and creativity. In
other words, they can add building blocks, but not values, and this is what makes the difference between
the human species and other species.

Life comes before anything else and it comes before the living system of the whole of all the
universes put together.

Commentary:

Just as dawn comes before day and dusk comes before night, Life comes before every other thing
and comes before the whole of all the universes.

It is the flow of life that creates the universes and everything that exists within them.

It even comes before the existence of the SELF,

both the personal and the cosmic one.

Commentary:

We can really only stammer about the existence of the Personal SELF and Cosmic SELF, but we do
know that they exist and that they guide human life along its pathway. Both of them are creations of Life
and therefore we say that Life comes before either one.

Life is and it is becoming and it knows the art of fusing death with life, and the art of fusing being
with becoming to create, in time, what it can not get from eternity: a life form that is both eternal and
immortal.

Commentary:

25
 Being and becoming belong to Life, just as death and life do, sometimes separately and sometimes
fused and conjoined as a result of the art of the fusion of two or more opposites. Therefore, we affirm
that both opposites themselves and the art of fusing them and extracting from them a new life form,
superior to the one that existed before the fusion, belong to Life as well.

If we look at Life only as being it is eternal, but if we look at it only as becoming, it is mortal. We
already learned this from Parmenides and Heraclitus. But if, instead, we look at it as a fusion of being
and becoming, it can be both eternal and immortal.

We can find one example of the fusion of being and becoming in our daily lives in what happens
when we ride a bicycle. There is one moment in which the bicycle is immobile, and another in which the
bicycle is moving. Movement is the result of the synthesis of three opposites: stability, movement and
the balance between stability and movement.

It is not easy for us to understand how death and life can be fused together and remain balanced, but
this is what happens. We can see it in works of art, if only we reflect carefully on the type of life that
works of art possess, which is a type of life that is different from every other type of life we know.

Because Life is eternal as it is, but it is not yet immortal.

Commentary:

Life is like a river that runs continuously, passing constantly from one form of life to another,
through the cycle of death and rebirth. Many lives are born and many lives die. The forms disappear and
the life remains.

We call the ability of life to constantly flow in time, creating the time within which to flow, eternity.

If time ends, life ends with it.

We call the ability to stop time, by stopping the cycle of death and rebirth, and at the same time the
ability to create time and condense the time of all times in one same, single life form, that is both being
and becoming, immortality. This is what happens by antonomasia in every single work of art that is
capable of creating immortal beauty.

26
 When Life that is primary beauty will create first a form of life that is secondary beauty, creating a
fusion between cosmic and human forces, then life will be both eternal and immortal within that single
form.

When this happens within a single human life and within many human lives fused together, then
Life will be both eternal and immortal.

27
 SEVENTH THEOREM

Life is not the Supreme Being. Life is not God.

God is omnipotent and perfect.

Life is potent and imperfect.

God creates instantly.

Life takes millions and billions of years to complete its creations.

God is eternal and immortal.

Life is eternal but it is mortal, and without death it would not know how to create new lives.

It is mortal because it is subject to the continual cycle of death-rebirth. All life forms that it creates
are subject to death, and all of them must continually pass through death to renew themselves.

Life that is mortal continually tends towards immortality, and it most certainly will accomplish it
sooner or later.

God is absolute beauty and no one can add something else to his beauty.

Life is beautiful but it doesn't have secondary beauty, immortal beauty. It needs us to accomplish it.

God doesn't need anyone.

For Life we are precious beings, for God we are "useless servants".

God that is pure perfection does not have to tend to perfection.

Life that is imperfect, tends continuously towards perfection. It often reaches it, but it never stops. It
always tends towards an ever greater perfection.

God, that is the most perfect being, often reveals himself to be an unjust being, whom, in every
epoch, invents new forms of injustice. No one will ever see the end of injustice on Earth.

28
 Life that is imperfect does not care about justice and injustice. Its goal is to reach the perfection of
art, and the goal of art is to create Beauty that does not yet exist.

It makes no sense to ask whether a work of art is just or unjust.

A work of art proposes its own truth, its freedom and its love, which is universal and inexhaustible.
It never imposes its will and it does not decide who is just or who is unjust, nor does it decide who must
go to hell and who must go to heaven.

The titanic effort of Life to create for itself and for everyone a form of life that is immortal is a
universal effort that all living and non-living beings are involved in, whether they are just or unjust.

Creating a form of life that is immortal is the same thing as creating a form of beauty that, once
created, is no longer subject to death.

Beauty that is no longer subject to death has within itself an inexhaustible energy that keeps it
constantly alive, and spreads around it more vital energy that is also immortal.

There are many that fight for justice, but how many fight for Beauty?

Life creates, in time, the Cosmic SELF and the Personal SELF. These have something that is both
an ally and an adversary: humanity.

Human beings create and human beings destroy, but, in the end, it is always Life that wins, and that
reaches the goals it has set for itself for eternity.

Human hope is based on this certainty, and this is the thread that connects the generations of
yesterday with the generations of today and tomorrow.

This is the nail that can hold up the frame that contains the individual and choral group work of art
created by those who are artists of their own lives and of the life of the universe.

The wall it hangs on is no longer vertical, it is transversal. It is mobile, and not immobile like
Aristotle's God.

29
 For those who are lazy, this change causes fear and disorientation, but for the audacious this is food
that nourishes their dreams and their visions.

SECOND FINAL CONSIDERATION

What are the Cosmo-Art Theorems good for?

Human life is like a canvas painted by a painter.

Every painting must be contained within a frame, and every frame needs a wall and a nail in the
wall it can be hung on. Throughout human history there has never been a populace or a civilization that
has not created a frame and a nail so it can hang its own painting up on the wall.

But at every turn of history it often happens that the frame is destroyed, the wall falls down and the
nail breaks. Human beings lose the meaning of life and while many destroy themselves miserably, others
search without pause for a frame they can create and for a wall that can hold up their painting and their
life.

The search for a new cosmological viewpoint is essential when creating a new frame, a new nail
and a new wall.

This is what I have tried to do with my work on the Cosmo-Art Theorems.

30
 CHAPTER II

The Cosmo-Art Axioms

31
 AXIOM N. 1

There is no creation without imagination.

Human life is an emergent property of biological life, that has created itself over millions and
millions of years.
It was created because someone, at some point during planet Earth's history, first imagined it, then
they thought about it and then they realized it.
It was possible to create it, because during the first two billion years that the terrestrial crust existed,
billions and billions of bacteria imagined and created photosynthesis, the ability to have a genetic code,
the ability to breathe, the ability to move, the ability to come together to form multi-cellular organisms,
etc., etc.. This is just to name a few of the most extraordinary inventions that came before human beings
appeared, and before the biosphere formed.
Without imagination there is no creation nor can there be, and already bacteria were endowed with
imagination.
Bacteria imagine, think and create.
Humans imagined for centuries the ability to fly, and now we can fly.
Science fiction is the result of human imagination, and it was most certainly very helpful towards
the creation of space flight, both those that are now possible and the ones that will be possible in the
future. All human inventions arise from imagination.
The same thing is true if now, with the Cosmo-Art myth, we imagine that it is possible to create an
immortal life for humanity, something that has been imagined by humanity in thousands of different
ways. If we do this, we are most certainly continuing to create the groundwork so that one day
immortality can come forth as an emergent property of human life.
Who was it that first imagined human beings? There was not just one cause, but many causes fused
together over a very long period of time.
Perhaps it was already the eukaryotic cells to do so, when they decided to make multi-cellular life
emerge from unicellular life.
Whomever it was that imagined the existence of God or the existence of karma or the existence of
the Tao, created the concept of God, the concept of karma and the concept of Path. Then they created a

32
belief in one or the other, and without these beliefs the emergent property of humanity's moral life
would not have been created.
Now that this moral life is going through a great crisis in the West, we must imagine something
different so we can recreate it, and give it a completely new definition that is broader than the previous
one.
Cosmo-Art has imagined the possibility to be able to create secondary beauty and the immortality
that this type of beauty contains.
It has also imagined the plurality of worlds, which is something that Giordano Bruno and many
others have already imagined.
What is specific to Cosmo-Art is the possibility for human beings to travel from one universe to
another, infinitely, once the living synthesis of four fundamental values that are opposites has been
created. These values are: truth, freedom, love and beauty.
The problem that Cosmo-Art poses is this: is it possible that human beings have fewer capablities
than bacteria? Then we must stimulate our imagination just like they did, and even more so than they
did. Because without imagination, there is no creation.

33
 AXIOM N. 2

Art is unlimited and continuous progress.

Humanity has always been divided into two parties: conservatives and progressives.
Human life has always been developed by being preserved in the uterus and by being pushed out of
the uterus, in a continuous progression.
Religion has always been conservative and not progressive.
Science has always had supporters who are conservative and supporters who are progressive.
Art, by its very nature, has always been progressive, but it often encounters determined opposition
along its way when it proposes a new qualitative leap forward.

Cosmo-Art is an emergent property of art and of the human being's artistic dimension, and as such it
is infinite progress.
Cosmo-Art, by its very nature, requires that human beings completely leave the maternal womb
and the cosmic womb. This is not possible without a dialectical artistic journey that entails many deaths
and rebirths within every human life.
The birth of a human being from any uterus is a continual progression and it cannot be completed
with only biological birth, because every time we lose one uterus we immediately create another one.
We must undergo continuous births, and the Fetal I¸ which is always present and active within the
Adult I¸ tenaciously opposes the goal of the Adult I to be born, to grow and to evolve.
This is a truth that we must always keep in mind.
Cosmo-Art and also Sophia-Art are existential arts.
The goal of Sophia-Art is to help people become artists of their lives.
The goal of Cosmo-Art is to help people become artists of the life of the universe.
Sophia-Art creates ecstatic beauty. Cosmo-Art creates secondary beauty.
Just as at one time the martial arts were developed in the Orient and today they are widely diffused
in the West as well, we now want to imagine that the time has come to affirm the existential arts and to
begin spreading them in the East and in the West.
This is already happening in India, in Russia and in the Baltic Countries thanks to the work of the
IPAE (Istituto di Psicoterapia Analitica Esistenziale - Institute of Existential Analytical Psychotherapy)

34
in Ascoli Piceno and its director Gabriella Sorgi, and it is happening in Europe thanks to the work of the
SUR Institutes and of the Cosmo-Art Group at Rome's IAPE (Istituto di Antropologia Personalistica
Esistenziale - Institute of Existential Personalistic Anthropology).
Cosmo-Art is not a science and it is not a religion, it is an artistic movement that is open to anyone
who wishes to be part of it.

35
 AXIOM N. 3

Every birth that the I undergoes has many different dimensions. The highest dimension is the one
that brings us to the creation of secondary beauty.

Homer, the author of the Odyssey, knows how painful it is to be born and to be born completely.
This is why he imagined his hero Ulysses, almost completely different from the one found in the
Iliad, and he called him "the man of a thousand woes" many times throughout the poem.
When Ulysses faces new pain it is a new death and a new birth that he is facing.
Every new birth has at least three dimensions:
1) it is a birth from the maternal womb
2) it is a birth of the Adult I from the Fetal I
3) it is a birth from the intracosmic uterus towards an ultracosmic world, by means of the energy
field that is secondary beauty.
The Odyssey is a cult book for Cosmo-Art and it must be read not only as a poem that narrates the
adventurous return of Ulysses to Ithaca (see A.M.: Hypotheses on Ulysses). It must instead be read as a
book of wisdom that holds within it treasures of wisdom equal to those written by the Hindu, Buddhist
and Chinese poets in their sacred poems, written in more or less the same epoch (VII Century B.C.E.).
The pact for beauty, the pact that brought the Achaeans to Troy, was a pact for primary beauty.
Troy was taken by storm and Helen was re-conquered, after the blood of many lives was shed.
Ulysses made another pact after Troy fell, urged on by Athena and Zeus, the pact of secondary
beauty. This is what brought him back to Ithaca, the island of secondary beauty, after a long, tormented
odyssey, where it is not the blood that is shed that is important, but rather what counts is the I's
continuous transmutation through death and rebirth.
There is a huge difference between primary and secondary beauty.
Helen represents primary beauty, the type of beauty that is subject to the damage of time and of
physical death.
Penelope represents secondary beauty, the type of beauty that is no longer subject to death and is
the result of the fusion of yin and yang.

36
 Primary beauty is an emergent property of nature and of cosmic life (a beautiful face, a beautiful
panorama, a beautiful sunset, the starry sky, etc. ..); secondary beauty is an emergent property of human
life and cosmic life fused together.
The creation of this fusion was Ulysses' true task, and this fusion is not possible without going
through a thousand woes.
The Fifth Theorem states that an emergent property is always the result of a network of subsystems
that fuse together to form a greater system.
An emergent property in itself belongs to the greater system, and not to any one of the subsystems
taken singularly.
Secondary beauty can emerge from a Choral Group SELF but it never will be able to emerge from a
Personal SELF that does not fuse with other Personal SELVES to create a Choral Group SELF together.

37
 AXIOM N. 4

Not every immortality is happiness.

In the wake of Plato, the Christian and the Muslim religions believe that the soul is immortal, but to
guarantee their believers a happy immortality they associated moral perfection with immortality.
In both the East and the West, humanity has no chance to happily enjoy immortality without
searching for moral perfection.
The search for artistic perfection often assures artists an immortal life, but it does not guarantee
them a happy immortality. This is because their immortality belongs to the works in which the I of the
artist lives. This I, however, enjoys no happiness after death. It is the I of the works' audiences that has
some enjoyment.
Cosmo-Art's ambition is to reach a type of immortality based on the creation of secondary beauty,
through a new type of artistic perfection. Also, it wants that every I that incarnates in first a Choral
Group SELF and then in the energy field that is specific to the secondary beauty produced by the Choral
Group SELF, can experience the enjoyment of this beauty.
Since secondary beauty is immortal and it lives forever, and the I has become one with it, this
beauty can contemplate itself forever, and enjoy itself fully.
The type of artistic perfection that Cosmo-Art strives for is made up of the synthesis of
contributions coming from the most different types of perfection that have been accomplished by
humanity up until this time, but which now are stripped of their traditional definitions. Their final goals
are transformed as well.
We are no longer interested in a linear type of moral perfection, where, according to traditional
criteria, there is no room for the presence of evil, whether it be small or great or only imagined, or only
thought of and acted upon much later.
This type of perfection created the Saints, but it also created an infinite number of alienated beings
and hypocrites, who, just because they think they are perfect, this makes it enough for them to pretend to
be so.
We instead want a type of perfection that is dialectical¸ which includes the acceptance of the
presence of good and evil during every human being's journey, and of the conflict that arises between
them. Not to eliminate them, but to transform them, and create a synthesis between them.

38
 The values we prefer are especially four: Truth, Freedom, Love and Beauty. These values, when
looked at in pairs, are opposites, even though very few people have realized this up until now. The
attempt to create a synthesis between each of these pairs of values is new, and this synthesis is a work of
art that requires tenacity, courage, creativity and a dialectical approach that is not admissible to the
expectation of moral perfection that we have known up until today.
From the search for alchemical perfection we learned that it is necessary to continuously transmute
the I, but in Cosmo-Art this transmutation is now entrusted only to an adherence to the laws of life and
to an attentive listening to the Personal SELF and the Choral Group SELF, rather than to the alchemical
criteria that only a few chosen adepts were allowed to learn.
From the systematic and cooperative way with which Nature and the Cosmos search for perfection,
we learned that it is necessary to look for a choral group perfection. This type of choral perfection
requires the creation of a single living organism, which is made up of parts that before were unknown to
each other, and that then become all connected to each other by means of a complex, continual circular
causality.
Summing up, the type of artistic perfection that Cosmo-Art searches for is made up of a synthesis of
various types of perfection all fused together. This is a dynamic, not static, type of perfection; it is
perfection that together is and together is becoming.
It is a synthesis of types of moral perfection (because it includes a search for values that are
opposites: love, freedom, truth and beauty), together with a synthesis of alchemical perfection
(because it requires the continual transmutation of the I, beginning from the embryonic or Fetal I), a
synthesis of artistic perfection (because it requires the creation of a work of art, such as life as a
work of art and the creation of secondary beauty¸ and art requires perfection), a synthesis of choral
group perfection (because it requires the creation of a single living organism, made up of people that
were hitherto unknown to each other), and a synthesis of natural perfection¸ of human perfection and
of cosmic perfection, which will encourage the development of human potential that we are not yet
aware of and that will be revealed only in the future.

This synthesis, that is a network of syntheses of various systems, has never been proposed before by
anyone, and if we look at it closely we can see that it is indeed very arduous. It is not a goal that any
individual can reach alone.

39
 What do we mean when we talk about "perfection"?
For Occidental religions, perfection is a state of the soul, and to reach it we must reach the complete
purification of the soul of every type of culpability, great or small. For the Oriental religions, perfection
consists of the complete detachment from the Ego and from the mind and from the presence of any type
of Karma that dirties the soul or makes it impure. For the religions, the soul is immortal by its very
nature and we have one either because God created it, or because it has existed as a monad since the
beginning of time.
For Buddhism, neither God nor the soul exist, but for many Buddhists this last question is very
controversial. Buddhism arose in 600 B.C.E., and over the course of the millennia, it has been
interpreted by its followers in many different ways. Perfection consists in reaching Nirvana or
Illumination.
For alchemists, perfection consists in knowing how to pass through all the states that are necessary
to reach the creation of the opus (= the transformation of lead into gold), from the black stage to the
white one, and from there on to the red (nigredo, albedo, rubedo).
The coniunctio oppositorum and the mystical wedding between the king and queen are other ways
of describing the accomplishment of alchemical perfection.

For artists, perfection means knowing how to reach a complete harmony of parts in their works: to
know how to enclose the universal in the individual; to know how to transmute the essence and the
existence of things; to know how to create a form of life that does not exist in nature, a form of life to be
incarnated in the work of art, which, once incarnated, is no longer subject to death, unlike every other
form of life that exists on this planet and in this universe.

For nature, we could say that perfection consists of the ability to assemble the most disparate things
and to make them capable of completely cooperating, so they can create living organisms that are able to
evolve and advance towards an ever greater complexity.

For Cosmo-Art, perfection consists of the ability of the I to know how to create the synthesis of
opposites in its own life, as they present themselves; of the ability to create a fusion of values that are
opposites and in this manner create an immortal soul; of the ability of the I to know how to completely

40
participate in a dialectical process, after it has freed itself of the infernal cage of the mind that knows
only linear processes.
It consists of the ability of the I to know how to transmute its own essence and existence, bringing it
from an inferior identity to a superior one, from a known identity to an unknown one, following the
indications of the SELF and of the laws of life to arrive at creating secondary beauty, the type of beauty
that never dies.

According to Cosmo-Art, perfection is not something to tend towards but rather is a series of events
we can create. These are transformative events that are the result of a long journey and can, if the
conditions are right, come about in a single instant and in a completely unpredictable way. This occurs
through action that does not have a linear causality, but rather has a circular causality, and is not from
one single cause but from a plurality of causes.
Sometimes one single event is enough and sometimes many events are necessary, one every time
that life presents us with a crossroads and we must know how to make the right choice.

Where is happiness in this new perspective?

Life enjoys its creation while it is creating it.
Artists enjoy their creations while they are bringing them forth.

Cosmo-Artists enjoy the life they create when they create secondary beauty and they incarnate in
this new life form that is both eternal and immortal. This enjoyment is both choral and individual at the
same time; it is present in the time frame of this universe and also goes beyond it, when it travels from
one universe to the next and passes into the time frame of other universes.

Secondary beauty is a field of energy that is created by two or more subjects fused together (the I-
SELF couple, an I-You couple or the I-Others of a group). Once it is created, it lives forever and enjoys
forever the new life it possesses, and the subjects that created it live within it forever, and enjoy it as
well.
The I-You couple is not only the couple created by a man and a woman, it can also be the couple
formed by two people who fuse together through friendship as a decision: see the characters Slide and
Charlie in the movie "Scent of a Woman" , Andy and Red in "The Shawshank Redemption", Forrester

41
and Jamal in "Finding Forrester", and the Cosmo-Artistic lectures on these films published in the book
“I Laboratori Corali della Cosmo-Art” {The Cosmo-Art Choral Group Laboratories}, edition Sophia
University of Rome, 2006

42
 AXIOM N. 5

There can be right aims contained in wrong modalities.

Throughout the passage of time, many ways in which humanity has imagined it could reach
immortality have proved themselves wrong (for example the way in which the Pharaohs imagined their
immortal life).
Nevertheless, those that invented them were not wrong in one aspect: in keeping the search for
immortality alive within humanity.

The same thing could happen for the way to reach immortality that Cosmo-Art proposes: it could be
found to be wrong.
At this time, Cosmo-Art is a myth to be created, and is not an ascertained scientific truth.

Nevertheless, some of the things that Cosmo-Art proposes will never be wrong:
a) the mental open-mindedness towards infinite horizons yet to be imagined;
b) the evolutionary passage from art to Cosmo-Art and the new meaning given to art;
c) the preference given to certain values rather than to others, and especially to beauty, which is
the value that fuses together all the others and makes them a whole;
d) the fact that it has given a meaning to pain that has never been offered before;
e) the fact that it has given a new purpose to the formation of the social I , the creation of a single
living organism that is accomplished through the cooperation and the unification of many
individuals who hitherto did not know each other;
f) the fact that it has given faith in the existence of their own creative artistic power to all human
beings (that is no longer the exclusive prerogative of professional artists);
g) the fact that it has inserted between the I and the Cosmos circular causality as the means for
the evolution of them both;
h) the fact that it has created a new cosmological vision and a new framework in which to place
human life;
i) the fact that it has created a bridge between intrauterine life, intracosmic life and ultracosmic
life;

43
 j) the fact that it has given humanity a role of co-creator, together with the Universe, of a life
form that without humanity the Universe cannot create.

44
 AXIOM N. 6

When am I born? ∗

LIFE has existed forever, because if something exists nothingness can't ever have existed, and it
will continue to exist forever due to the principle of circular causality.
LIFE produces energy that condenses into matter, and matter that transforms into energy, in a
continuous, unstoppable cycle that is also based on the principle of circular causality.
LIFE is like a river that flows incessantly. A river is generated through the circular causality that
brings water to the sea and from the sea brings it up to the clouds and from the clouds brings it back to
the river. The quantity of water found on Earth has always been the same. As far as I know, if we think
of the glaciers as water, the quantity of water has never increased nor decreased.
Infinite forms of life develop within the river.
Every form of life is an emergent property of LIFE.
I am a form of life, therefore I am also an emergent property of LIFE, and as such, I have been
contained in LIFE forever.
The fact that I appeared in my specific form during a certain moment of the history of LIFE takes
nothing away from my eternal origins.

Snow originates from the water vapor that is condensed into clouds.
Snow is an emergent property of water.
Water originates from a composition of hydrogen and oxygen.
Hydrogen was formed right after the Big Bang; oxygen, instead, came forth later on.
There is not one snowflake that is identical to another.
Every crystal of snow has a unique, unrepeatable shape. An American photographer named Bentley
took pictures of more than six thousand snowflakes over fifty years, and they were all different from
each other.
Scientists study what laws govern this phenomenon, but they remain a deep mystery.

∗
Here we are referring not to the I of the author, but to anyone's I.

45
 Every human being is unique and unrepeatable. Just as a snowflake is contained in its unique,
extraordinary form within the potential of water, every human being is contained in its own unique,
extraordinary form within the potential of LIFE.
Our universe, scientists say, has existed for approximately 15 billion years, and they also say that it
was once contained as an emergent property within the singularity that then exploded with the Big Bang.
I am part of this history of billions of years.
The universe is part of an even greater history, and so am I along with it.

46
 AXIOM N. 7

When do I die?

Every snowflake melts under the rays of the sun and turns back into water.
Water goes back into the continual cycle of matter that becomes energy and energy that condenses
into matter.
Water goes back into the cycle of LIFE without having to make any effort at all.

But if someone photographs a snowflake before it melts, that snowflake keeps on living on a
celluloid or digital support.
This doesn't happen unless someone makes the effort to prepare everything necessary for
photographing a snowflake.
Can you imagine how much effort it takes to isolate one snowflake and then take a picture of it?

Every crystal is made of matter and energy. Its matter is water. Its energy is the shape of the crystal;
and, it is the form that the crystal created.

Every human body that becomes a cadaver dissolves, and goes back into the cycle of biological life,
without having to make any effort at all.

But a human being is not made up of just a body.

In the body there is matter that is made up of atoms, and there is energy made up of sugars. This
matter and this energy are what dissolve in the biological cycle at death.
And there is also a particular energy that is the form of the I that is inherent to every single body,
and that is the form created by that specific I and by that specific body.

This is where the various religions invent all kinds of things to say in their own way what this form
is, and whether this form is ephemeral or immortal.
The religions that say the form is immortal and is called the soul are those that have been most
popular throughout history.

47
 It is always nice to know that we have an immortal soul, whether it is destined to go to heaven or to
hell, because this means that once I am born I will never die.

According to Cosmo-Art, it is better to call the form the I , and the I is either ephemeral or
immortal, depending on whether the I accepts to go to work, together with a Choral Group SELF, to
create an immortal soul.
At birth, the I is endowed with a mortal soul (vegetative soul, sensitive soul, rational soul) but it is
also endowed with creative energy that can, day after day, transform its mortal soul into an immortal
one; a soul whose essence is made up of primary beauty transformed into secondary beauty, a beauty
that never dies.

We are like painters and each of us receive a canvas. This canvas, in and of itself, is banal and
mortal. There are painters who know how to transform this canvas into an immortal work of art (and no
one thinks any longer about the canvas that lies below the painting) and there are painters that don't
know how to paint. Instead of painting, they only manage to dirty the canvas, and, logically, such a
canvas will never become immortal. The canvas that was supposed to be used to create beauty has
become a shroud that will wrap a cadaver.

This concept of a soul that, by winning over death, becomes immortal, was very carefully explored
during the 1st Cosmo-Art Laboratory, where we worked with the help of the movie "Scent of a woman"
by the director Martin Brest.

When do I die?
If I, together with a Choral Group SELF, create secondary beauty, I will never die. If I don't
create secondary beauty, my I will dissolve along with my body.

It's sad, but that's the way it is. Not all the ova and all the sperm that are created in nature end up
creating a life, and not all the lives that are created develop to reach maturity and fullness.
We must get to work. This is why our lives were given to us, this is why pain was given to us, this
is why knowledge, creativity, wisdom and art were given to us.

48
 In the case that the I dies along with the body, however, the causality that was created by a human
existence that was part of the vastness of the circular causality that underlies this universe (and that
makes up its history) does not die. A life, therefore, with everything that it has created and destroyed,
always conserves its meaning, even though it remains confined within the space-time of this universe.
But we want something more. We want the I's immortality, and the I's immortality is created only
through secondary beauty.

LAST FINAL CONSIDERATION

What is the purpose of these axioms?

To better explain what Cosmo-Art is, and to give a personal response to the questions that human
beings constantly ask themselves about death, and that are not found in the answers they found up until
now.

49
 CHAPTER III

Principles of Prenatal Anthropology

The search for Beauty that has been lost,
Primary Beauty;
and the search for Beauty to be created,
Secondary Beauty.

50
 PRINCIPLES OF PRENATAL ANTHROPOLOGY

THE SEARCH FOR PRIMARY BEAUTY, BEAUTY THAT HAS BEEN LOST , AND FOR
SECONDARY BEAUTY, BEAUTY TO BE CREATED

The object of the following principles of prenatal anthropology is intrauterine life, and they are part
of a broader discipline called Existential Personalistic Anthropology. Existential Personalistic
Anthropology has been taught in the Institutes in Italy and in other countries that are part of the Sophia
University of Rome.

This type of anthropology is partly a scientific discipline and partly a philosophical one. As a
science, it investigates the structure of the human being as a person , and the laws, the laws of life, that
regulate the evolutionary path of this specific structure. As a philosophy, it asks about why human
beings exist, what its individual purpose is and what its cosmic purpose is.

Structures and laws are, by their very nature, invisible to the human eye, but they can become
visible to the eyes of reason as research is done on both the structure and the laws. They also become
visible as the theoretical hypotheses that guide the research are verified and confirmed.

In a broad sense, the specific object of this existential research is humanity, within the context of its
historical goal of transforming from a simple animal-cultural individual, to an individual that becomes a
Person. A Person is a subject endowed with freedom and creativity, and it is a subject capable of
becoming part of a cosmic purpose that goes forward in evolutionary leaps, during the course of
millennia or of millions of years.
With regards to the goal of human beings realizing themselves as Persons, Existential Personalistic
Anthropology does research on this process beginning with the analysis of the content pertaining to
intrauterine life, and then it explores how the purpose of the individual is connected to the purpose of the
cosmos, from the first moment of conception onward.

We use the term primary beauty to indicate the type of beauty that is found in nature, and that as
such is subject to changes, alterations, aging and death. We use the term secondary beauty to indicate

51
the type of beauty that is the result of humanity's artist actions and that once it is created is no longer
subject to death.

The beauty of life, that special beauty that consists of the ability to live a serene life on both a
psychological and a biological level, and that today an ever smaller number of fortunate people manage
to experience, falls in the category of primary beauty, and it is created already during prenatal life.
Unfortunately, we know that this beauty can be shaken or disturbed by innumerable traumas, which
on a psychological level create much suffering in life and, on a biological level, create a myriad of
illnesses that produce physical and existential handicaps.
During our time, no matter how advanced the loving care of the fetus can be on the part of mothers
and fathers, there is no certainty that intrauterine life will not be disturbed by traumas, and that these
traumas will not negatively influence the beauty of life.
Existential suffering is too widespread in our current society, and while it is now clear that many
causes of this have been introduced by humanity and they pollute the quality of life, slowly but surely it
will become ever more clear that the quality of life becomes polluted already during prenatal life, and
not afterwards.
This is why we speak of lost beauty, of the beauty of living that was tasted and then lost already
during the nine months in the womb, and of the constant search for this beauty that many pursue during
their postnatal life in a thousand different ways that are sometimes healthy and sometimes are not.
In our view, what most pollutes the beauty of living for every human being that comes into the
world is the fact that children are always wanted and experienced so as to satisfy the mother's needs.
Unfortunately, there is no mother who can keep herself from imposing her will to dominate on the child
she carries in her womb, even when she has the best intentions in the world. This is a natural law.
While during past eras this reality did not cause any particular trauma to children, today this is no
longer so. We can see this in the widely proven presence of a new sensitivity and a new awareness that
characterizes the present generations. These generations are suffering, and they refuse to be considered
an extension of their parents so that these parental needs can be satisfied.
At conception they acquire the awareness that every human being is an end unto him or herself, and
not a means.
Paradoxically, this awareness is at the bottom of the inevitable trauma they experience when they
realize they are used as means and not respected as ends, by parents who see in their children's existence

52
only a way to satisfy their own needs, and remain completely blind to the personal purpose that every
child carries within.
When earlier we mentioned the structure of human beings as Persons, which is a subject of study
within the field of Existential Personalistic Anthropology, we wanted to affirm that this first principle,
initially formulated by Kant, that human beings cannot be considered a means but instead must be seen
as an end, is not only a norm that regulates relations between adults, but regards also the relationship
between mother and child from the very first moment of conception.
This is true not because a philosopher affirmed it, it is true because there is a mutation occurring
within the human species that happens during their reproduction and period of gestation.
An evolutionary leap is taking place within the story of humanity, and it is not humanity that wants
it, it instead is the expression of a cosmic will that is modifying the feelings and desires of human beings
from the very first moment they are alive.
The Fetal I¸ immersed in the intrauterine environment and in constant hormonal and empathic
communication with the mother, seems to be endowed with a new sensitivity. It does not tolerate any
type of domination or manipulation from the mother, and it rebels against them.
This is a huge accomplishment on the part of the human individual in its historical evolution, but
the price to pay for this conquest is very high as well. While it is true that often humans adapt to their
environment, it is also true that often humans impose themselves on the environment to transform it.
And since every transformation is painful, today it is as if we are immersed in an immense battle, which
leaves cadavers and wounded on both sides of the battlefield.
It seems correct to me to affirm, on the basis of the statistics at our disposal today, that the number
of spontaneous abortions is very much higher in this epoch with respect to earlier ones, and that in most
cases, the babies that do not succumb in the uterus and manage to be born all come forth with a huge
wound. This wound will influence, for good or for bad, their entire future life and the life of their parents
as well.

The wound is caused by the trauma of being considered a thing and not a person, a means and not
an end.
The wound is caused by the pain of the presence of a containing uterus that not only is no longer
warm and welcoming, as it was during preceding eras, but is essentially incapable of recognizing that
the baby itself has a double goal. The first is to be a person and to be respected as such, and the second

53
is to be the carrier of a cosmic purpose that has nothing to do with the reproductive needs of the human
species, nor of the needs and goals of the father and mother.

It would seem that Earth is being divided into two large areas: one where there is an overabundant
growth rate, and another where the growth rate is going down at a frighteningly rapid rate.
One study predicts that if in Italy the birth rate continues to stay as low as it is currently, in 200
years there will be no more Italians. The other European countries are not doing much better.
We could, therefore, hypothesize that one part of the earth provides the species' survival, and the
other goes through the species' mutation for purposes that we are not yet able to exactly define.

The fact that humanity considers itself an end and not a means every day a bit more is a mutation of
the species. But now a new mutation is in its preparatory phase.
Just as we went from being Homo Habilis to becoming Homo Erectus, and from there to Homo
Sapiens, now we are feeling the need to go from human beings as Persons to human beings as artists of
our own lives and of the life of the universe.

According to this hypothesis, the pain of the wounds we suffer is no longer something cruel and
senseless that life inflicts upon us, but it is a motor that starts up at the beginning of a human life, and
that incessantly pushes us forward towards:
a) the search for lost beauty, the beauty that was once given as a gift from life when we were
born, but is given no longer;
b) the search for the beauty to be created, secondary beauty¸ which both humanity and the
cosmos need for their future destiny and for an even further mutation of the species.

We could offer here a new way of interpreting the myth of Parsifal and the search for the Grail. We
could say that not only King Amfortas was wounded, but we are all wounded, because it is necessary
that we all embark on a journey to tirelessly look for what can cure our wounds, as well as for what can
create immortal beauty. This immortal beauty is no longer subject to any type of wound, not even to the
wound of death that hovers over every human life.

54
 If we were not wounded and we had only the beauty of life, life would become static and immobile.
It would become embalmed in the ephemeral enjoyment of beauty.

If, instead, we are wounded, we are forced to move out of the immobility of our laziness. We are
forced to keep searching, to keep on asking ourselves questions, to commit ourselves to growth, to
invent ever new ways to cure our ills. And while we cure our ills, we transform our way of being, we
lose the identity we have so we can acquire a new, unknown one that otherwise would have never come
to light.
If there is a wound, we are forced to go back into the black hole of the maternal uterus and look for
the causes of our wounds; but while we delve into the abyss of our pain and anger, of the cold and
emptiness, we can become capable of artistically transforming ourselves and the world we know. We
can acquire the means we need to land in a new universe, that of the creation of secondary beauty.

All of this becomes easier to understand and accept if we change the frame that up until now the
West has put around its conception of life.
Whereas astronomy and astrophysics are abandoning ever more the conception of a stationary
universe to embrace the idea of a dynamic universe in continual expansion, we are still imprisoned in
previous world views: the Parmenidean view of a being that is and that has no need to become; the
Platonic one where there is space for becoming but only on the condition that being is not touched in its
eternal immobility; the Aristotelian view that states that there are two separate worlds, where the world
of being moves the world of becoming but the world of becoming has no possible influence on the world
of being.

In these three conceptions of humanity, no matter how we look at it humanity is forced to remain
imprisoned in a very small space that condemns it to a useless and tragic, or at the very least futile,
destiny.
The being, in its untouchable regality, has no need for humanity. What, then, is the purpose of
human life? If only being is necessary and humanity, as a contingency, can add nothing that the being
already has on its own, what meaning does human life have, and what meaning does the life of the
universe have?

55
 I could not avoid touching on these themes if, besides introducing the concept of secondary beauty¸
the type of beauty that never dies, I wanted to move onward to introducing into human existence a
cosmic purpose as well as an individual one. I also had to do so because I want to try to bring the
existence of humanity, the existence of the universe, and the existence of the wound that humans carry
within from the time of intrauterine life together into a unified concept.
If on one hand there is an individual purpose that pushes me to realize myself as a Person and to
make sure I am respected as such, and this is already an epochal change, on the other there is a cosmic
goal that pushes me to not only recover lost beauty, but to create a whole new type of beauty that is
necessary not only for myself but for the entire universe.
If, however, we only go along with Heraclitus, who opposed Parmenides and affirmed that
everything is becoming and nothing is, we still cannot get out of the emptiness and the prison that traps
humanity.
If, instead, we affirm that only within humanity, and not within the being, it is possible to heal the
contradiction between being and becoming and to be able, through the creation of secondary beauty , to
make a synthesis of opposites, to create a fusion of being with becoming, a fusion of life with death and
to create a superior life form such as secondary beauty, then we can understand what humanity's
importance is. We can see that its purpose is necessary for, and not contingent to, the economy of the
universe.
Only when humanity creates secondary beauty, then and only then are we in the presence of the
being that is and at the same time is becoming. This, in part, has already happened in history when an
artist has created a work of art, an autonomous and immortal life that lives throughout the centuries well
beyond the biological life of the artist who created it and incarnated it in that particular medium. What
occurs is a continuous being and a continuous becoming, as well as a continuous enriching exchange
between being and becoming.
To experience the Grail, or to open new dimensions to the possibilities of art, what we must now do
is to create beauty in our own lives on the medium of our own existence. We must do so within the very
heart of the I that comes into life with a deep wound and must pass from a mortal form of life to an
immortal one, so as to become an artist of its own life and of the life of the universe.
In fact, this is the only way to give an immortal life to the universe as well, which constantly is and
constantly is becoming, no longer through the continual cycle of death and rebirth. This happens

56
because the universe, thanks to the artistic action of humanity, finally has access to a form of life that
always is and is always becoming, without ever again having to pass through death.
Let me explain better. If the universe should contract and die instead of forever expanding, just like
biological life contracts and dies after a certain period of expansion, the universe will nevertheless be
able to give itself an immortal soul that is capable of expanding further after matter, instead, has stopped
expanding. This is possible thanks to the artistic action of humanity, which creates secondary beauty.
A work of art has within it a form of immortal life that always is and is always becoming, and it
continues to live on after the artist who created it dies. This immortal life was produced by humanity,
whose life is mortal. This is the paradox we must reflect on with greater attention than has been paid to
it up until now.
Life that is immortal can emerge from life that is mortal. A superior being can come to light from an
inferior one.
This is not a matter of faith; it is a reality that anyone can verify, regardless of his or her cultural
level.

What is not verifiable by everyone is the fact that humanity carries within itself an artistic power
that is even greater than what we have seen in the history of art up until now.
This power can expand the I from the small field of energy it is born with into an immense energy
field. Once this field is created, it no longer dissipates, and not only can it expand itself infinitely within
the space-time of this universe, but it can also go beyond the space-time of this universe and penetrate
other universes as well.
The activation of this greater artistic power is the cosmic goal that encounters the individual goal of
our time. This goal goes well beyond the human need to reproduce itself and not die, and it goes well
beyond the small egotistical needs of a father and mother who bring a child into the world.

The conflict between being and becoming is not one that preoccupies the minds of only the
philosophers.
If we look closely, we can see that it is this same conflict that pits a mother against her child, and
children against their parents.

57
 The mother, whose will is immutable, immutable like the Parmenidean idea of being, conceives a
child to satisfy her own needs. She has absolutely no intention of renouncing her will and transforming
herself. She wants to be and does not want to become. She is and is not becoming.
Along comes the child, who carries within it the instance of becoming, and, in its omnipotence,
feels wounded by this immutable position of the mother.
The wound is inevitable, as is the clash between the two.

At this point, two possible roads can be taken. On one, the mother does all she can to deny the child
has been wounded, and the child does all it can to wound the mother even more deeply than it has been
wounded itself.
This, for example, is what happens with autistic children or with anorexic girls who, at the cost of
their own lives, act out their rebellion and their hatred towards their mother for having conceived them
for her own purposes, not for theirs.
Protest and rebellion do not always have pathological connotations as in the two cases cited above,
but they always contain a hard core made up of a destructive desire for revenge. This expresses itself
with damaging consequences for one's physical and psychological health that sometimes emerge
immediately, and other times emerge after many years.

Those who study prenatal life know that every trauma causes first immense pain, and then causes
enormous anger and interminable hatred. Those who are endowed with an I that is already strong
enough during intrauterine life first make use of the defense mechanisms of denial and repression of
their hatred, and then they split the I. This allows them to not succumb to their anger and hatred, and to
survive.
Those who are unable to defend themselves with these mechanisms succumb and die.

We cannot blame mothers and fathers for wanting to use their children to satisfy their own needs.
For millennia, society has granted them the right of life and death over their children.
Today, however, it is necessary that parents learn to deal with their children in radically new ways.
Those who work in the field of prenatal education can offer an important contribution by indicating the
changes they have to make.

58
 This just might be the signpost for the second possible road, where the mother moves away from
her immutable decision, and moves towards her child, to respect and promote the child's purpose even
when it opposes the satisfaction of her own needs.
The child, on the other hand, can decide to move away from its own immutable vengeful hatred and
move towards becoming, which is its true goal. It can begin to bring into being primary beauty and then
reach secondary beauty¸ which creates a synthesis of opposites as well as a field of energy, where being
and becoming harmoniously fuse together.
This process can happen at the same time on both parts, but it can also happen that only one of the
two unilaterally decides to do this. This is just as effective in healing the conflict between being and
becoming, between the will of the mother and the goal of the child.
This is a very long process, which can take many years to go through. Therefore, one must never
give up.
It takes a long time for the I to strengthen itself and become sufficiently resistant to be able to go
into the abyss of the hatred and pain within, so it can handle the one and resolve the other without going
to pieces.
It takes a long time for the I , through its errors, to be able to come into contact with the wisdom it
carries inside. It also takes a long time for the I to learn to fuse together art and wisdom, hatred and love,
life and death, truth and freedom, and be capable of making the evolutionary leap that transforms it from
a simple animal into an artist.
Not the kind of artist we are accustomed to, but rather a new type of artist that is capable of not so
much bending matter to the intention of art, but instead is capable of bending the spirit to the intention of
art.
Canvas, wood and marble are matter and we are well aware of how the artists we are familiar with
have been able to transform it.
The I is the spirit, and the I awaits a new type of artist, the inner artist, who is capable of bending
the I, of transmuting it and making it capable of transforming and condensing the energy of the whole
universe within itself. This happens after having gone through pain and death, and after pain and death
have been transformed into doors towards life. Then the I , the artist, and life can fly together beyond the
confines of this space-time.

59
 Up until now we have paid a lot of attention to the philosophical aspects of Existential Personalistic
Anthropology. Now we will look at how it is a science and an art.
Following is what we learned through a research project, yet to be published, carried out among
students at the Sophia University of Rome.
Many of them were born with a sexual identity that was not what the mother or father wanted. If
they were males they should have been born females, and if they were females they should have been
born males if they were to be the maternal or paternal object of desire.
If at birth, or during prenatal life (around the third or fourth month when the mother feels what the
sexual identity of the child is), the child's sex does not correspond with the mother's desire, it is natural
that she feel first disappointment and then rejection of the child. This rejection causes a huge trauma for
the baby.
In the cases studied, it was found that the females became masculinized, and the males became
feminized. This occurred so they could handle the violence of this trauma and, above all, so they could
overcome the risk of losing their mother's love already during the fetal stage.
On one level, this transformation seemed not to have created any type of conflict, but on other
levels many very painful ones were produced.
Some developed an attitude that was at the same time one of acquiescence and of rebellion towards
the mother and father, with thousands of levels of different intensity of each.
Others developed a confused identity within themselves and in their way of relating to others, where
they showed continual indecision as to how to be and how to act in the world.
As they grew, this ambivalence in their attitudes and their identities transferred over from their
family of origin into their intimate relationships, giving rise to a series of failed relationships and
incurable contrasts.
We proposed to these students, both the males and the females, to acquire the ability to dialectically
develop both their female and male identities, without either one squashing or negating the other as had
happened in the past. In this way, they could accomplish a fusion of the two identities, and their ultimate
harmonization.
Thanks to this process, after intense work on themselves they were able to end up with a greatly
enriched personality, which had both masculine and feminine qualities that no longer were in an internal
and external contrast to each other.

60
 We must make it clear that this is an art that requires a deep commitment and a great amount of
discipline to learn.
From what we have described, we can extract a series of useful reflections and principles.

The first. It is a grave trauma for a baby to feel rejection because of its sexual identity. If one must
renounce one's sexual identity to obtain maternal love, this is a painful renunciation, but a necessary one.
The Fetal I makes the decision to carry it out, even though it will heavily influence all of its future life.
We cannot live without maternal love, but we can survive with a confused sexual identity.
The second. A mother has every right to desire a male or female child. If her hopes are
disappointed, her disappointment cannot become a reason for the son or daughter who experience
rejection because they have not satisfied their mother's wishes to consider the mother guilty.
If either the mother or the child develops hatred as a response to this disappointment and rejection,
they are guilty. It poisons the relationship between the mother and the child, and, afterwards, any
relationship with a partner, where the same conflict will be recreated.
The third. Whereas a mother has every right to have her desire realized, a child also has every right
to preserve its original identity.
When two rights that are equally legitimate collide, what can be the best solution for each side to
adopt?

There is living life as thievery, and there is living life as a gift. Arrogant demands and violence
exist, and so do requests and gifts. Human beings have the ability and the freedom to make a choice
either way.

Thievery and arrogant demands are vehicles for violence and hatred. Requests and giving bring
peace and harmony. To go from thievery to the ability to ask for and receive a gift is a work of art, and
this work of art contains within it secondary beauty.
The Ulysses that Homer describes in the Iliad is a man who has based his life on thievery. The
Ulysses that Homer describes in the Odyssey is a man that has transformed himself, and has learned,
after going through many woeful experiences, to know how to go from thievery to asking for and
receiving gifts (see A.M. “Hypotheses on Ulysses” Sophia University of Rome, 2009).
We can affirm some principles based on these reflections:

61
 First: Those who want to impose their rights through arrogant demands and violence commit
thievery, and they will never be able to enjoy their rights. They will always feel guilty, and, consciously
or unconsciously, they will punish themselves through expiation. This is true for both mothers and
children.
Second: Those who choose to go from demanding their rights to giving, who ask that their rights be
given to them as a gift, loosen their conflict and open themselves to the realization and the enjoyment of
their rights.
Third. It is always possible to go from thievery to giving at any age, even if the conflict originated
during prenatal life.
Fourth. Those who do not resolve their conflicts that originated as far back as intrauterine life have
either never been truly born or are only partially born, because all of their energies invested in the
conflict keep them tied to the past. They do not allow them to live in the present. The present will be a
continual remake of the past.
Fifth. A mother who undergoes a grave loss or deep pain during a pregnancy cannot continue to
think that it is only her business, and that her child will not be affected by it.
If the mother creates a dialog with her child, where she tells the child of her pain, it is possible to
engage the child's sense of responsibility, as though it were an adult. This allows the child to soothe its
own pain, and to soothe, in some way, the pain of the mother as well.
I am affirming the principle that it is possible to speak to a child in the womb just as one would
speak to an adult, and that this is a sign of respect for the Person that is already present within the baby.
The baby is not only capable of taking in such communication with the mother, but it is even capable of
offering the mother help, if the mother respects the child and does not trample on it, if the mother
includes it instead of excluding it from any type of drama she is going through. This is true because the
child has within not only its Person, but also its Artist that creates, and that transforms itself by creating.
I am affirming the principle that if the mother does not violently impose her needs on her baby, but
asks it to help and understand her just as she would do with an adult, life as a gift and not as thievery is
created between them. The relationship is no longer based on violence and on the will to dominate but
on respect and giving.

62
 By giving up violence and the will to dominate, which she is born with, the mother concretely
makes the I die, and gives it the possibility of a new, unknown life, the life of an artist who knows how
to create and knows how to unify opposites.
For centuries, the Jainist Hindus have practiced ahimsa, non-violence, but when Gandhi came along
he added art to non-violence, and by doing so, he transformed the practice of non-violence into the art of
non-violence. With this art, he created a free people.
It happens ever more often today that those who want children want them so they can build a uterus
for themselves, their own uterus, one that they legitimately should have had at one time and that, for a
thousand different reasons, they never had.
Already during pregnancy, the child becomes the uterus in the mother's unconscious fantasies, a
uterus that must never separate from the mother. The mother is no longer the mother, but she becomes
the daughter. The son or daughter is no longer a growing child, but he or she becomes a uterus that must
accommodate the mother forever.
Many are the children who succumb to the mother's pressing request and her unconscious
manipulation. There is certainly no wonder that thousands of them then look for an accommodating
uterus in the artificial paradise of thousands of different drugs.
There are no valid principles to help us face these types of catastrophes, such as the low birth rate
and the drug phenomenon. If there will be a reversal in this tendency, only life will be able to produce it,
and not science, which is inadequate in solving the problems that life itself poses as it grows in
complexity.

Those who truly want to be born and grow will look for their own personal way to become
successful in achieving their goal.
Those who work in the field of prenatal education must gain expertise in the knowledge of what
paths are today available, so they can offer suggestions to those who come to them for help.
The Sophia University of Rome has created three paths, each one firmly anchored in the
groundwork of Existential Personalistic Anthropology, and they are Sophia-Analysis, Sophia-Art and
Cosmo-Art.
These pathways both affirm and activate the ability of men and women to be born, to grow and to
become artists of their own lives and of the life of the universe.

63
 Through them we want to affirm that all the pain that is contained within the trauma of prenatal life
can be transformed into the precious and indispensible element that is necessary to create one's very life
as a work of art, instead of feeding into an infinite destructivity.
Men and women, if so inclined, can choose the freedom to love themselves instead of hating
themselves. They can choose to make the pain and anguish that has possessed them since intrauterine
life into elements that fecundate the transformation of a life without meaning into a life full of meaning,
and follow the path of creativity and secondary beauty.

64
 CHAPTER IV

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 […]

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.

65
 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.

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

66
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.

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.

67
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.

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.

68
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, 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 see things with 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.

69
The universe knows what you need and every day it will give you what you need for that day.

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.

70
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.

Open yourself to the inexhaustible complexity and richness of life that can appear at any time, in the
most unpredictable ways.

71
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.

*****

72
 OTHER BOOKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR

AMORE LIBERTA’ E COLPA {Love, Freedom and Guilt} *

2° ed. Sophia University of Rome (S.U.R.), Rome 2000

AMORE E PERSONA {Love and the Person} *

3° ed. Costellazione d’Arianna, Rome 1993

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

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

73
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
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.

74