Eleven Rules, Seven Theorems and Seven Axioms of Cosmo-Art by Antonio Mercurio - HTML preview

CHAPTER III

PRINCIPLES OF COSMOARTISTIC 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 is intrauterine life, and they are part of a broader discipline called Cosmoartistic Anthropology.

Cosmoartistic 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 65

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, Cosmoartistic 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 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 66

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 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 Cosmoartistic 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 67

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 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.

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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.

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.

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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?

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 70

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 because the universe, thanks to the artistic action 71

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.

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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.

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.

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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.

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.

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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.

Up until now we have paid a lot of attention to the philosophical aspects of Cosmoartistic 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.

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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.

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 76

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: 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.

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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