Art-Cologne, gallery Pudelko, 2009
Moral Spaces By Igor Ganikowski
trans. by Darlene Reddaway
However, if we do discover a complete theory, it should in time be understandable in broad principle by everyone, not just a few scientists. Then we shall all, philosophers, scientists, and just ordinary people, be able to take part in the discussion of the question of why it is that we and the universe exist. If we find the answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason – for then we would know the mind of God.
Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time
Science, technology, religion, and art have all originated in magic, having one origin, and sometime afterwards they began to differentiate, to take on separate names, and to define their distinct paths. Their division transformed into opposition, hate, bonfires and burnings at the stake… Kazimir Malevich distilled these into three paths to knowledge: Religion, Art, Industry. Each of the three paths comes with its own approach. For instance, science practically never examines one-time phenomena, nor does it examine phenomena that lie on the other side of reason. By this very approach it constricts and simplifies the world to an extraordinary degree.
The real breakthroughs in all fields are always connected with the discovery of new worlds. Religion, science, and art were once together, then they divided, but here they are again, staring each other square in the eyes.
In the past, when I tried to characterize the driving force of my artistic practice, I came to call it the discovery of the invisible, the hidden – the unveiling of other worlds and spaces. While this may be true, I came to see that there is something too commonplace in it. The invisible, the impalpable has a much greater presence in our lives than those things we see and feel with our own senses. People see and feel within a fairly limited spectrum, but they gradually try to supersede the realm of the living by inventing newer and newer machines and devices.
It is less than ideal when a person, having not resolved to give up his own world, proceeds to acknowledge other realities as authentic and valuable in themselves, for then he learns to live and think in their complicated multiplicity.
Now, when I try to describe what my artistic practice was and what it is, resorting to the discourse of art, I would call it the study of moral spaces. What do I mean by this?
Every point in the space that surrounds us has its own defining characteristics – temperature, humidity, illumination… All of these are things our senses can experience. But we can go further than this: we can add radiation to this list. For although we can’t feel radiation, we can measure it with our devices. Humans are constantly extending the reach of their natural abilities. Today many have begun to speak about the informational fields and spaces humans are actively creating: satellite connections, the internet…
I myself, on the basis of my own individual human experience, hold that there is a moral constituent inherent in every point in space.[i] My artistic practice enables me to translate what I see and feel into visible forms. That is, each point in space, along with its physical characteristics, possesses additional information, and in part, moral information. But much more than this, the moral component is the more determinant one. It can, in its own right, cause the physical properties of space to change.
This World (the Great Space) was not built by humans: we have been placed in a sphere that lived before us and will live after us. Naturally, the formation of any spatial structure has its own laws. The Jews and Christians call these the Ten Commandments, received from God on Mount Sinai, and that is why the breaking of these Laws distorts the environment in which everyone and everything exists. If the connection of High and Low is broken, then local zones form in which negative processes arise (evil-viruses), negative subspaces accumulate, crusting into something like a “scab” that inhibits the passage of direct Light.
Every point in space possesses a moral component. Humans are the only creatures on the earth that make a distinction between good and evil. What is the relationship between humans and space? Humans are simply a part of the space that surrounds them – and at the same time they fill it up and live within it. For this reason, the world seems to be a huge Web (of course, much more intricate and of greater dimensions than the internet), where everything is connected to everything else: people, animals, the plant world, the sea, the earth, air… – all exists in and as one. This Web is not stable and is also subject to “winds,” to its own laws.
Each point surrounding us possesses its own collection of characteristics: some are of greater temperature, some of less; some are of greater mercy, and some exhibit almost no mercy at all. Probably, in this Net-Web humans are but a locus of coagulation, an important point in this space. It might possibly be that just because they possess unique properties, humans are embedded in space, just as an atom is in crystal. And from this, the corollary follows: humans can influence space, and conversely, space can influence humans.[ii] Everything is interconnected and is subject to the Law of God ( I call that Power that created everything God). God created space and humans in it.
If anyone thinks that human existence in this world is isolated, then this is an illusion and a more detailed investigation into moral spaces reveals this.
The Gate is one of the most important elements of moral spaces. If a person violates the laws of moral spaces (I could more thoroughly develop this model for intricate examination, if need be), then when this happens this person creates a new (negative) subspace by changing the old space, and they enter through a Gate into this new negative space. This new space with its modified properties usually resembles a labyrinth; the person can get lost in it for a fairly long time, sometimes for their whole life, or until they recognize the wrong deed and at what point in space it happened. Then, and only then, is it possible for them to leave behind the wrong. At this juncture, the negative space they created is annulled, and the properties of the former space are restored. The important thing is that the person should exit the labyrinth through the same Gate by which they entered it. Then the space that was invaded by evil disappears.[iii] The Jews have the word tshuwa,[iv] which can be translated as repentance, and as a return. The return is necessary in order that repentance be full.[v]
The formation of negative spaces must be regarded as a defensive reaction of the Great Spaces, forcing the transgressor to clean up after himself. The World-Net has embedded within it programs of regeneration. If repentance does not occur or occurs only partially, then zones form that do no operate in harmony with the Laws, and these zones inhibit the operation of the entire system. When the negative zones become more widespread, the Great network becomes ridden with errors, and in time this leads to the collapse of all space,[vi] as was prophetically foretold by both the Hebrew prophets and in the Apocalypse. This can be envisioned as the Great Space being covered with zones of darkness and preventing the penetration of direct Light (the Law).
Of course, everything is a little more complicated than that. I have brought only one possible example among the many to illustrate the way space and people interact. We could just as easily have taken the case where “infected people” transmit their “virus of evil” to space or to other people. On the one hand, there are also positive spaces that reappear when the righteous, when good and noble people, simply help to cleanse the environs from dark energies.
What I am saying about positive and negative spaces relates not only to people, but in like measure to the family, and to the government, and to the whole of humankind as well.
Moral spaces have been known to humankind as far back as the notions of physical spaces. Magi and shamans have conjured them and acted on them by means of prayer, appealing for rain, a harvest… Generally, “the first humans” were much closer to the understanding that the space around them was alive.[vii],[viii] Remember East philosophy, Greece. The myths and legends speak to us about moral spaces. It’s interesting, for instance, that even the properties of King Oedipus’ grave were such that they created an aura to defend the grave’s immediate territory. The vast architecture of Dante’s The Divine Comedy is built entirely upon the laws of moral spaces. There are an innumerable multitude of examples. There are people who have, apparently, experienced the effects of these spheres on themselves. One of the most interesting for me is the outstanding writer and thinker, Franz Kafka. The well-known Russian literary theoretician Viacheslav Vsevolodovich Ivanov has relegated F. Kafka to the movement of fantastic realism. I consider this categorization problematic. There was a lot more realism in F. Kafka’s works than there was the fantastic.[ix] If we look into the life and work of F. Kafka it becomes clear how realistically he depicted the life of negative spaces – those into which, once he had fallen, he found himself unable to extricate himself. Who hasn’t had to come up against these spaces? For them, of course, all is in the realm of the fantastic, but for others this is a feeling of some kind of weightlessness, when you should run and save yourself, and you can’t raise a leg; when you expend enormous effort, and the business doesn’t get done; when you ask about something, but there is no answer or you only hear white noise that leaves you no chance of discerning a thing. Many laws are violated in these spaces, for instance, the laws of the theory of probability.[x] When in the course of a long time, sometimes even over a whole lifetime, all the events decline to one side, as if someone had laid a magnet there, we can see that there is a person who may begin to fight with these invisible spaces, to even try to undermine them, but to no avail: the person themselves becomes all the more entangled in these spaces (sometimes people call this “the evil eye”).[xi]
If we were to speak about the visual arts, then we could relate realistic works to the iconography of moral spaces: the paintings about Paradise, Hell… where all is determined, from Good to sheer Evil… In the New time the discovery of these spaces is connected with the names of Kazimir Malevich, Vasily Kandinsky, Frantisek Kupka, Piet Mondrian, Barnett Newman…
K. Malevish was so surprised, so blinded by the discovery of these spaces within the contours of the geometric form that, in my opinion, he couldn’t recover from this discovery his whole life. I have already written about how the opening of Gates in moral spaces (the Gate is one of the most important elements of these spaces) are often connected with a blinding light, as well as with the tremor of sinister blackness. K. Malevich, V. Kandinsky, and El Lissitzky were all art theorists.[xii] To this day, their movement (“metaphysical geometry”), although extremely fruitful and important, hasn’t been fully studied – and yet it is blithely migrating into the field of design. The pathfinders tried to explain the world, and now, in many cases, their efforts have been reduced to eye candy or to a pretty spot on the wall.
History has shown that the visual arts have always run in the fore of the other arts in the development of new forms. In this sense, the visual arts must be regarded as having the intrinsic quality of the avant-garde.[xiii]
My work as an artist usually falls into several stages: an unmediated deep life impression, a mental construction of models, the finding of the right artistic images for these models, and my work on the actual art product.
During the first stage, I find the most important thing to be the incorporation of my own mystical experience (you can’t read about this in books, you have to experience this yourself). As I already said, science has no practical use for mystical revelations, but in point of fact, these revelations convey unique information.
Spaces and subspaces, high and low, are expressed synonymously. Of course, we see only the shadows, but any form, even the most inconsequential, as Plato said, has its prototype. Sometimes the “eyes of the soul” distinguish the particles of light by which we can posit the structures of other worlds. If we know something precise in our world, these glimpses of knowledge can be extrapolated into other systems. In mathematics, the describing functions for this process are known as analytical.
In the unmediated creation of the work itself, I find the critical moment to be when you are not only striving to adequately express images on canvas, but when the work itself forces you to vary or change something. As if some kind of force models the composition – maybe because in the visual arts it is easier to formulate your thought.
In my work I use a wide-angle view (the series, “Great Compositions”) as well as an articulation of the structural elements of moral spaces. These include: Gates, Traps, Filters, Names, Commentaries, Books (open and closed), Shadows…
In my works, Gates act as zones through which one space flows into another. There are zones of division and zones of contiguity, and sometimes they are latticed. The Gates in a few of my works resemble books.
The Traps are segments of space that entrice and test, and they are almost always invisible. That’s why in my three-dimensional traps the butt-end of an object turned toward the viewer has the same color as the background, and they can tell it apart only if they view it from the right or the left.
The series “Names” is tightly tied with “Books.” The names can be read as commands or signals that bleed into the Net and enable a change in its processes.
Sometimes when I give my works names, they can’t be taken literally. For instance, the 2003 work entitled “Massada” can, of course, be interpreted as a history of the Massada fortress, but you can also read it as a memorial of the battle near Stalingrad or as a portrait of F. Kafka… For me, Massada is, to a large degree, a zone in space where a righteous person, penned in on all sides, does not surrender…[xiv]
Of course, individual salvation is possible. But as for the salvation of all humankind – it is possible only with the participation of all people, but probably, this is utopia, whereas nevertheless reality is – apocalypse.
Odenthal, 2005
Notes:
[i] If we take theological discourse into consideration during our argument, then this will seem but natural: God is everywhere, and that means that His attributes are everywhere.
[ii] The God of Pythagoras was Monad, or the One, which is All. He describes God as the Supreme Intellect, dispersed over all parts of the Universe, as the Cause of all things, the Reason in all things, and the Power infusing all things. He went on to say that God’s motion is circular, the body of God is comprised of the substance of light, and that the nature of God must consist of the substance of truth.
Relatively recently, cosmologists, astrophysicists, nuclear physicists, and other scientists came to the conclusion that the Universe has no “empty spaces,” that all of space is full of matter: with elemental particles that behave as if they are located in the very nuclei of atoms, but which are found in “free movement.” By virtue of these elemental particles the whole universe, the cosmos, acts as if it is united in a single organism.
[iii] “… do not do to another what you would not want done to you. This is the whole Torah. Everything else is commentary. Go and learn.” Hegel the Elder, Babylonian Talmud.
“Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets” Matthew 7:12.
I would add a clarification: do not only not do to another what you would not want done to you, but do not commit any bad act against the space that is surrounding you.
[iv] For instance, the medieval Germans Hasidics had a strict method of repentance that was articulated in a clear-cut system: tshuwa ga baa, tshuwa ga gadar, tshuwa ga miskhal’.
[v] Often, if a person does not fulfill the work of repentance himself, then the work to correct the affected spaces can be transferred to their children or other loved ones.
If one accepts this model, it becomes apparent that the taking of human life (the death sentence) not only makes no sense, but it is harmful for all of humanity since it retains the negative spaces untouched instead of isolating the transgressor and giving them the chance to think and to repent.
[vi] In today’s world we can observe this in the increase in natural disasters and in the appearance of new viruses. As I see it, everyone should understand that if humankind is successful in conquering AIDs, then tomorrow something more horrifying will appear: tree flu, water flu… or new diseases of the mind, as it has always been.
[vii] Generally, what is magic, but the attempt to influence space in the hope of changing its properties? There have always been and even now are a multitude of magical practices connected with ritual acts, dances, and incantations…
[viii] Magic is possible because there is a common space. If there were no connections – could we even talk about influence?
[ix] I would say that the works of socialist realism are more like works of fantastic realism, and I would generalize this categorization to all official works of art made in support of totalitarian regimes.
[x] Even though the theory of probability has now been applied to situations known as “large deviations,” that is, those set of circumstances that are absolutely unlikely (for instance, in the game of craps – rolling double sixes ten times in a row), science still is not interested in why this happens.
[xi] All religious systems have methods for fighting against this type of moral space.
[xii] Of course, the artist’s endeavor is not that of speaking or writing. His calling is to create works of art. But sometimes you have to resort to the other when you meet up with a complete lack of understanding.
[xiii] “We would like for the word to bravely follow painting.” Velemir Khlebnikov
[xiv] In “Zogar,” the rabbi Shimon says that the world has not perished if, on the earth, there exists at least one righteous man.
trans. by Darlene Reddaway
However, if we do discover a complete theory, it should in time be understandable in broad principle by everyone, not just a few scientists. Then we shall all, philosophers, scientists, and just ordinary people, be able to take part in the discussion of the question of why it is that we and the universe exist. If we find the answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason – for then we would know the mind of God.
Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time
Science, technology, religion, and art have all originated in magic, having one origin, and sometime afterwards they began to differentiate, to take on separate names, and to define their distinct paths. Their division transformed into opposition, hate, bonfires and burnings at the stake… Kazimir Malevich distilled these into three paths to knowledge: Religion, Art, Industry. Each of the three paths comes with its own approach. For instance, science practically never examines one-time phenomena, nor does it examine phenomena that lie on the other side of reason. By this very approach it constricts and simplifies the world to an extraordinary degree.
The real breakthroughs in all fields are always connected with the discovery of new worlds. Religion, science, and art were once together, then they divided, but here they are again, staring each other square in the eyes.
In the past, when I tried to characterize the driving force of my artistic practice, I came to call it the discovery of the invisible, the hidden – the unveiling of other worlds and spaces. While this may be true, I came to see that there is something too commonplace in it. The invisible, the impalpable has a much greater presence in our lives than those things we see and feel with our own senses. People see and feel within a fairly limited spectrum, but they gradually try to supersede the realm of the living by inventing newer and newer machines and devices.
It is less than ideal when a person, having not resolved to give up his own world, proceeds to acknowledge other realities as authentic and valuable in themselves, for then he learns to live and think in their complicated multiplicity.
Now, when I try to describe what my artistic practice was and what it is, resorting to the discourse of art, I would call it the study of moral spaces. What do I mean by this?
Every point in the space that surrounds us has its own defining characteristics – temperature, humidity, illumination… All of these are things our senses can experience. But we can go further than this: we can add radiation to this list. For although we can’t feel radiation, we can measure it with our devices. Humans are constantly extending the reach of their natural abilities. Today many have begun to speak about the informational fields and spaces humans are actively creating: satellite connections, the internet…
I myself, on the basis of my own individual human experience, hold that there is a moral constituent inherent in every point in space.[i] My artistic practice enables me to translate what I see and feel into visible forms. That is, each point in space, along with its physical characteristics, possesses additional information, and in part, moral information. But much more than this, the moral component is the more determinant one. It can, in its own right, cause the physical properties of space to change.
This World (the Great Space) was not built by humans: we have been placed in a sphere that lived before us and will live after us. Naturally, the formation of any spatial structure has its own laws. The Jews and Christians call these the Ten Commandments, received from God on Mount Sinai, and that is why the breaking of these Laws distorts the environment in which everyone and everything exists. If the connection of High and Low is broken, then local zones form in which negative processes arise (evil-viruses), negative subspaces accumulate, crusting into something like a “scab” that inhibits the passage of direct Light.
Every point in space possesses a moral component. Humans are the only creatures on the earth that make a distinction between good and evil. What is the relationship between humans and space? Humans are simply a part of the space that surrounds them – and at the same time they fill it up and live within it. For this reason, the world seems to be a huge Web (of course, much more intricate and of greater dimensions than the internet), where everything is connected to everything else: people, animals, the plant world, the sea, the earth, air… – all exists in and as one. This Web is not stable and is also subject to “winds,” to its own laws.
Each point surrounding us possesses its own collection of characteristics: some are of greater temperature, some of less; some are of greater mercy, and some exhibit almost no mercy at all. Probably, in this Net-Web humans are but a locus of coagulation, an important point in this space. It might possibly be that just because they possess unique properties, humans are embedded in space, just as an atom is in crystal. And from this, the corollary follows: humans can influence space, and conversely, space can influence humans.[ii] Everything is interconnected and is subject to the Law of God ( I call that Power that created everything God). God created space and humans in it.
If anyone thinks that human existence in this world is isolated, then this is an illusion and a more detailed investigation into moral spaces reveals this.
The Gate is one of the most important elements of moral spaces. If a person violates the laws of moral spaces (I could more thoroughly develop this model for intricate examination, if need be), then when this happens this person creates a new (negative) subspace by changing the old space, and they enter through a Gate into this new negative space. This new space with its modified properties usually resembles a labyrinth; the person can get lost in it for a fairly long time, sometimes for their whole life, or until they recognize the wrong deed and at what point in space it happened. Then, and only then, is it possible for them to leave behind the wrong. At this juncture, the negative space they created is annulled, and the properties of the former space are restored. The important thing is that the person should exit the labyrinth through the same Gate by which they entered it. Then the space that was invaded by evil disappears.[iii] The Jews have the word tshuwa,[iv] which can be translated as repentance, and as a return. The return is necessary in order that repentance be full.[v]
The formation of negative spaces must be regarded as a defensive reaction of the Great Spaces, forcing the transgressor to clean up after himself. The World-Net has embedded within it programs of regeneration. If repentance does not occur or occurs only partially, then zones form that do no operate in harmony with the Laws, and these zones inhibit the operation of the entire system. When the negative zones become more widespread, the Great network becomes ridden with errors, and in time this leads to the collapse of all space,[vi] as was prophetically foretold by both the Hebrew prophets and in the Apocalypse. This can be envisioned as the Great Space being covered with zones of darkness and preventing the penetration of direct Light (the Law).
Of course, everything is a little more complicated than that. I have brought only one possible example among the many to illustrate the way space and people interact. We could just as easily have taken the case where “infected people” transmit their “virus of evil” to space or to other people. On the one hand, there are also positive spaces that reappear when the righteous, when good and noble people, simply help to cleanse the environs from dark energies.
What I am saying about positive and negative spaces relates not only to people, but in like measure to the family, and to the government, and to the whole of humankind as well.
Moral spaces have been known to humankind as far back as the notions of physical spaces. Magi and shamans have conjured them and acted on them by means of prayer, appealing for rain, a harvest… Generally, “the first humans” were much closer to the understanding that the space around them was alive.[vii],[viii] Remember East philosophy, Greece. The myths and legends speak to us about moral spaces. It’s interesting, for instance, that even the properties of King Oedipus’ grave were such that they created an aura to defend the grave’s immediate territory. The vast architecture of Dante’s The Divine Comedy is built entirely upon the laws of moral spaces. There are an innumerable multitude of examples. There are people who have, apparently, experienced the effects of these spheres on themselves. One of the most interesting for me is the outstanding writer and thinker, Franz Kafka. The well-known Russian literary theoretician Viacheslav Vsevolodovich Ivanov has relegated F. Kafka to the movement of fantastic realism. I consider this categorization problematic. There was a lot more realism in F. Kafka’s works than there was the fantastic.[ix] If we look into the life and work of F. Kafka it becomes clear how realistically he depicted the life of negative spaces – those into which, once he had fallen, he found himself unable to extricate himself. Who hasn’t had to come up against these spaces? For them, of course, all is in the realm of the fantastic, but for others this is a feeling of some kind of weightlessness, when you should run and save yourself, and you can’t raise a leg; when you expend enormous effort, and the business doesn’t get done; when you ask about something, but there is no answer or you only hear white noise that leaves you no chance of discerning a thing. Many laws are violated in these spaces, for instance, the laws of the theory of probability.[x] When in the course of a long time, sometimes even over a whole lifetime, all the events decline to one side, as if someone had laid a magnet there, we can see that there is a person who may begin to fight with these invisible spaces, to even try to undermine them, but to no avail: the person themselves becomes all the more entangled in these spaces (sometimes people call this “the evil eye”).[xi]
If we were to speak about the visual arts, then we could relate realistic works to the iconography of moral spaces: the paintings about Paradise, Hell… where all is determined, from Good to sheer Evil… In the New time the discovery of these spaces is connected with the names of Kazimir Malevich, Vasily Kandinsky, Frantisek Kupka, Piet Mondrian, Barnett Newman…
K. Malevish was so surprised, so blinded by the discovery of these spaces within the contours of the geometric form that, in my opinion, he couldn’t recover from this discovery his whole life. I have already written about how the opening of Gates in moral spaces (the Gate is one of the most important elements of these spaces) are often connected with a blinding light, as well as with the tremor of sinister blackness. K. Malevich, V. Kandinsky, and El Lissitzky were all art theorists.[xii] To this day, their movement (“metaphysical geometry”), although extremely fruitful and important, hasn’t been fully studied – and yet it is blithely migrating into the field of design. The pathfinders tried to explain the world, and now, in many cases, their efforts have been reduced to eye candy or to a pretty spot on the wall.
History has shown that the visual arts have always run in the fore of the other arts in the development of new forms. In this sense, the visual arts must be regarded as having the intrinsic quality of the avant-garde.[xiii]
My work as an artist usually falls into several stages: an unmediated deep life impression, a mental construction of models, the finding of the right artistic images for these models, and my work on the actual art product.
During the first stage, I find the most important thing to be the incorporation of my own mystical experience (you can’t read about this in books, you have to experience this yourself). As I already said, science has no practical use for mystical revelations, but in point of fact, these revelations convey unique information.
Spaces and subspaces, high and low, are expressed synonymously. Of course, we see only the shadows, but any form, even the most inconsequential, as Plato said, has its prototype. Sometimes the “eyes of the soul” distinguish the particles of light by which we can posit the structures of other worlds. If we know something precise in our world, these glimpses of knowledge can be extrapolated into other systems. In mathematics, the describing functions for this process are known as analytical.
In the unmediated creation of the work itself, I find the critical moment to be when you are not only striving to adequately express images on canvas, but when the work itself forces you to vary or change something. As if some kind of force models the composition – maybe because in the visual arts it is easier to formulate your thought.
In my work I use a wide-angle view (the series, “Great Compositions”) as well as an articulation of the structural elements of moral spaces. These include: Gates, Traps, Filters, Names, Commentaries, Books (open and closed), Shadows…
In my works, Gates act as zones through which one space flows into another. There are zones of division and zones of contiguity, and sometimes they are latticed. The Gates in a few of my works resemble books.
The Traps are segments of space that entrice and test, and they are almost always invisible. That’s why in my three-dimensional traps the butt-end of an object turned toward the viewer has the same color as the background, and they can tell it apart only if they view it from the right or the left.
The series “Names” is tightly tied with “Books.” The names can be read as commands or signals that bleed into the Net and enable a change in its processes.
Sometimes when I give my works names, they can’t be taken literally. For instance, the 2003 work entitled “Massada” can, of course, be interpreted as a history of the Massada fortress, but you can also read it as a memorial of the battle near Stalingrad or as a portrait of F. Kafka… For me, Massada is, to a large degree, a zone in space where a righteous person, penned in on all sides, does not surrender…[xiv]
Of course, individual salvation is possible. But as for the salvation of all humankind – it is possible only with the participation of all people, but probably, this is utopia, whereas nevertheless reality is – apocalypse.
Odenthal, 2005
Notes:
[i] If we take theological discourse into consideration during our argument, then this will seem but natural: God is everywhere, and that means that His attributes are everywhere.
[ii] The God of Pythagoras was Monad, or the One, which is All. He describes God as the Supreme Intellect, dispersed over all parts of the Universe, as the Cause of all things, the Reason in all things, and the Power infusing all things. He went on to say that God’s motion is circular, the body of God is comprised of the substance of light, and that the nature of God must consist of the substance of truth.
Relatively recently, cosmologists, astrophysicists, nuclear physicists, and other scientists came to the conclusion that the Universe has no “empty spaces,” that all of space is full of matter: with elemental particles that behave as if they are located in the very nuclei of atoms, but which are found in “free movement.” By virtue of these elemental particles the whole universe, the cosmos, acts as if it is united in a single organism.
[iii] “… do not do to another what you would not want done to you. This is the whole Torah. Everything else is commentary. Go and learn.” Hegel the Elder, Babylonian Talmud.
“Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets” Matthew 7:12.
I would add a clarification: do not only not do to another what you would not want done to you, but do not commit any bad act against the space that is surrounding you.
[iv] For instance, the medieval Germans Hasidics had a strict method of repentance that was articulated in a clear-cut system: tshuwa ga baa, tshuwa ga gadar, tshuwa ga miskhal’.
[v] Often, if a person does not fulfill the work of repentance himself, then the work to correct the affected spaces can be transferred to their children or other loved ones.
If one accepts this model, it becomes apparent that the taking of human life (the death sentence) not only makes no sense, but it is harmful for all of humanity since it retains the negative spaces untouched instead of isolating the transgressor and giving them the chance to think and to repent.
[vi] In today’s world we can observe this in the increase in natural disasters and in the appearance of new viruses. As I see it, everyone should understand that if humankind is successful in conquering AIDs, then tomorrow something more horrifying will appear: tree flu, water flu… or new diseases of the mind, as it has always been.
[vii] Generally, what is magic, but the attempt to influence space in the hope of changing its properties? There have always been and even now are a multitude of magical practices connected with ritual acts, dances, and incantations…
[viii] Magic is possible because there is a common space. If there were no connections – could we even talk about influence?
[ix] I would say that the works of socialist realism are more like works of fantastic realism, and I would generalize this categorization to all official works of art made in support of totalitarian regimes.
[x] Even though the theory of probability has now been applied to situations known as “large deviations,” that is, those set of circumstances that are absolutely unlikely (for instance, in the game of craps – rolling double sixes ten times in a row), science still is not interested in why this happens.
[xi] All religious systems have methods for fighting against this type of moral space.
[xii] Of course, the artist’s endeavor is not that of speaking or writing. His calling is to create works of art. But sometimes you have to resort to the other when you meet up with a complete lack of understanding.
[xiii] “We would like for the word to bravely follow painting.” Velemir Khlebnikov
[xiv] In “Zogar,” the rabbi Shimon says that the world has not perished if, on the earth, there exists at least one righteous man.
