Traduzione del brano “Le varianti non vissute” del libro LA FONTE PREZIOSA,[1] pp. 299-308
Tradotto da Francesco Innocenti
Kempis: “You have certainly noticed that our enunciation of Truths that escape man’s verification starts, as far as possible, from the certainties that man has, or relies on logic and, in any case, refrains from asking him for acts of faith. On the other hand, when certainties should derive from scientific statements that are not certain, we feel compelled to criticize them, such as the one that the beginning of life depicts in favor of materialism because it is a phenomenon that can be traced back to biochemistry: A simple encounter of suitable substances and materials, and the beginning of an evolutionary process.
Of course, such a discovery destroys something, but it only destroys an erroneous conception of God, that is, of a God who would have created life waving a magic wand, that is, with a direct intervention out of the ordinary. Instead, if we think that the divine intervention makes use of laws and establishes an order according to which life manifests itself, even the discovery of the biological laws pertaining to the phenomenon called “life” does not add a point to the materialistic conception of reality.
Saying that everything was born from an explosion of cosmic matter is not enough to explain the origin of the principles on which life is born and life itself then evolves. Now, if materialism helps us to destroy the mistakes of spiritualism, materialism is welcome, but let us be aware that it only gives us a partial view of reality.
I was saying that we are trying to substantiate our statements, which are uncontrollable to you, starting with the things you can touch with your own hands, even though we are currently at such a point in the development of our teaching that it is difficult to find points of similarity in the worlds of perception. One of the most appropriate similitudes – also because it is an application of the same principle – was the two-dimensional vision of the two eyes which, perceived simultaneously by the mind, originates in it a three-dimensional vision, that is, a vision that is greater than the sum of the two. We have used this similitude to illustrate the principle of transcendence, in which, due to fusion and simultaneity, a leap in quality is made, a state of knowledge and consciousness is reached that is greater than the sum of what was possessed.
The principle of transcendence has been recalled by us to explain how God – even though He is the Whole and therefore has an immanent nature – is very different from the sum of all His parts and therefore is transcendent, besides being immanent. The absolute consciousness (coscienza assoluta), though virtually made up of all possible relative feelings (sentire relativi), transcends them, and is something quite different from their sum. The leap in quality is enormous from relative to absolute.
However, the principle of transcendence is found in every manifold consciousness and every consciousness – except the atom of feeling (sentire)- is manifold in its structure, always remaining unified in its expression, in its feeling. So that the consciousness which is manifested by the communion of many feelings is far greater than the sum of these feelings and, by the principle of unity, is a single being. A proof that such consciousness is a being that transcends the feelings making it up is that, in order to feel in an enlarged way, it does not need the historical memory of the experience that amplified the feeling and, by its nature, feels in a way not conditioned to that memory. It then follows that, in the phase of new incarnation, man’s awareness (consapevolezza) is reduced compared to the possessed consciousness (coscienza) because, as we know, awareness implies the mind which, being new in each incarnation, does not possess the memory of the experiences it has had. However, I repeat, the essence of all experiences is saved in the new being’s consciousness and reappears by guiding his/her behavior consistently when the being is stimulated by circumstances.
Man’s awareness is made up of sensory impressions, emotions, thoughts, memories, feelings that condition him; but only a part of it comes from his consciousness, that is, from the true and indelible part of his being; the rest is the result of his education, character and so on. But this rest is a superstructure that he needs to experience and gain the necessary understanding to broaden his consciousness, his ability to feel. In his choices, man is influenced not only by his true, indelible being, but also by the artificial part that comes from his human position.
This fact would be unacceptable, if it were believed that man is responsible for his choices for an eternal reward or punishment, because it would prevent him from choosing freely. On the other hand, one cannot certainly use the claim that man is free in his choices as a proof of man’s eternal reward or punishment, because the opposite is so evident that no one can reasonably support the concept of free will. Man’s freedom consists of escaping certain influences, of choosing between one deterministic chain and another. However, the fact of choosing under certain influences does not affect the consequences of the choice, because the purpose of life is not to reward or to punish, but to give what is missing. For instance, if there is no altruistic consciousness, the choice will be selfish, but the consequence of this choice can only lead to a more altruistic consciousness.
Living means expressing one’s degree of consciousness, and unconsciously working to integrate it. This basic concept entirely characterizes our teaching and makes it an evolutionary doctrine. However, evolution here only means that the feeling (il sentire) manifests itself in a succession of enlargement – as seen from the perspective of becoming – or that the feeling is logically ordered from less to most, and therefore the more contains the less – as seen from the perspective of being.
Now, from the principle of transcendence it follows that the most transcends the least, not only in terms of quantity but also in terms of quality, since quantity and quality identify themselves when one deals with the feeling. Furthermore, saying that the feeling manifests itself in a succession of enlargements and is logically ordered from least to most, means to say that there are no wrong choices in absolute sense, or at least that they do not affect or concern the manifestation or concatenation of the feeling of consciousness (sentire di coscienza) – which, whatever the choice of man is, can only have a broader successor.
We have always affirmed that choices or variants (varianti) concern the feeling in a broad sense (il sentire in senso lato), the awareness of man, and not the concatenation of the feeling of consciousness (il sentire di coscienza). For the sake of understanding, one can say that choosing one way or the other might lead to a more or less painful path, but in any case, the resulting feeling is always the logically succeeding feeling. Of course, it is not the same, from a contingent point of view, to reach the logically succeeding feeling from one path or the other.
Now, if one admits that reality is “being” – an indispensable admission to make the concept of God-Absolute true – one must conclude that in the Eternal Present, in which everything exists, a real possibility of choice must correspond to several versions of individual history of equal reality, so equally real that, for an external observer, no one could know which version the individual lives. In other words: Among the many versions, only one is lived by man’s awareness, and only he who lives it knows in which one he is living. However, in the reality of things that are realizable and therefore realized in the Eternal Present, they must all be realized. Otherwise, it would not be a real possibility of choice and the individual would only have a supposed, nominal freedom, reducing reality to a rigid determinism.
The Eternal Present is a state, not a place. But let us suppose we can visualize it, or better, to visualize the real possibility of choice of a man, as he appears in the state of Eternal Present. One would then see the frames (i fotogrammi), that is, the cosmic situations, of all the possible choices concerning the physical world, the astral world, the mental world, all of which are related to his feeling of consciousness.
In other words, all versions of his history in the worlds of perception are linked to the feeling of consciousness, representing the choices that can be made. However, man’s awareness makes only one version be felt in a broad sense (sentire in senso lato): the version that has been chosen. This does not mean that the other versions are not complete with physical, astral, mental frames (i.e. actions, sensations, thoughts); because if, in becoming, they were chosen, they should give the corresponding feeling in a broad sense, more or less fatiguing, more or less painful or welcome, capable of broadening the feeling of consciousness.
In other words, when man has freedom of choice, to a single feeling of consciousness corresponds a pluralisation of feelings in a broad sense, inherent to a pluralisation of frames of which, however, only one series is perceived.
The visualization I have done is very crude and contains conceptual inaccuracies, but it is quite suitable to effectively explain such an unusual Reality. The most relevant mistake that one can make when misinterpreting this exemplification, is to understand that the frames are objectively existing beyond the creation-perception (creazione-percezione) of the individual. Instead, they are all existing in the state of Eternal Present, because precisely in that state every succession is canceled, and therefore they are all created-perceived simultaneously, so that it disappears the sense of passing that instead springs from the creation-perception in illusory succession. Not for anything else.
Going back to the example of the film flowing in front of the lens and projecting the frames, we could say that in the Eternal Present there are as many lenses as there are frames, and therefore all are projected simultaneously. The individual perceives in succession what exists in the Eternal Present simultaneously, but it exists in the Eternal Present because he perceives it, and he perceives it because the feeling creates it.
A question then arises, which I mentioned last time: if the variants exist equally realized in the Eternal Present, who does realize them since the individual perceives only one? Not only that, but how can it be that the individual perceives only one variant, since they are all structurally identical?
Many times, speaking of feeling, we have used the similitude of the mirror, that is, we have mentioned the double action of feeling: one of self-manifestation, and the other of disclosure that leads to the manifestation of a broader feeling. Lately, we have used the verb create-perceive (creare-percepire) as a single verb precisely to bring together in one word the double activity of feeling which, in fact, is always unitary. And this applies as much to the feeling in a broad sense as it does to the feeling of consciousness. However, it should be pointed out that perception is a process that is related to the worlds of appearance and therefore to the feeling in a broad sense; so that when the being has left the wheel of birth and death, it no longer has any perception; but that does not mean that the being does not feel anymore. On the contrary, its self-awareness covers the full breadth of its feeling of consciousness, which is not the case when awareness is linked to perception, to the feeling in a broad sense.
Dwell on this statement: It means that, in man, awareness is linked to perception in a very large part, and that only a small part is aware of the feeling of consciousness. This does not prevent the feeling of consciousness from manifesting itself if stimulated, that is, on the appropriate occasion, because it is not lost, it is only excluded from the awareness, the process of which, by habit, reveals almost exclusively what man perceives. This is because, in man, awareness is by habit an almost exclusively mental fact; while in beings free from the wheel of birth and death, awareness is a matter of consciousness.
But back to us. I was talking about the dual activity of feeling: one of creation or externalization, the other of perception or awareness. Now, the question about variants makes us think that the process of creation or externalization or manifestation is not necessarily related to perception, that is, that the feeling may create and creation may not be perceived. On the other hand, since the feeling is unitary, it cannot be that one of its twofold activities is absolutely missing; at least one creation, when there are many creations, must be perceived. Not so necessarily the others. But when does the feeling have multiple creations? Every time a logical fact dictates it. And why is only one creation perceived? Because the logical fact rules it out. That is, the creations are not complementary, but they are alternatives. In the logical succession, or in the deterministic chain, man can do something in a way or in another way, the equation can be solved in a way or in another way, by choice.
Again, in the creation phase, the creations of the feeling are manifold whenever the logical succession imposes it. Instead, in the process of perception, the creations are alternatives, so only one is perceived, because each one excludes the others.
Now, we must dwell on the creation of the feeling to ask ourselves: which is the relative feeling (sentire relativo) that creates cosmic situations and, in particular, the unlived, unperceived variants? The current feeling? If this were the case, the result would be a dismembered All, or at least unified only in a vertical sense, because it is an individual feeling that does not have the ability to escape from its own limitation, individualization, to make various stories common to others. If it were that feeling, it would be a reality in existence but made up of many dreamlike worlds. So, it must be a non-individualized feeling.
Do you remember when we said that the whole reality of a situation common to many feelings is known only by the feeling that, because of its breadth, contains all the feelings related to that situation? Well, the answer is in this statement. Thus, bearing in mind that the discourse applies to all the feelings of the whole cosmos, what is the feeling which by amplitude can contain all the feelings of all cosmic situations, all cosmic reality, if not the cosmic consciousness (coscienza cosmica)? And what is that feeling which within its environment includes all feelings and therefore is not individualized, if not the cosmic consciousness? Thus, the entire cosmic consciousness feels the entire cosmic reality, not only what is perceived by the relative feelings which constitute it, but also, by the principle of transcendence, that part which is not perceived but which must exist for the completeness of the development of the logical construct.
The cosmic consciousness which, as we have said, is always in a state of eternal present, constitutes a part of the virtual splitting (virtuale frazionamento) of the absolute feeling (sentire assoluto). Its delimitation derives from the fact that it represents the logical development of a certain virtual limitation of the absolute feeling, the so-called “fundamental module of the cosmos” (modulo fondamentale del cosmo). Each cosmos has its own module because it represents, with its cosmic consciousness, the logical development of a different virtual limitation of the absolute feeling: developments that are all carried out in an independent chain, one for each cosmos. The consciousness of every cosmos is independent of that of any other cosmos, as is the unfolding of one equation from that of another. Instead, the feelings that constitute the cosmic consciousness, of which it represents the logical point of departure or arrival, are not independent of each other, but due to their dual activity of creation, perception, awareness, they are horizontally linked in groups, and vertically in a logical and consequent order. However, in the cosmic consciousness is found the synthesis and the final or primitive mutual dependence of each feeling of the cosmos: cosmic consciousness which, by the principle of transcendence, is able to complete, unifying it, the individual logical discourse where, because of its alternativeness, it cannot be created-perceived by the individual.
To recapitulate, the variants concern the feeling in a broad sense, because they are only on the way to the fall of a limitation of the feeling of consciousness, and are alternative facts, that is, facts that go beyond the information that the feeling has from perception. Thus, their creation within the indivisible divine substance (divina sostanza indiversificata) cannot take place by the feeling that does not receive that information, but only by a feeling that in creating goes beyond perception-awareness and goes there not in the individual sense, like that of two or more unified feelings, but goes there in the total sense, like that of the cosmic consciousness.
Thus, the cosmic consciousness, by the principle of transcendence, logically completes the creation-perception of individual relative feelings, not through perception but through the conditioning of the divine substance of which it is constituted, and therefore of which the entire cosmos is constituted. This conditioning is essentially the basic limitation of the cosmic consciousness, that is, the fundamental module of the cosmos; which in itself already enucleates from the indivisible divine substance an environment: the cosmic environment.
This environment – compared to the absolute consciousness in which everything is present, but nothing is highlighted, and this explains God’s transcendence – already represents a particularisation, which can only take place through the limited-relative feeling. In fact, it is because of the limitation that the relative feeling draws out, creates, perceives, feels only something from the All. And the more limited the feeling, the more elementary the particular created-perceived is. Therefore, the limitation of the feeling, a consequence of the virtual splitting of the absolute feeling, pluralizes. And this pluralisation, consequence of the virtual splitting, makes the absolute consciousness not a feeling, but the absolute feeling, which, to be such, must contain the maximum possible pluralisation, that is, all possible feelings.
If you analyze the logical phases from Absolute to relative, you have:
- absolute consciousness;
- its virtual splitting resulting in the virtual decomposition-composition of the cosmic consciousnesses;
- in turn composed-decomposed into individual relative feelings;
- creation, by enucleation from the indivisible divine substance, of the cosmic environment, including the worlds of perception, by the cosmic consciousness and the individual related feelings.
The enucleation, direct consequence of the degree of limitation of the relative feelings, has as a consequence – as I said – the creation of the cosmic environment: which, however, does not exist objectively but only as a fact connected with the limitations of the feeling, and is therefore dependent, in the end, on the type of limitation of the cosmic consciousness relative to the Absolute, that is, on the fundamental module of the cosmos.
This phase of unfolding, of development, of limitations, can be defined as pluralisation, and therefore of creation or manifestation of the feeling. However, pluralisation, being contained in a logical development, is not infinite; being subject to a law that orders it, it is finite. That is why the cosmos is limited. Therefore, in this sense, already in the creation of the feeling, in pluralisation, there is inherent unification. In other words, in the non-temporal but structural moment in which the absolute feeling is relativized, there is a pluralisation, which includes all possible feelings according to a logical development; development that marks the limits of every cosmos, in which every feeling – among the many other logically consequent limitations – has one in common: the basic one. Due to this basic limitation, the cosmic environment created by the relative feelings is common to each one.
The feeling that has only the basic limitation is the cosmic consciousness. And, it is the cosmic consciousness that, due to this basic limitation and the principle of transcendence, brings about the horizontal unification of all feelings which proceed from it.
You do understand what the horizontal unification is: It is the unification that occurs to all equivalent feelings as a consequence of the fall of a limitation. The synthesis of these feelings is made by the cosmic consciousness; otherwise, each feeling would only remain vertically bound.
Each feeling is linked vertically when in logical succession it proceeds from the other, i.e. it is included by the other. And this is the vertical unification, which makes of the many interested relative feelings, in themselves completed, a being that feels rather than many separate feelings.
Perception-awareness is the result of this unification, and it is the second phase of the feeling, a phase that concerns unification rather than pluralisation, even though it is the cause of the illusion of becoming in which separation seems objective.
The astonishing warp and fabric that is the Existing, so barbarically illustrated by this narrator, who asks for forgiveness for this and much more, is not a mechanism, but a wonderful organism in which every part, even the most insignificant fragment, is irreplaceable and therefore of paramount importance, and therefore immortal.
If one comes so far to believe the truth of all this, one understands the meaning of the highest morality, and suddenly the meaning of life, of existence, of the right relationship with the others, becomes clear.
But who are the others? The more dismissive, hated, evil, the more confused and far from the truth, and therefore more in need of understanding and love? But what would be the point of knowing all of this, if one lived as one who ignores it?
Such is indeed the question I leave to your meditations.”
[1] LA FONTE PREZIOSA: rivelazioni sull’Assoluto. Cerchio Firenze 77, (a cura di Luciana Campani Setti). Roma: Edizioni Mediterranee, 1987.
La Logica della Morale 