Dreams in Blog - THE MUSIC OF LIFE 18/Feb/2010 THE MUSIC OF LIFE Posted by : Prof. Stefano D'Anna
The MUSIC of LIFE You are the song you sing. Your music shapes your existence and anything you see, touch and feel. There is a human mass that sings a chant of sorrow and projects a w orld on the edge of a precipice. There are individuals who sing a c hant of love and victory. The vastness of their music shapes destinies and societies, and profoundly profoundly affects the ro ots of the human s pirit.
Brueghel Jan, the elder: The sense of hearing
Are you ready to conduct a very interesting experiment? Can you accept being both the scientist of this experiment and at the same time the guinea pig? Well! Just pick out one of your days. Select any day of your life. Look carefully through it. Explore any detail of it. Notice the words you say. Classify them. Single out those you say more often« Scan the feelings you experience. Cla ssify them. Single out the most frequent ones« Look at your thoughts. Classify them. Single out the most persistent ones, those that appear with a higher frequency. Just as one cell, the smallest unit of life, contains the biological information of your en tire organism, so, ifif your search is sincere and you really want to know about yourself, any one of your days can tell you all about you. That tiny segment of your existence is the epitome, the very synthesis of your life and knows your destiny, buried und er thick layers of lies. It is like having the Delphic Oracle at hand. At your disposal. When you want it, if you want it.
We are monotonous beings
In all likelihood, such a search will make us realize that our words, thoughts, and feelings, are recurring; we just repeat them mechanically, day after day, over and
over. We may discover that as a whole we are a quite monotonous being. Pick out the physical sensations you experience in a day. If you pay a bit of attention, you will realise that there is nothing new in what you sense. Moreover this search will make us aware of our mechanical nature. It will take our breath away at the terrifying discovery that our µmachine¶ is already programmed to feel those sensations, to experience those emotions, to have those thoughts, to pronounce those words. Like a musical instrument that vibrates at a given frequency, and can emit only that sound, we are occupying only a very narrow bandwidth in the infinity of possible keys, vibrations, and sounds.
What song are you singing?
You will realise that every day you sing the same song and that the external world, what you call reality, does nothing but obey to that rhythm, that sound, that vibration. A man's reality, his ability to do and therefore to have, his degr ee of happiness as well as his financial destiny, perfectly corresponds to his µrate of vibration¶. The world is more or less narrow, more or less large according to the wideness of our song. "What song are you singing?" is the same as questioning yourself about your destiny. When you are able to listen to it, when you are more careful with the notes you utter, you will be able to notice it¶s mono -tony. If you will realize this, then you will also find the will and the ability ability to widen the narrow pentagram in which you are living. Like a piano, that with respect to other instruments has such a breadth of octaves to occupy two pentagrams, so there are men who have a wider expressive range than do others. There exist men who play music that spans three, four, five pentagrams« because their "dream" is too wide to be contained in the narrow bandwidth that suffices for the rest of mankind. Two men conduct business between them because of a fusion of rhythms, a consistency of sounds« an harmony. And a firm takes ov er another firm for the width of its music; a civilisation conquers another civilisation and absorbs it for the vastness of its chant, the width of octaves, the quality of sounds, the richness, and the power of its music.
It is easier to move a mountain
Notice how difficult it is to change even a single word of your everyday vocabulary, an accent, a pet phrase; notice the impossibility of changing an attitude, a reaction, of breaking a routine, routine, of going outside of the mechanical repetitiveness repetitiveness of gesture s, or of sounds. Just imagine what it could mean to transform a thought, to change an emotion« Notice inside you the impossibility of catching a new idea, to accept it« to dive into the invisible, to think something original, to dream something apparently
impossible« to play a single note outside of the pentagram in which you were driven to live. You will realise that it is easier to move a mountain. Every intentional effort, even the smallest, made to modify a repetitive action, a mechanical reaction or to break a habit, is a victory over our monotony, the tripping up of repetitive habits and recurrences of our life. You will realise that the aging, the process of progressive stiffening of your life started long ago, and though you may be young, soon you will no longer be able to reverse it. Rich men and tramps, politicians and employees, Nobel prize winners and ordinary people - everyone carries around his own own song. Everybody is locked in self created prisons of roles, sealed in bubbles of negative emotio ns, embalmed in their own habits. The greater part of mankind obeys a programme set at birth, reaffirmed in childhood by parents who can do nothing but transmit the song which they in their turn received from their parents; and reinforced in schools and un iversities where they learn a hypnotic music taught by bad musicians, tedious teachers, and prophets of misfortune. Throughout the millennia, the traditions of wisdom have devised and transmitted every kind of µtrick¶ to contrast with the rigidity and repe titiveness towards which men inevitably tend. Genuflections towards Mecca five times a day, the fasting ritual of Ramadan in the ninth month of the Islamic lunar year; indeed, the current rituals of every religious tradition, could all be characterized as µtripping¶ mechanical behaviours. Their function is to nourish mankind¶s drowsy intelligence and latent understanding, by the interruption of routine; pushing men to deviate from the rut of deep-rooted habits.
Like
a jammed gramophone
There are grandiose musicians, visionary individuals who sweep through the pentagrams of existence, who create and catch their music from immensity, from above, and there is a human mass resigned to their sad and flickering existence, men and women similar to a jammed gramop hone repeating their whining, mournful theme learned since childhood and never modified. Their life is an elementary, basic song played by pressing few keys with just a finger. If we bothered to pay the slightest attention to our movements, we would discov er how mechanical and repetitive our lives are. Every morning we set out with scrupulous rigour on a series of actions which are always the same: we get out of bed with the same foot, we start shaving from the same side, we clean our teeth repeating the sa me number of movements, in the same fashion, and always with the same facial expression. We have settled habits; we express received ideas with the same gestures, words and inflections we have always always used. Even our emotions are predictable, like conditione d reflexes of the soul. In the ordinary man, the will is buried. His behaviour is the reflection of a mechanical intelligence and could be studied more profitably by
sciences like ethology or robotics than by psychology. Once he has understood this, a man can have no other aim in life but to escape from this narrow bandwidth where all mankind is kept prisoner - to escape from his own music's monotony and poverty. There is no greater project, no holier war than contrasting one¶s limits and raising one¶s own chant. The cast out of Eden of Adam and Eve, the original sin, the paradise lost doesn¶t occur once upon a time but every moment that humanity raises a chant of fear and sorrow and keeps singing it over and over. T he he world is such because you are such. Change
your music
This hellish song springing from a black hole in man¶s soul, accounts for the all the conflicts, poverty, criminality and any moral and material disease of the planet, including humanity¶s millenary curse of aging, getting sick and dying. I f you want to change your reality, change your music, and devote yourself to widening your µdream¶. The dream is the most real thing there is. It is the dream that creates reality. And only the dream can rescue us out of this tight position of Being, out o f our chant's monotony that becomes pain in our bodies, fear in our feelings and doubt in our minds. One day our being will be so wide to be able to listen not only to our, but also to others' songs« the sounds others utter« the profoundness and the height of their octaves« their notes' colour, timbre, rhythm. When we are ready to stand up to the responsibility of this truth, we will find out that humanity thinks and feels negatively; it sings a song of misfortune, of sorrow, of doubt and fear. The whole world is in your head, like the music you play, the song you sing inside. And your fate is recorded like in the grooves of an LP.
Dream a beautiful dream
If you study yourself, if you observe yourself, you will know more about yourself and day-by-day you will be able to broaden your dream, creating and singing a new melody. Every day you will realize more and more that µthe dream¶ is more real than our illusion of acting in life. Through dreaming you will create relationships, solve problems, and enter inaccessible worlds. You will learn how to dive into the invisible. Reality will follow, and will take the shape and dimension of your dream. Knowing ourselves is discovering that man is alone in the universe, solely responsible for anything happening to him. him. Life is as you dream it. Your song shapes your existence. You can live in paradise or in hell. It is up to you. Have the courage to dream a beautiful dream. Have the courage to sing a unique melody, outside of the chorus, like a solitary bird. Be an indivi dual and conquer all that is possible to conquer« inside your head.
Dreams in Blog - SOLITUDE 04/Jan/2010 SOLITUDE Posted by : Prof. Stefano D'Anna
TEMPO
January 2010 Article By Stefano E. D¶Anna he T he
characteristics of the solitary bird are fivefold: First, it flies towards the highest point Second, it does not tolerate companions hird, it aims its beak to the sky T hird, Fourth, it has no definite colour Fifth, it sings most sweetly.
SOLITUDE Close your eyes and feel your presence, enjoy your own company. Search for solitude. This is the way a leader builds his integrity and acquires acquire s power.
We all tasted immortality. It was during the physical gestation, when for nine months (but in fact for an endless e ndless time) we have been aquatic, dreaming beings, beings, floating in the amniotic liquid. And while for zoological beings this is the only gestation, necessary and sufficient µto come t o this world¶, for human beings beings this physical gestation is fol lowed by an age of development, a sort of long psychological gestation, which continues until the age of 18-20. Therefore the news I am giving to the youngest of you is that you were not born around 1990, b ut as complete beings, you are having birth now, in i n 2010. And just now, like li ke Narcissus, Narcissus, you are looking at yourself in the mirror of the world and no parent or teacher, no school or university, has prepared you to t o recognise your
image in what you touch and see around you. Up to now you have been in the shell, family has has protected you; now you are starting to bare your own reflection in the world, and the image in front of you is not always pleasant. You start to experience the first disappointments, the first misfortunes, some accidents, sentimental delusions, apparent problems« And not recognising them as the reflection of your being, you have already got used to complain, to blame and accuse others, to hide, to lie, to feel sorry for yourselves. These are the clear signs that you are becoming part of th e dark sea of adulthood. Adult has not a very nice etimo. It comes from adulteration. We could say that an adult is an adulterated ad ulterated being, a child who has stopped dreaming. You are going to be hypnotised by a description, a tale of the external world, like 99.9% of grown-up people. You spend most of your time out of yourself, with others; and if i f occasionally you are alone, you are waiting for something to happen, a phone ringing, a person or event that can bring you life from the outside. Longing all the time for the company of others is like to depend on a l ung-machine for breathing. Following others, living in their shadow, imitating others and whatever is cool, trendy, makes your life banal. Be ahead of fashion! Put it behind you. Be yourself« The others will be imitating imitatin g you. To achieve this state of freedom, of independent i ndependent thinking, you have to know yourself, you have to find out who you really are. It i s necessary to reduce the hours that are spent in ordinary activities, working out of home, absorbed, immerged in the external world, and stay some time in solitude, alone with yourself. Spend more time being in your own company, free from any kind of conditioning. Do it intentionally if you wish to achieve a life li fe rich in all senses. For most people, and especially young people, to spend time alone is unbearable. They search for others to fill fi ll their solitude, they stuff their lives with engagements and events; their agendas are crammed of meetings and appointments. In the effort to escape from themselves, and the unbearable burden of a forced loneliness, they look for the crowd, they gather in its temples: cinemas, theatres, stadiums, they huddle in a group with others and they are at ease wherever they can feel the reassuring presence of the crowd. Multiplicity of events and commitments, external circumstances, an unceasing flow of facts, of insignificant insign ificant experiences, the constant presence of the others in our lives, are all indicators of the incapability of living in solitude. People do not like to spend time in their own company and when, obliged by
circumstances, they happen to be alone, they turn on the TV, make a circumstances, phone call, listen to music or look for the company of a book. What I have learned from the Dreamer, and which I have narrated in The School for Gods, the incapacity to be alone, the compulsive need for others, are symptoms of a self-destructive inclination, inclination, although unconscious. unconsc ious. People, especially youth, do not bear solitude because they don¶t love themselves. The inability to love themselves themselves leads l eads to a kind of self-sabotage that may come about in various guise, through harmful attitudes and habits, like smoking, smoking, assumption of drugs, abuse of alcohol, but also provoking apparently involuntary, unpredictable accidents« like the many casualties for road accidents that happen after leaving a party or a disco. Solitude is fortitude. Solitude Solitude has to be felt f elt as a friend. We W e need to learn how to feel good on our own, loving ourselves. The more we live in solitude the more occurrences occurrences disappear and number numb er of people we meet shortens to make space for more intense encounters and more real events.
Caspar David Friedrich: Wanderer above the Sea of Fog There is an internal time and an external time. Schools and univers universities ities should transfer to their students the i ntelligen ntelligence ce that one must balance them, that we must dedicate to ourselves at least as much time as we dedicate to others and the external world. Differently, will be left without the oil in the t he lamp, with our being deprived d eprived of the µprecious essence¶. When you are alone, you must learn how to live li ve beautiful moments moments in a conscious, consc ious, intentional, creative solitude if you do not want to live bad moments in a forced loneliness. Anytime you can, take t he opportunity to transform loneliness into precious time to enter into yourself, to practice the most fruitful of all activities: observing, studying, knowing yourself. You should realize, and then explain to your children, that to stay by
yourself means to build yourself, to strengthen yourself. It i s necessary to learn how to t o transform loneliness into creative solitude. solitude. Creative solitude means to have self-control, it means to master your emotions, to possess your inner world. In not comprehending this, people search for fulfilment and happiness in the outside world, they try to find certainty in the eyes of others. But the world, the outside reality is only a mirror.. Things happen only because you are. mirror a re. There is nothing out there. Nothing at all. Also the people that you meet and deem real, are nothing but your reflections. In reality, you only meet yourself. There is no greater adventure, no work more useful than that of encountering others and recognising them as projections of our thinking, t hinking, our states, our values. One day you will realise that you are the Dreamer and not the dreamed, the Creator and not the creation, and that everyth everything ing is at your service. Then you will no longer be dependent. Close your eyes and feel your presence, enjoy your own company. Search for solitude. This is the way a leader builds his integrity and acquires power: being with himself. He knows that power cannot come from the world, cannot be given to him by others. Only a few µgreats¶ of history have arrived at feeling inside themselves themselves this sense of vastnes vastness, s, knowing that they t hey could not depend on others, that they could not ask anything of anyone. A leaders is alone. He builds himself from the inside, in solitude. Alone with himself, in stillness and silence, he can catch a fragment of eternity to enlarge his thinking, to invite i nvite large, courageous ideas and solutions beyond imagination. imagination. There he finds the strength to take decisions that always go against existing µstatus quo¶, comm common on opinion and the convictions of others. His certainty comes from his integrity, the belief that everything depend on him and he can only rely on himself.
Solitude versus others, individual versus versus mass is a great argument that needs to be brought further and deeper. Others are you. Are you in time. Whoever you meet measures the distance that you have inside. The others are you distant from you. When they have too much significance significan ce in your life, l ife, is a worrying sign that soon or later you yo u can be trapped. But this will be matter for my next article and I look forward to discussing it with you.
29/Mar/2010 THE OTHERS Posted by : Prof. Stefano D'Anna
THE OTHER OTHERS S All that you always wanted to know about the others and nobody ever told you. Instructions on how to handle the others, what are they all about and what are they for.
ainting P ainting The
by René Margitte. Margitte.
others are you.
This article is continuing the reasoning and the train of thoughts started in the January¶s issue with my article on ³Solitude´. Solitude and others are a most interesting polarity of our lives. They are a most crucial dichotomy,, like light and darkness, fear and love, life and death. If there dichotomy is one, there cannot be the other. ot her. No school, no parent or mentor, no teacher or university taught us what is the meaning of the others, what are the others all about and for what reason they are there. Moreover nobody gave us instructions on how to µuse¶ them - to handle them. The others are your reflex in the world and whoever you meet is a flitting image of you captured by a mirror. As matter of fact you can only meet yourself. Anyone you meet is yourself. If you are aware of this,
anybody you encounter is an officiant Pythia, the t he sibyl or priestess of the Oracle at Delphi, capable to telling with pitiless precision who you are, and what your destiny is. In a few minutes you can discover yourself, know yourself, and also know everything everything about the other. Whomever you encounter, you can know his or her destiny, and the destiny of any other who is like-minded. The more you know k now yourself, the more the external world and the µothers¶ become an open book for you.
The
internal gap
Among the things I have learned from the Dreamer, which I have narrated in my Book ³The School for Gods´, one of the most amazing is the unveiling of this: whoever you meet, beyond the t he surface, beyond the thin layer of what you yo u are discussing, that encounter is measuring, registering register ing an internal distance, the gap existing between you and yourself. This is the real and most profitable outcome of encountering the others. Shortening the gap, bridging this distance in yourself, you will see the multiplicity multiplic ity of the world reduced and the others go down d own in number till they gradually fade away, disappearing from your life, like tools which are no longer needed, when the work is done. The more you are separated from yourself, the more this space must be filled with others, stuffed with casualness, with a multitude of adversities,, with a crowd of adversities of events, most of which which are unpleasant. unpleasant. The more you fill the inner gap the less the world intrudes between you and yourself. Without this understanding men meet each other in a somnambulist somnambulistic ic state, troubled by worries, clouded by doubts and fears and lost in daily discord.. They meet so as to pursue discord p ursue objectives and insignificant, insignificant, external advantages, advantages, instead of taking from the encounter the only real, durable profit: to eliminate one¶s mediocrity and lies, and conquer oneself. No matter how much people devote themselves to doing, to discussing discus sing business or making apparently important decisions, decisions, from an evolved man¶s man¶s point of view, they appear to be little more than uncivilized individuals busy negotiating and haggling over glass beads, bric-a-brac and trash. It is you who gives significance to events, who creates the people crowding your life. You are responsible for their moral and human quality, their actions and reactions, their understanding. It is i n your power to illuminate them or to switch them off, for a second or for a life
time. You can speed them up or you can slow them down. You can keep them or let them go. The world is an appendix, a game of lights and shadows where people exist and things happen only o nly because you are. For a real man, meeting others is only a stratagem to know oneself, to discoverr one¶s own incom discove i ncompleteness pleteness and heal it. i t.
The
others are your being made visible
The others are mirrors reflecting our image. The others ot hers are our being made visible, our psychology materialized. materialized. In fact, depending on the state of being that you are in, others ot hers reflect your doubts, your uncertainties, uncertaint ies, your sorrow and fears or they reflect your st ate of independence, independenc e, wellbeing and certainty. This This realization will will allow us to encounter a stable, clean and harmonious world if we l ive corresponding states states of being. The others are projections p rojections of our states of Being. When certain states disappear from inside, certain events and certain people disappear from our lives. For a human humanity ity that is is unprepared to encounter a respectfu r espectful, l, balanced, bright world there could only be an entry into a world of negativity and boredom. An incomplete person cannot bear to be by himself, to enjoy his own company. His incompleteness, his guiltiness urges him to always look for others to meet, in i n a constant state of o f expectation, perpetually waiting for something to happen. Solitude, Soli tude, a state in which to cultivate elevation of one¶s Being, is boring for unready people because it goes towards silence and leads to an absence of events, circumstances and gripping, absorbing emotions« and above all, an absence of others. You need to prepare for perfection or it arrives like a shadow, fear, t hreat. Unprepared people would suffocate with boredom. They would see unity of being and stillness as idleness and immobility. Realizing himself to be the solely responsible for his own world, an ordinary man would feel strangled strangled and crushed. He prefers prefers to believe that that he is part of the creation, part of the shadows, in a world made by ot hers, rather than to accept the responsibility responsibility of being the Maker of his destiny - because the state of being the Dreamer, the Creator is too powerful. The life of a dreamer will not accept even a single atom of uncertainty. Understand Unders tand this and you y ou will either give yourself up to sleep with its justifying, justifyin g, complaining, and accusing or you will dedicate yourself to your evolution - to your improvement.
Others
are time
Turn to yourself. This must be our discipline. Realize that there nothing out there. There is nobody to ask, nobody who can tell you the way to go. W hen you realize that there is nothing that the others can do for you, you yo u are free. Free to finally fetch from yourself, from your uniqueness, from your originality. On the contrary, ordinary people long to be with others, they t hey incessantly search for company. company. A man goes out to a restaurant, to the t he cinema, to the disco, just for one reason: to encounter others. And each time he returns home with a sense of defeat. The reason is that others are himself in time, others are are time. They are the past that haunts him. him. The victory is to be one without without otherness. People get married married to avoid being alone, in the attempt to overcome their loneliness, and to find happiness in the other. But two incomplete incomplete human beings beings clinging to to one another deceive themselves into thinking that they can complete each other, that together they can form a whole. But the result of the union of two t wo incomplete people is incomp i ncompleteness leteness squared. Ordinary people, and especially the young, are unaware that happiness is an inner matter. It can only be the intentional i ntentional choice of this very instant and cannot be in time; it cannot happen with with another person. It is impossible. impossible. Only you, in absence of time, time, returning to the source, source, regaining your unity, can be happy. Integrity doesn¶t have plurality. Integrity cannot cannot be achieved in two two or three. Just like one one cannot be healthy in two or in three. If you lower your level of integrity, of truth, of happiness,, the happiness t he world fragments, and becomes a kaleidoscope. Innocence is a return to integrity - a rewinding. rewinding. The closer you are to integrity, the less you rely on others, the less you need others, unt il for your nature, there is no alternative to your solitude; it becomes a blessing state state that you can pursue p ursue and hold constant in the middle of a crowd, or in the uproar of a bazaar.
The Portable Paradise
Timelessness makes life tremendously easy. Liberate Timelessness Libe rate yourself from time. Liberate yourself from the hypnotic need for ot hers. Train yourself to have a paradise inside - a portable paradise. There is no role, friend, relationship, relationsh ip, that t hat can make you live in i n paradise. Only you, yourself can do it. No marriage, no music, music, no drugs, no sex can give give you paradise or happiness. No politics, no religion, no priest, no master or guru can
do it ± no one o ne outside of yourself.
Dreams in Blog - Article on Sleep 14/Jul/2009 Article on Sleep Posted by : Prof. D'Anna
The invitation to write on such an interesting theme, so close to our existence and yet so misterious and in many ways still unexplored, has received receive d my m y immediate assent. In fact it has been for me a precious pretext to compress in the few pages of one article the ideas and the material that since many years I am gathering on this wonder of our life, on this amazing phenomenon. From the first draft of this article, and procedeeng with the iconographic search and selection of the images that could illustrate my ideas about sleep, I realised the extent of the subject, its multi-faceted nature and complexity. comple xity. My first choice then has been to limit the inve stigation to some aspects of sleep as an intimate, individual phenomenon, and to some reflections which cannot commonly be found in the existing literature on this theme. Keeping in mind the final development of this work, my excursus moves from the apology and praise of sleep - in a vision which considers considers it a pleasure, pleasur e, a phisiological phisiological function and a natural right given for granted to the exploration of more misterious sides of sleep, depicting it as rather an uneasy, unquiet state, till the consi consideration deration of o f some disturbing aspects of it.
Beauty,
Eros and Sleep
An
aspect of sleep, as part of its collective imagery, is certainly the sensual sleep. The sleeping Venus, one of the last works by the Italian renaissance renaiss ance Master Giorgione is an extremely influential painting. It portrays a nude woman whose profile seems to follow that of the hills in the background. This painting, also known as the Dresden Venus, is an hymn to beauty, sleep and eros. Erotic implications are made by the placement of her left hand on her groin and Venus's raised arm. To show one¶s armpit for a woman still today, in many cultures, is considered an indecent gesture. The choice choice of a nude woman marked a revolution in art, and is considered consi dered one of the starting points of modern art. The painting was unfinished at the time of Giorgione¶s death (1510). The landscape and sky were later finished by Titian, who later painted the similar Venus of Urbino.
Sleeping Venus
Giorgione, c. 1510 Oil on canvas 108,5 × 175 cm Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden
Sleep after sex
In 1866 a Turkish Diplomat Khalil Bey ordered a painting to the French artist Gustave Coubet, the foremost realist painter of mid -19th-cen -19th-century. tury. The image of a pair of entwined sleeping female bodies far from being a purely erotic painting has undeniably an element of trasgressive sensuality which cannot be lacking in a short but comprehensive research on sleep. Coubet¶s work also Coubet¶s a lso gives the cue for a quick note on how foundamenta foundamentall has been the trasgression in art to push further the frontiers of our
freedom and intelligence, intelligence, which are one and the same thing.
Gustave
Coubet Sleep (Le sommeil)
The tight connection between sleep, sex and death is more visibile in some masterpieces that represent the human condition (especially man¶s) of unguarded sleep after sex. Botticelli¶s Mars and Venus shows through the face of Mars how deep is the intuition built in the French language which names the condition post coitus µla petite mort¶, the French expression for orgasm.
Botticelli
- Mars and Venus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_ http://en.wikipedia .org/wiki/Venus_and_Mars_%28Botticel and_Mars_%28Botticelli%29 li%29
Ascetic, meditative, prophetic sleep
very rilevant observation is that sleep is in time. An ordinary person who is sleeping is fully immersed in time and has a very limited control, if any at all, on his body, on his life. As I will try to dimostrate d imostrate at the end, this unguarded condition of limited awareness is not very different from what happens in men¶s (so called) waking state. Nevertheless there is a dimension of sleep which opens the doors to timelessness. Intentional Intention al day dreaming, divinatory and meditative states are A
somehow induced by sleep but do not imply a loss of control on oneself. Just the opposit. And yet they are intimately connected connected to sleep and carried by it. This timeless condition of sleep is well expressed by this image of sleeping slee ping Budda, carved in one inestimable block of white Jada, which I have captured in a visit to Hufo temple in Shanghai. It is the rappresentation of wide open eyes sleep of a timeless, alert being. In the Greek mithology there has been just one man, Endymion, who was given by Hypnos the privilege to sleep w ith open eyes.
White
Jada
Budda
Hufo Temple - Shanghai
Sleep as flight
In Georgia, in his modest studio of Tiblisi, I met Koka Tsikhelashvili and his extraordinary extraordinary art. This painting in particular I brought with me to exhibit at the Aria Gallery in Pietrasant P ietrasanta, a, Tuscany. It is named µthe Flight¶. I found it a very poetic, fairy-tale represent representation ation of sleep as an escape from the so called reality. Men turn their impotente and sadmesse into sleep slee p and entrust themelves themelves to its wings when life becomes t oo painful, suffocating and one doesn¶t know how to deal with it, how to transform it. Ordinary men wake up and as first thing they meet with their inner song of unceasing sorrow. They do not want to listen to it nor want to face that pain they bring deep inside. Men drown their sorrow in a coffee,, plunge into their daily worries and same worn-out routines; they coffee let themselves be caught by their laborious existence, because they do not want to know. But their flight in sleep reveals to be ephemeral and tha t neglected pain
becomes more and more acute. One day we will discover that that dark becomes corner of our being we never lighted is the very source of all the difficulties and failures that then we meet in our life.
Koka
Tsikhelashvili
The Flight Aria Art Gallery-Pietrasanta-Italy
The Monster of Sleep "I have
often imagined the monster of sleep as a heavy, giant head with a tapering body held up by the crutches of reality. When the crutches break we have the sensation of falling " - Salvador Dali
This pulpy head looks very ugly and restless.., It depicts sleep as rather an uneasy, unquiet state. The body is useless and almost dead (hanging on just one crutch), the head is loaded and functioning, though not fully capable of feeding feeding awareness (eyes and ea rs are closed). It has indeed no control on reality, thus desperately depends upon thin and short crutches which hardly manage to keep the head from totally collapsing. Moreover, it seems there is a tremendous struggle going on. The loaded,, heavy head pushes downwards, uncomfortable with the loaded interference interfere nce of the crutches...yearning crutches...yearning to fall into the dark (might be interpreted as night or maybe forgetfulness and death).
Dali's
Sleep
Hypnos
In your next visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art you can admire a rare 1st century Roman bronze statue of Hypnos. Classical mythology represents him, the personification of sleep, as a gorgeous young man neked, with wings attached to his head. Son of goddess Nyx (Night), his power was such that not only men but even go ds couldn¶t resist resist him. According to one story, Hypnos lived in a cave underneath a Greek island; through this cave flowed Lethe, the river of forgetfulness. But the part of Hypnos¶ mith which is more interest interesting ing for the purpose p urpose of this article is that he has not just a brother but a tween brother: Thanatos, personification of death and mortality.
Sleep and
Death
somnus mortis image The School for
Gods
To go deeper into this important, disquieting vision of ³somnus imago mortis´, sleep sleep as representation of o f death, I shall introduce you to the work of an ancient School and to the ideas of a peculiar figure of a philosopher-monk philos opher-monk called Lupelius, a free spirit of the Dark Ages, and a
native of Ireland - in those years a refuge for learned men, a land at the crossroads of cultures and traditions, tormented by every war and conflict imaginable. At
a crucial point of my life I met an extraordinary being, a timeless man. In my Book: The School for Gods, I called Him the Dreamer. I wish all of you, readers of this article, to meet Him soon in your life. He changed my destiny. Among other difficult undertakings of my apprentship, He pushed me to a disperate, hopeless quest for an original manuscript manuscript 1.000 year old, written by Lupelius in the ninth century and whose traces had been lost for centuries. After
indescribable vicissitudes, bringing my quest in three continents, I found the Lupelius¶ manuscript in Everan, Armenia, at the Institute of Ancient Manuscripts. What follow are spinters of wisdom, extracts from the content of this priceless masterpiece. Sleeping is a bad habit
With his inimitable black humour, universal jester and master of disguises that he was, Lupelius claimed that every night men play out the dress rehearsal for their own final exit from the scene. Perseverin Persevering g in their µbad µbad habit¶ of sleeping, sleeping, half the planet planet goes to bed, its inhabitants bidding each other good night without even realising what a macabre ritual they are performing.. performing.... .. ³When you know that sleep is the representation of death, you can no longer approach it as you did before«I n any case, whatever precautions or methods you adopt, you must never let anyone, not even your woman, see you sleeping«Exercise the art of staying awake!...A warrior knows that to be caught napping is to expose his vulnerability«it is like inviting the world to attack and strike us to death.´
Fall asleep awake P eople eople
fall asleep in the same way as they hope to die«suddenly«But, whatever time it is, however long your day has been and however hard your battle, make sure you µfall asleep awake¶«Those who do not know how to manage their energy, fall into bed exhausted at the end of the day, more dead than alive«I f you really have to sleep for a few minutes, then you must approach sleep from a state of wakefulness. This will prevent you from from falling into the infernal depths.´
Why
are we awake?
Antropologists,
sociologists, experts of customs and usages, scientists above all, have tried to discover the mechanism which oversees and regulates regulate s sleep, so scattering the t he mist around the enigmatic cause of sleep. But up to now there is no concrete answer to this question: why we sleep? It is my belief that following a less travelled scientific path the comprehension of sleep becomes deeper and reveals unsuspected secrets if we move the focus of our inquiry from the sleep to the waking state and we ask: why are we awake? Or more simply: what is the real difference differen ce between beeng asleep and being awake?
The Endymion Syndrom
What if we found out that the sleeping condition is not limited to the night sleep but were a life time condition? What if we would discover that in reality an ordinary man never wakes up; that what he calls wake were in reality the natural continuation of a state of continuous sleep through which his entire life runs out? The myth-theme of Endymion being not dead but endle endlessly ssly asleep, by Zeus¶ decree, and who received from Hypnos the special capacity to sleep with open eyes, can well become the crucial symbol of ordinary man¶s condition. The final thesis I am bringing forth is that an hypnotic sleep sleep tyrannically rules every man¶s existence. The ordinary man, plunged in a hypnotic sleep, lulled by a song of pain, will keep on lying to himself. No matter how terrible his life may be, he will continue to indulge in it, and will
never ever find the will and enough energy to escape . I will try to go into this matter thoroughly in this last part of the art icle icle..
Hypnotic Sleep
The hypothesis of a planetary population of 7 billions of ³sleepwalkers´ who work, teach, pollute, riproduce, and above all get in each other¶s way and fight, in a state of dro wsines wsiness s if not of hypnotism, without a real will, driven by strings like puppets, is shocking but has the very fascination fasc ination of all great pre-scientific hypothesis, of those pow erful heresies that later in time have been recognised as corner stones of the history of ideas and of scientific thought. ³Men meet each other in a somnambulistic state, troubled by worries, clouded by doubts and fears, lost in daily discord. They meet so as to pursue insignificant objectives and external, vain advantages .´ ± says
the Dreamer. The discovery discovery that we do not just sleep at night but that, with the exception of few fleeting moments of lucidità, of real waking, we spend our entire life in a state of unconsciousness, could change our vison forever, and with it our destiny.
No political, religious or philosophical system can change society from the outside. Only an individu individual al revolution r evolution,, a psycholo psychological gical rebirth, a healing of the being, man by man, cell by cell, will free us from an hypnotic vision of the world, from a self-created prison. It will lead us towards a more intelligent civilization, truer, richer, more happy´. For this we need a School, schools of responsibility, schools of wakening. In them the cells of a new humanity will learn the art of dreaming. Dreaming means to be awaken, alert, a lert, to keep out of any a ny ipnotism. It means stopping self-sabotage, any s elf-distructive activity. It means stopping to be in fear, in uncertainty, indulging in any negative mood or emotion. The Art of Dreaming is to realize to be the creator of your reality, that life is as you dream it. It means to stop being a victim of
the worls, a victim of your own creation. And
if the schools and universities which we know are for men, then we need Schools for Gods. Now we can understand the deep meaning of the Greek mith of Hypnos twin brother of Tanathos. Hypnotic sleep is moral, psychological death. The opposite of a sleeping sleeping state is not to be sle epwalkers epwalkers,, sort of zombies, zombie s, but to be really alive, alert, aware. It means to lead and not to be led, it means to have a will. Ulysses orders his crew to tie him to the mainmast so as not to obey to the sirens¶ song song and abandon, not to fall in ³mare magnum ´ of the planetary hypnotic sleep. The ropes bind him to his principles. His decision is the act of a real heros, of a µman of the School¶. He emblematically shows the way to a new humanity to persue lucidity and freedom. Their motto, has been coined long ago for the worriormonks of Lupelius: sleep less, die less, dream more.
Herbert James
Draper
Ulysses and Sirens
Dreams in Blo Blog g - The way way of Icarus 28/Sep/2009 The way of Icarus Posted by : Stefano E. D¶Anna
Dedalos and Icaros Problems
are everywhere. And the t he solutions?
The way of Icarus Prof. Stefano E D¶Anna Humanity is enclosed in a labyrinth, languishing since time immemorial in a prison of repetitiveness without ever finding a solution to its age-old problems. The possible way out comes from the myth of Daedalus which recalls the condition of man imprisoned by his own creation. The solution is the problem seen from the top. The way of Icarus. inos M inos
closed all the doors to us However, he could not close the sky...
The
progeny of Sisyphus
The myth of Daedalus, the man imprisoned in the labyrinth, his own creation, is the oldest myth that our civilization recalls. Its origin is lost in the mists of time. In the western culture there is no prototypical idea more emblematic of our own condition.
Humanity is enclosed in a labyrinth. It languishes since time immemorial in a prison of repetitiveness without ever finding a solution to its age-old problems. The calamities and global challenges we have to face are innumerable and grave: from world pollution to the poverty of countries, from the death of a child every seven seconds due to hunger to the thousand conflicts and hatred between countries and different ethnic groups. The domineering characteristic of man¶s problematic reality seems to be its unsolvability. Everyone is searching for solutions. Men, governments, civilizations would like to know the way out of this labyrinth, to possess Ariadne¶s Ariadne¶s thread and the wings of Icarus. In the sphere of research conducted on leadership and of the studies on the decision-making process done in the Institute of Entrepreneurial Psychology of the European School of Economics, we asked ourselves why humanity¶s problems are not only unresolved but with time they have become more acute. Even the phenomenon of famine in the world has worsened. Though we possess the most advanced means and techniques, paradoxically, we are now producing less food for the third world then forty years ago. We are the descendents of Sisyphus, condemned to the same torment. Since millennia we push uphill our problems as heavy huge stones, to then see them rolling down to the bottom before reaching the top. And to start again, endlessly. We shift our problems to another place or pospone them to another time and then we call this solution. We were inadequate in the Stone Age when we could only count on our bare hands and we still are now in this digital era with atomic energy and internet. It is time to identify the t he reason of our powerlessn powerlessness. ess.
The
problem seen from the top
ESE works on the hypothesis that the problem and solution are not opposites but they are in fact the elements of the same reality. If we were able to rise into our being, if we were able to rise above ordinary vision we would realize that the solution is not divided from the problem. They are the same thing. The T he only difference is the levels on which they stand. solution is the problem seen from the top . This vision is what distinguishes a leader. The
The discovery is revealing itself to be of huge practical value in the
preparation of a new generation of leaders, visionary men, pragmatic dreamers that do not believe in the search for an external solution but in their very own capabilities. µI t is your vision, it is your pace that creates the path. A leader does not need to choose a direction because he is the direction, the inventor of the dream that is unfolding itself and that takes on the appearance of reality¶ (from The School for Gods) These men know that what other commonly call problems are in reality solutions in disguise. There is always a solution, it comes together with the problem, it is one with it, but to reach it we must overcome our conflictual psychology, must get over lower worlds where any reality cannot but take on problematic forms. Only through passing time, we can identify the solution where before we only saw the problem.
Waiting for Godot
Man searches outside himself. He runs around and looses breath all his life following external solutions that with time transform themselves in problems and in this way a ceaseless perverse cycle is formed. For an unhappy destiny, we will never know that outside ourselves there is nothing and no one that can help us out. As the characters in the tragicomedy of Samuel Beckett we will be endlessly ³waiting for Godot´ (God-ot) believing in a deus ex machina that can resolve us from the outside. Never realizing that we are the solution. Like reindeers we run after the fragrance of musk, enraptured by that essence without ever discovering discover ing that it is i s not out of us, but secreted by our own glands. Man searches for freedom, happiness, love, he searches outside himself but the journey of the ³prodigal sun´ is not external«it is an internal adventure; it is the journey of man returning to the unity of his being. ceaselessly tries to regain his integrity, a state of completeness, of interior unity but nothing seems capable to bring him back to his paradise lost. Man
The
Art of Decision
M aking
All organizations, and companies especially, live as arks scourged by an
ocean of problems. Their life could be defined as a set of intervals of apparent success from one crisis to another until the last one, which will mark its decline and consequently its death. Organizations, aware of their fragility and vulnerability, are continuously searching solutions and looking for the best way to take the right decision under various circumstances. Decision-making and problem solving techniques were formed due to the need to have guidelines to follow when it is time for taking a decision, a ritual to follow that can appease this exhausting, stressful condition of continued uncertainties. There is no executive education programme or master in Business Administration and neither a very least certificate in management that does not provide the teaching of decision-making with relative curriculum, books and exam. The goal of these courses is to equip the manager with a variety of techniques to render him able to identify possible solutions and be able to weigh disadvantages, limits, strengths and weaknesses attached to them.
Gut-Feeling.
The
Decision-Making Instinct
From Harvard down, from the colleges of the American heavy league to the eighteen noblest British universities of the Russel Group, in the academic and scientific circles the world over we find that the domineering conviction is that the solution is external to ourselves. If we only knew how to handle, if we had the right techniq techniques, ues, everyone could discover the way out, the solution; become a decision-maker, a leader.This belief in choosing the right solution between all possible solutions is just as incorrect as it is undisputed. The reality is that if we abandon the academic towers of ivory and we poke our noses outside the classrooms, we discover that decision in modern contexts, in the background of high competition are taken in a completely different way. Outside of routine decisions on simple questions that can return to the discretion of an employee, for the vaster and more complicated questions, and in general for the decision making processes of complex systems where the variables are innumerable like in the case of big multinationals, the only solution is instinct. In fact, the journal Business 2.0 has recently entitled an article on the argument with the significant title: T hink hink with your guts. The invitation to managers to think with their µguts¶ announces the revolution revolutio n in the way of viewing leadership and in the preparation of a responsible governing class, a decisional aristocracy. And while all universities in the world still believe in techniques and mental approaches to the ³problem solving´ and are in fact intellectual gyms, there is a need for new schools and universities of
being, capable of preparing decision-makers, pragmatic visionaries, equipped with an intelligence of the heart and of new senses: a sixth sense, intuition, and a seventh sense, µdreaming¶. A µ man pointed towards the top, impeccably aimed at his improvement, can find solutions for situations that appear without a way out, transform adversities into into events of superior order¶. The
Decision of Washington
Towards the end of 1776, veteran of a series of conflicts: Harlem Heights, White Planes, collimating in the abandon of New York, the American army is adrift, exhausted, deprived of everything. Followed by 20.000 µred jackets¶ rested and well equipped. Washington tries to flee towards the south, toward New Jersey. His goal is to save his young soldiers that would have been otherwise hanged or executed as rebels. The English did not take prisoners, as they did not see them as enemies. On the eve of Xmas Washington arrives on the banks of Delaware, he takes over all the boats that he can find and he crosses the river hoping that it will not freeze completely and that it will slow down his followers. He manages to transport all his soldiers but once on the other side he receives bad news: Trenton, one of the last bulwarks still in the hands of the patriots has been taken by the army of German mercenaries at the service of the English. Five hundred patriots have been executed. At that point, with a decision that was anything but rational and that will go down in history, George Washington re-crosses the river and attacks Trenton on Christmas Day. The conquest took just one hour and was done without the use of guns as they were without ammunitions. It is the beginning of what then be called µChristmas Campaign¶ that overturned the destiny of the war until the Victory of Yorktown and the birth of the United States of America. Before any solution comes our change Who knows how to produce intentionally in himself the smallest rise in his being can move mountains and projects himself like a giant in the external world.
Intervening on our being, on the quality of our thoughts, our ways of feeling, to circumscribe negative emotions- starving some while nourishing others, not only do we modify our aptitude and therefore our way of reacting to the events that come from the external world, but it is also changes the very nature of events that follow one the other, day
after day. Only
a man capable of betting everything on himself, only a man that wants¶, that asks and tries to change with all his forces, can make it. And µ wants¶, even if to the eyes of ordinary humanity he appears to be a daredevil, a person that lives riskily or even as a hell-bent, a man guided by integrity and seriousness is constantly accompanied by this µ sense sense of salvation. Only he knows that in reality is not risking anything. I n business, as in any undertakings that appear as reckless, he who has this certainty cannot be attacked, cannot fail. Whatever he touches grows richer and multiplies; under any circumstance, even the most desperate, he always finds a solution. He is always successful because he himself is the solution. To
Decide
The very etymology of the word µdecide¶ has something mysterious to it. If we take the root, caedere, to fall down, to be knocked down, or if instead prevails the element cida, which means to eliminate, whichever the case, we hear in it a terrible warning. That human feature which we proudly consider our noblest ability, indissolubly tied to our free will, in reality hides our fall, our ruin. One of the most diffused prejudices, and in truth the architrave on which the common description description of the world lies on, is that there are objective decisions that any of us could take provided we had all the necessary information and all the decision-making techniques to assess, read and weigh them out. In truth, the most extraordinary thing to discover about decisions and decision-making processes is that good decisions, objective and valid in absolute, do not exist. olutions ns Solutio
are as a s good as the individual individual that takes them.
America would not be here and it would have been impossible even to imagine its existence for centuries if the certainty in the greatest and most wonderful of all miscalculations did not support Christopher Columbus who until his death remained convinced that he had discovered the route to the Indies. The American Indians still carry the legacy of this erroneous certainty registered forever in their names. In the world of events, in the realm of opposites, you cannot encounter solutions.. Solutions are not on the solutions t he same plane of the t he problems. Solutions
come from above and not in time ! We have to know how to
enter into the world of solutions. When you rise your being all that looked blurry becomes clear and the apparent problems that seemed unconquerable unconquerable mountains reveal thems t hemselves elves to be nothing more than light protrusions, humps on which to step on and go further. Change
Your Dream first,
Reality
Will Follow
For millennia, nothing has happened. The planetary problems from poverty to crime, from conflicts to war are the same as always, now in the Digital Era as in the Stone Age. Yet we delude ourselves that we are in fact improving. improve¶ is the password for those who want to leave everything as it is, who indulge in a way of thinking that is obsolete and deprived of vitality. Believing that the world can be improved from the outside is the conviction of an fideistic, old humanity that does not have the strength to face the evil at its root. We need a revolution of our way of thinking. An overturn. In order to change reality we need to change the dream . Only the individual can accomplish this. Time bends and so does man; and all the civilizations he has created bend and break down with a cyclical procession that always brings them to the starting point of their past whilst they have the illusion that they th ey are going towards the future. µT o
The solution, in the life of a man as in the history of a civilization, is never in time but in a µvertical time¶, in a time without time, in the raising of the quality of thinking that can only o nly happen in this instant. Only
being able to manage the hanging instant between nothingness and eternity will humanity be able to mould its destiny, create events of a superior order.
The Greeks dreamed cities where architecture, theatre, music, sport, everything was at the service of being, of its elevation towards the world of ideas, of solutions. Especially in the classic time of Greek civilization, always with the aim of entering areas of greater freedom where the individual is the solution, invented universities, created Schools of thought around a teacher. Not by chance, these schools were located in enchanting places chosen for the magic of their legendary history, near rivers and sources of water. The Academy was near the Cefis river, the Lyceum, east of Athens, was where the waters of Eridanus touched it lightly and Cinosarge, where the cinic Antistene taught , was created near the Illisso river, south of Athens. Water not only symbolized life and knowledge but it was used for ablutions. In these schools, the culture of
the body and spirit were the two inseparable faces of the same reality. If we would know how to give centrality to man, how to put him back to the top of any priority, at the centre of attention, we could start healing humanity, individual individual by individual, one by o ne, cell by cell. ESE is only the emerging, visible top of the iceberg, an example that we can make it, that we accomplish this task. Classic culture, the search for truth, self-knowledge can and must live in contemporary with modernity, with internationality, with pragmatism that the new challenges ask for, in politics as in economics, to the young governing class, to the decisionmakers of the future. Our culture must re-establish education, re-create schools and universities universities of being. We have to return t o our roots, we must go back to that wisdom, wisdom, that love for beauty beauty and for truth and for that knowledge of oneself which is the solution. µWe have regressed from the wonderful project of the Academy and the Plato¶s dream. The universities of the future will do what they do not currently do: teach the art of µself-discovery¶. Every student is a light that is waiting to be turned on in order to disperse obscurity - said Ben Okrri, a Nigerian poet and writer, ex alumnus of Cambridge, concluding an historical conference organized in London by µThe Times¶ by the title: What are universities for?
From the
School
for Gods by Stefano E D¶Anna
the solution«inside! - commanded the Dreamer - Outside this there is no problem to fix, nor is there any villain to defend from or any enemy to fight. T o give an answer to the world you have to become the solution« Enter in sincerity, simplicity, lightness of your being«. I f you are able to see the µ game¶ game¶ from the top you will discover that for an man of integrity the solution always comes before the problem. Become
When you meet difficult situations rub your hands and rejoice because it is the very reason why you are here for. When you see a problem coming down the road, say to yourself: I was waiting for you. I have been training for you all my life. We must realize that all man have in themselves all the power to turn things around.
Dreams in Blog - PINOCCHIO: The universal univ ersal parable parable of man's destiny destiny 19/Aug/2009 PINOCCHIO: The universal parable of man's destiny Posted by : Stefano E. D¶Anna
Pinocchio
by Enrico Mazzanti (1852-1910) - the first illustrator (1883) of Le avventure di Pinocchio. Storia di un burattino - colored by Daniel DONNA
It is time for the world to reflect on Pinocchio's fable and discover discover it as the ferociously ironic caricature of an untruthful mankind, tyrannically moved by invisible external strings.
A mystical text disguised as a fable PINOCCHIO: THE UNIVER ERS S AL P AR ABLE OF MAN¶ N¶S S
DEST IN Y By Stefano E. D¶Anna
Behind its ironic and easy-going tones and its didacticisms, the puppet is actually the ferociously ironic caricature of an untruthful mankind, tyrannically moved by strings of casualness, negative emotions and the unhappin ess of an inescapable fate. Hidden under the surface of this fable, there lies the biggest and boldest mystical text of all world literature: man¶s initiatory trip from puppet, prey to its instincts, to a real man endowed with will. As a matter matter of fact, fact , Pi nocchio is the most widely read book after the Bible and the Koran.
A mystical text disguised as a fab le
Although universal literature, from Aristofane to Beckett, is full of great novelists, perhaps there has never been one as intelligent, ironic or se cluded as Carlo Lorenzini, alias Collodi. It is true. We are a touchy and violent species. Over the centuries, whoever had to reveal some unpleasant truths or break some deeply deeply rooted prejudices, had to take some timely precautions. When Copernicus, for instance, wrote the ³De Revolutionibus´ in which he exposed his revolutionary discovery he took two precautions: a) he dedicated his work to the Pope, b) as a security measure, he published his book after his death! Lorenzini also had to disguise the most terrible secret as a fable and pass for an author of nursery stories rather than one of the most scholarly anthropologists of our nature and human ethnology. One day a wiser, more aware mankind will recognize him as the man who knew how to pleasantly show us the cruel and terrible truth: humanity is made up of millions of puppets; we are bio-chemical marionettes, driven by invisible threads; we are incurable liars. Above all, he will be appreciated because he told us the truth and made us laugh at the misfortunes of the poor puppet, without having his book condemned at the stake. We are incapable of seeing how Pinocchio¶s toughness and untruthful nature, along with his irresponsibility are the psychological stigmata of the sapiens species and the very roots of all our misfortunes. The abandonment of his puppet dress and his transformation into a child is not a melancholic passage to normality or a cruel flight from the spell of childhood with its unbounded vitality.
Moon-men, Sun-men
What a misunderstanding! In actual fact, Collodi presents us with the horror of a puppet-like sub-human ³moon-man´ who is influenced by everyone and everything. They are zombies who, through misadventure, sorrow, antagonism and disappointment, will one day enter a real humanity, ³sun-men´ who are proactive, responsible and shine in their own light. By paraphrasing Caligula's words to his ministers - by analogy - we could say: if
Pinocchio is a puppet then we are men. But if Pinocchio is a man, then we are still men with a primitive conscious - larvae encased in their pods, waiting to break out and evolve.
A riddle to solve
There is an air of mystery about Pinocchio¶s story, a riddle we would like to solve. Why did a writer such as Carlo Lorenzini, who throug hout his carrier never rose above a Thouar or a Dazzi, suddenly produce an immortal story, an objective tale and a world-class masterpiece that had the unfathomable depth of an evangelical parable. How is it possible that a fable hastily cobbled together, perhaps reluctantly, with no clear plan, by a man who was probably defeated by personal and political disappointments could be considered an echo of a universal message and the mirror of all mankind? It¶s a worrying thought. Why didn¶t he sign it with his real name, like his other works, instead of choosing to use a ³nom de plume´?
Wood shavings of our soul
These two questions can be made into one, in that there¶s an explanation or better still an hypothesis that answers both of them. The hypothesis i s that the text is both inspired and the result of a brainwave. The adventures of Pinocchio, the most widely read children¶s book which has been translated throughout the world, in the guise of a children¶s tale, conceals the greatest and most daring mysti cal text of all world world literature. In actual fact what we see in Pinocchio are the wood shavings of our lost soul. This explains why when we read Pinocchio the text appears to be real while the author remains an unnecessary hypothesis. His existence is superfluous like in the Old Testament and the Gospels. There¶re holy books, but not holy authors. Carlo Lorenzini didn¶t feel like signing a universal story, that was written in Heaven, it only had to be written down.
The
awful secret
Benedetto Croce once wrote that ³the wood which Pinocchio is carved in is that of mankind´. Out of all the fables ever written, Pinocchio is perhaps the most comprehensive and the most painfully truthful. It comfortably belongs to the ³black fable´ genre of Orwell and its ruthlessness is only be equalled by ³Animal Farm´. It¶s the transparent filter of a humanity cast adrift, that lives in fear and ignorance of its own identity. The tale of Pinocchio¶s adventures belongs to the art of mysteries: the art of revealing by concealing. The secret which has been under the noses of millions throughout the world for more than a century is awful. Pinocchio is the mirror image of a bio-chemical puppet which has become man as we know him to be. We are reluctant to recognise ourselves in the grotesque image of Collodi¶s character, we loathe the idea of identifying ourselves with a speaking piece of wood, apparently alive, but in actual fact driven by external forces and terrible invisible strings. In the mirror we can see Pinocchio¶s image, the embarrassing appendix of an informant, but just like Narcissus we refuse to recognise ourselves in that imagined reflection - we cannot see the woodenness of his being, his chronic and incurable deceit or his disloyalty.
The
snare
Who knows if Collodi, wherever he may be, is laughing or crying at the millions of readers, the countless generations of children around the world who are rocked to sleep by the enchanted words and images of his fable, without even knowing its real nature: a dark and pitiless parable of the human condition. However from the very beginning, the storyteller Collodi, warns us that a snare awaits us and that we will uncover the deception only when it is too late - once we have crossed the threshold of the promised fairy-tale world that opens with the fateful words: ³once upon a time«´ It is as if Lorenzini was compelled to warn us against his own deception, bound to an unlikely deontology, that takes us back to Cat and the Fox. Once we¶ve crossed the threshold of the nurser y tale, the tacit agreement with the reader is immediately upset and we find ourselves in the presence of a gruesome fable, with its ruthless and sublime irony. Reading it, the book opens up a threatening, splendid and ephemeral world that begins with a di sturbing absence. There is not a King. The place of the King figure has been taken by the mass which is a joyfully plebeian crowd. The eternal dialectics between mass and individual,
between destination and destiny, emerge and this tears our world apart.
The
victim is always guilty
Pinocchio is any piece of wood that belongs to the pile. It is stuff that is destined to be destroyed and burnt, but it also longs to live. In this transformation the antagonists, represented by the Cat and the Fox have a p rovidential, religious, ideological and theological nature. The world is a mirror. Through its events and in its symbolic language that are made up of circumstances and meetings, it constantly gives out signals, clues and indications. If Pinocchio ( the ordinary human being ) could read them , he would not be so busy sabotaging his own being, he would not make the wrong choice at the crossroads of life and neither would he reject experience, in specious collaboration with error and misunderstanding. The Cat, cruel and simple and the Fox, ironic and savage are two poetic criminal figures. The characters in Pinocchio¶s world are nothing other than projections of our imagination, figures that thanks to our strong belief in them, have ended up by haunting our world. The Cat and the Fox stand out more than all the others, with their physical deformities, a symbol of a putrid conscience that is disguised with cunning. A strict deontology compels them to warn the victim with a thousand signals, contradictions and slips. In short they can rob someone who is determined to be robbed. This is why, one day, in all the law courts of an advanced humanity, we shall read in very large letters: ³the victim is always guilty´.
The
gospel according to
Pinocchio
The initial idea, the suspicion that this story conceals a parable of human destiny, a gospel, a timeless Bible is reinforced and gains ground bit by bit as we continue to read. Mastro Ciliegia, a carpenter, is the first character to appear. The father figure is called Geppetto, a nickname for Giuseppe. Geppetto is not a carpenter but he has tools to cut wood. It is more than a coincidence. As we continue we discover the story has an inexhaustible number of symbols, riddles and allegories, and that under the wrinkled and tough exterior, the most famous puppet conceals the man in search of himself. What a conjurer and an illusionist illusionist Lorenzini -Collodi is to conceal the truth under everyone¶s nose. Pinocchio is born from a carpenter called Giuseppe or Geppetto. On top of this, he has a yellow wig on his head, that looks like a poor and hot ³polenta´, it is true, but it is also similar to the golden colour of an aureole. Therefore« why did we not understand that« Pinocchio is« is« Any piece of wood, a man of the crowd, the real KING-individual, becomes real. The magical project of our advancement is encapsulated in that fable like a gospel about the transformation of a puppet into a real man, of a being without will driven by strings of fortuity and mechanisation, int o a free man who who is the master of his destiny.
The
birth of Pinocchio
Pinocchio is a fairy-tale character, like other magical figures, he comes into the world in one of those dark periods, into one of those infernal circles. Like Jesus Christ, who comes into the world in a shed looked after by animal warmth, Pinocchio is born into misery, surrounded by misfortune, ³on a bad night in winter´ ( my old book of Pinocchio, an edition of 1958, says: ³a hellishly bad night´) amid thunder and lightening. So we have another clue that shows that the fable, in the guise of a popular picaresque story, is actually an initiatory journey, that begins with our coming into the world, into this ³valley of tears´. The symbolism is just too obvious. In our societies, so-called civil societies, life begins according to one of the most brutal rituals.
Welcome to hell
Childbirth is painful, we are welcomed by the operating theatre¶s blinding lights, by the doctors¶ excited voices and by our mother¶s screams, then we are sp sp anked and put down on a cold surface, so we can say that from the very beginning everything appears as though we were truly ³welcomed to hell´. It does not take much for the child to accept the discipline of the masters of misfortune or the instructions th at will convince him that he has arrived on a dark planet where you are born to die and you live to suffer. In a world that is a ³valley of tears´. In fact, our first sensation on being
born is that of a terrible fear of suffocating, suffocating, of being overwhelmed a nd dying. From then on everything that appears familiar to us has this sweetish taste of fear.
The
imprinting of pain
This is how we - who for nine months of growth ( but in actual fact for an age) have been aquatic creatures, creatures, kings of a universe th at is lukewarm, dimly-lighted, silent and liquid - meet fear as our first feeling and from that moment on, like the imprinting of a goose, we follow her as if she were our real procreator. Fear and pain soon limit the possibilities in a man¶s life; an unre al hypnotic space, in which a man feels safe as if between the huge walls of a bunker that is half refuge and half prison. The whole life of an ordinary man seems to be controlled by this first moment, by the experience of that liquid fire that he has fel t enter his lungs in that terrifying passage from aquatic being to an air-breathing creature. Like the salmon that goes against the river¶s current to return to where it was it was born, we have a long long journey to make to overcome the trauma created at our birth and make our way home again in search of a lost paradise.
The Pinocchios
of Johannesburg
There are other elements in the story that constantly draw a parallel, there is an analogical connection between between Pinocchio¶s adventures and our life. Pinocchi o always has a thousand good intentions, he sets out with a kind of touching naivety, but then, he always diverts from his course so as to follow the easiest route, namely to lie whilst hoping to get off scot -free. He gets so used to lying that he is no lo nger able to see the difference between true and false, right and wrong. We¶re like this. Official reports and media news are full of good intentions and are as unreal as Pinocchio¶s. We¶ve heard world world leaders say these things, decade after decade, from Ri o to Johannesburg. They are like the puppet on his first day at school, making false plans/promises about brotherhood and voicing concerns for the unfortunate, poor, starving and oppressed of the world.
The
animal that lies
Pinocchio¶s story reveals our weaknesses and our hypocrisy, which are still hidden even from ourselves, so used are we to the dynamics of falsehood. We tell lies to everyone around us because we think about our own personal interest. However, even worse than that, we lie to ourselves, ourselv es, every minute of every hour of every day of our life, climbing up castles of prejudices and illusions. Collodi¶s invention of Pinocchio¶s nose, brings an embarrassing discovery to our notice, he reveals our most disturbing psychological feature: the ten dency to lie, first to ourselves, and then to others. This is the point: we can get away scot-free with others, but we shall never be able to escape unscathed when confronted with our own conscience; this is a part of us that reads our inner self, and we are aware of it, so for us, there is no peace, no rest, just endless torment. The cornerstone of research carried out by The European School of Economics, of which the Department of Sociology is a part, is the study of the individual and the discipline of self-observation or the study of ourselves. The central element of this work is the study of lying. Falsehood is a permanent state of the being, in which man has been ³educated´ throughout his life. Man is a liar and only lies to himself. Poverty, war and sickness, which are part of the world¶s events, are only the consequence of an inner struggle created by our lying that has enveloped us since birth, and the execution of a precise and monotonous script that we¶ve brilliantly brilliantly interpreted. The lie has beco me flesh. To leave the lie means to observe it and consequently to eradicate it. I would like to thank all the students of the European School of Economics, who have ³reread ´ ³The Adventures of Pinocchio´ with me and have contributed by giving deeper interpretations of this never ending story. Among the many works I have chosen:
Irene Licia
Melloni
-
ES E
Genova
Pinocchio is the story of an esoteric life of an initiatory completion which clearly evokes that jewel of the late Roman period, Apuleio¶s ³Me tamorphosis³ where the individual, starting from the most inert and decaying matter, comes through difficulties, tests and suffering of every kind to finally experience catharsis and recognition of his dignity and redeeming destiny. The metaphysical-eschatological interpretation of the fable that originates from the old myth (Iside and Osiride, Attis and Cibele) and is is then modified by the Judaic -
Christian tradition ( Job and the whale, the resurrection of Lazarus and the story of Jesus), shows us how faith (Geppetto), wisdom (the speaking cricket and the blue fair), the experience through evil evil (the Cat and the Fox, and the Fire -eater), the knowledge of the ephemeral pleasure of the world (the Toyland), the fraternal and filial pietas (Lucignolo and again again G eppetto), death ( passing through the whale¶s whale¶s miasmatic stomach) and in the end takes the weak and sinful man, formerly a puppet that is prey to its own instincts, to the recognition of faith and life. This is where Pinocchio¶s journey ends, the puppet and the man in search of himself, and due to the many ups and downs, he becomes conscious and this is an eternal metaphor for Man¶s journey through Life.
Pinocchio:
a universal parable parable of human nature - Valeria Basso -
ESE New
York
I was a child when I first read Pinocchio, and I did not like it, what is more: it upset me. The happy ending where the puppet becomes a boy didn¶t even soothe my anxieties. The images of this piece of wood and its adventures, were too vivid and remained etched in my memory for years afterwards like a nightmare. In my opinion Fellini himself would have wanted to make his movie interpretation of the story appear like a nightmare. As far as I know, Pinocchio is not one of the most popular fables amongst children. And amongst the adults? I read it again a short time ago and the feeling I had as a child doesn¶t seem to have gone away. Even other adults who read it are often crossed by a shadow. Nevertheless Pinocchio, the most widely read book and translated throughout the world, world, is considered a point of reference and fascination. How is it possible? Why do we feel drawn to the story of the puppet, even though it scares us a little at the same time? The answer is because human nature, as complicated as it is, is bewitched by itself; we are all a little narcissistic and egocentric, we like to look at ourselves in the mirror and see our reflection even when we are unaware of what we are looking at? Because we deceive and we are deceived like Pinocchio, we fall to earth and run run away with him, we live by our wits and by subterfuge and our life is full of whims and lies, just like our hero. There is an invisible but inseparable thread that connects us to the puppet. We too are often at the mercy of the waves, in danger of being swallowed by the jaws of a shark, though we often put ourselves in that position. A man¶s life is continually spent in the vague search of a bit of serenity and clarity, peppered with false moves and failed attempts to return to the correct path. The puppet, apparentl apparentl y without strings, is whimsical, stubborn (he is made of a hard wood) insecure, arrogant, unwilling and a liar: often his attitude, his lies and his stubbornness irritates us and gets on our nerves; at those moments we even hope something bad might happen to him. But then, suddenly, when Pinocchio is in danger we feel sorry for him, and we subject ourselves to all kinds of torment until he is safe. Why? Why can we never condemn
him deep down? Because, Because, like him, we are weathervanes battered by the wind, and if we sentenced the puppet with a guilty verdict it would be like throwing ourselves into an abyss. What we cannot stand in others, is just the unconscious reflex of what we cannot stand in our own, but self self -love tells us that it is easier to unload our accusations on to someone else whilst all the time believing ourselves to be perfect. Pinocchio too, always professes himself to be a ³very very good and wise fellow´. Pinocchio has to struggle to free the good boy buried inside him. What he has to do is go on a journey of redemption: as a matter of fact, the moment he comes alive in the hands of Geppetto, he starts to play his nasty tricks that soon put him to flight. This is the moment of separation, of falling into temptation (he seems to see Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden): Pinocchio loses his innocence and exchanges it for a double-edged weapon of falsehood (again like Adam and Eve). From then on, Pinocchio starts his journey along the slippery road that leads to perdition« Wherever he goes, whatever he does, Pinocchio is always arm in arm with death: along the way there is always someone who dies or is on the verge of dying. Death is such a recurrent theme in the fable, that it almost becomes an obsession though it is made less dramatic by Collodi¶s sarcastic quips. An unusual fixation for a nursery tale« We are unwilling to identify with Pinocchio because the truth is difficult to accept. However, whether we like it or not, our unconscious is attracted by him. Whether it is hate or love, condemnation or pity that moves us, his story does not leave us indifferent. And it is precisely this we have to analyse without letting it slip through our fingers. Because there lies the secret about who we are. Pinocchio would not be able to extricate himself from h is condition and complete his journey to redemption, if the superior influences of the Fair and the Cricket had not watched over him - though they pay a dear price for their protection. However it is also true that he is not saved by means of deus ex machi ne. It would be a disappointing solution. Pinocchio makes it because of his own merits, taking all the time he needs to open his eyes and prove his new self; we also have to know that we can make it on our own, that life is not decided decided by fate and that we we are our destiny. In the beginning Collodi gave his story a tragic ending by having Pinocchio hanged from a tree. However the public did not like this, so he was forced to change it, by having the puppet become become a boy. With any other kind of ending, Pinocchi Pinocchi o would not have had the popularity it enjoys today. It would have been lost a long time ago. Of course, we cannot say whether the author liked the revised ending or not. But we like it like this, because we have to believe that also also our own fable can end well and that we too can change from puppets into real men.
Laura
Dipterans -
E SE Lucca
There are several themes in Collodi¶s fable: freedom, family, loneliness, fear, courage, cunning, love, sorrow, fiction, deception« and death which is also a
continual theme. Death hovers over the whole story. Pinocchio runs the risk of being burnt, fried, drowned, hanged, starved and even eaten by a whale shark. In Chapter 17 we can even find a symbol of earthly death: the coffin. Despite all the ups and downs everything ends with the puppet becoming a child made of flesh and bones. Tomorrow is October 11 and so go and see the latest production from Oscar Roberto, enjoy the film with its wonderful show of lights, colours, special effects and scenery« and when you c ome out why not ask the Fair with deep-blue deep -blue hair to turn yourselves from Pinocchios into sincere and ³benign´ children? Enjoy the film!
The
king and the puppet - Andrea Franzi -
ESE
Genova
Pinocchio¶s fable conveys a very important concept about the l ife of the ordinary ordinary man; he is up to his neck in a sea that conceals his life from him, there he hides and lies to the world, unaware of how irresponsible he is. The puppet represents the stereotype of man¶s daily attempt to sabotage reality, he tries to d ivert the river of his uncertainties, but is compelled to bend under the unavoidable rush of water that drags him to the end of of his journey of self -destruction. Pinocchio cannot hide from the world, he cannot lie in silence, silence, and man for his part, lives out his sad fable with the woody heart of a puppet, dirtied by the terrible destiny of mediocrity that awaits him.
Chiara Pasquali
-
ES E
Bologna
From my point of view, Pinocchio is not a negative character. It is true, he is a liar, but this is because of his desire to live and experience the joys of the world, rather than gain any personal advantage by tricking people. Pinocchio starts off as a piece of wood that has never lived or felt joy. He is thrown into a world he knows nothing about, but everything about it fills him with enthusiasm. Pinocchio can speak as a piece of wood, even before he takes on the semblances of a human in the hands of Geppetto. He is already keen to move before he gets legs and becomes a real human. All this is because Pinocchio wants to live and is eager to throw himself into the world like a real child without a past. Many literary critics have compared his mistakes with those of a child and his story with the end of childhood. Pinocchio encounters a series of tempting symbols (Lucignolo, the Cat and the Fox) who lead him away from the right path, causing him to make mistakes, lie, and to be recalled by his teachers. This situation goes on up until an important event takes place: the sight of the Fair¶s grave. Like many stories about great men and great heroes, an impulse comes from inside, from the person¶s being that carries Pinocchio aloft and makes him become human. It is true that Pinocchio is saved by the Fair, but in my opinion the Fair is not an external character but Pin occhio¶s destiny, she is his future
and is the sign of what he was created for. Our character was born to be something better than what we see of him on his first adventures. However to improve, he first has to lie, suffer and pay a moral moral price for his mis takes. He has to have a difficult past and see the Fair die, and at the same time be free of her so he can become a real human and guide himself.
Milka P latan
-
ESE Lucca
There are so many puppets in the world and even more donkeys, but Pinocchio is still considered a fable set in a magical world far form reality. Pinocchio¶s story, in actual fact, touches the real essence of the human condition. A man¶s existence, from birth to death, is very often like that of a puppet who never becomes the man he wants to be. From one futile desire to another, man goes on living as though dozing, which prevents him from opening his eyes and awakening so as to become a real man. The path towards change needs discipline and good will. One has to accept the truth and become aware of our condition as nothing other than a programmed robot, that acts, feels and thinks like all the others. Those who think like the others will share the same destiny as the others.
