The Parturient Blessed Morality of Physiological Dimensionality: Aleph-Null Number
2004
Lithograph, Edition of 75
Image Size: 16 x 23 in.
Paper Size: 17 7/8 x 24 7/8 in.
Visit:
KENT Gallery, New York – www.kentgallery.com
META Gallery, Toronto – www.metagallery.com
Comments by the artist:
Bernard Riemann [ 1826-1866 ] student of Carl Friedrich Gauss [ 1777-1855 ] developed what we currently call dimensionality. Since dimensionality in the generic sense means the range over which, or to the degree to which any entification manifests itself, it often became further defined as a series contextual propositions. In other words it is a language which Ludwig Wittgenstein [1889-1951] considered a weltanschuung or worldview, an idea that was eventually fleshed out by Benjamin Lee Whorf. But these ideas have kept dimensionality well within the scope of practical science in which one paradigm becomes either parasitic to or subsumptive of all other paradigms.
The person who moved dimensionality away from the iron grip of traditional mathematics and back to the Ancient Greek concept of Fate, was Georg Cantor [1845-1918], who posing as a mathematician [ a scientist who abhors the concept of infinity in its abstract and concrete manifestations], sought the realm of actual Absolute Infinity – the Aleph-Null Number. This was his search for the living presence of the number of elements in the set of all integers which is the smallest transfinite cardinal number, which goes beyond or surpasses any finite number, group or magnitude.
What Cantor was doing was following the learning process of The Kabbalah, which is a search for God from a base of total materialistic skepticism. One of Cantor’s followers, Kurt Gödel [1909-1963] actually attempted to devise a mathematical proof of the existence of God.
This all leads to the idea that consciousness is embedded within the nature of dimensionality, and that consciousness can not be defined totally as we experience it in our fourth dimensional realm of Time-Solvoid by projecting our definition of consciousness, learned from experience, onto other more comprehensive and less comprehensive realms.
Consciousness presents itself, therefore, as a family of forms – an octave of intelligence many aspects of which can not be accessed by our human intelligence. But the fact that analogy-cum-metaphor is the operation of the imagination means, even if the transfer of the mind is never complete, that aliveness and deadness are terms relative to a dimensional realm.
Beyond the human realm of Time-Solvoid, the existence and nature of consciousness is often designated as God , gods, demigods, Demons divas, Angels ,souls, heroes , etc. While accepted as part of nature, these entities are rarely understood. Below or less comprehensive than the human realm, consciousness in the form of ghosts, apparitions , shadows or hallucinations are just as distant from human consciousness as members of the so-called divine realm. But the real difference is that most humans feel obviously and naturally superior to these entities. This feeling is often translated into propositions which state that these beings are without any kind of consciousness, and that the attribution of consciousness to them , is what gave rise to the existence of superstition prior to the rise of experimental science. A
science that tried, on the one hand, to discover their true nature, and on the other hand, to dismiss their existence as flim-flam.
The pre-scientific Ancient Egyptian Civilization accepted shadows as having consciousness. Of the nine parts of the Egyptian personality, two were about the shadow. The Khaibit (the shadow of the physical body) which never leaves the carcass, and The Ka (the doppelganger) the shadow of the soul that moves freely about the Earth and the stars are interpreted as phenomena such as lucid dreaming or the out-of-the-body-experience in terms of human perception.
While both forms of the shadow are ultimately the same, the dynamic and static forms demonstrate the form of Life-Death of the Shadow.
In today’s world-view, very few people believe that shadows possess a form of consciousness, let alone believe that a human can communicate with one. To most people the shadow is simply the result of solid objects in space blocking the rays of a light source and that is it.
The association of light with consciousness has a history lost in time. But closer to our time James Clerk Maxwell [1831-1879] discovered in 1856 the relation between light and electricity which led eventually to the theory of the electromagnetic spectrum which developed in the early 1930’s. From about 1875 on, the Occult vision of dimensionality, akin to the Pythagorean musical scale of infinite extent, was introduced and supported by Maxwell’s discovery.
Degrees of consciousness, from almost blinding light to almost total darkness, provide the metaphor for Good to Evil, The Divine to The Demonic, Life to Death, all as degrees of embodiment. These are the aspects of the entire electromagnetic spectrum, which include what we call visible light –a very small portion of the spectrum. Most of the spectrum is undetectable by our unaided senses, but nevertheless, it contains octaves of energy which separate themselves into individual dimensions.
Today so-called “physical light” is a metaphor the position of human consciousness within the total dimensional system for two reasons:
(1) “Physical light” always has its origin in the Past, whether or not that origin is a star or a candle;
(2) The “brilliance” that we associate with light exists in Nature only in the minds of intelligent conscious life-forms, and is not inherent in the non-conscious aspects of Nature. The photons which deliver energy to waiting retinae do not “carry” light. If it was the case that they do, the entire Universe would be “lit up” all of the time in an isotropic and homogeneous manner, and there would be no “darkness” in the Sky.
The symbol for the velocity light has been in our contemporary world the letter “C” meaning 299,796 + or – 4 km./ sec. in a vacuum near the Earth , or in the open air. But now astrophysicists are discovering there is a type of space which can not be monitored by any aspects of the electromagnetic spectrum. This is the space where an old star goes when it explodes and dies. This space is distinct from the space of a Black Hole, only in the sense that the Black Hole space is an infinitesimal point of that , space infinite in extent, which acts as the background energy plenum of the Universe.
On Earth these same astrophysicists have discovered a way of slowing down the speed of light to 17 mph by changes of media. They expect very soon to have light to travel at 4 mph. Then everyone will be able to interact directly with light, even the blind , because the energy of the electromagnetic spectrum travels in the human brain at 700 mph.
According to Philip Gibbs in an article entitled: “The Symbol For The Speed Of Light ? “, he states : “…, it is possible that its use persisted because “C” could stand for “celeritas” and had therefore become a conventional symbol for speed. We can not tell for sure how Drude, Lorentz, Planck or Einstein thought about their notation, so there can be no definitive answer for what it stood for then. The only logical answer is that when you use the symbol “C”, it stands for whatever possibility you prefer “.
While there are many physicists who propose an identification between light and consciousness by means of formulae that rival the simplicity and power of Einstein’s famous E = Mc². I prefer, therefore, to use “C’ to stand for consciousness.
Catholicism
Paul,
Your comments on Catholicism and Catholic theology I find interesting. I am a traditional Catholic who attends the old Latin mass, and I consider myself Thomistic in outlook. I note that you see Thomism is a closed system–not sure I quite agree with this–rather it is a structured system that allows for solutions to “problems” but retains space for “mysteries” which have no rational explanation and allow the mind to penetrate them inexhaustibly. Let me say that despite what I would imagine our significant differences in outlook (I for one am skeptical of Teilhard, though I do recognize his genius and originality), I admire your fearless visions.
Sincerely, Walter
September 18, 2009
Dear Walter,
1. Since your Email indicates that you are in The United States Army, I want to begin by thanking you for your service to our Country.
2. Are you aware of the work of Brother Michael Dimond who is part of The Most Holy Family Monastery at 4425 Schneider Road, Filmore, New York, 14735, 1-800-275-1126, www.mostholyfamilymonastery.com?
Brother Dimond, disproves evolution, gives evidence of a worldwide flood, demonstrates Biblical miracles, and modern day miracles, Eucharistic miracles, etc. He also can point out the various locations of the incorrupt Bodies of Saints, and he has a cogent explanation for the o.o.p.arts of The Shroud of Turin.
3. I do not know where you got the idea that I claimed that Thomism is a closed system. The only closed system I know of is described in the popular movie The Matrix.
4. The main proposition of Existentialism says that Existence precedes Essence, which means that the actual life of the individual is what constitutes what could be called his or her “essence” instead of there being a predetermined essence that defines what it is to be a human. Now this is exactly what Saint Thomas Aquinas believed to be the case about God, but in the case of human beings an individual soul was added to the mix.
5. Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) as the major French Existentialist, just before he died, wrote to his best friend that he knew from their student days , and who continued on as a teacher at The Sorbonne [The University of Paris] , that all the time he [Sartre] was an atheist and a Communist and an Existentialist [beginning on October 29 ,1945], The Holy Spirit in the form of a white dove was sitting on his right shoulder moving him his true Destiny. This was because of the fact that Gabriel Marcel (1889-1973) who became a Catholic convert in 1929, 14 years later in June of 1943 coined the term “Existentialism”.
6. My only objections to Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955) are first, he refused to believe in the existence of Extraterrestrials, meaning that the Earth was the only place in the Universe where intelligent life exists; and second, as a student he participated in “The Piltdown Man” hoax in 1918 in East Sussex England by burying a Neanderthal human skull without its mandible and then substituted a chimpanzee mandible. The attempt was to make the World believe in the existence of the fabled “Missing Link”.
7. I just found the latest CD cover of the pop music group Weezer. The image
is of a rather bourgeois living room, but in the midst of things there exists a light colored short haired dog named Sidney, who is levitating about 4 feet off the floor. The dog, of mixed breed, looks to be possessed of amazing intelligence. His emotional nature is composed of pure enthusiasm. Both front legs are held in a prayerful pose.
[See: http://www.spinner.com/media/weezer-raditude-cover.jpg].
This reminds me of the philosophy of George Santayana (December 16, 1863 to September 26, 1952) especially his introduction to a system of philosophy: “Skepticism and Animal Faith.” While Santayana was an atheist, he professed to be an “Aesthetic Catholic”, and in doing so influenced lots of people not the least of which are the World’s first “Erotic Epiphenomenal Existential Chicks”. I refer, of course, to Brigitte Bardot (1934- ), who is now 74! and Jeanne Moreau (1928 – ), who is now 81! Both women were born in Paris and said they are “Catholic Atheists”.
8. Finally a current influence of the aesthetic distance of Santayana is being experienced by a contemporary artist and film maker [Julian Schnabel]. A painting of his is being included in an exhibition titled “Something About Mary,” [after the popular movie], is in The Gallery Met at the Lincoln Center in New York City. The show opened on September 17, 2009. The painting itself is a kitsch bravura image of “The B.V.M.”
Dominus Vobis Cum
Paul Laffoley , A.I.A.