Audio Essay: Evolution of Aesthetic Judgment

This will be a short study of aesthetics. Of how aesthetic judgment can tell us more than ethical (moral) judgment, and how, unlike ethical judgment, it is not really subject to lying, or at least not to the same extent.

Nietzsche says:

“Beauty will save the world.”

He also says:

“All of life is a weighing of tastes.”

I have noticed that people are prone to lying when it comes to ethical judgment. Very often they lie, or speak from the position of a projected image of what they would like to be. This is understandable, since we all strive for ethical self-improvement, and the same is true of ethical judgment, which develops and refines itself within us. On the other hand, aesthetic judgment is different. The aesthetic standard is something we begin to accumulate very early, and the aesthetic frame of reference we build during adolescence and post-adolescence very often remains unchanged.

While, on the one hand, we all know, or think we know, the difference between good and evil, the difference between the beautiful and the ugly belongs to the realm of “subjective opinion,” and as such is much more sincere, because it gives the individual the possibility of finding something that his soul recognizes as “beautiful.” However, we also know that beauty has its gradations. Words such as kitsch and schund are not inventions of social constructivism, but definitions of temporal beauty — beauty that loses its value over time and is forgotten. The impermanence of trends through time points directly to their relative “beauty,” which is valid only from a particular perspective of time and space.

On the other hand, enduring beauty is something that has survived the tooth of time and still contains aesthetic values that resonate with the observer regardless of temporal or spatial context. Thus, for example, Faust or The Lord of the Rings resonate with audiences many years after their creation and still provide aesthetic consolation.

In what follows, I will try to define the progression of aesthetic judgment as I see it, and as I believe it has transformed through time and through the needs of the soul.

In early childhood, aesthetic judgment is defined through immediate aesthetics, that is, through taste. Children prefer one ice cream or another, one juice or another, one kind of food or another. As the ego and the self-image mature, this judgment expands to clothing and to the impression we give off in the world. During the school years, we begin to care about how we appear to others, and this is the second stage of transformation, one that for many remains in place for the rest of life. Alongside this immediate taste, we also begin to develop a taste for cartoons, which is a higher level of complexity than immediate taste, since it includes the theoretical senses (sight and hearing), although it usually begins with sight, as the first theoretical sense.

As childhood progresses and our interests grow, we move from cartoons to live-action films. This is the next level of complexity, one that necessarily includes the second theoretical sense, hearing, since plot — that is, what happens — becomes the central focus of our interest. Parallel with this interest in “artistic events,” our need for objective events also grows; hence, going out begins. Going out is the next level of complexity, and our aesthetic judgment then usually takes the form of comparing which party is better than another, or how the next party relates to the previous one. This is most pronounced during adolescence.

At a certain point, events in the form of nights out begin to feel repetitive, and we find ourselves searching for the next level of complexity. At that point, literature usually enters the scene. Although artistic in character, literature offers a stereotyping of events and characters. Characters are drawn into their purest stereotypes, while situations are translated into stereotypical patterns present in frequent social mechanics. Literature represents the first leap into true abstraction. When I say “true abstraction,” I mean the truth of reality that is not empirically visible, but can be understood and recognized exclusively through the intellect. Film, music, painting, theater, opera, ballet, and so on also offer this stereotyping, but in my view it remains most visible in literature. The additional mechanical act of “reading text” is somehow fundamental for the faculty that translates one sign into another — a word or a letter into an idea. This is, among other things, the first aesthetic leap between the young mind and the mature one. The collective, for the most part, never makes this leap and remains for life within the domain of aesthetic trend.

Once stereotypes become intelligible as autonomous wholes, we arrive at a point where we need a higher pattern that will bind stereotypes together, or at least connect similar groups of stereotypes. Here we come to the final aesthetic leap: the leap from stereotype to archetype. From story into religion, philosophy, and myth. Into impersonal collective events that we may call the symbolic image of the world.

Aesthetic judgment matures from the completely personal and immediate — the sense of taste — into a fully abstract, impersonal ideational configuration. From the individual toward the universal.

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Srpska verzija / Serbian Version

Audio Essay: Emptiness as the Center

The center is a crucial element of every composition. The central motif, the central pillar, the center of focus. In everyday language, when we try to explain the concept of a center, we are guided by the logic of position. The center is a location. However, that same center can also be explained through its content. In terms of content, the center differs drastically from what surrounds it. It is not merely in the middle – it is different.

It is precisely this difference of the center – its ontological, not just geometrical nature – that this text attempts to articulate. Through examples from spiritual practice, psychological dynamics, and philosophical thought, we will explore the idea of the center not as a place, but as emptiness – and not just any emptiness, but a positive, functional, and ontological one.

Something about Silent Retreats and Depression – and How They Relate to the Center

On Silent Retreats

The concept of a silent retreat intrigued me from the very beginning. I first encountered it more intimately through the lectures of Alan Watts, where he mentions Hindus who abandoned everyday life, went into the forest and solitude, and practiced active forgetting of language to reconnect with their own (instinctive) nature. He describes how these people killed off their “individuality” and functioned entirely spontaneously, fully surrendering to the inertia of context. Although I cannot fully grasp this idea, I can to some extent identify with that state of consciousness.

Years ago, when I first learned that language is not acquired like other sciences, but rather that we are preprogrammed for linguistic adoption, I had an epiphanic realization: that without language, I would fully immerse into my animal being. My assumption at the time was that, stripped of language, I would be reduced to basic instinctual impulses – hunger, fear, sexuality, primal movement.

Silence Before Meaning

Pre-conceptual thought, or the “house of being,” as Heidegger would call it, is the ontological site that precedes all language. It is a state of consciousness that is unarticulated, unexpressed in words, and thus hard to describe. It’s difficult to speak about this “house of being” because it is, in essence, non-contentual in the classical sense – it contains no images or words, only the potential of form.

Plato, in his theory of ideas, mentions the “Idea of Differentiation.” This idea is the foundational law by which things, in their deepest structure, differ from one another. On the conscious level of the ego, we perceive this difference through comparative analysis of content. But Plato would argue that the “Idea of Differentiation” is not necessarily content-based, but logos-based – that it exists beneath existence, before manifestation. It doesn’t distinguish by what, but by how.

Silence as Method

In my view, silent retreats trigger something I would call artificial depression – and in doing so, they help people. As strange as that may sound, I will try to explain what I mean.

Depression as a Corrective

As I’ve moved through life, I’ve reached one conclusion. Depression – and here I don’t mean clinical depression, but the common, existential kind we all face from time to time – emerges as a consequence of poorly constructed systems of value and meaning. As human beings, we have a natural need to orient our existence through a value system. However, being imperfect, we often make mistakes in that delegation. Depression arises as a corrective mechanism.

In other words, depression is the negation of a value system. When we are depressed, nothing holds meaning or value. We become indifferent to both the external and internal world. I believe this is how the subconscious protects the whole from the errors of consciousness. When consciousness loses orientation, the subconscious revolts – radically:
“If you cannot establish values correctly, I (the subconscious) will return you to ground zero – where nothing has value, and nothing has meaning.”

That moment of total meaninglessness is what I call the starting point. In that emptiness, new meaning can be built. Without it – no true reconstruction is possible.

How Do Silent Retreats Lead to This State?

At the core of the silent retreat is non-linguistic experience. The idea is not to speak with others, not to write anything down, and – as much as possible – not to talk to ourselves either. Since our value delegation is primarily linguistic, the silent retreat introduces a complete counterpoint – a non-linguistic marking of reality.

What happens then?

Individuals begin to feel mood shifts, bodily sensations, spontaneous impulses, emotions without narrative. Neuroses, or repressed complexes, which were previously fenced off by language and thus kept under control, are now unleashed. Language no longer acts as a barrier – and the repressed comes to consciousness. These manifestations are not necessarily pleasant – often disturbing – but they are liberating.

The experience that follows is cathartic. The silent retreat, as a non-linguistic mechanism, provides a moment of release from the rigid constructs language often cements. Complexes can then emerge, no longer as unspoken problems, but as living beings, bodily experiences, images, intuitions.
The individual, in this non-linguistic space, leaves an empty center of focus – like a vessel. That emptiness is not nihil – but a functional ontological emptiness. Something ready to receive what has not yet arrived.

The Configuration of Central Value

A central value must have a negating nature. It must be an antithesis to everything previously held as thesis. Only in this way does the center become dynamic. And movement is life (Leonardo da Vinci).

Movement is exactly what is lacking in depression. Depression is a state of stagnation, of freezing. And a static center – whether it’s an ideology, goal, or dogma – creates a monolithic structure that limits the soul’s needs.

“Art for art’s sake,” Kant would say.

Regime art, in contrast, is impoverished political propaganda. Within it, there is nothing unpredictable, nothing unexpected, nothing magical. And the phenomenon of the soul, if it is to be likened to anything, resembles an artwork more than a political doctrine.

Corrective truth, as Heidegger would call it.

Homo Universalis, said Weininger.

Thesis and antithesis, as method.

If the center contains an intuited thesis – then truth demands an antithesis as correction. Dynamism is the ontology of the center.

Identity Through Negation

A child builds identity through negation:

“I am not my exterior,”
“I am not my parents,”
“I am not the objects I possess,”
“I am not my finger.”

Therefore, I am what remains – and that “something” I don’t know how to name. That is positive emptiness.

An adult, however, affirms their weaknesses – acknowledges errors and attempts to integrate them. They hope correction is possible in a new context. And that too is positive emptiness – a place for a future whole.

Such systems of negation confirm Heidegger, Weininger, Jung, and Buddha. Negation, when directed toward synthesis, can be a system of construction.

The spider’s web illustrates this vividly. A series of threads woven into a system, with emptiness at its center. That emptiness is not absence – but an ontologically active center. The point where the spider sits is not semantic – it means nothing – yet it holds the structure. It is an anchor point.

The Burden of Meaning

“Man must move between meaning and meaninglessness like a snake.” – Vladeta Jerotić

Guided by this quote, we can conclude that even meaning has its antithesis. Those who feel an inner need to bring all aspects of life under the umbrella of “meaning” know how burdensome that need can become. Meaning tends toward unification. It tries to subsume everything into one. This process leads toward ideas, but simultaneously drifts away from the material world, from motion, from everyday reality.

This isn’t necessarily bad – but it mustn’t become the everyday home.

Conclusion: The Center as Sacred Unknowing

The central element is not only positional but also semantic.

The irony is that this semantics is not something concrete – but a negation of semantics itself.

Sacred unknowing, the theologians would say.

Anti-knowledge, said Philemon.

The center as functional emptiness – the beginning of all meaning.

Not a place of dogma, but of openness.

Not meaning – but space for meaning.

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Audio Essay: The Negation of Historicity

Further analysis, however quirky, has helped me understand (personal) relationship with work in a broader sense. I hope that the following interpretation may also assist others in finding a different perspective toward their work, one that is not solely defined by basic ideas.

This interpretation mainly refers to the movie Skyfall, though it is likely applicable to all Bond films.

Archetypal Patterns

Bond as a Man of Action – The Hero Archetype

Bond represents the archetype of the Hero, always ready to face dangers and moral dilemmas. His story in Skyfall portrays a fall, redemption, and return, passing through physical and inner conflicts, which makes him a complex hero. Action and instinct drive him through his missions, but this film adds depth to his character, making him a hero who faces his own limitations.

M – The Wise Old Woman – The Great Mother Archetype

M symbolizes the Wise Old Woman and the Great Mother, providing Bond with guidance and protection. As an authority figure and moral compass, she is someone Bond respects. Her death in the film has a strong emotional impact on Bond, as he loses a key maternal figure, forcing him to take on greater responsibility.

Death and Rebirth – The Transformation Archetype

In Skyfall, Bond undergoes the archetype of Transformation – his “death” at the beginning and eventual return symbolize a metaphorical rebirth. This cycle leads him through physical and emotional renewal, reexamining his identity and role, which is a crucial phase on the hero’s journey.

Reaching His Goals Mostly Through Women – The Anima Archetype

Bond’s relationship with women reflects his Anima, the feminine aspect of his soul. Women like Séverine often serve as catalysts for his actions, but they are also key to balancing his emotions and rational world. They open space for his introspective side, making them vital to his inner development.

The Shadow Archetype

Silva, the main antagonist represents Bond’s Shadow. He is a dark version of Bond, someone who has gone through a similar process but has chosen a different path. Silva personifies Bond’s inner fears – what he could become if he lost faith in MI6 and its authorities. As Bond’s shadow, Silva highlights the dangers of individualism without moral boundaries – the Lucifer (fallen angel) symbol.

The Father Archetype

MI6 and its institutional framework act as the father archetype, providing Bond with direction and tasks, offering him structure within which he operates. While MI6’s authority may sometimes appear cold and distant, it symbolizes a paternal figure guiding Bond through his mission, even when their relationship is strained.

Analysis of James Bond and What We Can Learn from His Relationship to Work

What caught my attention about James Bond (aside from all the well-known moments) is his relationship to his work. More precisely, the nature of his job, which differs from that of most people. The essence of his work is not about acquiring material wealth, which we can say is the nature of almost all jobs. For James Bond, his home or wealth does not matter. As a member of the secret service and a top operative, everything is provided for him. What retains importance is the Suit of Armor (his suit and watch) and his cars. Both can be seen as serving the function of defining his Persona. The suit is an exponent of a uniform (a certain mode of functioning), his watch represents precision, while the car signifies thought – its speed and elegance. These gadgets have their small additions and applications, but the core idea is deepening his purposefulness.

Bond’s Nature in Relation to Himself – The Negation of Historicity

Bond lacks historicity. He is not nostalgic in any way. Historicity, in his case, would be a crutch that would cause him to stumble. His conditional movement is directed straight toward the future. More precisely, he receives direction from MI6, the exponent of the Good (metaphysical, collectively supraconscious). This is a crucial point; Bond’s directions do not come from his personal consciousness (personal definitions of good), but from something greater, something universal. This idea is made explicit in Skyfall when Silva offers him the opportunity to “choose their own missions,” which Bond naturally declines. Although MI6 is depicted in the film as morally ambivalent (or even morally displaced), from an ordinary observer’s perspective, Bond still recognizes it as a higher moral authority.

This Good comes with collateral damage and has no sympathy for individual sacrifice, as long as the mission is accomplished – a reference to God (the metaphysical), who executes His Plan regardless of individual suffering. Bond is often in conflict with MI6 (the metaphysical) for this very reason: its lack of empathy toward individual suffering. His concern for the individual is what makes him human.

This type of conflict is something we all experience to such an extent that we often doubt the “authority” and its goals – just as we might doubt God’s plan. Skepticism is a healthy stance, and it must exist. However, faith must also exist, a faith that follows this “Greater Good,” even if we do not fully understand it.

Note: Suspension of disbelief – we interpret MI6 as it is portrayed in the film, as an objectively “greater good,” and not as a human construct full of anomalies and personal pretensions, as it probably is in reality.

On the Conditionals of This Kind of Work Relationship

Ancient Greek philosophers argued that one must rise above existential problems to engage in philosophy (higher matters). One must finish with the “lower” to deal with the “higher.”

That is exactly what James Bond does. He has finished with material accumulation and serves exclusively the “greater good.” This way of functioning puts him in an instrumental position, opposite to the autistic urges for repetition, ergo, security. His life is on the line at every moment, and each day could be his last. At the core of his actions is almost absolute Action, without contemplation or reflection on past experiences. There is no nostalgia, no desire for the old days or past events. Each day is a New Sun (Heraclitus), taken to the limit of the absolute. Thought (contemplation or conclusions) is reduced to almost instinctual (intuitive) action. He doesn’t need to reflect and conclude, he knows. Reflection is part of analysis (the material), intuitive guidance is part of instinct (the metaphysical, or already understood – conceptualized – part of a larger pattern that is not deduced but is self-evident). Intellectual muscle memory. Bond is not historical, even in thought. His identity does not derive from a historical mosaic of experiences but from active aspects that lead to his Goal, and that goal is established by an “other” – the Collective Supraconscious – the Good.

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Audio Essay: On Love for the Ideal

On Love

For the last 10,000 years, up until around the late 1800s, an individual’s environment was composed of “things” that were generated according to the following principle: an individual would leave their “house,” find a stone or a piece of wood that could be of use, bring it home, and from it create a chair, a tool, a shelf, etc. In other words, the initially found object was not discovered in its completed form but only as potential. The world was unfinished for a long time, and the completion of our immediate surroundings required our constant participation and activity. This is the principle of Refinement.

As history shows, this principle of relating to the other went so far that even people, at the beginning, connected in unfinished (unknown) qualities since marriages were largely predetermined. The lack of knowledge provided only the first contextual potential upon which love relationships were built. The possibility of this future love was given by that general perspective of developmental potential (anti-entropy).

Passive Consumers Instead of Active Participants

Today, things are different. Our immediate environment comes to us in its most “perfect” (intentional pleonasm) form, and through further handling (consumption), it only deteriorates. From houses and chairs to friendships, and even relationships with lovers, our first contact is an ecstatic obsessive state of intoxication with the perfection and “completeness” of the other. More precisely, we feel that the “otherness” is necessary to complete our emptiness, whereas before we saw the need for our actualization in the completion of the other. Here we recognize an inversion of our inner attitude toward the external world.

The Ideal Image

Problem plus Solution. This is the foundation of the ideal image. A symbolic process.

The ideal as a principle is of a driving nature. It translates Chaos into Order, and that is its basic algorithm. In line with the human romantic spirit, the history of civilization depicts the Ideal as a static, finished, harmonious image that requires no further movement. In such an illustration, we notice that it lacks the fundamental driving force. Given the level of completion, the “Ideal” image is not ideal but merely (illusorily) finished. However, since this “static image” has stood as the definition of the ideal for many years, it has left consequences on our definitions of reality. The ideal is one side of the compass needle from which our ethical and aesthetic laws are constituted. When that needle does not move and is portrayed as a static moment, it leads to problems and a loss of direction.

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Audio Essay: Squaring the Circle

Translating Potency

Planning often brings anxiety, and that is not unknown. Fears are part of daily life and can be rooted in something we may not always clearly define, but which exists as a constant. This is not a weakness but an opportunity to understand how to deal with something that follows us through time. In this context, we can talk about the concept of potency – something that exists as a possibility but has yet to become reality.

From a first-person perspective, there is no distinction between what is written and what is merely a thought process. However, from the position of the third person (an outside observer), the difference is essential. It represents the line between the potential – between Pleroma and Abraxas – and Helios – the visible (existing). The question is how to make that transition – how to move from potency to realization.

One of the solutions could be to find four points within the circle – four choices within freedom. Squaring the circle, as a mental process, can offer a way out of the chaos of possibilities. The square is structure, rules within freedom.

The four objective choices, aligned diagonally across the central point, show the way to establish balance.

In the middle, the central point has a gravitational nature and a directional path. The path is a symbol of the goal, and the goal is the translation of potency into actualization. But here, it’s important to understand that this doesn’t always happen under the influence of Helios, but sometimes we act under the force of Abraxas (chaotic and amoral), especially when the central point is unknown or undefined.

Helios becomes the key element that connects opposing sets. Through this lens, knowledge (or truthful, holistic understanding) becomes the central point that unites opposites. This dialogue between opposing elements enables the translation of possibility into action and the creation of order out of chaos – the balance of oppositions.

Doubling the Pairs

The number Two has implications of the feminine principle. The entire problem of the square, following Pythagorean mathematics (The Perennial Philosophy – Aldous Huxley), algebraically stands in the symbol of woman, in the number 2.

Four points make a square. A square implies two vertical and two horizontal lines. In the case of a square with a 16:9 ratio, the horizontal lines are closer to the center (the central point) than the vertical ones. The Earth symbol, in relation to the Sky symbol, is closer to Helios in this case. Considering that the lines are representatives of content, we will assume that this is the place where final choices can be made, which are necessary for secure and lasting existence. Choices that do not arise as a result of the “pushing force of the Cosmos” but as entities drawn by the gravitational force of the future.

On Differences:

Horizontal is the field, vertical are the constituents, the participants.

Horizontal is the context, vertical is individuality.

In the horizontal dimension is the community of everything, while in the vertical is only the individual.

The control of choices is divine power. It is the shaping of reality according to inner desire. It is the form-giving language.”

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Audio Essay: Thesis and Anti-thesis

Freedom vs. Destiny

It’s easy to fall into the trap and assume that the opposite of freedom is an empty lack of freedom or imprisonment.

“The soul is free when it is educated.” – M. Eckhart, Goethe

On the opposite side of freedom lies a choice. The Choice is what ends freedom and reduces it to actualization. Freedom is potential (numerous) choices, and Destiny (non-freedom) is one choice.

We make this choice, or the external makes the choice for us. The illusion is of the individual assuming otherwise.

The drawing of the simplest mandala is the most illustrative example of the relationship between freedom and Destiny, potential and actualisation.

Mandala 1

A circle describing a point. The circle is an infinite series of points (choices), or an exponent of freedom, while the point in the middle represents the “singularity” of Destiny, or as Jung says, the Self.

Ref: Jung’s autobiographical sketches of daily Mandalas

Mandala 2

A circle cut in half (into two semicircles). In this mandala, the separation of the whole by the Center line is shown. Two sets, thesis and antithesis. This mandala in its simplest interpretation represents three points, connected by a straight line (alignment of three points). Thesis, Antithesis, and the Relation between. The point of relation (Center) is an exponent of the Self and the basic reference point based on which thesis and antithesis are aligned (recognized). This Mandala is the first step in the coordinate determination of the Self and the first step towards Destiny Choice.

Mandala 3

A circle describing a point, and connected by a spiral. We all want to reach the Center, and we reach it through “freedoms”. Freedoms decrease, or “purify”, in cycles, and gravitate towards the Center. The Center is the Goal and the final step.

Freedoms push, the Center pulls. Ref: Terence McKenna and the theory of time (novum).

Maturity of consciousness is needed for Destiny. Infantile awareness, as the predominant collective neurosis, complicates this form of awareness. In a Biblical sense, the Devil is dressed in “new” garments and presents himself as the most beautiful angel, freedom.

Comment:

Free will and multiverse movies

We can often interpret movies as compensatory manifestations of our collective (or personal) shortcomings. The era of superhero movies portrays a picture of individual impotence, which is somewhat understandable due to the time we live in. However, multiverse movies provide a more interesting compensation. Compensation for the lack of free will. By depicting endless arrays of potential scenarios and possible realities, they relativize the importance of singularity behind phenomena but provide the comfort of indefiniteness (freedom).

Individual state – How Human is greater than the Cosmos

The collective existence of indefiniteness is permissible to the Cosmos, which measures its story in billions of years, and its development has practically just begun, however, this is not a good position for the individual.

Our insignificance in years, on the other hand, offers us a solution.

Every story consists of three constituents: Beginning, Middle, and End. These constituents make up the story of the Cosmos as much as they make up the story of a single Human. Although our experience of the Cosmos is of something almost Infinite, although we feel practically frightened by this magnitude, there exists in us another feeling of greatness standing as opposition to this fear. That greatness is the greatness of hypothetical inner infinity, which is as great as the external infinity, only its miniature representation.

Both infinities stand in a parallel, balanced relationship. However, while the external Infinity will potentially need hundreds of billions of years to reach the “Middle” of its Story, inner Infinity has the advantage of accelerated development.

Wrong unit of measurement (reference)

“So the World works, so will I,” is the basic fallacy. The “World” has time. The World is part of the Cosmic narrative.

The entirety of our story (beginning – middle – end) is written and played in about 100 years. All chapters, all transformations, all conceptualizations, all actualizations, all archetypal representations.

The differences between the beginning and the middle, as well as the middle and the end, are evident. These are differences between the young and the mature, the mature and the wise. It is also evident that the world is still in the infancy of its teenage years. This child is not an ethical-aesthetic norm, but merely a reference to the stage of development. A reference to the collective antithesis, which is at the beginning of development and will need much more time to mature.

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Throughout life, Persona builds our personality in two ways.

The First Persona

During our younger years, Persona semi-consciously infiltrates our subconscious, and then, practically from the subconscious, actualizes itself through our behaviour. This is especially evident during adolescence when the “artificiality” of adopted characteristics is visible almost non-stop. This is the moment when the subconscious is experimental, rebellious, and full of inner potency. Persona is built from the outside during this period. The basic constituents of this person are constituted when some of the basic archetypes are recognized on the outside. This archetype is imitated mainly in the mechanics of movement, with the assumption that the mechanics will lead to higher conceptual understandings of the archetype itself. During this time, we are mostly unaware of why imitation happens, except for the fact that we like it aesthetically. Aesthetic judgment is dominant during the articulation of the First Person.

Bridge period – Autocritical judgment

After enough lived First Personas and enough accumulated knowledge, we come to the conclusion that Persona is of instrumental character. Through enough lived Persons, we come to our personal constitutions of the Archetype. Within that Archetype (system of internal laws), the functioning of subconscious Persons is inadmissible, since their actualization disrupts the deeper-rooted structure, which we initially set out to build.

During this period, contempt for Persona is also shown, as we become aware of the fact of Persona’s subconscious influence.

The Second Persona

During adulthood, the constitution of Persona comes from consciousness. Persona is actualized as an adequate choice stylized on the basis of the current context of need and constituted through internal, clearly formulated ethical and aesthetic standards, which the person during the individuation declared to be the truest. Ethical judgment is dominant during the articulation of the Second Persona. This is the moment when consciousness is experimental, calm, and sees external potential.

This Persona can easily be mistaken for the personality itself since it is its direct exponent. However, unlike personality, this persona is a simplification of ideas and language and serves as their most illustrative example in relation to context. In its simplification lies its value because that simplification allows us a context in which we can be more elementary.

Final image:

Although these Persons, with the Bridge in Between, are presented chronologically through the story of life, they are actually a rhythmic image that is constantly active. The image “First Persona-Bridge-Second Persona” is a cycle that revolves throughout life. The First Persona has never been completely eradicated, the bridge is in constant repetition, and the Second Persona has never been completely defined. Here, too, we see a clear picture of the need for improvement through the same cycles with variations in semantics. These cycles, which are a necessary constituent of reality (movement), again give us a picture of the fractal configuration of the process.

Analogon of the tree

The first Persona can be easily recognized in a young tree, whose basic constituents are the root and the trunk. The root, like the first Persona, draws knowledge from the earth (the world; conventions) so that the trunk (growing up; the bridge) eventually articulates the crown (Fruit; Photosynthesis; the second Persona), through which it stands in relation to the sun (Helios; Logos; first laws; basics of the second Persona)

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Why does the Wizard look at the sphere?

There is a well-known story of a wizard (the archetype of a Wise Old Man), who has the power to look into the sphere from which he reads the future. The sphere is a pictorial representation of Pleroma. The sphere is potency. In order to read the “objective” future from the overall potency, we need a stable reference point of the Present. Based on this point, the historicity (identity) is written, and based on the historicity, the future is anticipated (projected). This reference point is the archetype of the Wise Old Man because it is he who shapes the objective (Logical) direction. The ordinary person, through the sphere, necessarily reads (writes), the wrong (unfinished), image of the future because he experiences the image of the world (reference point) through the subject’s prism of the burdened ego. Ref: Leonardo’s Salvador Mundi (Christ with the Ball) – a moralistic story

Comment: This folklore story has extended over time to witches, sorcerers, or wizards who serve the Shadow. Deviation from the archetype of the Wise Old Man to the archetype of the Clown and the archetype of the Shadow is an insinuation that an excessive focus on the future is not necessarily morally correct, or that it potentially entails trouble. Perhaps it is only the Spirit of the Present Time that seduces into wrong (temporal) definitions.

The advice I give myself

I have noticed that I often give people one piece of advice, and that is to try to read (interpret) their waking state and events in the same symbolic language with which we read dreams. We can also consider all the awake performances that we experience as archetypal. These are minimal and fragmented archetypes, mostly laden with anti-examples, but again, the picture is there. By reading our own historicity, through the logical-visual prisms of archetypal representations, we categorize and gather (synthesize) objective sets (Noah’s task).

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Brother M once perceived the Present (absolute now moment). From all that has been experienced, the following conclusion has been drawn: The Now is constituted from the ontological element which is the exclusive Present. In its exclusivity, the Now does not allow memory to form around it, ergo the Now can never belong to History (memory). The Now is a visual logical figure, which holds consistency. It is obvious that the Now is necessary, so that, in complete contrast to it, we can form the past (identity). After the formation of the past (memory-identity), with the constant energy of the Now, we have a predisposition to form (anticipate) the future. The more complete our definitions of the past (the elements within logical laws), the greater the possibilities within anticipation (more precisely). Ref: The story of Noah.

The Now is a relation-structure (potential binegation), that contains sets of the past and sets of the future, as well as sets of the interior and sets of the exterior.

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Noah’s Ark is a direct extension of Noah’s personality. A similar example is found in dreams with rooms, basements, attics, houses, vehicles, or cities (ref: Jung). In Barca, Noah, in addition to himself and his family, gathers (oppositions) of the completed phenomenon of life – he gathers the sets by understanding (connecting) their opposing constituents (male-female). With all the assemblies in him, Noah can stand above water – Water as the superconscious – Christ walks on water.

This is a moralistic story of purification that also offers us the laws by which purification occurs. If we unite in ourselves “sets of oppositions” (pairs of animals; male-female principle), as lower complete ontological units (cleansed of the human interference), we have a tool with which we can survive the “flood”, taking from our history only the “true”. and destroying everything else. After a flood, we elevate ourselves to a new level of higher potency.

A set of lower ontological definitions for the sake of higher potency is a universal pattern. The pattern is recognized in the language, and all other forms of denotation in general (painting, music, mathematics, etc.). Potentially, the pattern contains the laws of what we call “creativity.”

Wittgenstein uses the same pattern in his Tetractis for the sake of knowing the truth. Monastic life implies the renunciation of excess for the sake of reducing life to lower complete ontological definitions within which it is easier to see God (same pattern).

The narrative can also be recognized in the theory of reincarnation. After the death (flood) the soul joins the collective superconscious. We remember the truths from the lived life that are transferred to a new beginning with the hope that the next life (potency) will be completed. Here we recognize that reincarnation can be defined as individuation through multiple connected lives.

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