Massimo Scaligero - The Light

The Light(La Luce)

La Luce Quark Emmy 5/15/01 9:58 PM Page 1


The Light(La Luce)

An Introduction

to the

Creative Imagination

by

Massimo Scaligero

translated by

Eric L. Bisbocci

LINDISFARNE BOOKS


Translation Copyright © 2001 Eric L. Bisbocci

All rights reserved.No part of this book may be reproduced

in any form without the written permission of the publisher except for brief quotations embodied

in critical reviews and articles.

Published by Lindisfarne BooksP.O. Box 799, Great Barrington, MA 01230

www.lindisfarne.org

ISBN: 0-9701097-6-8

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Scaligero, Massimo.[Luce. English.]La luce=(The light): an introduction to the creative imagination /

Massimo Scaligero; translated by Eric L. Bisbocci.p. cm.

ISBN 0-9701097-6-81. Light body (Occultism) I. Title: Light

BF1442.L53 S3313 2001133.8—dc 21 2001023396

Designed byStudio 31, inc.

www.studio31.com

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Printed in the U.S.A.


Table of Contents

Translator’s Note 7

I. Darkness: The Leaven of Light 9

II. Thinking: The Light of the Earth 19

III. Forces of Opposition: Mediums 28

IV. Metaphysical Warmth 38

V. The Life of Light: Freedom 45

VI. Sense-free Thinking 64

VII. Meditation as a Path to Creative Imagination 74

VIII. Il Pensiero Pensante (The “Activity of Thinking”) 86

IX. Dialectics and Spiritual Science 95

X. The Magical Will: The “Void” 115

XI. The Threshold 140

XII. The Resurrection of Light 152

Notes 158



Translator’s Note

The translation of this work presented a number ofdifficulties, the most challenging of which was how torender the term pensiero pensante. Coined by GiovanniGentile, the founder of actualism, pensiero pensante isusually translated as either the “activity of thinking,” ashas been done in this work, or “thinking thought” (i.e.,thought that thinks), which is confusing because it tendsto presuppose a subject other than thought itself. Theexpression “activity of thinking,” on the other hand,lacks specificity. Therefore, a few words of explanationare offered here in an attempt to make it more intelligi-ble for the reader.

As Scaligero intimates in Trattato del Pensiero Vivente(p. 11), the pensiero pensante is not reflected thought butthinking “riflettentesi,” that is, “in the act of reflectingitself.” It is, in fact, what he refers to as the “dynamicmoment” of reflectivity (Trattato. . . , p. 13). This pensieropensante is continually at the point of leaving reflectivity,but does not. Hence the light or “pure dynamis” of think-ing goes unexperienced. “Gentile’s pensiero pensante,”says Scaligero, “is not living thinking, but rather theintuition of the dynamic moment of reflectivity; it is notpure thinking, for it is thinking which is not conceivedoutside its activity through an object. The path of think-ing proposed by spiritual science conversely has as itsaim the experience of thinking in itself, insofar as it ispure dynamis, that is, independent of the object.” (DalloYoga ai Rosacroce, p. 125).

Scaligero refers to living thinking as “the substanceof pure ideas, to whose light the human being unknow-ingly tends with thinking and existing, for it is in itselfthe dynamis of thinking and existing, life. . . ” (Trattato, p.

7


16-17). Whereas the pensiero pensante which can “resur-rect reflected thought from abstraction, by reactivatingthe dynamic moment of reflectivity, is still not. . . theinner life. . . . ” “This life is indeed present in the pensieropensante, but it continually disappears” (Trattato. . . ,p. 19). Only “if it realizes the continuity of its indepen-dence from a theme” can the pensiero pensante becomeliving. (Trattato. . . , p. 16). Says Scaligero, “there can rise,as thought, the force which precedes its producing, i.e.,the pensiero pensante but outside reflectivity. . . . ” Itsobject becomes the process of reflecting itself, which“therefore bears the life that previously annihilated itselfin the thinking act, and for which this act has never beenable to avoid being the fall of thinking into physicality,i.e., into dialecticism and into rhetoric.” (Trattato. . . ,p. 14). In order to cognize this pensiero pensante, we mustperceive its life. (Trattato. . . , p. 14).

Connected to this is Scaligero’s use of the lone wordpensante, which can itself be translated in several ways,one of which is the adjective “thinking,” as in “lacoscienza pensante” (the thinking consciousness). Otherways are thinking “in the act” as in “in the act of reflect-ing itself,” or simply “that (which) thinks,” both ofwhich the reader, again, must continually remember arein specific reference to that “dynamic moment” of reflec-tivity in which the light of thinking, in the act of reflect-ing itself by way of an object, flashes in its dying out asdialectics.

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I.

Darkness: The Leaven of Light

— 1 —

The light by which we see things is only a symbol.At the point of seeing the light, we lose it. Our loss of

the light is what we see as light.The light we think we see is the light that has annihi-

lated itself so that we can see.We are always at the point of seeing the light. There-

fore we see things.We are unable to see the light, because we look at

things through the dying of the light. We cannot per-ceive the light, because we think we are seeing things,and we see only things because they are clothed in thelight that we do not see. We see forms and colors andthink that we are seeing things. But we see only theappearances of things — by means of the light that anni-hilates itself in us.

Light is the secret being of things and entities. Theessential matter of things is light. But the essential mat-ter, the spiritual matrix of all that appears, is not the mat-ter that appears to us.

The matter that appears to us is fallen light: thecorpse of the light. It is the stratification of fallen light.

Therefore, matter is darkness, the darkness dominat-ed everywhere — except in the human soul — by thelight.

In matter, light encounters the levels of its fall. Ateach point, it gives itself up and extinguishes itself — inorder to resurrect what fell.

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Things illumined by the light of the sun are things atthe point of lighting up again by means of the originallight.

But the light reflected by the world is born as light sothat the human eye can see. It is born in order to die out.It continually dies out. Yet it is reborn each time.

We must orient ourselves toward this birth, becauseit occurs in the center of our soul — in essential thinking,in non-dialectical thought, in pure perceiving.

— 2 —

When we are looking at things such as minerals,plants, and living beings, we are always looking at thelight; but we do not see the light. Rather, we see thedarkness into which the light disappears.

The darkness that absorbs the light, the darkness intowhich the light disappears, is no longer darkness. It isthe play of light within the soul, which, in the eye,grasps the colors and forms of the world, the structure ofbeing.

Not only colors, but also the world’s forms are theplay of light in darkness.

Any form of thing or being is matter that tends to riseagain as light. It offers itself as an idea that is beyond ourability to grasp as such, for any idea we have is only anabstraction. We do not know how to grasp it as it arises— alive.

Things, the world, and entities appear because theyclothe themselves in light. But this clothing is theencounter of soul-light with the light of matter by meansof the eye. It is the reconstitution of the original light, asan act of consciousness. And yet we are unaware of thepresence of the principle of light.

Because we do not live in the I, but in the soul, we

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continually appeal to the I without being it. We have itslight, but only as reflected light. We ourselves are thevery source of the light; in reflection, we lose its life.

— 3 —

Our seeing is always a seeing of the light.All of the world’s being that reaches us through our

eyes is a resurrection of the light. It is a continuingmoment of the light’s resurrection — by which we seeforms and colors. But not the light.

We do not meet this resurrection directly with thelight of our willing but, rather, through the mediation ofthe senses, in which the light of willing is inverted. Wemeet it with the movement of nature, through which thisresurrection takes the forms of sensation, of representa-tion. This is always the dying out of the light.

Each time the light is at the point of resurrecting, itdies out. It dies out as the light of the world.

The I should be so awake as an individual I, that it nolonger needs such a death to exist. It should perceivedeath, so as to intuit the life which it loses.

Everything that dies has the force of dying: dying isnot the annihilation of that force. Dying can only occuras a consequence of the differentiated expression of theforce — for the subject that experiences it.

Annihilation is not a dying, but only a transition ofthat which, in a particularized state, cannot fully mani-fest itself. Thus, its being is actualized by its movementaway from that condition, by freeing itself from that par-ticularized state. But only a subject, an I, can completethis work. Annihilation apart from such a subject ismeaningless.

It is the path to “emptiness” and to silence: to thenullification of all that impedes the light’s movement.

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Thus, dying is always a hidden flow of life. Forget-ting that it bears the principle of life within itself, the Iblindly fears death. To cognize itself — to cognize thatwhich does not die as something real — the I must cog-nize the death of the “unreal,” to which it has bounditself in the soul.

— 4 —

Only what does not die can oppose death.Death gives life its meaning. It can be cognized only

by what has a conscious life. The principle of life canexperience itself only through death, insofar as it per-ceives itself on this side of what dies and, therefore, cog-nizes death without dying.

On Earth, only the human I can experience death.We must experience death in order to experience the

forces of life, in order to discover the life which we donot perceive during our existence, but which we knowonly by its earthly effects. We must experience death inorder to understand that what dies is not us but, rather,the bearer of our undying being.

We must pass through the darkness, carrying our-selves beyond the whole of darkness, in order to cognizethe light. During life, our only experience of that light iswhat is reflected to us by darkness.

Initiation proceeds through a series of deathmoments, beyond which the initiate rises again. Lifeprocesses cease to serve as supports to consciousnessand this, in turn, resists the tendency to precipitate intonothingness by drawing forces of life from the incorpo-real — from the I, which it is every day and withoutwhich it would not be.

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— 5 —

All of our suffering is just this: our failure to see thelight, though we know that the light illumines theworld.

It is the unseen light. We do not see the light, but weknow that it illumines the world, or else we would notsee the things, forms, and colors of the earth.

We think that we see the light. We are unaware thatwe do not see it. We do not know that our suffering isprecisely our failure to see the light while believing that,when we look at the world, we do see it. In reality, weimagine it. We think it. We suppose it.

We see the sun’s light only in its guise of brightnessand heat. We do not truly see it as light.

In truth, light is idea: pure image. It is the image of anessence which surfaces in the soul each time our gazeperceives illuminated things.

To the degree that our senses gather the dying out ofthe light, there arises in the soul the image of the light,which is the light at the very point of giving itself up. Wedo not live the life of the soul, but only participate in thesensation and dialectical consciousness of such a life. Wedo not notice the lighting up of the light in our souls. Westop at the reflection, at the moment of the world’sappearing, and we imbue this reflection with the powerof reality.

In translating the light’s reflection in the world intosomething of real value, in converting the sensory reflec-tion of the light into thought, we oppose the life of thelight. We operate according to darkness.

We only experience light by opposing darkness to it.The opposition of darkness to light is the sense world

— which we take to be real.

13


— 6 —

Without the opposition of darkness, the light couldnot give rise to colors. Colors are born for the humanbeing whose essence is the unseen light, becausehuman consciousness has darkness as its bearer.

Colors are not variations or aspects or fractions of thelight. They arise from the light’s encounter with dark-ness, and from our presence at this encounter.

The relationship between light and darkness takesplace in the human soul.

Without the support of darkness, we would have nei-ther the light of day, nor anything illumined by the sun’sglow. Light, penetrating into earthly darkness, and intothe sensory sphere, renders day visible to our eyes. Wedo not know how to gather the invisible force of light. Ifwe did, we would perceive in ourselves the wisdomfrom which light emanates. We have yet to form, withinourselves, the organ of perception for light.

The light we think we see is only the symbol of theliving light. It is in fact the light that dies out.

This is the light that dies out into darkness, because itcan reach us only in the sphere of darkness.

We must perceive the light’s sensory manifestations,in which the light extinguishes itself, in order to re-ascend to the light’s image — the living image that is thefabric of light.

In reality, we do not perceive light, but only dark-ness, or the darkness that absorbs the light.

We see darkness in various forms thanks to thelight’s forces, but we do not cognize these forces. We donot see the light. If we did see it, we would be able topenetrate the darkness. For there is no darkness stand-ing in opposition to the light apart from the way we hap-pen to perceive and represent it.

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What impresses itself on our souls as sensation isonly the form of the world’s dark element. To be known,it demands that we bind and extinguish the light to var-ious degrees.

The initial cognition that occurs, as a consequence ofthe extinguishing of the light, is not light, but only itsimage or reflection: dialectics. Such a dialectical processhas the virtue of passively shaping itself according to theplay of darkness — but it cannot penetrate the darkness.Reflection belongs to the force field of darkness — as animitation of the light, operating in the world by thelight’s own force of necessity.

The shining of the light, as it becomes life, means thatthe soul’s ordinary movement, or reflected knowledge,is reversed or overturned and that the reflection is re-absorbed. For the reflection is always darkness clutch-ing at the light: dialectical movement.

It is only in the human soul that this movementclutches at the light, through the soul’s echo of ordinarysense experience. Outside the human being, light pur-sues and dominates darkness.

We must open up to this movement. Our opening upis already the light’s own movement. It is the intuitivemovement of thinking — prior to words — in which theprinciple of the light operates.

This is the I which we are — without being aware ofwho we are.

— 7 —

Darkness is not the same as nothingness; it is nei-ther the void nor the absence of light. Rather, it is theforce opposed to the light.

Matter, deprived of the sun’s light, emanates an

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inverse light, which is black light — an invisible dark-ness that is present even during the day.

If darkness were nothingness, we would not see it;we would not perceive its obscurity. Darkness would beinvisible to us.

Instead, we see this obscurity, which is the obscurityof our own souls, projected onto the world.

The darkness of the soul is the soul’s dependence onthe body, a dependence that enables it to arise as earthlyconsciousness.

The physical carrier imprints itself on the soul. Thesoul becomes deprived of the light, and so it lives bymeans of sensory life, in which it has access only to theextinguishing of the light.

The soul is immersed in darkness. It has only thelight’s image — the reflection, which lacks the power todefeat darkness.

Therefore, when it lacks the light of day, the soul seesonly darkness — a darkness that emanates from thepowers of the earth.

But it is because it contains the light that the soul seesdarkness as well. We could behold the light at night. Forin the very absence of the physical sun and its visiblerays, it is possible to experience the presence of the spir-itual sun in us.

The function of darkness is to stop the visible light —which is not the light, but only its reflection. This meansopening the threshold to the true light, which is thesecret of matter.

Nevertheless, what the darkness holds back lets thetrue light pass through. For we are to become consciousof the light and experience, within ourselves, the light’smovement.

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— 8 —

Obscurity seen is already darkness illumined. Forour experience of seeing is a movement of the light fromthe depths of the soul.

Such light continuously extinguishes itself. But itcould not extinguish itself if it were not there, or if it didnot flow continuously.

For now, the radiation of the light into us is possibleonly as a dying of the light. It dies out in order to clothethe darkness.

This happens only for the human being.Outside the human being, light dominates the dark-

ness and darkness is defeated. The Logos has placedlimits on the darkness.

In the human soul, the darkness absorbs the light. Itmakes the play of the light its own. It clothes itself inlight.

It is only for human beings that light can die intodarkness.

We who see darkness behold it by means of theforces of light. But we cannot penetrate darkness,because we do not truly possess the light with which wesee.

We look at the darkness and see it. We do not knowwhy we see it as darkness.

The darkness we see before us is a symbol of thedarkness of the soul. Nevertheless, the light with whichwe can behold the darkness rises to us from the soul’sdepths.

Therefore, by showing the soul’s condition more tru-ly than the light of day, the darkness can sometimes bethe object of contemplation and of silence.

Contemplation must always proceed throughdarkness.

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— 9 —

Light continually lights up anew. Only in this waycan the darkness be seen. We are unaware of this. Ourseeing is always the movement of the light, but of thelight that lights up where it can only die out.

It lives in the same moment that it dies out. It couldnot live otherwise. It would not give itself to us, if it didnot light up in order to extinguish itself.

Its flashing forth, in order to die out, is the endlesssearch for the true secret of things, which we pursuethrough sensations and thought, through enjoyment andsuffering: uninterruptedly evoking life, seeking life, andlosing it. For every movement is longing — the play ofdarkness by means of the light.

The true secret of things can only be reached by theperson who can inwardly enkindle the light that shineswithout need of reflection. For light’s reflection comesabout through darkness, through the corporeal carrier. Itloses its warmth. It lacks the power of life.

Darkness is not merely the obscurity of night fromwhich we draw our image of darkness — so that we callwhat contradicts the light, “darkness.”

Rather, by drawing its image from the night’s obscu-rity, the darkness that we imagine is condensed andsolidified in the material substance of things — in thematter from which the earth is structured.

Matter is fallen light — light arrested during its fallfrom the creative forces of light.

When matter is perceived, the light of thoughtencounters the fallen light. It meets this light because forit, the fallen light, illuminated by the sun, has becomevisible.

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Massimo Scaligero - The Light