Michael Sharon

December 14, 2002

 

 

 

 

 

Manichaeism, ultimate Good and Evil vs. Triune structured Nature

 

 

 

 

 

 

Is the structure of reality Dualistic? Some philosophers of the ancient world thought so, putting forth dichotomies such as good and evil, right and left, light and dark and the like. But it can also well be hypothesized that the structure of reality is triune, being a more fundamental structure highly integrated into the empirical universe. For example, the structure of the human brain and that of primates is triune – the reptilian brain, the emotional brain (located mainly in the brain’s limbic system) and the neocortex, in particular the frontal lobes (See the conclusions of the emi­nent brain researcher Paul Maclean: The Triune Brain, Emotions and Scientific Bias. In Schmitt F. (Ed.), The Neuroscience. New York: Rockefeller University Press, 1970).

 

 

This triune structure is archetypical, and is found in mythologies and works of art since the dawn of civilization. In that context I unfold here a correspondence with a puppet show woman artist that incidentally came across this basic structure, and felt that she is facing something higher and much more fundamental than everything we deal with in our current culture - basically having an underlying dualistic structure.

 

 

The artist starts by quoting a short article of mine (see the link below) which refers to an arche­typical ancient stratum of the source for the Hebrew word for God (Elohim    àìäéí)  appearing  in the book of Genesis, chapter 1 (in the Bible). Please note that the breaking-through late mono­the­istic notions, partially lean on terms and concepts originally created by ancient cultures, yet they divert them into entirely new direction. Refering to this,  my analysis is mainly philological.

 

The Artist writes:

 

 

 

 

   Figure of the Mother and Son discovered in

  Egypt from about 3000 years before Christ.

  The complex crown on the maiden’s head

  indicates her supreme or trans-human status.

  Please note that “explaining”  the enigma by

  saying that Pagan motifs intruded into

  Christianity is basically evading the issue by

  a sort of  “hen before egg” game. The question

  still remains whence those motifs infiltrated

  into Pa­ganism.

 

  These themes are shown across cultures,

  religions and  time, thus being manifested as

  basic infra-structural conceptual/affective

  patterns from the dawn of Civilization. Note

  further that the Jungian concept of

  “Archetypes” acts merely as providing a

  pseudo-explanatory  term (or word) where

  a sub­stantial  in­formation  is lacking.

  Hence, this enigma still re­mains unresolved.

 

 

"Please note: Moses, like Yeshua (Jesus) contains the root Yeshua (salvation), but also 'Limshot' (Take out from the water): His name was Moses because I took him out of the water (Mashiti)."

Again - "Yeshua (Salvation) is related to 'getting him out of the water or sea'.

 

Michael, this was interesting to read. In my new show I have a scene where the protagonist, a 7 year old Jewish girl is in a nunnery and has to pretend to pray to Jesus. She tells him that she heard from the nuns that he lives in the sky, but should he ever fall into the sea he should cry for help and she will res­cue him from the waters. She'll save him. (she plays often a game of rescuing a black doll in a scene of shipwreck).

Coincidence? ancestral reservoirs of associations, ideas?

 

If you are interested you can come one day and watch a rehearsal, you'll understand then why Jesus and the sea and salvation happen in the story I tell with puppets and objects and myself.

 

Freedom within limits... I have many thoughts on the subject, I am actually busy with that question all the time doing what I do in theater. Right now checking the limits of drama. I have a story where nothing really happens, no CENTER. And yet it does not work as an epic.

 

The Nobel prize winner of literature Kertesz says that he does not want a center in his novels, no main characters. Why do we have this feeling that nothing happens when there is no real central dra­matic event that binds a story together? Why do things work in literature, in plastic arts and not in theater.

I am always looking for the language that serves the idea I am interested in. But my audience is of­ten used to one language only.

 

 

 

I want to work on the Darwin story, but do not yet know whether I need a center or not... What HAPPENED? Can there be a structure without a center? A shape without a center? Our body has a shape and a center we can shift, the center of gravity. I'd like that to happen in a story.

If Kertesz is right neither characters nor center are needed, there is the music of the language, the idea, that those characters serve to keep it going.

 

Maria, the sea, marionette. Did you know that marionette means little Maria? When the moral­ity stories about Jesus and Mary got hot and the devil became a tempting character, the storytell­ers were kicked out of the churches into the street, and continued performing there the stories with puppets.

 

Chau, Miguel.

 

________________________

 

Below follows my answer to the artist’s insightful notes, which refers to triune-based infrastructural structures and their concomitant  affec­tiv-metaphysical concepts:

 

I feel and think that the act of "limshot" from the water, manifests the archetypical motif of Di­vine Grace symbolized by Mother Mary. Please note characteristic ingredients of this motif in Lennon and McCartney lines: "When I'm in a time of trouble, Mother Mary comes to me. Tells me words of wisdom, let it be”. This phrase may suggest the following: 

 

1) “Time of trouble” – a lasting situation of painful occurrences that cannot be easily handled and resolved.

 

2) “Words of wisdom” – connoting in this context: The consolation inherent  in insightful knowledge involving profound and inspired understanding, insightful and effective explanations and general-purpose modes of coping that are far more reaching than every-day life ways of thinking and tactics of coping. These indicate (As suggested by the emergence of  Mother Mary at the time of trouble and by the basic meaning and connotations of “Wisdom” in this context) the way out of the troublesome situation, paving now possibilities for progressing further, which may not be merely a personal progress, but seems to  involve a general progress.

 

3) “Let it be”, implying in the context spread out by the phrase:  A favorable and graceful progress is about to happen now and follows necessarily from the nature of things. Do not forcefully and arbitrarily enforce an impediment, do not even force your way with it, but rather, follow this flow in a spontaneous and natural manner.

 

The important point I suggest is that the structure of “Grace” assumes no single center or a fo­cal vantage-point. Rather, Grace, bearing a structural similarity to infinite love, inspiration or generative creativity, has a form analogous to that of a fountain’s flow. Hence  the image of water, that overruns, diminishes or bypasses any hard matter apt to be an impeding vantage point that induces tight and domineering strain diverting from the natural order of things – the order of graceful reality (as contrasted with arbitrarily and forcefully imposed reality, say, that of social despotism). Thus, dual mode structure of reality has focal centers, whereas triune-based order of things inhibits this centrality.

 

The Mosha (the woman that takes the Son of Man out of the water) must be a "Virgin" minded maiden - like the daughter of Pharaoh and her young maiden friends, or the 7 year old in your play - manifesting the ever-fresh­ness nature of mother earth.

 

You note further: "When the morality stories about Jesus and Mary got hot and the devil became a tempting character the storytell­ers were kicked out of the churches into the street, and continued performing there the stories with puppets".

 

This stage of the history of civilization mani­fests the dominance of Manichaeanism (Good against Evil) and a structure of Dual infra-structural basic entity, replacing a Triune ba­sic entity. Under such metaphysical/affective tendency Nature is reduced into paved routes of human hate and barbaric jealousy, Grace and Love are stamped upon, and human spiritual composition collapses into a syn­thetic fabric routed along singularity lines. (See my article about the difference between the Arab Shahid and the Japanese Kamikaze)

 

 

 

An Egyptian Mother & Son figure, Ptolemaic period.

 

Drama - like rhetorics, is based by its very essence on a uni-focal center (or a single thematic fo­cus).

 

I have investigated the question of a single focus or center in my work on divided attention (Which involves simultaneous activation of multiple-foci). Drama usually tends to go along a single route or to converge once or more, in the course of serially running events, into centralized dramatic focus. Other possible simultaneous routes are eliminated from attention. This effect is compelling, and you are "convinced" during the show. Yet later, you can find points of disso­nance entailed by those simultaneous routes that had evaded attention due to the effect of the dramatic emphasis on a single centralized focus.

 

The cinema, on the other hand, does not entail a uni-focal center and can assume more contra­puntal (polyphonic) morphology.

 

Michael

 

 

Link: Ancient strata of the Hebrew term for God (Elohim  (àìäéí