Essay Letter on Absence, Reality
and the new Science.

The Principle of Inclusion.

Dear Reader,
with the present issue of Zeta, published by Campanotto, we continue the well-born co-operation between our Centro Studi and the review which was started in the previous issue.
With this letter - invitation - introduction - I want to further open up the way to knowledge of what we have been studying for over twenty years now: a new category, a new level through which reality shows itself and thought thinks itself and, so thinking itself, thinks anew and thinks nothingness, i.e. Absence.
I want to immediately point out that our research does not simply arise from philosophical speculation or from a different method or field of observation of reality.
It involves all this too, but not primarily. What we are dealing with is a condition or state - if it can be so designated - of human reality and of the world which is completely different from what has existed till now, a condition of which we now have daily experience, even in the way of the soma albeit, as we are going to explain now, in a different somatic condition from that known so far.

We have discovered and produced in the world a condition of reality, a state of matter - if we can so express ourselves capable of Absence - as we have designated it. We have created a void in the place of fullness, nothingness in the place of the thing and we have "thought empty", an activity of thinking able to dig into itself - to be nothing, not to be - in the very moment it is, so as to make itself more absent and capacious, and able to take things and their existence as absent.
Dear reader, it is so difficult to say what we have become aware of. We have thought it impossible for the many years during which we have investigated our psyche and analysed the layers of the unconscious and beyond (we are also doctors and psychoterapists). Discovering the root of a new ideation, an origin never thought of, nor experienced, of being and thinking - an origin because of which all that appears to us is nothing, is absent, no longer has that valence, that signified, nor that signifier it has always been assigned so far - has been an incredible experience, terrifying and greatly joyful at the same time, extreme, beyond what has been thought of so far. This experience is yet so close to a constant and pressing need of the human being who lives a life, dies a death and often bears an existence he feels as not in accordance with what the evolutionary stage reached by the species homo sapiens sapiens would not actually entail any longer, as we were to learn later on.

In our work, at first experimental and laboratory based, and later in the work we carried out with the help of a special therapy method called 'Activation', we have been able to explain more and more clearly, first of all to ourselves, how a bond existed innate in so-called human nature - inside its species - a bond which prevented the new evolutionary entity from being released, that entity called either thought, or intelligence, or verbal language articulate and abstract which had developed in the different biological cognitive systems in the transitions from animal to hominid and, in the end, to homo sapiens sapiens.
We are neither specifically scholars of evolution, nor anthropologists, yet it seemed more and more evident to us that the structure of the animal, i.e. the foundations of its cognitive condition had been transmitted, without significant changes, to the basis of human condition and that the latter had found itself having to elaborate the world and its self-consciousness, being mid-way with a nature which was no longer animal and yet not completely other.
It is as if the human species had found itself imprisoned in a condition no longer pertaining to it, blocked and powerless within a psychophysical reality, which even now does not belong to it, that is, it would not belong to it if the capacity of thinking had fully originated. It is as if the higher nervous activity were still clamped in a vice, not free to express itself more openly, more intensely, with greater subtlety and modulation because of ancient ties still active with the soma and with the experience of the past animal species.
As a doctor I found myself having to cope with serious psychopathological cases which neither known verbal nor pharmacological treatment could cure in a suitable way.
For years, I myself had felt bonds within myself, within my psychosomatic structure, conditions that over time I had recognized as not natural since I was aware, although only partly, of a deeper level and of a mental and affective system of greater complexity and motility.
I was aware, yet not in a completely explicit way, of a condition of reality and of existence wider and freer, of a greater capacity of consciousness, of a more open and more efficient learning capacity and of a different source wherefrom memory arises.
As a student, I started to study and experiment the phenomenon of Inhibition and particularly of conditioned Inhibition on laboratory animals, that side of learning in which the extinction of a certain ability acquired, of a certain behaviour and not the process of acquisition, is put under observation. I had focused my attention on a phenomenon which concerned lack, cessation rather than its contrary, a more evident phenomenon, which is the act leading to satisfaction. I had been able to observe experimentally in some tests carried out in the laboratory and, later on, in everyday behaviour, how the acquisition of an ability to extinguish a behaviour previously learned, therefore to inhibit an acquired response, was far more important - produced a better disposition, entailed a higher degree of fitness - for further experimental tests, where the task involved a certain discriminative complexity.

Thus, we had started to investigate, together with behavioural processes, the complex phenomenon of the deep layers of the psyche and of reality in general, and we were becoming aware of how those sites which have mainly concerned the Freudian and Kleinian analysis were not complete, limited to a certain point of view and relying on instruments of investigation which were not suitable for the reality in question, one which is certainly more complex. So we became aware that the interpretation method - the first means of psychoanalytic investigation and treatment - did not actually produce significant results in terms of therapy and consciousness, except in limited, very selected cases.
From these theoretical and experimental beginnings I got involved in deep analysis of the psychic processes, making layers emerge which turn out to be beneath and beyond those investigated by usual theory and practice.
Through a new method of investigation and therapy - which I called 'Activation', a method based on the use of one spoken word, of its deep meaning and its sound, the root of articulate voice and of its emotional and affective component in a condition of active concentration and ideation simultaneous with the verbal emission - I brought to light the existence of a level never before investigated within the psyche, a level given which the subject can have conscious experience - deeper awareness - of a new condition of being that had never emerged before: Absence.
With the aim of overcoming limitations imposed by their illness, I brought some patients of mine to the condition of experiencing birth, - a specific birth different from their natural birth - as became clear to me later on. With that process we had gone beyond the barriers separating living from non-living, born from non-born. The illness which manifested itself in various symptoms was evidence of a reality where the phenomenon of birth was missing. Not only as a specific fact concerning a person, a certain ill personality, but also - as we are gradually becoming aware of - as the expression of a general state of illness, a symptom of th immature state to which the human species belongs, its stage of evolution being imperfect, unfinished and 'fixed'.

A new reality emerges, complex with further (absent) relations and pregnant with extremely important consequences, free from ancient, inadequate ties. It is able to renew itself in its prime roots by contact with the 'new thinking', for the latter does not need the non-conscious support of the thing, both as shelter and hallucinatory objects.

At that time, in 1978, at completion of that phase of the research, we brought out a book entitled "Paolo e il suo compagno senza morte" (Paolo and his Companion free of Death) published by Apollinaire, Milan. It was a text in writing which was new, revolutionary compared to all previous writing; not so revolutionary in its form and contents - as these typologycally can fit, if one wants to fit them, into one of the many compartments man uses to defend himself from his fear of chaos and change. Yet it was a text which was different at its roots, such that what it produces within the mind of the reader has, we think, never taken place before: writing takes existence not because of its forms that - we reiterate - are outside the usual patterns of known comprehension, intellect and affect, but because of its deep characteristics. To their foundation and because of them, writing produces simultaneously, in the attentive reader, a new level in the way of thinking and being, that level we now call Absence.

Our research, focusing now on the system of Absence, proposes the languages and forms of Absence - thereby initiating its diverse scientific, medical, psychological and artistic positions - the analysis of signs and the composition of writing space - the birth of words and of (absent) ties of meaning and sound between words, musical - the discovery of a new level where sounds, the complex relation between sounds, may become manifest, and bring to life a new form of music capable of interacting profoundly with consciousness, forming within consciousness a level, more suitable, better articulated, more absent in order to achieve a freer capacity to relate to a less restrained and more constructed, a more sensitive and affective reality.

The discovery of the level of Absence - level zero, free of world thinghood which is the misleading light projected by physicality, the old soma of the species, not suitable for the new stage of evolution characterized by thinking activity - it is the place where today's research is producing fruitful results in the diverse fields of study and practical use.

A new level of thinking is introduced. It originates itself empty and able to be so in every manifestation of itself and, therefore, free to achieve a great power of abstraction, of vast capacity so that reality becomes larger, becomes more complex and is completed with the missing tract.
We are establishing, day by day, new relations existing between things, between things and nothingness, and we also put into action diverse forms of conceptualization, since ideation is revolutionized at its origin.
We have situated ourselves in this new place, a special place with a special statute of time and space, and from this place we observe both reality and the modifications of reality induced by this new thinking. Recently we have formulated a Principle of Reality which more fully encompasses the condition of reality and its new relations which derive from discoveries made through a thinking activity which goes beyond the usual patterns and categories of a somatic and psychological (intellectual and affective) condition.

This Principle is formulated as follows:

"Principle of Inclusion (of reality)."

If reality is observed in a system of observation which is situated outside the reality known until that moment, which is different from that, which is beyond the limits of knowledge so far accepted, reality will behave according to the way observation works, and namely it will behave in accordance with the complex system observing and placing reality itself.
It follows that if observation is sufficiently powerful and free from ties to the known system - at least in some parts of it - observation will produce predictions and phenomena not necessarily expressed on the level of evidence, of great consistency and clear precision corresponding to the complex theoretical and experimental apparatus already inherent in the observation system itself.

Every day we observe how reality - not only conceived as a metaphysical being, but also and above all as a physical being, of a more complex, emptier, physicality, which is other, not fixed by previous methods of the mind, uncertain and reductive, is in itself in evolution and is able to bring with itself the 'new-born entities', the deep and vast modifications that the origin of a thinking activity a powerful and conscious central nervous activity - an origin which never existed before, can generate.
Till now, two distinct entities have been examined in the analysis of evolution: the species and the environment. We consider this distinction between two entities to be coarse, lacking the due systemic complexity with which one should in fact think of an ampler condition, not only made up of visible factors - development not only being concerned with visible matter - but also with all those factors, non-visible events, such as the uncounscious and thought.
The reality we are speaking of is the reality of thought, of a more open and empty thinking activity, capable of knowing more accomplished levels both of matter and its absence.
Dear reader, it is increasingly clear to us that at the present stage of evolution a step is missing, one which would definitely differentiate man from animal, a transition no longer guided by chance and necessity - the approximative general law of evolution - but by a thinking activity capable of detaching itself from ancient ties to previous evolutionary stages.
We are discovering, day by day, a plane of great size and depth - Absence - of which the thinking activity manifested so far in the species - and the corollaries of this thinking : consciousness, intellect and reason and also (conscious) affect and knowledge of the other - are but an aspect, a mere sketch, definitely unfinished, of that vaster plane.
The thinking activity, both conscious and affective, and its relevant languages which have existed so far are but a small thing when compared to this new level, disencumbered of the unconscious, free and empty, ready to generate complex levels of reality, of an observer and an observed who have more chances of detachment and more chances of less reciprocal and retroactive wrong influences on each other, and yet with a higher degree of abstract knowledge - improved and more articulated languages - and of rational affect.
Till now, man has not been allowed to know what is other than himself. He gets to know what is similar, his projection, possibly controlled and sublimated, gradually as civilization grows, but he cannot yet produce anything which is not the reflected image of himself.
In the new observation field in which we have situated ourselves, the other - even absolute Otherness - is located and recognized in its wholeness and is therefore conceived with the widest and freest affect.
In this new condition the world opens its doors wide and shows itself beyond its boundaries, beyond the usual identity of things, because for the world to exist it is no longer necessary to hold things in eternal fixity, enclosed in their own identification as reflections of themselves. There arises a condition of nothingness, as we have said. A special nothingness, an elaboration of that nothingness which has so terrified the life of man throughout the ages since its origins. It makes itself more absent, poorer in virulence, less in need of asserting and replicating itself, overbearingly. Thus getting quieter and gentler, life makes itself ready for, adequate for the comprehension of a field as vast as the nothingness of which the thing is but a tiny part, pure eventuality and certainly neither the most important nor the truest or most complex one.

The New Method (of scientific observation).

The 'Principle and the concept of Inclusion' introduced by us in the field of reality, where nothing, really nothing is excluded, and indeed nothingness instead of the thing comes up at every step of observation and evolution - thus turning upside down the axiom of western thought - whereby the question is "Why the thing instead of nothingness?", because nothing is the rule; nothing is the capacity for reality to exist and even be manifest in its way, a complex way which is of active consistency and of particular expressiveness, made specific by its empty roots, i.e. roots of the most complete and utmost difference. We say "particular" and "specific" not because we are dealing with a minor part of reality, but because, today - given the usual ways of thinking and feeling - reality needs to show itself for itself, i.e. as the thing and not as (not yet as) nothingness, a reality free at its roots either to be or not to be.
We want to reiterate that we are not dealing with a metaphysical problem; we are using the terms 'to be' and 'not to be', 'reality' in a more "concrete" and specific way than that of conventional languages: i.e. as entities 'physically' existing, although with a 'physicality' different from the concept and the experience of the physical world existing so far.
Our production of concepts takes place in 'difference', i.e. in that stage of reality not yet occupied by the thing and thoughts-thing; in this ravine the world is ready to show itself in a different way, other than what has been generated so far.
We use the term and the concept 'to generate' because, as already stated, from the observation place where we are, there are not two separate entities - the subject and the object; the subject and the environment - having that imperfect and impartial separation and that unaccomplished detachment. What does exist - we put it into existence - is more complex relations; superimpositions of a different kind from those in use for the usual things; and 'Absences' which produce reality values by far more complex methods of scientific observation than those conceived and put into practice so far.

The 'Principle of Inclusion', formulated by us can be considered an enlargement and deepening of the anthropic principle, enriched by the occurrence, not improbable at all, of a reality in evolution - capable of behaving and 'generating itself' in accordance with the systems of observation and their capacity to open themselves to new, more complex conditions, with a higher degree of entirety than those in use at the present time of observation. According to the Principle of Inclusion, it will be a radical change of the thinking activity that will produce a substantial modification within reality, for reality will behave according to the modification in progress. We think that the radical change is essentially, or rather, exclusively a change to that higher degree of absence, of abstraction and that higher level of absence i.e. of (absent) complexity and simultaneity that are inherent in observation by 'absence'. As a result, one can think that reality changes in relation to thinking by 'absence' and that its general mutation - its evolution - has been set off as a function of the absence system a system which is able to include the field of nothingness, and therefore to think radically in the mode of difference which are more broad and diverse fields than those usually and ordinarily put into existence.

Dear reader, my letter is getting a little bit too long and also, I think, not so easy to accept and absorb. But I have no alternative at the moment: writing and the way of dealing with the subject in question have got the measure I have reached by explaining and simplifying after many many years and successive stages aimed at the constant improvement of the hypothesis, of the thesis.
Absence is a very extensive topic, is a place never existed in the world; up to now, thought has kept its own dissolution and annihilation outside of itself. And it has constantly refused to be put to the test by the condition which constituted it but is now the place for it to be superseded, there being a level where (the act of) thinking is empty, is an act absenting itself, though never either concealed or omitted. It is a place of vast capacity, it is silence and it is the capacity for a broader and more elaborated relation to exist, of other quality because of which nothing comes to existence unless in a relation of absence, that is, in a relation whereby detachment, conscious and absent, is given.
Introducing this thema of ours into thought and putting it, if possible, at the center of human nature, given the restraints with which human nature has worked so far because of ancient categories of the mind and of unaccomplished capacities for affect, is the equivalent of having at our disposal a container, very small and reduced - human nature into which we can pour all this wealth, extensive and deep, without artificial boundaries which is Absence.
This is like a sea, an empty sea, it is the infinite - more than finished - dimension of nothingness, of a special nothingness, not the fragile and terrifying nothingness as it thought of (in images) by the human mind today.
It is the otherwise, it is the Other, capable of being contained in one single point and in all the points of the empty universe. The mind as it presently is, is a small and reduced container, restrained within the parts it itself has built to support and control a state of reality as well as its own functions in a condition of simple and reduced unitariety because, otherwise, things would escape from all parts, since that reality is inclined to disorder, to dissemination when the level of Absence is missing - as it usually is.
We are aware that proposing the condition of Absence as an existing universe, concrete and real, in place of the one accepted so far - of being and showing oneself - is equivalent to calling for a radical revolution in the vision of the world and in the subject observing that world. Proposing a dimension made of nothingness and capable of being like that, without tending towards negative destructiveness and dissolution at all, means introducing into the field of reality a new paradoxical condition which cannot be easily accepted or resolved by existing logic. Putting the absence of the world at the center of the world - which is the place of affectivity, too, an empty affect, not unhealthy but rather the highest possible expression of affect without ambiguity - is a proposal turning the normal understanding of things right round.
We therefore warmly invite reason to make itself more responsive and milder and thus full of affect, rich in that component which springs from the plane of absence, so as to dispose itself well to grasp the new, that newness to which - we believe - the human species can adjust, greatly immature though the species is now, only capable of making short and limited performances originating from absence. Thought and consciousness may be considered to do so and to be rough expressions of absence, and so also may the stammering ways of abstract languages or the uncertain temporary balance of the mind and even the unsteady upright human posture.
Till some time ago we thought the passage here stated was impossible at the present stage of humanity. We thought thousands of years were required, as they had been for the succession of the evolutionary stages as well as for the intermediate steps within each of those stages.
Yet, recently, we realized that time has accelerated, the time is getting ripe, more suitable - except for the most complex and empty levels of absence; except for that cognition and experience of thinking, which is nothing and only nothing - for an intermediate way to exist in which the existence of a thinking activity and of consciousness is likely to be of higher quality than that possible so far, given the condition of the species. And with this higher quality, there will be a higher, qualitatively superior degree, of rational affect, generating conditions of accomplished freedom in each single man within himself and between men in their mutual relationships and between the different cultures and societies inhabiting our universe.

Dear reader, we are at the end of our long and difficult letter-introduction-essay. We have dealt with topics which we have only recently dared to present to a broader and more heterogeneous audience who have not followed our twenty-year research closely. Today, however, our research is more within reach and more within the range of thought, within customary reach and customary thought. Therefore nothingness is no longer so unapproachable just as the language of Absence is now less 'other' and empty.
In these long years of research - probably the research had even started earlier, within the physical and mental 'cells' of the evolution of the species, and only now has manifested itself - we have carried out not only scientific and clinical work but also activities in so-called artistic fields: Writing, Painting and, especially, Music.
These activities have accompanied the transformation throughout its different phases: the thing has become less and less thingy, up to the point of becoming nothingness; and this latter has manifested itself on several levels within the ravine of 'difference', that place from which new forms originate.
A few works are being prepared. The first one, entitled "Europe or the Absence", is in the form of a poem and deals with difference and nothingness, with the immature species and its possible and probable future mutation. It will shortly be published by Campanotto.
Another, the theoretical work, that first formulated knowledge of the new phenomenon is entitled, "Of Absence. Of a few traits of the new science and reality: the pages of theory and practice". It is going to be published in several volumes by the same publisher, somewhat later on.
In the previous issue of the review we presented several poems and two seminars given by the Author of the present letter last year, together with his scientific and 'artistic' curriculum vitae and a photographic introduction to Centro Studi, the centre which he directs and where he works with collaborators and, in particular, carries out his activity as a doctor psychotherapist.
A work in the series "Defeats" is reproduced in the present issue. It is entitled: "And Science on Horseback" and it was accomplished by means of a multi-layer technique.
This series was started in 1984-1985 - multi-layered works, place non-place of absent simultaneity - to express and generate an 'absent' level, that level where Being is 'defeated' and absents itself in its centrality: Being stands aside so as to enable the Other to assert itself, free of ties and able to generate laws of its own.

We also introduce a short piece-text of music for two (absent) pianos; this piece is here also referred to as "text", place (-non-place) where music is not only a value by itself, condition of pure and simple sound and silence, but music itself is also a condition for study and research it itself being a place-non-place linked to the other acts of the new thinking and of its Absence.
It is not that this music differs in its writing or its manifest expression from cultured Western music: as one can see, the writing of the composition presents itself with a structure analogous with that of classic composition, disposed here on two levels, which are simultaneously played: level 01 and 02, different but complementary levels of absence enabling the reality of sound to have the most complete and complex rotation.
It is also true that with attentive deep listening, this music will sound other, if compared to all known music, the relations between sounds (between notes) - i.e. anti-sounds, (anti-notes) - being relations by absence: i.e. relations neither of proximity nor of analogy nor of distance, in the usual meaning of the word. Yet they are relations where sound pitches and intervals are dealt with on the basis of a new cognition and experience both of sound and of reality all.
The root of sound is listened to and known by absence and it itself is absent. This music is composed and will sound void, with empty relations, with non-'saturated' intervals and ties, as it does not lead to any place known, pre-established by the laws of the human ear and mind. This is not only atonal, but also atopical music- without place and tone. It expresses and generates stages of knowledge and affect as yet unknown, stages that are not located on the level of immediately manifest experience, and thus produces in-depth modifications in the substantial structure of bodies (and minds), sound being a fundamental component of the compact tissue of physical and somatic matter.

Dear reader,

I give you now my regards and thank you. I hope you have had the kindness, perseverance and courage necessary to follow me to this point. I would also like you to know that this writing arises free and spontaneous, yet defined to its very bottom, finished and abstracted several times just as the music introduced by us was: it is the anti-sound which very often precedes me during my explorations. I consult it as my Muse and oracle, so that, by means of its complex relations - anti-relations -, it shows me the state of the system that is undergoing evolution and indicates to me the path forward in the science of things, because things are free (new substantiated) and also able not to be (pure absence, pure nothingness).

I hope that you can accept and welcome at least some aspects of what I have been experiencing for many years and learning in a system consisting of a new and radically different scientific method, so that all this does not get lost and does not roam for too long, being alone, in search of a place-non-place which accepts it, and where it can rest its head, oh man, improbable since the Beginning, already positioned and well-disposed in the Future.

With my best wishes,

Paolo Ferrari