Interspace: Physics and Semantics

As we have discussed, the potential space of the Interworld can be considered from two perspectives: as the “embryo” of materiality and as the “arche” of information. In other words, both the “substantial” and the “informational” components of reality are contained in the Interval as potential forms, their possibilities. Accordingly, the Interworld itself can be regarded as a “proto-space” and as “source code”, and in exactly the same way as, from a “physical” point of view, the “virtual singularity” of the Interval can generate an innumerable number of realized states, its semantic field can be “compiled” into an infinite number of structured “programs”.

The basis of the Interval is a set of “primordial potencies” which the Gnostics called “Aeons” (“Eternities”), “classical” Greek mythology described as the “Primordials” (“Protogons”), the Egyptians — as “Khemenu”, and the Scandinavians called “Jotuns”. As principles, they are abstractions of the universe’s original state and its fundamental qualities. As beings, they can participate in mythological narratives, interact with other deities, and so on. As spaces, they open up the possibility for the manifestation of particular properties or possibilities.

Each aeon is a special possibility of the manifestation of Divinity, which can, first, further generate a form of the presence of divine Light (that is, the primordial form of interaction of mind with Being) — a “proto-sefirah”, and second — the possibility of forming a structure (that is, transforming randomness into regularity) — a “proto-logos.

Views on the number and hierarchy of aeons differed among schools — they counted eight, thirty, 72, 360, and other numbers, but all researchers of the Interval agreed that aeons are “layers” of potential reality, proceeding from one another in the same way as, in actual reality, Lights or Sefirot emanate. However, it is incorrect to speak of aeons in terms of “manifestation” or “existence”, since they are only possibilities that can be discovered only by their “consequences”, and therefore the pseudo-space of the interworld formed by them is also “virtual”: it has no inherent boundaries, properties, or laws of existence.

Schools differ in their opinions as to how and why the virtual space of the Interval generates worlds and reality; the “first principle” of manifestation is held to be the striving of absolute mind toward self-reflection, toward the actualization of its potencies. In other words, although reality is born from the “womb” of the interworld, it is precisely the worlds that are the “goal”: their appearance is lawful and necessary based on the inner logic of Absolute mind; the interworld is primary ontologically, but the worlds are primary teleologically.

At the same time, it is precisely the Interval that is that “fabric”, more precisely — that “warehouse of fabrics”, from which mind weaves its reality. The dual nature of the interworld also gives rise to the duality of reality: the world is simultaneously an environment, a field of manifestation and activity of mind, and a picture in the perceiving mind. As long as mind has not “stitched” the potencies of the interworld into a single fabric, has not described (and thereby not established) the interactions between them, it remains virtual, “floats” in multiplicity of potentials, and therefore cannot define itself. But when the “choice” is made, a world is born, and possibilities for self-knowledge and self-actualization appear.

It is clear that both a transition between worlds and a transition between lives involves a stage of instability, when the “old” reality has already been destroyed, but the new one has not yet been created. It is precisely this state that is the Interval, the interworld, the Edge, the other side and foundation of reality.

Thus, it is important to understand that one can describe the source of reality both as a “physical singularity”, a vacuum containing the possibilities of any manifestation, matter or energy, and as a “semantic singularity” — an infinite field of meanings, possibilities for description, and consider it a basis for the manifestation of being and mind.