A time spiral, or a future that has already happened. Who makes good use of empty space?

Preface

There is hardly another contemporary director about whom as much has been said about Brook, and about whom they have been writing for so long. And in fact, at the age of seventeen he had already staged Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus in an amateur theater, and by twenty he had staged six performances in a professional theater, including Bernard Shaw’s Man and Superman, which had been staged very little before. And where - at Barry Jackson's, at the famous Birmingham Repertory Theatre! Then the fame never left him. He was twenty-one years old when Barry Jackson, who undertook to renovate the Shakespeare Memorial Theater, invited him, among other young directors, to Stratford-upon-Avon, and twenty-two years old when he staged the play Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet at this theater ( 1947) - became a sensation of the season and caused such controversy that rarely arose in English theater criticism. He came to the fore early, Brook is now only fifty (he was born on March 21, 1925), but they have been writing and arguing about him for almost thirty years. And who writes, who argues! It is difficult to name at least one major actor, director or theater critic who, having come into contact with Brook, would not want to express his opinion about him. Brook's bibliography is enormous. And she keeps growing. They say that truth is born in disputes. One of them was born in this. Not right away. Excruciating. But it was born and is no longer disputed. When he appeared, Brook was talked about - even by those who did not accept him - as an extremely original director. Then - as a significant director. Then - this time almost without a break - as a great director, one of those by whom the theater of the twentieth century will be judged.

And yet - what is he like, Peter Brook? “Great” is just a word, nothing more. You can fill it with a variety of contents. And here its meaning was not very clear. It first appeared in relation to Brook not so much in the minds of critics, who were accustomed to clearly formulating their opinions, but in the souls of thousands, tens of thousands of spectators who left his performances shocked, enlightened, having learned something new about themselves, about the world. It penetrated into criticism not without difficulty - Brook was so depressingly young when he achieved his first successes. It did not add up as a sum of values, but arose immediately as a kind of wholeness and was subject to analysis and decoding.

It wasn't easy. Each of Brook's performances provided an opportunity to see the author he was directing in a new way, but did not help to see “Brook himself.” No, Brook was not hiding behind the author at all. From the very beginning, he very definitely declared himself as a supporter of the all-powerful “director’s theater.” The thought of each performance was his, Brook's, thought. The mood is his, Brook's, mood. The form was given by him, Brook. Even more so than many other directors; after all, Brooke often acts as the artist of his own performances, and sometimes also as the author of the “concrete music” that accompanies them. But the difficulty was that the performances he staged were very different and dissimilar. They, of course, had something in common. But what? What determined that a particular performance belonged to Brook? Is it really just an obligatory dissimilarity with his previous performance?

The book “Empty Space,” published in 1968, was intended, it seemed, to clarify everything. There was no doubt about its literary merits: among Brooke’s many talents, there was also a literary one. The young director has repeatedly acted as an interesting theater and (much more often) ballet critic. Moreover, this book was born gradually, there could be no traces of haste in it. Its chapters correspond to the four parts of a short course of lectures on modern theater, given by Brook in 1965 in agreement with the Granada television company at the universities of Hull, Kiel, Manchester and Sheffield. Everything in it was tested in advance on a live listener. This book really made a lot of things clear. Of course, this was not the first time Brook expressed his views on the theater. He didn't hide them before. But he brought together much of what had previously had to be sought out bit by bit. By doing this, he certainly helped to look deeper into his work.

And into myself. Brooke is a man without pose. He doesn’t emphasize his successes. Failure is not hidden. He says what he thinks. He treats himself with that calm sense of humor, which is rightly considered a sign of inner intelligence. This man works with monstrous effort - he has staged dozens of plays, films and operas, written many articles - and at the same time is not at all internally tense, on the contrary, enviably relaxed

But then why does Peter Brook still have to explain today, seven years after the book, in newspaper interviews who he is and who he is not, and not a single such interview puts an end to the controversy about him. Why was this so logical book so unclear? The point, I think, is that readers did not find in it what they were looking for. First of all, confirmation of his views: Brook expressed his own. He upset theater conservatives. He did not abandon tradition at all; on the contrary, he respected her, but at the same time he saw her somehow differently. It did not please the theatrical innovators, so to speak. He was one of them; he willingly acknowledged their discoveries, peered into them carefully and at the same time, as if looking through them. And they were also looking for a system in it - some kind of, say, “Brooke’s system,” but he pointedly refused to reveal it. Didn’t it follow from this that this system simply does not exist? Meanwhile, the book says everything clearly. It helps to see the dominance of Brook's creativity. Of the huge number of Peter Brook's performances, Soviet audiences saw only two: Hamlet with Paul Scofield in the title role, staged in 1955 and brought to us at the same time, and Stratford's King Lear (staged in 1962, shown here in 1961 -m). And yet one should not think that we have seen little: it was after Lear that Brooke was said to be “great.”

This word was spoken by Kenneth Tainay.

He said it not so much as a theater expert who carefully thought through and correlated all the components of this concept, but rather as a viewer - an experienced, intelligent and at the same time unusually emotional viewer. Sitting in the darkness of the Stratford hall, he feverishly scratched some words on the program to capture unique moments. “I don’t want to pretend to be calm and I remember very well all the feelings that overwhelmed me,” he wrote in a note about this performance. However, in the same note he threw out the words about Brooke’s “moral neutrality” that later received such resonance. “Gloomy and beautiful,” he called Brooke’s “Lear” in another note that appeared a month later, when the play was shown to Londoners. But why did Lear’s story, shown from the standpoint of “moral neutrality,” shock the audience so much?! And she was amazing. In Brook's book the reader will find a brief and, as always with him, extremely modest mention of how the performance won more and more greater success(and grew internally) during the famous Eastern European tour of 1964. Moscow and Leningrad were the last cities on the continent where Lear was shown. It was here that the performance found its best audience, and with its help it reached its own peak. Until 1971, Brook staged fifty-seven dramatic performances (five of them were taken on tour abroad), seven operas, seven films, television plays (the scripts and tracks for them were written by Brook himself, one by Brook in collaboration with Dennis Kenan), wrote prefaces to books by Jerzy Grotowskoto “To the Poor Theatre”, Jan Kott “Shakespeare - Our Contemporary” (this book by the famous Polish Shakespeare scholar gave a great creative impulse to Brook when he worked on King Lear), separate editions of “How You Get Well” by Shakespeare and “Marat/ The Garden" by Peter Weiss, Michael Werr's book "Design of a Performance", and created a large number of other literary works. Could this viewer be so close to a performance that affirmed the principles of “moral neutrality”?

No, of course Brooke knows that's not true. It is not for nothing that he writes that the countries of Eastern Europe, where his “Lear” sounded so loudly, are the countries through which the war took place. Brook's Lear owes much to the influence of Samuel Beckett, a truly gloomy and hopeless writer. Kenneth Tynan immediately caught this, and much was said about it later in criticism. Brook himself notes this in “Empty Space.” But here the reader will find an indication of why exactly Beckett is valuable to Brooke. Beckett, in his opinion, does not say his “no” with pleasure. His “no” is out of longing for “yes.” Whether Brooke is right or wrong in this case is another question. It is important how things stand for him. Brook's goal was not just to show the world as cold and scary. He wanted to portray him as such with all uncompromisingness, so that the thought of how terrible the world is when it is unspiritual would sound equally uncompromisingly. When a person does not bring humanity with him. When it is given to each individual person - only at the cost of severe suffering.

There is no right or wrong in Brooke's Lear. Here everyone is right - from his own point of view - and everyone is guilty, for he too brought his share of evil into the world. In this sense, the play is indeed staged from the standpoint of “moral neutrality,” but by refusing to judge the characters, Brooke judges the world with which they live the more harshly and mercilessly. He does not allow this world to shift the blame onto anyone. This was not immediately revealed even to Kenneth Tynan - only a month later. But in the second review he already wrote: “Now I understand the nature of Mr. Brooke’s cruel egalitarianism: his performance is devoid of morality because it is staged in an immoral world.”

This concept of the tragic brings to mind Friedrich Schiller. Schiller, as is known, did not accept King Lear in the then prevailing interpretation. Lear's guilt, for which he had to pay so hard, was seen by commentators of the 18th century to be that, when he distributed his lands, he did not understand which of his daughters was what. "Lear" thus turned out to be a tragedy of individual guilt (or even error), and the surrounding world - a strict, but fair judge, punishing any deviation from justice.

Schiller resolutely did not accept this belief in the correctness of the divine (we would now say social) order, this conviction that “man is always himself to blame.” He wanted to build a tragedy not on the guilt of this or that particular person, but on the collision of a person with some impersonal and indifferent force. This was supposed to be revealed through a “coincidence of circumstances.” It gave the tragedy its most generalized form. Of course, any character, including the hero himself, can be the direct cause of the hero’s death. But this particular person is only the immediate source of misfortune; in general, it is due to the incorrect structure of the world. “The direct culprit of the misfortune,” even the one who was previously branded a “villain,” is capable at some moments of arousing pity himself.

Peter Brook staged King Lear as if exactly according to Schiller. But behind the philosophically abstract words about the “injustice of the world order” there now stood the experience gained by humanity from five years of war with its gas chambers and concentration camps. The scene of Gloucester's blinding became key in the play. The terrible thing that happened behind the ramp line was something very common for the participants in the crime, something defined by the erased words “practical activity.” But this did not stop it from being scary for those who were sitting in the hall. It even got worse. It was everyday, meaning repeatable. And it no longer happened on the stage - a place specially reserved for all kinds of performances. The lights came on, as during intermission, and on the stage, now no longer fenced off from the dark hall, calmly pushing the blind old man aside, the servants began to carry some bags, tidy up something... Work, nothing more... Brukovsky Lear was based on the past - very recent, but subject to the same danger as the distant past - it can be forgotten. And so Brooke staged his Lear not just as a reminder. It was as if it was a sign of refusal to recognize the past as past. The cruelty of Brooke's Lear became a form of revelation of his modernity. Everything that happens on stage happens today, now, at the moment. This performance concerns everyone. He does not talk about the suffering of others. He doesn’t narrate anywhere at all, in any of his parts. He shows how the scene should be. And not just other people in pain. He makes every viewer feel it for himself. In Lear, Brook managed to talk about the problems of the society he knows and make the viewer think about many things, leaving him, it would seem, not a minute to think. His performance was modern in thought and immediate in its stage practice. And at the same time, he was not tied once and for all to a specific moment in history. At one time, the Theater Workshop of Joan Littlewood, another outstanding contemporary English director, staged Macbeth in modern costumes. The meaning was clear, but at the same time too fixed. Brook avoids such historical ambiguity. If Shakespeare (even when he seemed to be fading into the past) wrote about the people of his time, for the people of his time and for all times, then the director, according to Brooke, should stage him as his contemporary; remembering at the same time how many generations this playwright was a contemporary.

The action of Stratford's "Lear" took place in a huge "empty space", which was seen both as world space and as land scorched by war (Grigory Kozintsev later deciphered the concept of "empty space" as "space of tragedy." He gave this name to his last book, complete reminiscences from Brooke). There were almost no scenery or props. Steady light, quiet voices, instead of a backdrop there were pieces of rusty iron that began to vibrate weakly when the last words of the tragedy were spoken and the lights in the hall (as in the scene with Gloucester) were turned on. This distant iron rustle, reminiscent of the roar of a storm the viewer had previously heard, came as if from the future. It was a world as cold as cosmic space, as vast as cosmic space, and just as indifferent to human destinies. He was incommensurate with people. He did not know morning and evening, like cosmic space. He was not like an artificially constructed stage, where the light dims in moments of grief and flares up brightly at the moment of triumph of virtue. This world was not illuminated by the sun - it was illuminated on all sides by a thousand suns. They did not shade or highlight anything - and made everything equally clear. There are almost no scenery and props - but that’s why they are especially visible. The voices are quiet, but you can hear them clearer than screams. The movements are spare, but that is why they are so full of meaning. And therefore, a person will not be lost in this seemingly too vast world for him.

In Brook’s “Lear,” Kozintsev wrote, “there was little joy, and even less touching. Brook evaporated sentimentality from his productions, like killing bedbugs before moving into a new apartment where unkempt people have lived for a long time.” And at the same time, he continued, “I left the theater not at all depressed. Perhaps a different feeling arose in my soul. In a production that affirmed hopelessness, hope triumphed.”

What gave birth to it? It is not easy to answer this question, but it is necessary - after all, thousands of people left this performance just as enlightened. Catharsis, purification of feelings, against which, it would seem, everything here was directed, nevertheless occurred. So what is this hope? I think - to the extent of humanity that he is not afraid of complete knowledge about a person. That alone makes it possible to measure the full depth of human suffering. A humanity so complete that it no longer needs constant and annoying proof that it really exists. This is what gives Brook the opportunity to speak at once about the man of today and yesterday, to correlate man and the world so easily and freely, to make the history of mankind the biography of his hero.

In today's philosophical interpretations of time, it is invariably emphasized that of the three time categories (present, past and future), the most conventional is the present - after all, depending on the need, one can take for it a moment, a day, a century, and, if you like, even an entire geological era. So for Brook, the “present” is the entire history of mankind and all the experiences that it has learned from it.

Brooke's significance lies primarily in the scale of his view of the world. Soviet audiences did not just see King Lear staged by Brooke. These evenings they saw Brook. In any case, that’s the main thing about it.

Brooke made his way with his “Lear” to that Shakespeare - our contemporary, whom many were looking for after the war. It seemed that the war was supposed to distance us from Shakespeare for another five years, but in reality it brought us closer together for centuries. Our history helped us read the one that was imprinted in his plays, and these plays helped us understand a lot in our world and in ourselves. Brook's Lear was an example of this - not the only one, but the largest.

Following Lear, Brook directed Dürrenmatt's The Physicists. This performance was something of a modern correlate to Shakespeare's tragedy. He very sharply emphasized one of the sides of Shakespeare's multi-valued performance. The vague threatening sound, coming as if from the future in refutation of Edgar’s words “We, the young, will not experience this,” no longer seemed mysterious. According to the famous English theater critic J. Trewin, in Dürrenmatt's play “the question of the responsibility of nuclear physicists ran through the text like lightning.”

This was by no means accidental. Modernity underlies all of Brook's work. “Everything we do is ultimately political,” he noted in one of his interviews. Moreover, there is a certain kind of politics. Neither Brooke's viewers nor his readers ever doubted that he belonged to the left wing of the English intelligentsia. This does not mean, of course, that Brooke has a strong political platform and is guaranteed against any mistakes, but he hates reaction and war. Brook's play "US" (the word can be deciphered both as "United States" and as "ourselves"), directed against the war in Vietnam, and at the same time affecting many aspects of social life in England, caused a great public outcry.

However, Brook is also trying to solve a large general cultural problem - to correlate a person, most fully understood, with the world, understood on the greatest scale. Moreover, it can be solved by means of the theater. But the theater lives by its own laws. It reflects life, but is not life; it is art, which means, according to Feuerbach, it is constituted by distinguishing itself from life. Here we have to transform everything and omit a lot. But here it is possible to make the invisible visible and penetrate to a deeper reality than everyday life. Theater is not life, but it changes, depending on what the reality around it is and from what positions it reflects it. This is a separate world and at the same time not at all an independent world. But how can we make this world, without violating its laws, the best “magnifying glass” in relation to life (this is Mayakovsky’s expression Brook prefers to apply to the theater)? How to make these two worlds live in the same rhythm? How to make them more interpenetrating?

Brooke learns the laws of theater through trial and error. (“Directing is a practical art,” G. A. Tovstonogov once threw out). Each of his successful performances is a guess at the objective law of art. Unsuccessful - an incorrect hypothesis refuted during the experiment. At the same time, there is no search for some final, all-exhaustive “law of art” that applies to all phenomena of the theater. Brook has no such complaints. Theater, designed to reflect the world, nature, must be equal to nature in its own way. And she, Brooke knows, is inexhaustible.

Theater, according to Brooke, should reflect through its very structure the moving, disharmonious, contradictory society of the 20th century. And not only to reflect it, but to intervene in it, to be needed by it. For Brook, the theater is not a place where people come to take a break from life. They come to it to become familiar with it, to understand something about it, or rather, to learn to understand it, because theater should not offer ready-made answers and thus free one from the need to think.

Brook's theater in all its possible variants is opposed to commercial theater and any theater that is isolated from life - inanimate theater, as he calls it. “Inanimate” is a more complex concept than simply “dead.” The dead one is dead, he is no more. The inanimate seems to have already died and does not want to go to the grave. It is even more durable in some ways than live theater. The living may die. The inanimate is not afraid of death. He claims eternity. Of course, non-live theater is just as diverse as live theater. Maybe even more: dozens of generations of former living people have gathered here. And not much more peaceful. It also has its own ghostly struggle going on. But in his own way he is one. What unites him is the absence of thought. This is where it contrasts with live theater. Living theater is always a thinking theater.

It is precisely the scale of thought that makes Brooke's theater similar to Shakespeare's.

Brooke's admiration for Shakespeare was dictated primarily by the fact that the great playwright knew how, like no one else, to combine the objective truth of the external world and the truth of the human soul. Without interpretation of the external world, a modern stage is impossible for Brook; “The External World” for him is not only (unlike artists of the mid-last century) the social environment - this is the Universe, it is the endless, airless, alien to life expanses of space, seen through modern telescopes and interpreted modern physics. The cosmos, trying to extend its unspiritual laws to the inhabited world. And yet, for Brook, man, despite everything, is the axis around which the world revolves. This view of the universe is reminiscent of the anti-God and at the same time socially charged protest of the English romantics. But it does not come from a transformed religious myth (as in Byron’s “Cain”), but from modern science, which was equally rebelliously perceived and correlated with society.

Anti-scientism and contempt for science, so fashionable now in intellectual circles in the West, are, of course, nonexistent here. Science did not create the universe, it only presented it as it is. She - Brook proved this with his Lear - helps to tear away the veils of sentimentality and false concepts from the world. And she is Brook’s ally in this sense. He prefers to know the reality that he is fighting against when defending a person. Peter Brook's stage world emerges at the intersection of scientific and social concepts. This is what, in Brook’s opinion, should help revive dramaturgy and the stage on a Shakespearean scale in new conditions. His natural ally in this daring plan is Bertolt Brecht. Brooke is an ardent supporter of his theory of "epic theatre". Brook speaks directly of what gave Brecht's thought such breadth - his Marxist convictions. The radical nature of these words can be appreciated by remembering that, while the point of view adopted in Western theater studies is diametrically opposed to Brooke’s, Brecht is usually interpreted as an artist who achieved great achievements in spite of his communist ideology.

The pathos of thought is what makes Brook in common with the German playwright and director. His Lear is the largest Brechtian production after the great Mother Courage at the Berliner Ensemble. Brook, no less than Brecht, strives for “alienation”, to create such an atmosphere in the hall when the viewer seems to be protected from unnecessary emotions. It is assumed, of course, that the viewer is by no means indifferent to what is happening on stage, but his interest is of a special kind: he eagerly follows the action, thinking along with the actor and director. Is this how Shakespeare imagined the relationship between stage and audience? Hardly. But Brook, like Brecht before him, is not embarrassed by this; to grasp reality today in Shakespeare’s broad way means, according to Brook, to apply to it concepts unknown to Shakespeare. To go back to Shakespeare, he notes in his book, one must go forward. Brecht for Brook is, to some extent, a modern Shakespeare. "Conscious Shakespeare."

But here’s what’s surprising: Brook never staged a single Brecht play in his life! He willingly staged many of his contemporaries - Jean Cocteau, Jean Anouilh, Jean-Paul Sartre, Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, Thomas Eliot, Graham Greene, Friedrich Dürrenmatt, Peter Weiss and others. He performed about sixty dramatic performances - and not a single Brechtian one among them!

Is this a coincidence? I think not.

Brook in “Empty Space” argues with those who see Brecht’s theater as emotionless. He rightly points out that this theater also generates emotions - only of a special kind. And yet, the measure of Brecht's emotionality, or rather, the measure of his penetration into the depths of the human soul, seems insufficient to Brook. Brecht for Brook is, first of all, an exponent of the objective truth of the outside world. Not at all limited by this task, understanding much more in the world, but focused primarily on it. The other side of Shakespeare - the truth of the human soul - is conveyed more weakly by Brecht. Here Brook has to look for other points of support. The name he named in this connection confused many in England - Antonin Artaud. Today, critics date Brook’s first experiments in the field of “theater of cruelty” back to 1946 - to the time when the founder of this movement was still alive (Artaud died in 1948), and his fame had not yet spread widely. However, he really became interested in Artaud’s ideas already in the sixties, when the “theater of cruelty” became a real fad on the continent. Brook took a practical approach to the matter. In 1963, together with director Charles Marowpets, he opened a theater workshop for experiments in this area. Specially recruited (as a “subsidiary” of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre), the troupe rehearsed for three months a program consisting of Jean Genet’s play “Screen”, dedicated to the war in Algeria, Artaud’s three-minute surreal sketch “A Stream of Blood”, a short play by John Arden “Life is Short, art is eternal" and some other things. In January 1964, this program was shown in a London theater without much success. The audience left the performance in bewilderment. Reviewers unanimously declared that Brook was simply chasing fashion. But Brook did not back down from Artaud. He staged another performance based on the same technique - “Marat/Sade” by Peter Weiss, and included several scenes from the previous performance, and achieved enormous success.

What is the reason for Brook’s appeal to Artaud and such a strange fate of his two “Artaudian” performances?

Artaud’s “Theater of Cruelty” is often compared to the rampant propaganda of violence from the screens and theater stage of the West, which encourages and multiplies acts of violence in life. Such a “theater of cruelty” is one of today’s varieties of commercial theater, deeply disgusting to Brook, just as he was disgusting to Artaud. Artaud’s book “The Theater and Its Double” was born out of a protest against such theater. It was in this capacity that Brook and a large number of other major directors in the West perceived her. Brooke’s co-worker in the “theater of cruelty” workshop, Charles Marowitz, wrote that he and Brooke “were especially close to Artaud by his dislike and intolerance of the prevailing theatrical trends, of those well-furnished dead ends in which the complacent modern theater is so comfortably nestled.” Of course, Artaud’s own views are far from clear-cut. His focus on the “cannibalism” of the bourgeois individual acquired an unhealthy character, because it was not supported by social analysis, and his conviction that, by giving a person the opportunity to overcome his penchant for cruelty in art, theater would save the real world from it, was quite naive. But at the same time, Antonin Artaud was, in the apt expression of V. Komissarzhevsky, “one of the “pain points” of this “mad, crazy, crazy world” and his anticipation of the cruelties of the Second World War, and then of the fact that the body is still susceptible to infection , meant a lot to Brook and like-minded people. This tendency was most fully reflected in Rossellini’s film Rome, the Open City and in the scene of the blinding of Gloucester in Brooke’s King Lear. Over time, however, the other side of Artaud’s views became more important for Brook - his search for the intuitive in the actor. In this Brook saw a necessary addition to Brecht. It was as a “supplement to Brecht” that Artaud entered Brook’s artistic system.

The success of “Marat/Sade” after the failure of the combined Artodian performance of the “theater of cruelty” workshop can only be explained by this. Artaud himself seemed to Brooke to be something of an unduly exaggerated particularity. He could not live with him without Brecht. And he needed him not just as a complement to Brecht, but as a contrast. In “Marat/Sade* Brook combined them according to this principle.

“Brecht’s ‘alienation’ is usually seen as something resolutely opposed to the Artaudian theater with its immediate, intense, subjective impressions,” Brook wrote in 1965. I have never shared this opinion. I believe that theater is, like life, an ongoing conflict of impression and judgment, delusion and insight, which are at war with each other, but at the same time inseparable.”4 Neither Brecht's "epic theatre" nor Artaud's "momentary theatre" replace Shakespeare's theater for Brooke. Shakespeare's sense of life in its fullness and contrast, with its grotesque difference between the tragic and the funny, arises, in his opinion, only in theater that goes beyond the boundaries of these rigidly defined systems. He chooses the words “total theatre” as a modern synonym for “Shakespearean theatre”: on a stage striving for perfection, he writes, “each element is determined by the neighboring element: the serious - comic, the sublime - common, the refined - rude, the intellectual - carnal; the abstract in him is enlivened by theatrical imagery, cruelty is shaded by a cold stream of thought”25. Such theater can claim to be equivalent to life.

“Total theatre,” according to Brook, is a theater that is all-encompassing in the professional sense.

The names of Stanislavsky and Meyerhold are equally dear to him. Each of them, he is sure, discovered an important aspect of the same reality. The names of other directors who were considered rivals during their lifetime are also dear to him. At the same time, Brook is very far from building some new system from randomly selected alien elements. He is by no means an eclectic and does not hope for the peaceful coexistence of heterogeneous artistic forms. On the contrary, he is counting on their collision. Therefore, each of them can be represented in him not only in those parts of itself that form the transition to other systems, but also in others that do not internally accept other systems.

Brooke rightly believes that a new stable system cannot arise under such conditions. But he doesn’t strive for her. Rather, he is afraid of her. For him, theater is a dynamic system, like a living organism, a kind of unity, arising every moment in some of its cells and collapsing in others. And so he has not only in theory, but also 2 Charles Warowitz. Notes on the Theater of cruelty/ In: theater in Work. Playwrigts and Productions in the Modern English Theatre. London. 1976. p. 184.

3 V. Komissarzhevsky. A space that cannot remain empty. "Foreign Literature", 1974, No. 5, hundred. 250.

4 Quoted from the book: J. C. Trewin Peter Brook. London, 1972, p. 160.

5 Ibid., p. 146.

in practice. In practice, first of all. Evaluating Brook’s different works, which seemed to constantly deny one another in some way, created before 1964, critics were ready, even in a fit of despair, to declare that he apparently had many different aesthetics. Indeed, for Brook, the theater then consisted of “many theatres,” many aesthetic systems, each of which was intended to perform a single task. Later the situation became different. Brook began to look for a unified system, but capacious enough, capable of turning each of the mutually negating theatrical aesthetics of the past into “ special case» rootstocks, rising above them aesthetics. Dynamism and the ability for rapid evolution should be its main distinguishing property. Brook is still moving all the time, but not at all from one frozen aesthetic system to another. His aesthetics are fluid in themselves.

The director, according to Brook, should not “know everything,” but “know how to look.” And of course, it’s good to have an idea of ​​the direction of your search. Brooke is particularly firm on this point.

And he proclaims his main goal with complete certainty.

For Brook, it is to restore the folk foundations of the theater, to make it again an important - indeed, a necessary - instrument of public life. For this, the theater must first of all return a living connection with the audience. As it was in Shakespeare's time.

This is not the first time that the slogan “Back to Shakespeare” has been heard. He has already noted important moments in theatrical history more than once. But perhaps never before has it been uttered by a theater figure so alien to restorationism as Peter Brook. He does not want to return the theater to Shakespeare, but to transform it so that it reaches the same level of thought and feeling.

Shakespeare represents the main point of attraction for Brooke. He produced twelve of his plays on stage and one film (King Lear starring Scofield). Almost all of his major successes are associated with Shakespeare, from the early “Love’s Labour’s Lost” (194B), designed in the manner of Watteau, and “Romeo and Juliet” (1947) to the internationally acclaimed “Hamlet” (1955), “King Lear” (1962) and A Midsummer Night's Dream (1971).

But Brooke's relationship with Shakespeare does not fit into the usual pattern: teacher and faithful student. Brooke's approach to Shakespeare is quite creative. At the same time, Brooke is least of all a “reproducer” of Shakespeare. This occupation, very common since the seventeenth century, did not bring any special laurels to either the actors or playwrights who “adapted Shakespeare for the stage,” and Brooke is in no way drawn to all this. In A. C. Sprague and J. C. Trewin's Shakespeare Plays Today (London, 1970), in the chapters dealing with changes in the text, Brooke's name is mentioned only twice, and both times in connection with incidents of minor importance. The changes noted by other researchers are also small and cannot be compared with the established practice of alterations.

Undoubtedly, Brook is very independent in relation to dramatic material, but his independence manifests itself differently - more complex and fruitful.

Brooke's system in its practical application has three components - director, actor, spectator: Isn't something very significant missing here, moreover, something primordial?

Where is the author? Indeed, he is not mentioned here. Brook's theater is emphatically directed. But this theater least of all ignores the author. On the contrary, he is omnipotent in it, as in those ancient times when he himself was supposed to stage his own plays and he walked on the stage, immediately changing the mise-en-scène on the spot, indicating the correct intonations, verifying his original plan with the scene. In Brook's productions the author is always present, but his name now is the director.

Having taken control of the performance, Brook does not compete with the author and does not quarrel with him. He himself transforms into it. He gets used to it like an actor.

Maybe that’s why Brook’s performances are always individual, different from one another, and at the same time recognizable every time, just as we recognize an actor for all the variety of roles he plays. The tendency towards individualization of performance, which has been developing in European directing since the times of romanticism, has, of course, found its consummator in Brook today.

The image of the performance created by Brook usually seems to be very faithful to the playwright's plan: it has structure, organicity, integrity, complete justification in all details. But at the same time, it may be completely different from another performance based on the same play, which also once seemed convincing to us. How can we understand in this case which director is telling the truth?

Brooke refuses to answer such a question. It seems illegal to him.

The opinion that “everything is written in the play” and you just need to figure out how to read the words imprinted on paper seems to him the result of laziness of the mind. Words only help to break through to the thought that gave birth to them, to the life that aroused this response in the artist. And it is inexhaustible. An artistic image is polysemantic because it has absorbed something of the diversity of life. A great image has an extraordinary polysemy.

No matter how many actors manage to equally fully get used to the image of Othello, Hamlet, Lear, each time we will see a different Othello, Hamlet, Lear. Which one did Shakespeare “have in mind”? None - and everyone. He created a literary (multi-valued) image, and not a living person, the greatest resemblance to which should be achieved. It's the same with the performance.

An “individual” performance “resembling only itself” is also a performance in which the director’s individuality is extremely fully embodied.

Director's theater is not considered to be conducive to the development of acting creativity. As is known, Stanislavsky, Meyerhold, and many others were accused of suppressing the actor. The only exception was made for Max Reinhardt, and even then in his love for acting originality they saw such a contradiction with his nature as a director that this exception was cited only to confirm the rule. Meanwhile, director's theater does not suppress the actor's creativity, it only streamlines it and subordinates it to a certain system. Each of the major directors, who were attacked by the defenders of the “actor’s theater,” left behind great, and sometimes great, actors raised by his school.

Brook is one of the few directors about whom such concerns have never been expressed. His love for the actor was revealed immediately, and later received many confirmations. Brooke is not going to “die as an actor,” and, perhaps, she doesn’t really believe in such a possibility. He understands that it is in the director that all the power lines of the play intersect. But at the same time, he strives to make each swap performance a kind of “collective creativity.” The “human fullness” of a performance, Brook believes, is always the result of the fact that it combines the talent and life experience of many actors.

However, this attitude was embodied by Brook in different ways in the first (before the “Artodnan season”) and second stages of his work.

When in 1945 Sir Barry Jackson, showing unprecedented courage, invited twenty-year-old Peter Brook to stage Shaw's most difficult play, Man and Superman, at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre, he introduced him to an almost equally young - only three years older - actor Paul Scofield. Since then they have worked together for a quarter of a century. Scofield acted in eleven plays and two films directed by Brook. The last time they met on stage was in 1962 (in Lear), and on film in 1971 (also in Lear). This collaboration meant a lot to Brook.

A happy accident brought him together from the very beginning with an actor who combined intelligence and emotionality, internal originality and the ability to penetrate the director’s plan. Scofield said about Brook that he was struck by his incredible openness to external influences, and at the same time, complete internal certainty.

Brook saw something similar in Scofield. Truly these two people found each other.

And yet, for the last ten years, Brook has been trying to develop a different technique in his actors, unlike Scofield’s. Scofield is an actor moving from technique to experience.

Now Brooke teaches actors to move from experience to technique. However, he varies this approach, returning from time to time to rely on technique, albeit an unusual one - say, on the technique of the Japanese Noh theater or the circus (in A Midsummer Night's Dream).

The source here is Stanislavsky. In some parts of his teaching he was perceived directly, in others - through Vakhtangov, perhaps the most brilliant of the directors who called for the revival of the theatricality of the theater.

Brook has no doubt that Stanislavski's system is the "grammar" of acting. Hence his dislike for the French declamatory school, so clearly expressed in “Empty Space.” But at the same time, he wants to use this system in the conditions of a theater that conveys life not in the forms of life itself.

He tries, as Marowitz put it, to provide Stanislavski’s “Grammar” with a different syntax. He sets himself the goal of raising the deeper layers of the actor’s subconscious, of expressing the fullness of human experiences through the actor’s internal rhythm, intense enough to become apparent even without the help of words.

The Artodnanskal workshop, which ceased to exist in 1964, was then revived again. The not very appropriate name “theater of cruelty” was discarded, and experiments continued. In 1968, Brook organized an international theater group in Paris. In 1971, on its basis, the International Center for Theater Research arose. Here the chain of experiments begun by the unsuccessful production in January 1964 was continued. Their scale, however, has increased unusually. Now it was not only about the search for a new acting technique, but also about the combination of different theatrical cultures. On this path, Brooke is now looking for a theater commensurate with life.

“Our theater today is often narrow and provincial; it is class-limited, and its form and content are such that they do not allow the rich and contradictory human experience to penetrate into it,” Brook wrote on January 20, 1974 in the New York Times, outlining his views on the development of Western theater. - Each of the traditional theatrical forms, from musical comedy to Noh theater, reveals to us only a tiny corner of a huge canvas. This is why international theatrical experimentation is so important. After all, actors from different countries are capable, working together, of destroying the cliches that dominate their cultures. Then, with their help, we will be able to see genuine national cultures, hitherto buried under a pile of conventions, and each of them in its own way reveals to us some previously unknown part of the human atlas... The theater is exactly the place where a single image emerges from disparate parts of the mosaic.”

The International Center for Theater Research was created by Brook for these purposes. He conducts his experiments in various countries. From June to September 1971, ICTI was in Iran. Here on the ruins of the ancient Persian city of Persepolis; Brook staged the grandiose play “Orghast” (in the first part it consisted of scenes going back to the myth of Prometheus, in the second it was based on Aeschylus’s “Persians”), which turned out to be the main event of the V annual arts festival in Iran. From December 1, 1972 to March 10, 1973, the ICTI troupe made a difficult journey across Africa, performing improvised skits in university cities, then in abandoned villages - in halls, on rural lawns, in market squares. From July 1 to October 12, 1973, the same troupe played in the United States a play based on the ancient Persian poem “The Meeting of the Birds.” And again Brook's actors preferred the courtyards of poor neighborhoods and workers' clubs to theater halls. And again the play changed from time to time depending on the audience. To give people energy, to bring them joy - this is how Brook formulated the purpose of the trip. And yet Brook and the thirty actors who united around him were looking for something for themselves in these unusual tours. They not only served the public - selflessly and unselfishly - but the public also served them. For the audience, according to Brook, is the most essential component of the performance: the actors receive as much from it as they give to it. One day during these trips, Brooke was asked if he was going to return to the regular theater. Brook replied that he never left it. In a certain sense, this was the pure truth. In his pilgrimages, Brook continued the same search for a new Shakespearean theater.

The Shakespearean stage was, as it were, a real embodiment of the humanistic tendency.

A huge proscenium, protruding into the hall and surrounded on three sides by the public, a shallow back stage with a minimal amount of scenery - and that’s it! On this conventional stage there were no staging tricks that could hide the actor’s ineptitude. She was “empty space” for those who brought nothing to the table. A real actor and author instantly, with a speed inaccessible to decorators, inhabited and populated it to the limit. Or maybe they only helped the public to do this themselves?

The Puritan revolution of the 17th century in England seemed to cut off the language of the theater. The theaters were burned, and when new ones appeared, they had a different scene - the one we are used to today - without an audience standing in a crowd at the stage. Previously, the stage was open to the public on three sides. Now it is fenced off on three sides. Another side of them was formed by an invisible “fourth wall”.

Brooke dreams of breaking this “fourth wall.” He is not a restorer and does not intend to restore the Shakespearean stage as it was in the 16th century. He wants to return to it without changing the architecture - only by destroying the “fourth wall”. It is precisely this, he believes, that today’s inanimate theater has isolated itself from the audience. And for it to no longer exist, the actor, director, theater as a whole must absorb all the currents of life and seek living connections with those for whom they work today. Brooke’s new “theater on wheels” was supposed to help him with this. Brooke searched and continues to search for some of the deepest - secret “receptors” in the audience that help to perceive art, and in actors he cultivates the ability to penetrate into this secret of the viewer.

Yes, Brook never left the “ordinary theatre” - the theater as it should be. In it, he conducted his rehearsals for several years - on-site rehearsals in public - Iranian, African, American. They are incredibly interesting, these rehearsals, and they will be remembered.

But in order for Brook's discoveries to take hold, it was necessary that these rehearsals culminate in a performance. In his interviews, he repeatedly said that the results of searches from stage to stage should be consolidated in completed works. Now it's their turn. In October 3974, Brooke opened his first season with Shakespeare's Timon of Athens at the Parisian theater Bouffe DEO Nord, with which he entered into a five-year contract. In January 1975, the theater staged its second play “Iki” - about a disappeared African tribe - which made a great impression in Paris. To prepare for the performance, part of the troupe again traveled to Africa. New performances are coming.

And yet, to find out what Brook is like, you shouldn’t wait for some kind of “final performance”. No matter how many performances Brook puts on, none of them will be his final one. He will always search.

Therefore, “Empty Space” is in no way a “final book.” It is written not at the end of the path, but in the middle of it. At the moment when it was published (196), one stage of Brooke’s life ended, another began. What should we call them? “Years of study” and “Years of wanderings”? But the years of study produced work that was by no means student work, and the years of wandering continued to be years of study No, when talking about Brook, it is better to avoid harsh language.

Moreover, he himself does not favor them. Everything he says and does has not only certainty, but also flexibility. He is the same in his book. It is like a series of aphorisms about the theater. But these aphorisms should not, as is usually done, be taken out of context. They sound truly only in the general flow of Brook's thoughts.

How to sum it up? Maybe it’s like this: the world needs theater commensurate with life, theater needs a world that can easily be placed on a par with art. Or maybe formulas are unnecessary here altogether. Brooke's book cannot be reduced to them. It was written by an artist.

From the author: In web design, white space refers to areas without text or images. We can say that this is “visual silence”. For our design to function, it is necessary to properly combine empty space with used space.

Before you start, watch the video below. Rowan Atkinson: Welcome to Hell:

What did you notice? Of course, Rowan's incredible wit. But have you noticed how he uses silence to make people laugh? This technique is called comic timing, one of the most important skills a successful comedian must have.

Imagine a Rowan Atkinson performance without these pauses. Not very funny, because silence is what makes a joke funny. This silence has a very important task.

The same can be said about music. Although there it may only be a lull before a sharp increase in rhythm, and not complete silence.

Notice how in the example above the bit “drops” at 0.45 and 1.29? Silence adds drama to future events. I took the dance track, but I could have easily taken Beethoven's fifth symphony.

In both examples, silence is a critical factor in attracting attention. White space works the same way. In web design, white space refers to areas without text or images. We can say that this is “visual silence”. For our design to function, it is necessary to properly combine empty space with used space.

While Google hasn't always been known for their design skills, they have always been big believers in white space, as can be seen in their homepage. Google launched its redesign when the pages of their competitors like Yahoo! were densely packed with weather forecasts, news and mail. The no-frills interface allowed users to focus on the main task - searching the Internet, without being distracted by things they don't need.

It's hard to truly appreciate how radical design decisions have been over the past 20 years, but we know who to look for in this regard.

Two Types of White Space

Active White Space: The space between design elements, often used for visual emphasis and structure. This is an asymmetrical type of space that makes the design more dynamic and active.

Passive white space: The space between words on a line or the space around logos and other graphic elements.

Take a look at home page 500px, how it uses active and passive white space.

When working with space, we mostly look at active white space, but passive space also needs a fair amount of attention and how it works with the design.

Two sizes of empty space

Microspace: This term refers to small areas of empty space between letters and words, as well as between several graphic elements. Properly setting up an empty microspace sets the overall tone for the entire design without changing its main component. Something similar to the rhythm in dance songs. The song is the same, but somehow sleepy.

The screenshot above shows the empty microspace between the Log In and Sign up buttons, as well as between the heading and paragraph.

Macro Empty Space: This term describes large amounts of empty space. For example, the space between columns or paragraphs. Optimizing macro space can often make a dramatic difference to your design, potentially improving the flow of attention and rhythm on a web page.

In Tumblr's design, empty macro space is clearly visible in the empty footer and sides.

White empty space?

The term white space implies a lack of color or tone, which can be confusing. White space can actually be any color that represents emptiness in your design—yellow, blue, green, or even a texture (like the Todoist example below).

Your choice of color doesn't matter, but don't forget that colors and textures are much more pleasing to look at than stark white. The principle remains the same even if you choose a different color or texture.

Where and how to use white space

White space and call to action (CTA) elements

Always imagine that the user doesn't know where to go next and design the white space appropriately. The idea is simple - if there is nothing next to a button on the page, then you need to click on it. Conversely, if the page is cluttered with elements, the user won't even notice the button due to the clutter.

Modern trends and approaches in web development

Learn the algorithm for rapid growth from scratch in website building

As you can see from the image above, the second CTA element is much more attractive than the first because it is not cluttered with other elements.

Using White Space for Emotional Response

There are many ways to evoke emotion in a design, including fonts, color, and imagery. All of these techniques help add drama, but white space is the strongest component and the least expensive. Some call it a good investment.

In the screenshot above, you can see how Todoist uses the white space around the title, making the background image shine and convey a positive vibe. They also took an image of a happy guy, not an app, which is also a big plus.

How to overcome the desire to fill voids

As designers and people, we have a natural desire to fill empty space. When we buy a large closet, garage or house, it doesn't take us long to fill this new space.

This habit often carries over to design. Once we notice an empty area in our design, we begin to think, “What should we fill it with?” This kind of thinking can cause problems for designers.

Don't fill your design with elements, try placing one CTA button in the center and creating a "safe zone" (white space) around it. Remember that empty space is not wasted space.

Who makes good use of white space?

Throughout its history, Volkswagen has been a master of using white space in magazine advertising. From the very beginning, their simple but dynamic layouts stood out among the static magazine advertising.

The macro space is clearly visible above and below the car, which puts the car in the center of attention. The asymmetry of the empty space forces us to move our eyes around the car, down to the text and back up. The eyes don't stand still. What if we cut the VW ad a little?

the car seems less impressive;

the gaze no longer flutters so easily over the layout;

It's harder to present a story about a man who fainted.

As you can see in the images below, from the 1960s to today, Volkswagen has used white space to great effect.

Compared to Volkswagen Apple company Newbie, but has already proven herself to be an ardent believer in white space design - from their website, products, to famous design and architecture Apple store.

Conclusion

We learned that white space is not white, and also that it is a place in design where nothing happens. Extremely important principle in design, which designers should not forget about. It is the white space that decides whether a page can be worked with or not, and whether any element needs extra attention.

We learned that white space comes in two types (active and passive) and two sizes (micro and macro). We looked at an example of the equivalent of white space in comedy (comic timing), how it makes people laugh, and also looked at an example of white space in music.

Finally, as a designer I would like to add “less is more.” Start from this in your work. White space can make or break a design. I hope these ideas help you with your next design.

If you think that you have some ideas that other people should definitely know about, write a book, poetry or make a film. The film is truly one man's work. The director here is the author. Any space that is not filled with anything can be called an empty stage. A person moves in space, someone looks at him, and this is already enough for theatrical action to arise. So said director Peter Brook...

In the playbill for the play “Macbeth. Cinema" indicated: author - Yuri Butusov. The stage space of the Lensovet Theater freed by him is ready to accommodate any action. Why not Macbeth?

Defining what is happening with the humble word “drama” is pure deceit. If this performance has a genre, then the most appropriate word is “shamanism.” The author successfully plays the role of a shaman. That is why light alternates with darkness, affectively loud “stories” with apathetically quiet ones. Musical and plastic rhythms, repeated movements and actions are important, but text and plot are not required. Or they also become part of the rhythm.

The shaman, as you know, is the chosen one of the spirits. He considers his individual ecstatic experiences to be the criterion of truth. To contact other spirits, you need to be a master of ritual, be able to enter a trance and then travel in worlds created by you.

A performance created by a shaman must certainly be long, because it takes time for several hundred people to fall into a trance and “sail in the boat of rhythm” to some worlds. But if you are not able to fall into trance, then it will be difficult for you.

This is possible. You look at what is happening as if from a train carriage. Not knowing how the “plot outside the window” began and how it will end. You are fascinated by the very process of changing “plots”. The train takes a long time, you have a lot of time. You can distract yourself by eating a couple of eggs, chicken, or drinking a glass of tea. And back to life outside the window again - the process of creating stories has not changed. In the end, you arrive at the same station you left from. You have been heavily cast, and some confusion coupled with emptiness threatens to turn into depression.

But the effect can also be the opposite: you left the station different, but in a different way - empty, ringing and ready for new filling.

This is possible. “Performance frames” are like Lego pieces, from which you can put together any compositions and create any “things.” The author's imagination is limitless and bizarre, forms multiply and multiply, are disassembled and assembled before our eyes. The sophistication of the process is amazing, and you understand that you can add not five hours, but ten, fifteen... Details can be repeated in various combinations, wander from one “thing” to another. The sequence is not important. Each “thing” is self-sufficient.

Is the public important to a shaman? Yes and no. Yes, because the community that has fallen into a trance strengthens the shaman, accelerating his energy, like a collider of elementary particles. No, because the shaman is inside the process, and the public is outside. The author of the play skillfully chooses “and” between “yes” and “no.” He masterfully controls both the crowd on stage and the one in the hall. He juggles rhythms, changes the way the actors exist, or even simply “throws” them into a furious dance for ten minutes. And the audience resonates, is drawn into this dance hall, willingly participating in the ritual. Young actors are selfless, they enthusiastically dissolve in the director, they are his mediums. Periodically, the fourth stage collapses: the creators of the play, just in case, check whether there are still spectators there? And they assure - guys, we haven’t forgotten about you! And they do it with captivating ease and wit.

Why is the shaman trying? What is his mission, which permeates all the action? He heals the souls of the sick and lost.

And here we need to remember Lady Macbeth and her obsessive-compulsive disorder. After killing Duncan, she constantly wants to wash the blood off her hands. And although there is no blood, the desire is inescapable. Psychiatrists “discovered” the disease itself much later than Shakespeare. And another genius - Pushkin - accurately described the psychophysical state of a person suffering from such a neurosis: “The soul is burning, the heart is filled with poison, Reproach is pounding in the ears like a hammer, And everyone is sick, and the head is spinning, And there are bloody boys in the eyes... And I’m glad to run, yes nowhere... terrible! Yes, pitiful is the one whose conscience is unclean”... (From the monologue of Boris Godunov.) Guilt, fear, a feeling of dirt eat away a person from the inside.

There is a diagnosis, however, it is not known who has it. Perhaps Yuri Butusov believes that we are all weak, psychasthenic representatives of a crazy world, we all suffer from the same illness and need a healing ritual. And he himself, the actors, and the audience are all in the same boat. Why not. And then those who leave the performance either do not want to be treated or are healthy. But they shouldn’t be called “people who don’t understand art.”

All our theatrical searches come down to ensuring that people sitting in the hall feel the real presence of the invisible. This sounds very simple and is very difficult to achieve. But then people go to the theater. It's Peter Brook again.

It is impossible to say that the invisible is in the play “Macbeth. Movie". But it is impossible to say the opposite. This is why the invisible is beautiful.

PART IV

SPACE, TIME, CIVILIZATIONS

We have identified three main views on the history of world civilizations.

1. The position adopted by official historiography with a well-known chronology of history, which begins approximately from the end of the 4th millennium.

2. Supporters of “long history”. Representatives of this concept believe that civilizations with developed technology, superior to modern ones, existed much earlier than what we know Ancient world. It was a pre-civilization, traces of which have survived to this day.

Who is right? Do “historical ghosts” exist? What is time? Are parallel worlds possible?

We will try to answer these questions in this chapter.

SPACE

First, you need to understand that outer space is not three-dimensional, as we are accustomed to perceiving our earthly space, but multidimensional. We measure space in three quantities - length, width and height. Space is three-dimensional for us. Mathematicians and physicists, as a rule, operate with the concept of four-dimensional space, adding a time characteristic.

Four-dimensional space consists of three geometric coordinates - length, width, height, and a fourth - time. “When a non-mathematician hears about four-dimensional space, he is seized by a mystical feeling, similar to the feeling excited by theatrical ghosts,” Einstein said on this occasion. And yet, in his opinion, there is no more banal statement than the message about the four-dimensionality of the world around us.

The multidimensionality of space can be imagined without the time characteristic. Three dimensions of space differ from four, just as two dimensions differ from three. A two-dimensional dimension is like a flat piece of paper. A sheet of paper has length and width, but no depth. A box has length, width and depth (three dimensions).

Now let’s imagine that we exist in a world of two dimensions of space. Then our world can be roughly represented in the form of drawings on a sheet of paper. All things in such a space can be described by length and width, but there will be no concept of height and depth. Representatives of this world will be able to move in any direction on a flat surface, but it will be impossible for them to rise or fall beyond this surface.

Suppose that in this imaginary world of two dimensions a square is drawn around an object. In this case, a two-dimensional resident will not be able to get out of the square, unless, of course, there is a hole in the latter. Movement above and below the square will be impossible.

If our sheet of paper is bent, say, rolled into a ring, then the inhabitants of two-dimensional space will not notice the curvature. The world for them is flat, two-dimensional.

Now let's return to our world of three dimensions. If you draw a square around a three-dimensional inhabitant, it costs him nothing to step over the square. Now imagine that an inhabitant of a three-dimensional world is placed inside a cube, for example in a room with a ceiling, a floor and four solid walls. He will not be able to get out of the room unless, of course, there is a hole in the ceiling, floor or one of the walls.

Now let's imagine that there is a world of four or more dimensions. An inhabitant of such a world will freely leave a room with a ceiling, a floor and four solid walls, just as an inhabitant of a world of three dimensions would overcome a square drawn around him, stepping over it. It is extremely difficult, almost impossible, for us, residents of three-dimensional space, to imagine how it is possible to leave a closed room. All things around us are explained from the point of view of the three-dimensional world. The existence of a fourth dimension of space, which is inaccessible under normal circumstances, is assumed in the explanation of paranormal phenomena. From time to time, objects in the four-dimensional world can move in and out of their world into our three-dimensional world.

One of the earliest works exploring the concept of the fourth dimension, Transcendental Physics, was written by Johann Karl-Friedrich Zellner in 1881.

Here is what he wrote about this: “Among the evidence, there is nothing more significant and convincing than the transfer of material bodies from a closed space. Although our three-dimensional intuition cannot allow an immaterial exit to open in a closed space, four-dimensional space provides such a possibility. Thus, transferring the body in this direction can be accomplished without affecting the three-dimensional material walls. Since we, three-dimensional beings, do not have the so-called intuition of four-dimensional space, we can only form its concept by analogy from the lower region of space. Imagine a two-dimensional figure on a surface: a line is drawn on each side, and a moving object inside. By moving only along the surface, an object will not be able to get out of this two-dimensional closed space, unless there is a break in the line.”

In public, Zellner explains that an object can only pass through solid matter through four-dimensional motion. Such movement, he said, is the most convincing evidence of the existence of the fourth dimension.

But if space is multidimensional, then other worlds can exist in other spaces. Why, then, not allow representatives of these worlds to appear among us, and we take them for ghosts? Let's imagine for a moment that we are sitting in front of an illuminated white screen, on which the shadows of people moving behind the screen are visible. Two people behind the screen walk towards each other, greet each other and move on in different sides. But on the screen, where only their shadows are visible, we will see how two silhouettes came closer, then merged into one shadow, froze, and then split into two again and floated in different directions. The people behind the screen walked nearby, and their shadows on the screen merged. Let's imagine the world of people behind the screen and the world of shadows on the screen in different ways.

According to V.I. Vernadsky, living matter, living space is a fundamentally non-Euclidean space.

Naturally, it is difficult for us to imagine a space greater than three dimensions. Just as it is impossible to imagine a line at a point, just as it is impossible to imagine a surface in a line, just as it is impossible to imagine a body in a surface, so in our space it is impossible to imagine a body that has more than three dimensions.

MATTER

Even solid things, objects that we touch with our hands, are nothing more than emptiness. It's hard to imagine, but it's true.

In public and private banks, where huge capital is concentrated, heavy-duty steel doors with extremely complex locks and alarm systems are installed to protect premises. These doors give the impression of an impenetrable monolith. It seems that nothing and no one can penetrate them.

But if you look at these doors through the eyes of a microphysicist, you will be amazed that this door is a continuous sieve, consisting of tiny atoms in an almost continuous free space between them. The fact is that the distance between the elements that make up an atom significantly exceeds the size of these elements themselves. This also applies to molecules that are formed from atoms. All this can be compared to the starry sky that we see at night - small points of stars and a huge black space between them.

This is how the microworld works. An atom consists of a nucleus and electrons orbiting the nucleus. The size of atoms is about 10 -8 cm, nuclei are tens of thousands of times smaller, and the size of electrons is 10 -6 cm. As is known, the entire mass of an atom is concentrated in a very small volume - the atomic nucleus, the diameter of which is 10,000 times less than diameter atom.

The dimensions of atoms are hundreds of millions of times larger than the smallest elementary particles.

Atoms are connected into molecules by a certain bond. We can say that the microcosm is elementary particles connected to each other by certain connections, but separated from each other by huge spaces (naturally, in comparison with their volumes).

This is how the macroworld works. The Sun, together with its planetary system, is just one of the stars in our galaxy. Our star system consists of approximately 2 × 10 11 (10 to the 11th power) stars. The world of galaxies in the Universe is quite diverse. There are approximately 80% of galaxies like ours (spiral). In addition to them, there are also galaxies of other types. Dwarf galaxies have approximately 10 9 (10 to the 9th power) stars, giant galaxies have up to 10 14 (10 to the 14th power) stars.

Stars, galaxies, galaxy clusters, superclusters are elements of a cellular structure (cell sizes are hundreds of megaparsecs (1 parsec = 3 × 10 18 cm = 3.2 light years = 206,265 AU), the thickness of their walls is about 2–4 megaparsec. Large clusters are located in the nodes of cells. Superclusters are elements of this cellular structure.).

Thus, all matter is a honeycomb structure in empty space.

Or maybe empty space is not emptiness at all, but space filled with another “subtle” matter unknown to us? Maybe this subtle matter is the basis of life for other civilizations unknown to us?

EMPTY SPACE

Our idea of ​​the world is often associated with the image of limitless empty space with individual grains of material inclusions. The material worlds are like ships sailing in the vast expanses of the ocean.

All elements in space are interconnected, interacting, in certain relationships, connected to each other like radio amateurs on the air. Modern physics proceeds from the fact that all processes occurring in the micro- and macrocosm are generated by certain forces (energies). Currently, four types of fundamental forces (energies) are distinguished: 1) electromagnetic; 2) strong nuclear; 3) weak nuclear; 4) gravitational.

But by what means do bodies influence each other? For example, why do forces appear on the charges when electric charges interact, and how are they transferred from one charge to another?

In the process of development of physics, there were two opposing approaches to answering the question posed. In one of them, it was assumed that bodies have the inherent property of acting on other bodies at a distance, without the participation of intermediate bodies or the environment, that is, it was assumed that forces can be transmitted from one body to another through emptiness and, moreover, instantly (the theory of long-range action). From this point of view, if there is only one charge, no changes occur in the surrounding space.

According to the second view, force interactions between disconnected bodies can be transmitted only in the presence of any medium surrounding these bodies, sequentially from one part of this medium to another and with a finite speed (short-range theory).

Most modern physicists adhere to the second point of view. By the way, M.V. Lomonosov also denied the interaction of bodies at a distance without the participation of an intermediate material environment (in modern language we would say “fields”).

Modern physics proceeds from the fact that in order to understand the origin and transmission of forces acting between charges at rest, it is necessary to assume the presence of some physical agent between the charges that carries out this interaction. This agent is the electric field. When an electric charge appears in any place, an electric field appears around it. The main property of an electric field is that any other charge placed in this field experiences a force.

Thus, material bodies and particles are sources of fields - electromagnetic, gravitational, etc.

The theory of physical fields and interactions of bodies has been sufficiently studied. But in last years In physical science, there has been a tendency to radically revise some fundamental concepts. It is suggested that the carriers of fields are not objects, but space itself. Thus, the magnetic field does not belong to a permanent magnet, but simply a magnet is the structure that accumulates the magnetic component of the vacuum, or more precisely, the superfield.

It is known that A. Einstein intuitively felt that all the fundamental physical fields of our three-dimensional world are only components of something single, a whole, which he called a superfield. He tried to create a unified field theory, but could not solve this problem.

For example, the presence of biofields is poorly understood and unexplained. It is clear that it is not possible to explain the functioning of the biofields of plants and living organisms using fields known to physics (for example, electromagnetic fields). An attempt to construct a unified field theory is the research of Academician I. I. Yuzvishin. In his opinion, the entire Universe is a single information space of resonant - cellular, frequency - quantum and wave states of various fields, vacuums, elementary particles and massive macrostructures. Existence information interaction in the Universe of all macroscopic and microscopic particles and bodies without exception is the root cause (foundation) of the emission, absorption and interaction of information. Information is a unit of elementary relationship. This is an elementary generalization quantum of relations between micro- and macrodynamic processes and phenomena of the Universe.

Inside and near materialized objects, as we have already noted, there is always an information field that always has a code structure of material particles or (outside the materialized body) an information-cellular structure of various kinds of field forms of matter and their traces created both by the body itself and its external environment. Information fields (as forms of materialized and dematerialized information) penetrate all material structures, strengthening their internal relationships and external connections with other structures. Relationships reflect the code structure of any subject, object, matter, as well as the physical vacuum of the Universe.

The space inside the nucleus and the vacuum spaces that exist in the Universe function according to the laws of relations between nuclear and electronic elements, their spaces, fields, traces and processes. Such relationships are informational.

I. I. Yuzvishin believes that the cellular structure of the information field allows information, due to the wave nature of the field, to transmit information at any speed (smaller, equal or greater than the speed of light). But according to A. Einstein’s special theory of relativity, we know that the speed of light is maximum speed transmission of interaction.

The idea of ​​space-time is replaced by I. I. Yuzvishin with the idea of ​​absolute essence - information, which includes both space and time. Space and time are forms of existence of information.

What is movement at infinite speed? From a philosophical position, this means that the body is everywhere at once, in all possible places through which it can only pass. The movement of an infinitely fast moving body is equivalent to rest, for there is no place in which it would not fit, and there is no place where it could still move. The faster a body moves, the more it covers the places it traverses and the less time it uses to pass through them, that is, the more it is at rest. This idea of ​​the cosmic manifestation of moving peace was developed by ancient Greek philosophers. But this idea is also characteristic of the modern doctrine of electron motion.

Now we just have to figure out the question: what is outer space, vacuum? Physical theory says that at every point in space the most complex material processes continuously occur: matter is spontaneously born and disappears, the curvature of space changes in a whimsical way, the pace of time is distorted, etc. Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences Baranshekov rightly notes that all the material content of the world, all fields and particles are a manifestation of various properties of an empty, but complexly curved, twisted space-vacuum. So, on the one hand, a vacuum is a complex material structure, and on the other hand, on the contrary, it turns out that the substance itself is a “curved” void.

A.V. Martynov goes further. He believes that the vacuum, and therefore the physical world associated with it, is split into separate separate states. And this means, he emphasizes, that our world is not the only possible one: there may be other worlds with a different “zero level” of vacuum.

But even if we admit the presence of many worlds in our space, we should still recognize that these worlds are interconnected by information relations.

TIME AND SPACE

We must clearly understand that the nature of time is not as simple as it seems. By “time,” as a rule, we mean, on the one hand, some space, and on the other, movement through this space.

We are used to measuring time by the period of revolution of the Earth around the Sun - this is a year. The time the Earth rotates around its axis is a day. There are 24 hours in a day. There are 60 minutes in an hour. There are 60 seconds in a minute.

Each planet has different time metrics. If we take the Earth hour as the reference unit of time for information processes and technologies on Earth, then the corresponding time for similar processes and technologies on the planets of the Solar System, based on masses, densities, free fall accelerations, etc., will be completely different: on the Moon - 0.165 hours ; on Jupiter - 2.65 hours; Mars - 38 hours, etc. Taking into account the corresponding local time scale, the following parameters can be determined for any planet or cosmic formation: the presence of day and night, their duration, the presence of summer, spring, autumn, winter and their duration, the presence and the duration of a particular form of life, etc.

In 1967, the World Conference on Weights and Measures adopted the atomic second as a unit of time, defining it as 9 × 10 9 (10 to the 9th power) periods of electronic oscillations corresponding to the quantum transition of a certain cesium isotope.

Professor of the Pulkovo Observatory N.A. Kozyrev, who made a huge contribution to the study of the nature of time, argued that time is a necessary component of all processes in the Universe, and therefore on our planet, and the main “driving force” of everything that happens, since everything processes in nature occur either with the release or absorption of time. His idea is consonant with the idea of ​​I. I. Yuzvishin, only he uses the concept of “time”, and Yuzvishin uses the concept of “information”. N.A. Kozyrev believed that, using the properties of time, it is possible to obtain instant information from any point in the Universe or transmit it to any point.

Based on the theory of N. A. Kozyrev about the existence in nature of a timeless channel for the transmission of cause-and-effect information, A. V. Martynov emphasizes that such information represents a deformation of the space-time continuum, or rather, causes its vibration. These microgravity vibrations fill the entire space of the Universe and in our real world they have the character of a hologram.

All processes in nature occur either with the release or absorption of time. Time is not simply the duration from one event to another, measured in hours. Time can be measured with scales. Time exerts physical pressure and carries energy. Thus, N.A. Kozyrev discovered that the Earth is pumping up its natural satellite, the Moon, with time. Based on this, he suggested that volcanic activity is possible on the Moon. But the Moon is a dead body that has completed its evolution! There should be no volcanic eruptions there! N.A. Kozyrev’s assumption was so paradoxical that he was mocked for many years. But on November 3, 1958, he managed to detect a volcanic eruption through a telescope on the lunar crater Alphonse. And at the heart of this volcanism were the flows of time! N.A. Kozyrev’s discovery was not accepted immediately. Only in 1969 was he given a diploma for the discovery of lunar volcanism; in 1970, the International Astronomical Academy awarded him a personal gold medal with a diamond image of the constellation Ursa Major.

N.A. Kozyrev experimentally proved that stars emit a colossal amount of time, that is, in essence, they serve as generators of some substance.

Characterizing the materiality of time, N. A. Kozyrev wrote that moments of time itself, like material threads, connect the center of action with objects that perceive this action. Time carries within itself an organization, structure, or negetropia that can be transferred to another sensor substance.

In Newtonian mechanics, time does not depend on space. The geometry linking space and time into a four-dimensional manifold was developed by Breslau professor G. Menkowski in accordance with the Lorentz transformation and other consequences of the special theory of relativity. From the point of view of the reality of such a world, everything that can happen already exists in the future and continues to exist in the past. Moving along the time axis, we only encounter events in our present.

It is known that we see stars not where they are currently, but where they were tens and hundreds of thousands of years ago: this is exactly how long it takes light to reach us from a star. But over time, things happen differently. It does not spread throughout the Universe like light, but appears in it immediately, its effect on processes and material bodies occurs instantly.

But still, does time move or not? If it moves, where and how does it move?

“Imagine for a moment,” writes N. Nepomniachtchi, “that you are watching a film about a game of billiards. The game has just started. The cue hits the ball, the ball breaks other balls. Some balls roll into corner or side pockets, others simply roll across the table and stop in different places.

Now imagine the movie being replayed. Several balls quickly pop out of the pockets and roll into the center of the table. The first ball rolls back and stops at the tip of the cue. All other balls are collected in the shape of a triangle.

Our experience tells us that there can be no real movement back. Although it looks fun, we instinctively feel that it is not feasible.

Let's say that you are asked to explain why it is impossible to move backwards. What physical laws does it violate, if indeed it does? At first, it may seem that the law of gravity is being violated if the balls jump out of the corner and side pockets. Now suppose that the molecules that received the shock and heat at the bottom of the pockets will compress and return momentum to the balls, pushing them back to the surface of the table.

Similar questions have troubled physicists for many years. In reality, reversing the entire course of events during a billiards session will not violate any basic laws of physics, although the laws of probability will, of course, be ignored. The chance of this happening is almost equal to zero. Until recently, the laws of probability were considered the main reason why time cannot be turned back.”

One of the most eloquent defenders of probability theory was Arthur Eddington (1882–1944), a prominent British astronomer and physicist. In his book The Nature of the Physical World, he comments on the inevitable march of time forward, which he calls the “arrow of time”: “The great thing about time is that it moves forward. But it is precisely this aspect of time that physicists most often neglect.” Describing a method for determining the direction of the arrow of time, he notes: “If, while tracking the arrow, we discover more and more more elements accidents in the state of things, then the arrow is directed to the future; if the presence of the element of chance becomes less and less, the arrow is directed into the past.”

On a smaller scale, this rule is quite applicable to the billiards example. As soon as the first ball hits the other balls, the neat triangle scatters in all directions. The element of chance is increased, the arrow is directed into the future. Conversely, if the scattered balls return to their places in the triangle, the element of chance is reduced and the arrow points into the past. In one case time moves forward, in the other - backward.

Judging by recent discoveries, it appears that there are other factors besides probability that determine the direction of the arrow of time.

At the atomic and subatomic levels, some weak interactions between particles of matter are apparently irreversible in time. In other words, these interactions always occur in one direction and cannot be reversed.

According to a concept proposed by Richard Feeman, some subatomic particles of matter, called antiparticles, appear to be particles that move backwards in time within an instant. In other words, an antiproton is a proton moving backward in time, and by extension a positron is just an electron moving backward in time.

However, it now seems clear that at a level beyond the reach of the microscope, the arrow of time must point forward at certain points. If Richard Feeman is right, time travel itself is a common phenomenon at the submicroscopic level.

But there is one more question, very important for understanding the nature of “doubles”, “ghosts” in the history of civilizations: is it possible to reverse the passage of time? In his treatise, The Republic, the ancient Greek philosopher Plato mentions a strange phenomenon where the world turns back and moves back in time.

Plato proposed a description of the reversal of time to interpret a myth that interested him greatly. In this myth, the god Zeus was angered by an unjust king who took the throne from his predecessor. Zeus simply went ahead and stopped ruling the world, causing time to go backwards, thus restoring the deposed king to the throne. Plato believed that the gods either rule the world, or the world itself moves. Each cycle continues for many centuries. When the gods rule the world, time moves forward. When they stop controlling the world, it moves backwards.

This is how Plato describes the actions of Zeus: “There is an era when God himself helps the movement and circulation of the world. There is also an era when he stops helping. He does this when the world's cycles reach their limit, determined for them. As a result of this, he begins to spin backwards from his own impulse, for he is a living being, and he was given reason by those who blinded him at the very beginning.

Platoy goes on to describe the consequences of the strange reversal of time: “At first, every living creature will freeze at the stage of life that it has reached. All mortal beings will stop aging and will begin to grow back, that is, to become younger, and will gradually turn into babies. The gray hair of the elders will begin to turn black, the beards of the husbands will thin and their cheeks will become smooth, restoring to each the long-gone bloom of youth. The bodies of the young will lose the marks of gender, shrinking day and night until they return to infancy, becoming infants in body and mind. Then they will wither completely and disappear completely.”

In the example given, the mythical world first moved forward in time, and then completely reversed its course and moved back. Probably, the inhabitants of that world did not realize that time was flowing backwards, although Zeus understood this perfectly well.

Therefore, on Mount Olympus, the legendary abode of the Greek gods, time continued to move forward, otherwise Zeus and the other gods would also move backward in time.

This example from the myth, notes N. Nepomnyashchy, raises important questions: does time simply move back and forth, or can its direction be observed from the outside? Can time move forward from one viewpoint back to another?

The great physicist Albert Einstein, who created the theory of relativity, tried to answer these questions. This theory fully justifies the assumption that time travel is quite feasible for bodies moving at tremendous speed. The fact is that time flows slower on a device moving at enormous speed than on earth. The higher the speed, the more noticeable this difference in time. But, according to the theory of relativity, a body cannot move faster than the speed of light, because its mass will become infinite, at the same time its length will decrease to infinity.

Firstly, this is unattainable, according to our current knowledge. Secondly, Einstein’s theory of relativity is also “relatively fair.” N.A. Morozov, about whom we spoke a lot above in connection with the new chronology, was one of the first to give meaningful and constructive criticism of the theory of relativity. Back in 1919, he made a report on this problem at the Astronomical Society, and a year later he published it in an expanded form. N.A. Morozov noted the main distinguishing feature of Einstein’s theory: the place of the old overthrown absolutes was taken by new - albeit unusual and extravagant, but from a methodological point of view exactly the same - absolutes (and first of all - the “absolute constancy of wave speed”).

N. A. Morozov was always concerned with the issues of time reversal. He was, perhaps, the first to give an impartial and complete natural-scientific picture of the inevitable physical, chemical, biological and astronomical processes that must occur if time suddenly flows backwards. The galaxy, as we know, is constantly expanding, stars are flying away in different directions, but the expansion of the Universe will be followed by a process of its compression. This process will be the beginning of the reversal of time.

N. A. Morozov’s concept of “time travel” was based on ideas about the wave-like nature of time. He drew an analogy between the waves of time and a man sailing in a boat. “From this point of view, the past days, years and centuries of the existence of the Universe did not turn into oblivion,” he said in a report at the First Congress of the Russian Society for World Studies, “but only left our field of vision, just as pictures of nature leave the field of view of passengers, rushing in a train along the railway track. In this case, indeed, time completely overlaps space, and all the modifications of landscapes we see remain for us not only behind us, but also in the past. But they do not disappear there, and, having returned back, we can again travel the same route by rail and see all the details of the adjacent areas in the same sequence.”

His concept of the relationship between past, present and future is interesting. The scientist believed that only the past and the future really exist, but the present does not exist, it is pure fiction, a “gap in eternity” between the past and the future. This is how time is understood in mathematics today.

In conversations with the Russian cosmist A.L. Chizhevsky, N.A. Morozov said: “Cosmic magnetic lines of force, like a giant web, randomly fill the entire cosmic space. Nature is so much more significant than the human brain portrays it that it undoubtedly possesses such amazing capabilities that man cannot produce in his earthly laboratories.”

TIME SPIRAL, OR THE FUTURE THAT ALREADY HAS BEEN

We have briefly outlined the physical picture of space and time. As it was found out, matter, time and space of the Universe as a whole are of an informational nature. The ideas of space-time are replaced by the idea of ​​the absolute essence of information, which includes both space and time, previously considered (in Euclidean geometry and classical mechanics) as independent philosophical categories. Space and time are functional interdependent factors, correlated with an informational essence.

Thus, our everyday ideas about time and space do not correspond to reality. It is almost impossible to describe time and space in words in the language of concepts known to us. However, this also applies to our idea of ​​the micro- and macrocosm. As the famous English physicist and Nobel Prize laureate Paul Dirac noted, quantum theory is built from such concepts “that cannot be explained using previously known concepts and cannot even be explained adequately in words at all.”

And although it is difficult to describe the physical concept of space and time, we tried to do it. But the point is not even how we imagine these categories. Something else is important for us. Modern scientific ideas about space and time prove the possibility of the existence of other worlds, other civilizations, the possibility of movement in time, the creation of a time machine. It is therefore possible that the worlds interpenetrate. And this, in turn, explains the possibility of the existence of “doubles” and “ghosts” on Earth. The spiral of time, repetitions in the history of world civilizations and the presence of “ghosts” in history cease to be so mysterious.

The presence of historical duplicates in this case lies not only in distortions of traditional chronology and mistakes of historians, but also in the phenomenon of the revival of human life (reincarnation) and entire civilizations in different historical eras. The laws of karma apply both to individuals and to entire nations and historical civilizations.

There are quite a lot of supporters of the idea of ​​reincarnation, but there are also many opponents. As we know, one of the adherents of reincarnation was Giordano Bruno. Mysticism and philosophy led Bruno to ideas about the countless worlds. Bruno agreed with Copernicus that the Earth cannot be the center of the Universe, but he believed that the Sun cannot be the center of the Universe. He started from the idea of ​​an infinite number of worlds.

They say that Bruno was burned at the stake for his “theological errors.” In fact, as is clear from the remaining investigative reports, the real reason was his belief in infinite worlds and reincarnation. He believed that after death the human soul could return to Earth in a new body and could even go on to live in an infinite variety of worlds beyond the Earth.

The theory of reincarnation has become widespread, but to this day it does not trace the most important, in our opinion, idea of ​​reincarnation, the revival of families, clans, nations, and civilizations in a new life. We often hear that history repeats itself. Isn’t such repetition a consequence of the reincarnation of civilizations? After all, it is not only man who sins and is responsible for the sins of his life, atoning for them in a new incarnation. Whole civilizations can commit nefarious phenomena at certain periods of time. Take slavery in Rome. An entire civilization based on slavery must reincarnate and atone for its sins.

The hypothesis we have considered of the revival of human life (reincarnation) and entire civilizations in various historical eras, and hence the appearance of doubles in history, is in many ways beautiful, esoteric, but too hypothetical and complex.

Reincarnation is rejected by the Orthodox Church, but this is a separate issue, and we will not discuss it now.

It seems appropriate to us to try to find a simpler, more rigorous explanation of the mysterious phenomena in the history of world civilizations. Let's try to rethink in the light of all of the above our ideas about the course of history.

Some ancient philosophers viewed development as forward motion in a straight line. Others saw development as moving in circles. Aristotle combined these two approaches and created the image of a spiral as a model for the development of nature and civilizations.

In one of his early works, F. Engels compared the development of social life with a free, hand-drawn spiral: “Slowly history begins its run from an invisible point, sluggishly making its revolutions around it, but its circles grow faster and faster and the flight becomes more lively...”

This statement, which is obvious at first glance, turns out to be erroneous. We know early civilizations that had superbly developed technology, amazing knowledge of astronomy, and then these civilizations disappeared, and in their place came primitive societies that imagined the Earth as a disk standing on the backs of whales or elephants, etc.

The idea of ​​an ascending nature of development, the idea of ​​a development model in the form of an “expanding upward” spiral ultimately turns out to be erroneous.

A new interesting model of the development spiral was developed by the President of the Philosophy Department information civilization MAI R. F. Abdeev. He developed and substantiated the converging (nonlinear) spiral of development.

Other ideas about the development spiral are also possible. And our ancestors seemed to understand this well. The spiral as a symbol has been widely used since ancient times. Labyrinths and spirals or their images have been recorded on all continents: Africa, Asia, America, Australia, Russia...

In the Andes, for example, a huge hewn 20,000-ton stone block (the size of a 4-story house), completely covered with spirals, was discovered. To date, no one can explain its origin and purpose.

The spiral pattern was widespread in Russian traditional embroidery. Spiral-shaped signs and symbols are imprinted on objects of Slavic-Russian life. Spiral codes were passed on from generation to generation, from people to people, from worldview to worldview, from religion to religion. The spiral is one of the deepest symbols of the Universe. Apparently, the ancients wanted to show that everything moves and develops in a spiral, but the forms of spirals can be very different, just as the forms of development of civilizations are different.

We said in previous chapters that numerous studies prove the existence of a highly developed civilization even before the Biblical flood. On Earth, according to E. Blavatsky, there were 5 races of people, our race is the fifth. Each race arose from the previous one (the first race of people, which was called “self-born,” arose on Earth in the form of ethereal beings by densifying the subtle world, that is, the world of psychic energy. These were angelic people who could freely pass through any solid objects. They looked like luminous, ethereal forms of moonlight and up to 40–50 meters tall, they did not have a language; they communicated using “thought transfer.”

The second race of people, called “later born” or “boneless”. These people were also ghost-like, but denser than the first race. Their size was a little smaller. They were golden yellow in color.

The third race of people, called the “Lemurians,” already consisted of a dense body and had bones. The early Lemurians were golden in color. The late Lemurians, or Lemur-Atlanteans, were the most highly developed people on Earth, with the highest level of technology. It is believed that their achievements include the construction of the Egyptian Sphinx, the huge ruins of Solusbury (Great Britain), and some monuments South America etc. Their height reached 7–8 meters.

The fourth race of people was called the Atlanteans. They had two physical eyes at the front, and the "third eye" was hidden deep inside the skull, but functioned well. They had two hands. Height - 3–4 meters.

They gained knowledge by connecting to the Universal Information Field, mastered remote hypnosis, transmitted thoughts at a distance, could influence gravity, had their own flying machines (vimana), built stone idols on Easter Island, Egyptian pyramids and many other mysterious elements of antiquity.

The fifth race is modern man. It arose during the late Atlanteans. The function of the “third eye” has almost completely disappeared, the constant connection with the Universal information field has been interrupted.). The reconstruction of these races, including the appearance of people of previous civilizations, was carried out by Doctor of Medical Sciences E.R. Muldashev based on the methodology he developed and data from the Himalayan expedition.

Proto-civilization left us practically no written traces. We can judge its existence only by strange finds in soil layers that do not correspond to the time of the appearance of these objects. A mystery for archaeologists to this day is the “California” automobile spark plug, which has lain on the ocean floor for millions of years; giant cave paintings of Ancient America; maps of undiscovered continents that belonged to the ancient Greeks, Alexander the Great, and Turkish admiral Piri Reis; the most accurate maps of the Earth handed down by old sailors for thousands of years; a knight found on Easter Island on horseback and in ammunition, with things and coins belonging to the period several centuries before the discovery of the island; a crystal skull, perfect star maps and other items that are technologically difficult to make even today. There are others Interesting Facts. For example, a strange metal bolt (according to another version - a coil), discovered by D. Kurkov and L. Kuleshova in Kaluga region(Kosmopoisk expedition, May 1997). The age of the find is 300–320 million years! In the press, this find was called “Adam’s bolt.” Another amazing find is a conductor made using technology that began to be used only at the end of the 20th century for the production of aerospace aircraft. Found by members of the 25th Medveditskaya expedition (August 1997). The age of the find is 2.5 thousand years. How did all this end up in past centuries? Why are there no written sources left from the ancient civilization?

It can be assumed that the ancients communicated with each other not using language, words, or writing, but telepathically. Thoughts were transmitted in time and space over vast distances. But is such communication possible? From the perspective of information science, it is not only possible, but also optimal.

Everyone knows the telepathic capabilities of people. A striking example is the telepathic connection between mother and child. The mother instantly senses the child's distress at any distance. We are also well aware of cases of super-telepathic abilities of individual people. Perhaps this is a manifestation of atavism of the once natural connection between people. Please note that the brain modern man only works 10%. Why is nature so wasteful and 90% of the brain rests? Probably, at one time the brain used 100% of its capabilities to carry out telepathic communication.

Moreover, a person perceived and processed information not only and not so much with the brain, but with the whole body. Today the mechanism of this process is quite clear. Heraclitus also expressed the idea that the power of thinking is outside the body. The philosopher A.K. Minaev noted that such a subsystem of the body as blood, no less than the brain, is necessary for the implementation of all physiological, biological and mental functions, although it is not considered the organs of thought. Professor V.V. Nalimov noted that a person, in some deep sense, thinks with his whole body.

A. M. Martynov, noting this brilliant thought in depth, notes that blood - this liquid crystalline medium - has, like other biological fluids, unique information properties, like ordinary water. In his opinion, water is not only an energy stimulant, but also an information stimulant (Based on the fact that our body is 70–80% water, he notes that human bioenergy is largely determined by structural changes in cellular water. Individual water molecules are capable of combine into molecular aggregates consisting of 25–81 molecules; such a molecular aggregate can acquire the properties of a biologically active polymer with a molecular weight of up to 1400. Modern science has proven that the so-called aggregate (structural) water has a liquid crystal structure in water under the influence of various physical factors. factors - such as a magnetic field, temperature changes, the degree of oxygen saturation, microgravitational influence of informational or topological properties of space - microphase changes continuously occur, as a result of which its crystal lattice changes, and this, in turn, is expressed in the form of a change in the secondary spectrum gravitational radiation.). The discovery of the so-called “memory” of water became important (the discovery was made by G. M. Shangin-Berezovsky and J. Benvist). For example, if some biologically active substance is dissolved in water, then even after very thorough cleaning it still “remembers” the biological effect of that substance.

The fact that water has the ability to accumulate, store and transfer information, as noted by researcher E. Panov, was noticed long ago. She is a transfer agent. Perhaps it is precisely the material agent that materializes thought. Then the true meaning of the water cycle in nature is not that it evaporates, accumulates in clouds, rains, and this cycle repeats endlessly. It's about something else. Water is found in the blood that washes the human brain, in the brain cells. She absorbs thoughts, ideas, information. No thought, good or bad, disappears without a trace, because water is present everywhere.

But why do we think that water has the ability to accumulate, store and transfer information? Firstly, this has been noticed by people for a long time. Secondly, this is confirmed by modern science and, in particular, information science.

Professor E.R. Muldashev also believes that a very deep principle operates in the process of transferring information by water.

There is a law of information science, formulated by academician I. I. Yuzvishin, which can be briefly defined as follows - like interacts with like (The law reads as follows: “Homogeneous or isotropic bio- and cosmic objects, bodies, particles, fields and thoughts give birth to (produce) gene-symmetric themselves, and also interact with genetically symmetrical ones.” For any biofield, the biofield of water is genetically symmetrical. This comes from the fact that water is genetically symmetrical to any cosmic nature. Water and humans are similar objects (According to Yuzvishin - homogeneous and isotropic biological objects.).

Humanity has literally and figuratively come out of the water.

The development of the embryo, and then the fetus, as is known, occurs in an aquatic environment (The embryo, with the help of a special embryonic membrane - the amnion - creates its own “pond” in which it floats until 35 weeks of its development. This liquid environment is most favorable for development.

at 6 weeks - 97.5%;

at 4 months - 90%;

at 7 months - 73.5%;

by the time of birth - 71%

Consequently, man and water interact regardless of the distances separating them. The water in human cells (cellular water) constantly interacts with earthly and world waters.

However, there are other theories to explain the telepathic capabilities of people. It is important for us not to reveal the cause of telepathy, but to show that it exists.

During pre-civilization, people not only had telepathic abilities, but also had an excellent knowledge of mathematics, astronomy, medicine, and chemistry. They understood the nature of the influence of stars and space in general on humans. Astrology flourished. Here you should pay attention to one nuance. We were taught to think that astrology first appeared, which was not yet a science, but rather mysticism. Then, with the development of society, astronomy appeared. In fact, it was the other way around. First came astronomy. As a result of its development, people not only comprehended the secrets of the cosmic device, but also realized the influence of the stars on the destinies of people.

Astrology is higher, deeper than astronomy. The same thing happened with the development of chemistry. People first reached the heights of chemical knowledge, and only then began to develop alchemy as “higher chemistry.”

It is possible that what we call esotericism is deep knowledge inaccessible to modern science. There is a close connection between magic, esotericism and scientific and technical thought, which we have not yet realized. Here is an eloquent example. It is known that surface hardening of steel was achieved in the Middle East by immersing a red-hot blade into the body of a prisoner. This is a typically magical practice of transferring an opponent's martial prowess to the blade. This practice became known in the West from the Crusaders, who became convinced that Damascus steel was indeed harder than the steel of Europe. Experiments were carried out: steel began to be dipped into water in which animal skins floated. The same result was obtained. In the 19th century it was noticed that this result was caused by organic nitrogen. In the 20th century, when they learned to liquefy gases, this method was improved by dipping steel in a liquid nitrogen at low temperature. In this form, nitrogen treatment forms part of our technology today.

Galileo and Newton clearly acknowledged that they owed their achievements to ancient science. And Copernicus, in the preface to his works, wrote that he “came to his discoveries by reading the ancients.”

Does the dear reader know that the manuscript of the German poem “Solomon and Malroff”, written in 1190 and stored in the Stuttgart library, contains a drawing of a submarine. It mentions a submarine made of copper and capable of withstanding the onslaught of a storm.

People of the most ancient civilization led a semi-underwater lifestyle. As E.R. Muldashev established, a distinctive feature of representatives of proto-civilization is the presence of membranes between the fingers and toes. In place of the nose they had a spiral curl. This curl served as a valve-shaped breathing hole. Dolphins and whales have a similar valve-shaped anatomy of the respiratory opening. This helps, unlike a normal nose, to reliably block the access of water to the respiratory tract while under water. The curl also performed a sound-reproducing function. Representatives of the proto-civilization also had gill elements. But perhaps the most important thing is that they have a “third eye” (Now, modern people, it remained in the form of a rudiment - the pineal gland (epiphysis), hidden deep in the depths of the brain.). It served as an organ of human bioenergy (telepathy, etc.). E.R. Muldashev received this information during the Tibetan expedition. Representatives of pre-civilization, of course, mastered the secrets of genetics, genetic engineering, and cloning.

Not only animals or people were cloned, but mixed types. For example, centaurs (human - horse), sphinxes (lion with a human head). There was a prisk of the optimal form of a living intelligent being. Entire families and births were cloned. Hence the appearance of “doubles” or “ghosts”.

Representatives of pre-civilization could enter the state of samadhi described by E. R. Muldashev in the book “From Who Did We Come?”

Interesting, in our opinion, is his concept of the desire of representatives of pre-civilization to create the gene pool of the Earth.

The question arises: why did the pre-civilization perish? The answers to this question in most cases are as follows: various natural disasters, rotation of the earth's axis, sudden glaciation, etc.

Such explanations are acceptable, but the main reason, in our opinion, lies elsewhere.

Having reached the highest level technical development, pre-civilization was destroying nature and degenerating morally. Transmitting thoughts over a distance required effort, and people always strive to make their lives easier and more comfortable. Various symbolic information exchange systems are emerging. Signs were used to designate things, phenomena, properties, and relationships. Each sign had one or more meanings. Something like this began to appear electronic means collection, storage and exchange of information. Networks developed, similar to the modern Internet.

People have learned to create robots from “flesh and blood”, that is, to clone living beings similar to themselves, endowing them with the ability of sign communication, but practically depriving them of telepathic capabilities. Limited telepathic abilities remained, but the robots were incomparably lower than those of their creators. But these telepathic abilities were lost over time, remaining only among a select few who became pharaohs, priests, and magicians.

What we call today a secular way of life developed - idleness, lack of spirituality, debauchery. Having mastered time and space, creating time machines, people began to carry out intergalactic flights. Naturally, not on devices like our space rockets. They are too primitive. Colonization was carried out in a way that I. I. Yuzvishin called information-ideal. Its essence is as follows. The level of information technology was increased from 106 to 10,100, which made it possible to ensure the regeneration and relaxation process of materialization and dematerialization of a living organism, as well as informationlets with antimaterial engines that provide light or superluminal speed of interplanetary flights. Our distant ancestors left the Earth...

The possibility of such flights is not fantasy. Doctor technical sciences, professor, head Department of the Moscow State Technical University of Radio Electronics and Automation (MIREA) I. I. Yuzvishin scientifically substantiates this in a number of his works.

If we agree that there was an ancient pre-civilization with a highly developed technology that exceeds our modern technological achievements, and numerous facts testify to this, then we must admit that this pre-civilization came to a decline towards the end of the 4th millennium BC. e. It was from this moment that information appeared about the birth of a new civilization, which in modern historiography is called the Ancient World.

At this time, cities appeared in Egypt and Mesopotamia. About this new civilization, despite the development of Egyptology, Sumerology, etc., very little is known and information about it is confused. It should be said that Egypt or the Sumerians are not the youth of modern civilization, but rather the agony of the old proto-civilization. Although the moral decay of the representatives of pre-civilization had reached its limit, there were still carriers of ancient knowledge. Flesh and blood robots increasingly lost the ability to communicate telepathically. Language and writing became their means of communication.

This new civilization was not as adapted to life as the previous one. Like a child, she was just learning to walk and talk. Millennia passed, but she remained a child. By failing to grow up, she doomed herself to death. They never sufficiently mastered telepathic capabilities, and language and speech, that is, sign communication systems, were not developed. The knowledge of the previous civilization continued to be preserved by priests, initiates, but they gradually ceased to understand the wisdom of their ancestors, and their telepathic ability to communicate was also lost.

We see what happened to pre-civilization from the history of Ancient Rome, Ancient Greece, China, etc. True, this history has come down to us in an extremely confused, distorted form, and even largely fictitious. The reasons for this distortion were well guessed by N. A. Morozov.

The third stage in the development of civilizations is the appearance by the 10th century AD. e. on the territory of present-day Egypt, an ancient kingdom called the Byzantine Empire, and then on its basis the Great Russian Empire, which is included in modern historiography under the name of the Mongol Empire. The course of development of this civilization up to the 18th century is extremely distorted. This is set out in sufficient detail in the works of Academician A. T. Fomenko and his school. Naturally, not all hypothetical constructions of the course of this story are described by them correctly, but the essence is guessed accurately.

This third civilization developed. Scientific and technological progress grew, more and more advanced technologies appeared. Society mastered atomic energy and began building spaceships. This is our modern society.

Information technologies developed with particular speed. Print, radio, television, modern means of communication, computer networks generate huge information flows. Back in the middle of the 20th century, scientists determined that the growth of information volumes is not uniform, but exponential.

(Uniform growth of information )

(Information is growing exponentially )

The exponential growth of information means that over a certain period of time the volume of information doubles, and the closer to modern times, the period of time during which the doubling of information occurs decreases.

That is, if earlier the volume of information doubled over hundreds of years, then by the beginning of the 20th century, the doubling of information took place over tens of years; by the middle of the 20th century, information doubled in 5–8 years. Now the doubling of information volumes can be measured in months, and soon the doubling of information volumes will occur in weeks, days...

Now humanity, in our opinion, is at a new stage in the development of civilization - the information stage.

A distinctive feature of this period is that people lose contact with nature, and direct contacts between people cease.

We do not travel, but watch television programs “Cinema Travel Club”. We do not look at the starry sky, but read about the secrets of space. People stop playing chess among themselves, and play with the computer. Billiards, cards - on the computer. Even football, volleyball, and basketball are being replaced by computer games. People stop communicating. The mobile phone replaces one-on-one conversations.

Scientific knowledge turns into a means of information processing. Laboratory experiments and experiments are becoming a thing of the past.

Real life replaced by a ghostly information fog. We are becoming no less ghostly than the ghosts created by modern information technology.

They say that the media is the fourth estate. This means that they shape our consciousness, influence our worldview, determine our tastes, interests... Whoever owns the media owns the world. It's right. But that's not even the point. The fact is that we did not notice how the information itself got out of the control of even those who own information resources. Information began to live its own life, independent of people. It, if you like, materialized, but not into the forms of existence of living matter that are familiar to us - protein bodies, but into special forms called information by Academician I. I. Yuzvishin.

The earth is shrouded in radio waves, networks of electrical wires, radiation from television station antennas, computer networks. But not only electromagnetic radiation has a massive impact on people. Nowadays there is more and more talk about the formation of a single cosmic information space or a cosmic information bank.

It is believed that information fields are the most powerful sources of radiation, which propagates without transfer of mass and energy, has high penetrating power and superluminal speed, and unprecedentedly high intensities, penetrating power and speed exceeding the speed of light. The Universe has increasingly come to be understood as a single information-cellular field, an infinitely large brain in which endless processes of materialization and dematerialization of information occur. We can also talk about the information space of the Earth, which turned out to be shrouded in an information web. The cellular structure of information fields allows information fields, due to the wave nature of the field, to transmit information at any speed. It is now known that information fields influence the emergence of matter from vacuum. Consequently, according to I. I. Yuzvishin, information is primary, matter is secondary. That is, information fields, information fields can materialize.

It has long been known that our thoughts represent enormous power. They are from the dematerialized, perfect shape information can be transformed into material things, objects, structures. In accordance with the law of information-gene symmetrization, notes I. I. Yuzvishin, the thoughts of each person attract similar ones. The beautiful thoughts of one person synchronize and interfere with the same thoughts of another person. Bad thoughts are attracted to bad thoughts, good thoughts to good ones, etc. Information-thought waves of one person have the amazing property of attracting (accepting) under appropriate conditions other information-thought waves of another person, of approximately the same lengths, frequencies, energies and codes .

They say that after death the soul remains alive. From the point of view of information science, the soul is a flow of information entering the information space of space after the death of a person.

Some scientists argue that everything is biased if it is not based on empirical knowledge, that is, on experiment. They also deny when mystics, clairvoyants, ufologists, astrologers, palmists, theologians, demonologists, telepaths and other spiritual scientists base their evidence on subjective sensations. This position of scientists, writes academician I. I. Yuzvishin, is unjustified, unambiguous and inadequate to individual historical phenomena and processes, which have been repeatedly confirmed by the prophetic and even mystical predictions of some religious and spiritual representatives. So, for example, individual people can mentally imagine themselves in the past tense in the person of their former 10th 11th degree ancestor, or see in the distant past certain phenomena and processes that took place hundreds, thousands or millions of years ago. Memory (information) of long-past phenomena can be genetically transmitted from generation to generation and at any stage of human development manifest itself in the form of predictions, knowledge or discoveries of what happened a long time ago.

But, in our opinion, it’s not just about genetic memory. Streams of information of deceased people stored in the information space of space can be connected with information of like-minded living people, as if returning to Earth again. Ideas that take possession of groups of people, nations, can be connected through information with related ideas of past generations. Then there is, as it were, a revival of entire groups and peoples. The life of such groups becomes, as it were, a mirror reflection of the life of bygone civilizations.

Now we can return to the beginning of the book and confidently say that life is not only a way of existence of protein bodies. There may be other forms of life. Life and intelligence can arise or be reborn from the information around us. It is quite possible that ghosts are representatives of an information civilization that was born, lives and develops.

Ghosts are no less real than people. It’s just that not everyone can feel this reality. Only in the information world do thoughts and desires become reality. Really, what do we know about the real world? Maybe he is an illusion that we take for reality. And there is no present, no future, no past here. One illusion. We earthly people are very strange. We see and don't believe our eyes. Maybe we really live in the past, present and future at the same time. We lived, live and will always live. There is no past, present and future. Time is divisible only on Earth. Or maybe time is unchanging, it doesn’t flow as we think. It is eternal, infinite and instantaneous. Centuries - one moment. One moment - millennia. We believe in the future, even without knowing the past. And our knowledge is a muddy drop in the clear sea of ​​history. We know nothing about life and death. And only in the informational, timeless space we learn the truth.

The world around us is inextricably linked with us. Every thing we come into contact with absorbs our emotions, thoughts, our joys and sufferings. And these feelings are transferred to other people. Everything that has ever been created carries within it a magnetic influence. Thought attached to things is a life force called vibrational force. In the mystic concept, it is believed that vibrations can have three aspects: audibility, visibility and tangibility. Man fills any object he creates with life.

Man has generated various forms of social information, and this information, once materialized, can serve for the benefit, or it can destroy humanity. She's like a genie out of a bottle.

This is a new, fourth stage in the development of civilization generated by man. Now this civilization has begun to live and develop on its own, independently of us. She is still in her infancy. We gave birth to her, fed her, and we are obliged to monitor her development. What this civilization will grow and become, what path it will take, depends on us.