Our first edition of Travesías Terremoto was accompanied by several guests. Curator and philosopher Itala Schmelz shares with us this brief piece of philosophy-fiction inspired by that moment.

Where the land blocks off the Sea of Cortez, at the international border between Mexico and the United States and the local border between Baja California Norte and Sonora, an immense desert expands. Five people, looking like the last survivors on the planet, descend some dunes of pure brown sand and cross a white plain made up of kilometers and kilometers of salt that have become like a limpid, motionless mirror when the water from the coast vaporized. As they hear the salt crystals crackle beneath their footsteps, they notice that ships carrying drug cargo no longer pass by the sea as they had in previous days, nor can they see the headlights of cars moving along the road. There is no border wall, nor are there military checkpoints in the distance. Have they traveled in time? Are they in a parallel world? 

 They had come from a long exploration and, upon their return, they did not find the comfortable cabins that had accommodated them. A few weeks earlier, having been invited to participate in an interdisciplinary art project, they had traveled from different parts of Latin America to venture into the desert and carry out an “interplanetary simulation”. Elisa is Chilean, familiar with the celestial map, and believes technology should be used differently. Tania Ximena is Mexican and interested in indigenous cultures and their cosmogonic and magical understanding of the Earth. Nahuel is from Argentina, with an alchemical heritage and a knack for reading the symbols in the landscape. Luis is from Costa Rica and conducts interesting research on extremophile beings. And Dyo, whose body constantly creates surprising symbioses with the land, is from Brazil.

They wander in search of fresh water and food on the islets that appear like oases in the salt flats, where they find animals and edible fruits. Shortly before falling into despair, they come across an unidentifiable object and, as if hypnotized, they form a circle around it. It is a dual object, as it appears to be buried in the depths, crystallized; its image is duplicated invertedly like a holographic projection on the surface. It is not an organic being—nor does it appear technological. It creates permanent prismatic anamorphoses, tracing infinite geometric patterns, but also creating irregular and rhizomatic shapes. Not only does it recreate changes in shapes and colors, but it also makes noises. Its constant contraction and expansion—its systolic and diastolic pulse, inhalation and exhalation—produces binaural sound waves, and at night, it plays harmonic notes as if singing to the stars.

They ask themselves: “What could it be? Is it a womb, a seed? An alien gift? An ally of magical thinking, a totem in sacred territory? Is it a portal?” What seems obvious is that it is not conceivable from a scientific point of view; it is not quantifiable or measurable, it cannot be classified, it cannot even be known, only experienced: it is a metaphysical object. Lying on the white salt surface, Nahuel brings a shell closer to the object to listen through its spiral. Elisa observes it with ultra-red light, measures its sound waves with a device she takes out of her backpack and suggests: “Let us try to tune our heartbeat to its heartbeat!” Tania Ximena can't stop thinking about the patterns formed by the strange object and their relationship to the motifs of the ceramics made by the O'Odham, the indigenous people for whom these lands are sacred. Luis suggests that this emanates its own subjectivity and that he imagines that it is an anomalous life form that could be similar to that of other places in the Universe. Dyo senses that they are facing a magical mystery.

Suddenly, a philosopher comes to visit them; she tells them she has been engaged in soliloquy for an eternity on this subject. She starts by explaining that, according to Leibniz, there are an infinite number of possible worlds that, even if they never come to fruition, are virtually realized in every action and decision we make. Leibniz describes a crystal pyramid, whose base is infinite and from which all possible worlds emanate. The top of the pyramid is the best of these worlds, the only one that is actualized—that is, that materially happens in the present.

“You and I —she tells them— are freeing ourselves from the top of the crystal pyramid and, with it, from linear and chronological time. We are experiencing the temporality of parallel worlds, unrealized pasts, and contingent futures.” They ask her if she could help them return to their world, to which she replies that in order to do so they will have to go through the portal to the inner Universe.

The object they have fallen into, since they are not outside but inside, as in a room of mirrors, is a Leibnizian monad: a simple substance that perceives and feels, an entelechy. It does not come from another world but is connected to all worlds, both existing and possible. It is a divine particle, a molecule of God. From each of its parts, we see the Whole; in them, we can see the past, present, and future happening simultaneously. Each monad is a living and perpetual mirror of the Universe. Let's say this entelechy of the salt flat is a simple monad, a spirit of the salt flats, perhaps an ancient shaman; our souls are also monads, but more complex. The human being is a zone of indeterminacy, a threshold between two orders of different nature: matter and spirit, physis and nous.

“This entelechy —the philosopher continues— has something to communicate to you.” Heidegger proposed that being human is, in essence, to inhabit the Earth. In his words: To inhabit means “to care for and cultivate the growth of that which matures by itself.” To inhabit is to build, and we build because “the Earth is the dwelling place of Mortals.” In turn, being on Earth is being “below Heaven” and this implies “standing before the Divine.” The human community “supposes an original unity”, “the four are shared in one: Earth, Heaven, the Divine and the Mortals.” “We call this unitary deployment the quadrants.” Mortals should be the custodians of the quadrant and protect the Earth, bringing things to their essence, since things themselves harbor the quadrant if left in their essence. However, instead, they exploit the Earth without limits and have forgotten to await the arrival of the Divine, closing the door to the unexpected. For Heidegger, by mid-20th century, it was already evident that Mortals “would first of all have to seek again the essence of inhabiting”, “be constituted by inhabiting”, and “think for inhabiting”, if they still wanted to save the planet. 

Individuals in modern society do not inhabit the world taking care of the quadrant proposed by Heidegger; their spirituality is disoriented, dormant, manipulated, and enslaved. That is why Artaud sought to escape from a false world by eating peyote with the Tarahumaras. It is necessary to truncate Leibniz's pyramid, since its tip is not the best of all possible worlds, but rather the one instrumentalized by reason. The tip of the present, which is precisely where the coalescence between physis and nous, matter and spirit, body and soul occurs, is hijacked by a technocratic system that has imposed an artificial and machine-like time on our perception of the present, alienating our being in the world. We can interpret the tip of the Leibnizian pyramid as the "assemblage point” —of which Don Juan speaks to Castaneda— where perception is assembled and which, according to him, we moderns are stuck on; plugged into the Matrix, when it can move. Why enclose in a pyramid, with a single tip, what overflows throughout the entire universe, the flow between material energy and spiritual energy? Don Juan teaches Castaneda how to move his assemblage point to open the crystal pyramid and release the energy fibers that connect us to the cosmos. 

At this point, the philosopher makes a rebellious call to them: she proposes that they return to modern time to challenge the techno-positivist conception of the world. They can, through art, help the modern individual move their assemblage point by holistically opening the doors between physis and nous. “In the indiscernible confines between the body and the soul is the portal to the inner Universe; but, without the Heideggerian quadrant, the portal will remain closed”, the philosopher warns.

Finally, she tells them that, for Teilhard de Chardin, there is no other religion than that of “passionately loving and serving the Universe,” and humanity needs to experience an awakening of consciousness “capable of approaching the very soul of the cosmos”, which will allow it to transform its relationship with the world. To avert the catastrophic fate of modern society, they must liberate contingent realities and subvert the linear vision of time.

Seated around the monad, the energy flowing between them forms a common psychic density. The soul, says Bifo, is vibration, but souls do not vibrate alone, they vibrate together with others, “the other is a sensitive extension of our own sensitivity”. The salt flat's monad vibrates their souls, which open like vanishing points toward an inner transformation; together they cross the portal and return to the apex of the Leibnizian pyramid, returning to chronological time. Their mission will not be simple.