Prometheus 6

I was going to post something else entirely when I realized I needed to lay some preparatory groundwork first.

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Form/No Form
by Earl Dunovant
Copyright © 1996

First one must understand that one's current emotions affect the way things look. When angry, one's favorite sweater?the one he gave you?doesn't look right anymore. When infatuated, the most grotesque habits are acceptable. When relaxed, everything is simple. When tense, everything happens too fast. Immediate emotions affect the way things look because, when you come down to it, they are neural impulses and as such contribute equally to the brain state we perceive as sight, sound ("I thought I heard my name"), touch ("Snakes feel nice"), taste (some people like chitlins), etc.

Beyond immediate affects there are also long-term memories, such as the personality, which are used as a basis of judgment, consciously or not. These memories generally express themselves as preferences and desires. As we all know, desires and preferences are among the most potent thoughts we entertain, perhaps because acting on them is more direct than acting on the avoidance of damage. One compares one's understanding of the situation before them to those in one's memory. When one finds the closest correlation to a pleasant memory, one gives preference to that which is seen as missing when compared to the memory.

The long-term memories are what give structure and form to one's consciousness and thought. As such, the memories give one's perceptions their characteristic bent, leading one person to say all is well with the world and another to say everything sucks. This form, into which one's memory casts the world, is taken to be the nature of things, for people need explanations. Yet things are easily connected in error. . . we know this, but few act on that knowledge. And so the form of the man is the form of the world.

But since thoughts, memories and emotions change the way we see things, and all our actions are accompanied by thoughts, memories and emotions, it follows that we have no knowledge or experience of the world in its "unperceived" form.

This need not be.

A man may open himself and allow the obscuring memories to pass. One may observe the thought passing as one observes a bird passing your window?neither calling for its coming nor seeking to halt its passing. Can you see without comparison to remembered pleasure or pain? Can you hear familiar music without reciting the words in your mind? Can you see the world without the form you've given it all these years?

Abandoning the form causes the erroneous connections to cease activity. True, unsuspected causal connections become visible and active?and this may appear frighteningly chaotic at first because one's experience no longer appears to be a guide.

But you are no worse off than before, because no form is true, stable or substantial.

Even the form of our mind is a result of the clenching together of thoughts and memories, as the form of a fist is the result of clenching together of fingers. But a fist can be opened, a hand can be pointed, held, used as a weapon or a healing tool. . . and if any would limit the hand to only one of these functions, one eventually damages the hand.