The Appearance of Patterns and Forms
by Hermit Crab 29.04.2007, changed 03.05.2007

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As the Great Mystery becomes manifest as the Life and existent as Pure Consciousness, it makes patterns and forms of itself and becomes an Appearance—the measurable total of all things present and knowable within the Universe of Pure Consciousness. Whereas the Universe contains all things that were and will be, the Appearance is a unique perspective of the Universe, created by introducing the fourth dimension of Time.

The Great Mystery moves within its three existent dimensions, always creating new patterns and forms, then dissolves them and reappears in other forms. The Appearance is like a snapshot of this process, but one that is forever in the process of change. The Appearance is Now.

Therefore it is said that the Appearance is a state of perpetual impermanence: the Appearance is shaped and reshaped by these processes; the Great Mystery remains whole. The Appearance never stops changing and moving; the Great Mystery is changeless and unmoved. The patterns and forms of the Appearance— also called objects —are created within the Great Mystery; they exist within the Great Mystery, and return to the source they never really left. In passing through the Appearance, the Great Mystery achieves the perfect state of balance between existence and non-existence, perfect mutability and perfect changelessness.

Before anything in the Universe was, the Great Mystery Is. The Appearance is its Isness in the form of a three-dimensional Universe, made present by the dimension of Time.

The Appearance can be likened to a vast Ocean in which all things exist that are made. At this level of perception, the Ocean appears to be empty, because all things that exist are made of the Ocean water (the Life). They are not merely in the Ocean, but are of the Ocean—the manifest and existent energy of the Great Mystery that takes form as the Appearance. As the water moves in three dimensions, it creates patterns and forms that appear on a large scale as tides and currents, and on a smaller scale as individual waves and, smaller yet, as drops of water. These patterns and forms are the beginning of what we recognize as substantial objects that have a place and time within the Universe. They are created of water, exist as water while they appear, and dissolve back into the water they never cease to be—all by the power of the manifest Life in motion.

The Ocean is the water and all the tides and currents and waves and drops that are Now. Objects rise and objects vanish; the Ocean alone is real.

No object can understand its place within the Great Mystery that brings it forth and calls it back to the source; this is like asking a single wave to direct the tides, or a drop of water to know the entire Ocean. But just as the tides and currents work with gravitational forces to move the Ocean waters, the Great Mystery moves everything in the Appearance from within and from without. However the Great Mystery moves within them and pulls from beyond them, the patterns and forms of the Appearance exist and move without knowing what they do. These objects are not aware of themselves, but one drop cannot fail to recognize another drop as water, the Life common to both. Thus, no objects of the Appearance are separate from each other—each drop is a conscious projection of the Universe, existing simultaneously as part and whole. No matter how infinitesimally small within the Ocean, each drop of water, while present, never ceases to also be the entire Ocean.

In not recognizing itself as separate objects with a function (relative motion through the Appearance), the patterns and forms of the Appearance therefore retain an undivided consciousness of the Great Mystery. As the totality of their function is unknown to them, these objects simply project the presence of the Great Mystery as they are moved through the Appearance like drops of water pulled by the tides. The dimension of Time creates their distinctive spatial relations (and therefore their function as well), but these objects are not conscious of Time, only of the Now in which they are present as the Ocean.

Thus we say that the Appearance, just as the Life and the Universe of Pure Consciousness, exists as One without a Two. There is no second Appearance to contrast with the One that is Now. The Appearance knows only this Unity; it does not know itself as the many patterns and forms because it does not exist as a pair of Ones that can observe each other. This is the secret to its perfection. The objects of the Appearance simply perform the function for which they were formed— in the potency of the Life and by the Light of Pure Consciousness —and dissolve back into the unmanifest Great Mystery. But at no point do these objects have any reality or function outside of the Great Mystery, which is always One. Thus the Great Mystery and the Life and Universe of Pure Consciousness are One with all present objects of the Appearance, though the three give birth to the many.

[Editor's Note: This article is based an excerpt from introductory material to a forthcoming novel-in-progress, The Peasant and the King. It is the fourth part of the section entitled, Forward to the Source: The Eightfold Concentric Path of God. The author, Hermit Crab, is the creator of the Fish Out Of Water Project (FOOW.Org) and is a frequent contributor to The Four Precepts Web Portal. The images are borrowed from AsItIs.Com and FreeDeskTopWallPapers.Net. For a listing of all The Peasant and the King articles published to date, type that title into the Article Search field and click on Search now!]