(7)

If I withdraw the emotional connection I have to those objects in this world towards which I normally feel attached, it causes those objects to appear more "thing-like," more self-sufficient and autonomous in their mode of existence.  Reality then takes on the quality of a patterning of objects and events, but nothing more; and from this patterning of reality I feel myself to be, in essence, separated, detached.  This sense of detachment seems to make my experience of reality more ephemeral (which is to say, the experience of my own sense of self becomes more ephemeral), but it also makes the world appear brighter, sharper, more vivid to me, for my experience of it now is the subject of an undiluted sensual apprehension – sensuality being (when thus refined) the most direct route we have towards aesthetic appreciation.  But there is a potential danger to this detachment as well:  it may be that my emotional withdrawal represents nothing more than mere repression.  I suppose that success in avoiding this difficulty depends on how deep the feeling of detachment goes.  Can I, for instance, maintain it even while continuing to interact with the environment?  Can I become a part of the pattern, act out my various roles within it, and still retain my sense of being detached?  What happens to morality under this condition?  I might come to feel that any emotion or thought that I have, any act I commit, is simply "a part of the pattern," and thus not ascribe any moral value to it at all.

It seems more likely, however, that the objectivity required to see the pattern, even while I continue to play a part in it, would naturally incline me to the morally appropriate response.  In other words, the response of one's self to the environment would, under the conditions described above, be governed by the obligations entailed by the pattern as it moves towards a state of fulfillment; thus all action would be dictated by the need of the pattern to achieve this state.  Of course, fulfillment of the pattern is not a matter of its completion so much as it's of an ongoing evolutionary interplay between "self" and "other."  It would seem, therefore, that even the most complete sense of detachment cannot operate to disentangle us from the pattern's weave, nor from the involvement of a humanly derived sense of morality with regard the part we play in it:  being human, we cannot help but view our actions as having moral implications.  This, however, does not necessarily mean that we cannot view those actions in and of themselves from a point of detachment.

The capacity for moral consideration derives from the capacity for self-reflection; self-reflection is in turn the capacity, the habit, the compulsion, for self-analysis.  Closing the gap between the self that acts and the self that observes the self that acts yields a state of detachment.  It also helps rid us of the fear of death, for in closing that gap, the egoistic aspect of the self disappears.  There remains only the pattern, of which we are a part, to which we belong.  And while it's true that we influence the pattern by adding our strand to it, so other strands in the pattern also influence us:  it's only together that we create a whole.  Closing the gap between "self" and "other" should (ostensibly) bring about that ultimate transcendent experience, the experiential realization of the "oneness" of all things.  Assuming such a point of view has validity beyond that of a momentary condition, one may conclude that even if nothing of the "self" survives physical death, death is still not the end of the energy we contain.  Our energy is simply transformed, becoming "one" with the "all."

Yet there remains, for me, the suspicion that even such a transcendent vision of reality as this cannot deny the existence of a void underlying it, a void in which reality is held suspended just as the earth is held suspended in the relative vacuum of outer space.  I am not sure that this void need automatically be equated with death, however.  As far as human understanding is concerned, an absolute void cannot logically exist except as a conceptualized expression of that which brings forth and upholds that which does exist.  And what more than this should, logically, interest us?

But, does there not yet remain another avenue of possibility to be explored?  Some means of manipulating the pattern, of influencing it, or of discovering other forms it might take?  Through our creativity, as embodied by language, as embodied in dreams, I believe we may yet find a profoundly transformative power to be within our grasp . . .

DREAMS IN A BACKWATER:  fragment