Hardware as Image One of the things which makes spiritual traditions mystical is their concurrence on the paradoxical aspect of revelation. We believe the world and its objects to be real. How is it said that they are unreal? Put another way, most people have no doubt that the material manifestations are real, but have great doubt as to whether the embodied presence of the Absolute is real. That which is real, in the context of the sages, is always real—unchanged throughout eternity. All that is created and destroyed—even primordial solar systems—are not real. All that is impermanent comes and goes, in the context of a backdrop that is without beginning or ending. An analogy that has been given is that of the progression of movie footage on a screen, which supports the activity without movement on its own part. In the case of universal manifestation, the background is without form, whereas all things which appear as contrast on the background have form, and each ‘thing’ is limited to its form. Since the unlimited formless is what is fundamentally real, it has to be the ground which gives rise—en potentia—to all that is materially manifest. In other words, the forms are dependent upon the formless for their arising; the impermanent exists on a lattice of the permanent.
224
