Formlessness

There are three realms of existence, domains that affect the world. Let’s walk through them. Look around and tap things. That’s the Material world, the Physical Form realm. Form means having characteristics that can be described. Look in a mirror–that is your Physical Form Body. Hold up some fingers. Most people around you would agree on how many fingers you are holding up. Obvious, right? Almost everyone can perceive the Material realm.

Now close your eyes and imagine your face and body. Notice that your mental image of yourself has shapes and other characteristics. That is also Form, Mental Form. Imagine a letter. That visualized symbol has a characteristic Form that you can see in the “mind’s eye” and can be described. Imagine hearing a word. That is an auditory Mental Form. Imagine walking. That is a visualized action, a series of Mental Forms. This is the second realm of existence, the Mental Form realm, or Spirit Realm, the non-physical things you can see, feel, and hear with your inner perceptions.

This Mental Form realm also exists, because much of what you can visualize, with effort you can make Real, you can manifest your vision in the Physical Form world. Even if you can’t bring an idea into Physical reality, there are engineers, artists, animators, or scientists who can. Almost everything humans have created first existed as ideas or plans in someone’s mind.

But where do these ideas come from? Many, like the benzene ring, spring into people’s minds in a vision, fully formed. Artists, like my mother, describe this source of ideas as a well that never runs dry. There is a source of potential that contains everything that could exist, awaiting our mental and physical effort to visualize it and bring it into existence. Potential has not yet taken Form, it is Formless.

Many things that exist in the world have no Form: space, time, love, hate, fear, joy, beauty, consciousness. Every one of these “things” influence the world, therefore exist, even though they are invisible and have no shape, color, size, or other describable characteristics. They have no Form. Yet we experience them. We know they exist. This is the Formless realm of existence.

All three realms of being have power in the world, thus they all exist. People have experienced inhabitants of each realm. We all perceive the creatures of the Material world. Some people experience ghosts, angels, and other spirits as Mental Forms, the Spirit world. Fewer people experience invisible forces and beings without form, the Divine dimension. Atheist scientists who perceive the beauty of the invisible laws of nature, relationships among forces, and mathematics are touching Divinity, the Formless reality underlying all-that-is.

People have differing capacity to perceive and master the three realms, depending on their Spiritual maturity. Everyone has at least some access to physical perception, what we call the Material world. Those of us who are limited to the five senses, or fear what lies beyond them, or have limited imagination, often deny that the other realms exist. They dismiss the Spirit realm as mere fantasy, and say they only believe what they can see and touch. It is possible to be a master of the Material world and have no perception of worlds beyond. Such people can become leaders and “stars,” wealthy and admired by many. But without access to creativity, they must rely on helpers or subordinates who perceive possibilities beyond the mundane. Some masters of the Material world may be Spiritual cripples. This is sad.

Leaving the mundane world of the five senses behind, many people are able to visualize things that other people cannot perceive. In the arts and sports, we say these people are “creative,” they can manifest what they imagine into forms that others can perceive, clay into sculpture, emotion into music, words into story, movement into performance. In the sciences, we call those who have access to the Spirit realm of Mental Form “gifted.” They can perceive relationships among matter, energy, time, space, and forces to create technology that generations ago would have been called “magic.” In the religions, there are people with access to the Spirit realm of thought and deep perception who can see and hear beings and realms without Physical Form. We call them teachers, gurus, psychics, meditators, shamans, and prophets. We say they have the third eye or sixth sense. These are our masters of the Spiritual world. Many of these people, especially those with large egos, regard being a master of the Spirit world as the ultimate attainment. But this is merely a step along the Path to ultimate experience.

Delving deeper than the visualized characteristics of religious images, of gods and demons, beyond even the limits of human imagination, lies the realm of ecstatic religious experience. The realm that can only be experienced, because it is beyond the power of words to describe. The Tao. The one. The unitive experience. Emptiness. The Ultimate. The Divine. The Formless.

This Formless realm can be accessed by anyone, but few make the effort to perceive the reality that is the foundation of our experience. It can be found with stillness meditation into the Heart of Reality. It can be reached through devotional prayer. It can be given as the gift of solace from adversity. It can be the karmic effect from selfless service. It can be found after years of diligent practice, or the blinding flash of insight in an instant. There are as many different ways as there are people, and many ways yet to be discovered. We call masters of the Formless Divine realm Mystics, and they are hidden everywhere. How would you find one, or better yet become one?