Adam Blatner

Primal Forms: Their Anatomy and Physiology: An Introduction

This is a topic that in truth is so complex that it would boggle a human mind right off its hinges. To begin with, we need a relative holistic view of the cosmos and its interpenetrating nature. Super-String Theory hints at the opening of the door. It is somewhat right as far as it goes, but it doesn’t go near far enough, because in proposing 11 dimensions, we are led to the next obvious question: What are these dimensions? What goes on in them. I have been vouchsafed a preliminary answer that at least offers a beginning in trying to comprehend the literally incomprehensible.

Plato was a little bit right, but it also has to be seen functionally. There is no primary form to chair, which calls on human anatomy and to some degree, Western technology and culture. In many cultures, one squats, lies down, sits cross-legged. What is hinted at is not “chair” but rather a context for repose. So this archetypal function operates even on other planets, because activity and repose is a syzygy, a primal duality, both of which elements operate relative to the other, as in more and less (another syzygy), up and down, better and worse, dark and light, etc. So also is form and formless, and yet as in the symbol of the Tao, there are shades of in-between-ness, gradients, spectrums. Here, to the upper right, is a very stylized diagram, admittedly crude, in which I try to capture some sense of the way primal forms come to become more manifest in our perceivable cosmos. I also allude to the Kabbalistic Tree of Life diagram as described on another webpage. The underlying theme is that of emanation: More abstract and general forms, beyond form, emerge into form. To our time frame these emergences are instantaneous. However, as we have penetrated sub-atomic physics, we now can indirectly be aware of events that operate far more quickly than anyone can actually comprehend.

It begins with dynamic intra-action, a swirling of inter-dimensional formative brew, partaking of chaos as form emerges from implicate order. Correspondences to the Kabbalistic Tree of Life, this would be near the 4th Sephiroth:

A period of repose and individuation is the next phase, an encysting as each element gathers its energies to blossom into more dynamic evolutionary meta-forms, preparing to encounter each other in realtionship. 5th Sephiroth:

More interconnections at a “higher” (or more manifest, more complex) level (though lower in the diagram of the Tree of Life—7th Sephira). Qualities of “beauty” become more evident:

In this diagram, the forms within themselves are generating further explorations of individuality, corresponding to the 8th Sephira on the Kabbalistic Tree of Life:

Meanwhile, in the illustration to the below, each of the elements begin to re-organize into a primordial organismic-form at a higher, more integrative level. Forms within forms, systems within systems, what the philosopher calls holarchy, this operates also in the transdimensional realm:

Actual Occasion (below)

A moment in time, perhaps 2.3 micro-seconds, with the semi-square figure in the middle being a slice in multi-dimensional space-time of the subjectivity creating. This drawing illustrates a rather difficult idea put forth by the mathematician – turned philosopher, Alred North Whitehead (1861-1947). After contemplating new ideas in relativity (Einstein), quantum physics (Max Planck, Niels Bohr, etc.), Whitehead realized in the mid-1920s that the problem is partly that our culture thinks in terms of “stuff,” things, nouns, rather than events, processes. What if we reversed this, and imageined that the elemental whatever was an event, a process, rather than a thing? (That’s one reason his metaphysical theory has come to be called “process philosophy,” although Whitehead himself termed it a philosophy of organism.  That is because he recognized that things are organized holarchically, in terms of systems within systems, though systems and holarchy weren’t really used as words when he developed this theory.

Well, I fear this is getting serious, and we wouldn’t want that, would we? The point in the illustration above left is that events take in (prehend) all sorts of unfolding influences and at a certain point integrate also values (Whitehead called them eternal objects, drawing from Plato’s eternal forms) and create a response. Creativity is a key dynamic here—and those of you who know me know I delight in creativity, even if it edges into silliness at times.

Tags: Confabulations