Thought

He floats, a vast expanse surrounding him. His world; his domain.

His mind.

He stands above a similarly vast construct, an edifice composed of firm solid elements as a base, with a myriad struts, assemblies, and other temporary scaffolding around it. If it remains fixed for too long, it's integrated, absorbed into the solid core.

He looks over his kingdom, noticing things at the very periphery; the outside world.

As he looks he replicates these external objects within; the mental models he utilizes to comprehend and interact with the outside world. He makes them as exact and accurate as he can, although he is aware that such a thing is impossible. Still, he relies on his understanding f the external world, as codified in these mental representations, to understand how things should work.

Most of the time he is preoccupied with the mental models themselves; conjuring them from the mass that is the core of his personality and knowledge, bringing them forth onto his mind to refine, link, compare, or study. The outside world passes by outside, sometimes unnoticed, other times deliberately ignored.

But every once in a while a new element is found outside, something he had never seen before. He moves to the edge of his world, where the mind meets the outside. The senses feed him raw data, and he begins quickly browsing his internal collection, looking for the closest fit. Yet none of them fit.

So he starts from scratch, raw mindstuff coalescing in his hands. He shapes, as a master sculpture, recreating with the closest accuracy his senses allows what he sees outside. In the external world, his hands touch, feel, manipulate, moving the object this way and that, observing, listening. Within, his consciousness gathers all this information and uses it in the creation of the mental model.

Until it's done, as far as he can see. Then it's added to the scaffolding around the core. If he learns any new information about it, it's pulled from the this temporary area, refined, and added again. If it doesn't change in a while, it's integrated into the nucleus of his self, and the core model of the world.

The interesting times come when you find evidence contradicting a part of the core. That's where, in refining that model, every other model that derives or depends on the newly-changed one need t undergo revision as well. The entire core changes; the person becomes someone similar, yet else; a changed person in some way, either small or radical.

Yet what I've experienced is something altogether different.

It is as it, in the process of modeling an external entity, the entity itself slid right through the frontier, coming inside, looking around. Outside I can feel two people in intense conversation, yet within, it's as if there's a nearly perfect transference of concepts and ideas. At the same time I'm modeling the entity, and the entity itself corrects my models, filling in blanks. Yet in doing so, I can feel the core quaking; central elements of it, and many of my decisions, crumbling under the weight of this new information.

I know that more fearful people may shy away from such entities or concepts, fearing for their self-image and the structure of their existence. Yet for others, it's as if purifying fire were scouring their selves, temporary turmoil accepted in exchange for corrections to long-term existence.

We speak, and we understand each other.