Too much importance is given to consciousness, as if the 'hard problem' were the key to the ages, as if mapping its protean forms were the way to metaphysical truth. The latest toy. Instead regard it as an instrument, a sheath, a kind of body, a condition of appearances, but not its own ground, not sui-generis, not the source. This is the condition of the times, the obsession with the instrumental in itself and not as a medium, the avoidance at all costs of That for which it is an instrument.