I am hoping to meet anyone who has had what I'll call the Phaedrus
experience. That is, the psychological event which Pirsig attributes to
Phaedrus, which led to the upheaval in his life and which found expression
in the MoQ.
I had a similar experience, before reading ZAMM. I would summarise it thus:
a sense of the dissolving of certain of one's mental structures, a radical
internalisation of value, an awareness of the artificiality of conventional
antitheses and generally of the inadequacy of language, and a detachment
from the normal imperatives of personal survival and advancement.
You can imagine the impact of reading ZAMM.
Its popularity indicates that large numbers of people are receptive to these
issues, but do many actually undergo the experience? I suspect not.
I imagine that in the past an individual thus visited would have been
inclined to interpret the experience as religious. It certainly invites
that, since it gives you a powerful sense of being able to understand
religion from the inside.
As far as I am aware, Pirsig was the first to describe it without reference
to religion, thus possibly initiating a process of naturalisation, which I
think could be developed further, with the aid of philosophy and
evolutionary biology. Many years of reflection have left me with a few ideas
on how this could be done. For all I know, it may already be happening -
tell me where!
I would be delighted to meet anyone in whom all this evokes a sympathetic
response.
William
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archive - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net
To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sat Aug 17 2002 - 16:01:27 BST