Platt, 3WD,
Thanks for the comments. You ask, Platt,
"Would you consider an aesthetic experience a mystic experience?"
Yes, but! First of all I don't particularly like the term 'mystic
experience', as I hinted in the earlier post. For many people the term
mystic has overtones that suggest an extraordinary state, whereas I suspect
the mystic experiences the most ordinary states, which are only unusual for
most of us due to the layers of interpretation and fantasy that our egoic
development has imposed on ordinary experience. I suppose that an infant
experiences much as a mystic does, though I do not equate this with
mysticism, which is an adult state, with all the extra abilities which an
adult has that a young child does not.
You are probably familiar with the state known as 'flow', common to creative
types such as artists. It occurs when the complexity of the task more or
less matches the competence of the operator, and results in an absorption in
which time often 'disappears', and attention is focusssed so intently upon
the task at hand that there is a loss of normal ego boundaries, fantasies,
and attention to past and future issues. Again this is a normal experience,
but close to the immediacy that the mystic apparently experiences in
everyday life.
So I would place aesthetic experience in the 'intellectual' level of
experience. But as I said in my post of 12.02.02
"The problem with level 4 quality is that it is potentially extremely
isolating. It is the end of the line for the egoic personality. I can
appreciate art, enjoy all kinds of understanding, and feel compassion for
others, and still feel a huge lack in my life. This is also the problem with
creativity."
I think this is the main problem with setting up art as the fifth level,
despite what Pirsig said about a 'level of art'.
3WD said "is it that this "praxis" or practice is so ingrained in the
various levels as to be transparent or invisible to the intellect?"
Yes, I think it is. You may remember the example I gave a few weeks back of
Van Gogh. Only one painting sold in his lifetime, yet today he is one of the
most popular artists in the West. This sea change of appreciation is
probably invisible to the intellect. Ask any average person with a Van Gogh
print on their wall about what makes it great art, and they will give you
reasons. Ask the equivalent person living in his day what makes his work
garbage, and they would be equally fluent. The change is complex, and
learned. That is why I argue that all three realms of quality at Pirsig's
fourth level are learned, not instinctive.
Including the song on the radio. If I was in a very different culture and
heard a song on the radio that was real dynamic quality to a local, almost
certainly it would be nothing to me (hard to do now that western music is
taking over almost everywhere). It requires the 'invisible' learning of
musical traditions and forms that immersion in the culture provides to make
this quality evident. Pirsig sort of allows for this educational
requirement, when he accepts that different people experience different
things as having quality because of their different backgrounds (in his SODV
paper?). But I think the issue is far more complex than he suggests, and
have explored some of that in my previous essays.
I use the term praxis to indicate a transformational practice, which may
include meditation, as an educational path to a higher form of quality. The
evidence seems to show that meditation alone is a very poor transformational
tool, though Wilber recommends it. It seems to me that most of the
transformational practice that might lead to mystical 'enlightenment' is an
undoing of learnt patterns of reaction. So I would suggest that the quality
(qualities) that can be experienced at Pirsig's fourth level are encountered
only when the ground has been prepared by an appropriate form of learning.
And the quality that can be experienced at the mystic (fifth?) level is to
be encountered only after a rigorous unlearning. Certainly I am finding the
path I have embarked on is more about unlearning than about learning.
However I have no certainty that it will ever lead to enlightenment.
Regards,
John B
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