--- Glenn Bradford <gmbbradford@netscape.net> wrote:
>
> PIRSIG
> ...he thought that the light was nothing more than
> involuntary widening of
> the iris of the eyes of the observer that lets in
> extra light and makes
> things look brighter, a kind of hallucinatory light
=== message truncated ===
I think there's actually two effects involved.
I think we have a filter in place from our society
that will cause us to potentially ignore the D light
if we do happen to see it. Ie, rather than saying...
" wow I've seen the light" I might respond by saying "
my eye's are going nuts, I need to sit down".
The second effect is what actually causes the D Light
in the first place. It is an involuntary dilating of
the iris but that doesn't meen it happens consistently
across the board for everyone, it means it is not
consciously controlled. If you look at stories of
people who have seen it it is often triggered by
emotional or drug related situations. I don't think
drug related situations are too important because the
biology could be readily explained and besides many
people who have taken various drugs see all sorts of
phenomina. But I think it is important about the
empotional situations. Our society (western society)
strongly supports being objective and unemotional
about things. So if we are always striving to not be
too emotional we are less likely to get into highly
emotional states the trigger the D light effect. You
would therefore probably expect to get higher
incedences of D Light amongst religous figures of the
past etc because a lot of these people had incredibly
strong and often conflicting beliefs and when they
were at their peak of their internal conflict they saw
the light (of God?). Pirsig saw the light quite a bit
too, but he spent a lot of time walking around being
quite "abnormal" to society and having strong
emotional interactions with the world. In fact he was
striving to see the world beyond the constraints of a
society that had told him to view it calmly and
objectively.
And other societies having a higher incedence of D
light? Well this seems to me to often be within the
guru's/holy men/shaman etc and their societies aren't
telling them to take stress management courses or
prozac or counselling, they are just out there living
in the world with extremely passionate beliefs....
Just my take on it anyway
Dave M
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