Hi David,
With so much high quality discussion going on at present, I am finding it
hard to keep up. But I want to tease out a bit more from your message of
31.3.02, where you said,
"The experiential and intellectual paths are one. Or at least they aren't
incompatible. Reading and writing and thinking is doing something, its a
real experience..."
Almost. What is needed here is an appreciation of neurosis and fantasy. For
while ideas may be exciting and certainly having or exploring an idea is a
'real
experience', we must beware of what Wilber so tellingly calls "thought
without evidence". Pirsig himself becomes quite critical of Phaedrus' (or
his) obsession with ideas. In his Afterword in ZMM he says "I tend to become
taken with philosophic questions, going over them and over them and over
them again in loops that go round and round and round until they either
produce an answer or become so repetitively locked on they become
psychiatrically dangerous".
So we need to discriminate between having an idea, or discovering an idea,
which is an experience and often dynamic, and becoming obsessed with
ideas, to the extent that we lose touch with immediate reality (This is what
Pirsig means by the hung-over feeling that accompanies writing a
metaphysics. It IS decadent.) Ideas are very high level abstractions from
reality. They are generally couched in language which is similarly distanced
from reality. The word 'tree' and the 'object' outside my window which I
describe using this word are very
different indeed, and Pirsig correctly makes clear that the subject-object
viewpoint which underlies the objectification of language is itself limited
and untrue to the most fundamental level of what is, which he calls quality.
The mystic is concerned with the immediacy of reality, including "the
ability to notice the slightest of breezes". To attend to the sensations it
creates without even labelling them as a 'breeze'. To the mystic there is no
'me' feeling the 'breeze', but the immediate experience of the moment, which
may include the sensations which we can conveniently label as 'feeling a
breeze'. The problem with the intellectual level is that there can develop
there an addiction to ideas, which only poorly, at second or third hand,
refer to immediate reality. Perls saw the dominant neurosis of America in
the middle of last century as a loss of contact, or immediacy, where people
had become so lost in the pseudo-world of ideas that they hardly functioned
any more in the world of experience, where we continue to live as organisms.
Hence it is possible to eat meal after meal in good restaurants, and even
describe these meals to others, while actually almost never tasting
anything. This is neurosis.
Wilber has explored the key to this puzzle in his book, 'No Boundary'. If
you have not read it I strongly recommend it, even though Wilber himself
sees it as somewhat dated. The first half of life almost inevitably involves
setting boundaries for the self; the ego, a necessary construct which helps
us function in an inhospitable world. The second half of a life which
continues to develop is spent in undoing those same boundaries, and
encountering as an adult those same experiences which seemed intolerable to
the child, and learning a new way of dealing with experience that does not
involve a mental 'splitting'. While this might seem rather trivial, it is
extremely difficult to achieve, and the consequences are in fact enormous.
Pirsig sub-titled his second book 'An Inquiry into Morals'. While his use of
the term 'morals' is often broader than the conventional use, let's for the
moment just look at the conventional understanding, where morals refers to
my way of relating to other people. At the intellectual level my 'moral'
choices are often driven by ideas. ("Do unto others ... ", "the greatest
good for the greatest number", or such like.) For the mystic this would
appear immoral. For the mystic, action issues from my experience of 'what
is'. If I am truly open to experience, (Pirsig's 'dynamic quality'), then
there is no need to consider or think about what I should do. My doing flows
from the experience. It simply arises. I do not need a moral code. I do not
need to debate moral issues. (In my latest essay which should eventually
appear on the forum, I argue that for the mystic immediacy is the only moral
imperative, though I also point out some of the paradoxes of mystic
morality.)
Now we (and I include myself here) find this hard to accept. We believe that
the way to make a difference in the world is to form clear moral opinions,
and work to have them implemented in our society or world. (This is assuming
we have progressed beyond those low level moral stages of development which
cannot see beyond self interest.) All sorts of human organisations are
founded on just such an understanding, or at least incorporate it in part. I
suspect most if not all of the people who contribute to this forum, no
matter how much they disagree, feel quite strongly they are doing it for
some 'worthwhile' purpose. And a mystic is as capable as anyone else of
acting purposefully for some long term goal. It is just that he/she does not
confuse this with the 'good'. Any long term goal is a 'fantasy', in the
technical sense of a mental construct. It is not real. It has no immediacy.
And most of the worst crimes of humanity have been committed by people who
honestly believed they were doing what was right.
To return to ideas and the intellect. Ideas are fantasies. They are
inevitably 'static', though encountering a new idea can be a dynamic
experience. There is some debate going on about it being the ideas that
contend in science. The memes compete. The high quality ones survive. This
is actually a nonsense, however convincing it sounds. It is a nonsense
because ideas have no immediacy. They are the static derivative of people's
experience, and while they have their own role and reality, it is not
fundamental. The mystic is fundamentally at odds with the intellectual
level, since the mystic encounters quality in his/her immediate experience,
and acts morally insofar as this is so. The intellectual must categorise
his/her experience in terms of his/her ideas, which then (hopefully) offer
guidance as to the appropriate action which 'should' occur. To the mystic
this is immoral. It is a fantasy about a fantasy. What happens has been
categorised, and categorisation is a fantasy. Then it is tested against a
second order fantasy, the moral ideal, or scientific method, or whatever.
Now this is not to say there is no place for scientific method, for example.
But you have only to read the writings of the most eminent physicists of
last century to realise that they did not for one minute believe that
science was anything other than a fantasy. A mathematical fantasy. What a
numberof them said was that at last we now recognise that these are
fantasies. (see 'Quantum Questions', edited by Wilber, on this.)
Unfortunately it is taking some time for the rest of us to get that message.
Pirsig actually sees this and says it in his SODV paper. It has been
fascinating to see others writhe over this. They feel convinced that he
couldn't mean what he says - but he does. (This is not to say that Pirsig
himself does not at times get caught in this trap too. His use of evolution
as a mainstay of his metaphysics, and his desire for a 'scientific'
morality, are two huge fantasies.)
So I must take issue with your words quoted above. You assert that thinking
is a real experience. I say beware. The brain "can process falsehood just as
easily as truth" (SODV p 15) Metaphysics can be "thought without
evidence"(Wilber). Ideas are meta-constructs. Their "reality is ultimately a
deduction made in the first months of an infant's life and supported by the
culture in which the infant grows up." (SODV p 21) Sure, ideas exist. But
their existence is of a different order to here and now immediacy. (They are
static quality, not dynamic.) The ego 'exists', yet the mystic claims at
base it is all smoke and mirrors. This is one of the most difficult things
to accept, since acceptance is an ego activity. So here we run into the real
limitations of language to progress our understanding. What the mystic
asserts is ultimately beyond language and intellect. Sure, mystics
communicate using language like the rest of us, but what they point to with
words is beyond the capacity of words to capture, or intellect to grasp.
It is extremely difficult to argue something as complex as this without
making many jumps which confuse levels, and of course any use of language is
SOM tainted. I hope you have been able to follow my argument, even though
following an argument such as this does absolutely nothing to introduce
anyone to the reality the mystics speak of. At most it is a clearing of the
barriers at the intellectual level to actually attending to what is, and all
the consequences that can flow from that.
Regards,
John B
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