Hullo David, Erin and Wim,
Thanks for your responses to my April Fool's Day posting on 'letting the
situation dictate'.
Erin suggested that "'letting the situation dictate' reminds me of a hippie
regression to the biological level". This was exactly my thinking only a
couple of years ago, when in one of my Forum essays I criticised the mystic
position as just this - a reversion to biological values. John Wren-Lewis
made the same assessment before he was thrust into mystic consciousness
through a near death experience. In his elegant words, "I saw mysticism as a
neurotic escape into fantasy, due to failure of nerve in the creative
struggle." (The Dazzling Dark, p1) This has echoes of Pirsig's attitude that
David correctly summarised. "Pirsig didn't just disagree with his teacher's
somewhat Nihilistic view toward the use of atomic weapons, he was angered
and outraged by it." However I disagree with David's conclusions that "These
kinds of problems simply can't be solved at the social level - and mystical
transcendence isn't the right tool either. War, genocide and exploitation
are antics of the giant and can only be tamed by the
intellectual level."
First, though, I'll return to Erin's request to "help distinguish how
'letting the situation dictate" from a biological level differs from
"letting the situation dictate" on an intellectual level". This is not so
simple, since the discrimination Erin is making is an 'intellectual'
discrimination, and what I am talking about transcends the intellectual
level and cannot be well expressed in intellectual terms. Or as Wilber
astutely observes, it is quite capable of being described in ordinary
language, but only if there is a shared experiential basis for such
language. Otherwise it becomes something akin to describing the taste of a
banana to someone who has never eaten one.
But if this barrier was absolute, there could be no communication between
levels, nor interest in transcending our present levels. In reality, we all
feel the lure of quality, that tugs us into leaving the arid comfort of our
present understanding for something deeper and more satisfying. In Hameed
Ali's view, we all knew this state once, when as infants we encountered
reality unmediated by ego. This, as Erin has noted, is the immediacy of
biological existence, and we need to transcend that, and the development of
social and intellectual levels are necessary steps in that transcendence.
The problem is that such development is both necessary and flawed. We cannot
remain as animals, simply responding to what comes up, yet our social and
intellectual worlds are constructed by the ego to attempt to give us some
control over the world and the people in it. As infants our experience was
both intensely satisfying and intensely threatening. Ali has studied in
great depth how the ego develops (in object relations) to offer this control
which is the only alternative to overwhelming fear and powerlessness. This
is a necessary step, but it carries within it real dilemmas.
One of these is the separation of the ego from what is 'other'. This is the
origin of the subject-object split that Pirsig struggles to transcend.
Pirsig comes up with two main solutions; attending to dynamic quality, on
the one hand, and developing a system of thought (the MOQ) with which to
'explain' how it is that the dynamic 'should' take precedence over the
static, on the other. The first points to the mystic solution, the other
anchors it in a thoroughly non mystic metaphysics. The big lack in Pirsig's
metaphysics is that he seems not to realise how difficult it is to attend to
the dynamic core of all experience, since the social and intellectual
filters that we all develop actually prevent us from such attending. As
Fritz Perls opined in his old age, 90% of all we experience is fantasy.
Ken Wilber offers the best intellectual understanding of these issues, in
his book 'No Boundary'. He argues that the second half of life demands the
undoing of those very boundaries that allowed the development of the social
and intellectual levels that were so necessary to the first half of life. He
also offers an impressive explanation of how the various therapies and
spiritual disciplines fit within this scheme of things. In other of his
writings he offers some suggestions as to the nature of the transformative
path post-intellect. The main point I would make is that the path is a 'via
negativa', an undoing of our projections, our theories, and so on, which
actually keep us from the immediacy of 'dynamic quality'. You remember the
little story Pirsig uses where the staleness of a man's life is shattered by
a heart attack on the way to work, and he finds himself in a hospital bed,
gazing at his hand in wonder and delight. While a near death experience can
trigger transformation in a fortunate few, Wilber points to less dramatic
alternatives, and Hameed Ali offers perhaps the best methodology for a
gradual transformative process.
This process is a 'cleansing' (in Blake's terms) of consciousness. It is not
an intellectual process, though there is nothing to prevent us discussing it
in intellectual terms, provided the experiential nature of the process is
honoured.
And this brings me back to David's points which I mentioned above. I think
you are right as far as you go, David. Much of the devastation that we see
in our world is originating at the social level, and the intellectual level
seeks to control it. However our intellects are also limited by their
cultural filters, and their more basic weakness is their manipulation by our
egos, fundamentally out of fear. While he does not go far enough, Pirsig is
actually pointing to the one thing that can liberate us from this egoic
paranoia - the dynamic quality of here and now existence. It is a matter of
what controls the intellect. If it is driven by fear, as Krishnamurti and
many others claim, it is quite simply inadequate to the task of remedying
the evils that emerge from the social level. Which is not to denigrate the
task. What Wim and Roger are debating is not without value. Far from it.
(I want to address your long response in more detail when I have time, Wim.)
Wim has quite rightly seen that there needs to be some core of value to
drive this endeavour. He argues for a religious inspiration. Despite the
static nature of most organised religion, and the pseudocommunity asociated
with most religious fellowship, I think he is correct to point to this
general
domain. But the guidance will be found to emerge from the immediacy of
personal experience that the mystic discerns. The mystic is the expert in
dynamic encounter, in discerning quality. Unlike the artist, the creative
doer, who is able to cause us to attend more closely to his/her production,
and thus expand our awareness a little, the mystic is the creative
'un-doer', who strips away the neuroses, the fears, the obsessions, the
whole panoply of egoic selfhood, to encounter the dynamic ground of being,
moment by moment. His only allegience is to the truth, the truth of
experience.
The problem with David's argument is that the whole intellectual struggle
with the social is mired in a fundamental rejection of what is. The ego is
constantly attempting to deny what is, and manipulate the world to become a
'better' (meaning safer and more under control) place. This is a basic flaw;
'original sin', if you like. The mystic operates at a more fundamental level
where the judgements of the ego as to what is good or bad are transcended.
Paradoxically, the mystic asserts that the actions that arise spontaneously
from the immediacy of such experience are 'better' than the calculated
actions of the intellect, poisoned as they are by the fundamental
assumptions of the ego.
I'll close with a Sufi story, that puts this in a poetic form. It comes from
Idries Shah, 'Tales of the Dervishes', p 181, and is quoted by Hameed Ali in
'Elements of the Real in Man', p 222. Here it is.
The People Who Attain.
Imam el-Ghazali relates a tradition from the life of Isa, ibn Maryiam.
Isa one day saw some people sitting miserably on a wall, by the roadside.
He asked, "What is your affliction?"
They said, "We have become like this through our fear of hell."
He went on his way, and saw a number of people grouped disconsolately in
various postures by the wayside. He said, "What is your affliction?" They
said, "Desire for Paradise has made us like this."
He went on his way, until he came to a third group of people. They looked
like people who had endured much, but their faces shone with joy.
Isa asked them, "What has made you like this?"
They answered: "The Spirit of Truth. We have seen Reality, and this has made
us oblivious of lesser goals."
Isa said, "These are the people who attain. On the Day of Accounting these
are they who will be in the Presence of God."
Regards,
John B
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