Elliot, Platt, Gavin and c.,
>Elliot wrote:
"I might add here that i think words = concepts, or are so closely related
that they need not be distinguished here (we can debate this if need be).
Or rather, words are the verbal expression of concepts, which are the root
of what im talking about. Concepts are not absolutes, they are tools to
intellectually understand reality, but the picture is based on phantasms."
Glen replies:
I agree but think the MoQ might phrase this as; Our current intellectual
patterns are inadequate to explain reality. Dynamic Quality may be
approached by evolving our intellectual patterns (and our other patterns
too) with the understanding that the patterns we evolve, will never be
perfect.
I might go out on a limb here and suggest this is a lot of what the
mystics do teach; how to experience a removal of some of your static
patterns. Certainly the psychedelic experience can be shown to
change some of the fundamental operation of the human biological static
pattern. You can literally, hear a color. The experience generated by
the removal of static patterns may be of value even when collapsed as a
retained memory. And of course our language, which has not been evolved
to describe these states, may be inadequate to describe the experience
meaningfully. It is interesting that religion and the psychedelic
culture both have special terms to describe their experiences. The
shamanistic tradition focused their psychedelic experience and thus enhanced
their society rather than just laying around, baked all day and being weird.
Perhaps because religion is more focused than the drug experience, social
patterns valued over the psychedelic experience. It easy to see how this
comparison could go on and on...
>Elliot wrote:
"Having words like static pattern of quality (and especially the concept)
did change the way i experience things. I say now my experience is very
different and it is the words i use to arrange and divide my world that
make it so."
Glen replies:
Lila really clicked for me the first time although I read ZMM a couple of
times between first finding it and when Lila was published. MoQ is a great
model and in my experience the best. I really think people can approach
dynamic quality without the MoQ but the MoQ has the best articulation and
encapsulation I have encountered. For me the MoQ explains my experiences
but didn't profoundly alter what I experience.
>>Glen wrote:
"A static pattern is required to gain experience.
While one event may seem very much more dynamic I doubt if there is such an
event as a experience of dynamic quality and nothing else. Throughout the
peyote experience Pirsig's body did not dissolve (although Pirsig may have
thought it did! ;) ) and this would at least provide some kind of static
pattern with which to gain experience."
>Elliot wrote:
"A static pattern is required to GAIN experience, because the gain is
memory, which is a static pattern. Static patterns are not required to
HAVE an experience. Well, actually maybe it is, the requirements for
having an experience are not set that i know of. Humans need bodies, but
do electrons as bits of chaos (or whatever) respond to quality and
experience it? "
Glen replies:
I think we are talking about having an experience as a human being. I think
patterns are a response to dynamic quality. I have no experience of
intellectual patterns that did not possess a structure of matter to support
them. Interestingly I have heard of medical cases where the hippocampus
(I think) was damaged and the people so affected were no longer able to form
more than short term memories. These people could access their old memories
and could gain new experience but couldn't hold on to it (no static
latching).
If these people had had their capacity to form short term memories destroyed
as well, I don't think they could have gained any experience.
>>>Elliot wrote:
"I think we dont dissagree on the quality of MoQ as a
metaphysics, but i do dissagree that any doctrine (static pattern) will
lead to transendance of static patterns. MoQ is a discription and it is a
burden to experience to fit everything into its divsions, because as i say,
the world is fundementally undivided."
>>Glen wrote:
"What about 'addition'? It's unbounded but still a pattern."
>Elliot wrote:
"What about addition? It is a static pattern and I've never heard a mystic
talk about math. Does the static pattern of addition trancend a static
pattern (itself), or does it set up a static relationship between objects
and subjects in the world? Is this relationship absoulte? or just
consistant within itself?"
Glen replies:
Addition doesn't transcend being a pattern but the intellectual pattern of
addition implies an unbounded set of numbers, truly infinite. People work
within part of this set but do not go insane because there really is no
horizon and no end to the set. My point is that intellectual patterns can
be evolved that be useful even if we cannot describe the entire set over
which they operate. I think the MoQ is like in addition in that, while we
realize we cannot ever create a set (explanation) that describes all of
dynamic quality, we can create a larger or better set (explanation) than we
have now. The pattern of the MoQ works quite within an infinite framework.
Does the static pattern transcend being a pattern? Perhaps not, but it does
allow for change to itself and may thereby transcend what it was in the
past.
>Elliot wrote"
"How else would one break free of language but by grappling with it?"
Glen replies:
Personally, I like cage fighting with wild rabid animals but if you have
the time being shot out of a cannon into a huge block of lime Jell-O is
also very effective if more fattening. :|
>Elliot wrote:
"no need to worry, im not trying to implement anything. And although i am
kidding myself to an extent my point was that the teacher does not read
from a cirriculum but interacts with the student and makes decisions
dynamically, whereas a textbook does not respond to you. The teachings are
not meant to be memorized and internalized (one doesnt just say, ok all
things are true yet they are false, or develope a framework around it to
explain it because then they just internalize the conflict). The student is
seeking the moon, the teacher sticks out his finger (the words of the
teachings) and the student looks at the finger puzzledly untill he realizes
that the finger is not the moon, but the teacher is infact pointing to it. "
Glen replies:
Perhaps you should be trying to implement something (although perhaps not
Castaneda's path)? I think seeking dynamic experiences brings a lot of joy
to life. Our world has some quite exciting and interesting possibilities.
Meditation is great if that's your thing, but there are many paths to the
top of the mountain.
>Elliot wrote:
"(how do you view words? as truth or as tools for pointing to the truth?
honestly?)"
Glen replies:
Language is an intellectual pattern that is useful for communicating with
others. It is the best system in my experience for this purpose.
Describing a chair to someone else who had never seen a chair might allow
the individual to imagine how one might function and be constructed but
a description cannot provide the experience of sitting in one. I might
illustrate this with a quote;
"Sex was like the movie Aliens. Everyone told me how good it was, but
it was much much better."
- Ed on Northern Exposure
>Elliot wrote:
"Lastly, static patterns are nessicary for life (which is itself a static
pattern), i admit this. Although liberation from them is the highest goal,
if we want to live we must submit to them atleast in part. I say however
that many hold concepts to be reality rather than tools for grasping at it,
and this is a hinderance to liberation. "
Glen replies:
Perhaps the MoQ might phrase this as; Improving your pattern is the way to
liberation.
Smiles,
Glen
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