Hullo again Marco,
Thanks for your ideas and the courteous way you express them. When you say
"Phew! It's not easy to face a mystic. :-)", I hope you are not seeing me as
a mystic. While I am certainly attracted to mysticism, I am also repelled by
some aspects of it, and simply confused about much of it. So in a sense I am
acting the Devil's Advocate here, putting what I believe is the mystic case,
not just to annoy others, but to explore the strengths and weaknesses of
that case, and to educate myself.
You challenge me as to whether I "achieve evidence without thought?"
Actually this is a tricky question, as evidence seems to presuppose thought,
so maybe I don't. It depends on what you mean by evidence. I would assume
all experience of dynamic quality is 'evidence' in some sense, without
thought. (Sitting on a hot stove is evidence of a low quality situation, for
example.) Introducing thought is moulding it into static quality; putting it
in words. I see Wilber's point being that structures of thought aren't
necessarily related to what 'is', however defined. Phlogiston theory was
widely used to explain burning for many years, until a more elegant chemical
theory displaced it. But in its time learned men used to debate with great
seriousness all aspects of phlogiston; the problem we see now is that
phlogiston just didn't exist. It was a word, and in that sense it had an
existence, a phoney one. Words can be phoney as well as real.
Do I suggest you stop thinking or investigating. Never! But be aware that
the most powerful learnings aren't always the result of thought or
investigation. I guess becoming a father could be one of those?? :-) I too
love to know, and draw my maps, and explore new territory. What the mystics
are doing, I think, is challenging the assumptions that lie below this sort
of activity. Assumptions such as some things (or people) are good, while
others are bad.
As to the reality of words and systems, your example of Europe is helpful.
Firstly, it's a matter of definition whether or not the Canaries are in
Europe. As you go on to say, each of us builds our own 'private Europe' in
our minds. Arguing pragmatically, though, you or I might well have ideas
about Europe that are able to be shown to be false. This is to argue that
our words and ideas are not totally fluid, and not totally whatever we
choose them to mean (the postmodern mistake). If this was not the case we
could never learn new words, which we all do. Your idea of Europe and my
idea of Europe will certainly differ in detail, and putting them together
will probably give a fuller picture of Europe than either alone, yet that
does not mean that we cannot be wrong. This is where Bohm's understanding of
intelligence, meaning to read between the lines, is so useful. Intelligence
is what leads us to see the need for a new word, for example, since what we
wish to discriminate is not easily put into existing words. So this
indicates that what is, is other than the words we have to describe it.
Words are more or less useful ways of pointing to what we discriminate.
Yes, the opinions people have about Europe will result in outcomes, like the
deplorable vote for Le Pen last week. But surely this confirms my point. The
concept of the EU, a greater European Union, means very different things to
different people. For one person it means greater efficiency in business and
travel, for another it means domination by 'outsiders', while for yet
another it means the opportunity to move beyond nation states and their
narrow interests. I do not see that putting all these and millions of other
ideas together then defines the EU. That would just be a confused mess, a
mass of contradictions. But the point I am making is that a term like EU is
not without ambiguity and as such its value is less immediate than the value
of actual experience.
You may not even be able to find a word to label your experience, yet it can
profoundly affect you. You can read thousands of words about a 'system' like
the EU and still be unsure of its value. But you will have no doubt about
the value of sitting on a hot stove. The mystic asserts that all our words
and systems are ultimately a bit like the EU, in that they are our
creations, our fantasies, while some things are real beyond dispute. Pirsig
calls this reality quality. I argue for a more complex analysis, but I
basically agree with him on this.
So I am surprised when you say
"The world we know... (pardon, experience :-) ) was not built by mystic
atoms, genes, families and ideas. It was built (just to simplify) step by
step by real genes upon real atoms; by real families upon real living
beings; by real ideas upon real societies. Experiencing is just being part
of the flow of interactions that is connecting all these "things"."
You seem to be saying that the world, the map we make of our experience, is
real, and experience is "just" part of the interaction between these real
things. This is not Pirsig's view, as I read him, and it is certainly not
mine. Experience is the dynamic fundamental reality. Atoms and such like are
the static quality derivatives from that experience that we use to talk
about our world. They are, as Pirsig says, high quality descriptions, but
they are not ultimate reality. The mystic asserts that ultimate reality is
one, unified, whole; which we then cut into bits and label with words. Our
words are one result of our attempt at making boundaries, and our using
these to describe and control our world. A pragmatist would argue that are
are valuable insofar as they are effective. But even our assessment of
effectiveness is tied up in the boundaries we have created, and the mind
sets that flow from these boundaries. The mystic argues that all words are
ultimately less than real. Of course they are useful. Just as the idea of
atoms is useful. But ask a physicist "What is an atom?" and you will not get
a description of 'reality', but a mathematical structure that works in
certain predictive ways very effectively, but leaves out the bits that are
most important to us. That is why so many of the greatest physicists of the
past century were 'mystics'. They clearly saw that the mathematics was not
'reality'. Or, in the old saying, 'the map is not the terrain'.
So I am saying your 'real reality', from which you can take bits to make a
'new reality', is technically a fantasy. The only reality that is not
fantasy is our immediate experience of 'quality'. The trouble with the realm
of the intellect is that the apparent quality of ideas etc is only as good
as the ideas. Like a computer; garbage in, garbage out. People have died for
ideas that most of us would now think crazy. These fantasies can get really
serious.
Sorry this has got so long. I would be interested in your response.
Regards,
John B
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