Hi David,
Thanks for your post. Your grasp of Wilber and Pirsig is impressive. I feel
I am floundering in your wake a bit here, but will try to get my mind around
it all.
The topic arose from a comment by Marco, where he said "when we start
talking about something we can't experience we are actually experiencing
it".
My point was that "talking about something" has a different quality to the
immediate experience of something. It is a distanced experience, as I tried
to indicate when I said "much of our lives is lived, perhaps tragically, in
our minds, where memories of past experience, codified in language, are used
to reflect on
the past or guide our actions in the future. While there is undoubtedly
'value' in this ability, and our culture rests upon it, this is second order
experience. It makes sense to ask about such knowledge, "Is it true?" "
You have made the valid point that "When we talk about the difference
between intellectual pattterns and direct mystical experience we're talking
about the differences between static and Dynamic Quality. As I understand
it, it is wrong to dismiss or underestimate the importance of either. These
are not mutually exclusive forces, but are two sides of a single coin." You
go on to make clear the advantages of static latching, and I have no problem
with this. There is instrumental value in this.
Further, you have said "rejection of subjects and objects as the ultimate
metaphysical bedrock of reality is NOT the same thing as rejecting the very
existence of subjects and objects. Subjects and objects do not disappear
from the world in the MOQ or in the mystic's understanding. They simply
become transparent. We see through them. We see the emptiness of those
forms". Good. I like your 'transparent' analogy.
You go on to quote Wilber thus "Spirit manifests as all four quadrants, And
we aren't supposed to simply evaporate those quadrants - they are the
radiant glory of Spirit's manifestation. But we are supposed to see through
them to their Source, their suchness". Again, good.
You say "I think that both Pirsig and Wilber take the view that its a big
mistake to think that mystics are somehow exempt from morality and
responsibility, that they can just disengage from the world and rise above
it all. As Pirsig says, "everything, not just life, is an ethical activity.
It is nothing else". Now you are touching on my concerns that I have raised
in more recent posts, and in my most recent essay on the Forum.
You then quote Wilber again, where he says "in the Nondual traditions, you
take a vow, a very sacred vow, which is the foundation of all of your
training, and the vow is that YOU WILL NOT DISAPPEAR INTO CESSATION " Here I
have problems. For a start, probably a minority of mystics take any such
vow. And so what, if they do, for if the vow is taken at the start of their
training, it is taken, if you like, in ignorance. I find it very odd that
Wilber has to resort to such a strange device to underpin his view that
mystic apprehension and moral involvement in the world are indivisible.
Someone like John Wren-Lewis, whose mystic experience seems undoubted, would
also, I am sure, object to this. He was thrust into mystic experience in a
near death experience, and made no vows, nor needed to.
In myth, you say, "The hero who fails to return has failed completely".
Perhaps, though I don't recall this ever featuring in myth. True, many myths
do have a quest and a return, but I find that a less than satisfactory
argument. You go on to concede "it does seem that the mystic is often
endowed with a kind of morality that is beyond conventional social codes,
but that's only because her moral development has surpassed the need for
such exterior values". "Morality is like that too. At the mystical level it
flows out of your being naturally and requires no instruction or coersion".
Exactly, and this is where I argue that as I read the mystics the single
criterion of moral value common to almost all is immediacy. The locus of
value for the mystic is in immediate experience, and while the words used to
describe this vary, the core remains immediacy. My further argument is that
it is precisely words and theories that prevent our awareness of the
immediate. Words and theories are not just necessary static latches for
experience, that allow us to make use of that experience: the intrusion of
past experience, codified in words and ideas, is what actively blocks our
attending to what is happening now, and so perverts the 'integral morality'
that arises through attending to the moment. This is the core of my issue.
I quite agree with your comments on the Hippie brand of Zen, and noted in a
previous post that this is an example of Pirsig using the "pre-trans"
argument of Wilber.
Then you move on to the reconciliation of science and religion, again
quoting Wilber. "What seems to be missing in most of the attempts to
integrate science and religion is a deep discussion of its political
dimensions ... Modern science was an integral part of this differentiated
worldspace, in which those freedoms,
values and rights arose, and thus to talk genuinely and deeply of the
integration of science and religion is to talk, sooner or later, of
politics." So far, so good.
But from that you make a rather large claim "These static patterns need to
be transparent as much as lower level patterns do, and if they grow stale
and die they can become a hinderance and a prison. But for the most part,
they're still quite fresh. They're still speading and there is plenty of
reason to think that they need to be defended against reactionary forces."
"Quite fresh" in terms of world history - yes. Immediate - no. These static
patterns are the very impediment to mystic intuition of truth. They are not
given in experience. In terms of eastern mysticism, they are part of the
very division of the world, the making of comparisons, that create
suffering.
You again quote Wilber who says "spiritual or transrational awareness
accepts the general tenets of rational political liberalism (not prerational
mythic reactionism), but then, within those freedoms, pursues spiritual
Enlightenment in its own case; and through the powers of advocacy and
example, encourages others to use their liberal freeedom - the
Enlightenment of the West - in order to persue spiritual freedom - the
Enlightenment of the East." I have no problem with this as a statement of
how the process operates. I agree with Wilber that one does not just jump
from some primitive form of morality into the mystic realm, that one
proceeds through a holarchy, and that the enlightenment of the East is
further up the holarchy than the enlightenment of the West.
You conclude "Calm down. Dig in. Do some static latching. But for God's
sake, don't drop out. There is no contradiction between spirituality and
political activism. Quite the contrary. There's no contradiction between
moral outrage and Enlightenment. Quite the contrary." I don't see that this
follows.
I shall try to summarise my feeling for the issue.
The immediate experience of quality is intrinsically moral. Conventional
morality, though, is couched in language and understood in terms of ideas
and ideology. Wilber charts the developmental path of moral emergence in
human beings as a holarchy, in which each stage is a development from the
previous one, but transcends and includes it, while already containing the
seeds of its own inadequacy, which will in time demand a further transition
to a new and more inclusive holon. The lower dimensions of moral development
can be adequately described in language, or cast in the form of ideas (or
ideals). In terms of Pirsig's hierarchy, these levels of moral development
are able to be held within the intellectual level.
In practice, this means that while for each person the experiences that lead
to
moral development are dynamic, they can be usefully captured in static
formulations to guide future behaviour. But there comes a point when the
intellect and the language it operates with become a hindrance to the next
stage of moral development. At this stage the moral imperative is to regain
contact with what is immediate in experience. And at this stage language and
ideas become the major barrier to such contact.
What is expereinced can still be put in words, and understood by anyone who
has also reached this level, but the actual contact with 'truth' is hindered
by language, which attempts to label and separate what is indivisible, and
ideas, which serve to bring the past into the present, to predict or control
the future. But as the Gestalt theorists saw clearly, the mind can attend to
only one thing at a time. If I am attending to ideas, I am not free to
attend to immediate experience. Obviously, we all shuttle back and forth
between different realms of meaning, and this is fine. A mystic uses static
quality every time he catches a bus, but you do not achieve the 'integral
morality' of the mystic through static devices. To the contrary, the reason
why mystic experience is so rare is that this quite normal attribute of each
of us has been swamped by words and concepts, and to regain it is therefore
for most people a long and difficult process of undoing our previous ways of
operating in the world. Only when this process is well developed do words
and concepts, and not just subjects and objects, become transparent. Sure,
the Bodhisattva vow, or the return to the world of the ox-herding pictures,
is real, but is at a yet higher stage of development. It is not for nothing
that in most cultures mystic development is associated with a withdrawal
from ordinary life.
I'll leave it there. But I would like your response to my conclusion to an
earlier post, where I said
"The world is full of suffering. I can make an effort here, patch up
something there, but the impact is minimal. The mystic alternative seems
selfish at first. Attend to my own salvation. Yet without this I labour in
vain, since my action flows from judgment that is bound up with my egoic
development, and ultimately flows from childhood trauma and my bondage to
patterns established then. Only liberation within can free me to act morally
in the world."
Regards,
John B
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