Hullo Rod,
A very interesting topic. I hate talking about my spirituality since the
word is so mired with 'airy-fairy' 'religious' connotations, on one side,
and mindless 'new age' associations on the other, that the moment it is used
it seems necessary to defend it by explaining that I don't mean either. This
seems to be something like your experience, too.
The problem is that there does not seem to be an acceptable alternative, at
least in English. While I see a large overlap between the realm of 'quality'
and the realm of spirituality, they are hardly synonyms. If anyone can come
up with an appropriate term and weave it into a story about Zen and such
like, there should be a small fortune to be made from it.
In very broad terms I see 'spiritual' as shorthand for the highest level of
quality I can encounter. This goes against a tendency in the MOQ to see
dynamic quality as homogeneous, and hence not something that can be
discriminated into higher and lower levels, but I have long argued that this
is simplistic. Dynamic quality operates differently at the different static
levels. For example, at the level of the biological organism, it is all
about finding food, shelter and mates, and avoiding predators and harmful
environments. These values are generally 'hard-wired' into the neural
systems of the organisms, including ourselves. And at this level Pirsig's
assumption that whatever is without quality, be that high or low value
quality, cannot be experienced, holds true. Our perceptual systems are
'quality-seeking' structures at this biological level. However, the fact
that I can attend to the capital H that begins this sentence is in my view
sufficient evidence that Pirsig's assumption is not valid at other levels.
I cannot agree that Pirsig's static quality hierarchy is so structured that
it includes everything in experience except dynamic quality. The categories
are not discrete. The 'social' level is then (in my opinion) something of a
pseudo level, dealing with moral quality, as is clearly the 'intellectual',
which has to cover the experience of quality in both art and science.
However as I discover the higher levels of morality, art and knowledge
(including scientific knowledge), I begin to sense that these are in some
way 'pointing' to a higher (or deeper, take your choice)reality that is very
different to the conventional view of our world, which is fundamentally
logical positivism. Wilber suggests that the three spheres of science,
morality and art refer to the general dimensions of 'it', of 'we' and of
'I'. In 'A Brief History of Everything' he suggests that as transformation
occurs in each of these dimensions, because Spirit manifests equally in
each, "then we can describe Spirit subjectively as one's own Buddha-mind -
the 'I' of Spirit, the Beauty. And we can describe Spirit objectively as
Dharma - the 'It' of Spirit, the ultimate Truth. And we can describe Spirit
culturally as Sangha - the 'We' of Spirit, the ultimate Good." (pp 133 -134)
Wilber's comments on Whitehead, which I have twice posted in this forum
without much response, seem very relevant to this issue. So I'll repeat the
core bit agian.
Whitehead "said that if you want to know the general principles of
existence, you must start at the top and use the highest occasions to
illumine the lowest, not the other way around, which of course is the common
reductionist reflex. So he said you could learn more about the world from
biology than you could from physics; and so he introduced the organismic
viewpoint which has revolutionized philosophy. And he said you could learn
more from social psychology than from biology, and then introduced the
notion of things being a society of occasions - the notion of compound
individuality. Naturally, he held that the apex of exemplary pattern was
God, and it was in God, the ultimate compound individual, that you would
ground any laws or patterns found reflected in reduced versions in the lower
dimensions of psychology, then biology, then physics. The idea, which was
brilliant in its statement, was that you first look to the higher levels for
the general principles of existence, and then, by subtraction, you see how
far down the hierarchy they extend. You don't start at the bottom and try to
move up by addition of the lower parts, because some of the higher parts
simply don't show up very well, or at all, on the lower rungs. Perhaps his
favourite examples were creativity and love - God, for Whitehead, was
especially love and creativity. But in the lower dimensions, the creativity
gets reduced, appearing in humans as a modicum of free will but being almost
entirely lost by the time you get to atomic particles... So Whitehead, by
looking to illuminate the lower by the higher, and not vice versa, could
make creativity the general principle, and then understand determinism as a
partial restriction or reduction of primary creativity. If, on the other
hand, you start at the bottom, then you have to figure out a way to get free
will and creativity out of rocks, and it just won't work."
If we take this approach of Whitehead's seriously, spirituality is my
experience of the highest levels of quality, which in turn illuminate all
other knowledge. Wilber also speaks of a Basic Moral Intuition, which he
states as "Protect and promote the greatest depth for the greatest span". He
believes that this is "the actual form of spiritual intuition". (op cit
p335)
If the mystics, as I understand them, are correct, then mysticism is closer
to science than to religion. Mystic knowledge is in principle not different
to, say, mathematical knowledge. Both are acquired and tested in similar
ways. Hence I would want to separate spirituality from religion. However
Wilber points out that the deeper or higher or more encompassing motivations
are not just lying around awaiting discovery through our senses or their
extensions - they require transformations in our consciousness or being. So
mystic truth is not just a matter of learning more facts, or even new ways
of thought, valuable though these may be. One of my arguments with much of
the 'spiritual' critique that goes on in this forum, including the judgment
that people are either MOQ or SOM 'thinkers', is that these seem to be
learned patterns that are not necessarily the outcome of a transformational
praxis. However I could be wrong about this. The experiential core of Bo's
SOLAQI concept may not be very different to mysticism, though he might
vehemently deny it.
After all this theoretical background, you asked for "each of your own views
on spirituality". Well, you have my views, but I suspect what you may have
also wanted was more of my experience. This is mainly non-mystic and hence
heavily influenced by prior learning, rather than immediate perception of
value, though my current process is an attempt to redress this balance.
Beauty is obviously important to my work as a sculptor. Like quality, it is
not to be defined. On the rare occasions when I perceive great beauty in a
work of art, or the natural world, I am greatly moved by it. I am also aware
that often my cultural background becomes a significant part of the
experience. The beauty arises from the perception of the object within the
framework by which I identify beauty. It is partly given, partly learned.
Truth also is undefinable. My 'inbuilt crap detector' is important as a
guide to truth, but it too is constructed from past experience. I find that
I am energised when my reading or speaking expands my understanding of 'what
is', particularly when previously unrelated or conflicting understandings
are brought together into a new harmony.
Moral good is something I experience intensely, especially in its absence,
as in injustice. I encounter a real paradox here with the mystic valuing of
immediacy and how this relates to matters of justice. I have not resolved
this issue which continues to plague me.
I'm sure you didn't expect this sort of response when you suggested this was
a 'lighter' topic.
Regards,
John B
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