John et al,
Let me try to clarify. I am using "metaphysics" in two ways. One is
"written metaphysics", as in LILA, and in these posts. The other I'll
call "lived metaphysics", which consists of the core patterns that
determine how we interpret our experience, or even stronger, that
determine our experience to some unclear extent.
It seems to that your quotes from Almaas are consistent with my
position. What he doesn't say (at least in these quotes) is that the
words and knowledge he is criticising are SOM words and knowledge.
Which is what you too are doing. The SOM error with respect to the word
"metaphysics" is to understand it is a describing (naming) of a reality
that exists independently of our naming. To say that this naming
activity is what deadens our experience is a metaphysical idea that I
fully agree with. Post-SOM metaphysics STARTS with that idea. It turns
"naming" from a constricting to a creative activity.
Our lived metaphysics is (with mystical exceptions) lived SOM, and our
normal intellectual level is SOT. LILA is written MOQ, but it uses SOT.
What I write, and what Almaas writes, as well as my "pet authors", also
uses SOT, since that is the only kind of writing we can read. But what
is written points out the errors of written SOM, and therefore the
errors of lived SOM. In other words, by reading and thinking about these
things, even though that reading and thinking is SOT, it points us to a
lived MOQ (or other post-SOM). A lived MOQ, for instance would be one in
which Quality is obvious in all moments, not just when sitting on a
hot stove. The deadness that Almaas writes about is a feature of lived
SOM. Kuhlewind, by the way, uses the same word -- dead -- to describe
our normal thinking and perceiving.
What he does NOT do, and Almaas seems to do, and you do, is say: throw
away your words and thereby recapture immediate experience. If you do
that, you are ignoring the social problem, that the mass of humanity is
stuck in lived SOM, and we need written post-SOM metaphysics to
evangelize, so to speak. You are also ignoring the personal problem,
which is to be fully conscious of the contradictions of SOM, both
written and lived. The more one deconstructs SOM, the more aware we are
of the obstacles to lived post-SOM, and the more likely we are to
overcome them.
For example, your use of the phrase "immediate experience". Experience
of what? Isn't the "of what" a hidden SOM obstacle? Merrell-Wolff says
that his Realization came when he realized that in his meditation he was
continuing to expect experience of a very subtle object, and was able
(being well-trained in meditation by that time) to cease that
expectation, and in that moment awaken. The result requires that the
word "experience" be kept in scare quotes, since in our lived SOM we
can't avoid that "of what" when we read the word "experience".
You say: "It seems to me that S/O thinking is not altered by ideas about
alternatives, but only through experience of alternatives. Hence a
discipline, a praxis, which can reconnect us with the immediacy of
experience is needed."
I argue instead that the more we think those alternative ideas the more
we make ourselves open to the alternative experience. Isn't that, in
essence, what Almaas is saying: that our ideas are what structure our
reality, so change the ideas to help along that restructuring? Faith
seeking understanding, in other words.
You also say: "I take issue with your statement that "the Ideas filter
through our egos to produce both our thoughts and our perceptions, and
our SOM mistake is to think of the former as our productions and the
latter as not our productions". This appears to be where we disagree
fundamentally."
How do you disagree? Just to forestall the obvious, one shouldn't
interpret the word Idea (with a capital I) as being like one of our
ideas (like the one being expressed in this sentence). Instead it is a
living spiritual being/becoming, which is to say it is nothing that we
can experience with the ego. The ego can only experience the dead ideas
and percepts that Ideas produce in us. Knowing this (or rather, taking
it on reasoned faith), is a help to overcoming the egoic obstacle.
"Experiencing" the Ideas directly is to BE them (what Merrell-Wolff
calls "Knowledge through Identity", precisely what you mean by
"immediate experience").It is Knowing ("experiencing") the production of
our percepts, and so being perfectly aware of their intrinsic DQ.
The "filtering of the Ideas through the ego" has the consequence that DQ
is filtered out. Isn't this what Almaas is saying, that our lived SOM is
what causes that constriction of reality? All Kuhlewind is adding is
that that reality are the Ideas, and he and Merrell-Wolff have
"experientially" confirmed it. You can consider them deluded (or lying),
of course, but I think in doing that you would be constricting your
possibilities.
So there isn't any fundamental difference between what Almaas and
Kuhlewind are saying, but I think (based on your quotes) that Almaas and
you have unnecessarily restricted the words "mind", "intellect", and
"words" to SOM mind, intellect and words. We need post-SOM written
metaphysics to train us to use these words in a post-SOM way, one where
the SOM effect (the deadening) doesn't occur.
- Scott
John Beasley wrote:
> Hullo Scott, Wim, Platt, Bo,
>
> Scott, I am interested in a few things in your most recent post to Bo.
>
> I agree with you that Pirsig largely ignored consciousness, and therefore
> his metaphysics is incomplete.
>
> You say "SOL language cannot, in fact, describe perception". I think this is
> quite true. Perception is unified, while language and intellect
> discriminate.
>
> You mention Kant's "the macroscopic world is a product of our perception".
> This seems to me almost true, and I will get back to this point.
>
> In one sense I agree that "one needs to live the metaphysics, i.e., go
> through the discipline to arrive at transcendence of S/O". It seems to me
> that S/O thinking is not altered by ideas about alternatives, but only
> through experience of alternatives. Hence a discipline, a praxis, which can
> reconnect us with the immediacy of experience is needed. Sometimes,
> particularly in near-death experiences, an experience is powerful enough to
> shake the whole mental construct, and in rare cases, such as with John
> Wren-Lewis, is sufficient to catapult a person into a mystic way of being.
>
> I would like to comment more on your statement that "One of SOM's
> mistakes is to think that what we treat as the objective is not a set of
> concepts, but a non-thinking reality". In doing this, I take issue with your
> statement that "the Ideas filter through our egos to produce both our
> thoughts
> and our perceptions, and our SOM mistake is to think of the former as our
> productions and the latter as not our productions". This appears to be where
> we disagree fundamentally.
>
> And this leads to your criticism of my position, in which you say "SOM is,
> more or less, how we find ourselves, but the MOQ is something we have to
> achieve on our own. This is why I object to John B. when he says we should
> drop metaphysics and concentrate on "immediate experience". Such experience
> is the gaol, but it requires changing one's metaphysics".
>
> Since I am no mystic myself, I am forced to quote others in defence of my
> position. I am currently re-reading A.H. Almaas's book 'Indestructible
> Innocence', where he deals with some of these issues from the mystic
> perspective. In an essay entitled "Our Knowledge is the World We Live" he
> explores our 'knowledge' of the world, how it influences us, and how we
> might escape from its corruption of experience.
>
> Almaas (Hameed Ali) begins by looking at how the human infant becomes aware
> of itself and the world, and believes that it knows that world. Even as
> adults exploring spirituality, when it seems the world has taken on more
> dimensions, "basically the world you live in remains the same".(p 215) "Even
> when we learn about ourselves psychologically, although we believe we have
> gained in knowledge, the kind of knowledge we have gained is simply seeing
> new connections in the world that we already know". (p 218) "The categories
> never change, we just see different relationships between them". (p 221)
> "The world that you're learning about is nothing but words added to your
> mind". (p 228)
>
> He goes on "So we are seeing that the elements of the world don't exist in
> the way we assume they do - they exist only because we discriminate them
> from other things. As separate things, they don't really exist. This is a
> tricky point." (p 231) "In the process of conceptualizing and naming the
> world, we forget that these elements didn't exist for us until we
> differentiated them, separated them, isolated them, and named them. We don't
> remember what happened before that, because there wasn't enough conceptual
> capacity to remember things before that. What we remember is the notions we
> have developed. We cannot remember things that had no concepts associated
> with them ... What we call our world is nothing but the content of our
> knowledge. And our world becomes as fixed as the content of our knowledge
> ... It's no longer a fresh world ... Your world becomes more narrow, and
> increasing complexity is further narrowing, adding to the rigidity of the
> world you inhabit." (pp 232 - 233) "As the weaving of our concepts becomes
> thicker and denser, so the fabric of our world becomes even more set, which
> gives us a firmer sense of security. At the same time, we lose the dynamic
> quality of who we are, and of what the world is." (p 233)
>
> So we have lost "dynamic quality", which we experienced pre-verbally in
> infancy. He goes on "The more we make the world concrete, the more dead our
> world is, and the more dead we become. But we usually don't think of
> spiritual freedom as confronting what we call our world, or our minds. We
> think of it as something that will happen within that world. We don't
> confront the whole question of what this world is. We don't confront the
> most obvious thing. We want to find some mysterious something that brings us
> freshness, freedom, a sense of dynamism, not realizing that the dynamism is
> right here. We have deadened the world by giving everything a name and
> believing that the name is the ultimate truth". (p 235)
>
> This is why I find a metaphysics a fundamental error - it is just more of
> the same. Naming.
>
> He takes an interesting look at art, without naming it as such, when he says
> "When we realise that different cultures conceptualize things differently,
> we might begin to confront and challenge our assumption that our known world
> is the actual world ... When we first see a Japanese garden, for example,
> our perception is that it is alive and fresh ... But the more you see it,
> the more you get used to it; you end up seeing not the actual garden but 'a
> Japanese garden', and after a while, it's just rocks over there. So a new
> arrangement of things can bring us some aliveness and freshness because it
> jiggles our minds a little ... after a while, however, it becomes stale and
> uninteresting ... it is the same with philosophy, with religion, with
> science." (p 237)
>
> Pirsig would probably agree with the staleness; the hangover, as he calls
> it. This fits my experience well enough to convince me, unlike Platt, that
> art is not the answer. It's just jiggling our minds a little.
>
> In exploring the reality beyond mind, beyond metaphysics, Almaas suggests we
> must confront "all the concepts that have evolved, all the various
> combinations of ideas, the physical knowledge, social knowledge, religious
> knowledge, [which] have become the world which is our knowledge." "At this
> level the Work is not a matter of exotic experiences, but of seeing the
> reality of the things we already know ... To see through the concepts that
> have calcified our minds and our perceptions is to see reality freshly,
> immediately, to see it the way it is, not the way our minds have defined it.
> At the beginning, this might sound like an intellectual exploration, but
> actually we are confronting the intellectual". "Penetrating the mental world
> is not easy". (p 238)
>
> If there is a motto that I would want to adopt in this forum at present, it
> would be "confronting the intellectual". It is the fundamental error of a
> metaphysics, and particularly one like the MOQ which places intellect at
> some pinnacle of static patterns of value. It is no coincidence, I think,
> that Bo and others find the dynamic fearful. It fits with the words quoted
> above; "As the weaving of our concepts becomes thicker and denser, so the
> fabric of our world becomes even more set, which gives us a firmer sense of
> security. At the same time, we lose the dynamic quality of who we are, and
> of what the world is." The security of a metaphysics is the very antithesis
> of the dynamic quality which supposedly the MOQ promotes. This, I repeat, is
> a fundamental error.
>
> It is also the fundamental error of postmodernism. From within a tapestry of
> words it makes sense to reach the assumption that you support, Scott, when
> you assume that "the Ideas filter through our egos to produce both our
> thoughts and our perceptions". But I argue that it simply is not so. Our
> perceptions, by which I mean our ability to "see reality freshly,
> immediately, to see it the way it is, not the way our minds have defined
> it", these precede our ideas and our thoughts. I see Pirsig as saying just
> this. The perception of the hot stove IS reality. Pols argues in his book
> 'Radical Realism', which is a sustained critique of the postmodern morass,
> that what is required is "a restorative access to reality".(p 41) This is
> what the mystics claim is available, not through ever more thought and ever
> more clever metaphysics, but through directly challenging all that mental
> 'knowledge'. The whole approach is wrong. It really does give us the thirty
> thousand page menu and no food.
>
> Confronting the intellectual. Of course it can't be done in words. I'll let
> Almaas put it his way. "In a sense, what we are talking about is something
> that cannot be talked about. How can you talk about something if you don't
> use concepts? ... We have tried to live according to those concepts ... what
> will happen if we don't do it that way? What will happen if our knowing is
> one hundred percent spontaneous?" (p 240)
>
> John B
>
>
>
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