Dear John B.,
You wrote 11/9 22:51 +1000
'Either consciousness strikes you as fundamentally "given", and hence in a
way powerfully inexplicable, or you end up as Wim did trying to sort out
what behavioral patterns would equate with consciousness.'
Couldn't consciousness be BOTH something experienced as fundamentally
"given" AND something worth analyzing to find what aspect of it exactly is
"given" and which aspects are explainable (like 'consciousness' in Bo's
sense of 'not sleeping')?
Compare: couldn't mysticism be something BOTH transcending SOT by
abstraction AND transcending SOT by attending to immediate experience?
If you see the value of two options (as you write), why not invent a
position combining both, even if no-one you read did so? If necessary you
can always employ 'logic of contradictory identity' (-:
Regarding the question where the Dynamic is to be found, please see my 12/9
23:45 +0200 post to Scott in which I argue that DQ CAN be found in immediate
experience prior to distinguishing different levels of static quality, but
that a more worthwhile way of searching for it may be to first concentrate
on and then to let go of the highest quality intellectual patterns we know.
Regarding 'passion', for me that only comes mainly into play when I am
applying my abstract ideas to social issues, when the suffering of real
people is at issue. Sorting out
'consciousness/experience/value/Quality/reality' is for me a way of
developing intellectual tools to deal with such issues.
I indeed do not feel staleness in my intellectual life, because I experience
my life to be much more than just intellectual. I guess Gestalt enables you
too to experience more than intellect, if the little I know of it is true.
Why do you still feel trapped in intellect and want to 'escape' it to (a
one-sided type of) mysticism?
With friendly greetings,
Wim
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