From: John Beasley (beasley@austarnet.com.au)
Date: Sun Oct 06 2002 - 14:21:41 BST
Hi David,
DAVID: "This forum could venture into the practical affairs in today's
world, into current events and issues. Pirsig's idea of levels in conflict
could go along way toward exploring what is going on in the world. It could,
but the responses consistently miss the point, deny the Pirsigisms, avoid
the issues and otherwise trash the conversation. Sad. And frustrating."
But quite understandable, David, if we follow Wilber on the opacity of
higher levels to those below. I find it strange that quite obvious
intelligence can be so blind to the meaning of what you write, but we are
dealing with moral levels, not intellectual. I share your frustration that
there seems no way from the outside to lift the lid on the moral block - it
seems that it will be resolutely defended with all the power of available
intellect, and cannot be pushed. Whether it can be lured?
I would suggest that headway will not be made at the level of argument. This
is one reason I find the respect for intellect both in this forum and in
Pirsig's writing a barrier to further growth. The bit of Rorty I find
interesting is his analysis of how argument just gets stuck in people's
final vocabularies. This seems right to me. But how do we find concrete
situations in which the intellectual straight jacket can be seen and
explored? You say "the key is to bring tons of actual facts and knowledge to
it", and this might help, but I think does not go far enough. If I have
already condemned a terrorist to the status of germ, for example, I doubt
that his being a good chess player, or any other facts I could be shown,
would actually convince me otherwise. In fact I would go so far as to say
that the internet will never be able to cope with these issues while we
communicate in words, anyway. Perhaps at some non-verbal level progress is
possible. Buber thought so.
DAVID: "Hopefully, one can develop to a point that the intellectual quest is
no longer adequate, but it is supposed to be included even after it has been
transcended. As you can see, I'm suspicious of anti-intellectual attitudes
even from mystics."
Fair enough. I certainly can't argue against the value of the intellect,
given the time I'm spending here, but what I see as a problem is an
assumption that intellect leads to enlightenment, when I see that the path
to enlightenment, if such a thing makes sense, is actually more likely to be
blocked by the intellect than helped by it. Of course it can be included,
and transcended, as evidenced by the many mystics who write books.
But it is more subtle than that. If you have been following my debate with
Scott, it seems to hinge on defining where a mystic praxis might begin.
Scott seems to say that there is an 'intellectual' transformation when one
lets go of SOM for MOQ, which then transforms the intellectual level
itself. I strongly resist this notion, since it seems to me, and the more so
since I have been reading Ali's latest book on the inquiry process, that
this is a fatal delusion. The Buddhists actually have a term for it that I
cannot remember, but it is seen as one of the traps on the way to
enlightenment. Yet Scott is quite clear that 'knowing about' is not a
praxis, with which I totally agree. And of course Scott is right to point to
statements of mine and challenge them as dogma [SCOTT: "isn't your "language
gets in the way of immediate experience" a dogma? And isn't it dependent on
the SOM attitude toward language (nominalism, another dogma)?"] But then it
becomes impossible to say anything without those words being vulnerable to
such a charge, hence conversation stops.
You mention Watts and that "The ascetic tradition was basically about
dropping out of the culture to discipline the mind." I think this is not the
mystic tradition, though. It may be that the ascetic tradition is a good
precursor for the mystic.
Must go. It's late, and I'm beginning to get that hung-over feeling from too
much intellectualising.
Many thanks for your input. I value your comments.
Regards,
John B
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