Kevin, Roger and all would-be mystics:
I've found Kevin's ideas interesting and I have a lot of sympathy with
his views. But we don't come to the same conclusions very often. Wish
I'd been able to respond and played some role in the debate. Mysticism
is one of my favorite topics.
Mysticism is a set of intellectual patterns, just like any other ism.
But the actual mystical experience or mystical state in not intellectual
in nature. I like to say that mysticism is post-rational. It doesn't
reject logic of science so much as it goes beyond logic and science. Its
no accident that intelligent, rational people have a hard time accepting
mysticism unless they've actually had some kind of mystical experience.
As James says, the experience has a lot of "authority", but only for the
one who had the experience. Knowledge of it can only be attained
directly. Vicariousness doesn't do the trick when it comes to mysticism.
Naturally, anything I write about mysticism is only intellectual.
There's no better way, yet it isn't really up to the task. Please keep
in mind that metaphors are better that concepts when discussing mystical
experience. There is always a frustrating but necessary fuzziness to
idea around mysticism.
Mysticism is so famously difficult to talk about that the hero's journey
always ends with the hero's difficult return to normal life. His final
task is always to share the boon from the gods (mystical insight) but
has trouble convincing those who have not yet taken the journey. The
hero's journey appears in all cultures, at all stages of development and
so seems to be a universal truth. The hero's journey is a metaphor for
the psychological road we must all travel in order to be complete. you
know, Joseph Campbell and Carl Jung. Its a matter of spiritual growth
and mental health.
I read a book called "The Long Trip" by Paul Devareaux. He is an
ethnobotonist or a paleoanthrobotonist or a ethnopharmacologist or
something like that. He show that nearly every culture on earth has
employed some kind of mind altering substance, usually in a religious or
ritualistic way. Modern Westernernized humanity has been cut off from a
tradition as old and wide as civilization itself. Insanity is too
unreliable and so humans learned to create short-term madness by eating
or smoking certain plants and fungi. The whole question of LSD TRIPS and
the visions of saints is a false dilemma. They were always intertwined.
The same kinds of "truths" are percieved in either case. Both roads take
you to the same place. Seperate travelers can talk in common about the
mystical landscape. As Pirsig never bothers to make a distinction
between his mental breakdown and his night in the tee pee eating payote.
In terms of the MOQ, the mystical state in one in which all static
social and intellectual patterns fall away into the background. (Be a
dead man.) This shift is quite shocking and memorable in itself. As a
matter of everyday experience, those static patterns are literally all
we know. When they slip away it feels like you're losing your mind,
because you are losing your mind. Alan Watts used to say that we have to
lose our minds and come back to our senses. In MOQ terms one could say
we have to lose static patterns and come back to direct experience. As
William Blake said, "if the doors of perception were cleansed..."
Reality is normally mediated by these static patterns. They are
positioned between us and experience. Static social and intellectual
pattterns organize experience in a way that makes experience
intelligable. In the mystical state perception is unmediated and direct.
The primary empirical reality is percieved as it truly is. As William
Blake said, "...everything would appear to man as it truly is;
infinite." Unity, Eternity and Oneness describe this same infinity
Blake refers to. In MOQ terms one might say that the static patterns
become transparent to their underlying Quality. Since everything in the
universe is composed of Quality, it is reall all one thing. There is a
profound feeling that this was something you already knew, but forgot.
It is recognized more than learned. There is a sense that something has
been revealed or uncovered, but it was right there with you the whole
time.
There is no good reason to think that a fifth level may evolve in time.
But there is no good reason to think mysticism has anything to do with
it. The levels are all composed of static patterns, but the mystical
experience is outside of static patterns. It is dynamic experience
itself. Mysticism simply doesn't fit into any static level because it is
not a static thing. If a fifth level ever comes along, I suspect it
will take many thousands of years. Perhaps millions of years are needed
for such a task. It seems to me that the intellectual level is just an
infant. It was only born yesterday and I think a fully mature level is
required before the next can begin to evolve. Also there is the idea
that the very form and structure of the static patterns reflects their
evolutionary level. If a fifth level were to have evolved, so would the
bodies of the creatures who'd achieved it.
Mysticism is not an MOQ platypus. Radical Empiricism is one one the
labels we can rightly slap onto Pirsig's philosophy because he says
direct experience is the primary empirical reality. The MOQ says that
mystical insights are more real and valid than all intellectual
patterns. The MOQ says that unmediated experience is more real and valid
that even the finest intellectual patterns. Its not just the
experiences that can be scientifically verified or eaily talked about,
but all experience including madness and mystical states. In fact
intellectual patterns can prevent the perception of realities, as in the
case of auras and the halo light. The MOQ was undertaken as an attempt
to explain Pirsig's own madness and the mysticism of native Americans.
Mysiticism doesn't fit into any of the static levels, but it is at the
very heart of the MOQ. It is the primary empirical reality that shakes
us out of our slumber, that leads us out of the cave and away from the
shadows on the wall. The mystical insight is the best way to percieve DQ
itself.
David B
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