Roger,
Many thanks for your posts which I find quite reassuring. I'm not discouraged by the clash of
ideologies and I've learnt a lot.
Your do know how to ask the hard questions. I'm not sure I can do justice to them. It seems
we are dealing with core issues here, and I struggle to grasp the issues, let alone put them
clearly.
You ask "Would you go so far as to agree that "Quality is the experience"?"
No, I don't. Otherwise I would scrap the word 'quality' and just use 'experience'. But when I
try to disentangle the two it all sounds phony. "Quality is what you see out of the corner of
your eye." (Zen Ch 28) Can I start with your comments to Bodvar, which I thought were spot
on, especially with thinking being a form of experience, and your comment to me that
"thinking is the experience that creates all the levels, and the thinker to boot. In this light, it is
the same Quality."
I would suggest that the infant experiences without thinking, but certainly with quality.
Animals also can experience, and discern quality. They don't think, so far as we can tell, so
don't lie awake at nights wondering about subjects and objects. What thinking does is take
the raw material of experience, and using the already static forms of words, concepts, and so
on, extract significance from the experience. So in itself thinking seems very much a second
order activity. In this it is little different to memory - a static trace of a once dynamic
experience. However as you have noted, thinking can also be dynamic. I see this most
clearly in the "Aha" experience. For now I use Krishnamurti's distinction between thought and
intelligence even though I am not quite comfortable with this. For him, intelligence is
something encountered, and it is clearly dynamic. Whereas he constantly treated the mind
and thought as burdens, as barriers to understanding and enlightenment, because they are
always static, being derived from past experience, so tending to prevent contact with present
experience.
My interest in Gestalt therapy leads me to recognise that experience comes in many forms,
some of which are toxic. Projection is the big example. If there is something I loathe or fear in
myself, almost invariably I manage to project it onto others, whom I then fear or loathe in turn.
(It can be positive too; most of what we 'respond' to when we fall in love is projected.) While
we all know people who do this, we are often oblivious to the extent that we do this
ourselves. Fritz Perls, at the end of a long life working with people, suggested that about
90% of what we 'think' we experience is actually projection. I'm inclined to think he is right.
To take an imaginary example. I meet a man who reminds me of my Father, who used to beat
me as a child. The resemblance may be very slight, the way he holds his mouth, or the way
he stands, or a certain rumble in his voice, but instinctively I feel dislike, perhaps, or fear, or
some other emotion that is inappropriate to the situation. If he starts to talk I shall probably
disagree with what he says. In time, if my contact is extended enough with this person, I may
come to 'see' the real person, and discover that he is not the fearful father of my first
encounter. The experience I had initially was largely projection, but sustained contact may
allow for a different experience to emerge. Nevertheless, the initial fear was real, even if
misplaced. Technically, the experience was fantasy. Something real triggered my fear, but it
was my projection which misplaced the fear, and attached it to the stranger. Using therapy to
develop awareness of what is happening, the fantasy can be dealt with, and I am freed to
contact what is there in reality.
What shall we say of the quality of this experience? The fear was real, the threat imaginary.
The dislike was unearned. To turn to your second question "Would you agree that 'you' are
derived from the encounter?", it seems just as relevant to say that 'you' created the
encounter. This raises the issue of whether there are differences betweeen the directness of
an encounter with what 'is', and the phoniness of encounter with one's own fantasies. I think
there is, and Pirsig seems to be going along with this when "He singled out aspects of
Quality such as unity, vividness, authority, economy, sensitivity, clarity, emphasis, flow,
suspense, brilliance, precision, proportion, depth, and so on." (Zen Ch 17) These are almost
identical to the words used by Paul Goodman to describe 'contact'. Dynamic quality resides
in contactful experience! Not all experience is contactful, inded most is fantasy, derived from
our own projections, and built on our static categories of memory and thinking (as in 'thinking
about', not 'Aha' contact).
I haven't time now to even attempt to take up your other questions, but perhaps this
excursion into the Gestalt field will help clarify some of the issues.
I'll be interested in your comments.
John B
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