What follows was composed as a response to the discussion of self and soul in the MOQ in
the LS forum, but rejected as being off the topic. I am sufficiently intrigued by Julian Jaynes
exploration of the emergence of the notion of soul in Greek thought, which pushes back
Pirsig's own exploration of the roots of SOM, and links this to the development of
consciousness of self, to place this in the alternative forum rather than attempt to rewrite it:-
Following David, Bo and Robert's input to this month's topic I would like to make a few
tentative responses.
David first. Given that your high quality input into the MD discussion over the past month or
so is all that has kept me from unsubscribing, I feel slightly saddened that we appear to be at
odds here. Perhaps this is a matter of clarification. Certainly I liked your use of the word
'psyche' for soul. The history of this term is interesting. In the Iliad (composed about 1200 BC
and written about 900 BC) psyche refers predominantly to life substances such as blood or
breath, which a well aimed spear can remove from the person to leave the 'soma', or corpse.
There is no sense of the ending of a life span, though, and certainly "no one in any way ever
sees, decides, thinks, knows, fears, or remembers anything in his psyche." (Julian Jaynes
'The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind' p 289)
The movement to the use of psyche as a container for the soul is not at all clear, though its
primary usage is always for life. Even in the New Testament, "the good shepherd giveth his
'psyche' [= life] for his sheep." Pythagoras probably picked up the idea of the 'transmigration
of the soul' in Egypt, where the 'ba' was viewed as the physical embodiment (often in the
form of a bird) of the 'ka', the hallucinated voice which remains after death. Greek at that time
had no word for a 'life' which could be transferred from one body to another, and so 'psyche'
was pressed into service. The scenes in the Odyssey where dead souls guzzle blood to
regain their strength seem derived from this Pythagorean usage, as is the almost certainly
late insertion of a ghostly visitation into Book 23 of the Iliad.
The change from psyche meaning life, to psyche meaning what survives after death and its
separability from the body, seems to spring from this coming together of Pythagorean
teaching with the older Greek view of death. So where 'soma' represented the dead body,
stripped of its 'psyche', the new usage of 'psyche' as soul leads to the first division of what
we now call dualism, where the separation of soul and body has begun. (the SOM emerges).
The other interesting development in Greek thought about 500BC is the merging of the
meanings of 'psyche' and 'nous' (derived from the word 'to see', it comes to mean perception
itself.) "The great majority of the terms we use to describe our conscious lives are visual. We
'see' with the mind's 'eye' solutions which may be 'brilliant' or 'obscure', and so on." Vision
offers a spatial quality "that is the very ground and fabric of consciousness." (Jaynes, p 269)
(For those born blind, the image would seem to be of spaciousness.) In the Odyssey
(composed in association with a cult that developed by 800BC) we have a very different
world to that of the Iliad, one where self consciousness and deception abound, and it can
even be argued that the whole highly patterned legend is itself a metaphor for the emergence
of self. It only remains to be said that following these changes in the usage and meaning of
words allows us to grasp something of the emergence of ways of understanding ourselves
that remain part of our present day 'mythos'.
I look forward to hearing more from Bo on how we escape the quandry of becoming "leaves
in a MOQ storm" - I love the metaphor. However I must take issue with his words "official
MOQ teaching". I simply can't subscribe to any top down imposition of dogma, MOQ or
otherwise. I value Pirsig's ideas very highly or I wouldn't be involved here, but I put my own
experience and reflection ahead of any official line. For sure I will often be wrong, or
misguided, but the alternative is unthinkable. Following gurus is rightly criticised by my
favourite mystics, who include the two Krishnamurtis and John Wren-Lewis. Lacking their
experiences I can only report their views in this case.
I think that you are right to stress the word "unity" in discussing consciousness, though it is
currently fashionable to suppose that our minds are a jumble of voices, not unlike a town-
meeting, with no one in charge. This I think is an over-reaction to a too precious view of our
selves as entities.
I don't think I was around when you originally raised the SOLAQI idea. Is there any chance of
a brief resume of your concept here? I can accept that "soul and self are intellect's creations"
in the sense that intellect is a prerequisite for their emergence, but to say they are 'only'
intellect would in my view be equivalent to saying a professor of chemistry is only atoms, or a
novel in a computer is only a collection of data bits. Perhaps you aren't saying this... I'm
confused.
Robert comes very close to my concerns and while I don't remember his earlier proposal for
a metaphysics dividing reality into experiential quality and attentive self, it seems a good
debating point for me. Both terms are extremely slippery, though, and I guess we can only
grapple with what is beyond language and concepts through the media of language and
concepts that must embody any metaphysics. A good metaphor could be worth a thousand
words here.
I do like your point, Robert, that "the 'Self" IS the unity of our experiences". It's pretty
abstract, but I think worth hanging onto. That unity is itself worthy of note, and stands apart
from the actual experience. It also seems to me that without a self there is no way of
explaining the emergence of static quality, particularly when we look at the highest level of
intellectual static quality, and at that other form of quality which says some books, paintings
etc are better than others.
John B
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