Friends,
I wish to illustrate some relations between the ideas laid out in Ken
Wilber's "Up From Eden: A Transpersonal View of Human Evolution" (Shambala
1983), and Robert Pirsig's "Metaphysics of Quality".
THE PERENNIAL PHILOSOPHY
-"Nothing can stay long removed from God, nor long divorced from that
Ground of Being outside of which nothing exists, and history...as a
movement of human consciousness - is the story of men and women's love
affair with the Divine. On again, off again; loving and loathing; moving
toward and recoiling from - history as the sport and play of Brahman."
Isn't this a beautiful depiction of the Hindu concept of "lila"?
-"Unfortunately, the orthodox Western conception of God is not simply as a
psychological Other (separated from us by unconsciousness) or a temporal
Other (separated from us by time), or an epistemological Other (separated
from us by ignorance). Rather, Jehovah - God of Abraham and Father of
Jesus - is an ontological Other, separated from us by nature, forever...God
and man are forever divorced - they are not, as in Hinduism and Buddhism,
ultimately one and identical..."
-"But there is a much more sophisticated view of the relation of humanity
and Divinity...Known in general as the "perennial philosophy" (a name coined
by Leibniz), it forms the esoteric core of Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism,
Sufism, and Christian mysticism, as well as being embraced, in whole or
part, by individual intellects ranging from Spinoza to Albert Einstein,
Schopenhauer to Jung, William James to Plato..."
Aldous Huxley wrote an anthology called "The Perrenial Philosophy". It is
excellent.
-"The essence of the perennial philosophy can be put simply: it is true that
there is some sort of Infinite, some type of Absolute Godhead, but it
cannot properly be conceived as a colossal Being, a great Daddy, or a big
Creator set apart from its creations, from things and events and human
beings themselves. Rather, it is best conceived (metaphorically) as the
ground or suchness or condition of all things and events. It is not a Big
Thing set apart from finite things, but rather the reality or suchness or
ground of all things..."
Quality.
-"In that sense, the perennial philosophy declares that the absolute is One,
Whole and Undivided - very like what Whitehead called "the seamless coat of
the universe." But note that "seamless" deos not mean "featureless." That
is, to say that Reality is One is not to say that separate things and events
don't exist...the Ultimate is a seamless whole, an integral Oneness, that
underlies but includes all multiplicity. The Ultimate is prior to this
world, but not other to this world, as the ocean is prior to its waves but
not set apart from them."
A nice way of explaining the relationship of Dynamic Quality (the One
Ultimate) to static patterns of value (this world), yes? Hear the waving
echoes, Rog?
-"...the 'religion' of the perennial philosophy is quite different from
salvation. Since the Ultimate is here pictured as an integral Wholeness, the
aim of this type of religion is not to be saved but to discover that
wholeness. And thus, to find oneself whole as well. Albert Einstein:
'A human being is a part of the whole, called by us 'Universe'; a
part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and
feelings as something separated from the rest - a kind of optical delusion
of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting
us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us.
Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison.'"
"...the mythos (subject/object logic) is insane..."
-"If only the notion of God can explain history, and if God is not A Big
Person, but the Suchness and Wholeness of all that is, then history is not
the story of the unfolding of a pact between man and God, but the story of
the unfolding of the relationship between man and the ultimate Whole. Since
this Wholeness is contiguous with consciousness itself, we can also say that
history is the unfolding of various structures of human consciousness."
Or, history is a continuous evolution of "better experiences" - i.e. "more
Dynamic Quality Events" - greater levels of freely conscious value
judgements.
-"...not only are we moving toward that Wholeness, we also emerged from it,
and paradoxically, in its embrace we always remain."
"...nothing has/dominates Quality. Quality has you."
-"History is the narrative of man's relationship to his own deepest Nature,
played out in time, but grounded in eternity."
THE GREAT CHAIN OF BEING
-"According to the perennial philosophy, this path of transcendence follows
what is called the 'Great Chain of Being,' which is said to be a universal
sequence of hierarchic levels of increasing consciouness...(it) moves, to
use Western terms, from matter to body to mind to soul to spirit."
8: Ultimate
(Svabhavikakaya, absolute)
SUPERCONSCIOUS ::Spirit
(trans-personal) 7: Causal
(Dharmakaya, sagely)
6: Subtle
(Sambhogakaya, saintly)
::Soul
5: Psychic
(Nirmanakaya, shamanistic)
SELF-CONSCIOUS
(personal) 4: Advanced mind
(rational, mental-egoic, self-reflective)
3: Early mind
(verbal, mythical, membership, bicameral)
2: Body
(highest bodily life forms, typhonic, magical)
SUB-CONSCIOUS
(pre-personal) 1: Nature
(lower life forms, material, uroboric-reptilian)
--------------------------------------------------------------
THE GROUND UNCONSCIOUS
Inorganic to biological to social to intellectual...and into ,aum, the
mystic...
-"...at all stages of human history, certain highly advanced individuals
managed to evolve considerably beyond their fellows and into aspects of the
highter realms themselves (the superconscious realms). These were the
prophets, the saints, the sages, the shamans, the souls who, as the growing
tip of human consciousness, discovered the higher levels of being through
an expansion and precocious evoltution of their own consciousness."
And let's not forget the brujos, who simply do what "is best"...they know
not why...
-"Thus I will trace two parallel strands of evolution as they actually
ocurred historically: that of the average level of consciousness, and that
of the most advanced level of consciousness. "Therefore the former, we will
see, was an evolution of average experience and awareness, moving from level
1 to 4, while the latter was a correlative evolution of advanced,
growing-tip, or 'religious' experience, moving from level 5 to 8."
A play between static and Dynamic, yin and yang, exoteric and esoteric,
better and worse perceptions of value...
THE ATMAN PROJECT
-"The basic Nature of human beings, then, is an ultimate Wholeness (level
7/8). This is eternally and timelessly so - that is, true from the
beginning, true to the end, and most importantly, true right now, moment to
moment to moment. This ever-present and ultimate Wholeness, as it appears
in men and women, we call Atman (after the Hindus), or Buddha Nature, or
Tao, or Spirit, or Consciousness (superconsciousness), or less frequently
(because of its loaded connotations) God."
Or Quality, after Phaedrus.
-"Because Atman is an integral Whole, outside of which nothing exists, it
embraces all space and time, and is itself therefore spaceless and timeless,
infinte and eternal. Infinity does not, for the perennial philosophy, mean
Extremely Big - it means that spaceless ground which underlies and includes
time and space, much as a mirror underlies but embraces all its reflected
objects. Likewise, eternity does not mean a Very Long Time - it means that
timeless ground which underlies and includes all time."
The tao that can be spoken of is not the true tao... Quality when defined
has not the best value...
-"Liberation does not mean giong on forever and forever and forever in some
sort of a gold-embossed heaven. It means a direct and immediate apprehension
of the spaceless and timeless Ground of Being."
-"Seeing that self and other are one, he is released from the fear of life;
seeing that being and non-being are one, he is delivered from the fear of
death."
Seeing that both good and bad have (are) Quality, she has the gumption to
slay platypi...
-"Wholeness is not the opposite of egoic individuality, it is simply its
Ground, and the discovery of the ground does not annihilate the figure of
the ego. On the contrary, it simply reconnects it with the rest of nature,
cosmos, and divinity... With this realization, one does not gain everlasting
life in time, but discovers that which is prior to time."
"The pre-intellectual(socio-egoic) cutting edge of reality"
Romantic understanding has its own theoretics. Classic understanding has its
own esthetics.
-"Now according to the perennial philosophy, the rediscovery of this
infinite and eternal Wholeness is man's single greatest need and want. For
not only is Atman the basic nature of all souls, each person knows or
intuits that this is so."
Life can be explained as a migration of (Quality Experience) away from
static patterns of value...evolving ever more Dynamic Consciousness
(Qualitative Experiential Eventuality).
-"...But, at the the same time, he is terrified of real transcendence,
because transcendence entails the 'death' of his isolated and separate-self
sense. Because he won't let go of and die to his separate self, he cannot
find true and real transcendence, he cannot find that larger fulfillment in
integral Wholeness. Holding on to himself, he shuts out Atman; grasping only
his own ego, he denies the rest of the All."
Lecture notes for "Gumption Traps 101".
-"Because man wants real transcendence above all else, but because he will
not accept the necessary death of his separate-self sense, he goes about
seeking transcendence in ways that actually prevent it and force symbolic
substitutes. And these substitutes come in all varieties: sex, food, money,
fame, knowledge, power - all are ultimately substitute gratifications,
simple substitutes for true release in Wholeness. This is why human desire
is insatiable, why all joys yearn for infinity - all a person wants is
Atman; all he finds are symbolic substitutes for it."
All we want is Dynamic Experience... yet so tightly we cling to static
patterns of value (life-ways/mythos')...
-"Even an individual's feeling of being a separate, isolated, and individual
self is a mere substitute for one's true Nature, a substitute for the
transcendent Self of the ultimate Whole. Every individual correctly intuits
that he is of one nature with Atman, but he distorts that intuition by
applying it to his separated self. He feels his separate self is immortal,
central to the cosmos, all-significant. That is, he substitutes his ego for
Atman."
"...there is no "self", no autonomous little homunculus sitting behind the
eyeballs, directing..."
"The average man seeks to make himself the center of the universe. The
cosmos of the sage is at his center." (?)
-"Then, instead of finding timeless wholeness, he merely substitutes the
wish to live forever; instead of being one with the cosmos, he substititues
the desire to possess the cosmos; instead of being one with God, he tries
himself to play God."
-"This attempt to regain Atman consciousness in ways that prevent it and
force symbolic substitutes - this I call the Atman project. It is the
impossible desire that the individual self be immortal, cosmocentric, and
all-important, but based on the correct intuition that one's real Nature is
indeed infinite and eternal. Not that his deepest nature is already God,
timeless and eternal, but that his ego should be God, immortal,
cosmocentric, death-defying, and all-powerful - that is the Atman project.
And there is either Atman, or there is the Atman project."
"If you construct an encyclopedia of four topics - Inorganic, Biological,
Social, and Intellectual - nothing is left out. No 'thing,' that is. Only
Dynamic Quality, which cannot be described in any encyclopedia, is absent."
-"The Atman project, then, is both a compensation for the apparent (i.e.
ultimately illusory) lack of Atman and a drive to recapture it
(consciously). We need only remember those two points: the Atman project is
a substitute for Atman, but it also contains a drive to recapture Atman.
And, as I will try to show, it is ultimately the Atman project which moves
history, moves evolution, and moves the individual psyche. And only when the
Atman project comes to an end does true Atman consciousness stand forth.
That is also the end of history, the end of alienation, and the resurrection
of the superconscious All."
The Supremacy of the Way of Purely Dynamically Free Quality-Conscious
Experience.
Rich
______________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com
MOQ Online Homepage - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archive - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
Unsubscribe - http://www.moq.org/md/index.html
MD Queries - horse@wasted.demon.nl
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sat Aug 17 2002 - 16:03:09 BST