ROGER IS HAUNTED BY THE SPECTER OF REAL GHOSTS
(Warning! This post may be genuinely frightening
to closet materialists)
Hey Platt and David B.
PLATT:
I'm looking forward to your summary of "Flow" (from the
book of the same name by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi I presume),
which emphasizes "quality of life" and how to achieve it. This sounds
like the sort of practical, down to earth "everyday Quality" viewpoint
that I'm trying to attain without having to inject drugs, meditate for
years, be born again or face near death. :-)
ROGER:
I started some sketchy ideas on the LS forum a few weeks ago. My only post
for the month (keeping within the theme of this post, the LS has turned out
to be a regular ghost town -- rumor has it the denizens were strangled).
ROG PREVIOUS:
I believe it would be more accurate to say that I believe DQ (or
Direct Experience) is Base Reality, and that David believes that
there is a base reality other than DQ and Direct Experience.
PLATT:
And here I've been laboring under the impression all along that
Quality (or Direct Experience) was Base Reality and that Quality or
Direct Experience included both DQ and static Quality--the first cut.
Wonder where I got that idea. Hmmm. Looks like I have to come
down on David's side after all.
ROGER NOW:
Silly, silly boy. Sq does not get counted as Direct Experience. SQ is
derived from DE in the Quality Event. I of course agree that sq is essential
to reality as we know it. In fact it is reality as we know it! But reality
as we know it is "ghosts". The base reality is preconceptual DQ. Check my
posts for numerous quotes of Mr. P saying exactly this. Here are two new
ones from ZMM.......
PIRSIG ON 'GHOSTS':
"It's completely natural," I say, "to think of Europeans who
believed in ghosts or Indians who believed in ghosts as ignorant. The
scientific point of view has wiped out every other view to a point where
they all seem primitive, so that if a person today talks about ghosts or
spirits he is considered ignorant or maybe nutty. It's just all but
completely impossible to imagine a world where ghosts can actually exist."
John nods affirmatively and I continue.
"My own opinion is that the intellect of modern man isn't that
superior. IQs aren't that much different. Those Indians and medieval men
were just as intelligent as we are, but the context in which they thought
was completely different. Within that context of thought, ghosts and spirits
are quite as real as atoms, particles, photons and quants are to a modern
man. In that sense I believe in ghosts. Modern man has his ghosts and
spirits too, you know."
"What?"
"Oh, the laws of physics and of logic... the number system... the
principle of algebraic substitution. These are ghosts. We just believe in
them so thoroughly they seem real."
"They seem real to me," John says.
"I don't get it," says Chris.
So I go on. "For example, it seems completely natural to presume
that gravitation and the law of gravitation existed before Isaac Newton. It
would sound nutty to think that until the seventeenth century there was no
gravity."
"Of course."
"So when did this law start? Has it always existed?"
John is frowning, wondering what I am getting at.
"What I'm driving at," I say, "is the notion that before the
beginning of the earth, before the sun and the stars were formed, before the
primal generation of anything, the law of gravity existed."
"Sure."
"Sitting there, having no mass of its own, no energy of its own, not
in anyone's mind because there wasn't anyone, not in space because there was
no space either, not anywhere -- this law of gravity still existed?"
Now John seems not so sure.
"If that law of gravity existed," I say,"I honestly don't know what
a thing has to do to be nonexistent. It seems to me that the law of gravity
has passed every single test of nonexistence there is. You cannot think of a
single attribute of nonexistence that law of gravity didn't have. Or a
single scientific attribute of existence that it did have. And yet it is
still 'common sense' to believe that it existed."
John says, "I guess I'd have to think about it."
"Well, I predict that if you think about it long enough you will
find yourself going round and round and round and round until you finally
reach only one possible, rational, intelligent conclusion. The law of
gravity and gravity itself did not exist before Isaac Newton. No other
conclusion makes sense.
"And what that means," I say before he can interrupt, "and what that
means is that that law of gravity exists nowhere except in people's heads!
It's a ghost! We are all of us very arrogant and conceited about running
down other people's ghosts but just as ignorant and barbaric and
superstitious about our own."
..."The problem, the contradiction the scientists are stuck with, is
that of mind. Mind has no matter or energy but they can't escape its
predominance over everything they do. Logic exists in the mind. Numbers
exist only in the mind. I don't get upset when scientists say that ghosts
exist in the mind. It's that only that gets me. Science is only in your mind
too, it's just that that doesn't make it bad. Or ghosts either."
AND LATER:
"Precision instruments are designed to achieve an idea, dimensional
precision, whose perfection is impossible. There is no perfectly shaped part
of the motorcycle and never will be, but when you come as close as these
instruments take you, remarkable things happen, and you go flying across the
countryside under a power that would be called magic if it were not so
completely rational in every way. It's the understanding of this rational
intellectual idea that's fundamental. John looks at the motorcycle and he
sees steel in various shapes and has negative feelngs about these steel
shapes and turns off the whole thing. I look at the shapes of the steel now
and I see ideas. He thinks I'm working on parts. I'm working on concepts.
...That's all the motorcycle is, a system of concepts worked out in
steel. There's no part in it, no shape in it, that is not out of someone's
mind... I've noticed that people who have never worked with steel have
trouble seeing this -- that the motorcycle is primarily a mental phenomenon.
They associate metal with given shapes -- pipes, rods and girders, tools,
parts -- all of them fixed and inviolable, and think of it as primarily
physical. But a person who does machining or foundry work or forge work or
welding sees 'steel' as having no shape at all. Steel can be any shape you
want if you are skilled enough, and any shape but the one you want if you
are not. Shapes, like this tappet, are what you arrive at, what you give to
the steel. Steel has no more shape than this old pile of dirt on the engine
here. These shapes are all out of someone's mind. That's important to see.
The steel? Hell, even the steel is out of someone's mind. There's no steel
in nature. Anyone from the Bronze Age could have told you that. All nature
has is a potential for steel. There's nothing else there. But what's
'potential'? That's also in someone's mind!... Ghosts."
Roger
PS -- David I agree this reads very solipsistic. Later RMP of course
introduces the Base of Romantic/DQ and clarifies that the mind and self
concepts are ghosts too. (Some of which are not yet dead).
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