From: David Buchanan (DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org)
Date: Mon Dec 02 2002 - 02:43:25 GMT
Mari and all:
Mari asked:
So what exactly IS "mystical experience"?
peyote? near death experience? out of body experience? prayer? meditation?
other? God?
DMB says:
Huge question. Many books have been written. Basically, it is a direct
experience of the divine. It can be triggered by many things including
peyote, NDEs, OBEs, meditation or even spontaneously.
Mari asked:
Did Pirsig or Phaedrus have the peyote experience in Lila?
DMB says:
No doubt about it. He describes the experience at length in the book and
even goes so far as to say he once thought of using the experience as the
spine of the book. He also explains that his conception of the MOQ was
pretty much born during the ceremony.
Mari asked:
Is it possible to write/talk (with authority) about "ME" if one has never
had one?
DMB says:
Is is possible to speak of parenthood without ever having any children? Is
it possible to speak authoritatively of love without ever having been in
love? Not likely.
Mari said:
On page 45 in Lila Pheadrus says: " Most of the rest of the whole tray of
slips, many more than a thousand of them before him here, was a >direct<
growth from this one original insight" ( i take this to mean that
everything was effected by "insight" and that the insight happened as a
result of his partisipation in the ceremony)
DMB says:
That's right.
Mari said:
On page 42 Pheadrus says: "He couldn't figure out what it was. Was the
peyote just making him sentimental? Sentimentality is a narrowing of
experience to the emotionally familiar. But this was something new opening
up. There was a contradiction here. It was something new opening up that
gave the sentimental feeling one might get from his childhood home when he
sees a tree he once climbed or swing he used to play on. A feeling of coming
home. Coming home to some place one had never been before" (how can one come
'home' to a place one has never been before? what is "home") (does metaphor
allow one to "see" things in ways that otherwise may not be see-able?) ( are
there some things that can only be "seen" "understood" via metaphor )
DMB says:
Metaphor? Yea. definately. That's about the best way to get at it.
John Denver says:
He was born in the summer of his twenty-seventh year
Coming home to a place he'd never been before
He left yesterday behind him
you might say he was born again
you might say he found a key to every door
when he fiirst came to the mountains
his life was far away
on the road and hanging by a song
...now his life is full of wonder
but his heart still knows some fear
of the simple things he can not comprehend
and they say he got crazy once
and tried to touch the sun
and he lost a friend but kept the memory
but the string's already broken
and he doesn't really care
it keeps changing fast and it don't last for long
its a Colorado Rocky Mountain high
I've seen it raining fire in the sky
the shadows from the starliggt are softer than a lullabye
he climbed cathedral montains
he saw silver clouds below
saw everything as far as you can see
now he walks in quiet solitude
the forests and the stream
seeking grace in every step he takes
his sight is turned inside himself
to try and understand
the serenity of a clear blue mountain lake
you can talk to god and listen to the casual reply
Rocky Mountain high, Colorado
On Page 41 Pheadrus says:
"The physical distance to that teepee from the highway was about two hundred
yards, but cultrally the distance bridged with Dusenberry that night was
more like thousands of years. PHEADRUS COULDN'T HAVE GONE THE DISTANCE
WITHOUT THE PEYOTE" He would have just sat there "observing" all this
"objectively" like a well trained anthropology student. But the peyote
prevented that. He didn't observe, he partisipated exactly as Dusenberry had
intended we should do"
(what does it mean that he "couldn't have gone the distance without the
peyote"?) ( if he just "observed" "objectively" then he would have been
employing SOM (IMO) but being "prevented" from doing that by the peyote
opened him up to and allowed him to experience/practice/partisipate in MoQ
is my interpretation)
DMB says:
That's right. He was a swimmer, not a lifeguard.
Mari said:
Starting with ZMM i thought that Pirsig had had extra-ordinary experiences
in his life that seeped through into the story. What exactly those
experiences were i wasn't sure but in the 70's when i first read ZMM i just
assumed that he had taken drugs, probably LSD. Has Pirsig ever admitted to
experimentation with drugs? i don't know. Whether or not it matters is up
for discussion.
DMB says:
Peyote and LSD have very similar effects and both of them very often trigger
a mystical experience. There are many, many substances known to work this
way. The peyote ceremony occured before he wrote ZAMM too. Anyway, Pirsig
certainly admits to having taken "drugs" insofar as peyote is a drug. Its on
the list of banned substances right along with LSD, entheogenic mushrooms
and a whole lot of other spiritual tools. There are some good books on this
too.
Thanks.
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archive - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net
To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Mon Dec 02 2002 - 02:43:52 GMT