From: David Buchanan (DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org)
Date: Sun Dec 15 2002 - 21:16:32 GMT
Sam and all MOQers:
In various threads we've been discussing the difference between ritualistic
religion and mystical experience, the difference between static and Dynamic
Quality, the distinction between the third and fourth level perspectives,
between social and intellectual values. In spite of the fact that Zen and
the Art preceeds many of these terms, I've returned to it with these issues
in mind. Even though the static/Dynamic split had not yet been made, I think
we can look at ZAMM with our MOQ glasses on. I believe this not only makes
ZAMM more clear and specific, it also resolves some ambiguities. I hope to
get at all these issues by focusing in on mysticism as it relates to
Phaedrus, Plato and the Sophists. That is to say, I hope to show that they
each had slightly different notions of the "ONE", which is called DQ in MOQ
terms. Another very important thing that is going on with these three
figures is the birth of the intellectual level. This is another reason to
wear our MOQ glasses. Most of the quotes come from chapters 29 and 30, where
Phaedrus is attending philosophy classes and is about to go mad.
The beginning is a good place to start...
"One must first get over the idea that the time span between the last
caveman and the first Greek philosophers was short. The absence of any
history for this period sometimes gives this illusion. But before the Greek
philosophers arrived on the scene, for a period of at least five times all
our recorded history since the Greek philosophers, there existed
civiizations in an advanced state of development. They had villages and
cities,..and led a life quite as rich and varied as that in most rural areas
of the world today. And like people in those areas today they saw no reason
to write it down, or if they did, they wrote it on materials that have never
been found. Thus we know nothing about them." (335-6)
This pre-historic period was a time of myths and mythic thinking, when
ritual ruled, when the social level was not only evolving, but really
flowering. By the time of the Sophists many advanced civilizations and great
cities had come and gone. This third level evolution goes way, way back.
Historically, its true, we know nothing. But by looking at the mythos,
ancient myths, poetry and art, we can see it leading us out of the caves and
into the light. There are very ancient rituals that actually portray this.
It includes the lighting of a lamp or candle deep inside a completely
darkened cave, followed by a procession out of the cave behind one who holds
the light. The ritual procession then continues up to and through the city
and then finally up to the temple at the top of a hill. All their choices in
landscape and architecture was built to serve this ritual. It re-enacts
human evolution and demonstrates humanities spiritual aspirations. The myths
tell us a great deal about this period, a treasure chest of information,
which is why Pirsig recommends Campbell the mythologist. In Lila, Pirsig
takes us back into this period by way of Proto-Indo-European etymology. He
concludes that his MOQ is really a version of "the oldest idea known to
man"; that the physical order and the moral order are One and the same. He
says that he sees this idea in Great religions like Hindusim, but that it
was all smothered by clap trap and otherwise obscured from our
consciousness. This was all made obvious to him at the peyote ceremony. This
"oldest idea" is all but forgotten now, but in this prehistoric period signs
of the "One" were everywhere. This is the world that shaped the Sophists,
who were something like the height and the end of this age, the children who
inherited the fruits of this long evolutionary period. This period is what
shaped all the early Greeks and is still very much with us all even today.
"Dialectic, which is the parent of logic, came itself from rhetoric.
Rhetoric in turn is the child of the myths and poetry of ancient Greece.
That is true historically, and by the application of common sense. The
poetry and myths are the response of a prehistoric people to the universe
around them made on the basis of Quality. It is Quality, not dialectic,
which is the generator of everything we know." (ZAMM P354)
I don't wish to get bogged down in too much detail, I just want you to
notice what he's saying about myths here. He says they're "made on the basis
of Quality". Since he says in the same breath that Quality "is the generator
of everything we know", I think its safe to say that he's talking about
Dynamic Quality. Myths are natural, not made by hands. There is an
unconscious, organic quality to the way they are created. Just like in our
dreams, we seem to spin out stories whether we like it or not. They're gifts
from the Muses. Stories create people, not the other way around. This
explains their power. They made us what we are. The Greek myths can be seen
as the basic assumptions and worldview of the Sophists. And as Campbell
tells us, all myths say essentially the same thing and this core message is
also the core of the mystical vision. To paraphrase the mythologist, the
myths tell us that all things, all forms and all beings are issued forth out
of the ONE, that all things and beings are manifestations of, particular
inflections of some aspect of the ONE, that all things and beings are filled
and supported by the ONE during their period of manifestation, and that they
then all return to that source of being.
"Whatever nuance the language of union is given, if there is to be talk of
mysticism, some sort of deep union must be involved. It perhaps cannot be
emphasized enough that to speak of mysticism is to speak of an EXPERIENCE of
union and not merely speculations about union." (Guidebook P27)
"Plato is the essential Buddha-seeker who appears again and again in each
generation, moving onward and upward toward the 'one'. Aristotle is the
eternal motorcycle mechanic who prefers the "many. I myself am pretty much
Aristotelian in this sense, preferring to find the Buddha in the quality of
the facts around me, but Phaedrus was clearly a Platonist by temperment and
when the classes shifted to Plato he was greatly relieved. His Quality and
Plato's Good were so similar that if it hadn't been for some notes Phaedrus
left I might have thought they were identical." (331-2)
Phaedrus' Good and Plato's Good are not exactly the same. Why are they not
identical? This is surely the most interesting question raised here and
we'll get to it soon enough. But notice how it provides a key to the
difference between Platonic Phaedrus and the Aristotelian narrator. We even
see it framed in terms of finding the Buddha, either in the One or in the
many. With our MOQ glasses on, I think we can see that the One is DQ and the
many is static quality. And in this we can see the core mythical/mystical
vision, that the many is a manifestation of the ONE, that all sq is created
by DQ. Also this Platonic Buddha-seeker appears in every generation because
static quality needs to constantly be informed, evolved and refreshed by
Dynamic Quality in an eternal dance. Now back to that question about the
'Good'.
"The difference was that Plato's Good was a fixed and eternal and unmoving
idea, whereas for the rhetoricians it was not an idea at all. The Good was
not a form of reality. It was reality itself, ever changing, and ultimately
unknowable in any kind of fixed, rigid way. " (P342)
Using the MOQ's terms this difference is easily identified. Plato's Good is
a static intellectual description. For the rhetoricians, the Good was the
One, was dynamic reality itself. They were so close because they both were
refering to the ONE, but Plato was trying to nail down this same Dynamic
thing in a static way. The fact that this move also represents a shift from
the third to the fourth level of values adds to the complexity of all this,
but I think we can still see it.
"Now Plato's hatred of the Sophists makes sense. He and Socrates are
defending the Immortal Principle of the Cosmologists against what they
consider to be the decadence of the Sophists. Truth. Knowledge. That which
is independent of what anyone thinks about it. The ideal that Socrates died
for. The ideal that Greece alone possesses for the first time in the history
of the world. It is a very fragile thing. It can disappear completely. Plato
abhors and damns the Sophists without restraint ...because they threaten
mankind's first beginning grasp of the idea of truth. That's what it is all
about. The results...are nothing less than the whole world of Western man as
we know it." (P337-8)
The Sophists didn't have any Immortal Principles like the Cosmologists, who
were forever fighting about which Principle was the truely Immortal One, but
Plato sythesized then and everything that had come before. He installed the
Sophists' conception of arete, of the Good, as the Immortal Principle in his
own cosmology. Plato tried to capture the One is a static intellectual
pattern, not to kill it off, but to preserve it.
"Plato HADN'T tried to destroy ARETE. He had ENCAPSULATED it: made a
permanent fixed idea of of it; he had CONVERTED it to a rigid, immobile
Immortal Truth. ... That was why the Quality Phaedrus had arrived at in the
classroom had seemed so close to Plato's Good. Plato's Good was TAKEN from
the rhetoricians. (P342)
Pirsig's MOQ does the same thing - almost. He provides an intellectual
description of Dynamic Quality, but not quite a definition. Unlike Plato, he
insists some things can never be encapsulated in this way and admits that
such efforts to pin it down are degenerate activities. But there's something
about the 'Good" that attracts Phaedrus. That's what drives him. That's why
he's so frustrated by materialism, the system, subject-object dualism and
the Aristotelian Professors. It all defies his mystical inclination, his
inclinations toward DQ, toward the One. He's very close to the Sophists
because they really lived it and he's nearly identical to Plato because it
is a philosophical mysticism. He can see the One in both.
"Philosophical mysticism, the idea that truth is indefinable and can be
apprehended only by non-rational means, has been with us since the beginning
of history." (ZAMM P 207)
"The One can only be described allegorically, through the use of analogy,
of figures of imagination and speech." (ZAMM P349)
When the Chairman has taken over the class and they are reading the Socratic
dialogue titled "Phaedrus". As the Chairman speaks, he notices that a "false
note has crept in". The tension is high and things are coming to a boil when
he notices that "the Chairman has completely bypassed Socrates' description
of the One and has jumped ahead" to the allegorical horses that lead us to
the One. He's taking it too literally and insisting that this is not an
allegory, but the "truth". Even though Plato was writing about the One
specifically, and the Chairman was a major league dude, he was apparently
obvilious to it. And I was oblivious to this whole dimension of Pirsig's
work the first time I read it too. Like the Chairman, I missed it like it
wasn't even there. Mysticism is like that. It is pretty much at this point
that Phaedrus begins to loose his mind and he never returns to class after
that day.
"I want to say, in brief, that the ultimate journey taken by Phaedrus and
described by the narrator was the MYSTICAL self, ... Mysticism is always
associated with some sort of unitive consciousness, a consciousness
experientially united with ultimate reality." (Guidebook P26)
"At the moment of pure Quality, subject and object are identical" (ZAMM P25)
I'm sure that depictions of this unitive consciousness are everywhere to be
found in Christianity. At-one-ment. Conformed to God. Eating the flesh and
blood of Christ. The cross as Axis mundi. Being born again. The virgin
birth. These are all references to the union or the shift in consciousness
that results, no? Its all about the mystical experience and the ultimate
unitive reality that is revealed in such an experience. Its about the
underlying unity behind apparent dualities like static and dynamic, man and
God, the many and the One. It resolves them all, gives rise to them all.
This radical shift in consciousness is totally alien to the Aristotelian
view. Like a bad theology that blocks out the light, the intellectual level
descriptions can obscure this ancient wisdom too. Its no accident that
Aquinas was an Aristotelain. Like Phaedrus, he had a life-altering
experience on the heels of an extented period of struggling with the
futility of grasping after the One by way of references and portrayals, by
way of static forms.
"Mystical experience is the base from which one lives in fuller union with
everything and everyone, doing what ordinary people do but with a radically
transformed and transforming consciousness." (Guidebook P27)
If the MOQ grew out of that peyote ceremony, then ZAMM get out of his
original mystical experience. Sure, he was locked up and hammered in the
head with electricity. It looked like insanity and maybe it was, but his
description of the central events are unmistakable. Its a mystical
experience.
"Then even "he" disappears and only the dream of himself remains with
himself in it. And the Quality, the arete he has fought so hard for, has
sacrificed for, has NEVER betrayed, but in all that time has never once
understood, now makes itself clear to him and his soul is at rest." (ZAMM
P359)
There is so much left unsaid and there are many unmentioned connections
between what has been said, but this is already too long. And I wish I had
some fancy concluding remarks, full of insights and profundities, but I
don't. Hopefully, dear reader, you can connect the dots and see the whole
picture. I've tried to show how the MOQ's distinction between static and
Dynamic resolves the tension between the single-minded mystical Platonists
and the many-minded materialist Aristotelians. I've tried to show that
social level myths and intellectual level metaphysics can both refer to the
ONE, that they both can portray the mystical knowledge revealed in a unitive
experience, and that either of them can grow too static and stale and become
oblivious to this perennial truth. As Pirsig puts it, Rta, the oldest idea,
the "cosmic order of things" is "a deeply submerged hidden root" of all
these static forms. That's why we started at the begining, in pre-historic
times.
"Long ago when he first explored the idea of Quality he'd reasoned that if
Quality were the primordial source of all our understanding then it followed
that the place to get the best view of it would be at the begining history
when it would have been less cluttered by the present deluge of static
intellectual patterns of knowledge. ... Philosophers usually present their
ideas as sprung from 'nature' or sometime from 'God', but Phadedrus thought
neither of these was completely accurate. The logical order of thing which
the philosophers study is derived from the 'mythos'. The mythos is the
social culture and the rhetoric which the culture must invent before
philosophy becomes possible. Most of this old religious talk is nonsense, of
course, but nonsense or not, it is the PARENT of our modern scientific talk.
This 'mythos over logos' thesis agree with the MOQ's assertion that
intellectual static patterns of quality are built up out of social static
patterns of quality." (Lila P 378)
How's that for a start?
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 16 2002 - 12:32:59 GMT