From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Thu Aug 12 2004 - 16:04:51 BST
Hi Ham,
Before proceeding further with your philosophy I'd like to get your
response to some things I find questionable in your assertions below.
You wrote:
> Platt, I don't think it is possible to expunge "duality" from the
> experienced world,
> and I don't believe the Professor has done it.
Like Pirsig, I believe it is possible to expunge duality from the
experienced world so long as one doesn't find it necessary to
intellectualize that experience. What comes immediately to mind is the
aesthetic experience which is complete nondual as it is experienced. Only
in describing the experience does duality become necessary. Pirsig agrees:
"Quality is indivisible, undefinable and unknowable in the sense that
there is a knower and a known, but a metaphysics can be none of these
things. A metaphysics must be divisible, definable, and knowable, or there
isn't any metaphysics. Since a metaphysics is essentially a kind of
dialectical definition and since Quality is essentially outside
definition, this means that a "Metaphysics of Quality" is essentially a
contradiction in terms, a logical absurdity." (Lila, 5)
He goes on, as you know, to equate experience with Quality, finding it
"indivisible, undefinable and unknowable.".
> He has stated (probably in
> the Magritte paper) that Quality is the primary "empirical reality" of the
> world. I'm saying that Value is the essence of "man's reality", which is
> the same thing. Note, however, that neither of us has said that "empirical
> reality" or "man's reality" is the Ultimate Reality.
In the MOQ there are no differences in the following: Experience, Quality,
Value, Reality. But there is a distinction between those synonyms and
"man's reality." As soon as you introduce "man" you introduce the duality
of man and not man. Pirsig's reality of Quality comes prior to that
duality. Also, Pirsig has said that Quality is the ultimate reality:
"But if Quality or excellence is seen as the ultimate reality then it
becomes possible for more than one set of truths to exist." (Lila, 8)
> I don't know if
> Pirsig believes in the Ultimate Reality (Essence); but I do know that in
> order to have "experience" you must have both an observer (subject) and an
> object, and they must have a progenitor.
Not according to Pirsig. Your "must have" only applies when you get
involved in thinking or talking about direct experience.
> (I'm sure the Professor wouldn't
> deny that.)
I'm sure he would because he wrote: .
"Quality is a direct experience independent of and prior to intellectual
abstractions." (Lila, 5)
> Finite existence is a polarized system (as you'll see later in
> my thesis) in which sensibility [conscious awareness in man] confronts
> "otherness" and turns it into experience. There is no way around this.
Pirsig seems to get around it fairly easily. In the MOQ, experience
(Quality) comes before the duality of man and otherness.
> We
> can rail against this fact of nature -- call it an SOM, an SOB, (whatever)
> -- but the duality is always there. If you can't accept the duality, you
> are forced to conclude that it is an illusion whose ultimate source is a
> transcendent Essence.
Disagree. The duality is not "always there." In meditation one can have
the experience of non-duality by silencing the chattering mind. I get it
by contemplating great art.
> That's not a "belief system", Platt; it's pure logic!
Experience comes prior to logic. That's logic!
I look forward to your comments.
Best,
Platt
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