From: David Buchanan (DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org)
Date: Sat Nov 06 2004 - 22:21:19 GMT
Sam, the faithful (including Scott), and all MOQers:
"Some of the most honored philosophers in history have been mystics:
Plotinus, Swedenborg, Loyola, Shankaracharya and many others. They share a
common belief that the fundamental nature of reality is outside language;
that language splits things up into parts while the true nature of reality
is undivided. Zen, which is a mystic religion, argues that the illusion of
dividedness can be overcome by meditation. The Native American Church argues
that peyote can force feed a mystic undrstanding upon those who are normally
resistant to it, an understanding that Indians had been deriving through
Vision Quests in the past."
"Already in the 8th century B.C., in the Chhandogya Upanisad, the key word
wo such a meditation is announced; TAT TVAM ASI, "Thou art That", or "You
yourself are It!". The final sense of a relgion such as Hinduism or Buddhism
is to bring about in the individual an experience , one way or another, of
his owhn IDENTITY with that mystery that is the mystery of all being. ...it
is the mystery also of many of our own Occidental mystics; and many of thses
have been burned for having said as much. Westward of Iran, in all three of
the great traditions that have co e to us from the Near Eastern zone, namely
Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, such concepts are unthinkable and sheeer
heresy. God created the world. Cretor and creture cannot be the same, since,
as Aristotle tells us, A is not-A. Our theology, therefore, begins from the
point of view of wqking consciousness and Aristotelian logic; whereas, on
another level of consciousness - and this, the level to which all religions
must finally refer - the ultimate mystery transecnds the laws of dualistic
logic, causality and space-time. Anyone who says, as Jesus is reported to
have said (John10:30), 'I and the Father are One', is declared in our
tradition to have blasphemed. ...We in our traditon do not recognize the
possibility of such and experience of identity with the ground of one's own
being. What we accent, ratehr, is the achievement and maintenance of a
relationship to a personality concieved to be our Creator. In other words,
ours is a religion of RELATIONSHIP: a, the creature, RELATED to X, the
Creator (aRX). In the Orient, on the other hand, the appropriate formula
would be something more like the simple equation, a=X."
Sam Norton said to dmb:
It seems to me that the biggest obstacle to our having something like a
fruitful conversation is that on the one hand I see Christian mysticism and
Jamesian mysticism as two very different things, and you see the Jamesian
account as an overall description of all sorts of mysticism, including the
Christian one (which I think lies behind your assertion that you are a
Christian mystic. For a Jamesian that might make some sense, but for a
(traditional) Christian, it is nonsense). Are you able to step back from
your own 'tradition' and examine it dispassionately? Can you understand why
I
differ on this?
dmb says:
This explanation helps a little bit, but it feels like you're trying to back
me into a corner rather than genuinely trying to spot the crux of the
matter. Keeping in mind that "Jamesian" is a label you've slapped upon me,
not one I choose for myself. But basically yes, I think his list of
qualities pretty well describes a mystical experience. Wilber and other will
point out that there are serveral levels of mystical experience, but as a
very basic description, it'll do. But again, this is not what I had in mind
while making a case for philosophical mysticism, the perennial philosophy,
which is a much larger thing. The experience itself is at the center of it,
not unlike the way Pirsig's Lila has one as its center, but there much more
to it than that.
I think you've pin-pointed James as the source of this view, but its
actually much broader than than. Its a view made possible only at the
intellectual level, by an examination of widespread accounts. The writers
that excite me most are postmodern in the sense that they are rejecting
premodern tradition and modern materialism for philosophical mysticism. It
can't rightly be condemned for being a SOM thing because the central claim
is that all such dualities are illusory. (Much more about that below)
Sam said to dmb:
When you say above "Your arguments seems to be contrary to the mystical
experience and the insight it provides, that's why I asked. Its not about
authority or credentials, its about experience, first-hand experience" you
are implicitly drawing upon the Jamesian understandings that I reject. So
every time you try and put me into a Jamesian box I will come across as
'evasive' and 'intellectually dishonest' for the simple reason that I reject
the assumptions that you are making in our disagreement. I don't believe
there IS such a thing as THE mystical experience, and I think, specifically,
that a fixation on such experiences is exactly what the Christian tradition
of
mysticism is opposed to (as is the MoQ, so far as I understand it - I think
your perspective turns DQ into an object, very SOM). Now I could be wrong,
but I've not yet had any evidence that you're able to step outside of the
Jamesian framework and provide a higher Quality analysis. This - so it seems
to me - is the major reason why we are 'stuck'.
dmb says:
Thanks. That's almost a straight answer and almost helpful too. There is no
such thing as the mystical experience, eh? That is pretty much an admission
that you have not had one then, right? I mean, how could a person go through
such a thing and NOT believe it can happen? This is definately the source of
our disagreement. And the fact that the christian tradition is opposed to
this idea, is the saddest thing in the world. That exactly the problem.
That's what makes it dead. And its not that I want to put you a Jamesian
box, seems like that's what you're doing to me actually. You don't even have
to believe such a thing is possible, I just want you to use these terms as
Pirsig does for the simple reason that we are otherwise talking about two
entirely different things at the same time, which is confusing and
frustrating. This is not about "accepting assumptions". Its about
understanding the terms in the book we all have in common. Its just about
clarity.
Sam said:
...Pirsig is arguing that you get to DQ through high quality social and
intellectual rituals; in a Christian context, as I originally quoted, "'the
mystics' were not those who had particular states of consciousness, but
those who were able to elucidate the spiritual interpretation of a passage
of scripture, say, or who were faithful participants in the Eucharist".
dmb says:
See, this description of a mystic may be 100% correct in a different
context, but here it conveys almost exactly the opposite meaning. Sure,
Pirsig says DQ can be revealed to social level people by ritualistic
religion, but that these static portrayals usually grow too thick and BLOCK
out the DQ instead. And I have no doubt that this still works for some
people despite the layers of history and dogma. But even then, is it not the
GOAL to evoke a mystical experience through these rituals? That's what
Pirsig means when he says they are a static portrayal, they demonstate the
experience through metaphor, by analogy. Your description of a mystic
strikes me as entirely static, not dynamic at all. This is a source of
confusion here because Pirsig is never using the terms that way and neither
do any other philosophical mystics that I know of.
dmb had said:
You're all indignant like I've stolen your vocabulary, but this is the MOQ
forum and so I think you have to take responsibility for the confusion this
might cause. Its your baggage, not mine, that seems to be getting in the
way. I realize these kinds of terms originate in traditional christianity,
but that is not the context in which we are presently discussing them. We're
talking about faith, theism and mysticism in the context of what Pirsig
says. Let's agree on that, at least, ok?
Sam replied:
Actually, I'd rather not. I think mysticism isn't confined to what Pirsig
says, and as you're quite happy to quote Wilber, I suspect such a constraint
would hamper you more than me. But if I have to accept Pirsig as an oracle
in order to have a conversation with you we may as well stop this now!
dmb says:
AARRGGG! Honestly, you can be so damn think, so obtuse! I'm not asking you
to accept Pirsig's point of view or that Pirsig is the last word on the
topic, I'm just trying to be sure that we're talking about the same thing.
See, we are talking metaphysics here and as you well know, Pirsig is taking
in both East and West. Philosophical mysticism, by its very nature, is not
attached to any particular theology or dogma. Failure to recognize the
difference leads to lots of confusion. You'll disagee, but I think this is
fundamentally a difference between the social and intellectual levels. I
think this may be where you get the impression that I'm Jamesian, whereas it
is just that he and the philosophical mystics are both operating at the
intellectual level....
Sam said to dmb:
In following your Jamesian stance, you're *assuming* that all mystics are
similiar, and you therefore interpret the Christian mystics as supporters
for your case, when, if you would actually stop and look at one for once, you
might discover that they don't fit into the Jamesian pattern. ...you're the
one who claims (following William James) that Christian thinkers can be
bracketed with the non-theistic. I'm merely asking you to back up your claim
with some evidence. (Don't be put off by the request, you should be able to
find some evidence for the assertion - try Eckhart - I just think you can
only back up your claim if you already accept the Jamesian methodology, not
otherwise).
dmb says:
Um, I'm not sure if I understand your description of my stance, my
assumptions, my claims or my case, so it might be hard to back it up.
Instead, let me back up my own views as I understand them. I'll use quotes
from Pirsig and from those who seem to illuminate him on this topic.
(Mysticism) You may have seen some of them before, but see them again for
the first time.
Pirsig:
"Bradley's fundamental assertion is that the reality of the world is
intellectually unknowable, and that defines him as a mystic. So it has
really been a shock to see how close is the the MOQ. Both he and the MOQ are
expressing what Aldous Huxley called "The Perennial Philosophy", which is
perennial, I believe, because it happens to be true."
"THE PERENNIAL PHILOSOPHY (the term was made famous by Huxley but coined by
Leibniz) - the transcentental essence of the great religions - has as its
core the notion of 'nonduality', which means that reality is neither one nor
many, neither permanent nor dynamic, neither seperate nor unified, neither
pluralistic nor holistic. It is entirely and radically above and prior to
ANY form of conceptual elaboration. ..Sri Ramana Maharshi had a perfect
summary of the paradox of the ultimate:"
The world is illusory;
Brahman alone is real;
Brahman is the world.
"THE PERENNIAL PHILOSOPHY is the worldview that has been embraced by the
vast majority of the world's greatest spiritual teachers, philosophers,
thinkers, and even scientists. Its called 'perennial' or 'universal' because
it shows up in virtually all cultures across the globe and across the ages.
And wherever we find it, it has essentially similar features, it is in
essential agreement the world over. We moderns, who can hardly agree on
anything, find this rather hard to believe."
"To begin with the premodern or traditional sources, the easiest access to
their wisdom is through what has been called the perennial philosophy, or
the common core of the world's great spiritual traditions. As Huston Smith,
Arthur Lovejoy, Ananda Coomaraswamy, and other scholars of these traditions
have pointed out, the core of the perennial philosophy is the view that
reality is composed of various LEVELS OF EXISTENCE - levels of being and
knowing - ranging from matter to body to mind to soul to spirit. Each senior
dimension transcends but includes its juniors, so that this is a conception
of wholes within wholes within wholes indefinitely, reaching from dirt to
divinity." (Emphasis is Wilber's)
As Aldous Huxley puts it...
"In Vedanta and Hebrew prophecy, in the Tao Teh King and the Platonic
dialogues, in the Gospel according to St. John and Mahayana theology, in
Plotinus and the Areopagite, among the Persian Sufis and the Christian
mystics of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance--the Perennial Philosophy has
spoken almost all the languages of Asia and Europe and has made use of the
terminology and traditions of every one of the higher religions. But under
all this confusion of tongues and myths, of local histories and
particularist doctrines, there remains a Highest Common Factor, which is the
Perennial Philosophy in what may be called its chemically pure state. This
final purity can never, of course, be expressed by any verbal statement of
the philosophy, however undogmatic that statement may be, however
deliberately syncretistic. The very fact that it is set down at a certain
time by a certain writer, using this or that language, automatically imposes
a certain sociological and personal bias on the doctrines so formulated. It
is only the act of contemplation when words and even personality are
transcended, that the pure state of the Perennial Philosophy can actually be
known. The records left by those who have known it in this way make it
abundantly clear that all of them, whether Hindu, Buddhist, Hebrew, Taoist,
Christian, or Mohammedan, were attempting to describe the same essentially
indescribable Fact."
Pirsig:
"The MOQ does not rest on faith. In the MOQ faith is very low quality stuff,
a willingness to believe falsehoods."
"The selling out of intellectual truth to the social icons of organized
relgion is seen by the MOQ as an evil act."
In the MOQ "...the term "God" is completely dropped as a relic of an evil
social suppression of intellectual and Dynamic freedom. The MOQ is not just
atheistic in this regard. It is anti-theistic."
Wilber:
"Its no accident that wars fought in hole or part in the name of a
particular mythic Deity have historically killed more human beings that any
other intentional force on the planet. The enlightenment pointed out - quite
rightly- that religious claims hiding from evidence are not the voice of God
or Goddess, but merely the voice of men or women, who usually come with big
guns and bigger egos. Power, not truth, drives claims that hide from
evidence."
"For not all of us are philosophers. Many require an atmosphere of incense,
music, vestments and processions, gongs, bells, dramatic mimes and cries, to
be carried beyond themselves. And for such the various styles of relgiion
exist - where, for the most part, however, truth is so enveloped in symbol
as to be imperceptible to anyone who is not already a philosopher. Degrees
of initiation have been developed, through which the mind is meant to be
carried beyond the fields of the symbols to increasingly exalted
realizations - passing, as it were, through veil beyond veil. But the
ultimate realizations differ, according, on the one hand, to those cults in
which divinity is seen as at once immanent and transcendent, and on the
other to the orthodox Zoroastrian, Jewish, Christian and Mohammedan
liturgies, where the ontological distinction is retained between God and
Man, Creator and Creature.." Joseph Campbell, Masks of God vol3 p.254
"Phaedrus saw nothing wrong with this ritualistic religion as long as the
rituals are seen as merely a static portrayal of DQ, a sign-post which
allows socially pattern-dominated people to see DQ. The problem has always
been that the rituals, the static patterns, are mistaken for what they
merely represent and are allowed to destroy the DQ they were originally
intended to preserve."
"Science supercedes old religious forms, not because what it says is more
true in any absolute sense (whatever that is), but because what it says is
more Dynamic." (LILA Chapter 17)
"Mythology is true enough in its own world-space; its just that perspectival
reason is 'more true'; more developed, more diffferentiated-and-integrated,
and more sophisticated in its capactiy to disclose verifiable knowledge.
Thus the higher truths of rationality pass judgement on the lower truths of
mythology, and for the most part mythology simply does not survive those
more sophisticated tests. Moses did not part the Red Sea, and Jesus was not
born by a biological virgin. Those claims, in the light of higher reason,
are indeed bogus. ...And if religion is to survive in a vialbe form in the
modern world, it must be willing to jettison its bogus claims, just as
narrow science must be willing to jettison its reductionistic imperialism."
(KEN WILBER)
"Scholars usually take Plotinus's system to be primarily a form of
philosophy of 'metaphysics': the various levels, particularly the higher
ones, are imagined to be some sort of theoretical contructs that are
deduced, logically or postulated, speculatively, to account for existence
and manifestation. But in fact these systems are, through and through, from
top to bottom, the results of actual comtemplative apprehensions and direct
developmental phenomenolgy. The higher levels of these systems connot be
experienced or deduced RATIONALLY, and nobody from Plotinus to Aurobindo
thinks they can. However, AFTER THE FACT, of direct and repeated
experiential disclosures, they can be rationally reconstructed and presented
as a 'system'. But the 'system', so called, has been discovered, not
deduced, and checked against direct experience in a community of the
like-minded and like-spirited. (Its no accident that Inge refers to
Plotinus's spiritality as being based on 'experimental verification'. -
'faith begins as an experiement and ends as an experience.) Not a single
component of these systems is hidden to experience or nestled safely away in
a 'metaphysical' domain that cannot be checked cognitively with the
appropriate tools... In short, they follow all three strands of valid
knowledge accumulation - and one can 'dismiss' these higher levels of
development only on the same grounds that the Churchmen refused to look
through Galileo's telescope; dogmatic stubbornness tells them that there's
nothing to see." Ken Wilber
Thanks.
dmb
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