From: David Buchanan (DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org)
Date: Sat Jan 01 2005 - 19:29:27 GMT
Sam, Mark and all MOQers:
Sam Norton asked dmb:
Are you able to explain, to such a dunder-head as I, in words of few
syllables, and preferably less than about 20 of them, what you understand to
be 'non-traditional mysticism'. I find that I sometimes drown in your
torrent of words, only some of which pertain to the point at issue.
dmb says:
The most basic notion is described in a single sentence. "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."
(Pirsig in ZAMM, p25) In Lila this truth, this mystical and undivided
reality, is Dynamic Quality while rationality and definitions belong to the
divided and static world.
Likewsie, Plotinus says, "of this One no descripton nor scientific knowledge
is possible" and "he who wishes to see the Intelligible must abandon all
imagery of the perceptible in order to contemplate what is beyond the
perceptible, so he who wishes to contemplate what is beyond the Intelligible
will attain the contemplation of it by letting go everything intelligible".
See, the thing about SOM is that it convinces us that subjects and objects
are so undeniable real as the basic facts of reality. We look at a thing and
are utterly certain that it is real because we can see it. We imagine that
light bounces off of the material and in to our eyes and that this sensory
data is the first thing we have from which all other knowledge proceeds. And
this is an excellent and useful way to see the world. I'm not suggesting we
give it up, especially not during rush-hour traffic. But what Pirsig and so
many others are saying is that we "see" the world through concepts. As we
mature from infancy we are told over and over that this or that is hot or
cold, that this thing is not the same as that thing, red thing, blue thing,
lovely thing, scary thing, etc., etc.. And so what we imagine to be the raw
empirical data of the world is actually the conceptual shape we give to our
perceptions. We have to go through a series of deductions to picture the
world in terms of subjects and objects, but we have done it so many times
that it is completely automatic and we don't even notice it anymore. Its
just a part of the way we think. It is our inherited cultural filter. Its
not just an opinion that we can easily trade in for another, it shapes all
our perceptions on a more fundamental level and provides the very thought
categories with which we think about the world. What we usually fail to
realize is that we have created the static world in response to DQ, which is
the ineffable ground, the primary empirical reality. Instead we think that
divided static world is the ground and the primary reality.
And so even when we are told in explicit terms that the mystical experience
is all about overcoming subjectivity and the illusory ego self, we are so
used to thinking in terms of subjects and objects that we often then ask,
"well then who is having the mystical experience?" And of course this only
shows that one is trying to understand the pre-intellectual reality in terms
of concepts, in terms of subjectivity.
Subjects and objects are things, see? And this is one of the reasons that DQ
is also called Nothingness. If we think of Nothingness as the reality that
preceds subjects and objects, as the pre-intellectual reality, as the
undivided and undifferentiated reality, then we start to understand that
Nothingness is not just black empty space, but is no-THING-ness. This is
also why we call it the One and oppose it to the many, the world of things,
otherwise known as the maya or world of illusion. The very same idea is made
in refering to DQ as "pure", "simple" and "direct". Pirsig is not saying DQ
is super clean, uncomplicated or straitforward with these terms. No, they
all speak to this same idea of an undivided reality, reality before it is
percieved through cultural metaphysical assumptions, before it is divided up
into static patterns of any kind.
I could have stopped with the quotes from Pirsig and Plotinus. Everything
after that is just an attempt to explain that first basic idea.
Philosophical mysticism is "the idea that truth is indefinable and can be
apprehended only by non-rational means."
Thanks,
dmb
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