From: David Buchanan (DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org)
Date: Sat Jan 15 2005 - 05:01:08 GMT
Scott and all MOQers:
Scott Roberts said to DMB:
I completely agree that Plotinus considers the One to be completely
ineffable, without distinctions, and so on, and I agree that in this he and
Pirsig are the same.
dmb replies:
Well, that's something. And of course I'm not saying that Plotinus and
Pirsig are exactly the same in every way. Far from it. But I think that
Plotinus's Intellect with a capital "I" simply can't be compared to Pirsig's
intellect. Pirsig's fourth level of static patterns is not forever separate
from the "divine" and otherwise has a dynamic and creative compontent, as
the evolution of intellectual patterns demonstrates, but basically we are
talking about reason, concepts, logic and the like. Obviously, Plotinus
knows what reason and logic are and also includes them in his world view,
but his Intellect with a capital "I" is more like the source of ORIGINAL
thoughts, thoughts that are NOT just the sum of previous thoughts. When the
early Church say what he was talking about they likened it to the LOGOS, the
CHRIST. So this would be included in Pirsig's framework on the Dynamic side.
See, its not that Pirsig fails to include something like "Intellect". Its
just that he doesn't call it that. I imagine that about now you're thinking,
"I already know that! That's what I'm saying!" But hold your horses and let
me try to further show you what I mean.
Scott continued: ...What I am pointing out is that, after this, Plotinus'
philosophy and Pirsig's are diametrically opposed, in their ways of
treating intellect. For Pirsig, intellect is just something human, another
level of SQ. For Plotinus, Intellect is the first emanation from the One,
and as such, divine. Pirsig says one must shut down the intellect to
experience pure DQ. Plotinus says one should purify one's intellect (he
recommends studying mathematics and dialectic -- see Tractate I.3.3) and
seek to rise to the Intelligible Realm. From there, since it is the first
emanation from the One, one is in contact with the One. Also, Plotinus says
that at that level (the Intellect, not the One), there is knowing without a
separation into knower and known. And, it is the Intellect which creates
all things, not the One, though the One is the ultimate source.
dmb replies:
Plotinus was a contemplative and lived at a time when philsophy was hardly
convieved as anything else. And so the "purification" of intellect here
should not be thought of in terms of math exercises, but more along the
lines of meditation. There is a difference in the way the two men view time
which has the effect of turning their hierarchies upside down, but that is
just a matter of different direction and not relationship. I mean, the
ancients tended to think of the beginning as a golden age and the world grew
increasingly corrupt as time went on, but we imagine the opposite where
primordial goo slowly evolves toward better and better forms. Again, I'm not
saying they are the same in all ways, but they are much more alike than you
seem to recognize. Let me get very specific about one such difference that
isn't really a difference. I think this is a key concept...
I want to look at your idea that at the level of the Intellect "there is a
knowing without a separation into knower and known". Your assertion is that
this is one of the ways in which Pirsig and Plotinus differ and I say, "no
way, Jose!". Pirsig says exactly the same thing. At the cutting edge of
experience there are no subjects and objects. Pirsig is saying we start with
experience, a knowing, that is prior to the knower and the known. For Pirsig
this is also not the One, but he calls it DQ instead of Intellect with a
captial "I". See? This is what I mean when I say you're confused by the
terms. They are both painting the same idea, but with differing terms, which
are superficial and unimportant compared to the ideas behind them. I know,
you still don't buy it....
Scott continued:
Merrell-Wolff says similar things, though he does not employ the
"emanation" vocabulary. He describes a level of Intellect in which there is
no separation between subject and object, what he calls Knowledge through
Identity. This is, again, not something that Pirsig can allow for. He just
separates SQ (which includes intellect) from DQ. And Merrell-Wolff also
recommends studying mathematics and philosophy as an aid to mystical
awakening. These are the two points of difference, then: first, that
Plotinus and Merrell-Wolff recognize a divine level of Intellect *as well
as* an ultimate level in which there are no distinctions, and second, that
intellect can be an aid to Awakening, not an obstacle.
dmb replies:
Again, with "Intellect" they are describing Pirsig's DQ. Maybe it would help
to think of Zen meditation in Susan Blackmore's terms. She says that its a
kind of purification of the intellect too, but she's apparently much more
fun that Plotinus or Pirsig. Its not about new insights or the revelation of
some secret knowledge, but rather a matter of shedding ideas and beliefs.
She defines enlightenment as the "loss of a whole lot of crap", or "waking
from the meme dream". Another pithy thinker, I think it was T.D. Suzuki,
said that Zen could best be described as "radical realism". Pirsig's radical
empiricism says the same thing, that the primary experience is prior to the
formation of subjects and objects. See the idea here is that experience is
habitually and constantly interpreted in terms of subjects and objects. This
happens so automatically that we don't realize that subjects and objects are
interpretive CONCEPTS, not the experience itself. And so purification of the
intellect in Zen is about turning off the automatic production of conceptual
interpretations in favor of undivided experience. See? Even if we have
considered SOM as a metaphysics and found it lacking, we still don't escape
the perception. It takes training of the mind, not just accepting a good
idea as such. I'll try to take more time on this point later this weekend in
trying to answer some questions msh has had along these lines. I hope you'll
look at that. He's asking, if there is no objective reality, then why do eye
doctors make eye glasses.
Scott said:
Therefore, you wasted most of a post to state quotes on a matter I wasn't
disputing, and ignored the points I am disputing. Did you not notice that I
said "Reality [with a capital-R] cannot be apprehended by reason"? If you
did, why do you think you were informing me of something by quoting FM-W
and Plotinus saying similar things?
dmb relies:
I think you do not properly understand the point that is supposedly not in
dispute and so it IS IN DISPUTE. The bulk of the post was meant to dispute
your interpretation of that main point. See I think you have misunderstood
the central concept here and that one bad move leads to all the other bad
moves. You think you are beyond mysticism 101 and just can't believe I'm
saying anything different than you, but that is my position. You see, you
are disputing the Pirsigian idea that intellect gets in the way of seeing
reality directly and yet accept the idea that "Reality is accessable only
through non-rational means." What I've been trying to tell you is that those
two assertions are the very same assertion. They are just two ways of saying
the same thing. If you are accepting one and rejecting the other, then you
are confused as to the meaning of at least one of them. See? If it can't be
seen with rational means, then it can't been known through the intellect.
So, to me, its like you are saying, "pre-intellectual awareness is an
intellectual awareness", which is simply a contradiction.
Scott continued:
On my use of the same word, but with capitalization and without, this is a
fairly common practice, one which Merrell-Wolff uses frequently, as do many
others (including Pirsig). It is to emphasize that the two uses are
different, but connected. For example, human intellect derives from divine
Intellect, and therefore shares some characteristics. So when Merrell-Wolff
refers to Thoughts that would take many lifetimes to put into human terms,
he is talking about Something, not ordinary human thoughts, but also not an
"undifferentiated continuum". I see no room in Pirsig's philosophy for what
Merrell-Wolff is referring to.
dmb replies:
No room in the MOQ for superconceptual thoughts? Again, this is exactly what
Pirsig is saying. Don't you recall the teepee scene? He doesn't use the same
terms but its pretty clear to me that Pirsig and Merril-Wolff have again
described the same thing and are NOT at odds. As to the first part, it might
help to draw out the distinctions and the differences between intellect and
Intellect, between thought and Thought. But I would beg you to use your own
terms or even Pirsig's if you can. All I'm saying is that here in this
forum, intellect has a specific meaning and using the same term for two
different ideas is just bad writing. It does a disservice to the readers.
And imagine how much worse it is if you really are mixed up, as I believe.
In that case, we have a confused writer who uses a single word for what may
be three different ideas. Lord have mercy on the dyslexics!
Scott said:
Yes, Pirsig does say near the beginning of Lila that he is just using the
static/Dynamic split to build a metaphysics, and that there is no real
division. I will get back to this in a moment. But when he says near the
end that the mystic's goal is to leave SQ behind to experience "pure DQ",
he has made the division real. Now, DQ is being treated as something
isolatable *by the mystic*. That is dualist.
dmb replies:
This is the part you seem to misunderstand. Pirsig says that DQ is
experienced when static patterns are put to sleep, left behind, abandoned.
As when he says that he's only saying that is must be accessed through
non-rational means. It is not dualistic, as Paul and I have been trying to
explain to Matt and Sam, because DQ is not a thing or things. It is
undivided, pre-conceptual experience. Things are conceptual. They are static
patterns and if what we are trying to access is the experience before those
concepts arise. Or rather, if static patterns are secondary, if they come
after the primary experience, in the wake of it as Pirsig says, then its not
a matter of getting them out of the way, so much as learning to stop
thinking, to stop conceptualizing. Its radical realism, radical empiricism.
Pirsig also talks about the increasing levels of quiet and how each is more
difficult than the next. Its easy to lay down and relax the body but if you
ever tried to stop your mind from moving, then you know how hard it is. This
is the Zen work that Blackmore describes as a process of crap shedding. Its
not really so bad as all that, but the mind does keep us thoroughly
hypnotized unless we're very lucky or decide to do something about it.
dmb says:
Now I will no doubt once again confuse you by saying that Pirsig would be
better off by *not* treating the static/Dynamic split as just a
philosophical means. True, the particular words ('static' and 'dynamic')
are contingent, but to pretend that "in reality" there is no distinction at
all is absurd. Even if our terms 'positive and negative charge' or 'mating
rituals' belong just to our current understanding, if there are no
distinctions made at the inorganic and biological levels, there isn't
anything.
dmb replies:
Huh? It seems to me that the static/Dynamic split works as an intellectual
device becasue it corresponds with experience and explains that experientce.
And in the MOQ, experience IS reality. Things, static patterns exist because
they are distinquished in experience, repeatedly. But there is undivided
experience too. Thus the split.
Scott concluded:
Hence I think that one should think in terms of opposites like dynamic and
static, or subject and object, as being really real (though contingent),
but one shouldn't divide reality into subjects and objects, or into the
dynamic and the static. They exist in contradictory identity, and by
existing in contradictory identity, create. I maintain (like Plotinus,
Merrell-Wolff, and Coleridge) that this kind of thinking is a skillful
means (as the Madhyamika say), and is not just something one does, like
getting drunk and picking up ladies in bars. But, if this is just gibberish
to you, then so be it.
dmb replies:
Subject and object are real but contingent. We shouldn't divide the world
into dualities but contradictory identities, which are creative and skillful
and don't dance or drink. Whew! Gibberish indeed!
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