From: David Buchanan (DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org)
Date: Sun Feb 13 2005 - 05:15:23 GMT
Sam Norton said:
What I believe myself to be objecting to is a specifically Western, SOM
misappropriation of
(largely) the Christian spiritual tradition - that is what I call the
'Jamesian' understanding.
....following the sequence of intellectual
revolutions in the West,
culminating in Kant, a particular understanding of spirituality was born,
which went via
Schleiermacher and the German Romantics (and Idealists, it would seem), and
took a canonical
expression in William James - this is what I've called the 'noetic', it's
also called
'experientialism' in the literature. I think this particular understanding
of spirituality is novel,
has no roots in any of the different religious traditions, and is wholly
saturated with the
metaphysical assumptions of SOM. I don't believe it is possible to read this
perspective out from
someone like Socrates unless you bring those same assumptions with you to
the interpretation of the
evidence. Now, as we've been battling that out for the last few years, I
don't expect you to agree
with it, but I thought it would help to foster the clarity which I seek by
setting it out.
dmb says:
I appreciate your attempt to be clear, and it is clear as far as it goes,
but I also have to say that this is quite a complicated web of associations.
On top of that you seem to be making a case that Pirsig is unconsciously an
inheritor of this Modern SOM spirituality. Further, you're trying to make
the case for this unconscious legacy even though Pirsig's published works on
the matter seem to contradict SOM on every other page. It seems like an
awful lot of explicitness to overcome with something so flimsy as
unconscious influences. I don't know that they are all that detectable and
so the whole thing seems highly speculative. I'll mention again that I'm not
exactly a big fan of James either. I read his famous book once, many years
ago, for coffeehouse discussion group. Didn't somebody just post a quote
where Pirsig says he was actually leary of James on the topic? What my
point? It just seems a whole lot simpler to argue with what people acutally
say rather than with their secretly or unconsciously held beliefs.
But as to the actual content of your remarks, you say that what you object
"to is a specifically Western, SOM misappropriation of (largely) the
Christian spiritual tradition." But Pirsig is so very explicit about NOT
being SOM, NOT being specifically Christian, NOT limiting himself to
Modernity or the West, and he doesn't much like the word spiritual either.
Likewise, the other sources I rely on are also quite explicit about these
matters. I mean, if you take me and Pirsig at our word, you're objecting to
assertions that no one has made - at length.
Sam said to dmb:
What gets me annoyed/ frustrated/ resentful in our discussions has been, so
far, when you've tried
to claim that Christianity is in fact about this Jamesian spirituality; and
so what has made me
relaxed much more recently is when you've been prepared to accept that
Christianity isn't just a
sociological expression of this Jamesian truth. Great.
dmb replies:
Huh? Christianity is about this Jamesian spirituality, just a sociological
expression of this Jamesian truth? Not only do I deny making these
assertions, I'm not even sure what they mean. It seems this is a distorted
version of the perennial philosophy, which views each of the world's great
religions as a particular cultural expression of the same universal wisdom,
which they all have in common. In the MOQ we'd say that each of these
religions are a particular static interpretation of DQ. Apparently that well
known idea became "a sociological expression of a Jamesian truth" in your
view. You seem utterly convinced that the very idea of a mystical experience
is Modern and Jamesian, but as I understand it Modern thinkers were allowed
to explore this area where previously such things were forbidden in all
kinds of ways. The perennial philosophy was re-discovered in this period.
Long lost texts were a big part of what prompted the end of the "dark" ages.
On a related note, Buddhism was imported into the West just in time for
those romantic movements. In any case, I'm thoroughly convinced by now that
the mystical experience is where it all starts. Peter Kingsley's latest
book, REALITY, makes a detailed case for the idea that philosophy began
there too. In the West, this has been lost for a long time. REALITY is
largely about Parmenides, who is seen as the father of logic and
rationality. Kingsley makes the case that such a view is a complete
misunderstanding and that instead, he was a mystic and that his great poems
is acutally all about the limits of logic and the deceptive nature of
rationality and how the real truth can only be apprehended on a different
path. In other words, the defining notion of philosophical mysticism, that
truth can be apprehended on through non-rational means. And this was 100
years before Socrates and 2500 years before James. Its really fun to read as
well. Kingsley compares our impulse to intellectualize to a dog's impulse to
pee on things. Its funny in that sort of context anyway. And he writes with
a kind breathless excitement, as if he's telling you where to find a great
buried treasure, because he is.
Sam said:
Now, in so far as you think the Jamesian point of view is the good and right
one, you will reject my
descriptions, which is perfectly fair enough. What I suppose we need to do
is find some form of
language to have a conversation about this. How are we to assess which is
the true description of
what is going on? A little while back, you used the Hamlet analogy, which
seems to provide a point
of agreement; that is, you can't understand what's going on in Hamlet's head
unless you study the
play, try to act it out, etc etc. I think that's a description of praxis,
and that's what I think
the different religious traditions, in their diverse ways, are all about.
dmb replies:
Firstly, I can accept or reject your point of view perfectly well without
James. He means nothing to me or to the people who inform my view. Secondly,
I don't exactly know what you mean by "find some form of language". You can
use any kind of language you like, as long as it gets your idea across we
are having a conversation. Or are you using some jargon there and finding
"some form of language" means something special? Or is it just that you want
to work with the Hamlet analogy for a while? If I recall, I'd simply said
that if a person wants to know what Hamlet is, then they can best find out
by going to see it, by reading it. Experience it. That was the point. Now
here you have offered the idea that one can't really know Hamlet through
simply experiencing a preformance of it, but rather study it and star in the
play. This is a not so subtle shift, but OK. There is something to be said
for mastery. But from the view of a perennial philosopher, there comes a
point where the best insights come from looking at more than one play. By
seeing what other writers have done in other times and in other cultures,
one gets a new fresh view of what might have become all to familiar and lost
its vitality. And this is what I'm really getting at. I'm perfectly well
aware that we need static patterns to contain our progress and of the
foolishness in ignoring tradition, but I think that the religions of the
West, just like the Philosophies of the West have long ago lost sight of
what those static patterns are reflecting. We just don't do enlightenment,
and that's the problem. The West denies that such things are possible, as
Pirsig puts it, because of metaphysical assumptions not for empirical
reasons. And I think its no accident that so many MOQers persist in thinking
of the MOQ without getting rid of these very assumptions. This is why we
keep getting questions like, "if direct experience comes before the subject
and object, then what is experiencing? People are so convinced of SOM's
assumptions that it becomes impossible to imagine experience or
consciousness of any kind without a subject. But that's what he's saying.
Remember all that work he did in denying that consciousness is a by-product
of the biological brain? Remember all that talk about the ego looking out
from behind the eyeballs as a ridiculous fiction? Remember when he went
insane, so that even "he" disappeared and there was only Quality? See,
experience is not just an important thing in the MOQ, its the only thing.
Sam said:
What it seems to me that you have been arguing for - and I'm quite happy to
be told I'm wrong in
this - what I think you've been arguing for is that there is something which
is the end-point of the
spiritual path which is grounded, or established, or validated, or mediated,
through *a particular
type of experience*; moreover, that this particular experience is common
across the diverse
religious traditions, and so the different traditions are simply more or
less replaceable clothing
which obscures the truths generated from that particular experience.
dmb says:
No, I don't know anything about any endpoint of the spiritual path, except
for total enlightenment and even then we don't get to punch out or otherwise
call it a day. And I'm sure there are many kinds of mystical experiences.
The perennial philosophy simply points out that, despite the obvious
differences, all the great religions have something in common. And many
people think its wise to pay attention to such commonalities and understand
what that means. From the point of view of a materialit, there is no reason
for them the have anything in common. From the point of view of a sectarian,
such comparisons seems insulting, as you have illustrated. But from another
point of view, this universal truth is just about the most amazing thing in
the world. And add to this discovery the notion that myths have been
depicting the same universal truths for ages, in their own language.
Sam said:
My rejection of that does not correspond, so it seems to me, to a rejection
of jnani in favour of
bakhti; if anything, it seems more the reverse, a doubt and seeking of
intellectual validation
(jnani) of an established pattern of devotion (Jamesian philosophical
understandings, bakhti).
dmb says:
Devotion? See, I don't really know what that means. Or rather, devotion
seems quite alien to what I'm talking about. Think of it like this. If the
main idea here is that reality has to be experienced to be known or
apprehended. It can't be known through rational means. And when a seeker
takes up a practice in order to have that non-rational experience, the task
is to quiet the mind. It seems to me that seeking intellectual validation
and following patterns of devotion is pretty much exactly what one does NOT
want to do. I think that the Western conception of God as eternally other
has had many negative consequences and this is a big one. Instead of
meditation practices, instead of learning to quiet the mind, Christian
practice is about filling up with static patterns. Its about worship and
devotion and morality instead of training the mind to junk all that for a
while. The practices don't seem aimed at enlightenment, which is a letting
go. Salvation is about grasping, about hanging on to life forever. So when
Pirsig advises us to be dead, its gonna jar the senses.
Sam said:
My rejection of it is, by and large, that I don't see it as spiritual in any
sense at all, either
jnani or bakhti, exoteric or esoteric, Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, whatever.
In other words, I see
it as lacking in Quality. More specifically, I see the Jamesian
understanding as the product of
Western metaphysics, with very little relation to any living spiritual
tradition. Most crucially, I
don't see people like Plotinus as fitting in with James, even if that
neo-Platonic strand comes
closest to what James was describing. This is what my essay was wanting to
explore.
dmb says:
It would be OK with me if James and Plotinus didn't fit with each other. The
point in bringing up Plotinus, Parmenides, Empedocles, the Sophists,
Socrates and the Buddha is simply to point out that the recognition of
enlightenment as a spiritual reality does not rest on James, Modernity or
the West. The author of ZEN has many sources for his mysticism and whatever
he takes from James he takes carefully and in light of those other sources.
The search for enlightenment is one of the key universals that perennial
philosophers love so much. As Pirsig puts it, its perennial, i think,
because it happens to be true. And as you can imagine, they aren't so fond
of the idea that truth has to be tied to "any living spiritual tradition".
Personally, I doubt that there is such a thing, at least not in the West.
(If "living" means actually functioning with the aime to facilitate
enlightenment in its adherents.)
Sam said finally:
Finally, to Pirsig. I had been thinking that in Lila (not in ZMM) Pirsig was
aligning himself with
the Platonic strand of Western thought, and that he was extending that line
of spiritual searching.
Since writing that essay, I'm now quite concerned that in fact he is much
more Modern in his
metaphysics than I had thought, and that the correspondence of language and
structure between the
MoQ and Schleiermacher is not an accident. This was a surprise to me, but it
ties in with the
various discussions we've had here and in the MF section, especially about
whether Quality is
separate from DQ/SQ (my perspective) or whether DQ and SQ are in a
source/expression relationship
(your point of view, as I recall). Anyhow. We seem to be getting somewhere
at last, and that must be good.
dmb says finally:
Well, I'm sorry but I think you have failed to demonstrate that
correspondence and I think Paul and I have done enough to defeat it. I
suspect that whatever matches we might find between the MOQ and Modern
Western philosophers, it'll be the ones who were exposed to Buddhism and
other Eastern incluences. As I understand it, the Romantics mostly confused
biological quality with Dynamic Quality, just like the hippies. That was
basically a romantic movement and one close enough to us for us to
understand. There was some dabbling with Zen and LSD. They thought they were
seeking enlightenment with that sort of thing, but mostlu they didn't quite
understand what they were dealing with. The German Romantics weren't so
different from that. It was about intense emotions, passion, feelings, even
intentionally outlandish debuachery. Sound familiar? This is a long way from
quieting the mind. And Pirsig rejects this confusion as degeneracy. That's
why I don't think Schleiermacher has much to do with anything, except to
serve as a bad example of what happens to mysticism when its freshly
imported into a culture that has too little experience with it, a culture
that lost track of it long ago except in little pockets, and then tries to
understand it with the wrong metaphysical equipment. Alan Watts, the
Anglican theologican/Zen master spent much of his life getting over it. For
Pirsig it took half of that and a bout of insanity. That blindspot can be
overcome only by way of other cultures, even if the aim is to understand
your own Christianity. Jung was raised as a Protestant and came around to
Catholicism by way of Alchemy. Campbell was raised as a Catholic and came to
the Kundulini by way of Zen. It loosens things up and broadens the
perspective if nothing else, but maybe it allows us to see around the
blindspot too. Personally, I think its all quite amazing. I see that this
strikes you as an insult to Christianity and you've basically confessed that
you have a great deal of personal investment in it and you're banking, at
least in part, on the idea that there is no such thing as enlightenment.
Well, Zen writers like Watts will tell you that its exactly that kind of
clinging to ideas that prevents enlightenment. We almost always come back to
it in one way or another, but its the letting go that really counts. And
trades don't work. The idea is not to exhange your views for mine of anyone
else's. The idea is to get empty, so to speak. And speaking of empty, I'm
done. Whew!
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