From: hampday@earthlink.net
Date: Thu May 05 2005 - 07:44:12 BST
Hi Platt:
Thanks for the suggestion. I read your "Say Hello to Now" essay and found
it well crafted and poetically inspiring. It reminded me of some of Alan
Watts' best prose.
Sorry to say, however, I wasn't clear as to the identity of the subject. If
your title was meant to be a clue, "Now" might be the "eternal present" of a
timeless universe. Or it could be my psyche or "soul" reminding me that I
am one with the cosmos. It could be the Oneness itself, monitoring my every
mood and act through the life-experience. Perhaps you intended it to be a
melding of all three, as in the transition from SQ to DQ.
But then I returned to your message and read this:
> If you can comprehend experience absent thought, you can comprehend
> ultimate reality. It's what's right in front of your nose, everyday.
How could I be so dense? Obviously, the subject of your essay was meant to
be ultimate reality -- as my ever-present, constant, holistic Self
overseeing my individual existence. The Atman of Hinduism, perhaps. This
is a refreshing departure from Judeo-Christianity; but I wonder if your
metaphor is a fair portrayal of ultimate reality which I still maintain is
incomprehensible, although logically conceivable.
Ham (previously):
> > If Quality is experience, it is proprietary to individual awareness and
is
> > something sensed or observed. That means it is not an abstract
"universal
> > principle".
> What you are asserting is that experience belongs to a subject. What
> Pirsig asserts is that experience is prior to your intellectual conception
> of a subject with its companion star, object. Think of it this way: like
> spirit, experience was around long before you or I or other "biological
> organism" became it's vessel.
Unlike Pirsig, I do not hold that experience can precede the subject that
possesses it. Presumably even the earliest (pre-natal) experience is a
sensation "added to" the serenity of the psyche. I don't believe it is
logical to infer that experience can be other than SOM, unless you consider
pure awareness to be experiential. Even then, I have reservations, because
"awareness" is commonly understood to be proprietary; and I no longer
believe the proprietary self transcends physical (i.e. space/time)
existence.
Instead, I'm persuaded that the transcendent component of existence is
Value. If you read my Creation hypothesis, you'll see that it is based on a
negational ontology. Creation involves a negation or "denial" of Essence
Value which leaves a "nothingness" in its place. Nothingness is what
differentiates the physical world, beginning with the division of "other"
(beingness) from "not-other" (proprietary awareness). The denied Value of
these essents is reclaimed in the process of experience. So, if the
individual has a link to ultimate reality (i.e., Essence), it is a valuistic
link. That's my hypothesis in a nutshell.
> An "unknowable" source is by definition prior to intellectual concepts. I
> don't see how this differs from Pirsig's Quality.
Well, I don't see how an unknowable source can be experienced as Quality --
particularly as there is no subject yet intellectualized to experience it.
Again, your assertion presupposes a "universal" Quality which has not
adequately been defined by MoQ's author. You yourself denied that Pirsig
ever meant that Quality could exist independently of the observing subject,
but that he equated it with "direct experience". That's my hangup, Platt.
Now, IF someone were to postulate a primary reality -- complete with a
metaphysics relating it to differentiated existence -- and chose to call
that reality Quality, then you might have a bonafide philosophy instead of
just a cultist belief system. (Of course, if he chose to call it Essence,
nobody would pay any attention.)
By the way, what does it mean to be Christian "in name only"? Someone in my
family had a theory that Priday was derived from the French word "prideaux"
which is a kind of kneeling pad. However, in tracing our Scotch/English
ancestry we were
never able to establish a French connection.
Essentially just
Ham
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