From: Ant McWatt (antmcwatt@hotmail.co.uk)
Date: Mon Aug 15 2005 - 20:23:39 BST
Ant McWatt stated August 11th 2005:
>I guess your throwaway conclusion based on minimal evidence about Brown
>being a charlatan is probably a good indication of how your closed mind
>works in general and your fear that people like him and myself are probably
>right about the political propaganda that many people are largely
>brainwashed with.
Again, Platt evaded the issue and “replied” August 13th 2005:
Like I said, if hypnotism is your bag, go for it. I'm just surprised, that's
all.
Ant McWatt comments:
Platt,
I don’t know why a so-called supporter of the MOQ would be surprized that an
“MOQ academic” would have an interest in hypnotism in a political and
religious context. (To sound like Matt K), I’m surprized at your surprize.
Maybe you’re worried about the subliminal effects that the Western mass
media have already had on your own beliefs over the last sixty years plus.
Moreover, your surprize that an “MOQ academic” would have some interest in
hypnotism and cultural conditioning certainly leaves you behind in SOM-land
as indicated by Pirsig’s own mention of hypnotism in the context of SOM:
“In a subject-object world, trance and hypnosis are big-time
platypi. That's why there's this prejudice that while hypnosis and trance
can't be denied, there's something ‘wrong’ about them. They're best nudged
as close as possible to the empirical trash heap called ‘the occult’ and
left to that anti-empirical crowd that indulges in astrology, Tarot cards,
the I-Ching and the like. If seeing is believing then hypnosis and trance
should be impossible. But since they do exist, what you have is an
empirically observable case of empiricism being overthrown.
The irony is that there are times when the culture actually fosters trance
and hypnosis to further its purposes. The theater's a form of hypnosis.
So are movies and TV… While the illusion is taking place you
are not aware that it is an illusion. This is hypnosis. It is trance.
It's also a form of temporary insanity. But it's also a powerful force for
cultural reinforcement.” (LILA, near the beginning of Chapter 29)
Moreover, for evidence of Pirsig’s interest in hypnotism and cultural
conditioning in the context of SOM, note the following paragraph from LILA,
near the beginning of Chapter 26:
“But with a Metaphysics of Quality the empirical experience is not an
experience of ‘objects.’ It's an experience of value patterns produced by a
number of sources, not just inorganic patterns. When an insane person-or a
hypnotized person (such as a conservative) or a person from a primitive
culture - advances some explanation of the universe that is completely at
odds with current scientific reality, we do not have to believe he has
jumped off the end of the empirical world. He is just a person who is
valuing intellectual patterns that, because they are outside the range of
our own culture, we perceive to have very low quality. Some biological or
social or Dynamic
force has altered his judgment of quality. It has caused him to filter out
what we call normal cultural intellectual patterns just as ruthlessly as
our culture filters out his.”
Now if hypnotism has been ignored by the West’s SOM culture, doesn’t it make
you think that there are other cultural biases and political viewpoints that
you have and which you are unaware of? In fact, Pirsig mentions others in
LILA such as the "green flash" of the sun (seen by sailors) and the East
Asian perception of the Dharmakåya light (“a huge area of human experience
cut off by cultural filtering”).
In my previous post, I mentioned that education in the appropriate subject
areas (such as sociology and political studies) will develop your critical
faculties which can often break the mind from static cultural conditioning.
Pirsig mentions some other methods to achieve this Dynamic freedom from
static conditioning including meditation, fasting and psychedelics (such as
peyote “and its synthetic equivalent, LSD”):
“The Indians had quietly brought peyote up from Mexico in the
late nineteenth century, eating it to induce an altered mental state that
they considered a form of religious communion. Dusenberry had indicated
that Indians who used it regarded it as a quicker and surer way of arriving
at the condition reached in the traditional ‘vision quest’ where an Indian
goes out into isolation and fasts and prays and meditates for days in the
darkness of a sealed lodge until the Great Spirit reveals itself to him and
takes over his life.”
Now Pirsig is also careful to mention that psychedelics have to be treated
with care and respect (Bill Hicks calls them “sacred”). However, as Pirsig
also reminds us, the view that – like hypnotism - they are somehow “wrong”
begs some metaphysical questions.
“The majority opposition to peyote reflected a cultural bias, the belief,
unsupported by scientific or historical evidence, that ‘hallucinatory’
experience is automatically bad. Since hallucinations are a form of
insanity, the term, ‘hallucinogen,’ is clearly pejorative. Like early
descriptions of Buddhism as a ‘heathen’ religion and Islam as ‘barbaric,’
it begs some metaphysical questions. The Indians who use it as part of
their ceremony might with equal accuracy call it a ‘de-hallucinogen,’ since
it's their claim that it removes the hallucinations of contemporary life
and reveals the reality buried beneath them.”
“There is actually some scientific support for this Indian point of view.
Experiments have shown that spiders fed LSD do not wander around doing
purposeless things as one might expect a ‘hallucination’ would cause them
to do, but instead spin an abnormally perfect, symmetrical web. That would
support the ‘de-hallucinogen’ thesis. But politics seldom depends on facts
for its decisions.” (LILA, Chapter 3)
Above all, note Pirsig’s emphasis that psychedelics (like meditation and
in-depth sociology) are actually a "de-hallucinogen"! They actually improve
our perception of reality. Though LSD needs to be treated carefully due to
its strong effects, there do remain available mild if effective psychedelic
drugs (such as psilocybin mushrooms) which will still throw light regards
one’s own spirituality and place in the universe. Judging from the
attendees at the MOQ Conference I observed a clear dividing line between
those who had taken psychedelics (such as Pirsig, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?, ? and ?)
and those who hadn’t regarding both what the “mystic experience” entails and
the MOQ.
Hence, the title of my post (Why Platt, Sam, Matt K, Scott and Erin must
go…) To finish the title it should be… “and look into taking up mediation,
sociology and/or using psychedelics at some point.” It would certainly save
a lot of writing time on this discussion forum.
Best wishes,
Anthony.
P.S. I hope no one thought that I was going to suggest that these long
standing contributors should be banned? ;-)
“I think it's interesting the two drugs that are legal - alcohol and
cigarettes, two drugs that do absolutely nothing for you at all - are legal,
and the drugs that might open your mind up to realise how you're being
fucked every day of your life? Those drugs are against the law. Coincidence?
See, I'm glad mushrooms are against the law, cos I took 'em one time, you
know what happened to me? I laid in a field of green grass for four hours,
going, 'My God, I love everything.' Yeah, now if that isn't a hazard to this
country... How are we gonna justify arms dealing if we know we're all one?”
(Bill Hicks)
Redneck voice (possibly Erin’s grandfather): “I took mushrooms when I
visited astro-world and I had a real bad time.”
Hicks again: “Then you are a moron. They are sacred, go to nature....”
“Christianity has a built-in defense system: anything that questions a
belief, no matter how logical the argument is, is the work of Satan by the
very fact that it makes you question a belief. It's a very interesting
defense mechanism and the only way to get by it -- and believe me, I was
raised Southern Baptist -- is to take massive amounts of mushrooms, sit in a
field, and just go, ‘Show me.’”
“The world is like a ride at an amusement park. And when you choose to go on
it, you think that it's real because that's how powerful our minds are….
It's just a ride. But we always kill those good guys who try and tell us
that, you ever notice that? And let the demons run amok. But it doesn't
matter because: it's just a ride. And we can change it anytime we want. It's
only a choice. No effort, no work, no job, no savings, and money. A choice,
right now, between fear and love. The eyes of fear want you to put bigger
locks on your doors, buy guns, close yourselves off. The eyes of love,
instead, see all of us as one. Here's what you can do to change the world,
right now, to a better ride. Take all that money that we spend on weapons
and defence each year, and instead spend it feeding, clothing and educating
the poor of the world, which it would many times over, not one human being
excluded, and we could explore space, together, both inner and outer, for
ever, in peace.”
(http://www.billhicks.com/darktimes/other/darktimes20/faq/index.html)
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