From: david buchanan (dmbuchanan@hotmail.com)
Date: Thu Sep 01 2005 - 22:46:52 BST
Sam, Matt and all MOQers:
Horse, this is a long one. Maybe you could help to make sure it gets
through?
This post is especially designed for those who wish to take the metaphysics
and/or the Quality out of the MOQ. As I understand it, there is a great deal
of overlap between Pragmatism and the MOQ, but mysticism is outside that
area. Mysticism represents the area where they don't overlap and I think the
consequences of this difference are enormous. And Western religion, where we
might have the best hope of finding some mysticism, also tends to exclude
it. As I understand it, the MOQ says that its Quality all the way down, not
language, and it rejects the pre-existing subjective self, the"autonomous
judgement" of the "choosing unit" that Sam and Western theism seem to depend
upon. That's why this is addressed to Matt and Sam, but I hope every MOQer
thinks about this post. (I'll be gone this weekend for a high school
reunion, so it'll be a week or so before I can respond to any comments.) May
I remind you where this thread began?...
"QUALITY! VIRTUE! DHARMA! THAT is what the Sophists were teaching! NOT
ethical relativism. NOT pristine 'virtue'. But ARETE. Excellence. DHARMA!
Before the church of reason. Before substance. Before form. Before mind and
matter. Before dialectic itself. Quality had been absolute. Those first
teachers of the Western world were teaching QUALITY, and the medium they had
chosen was that of rhetoric. He had been doing it right all along." ZAMM
p.340
This quote not only reminds us of what what lost, of what Plato turned into
a fixed, static idea, but I think it also takes a nice little dig at the
relativism of neoPragmatism and the pristine virtue of traditional religion.
And it reminds us that Pirsig says Quality, not intellect, is the source of
everything we know, that Quality is the source of intellect and not the
other way around...
"Poincaré had been working on a puzzle of his own. His judgment that the
scientist selects facts, hypotheses and axioms on the basis of harmony, also
left the rough serrated edge of a puzzle incomplete. To leave the impression
in the scientific world that the source of all scientific reality is merely
a subjective, capricious harmony is to solve problems of epistemology while
leaving an unfinished edge at the border of metaphysics that makes the
epistemology unacceptable.
But we know from Phædrus' metaphysics that the harmony Poincaré talked about
is not subjective. It is the source of subjects and objects and exists in an
anterior relationship to them. It is not capricious, it is the force that
opposes capriciousness; the ordering principle of all scientific and
mathematical thought which destroys capriciousness, and without which no
scientific thought can proceed." [ZMM Ch22]rhetoric. He had been doing it
right all along." ZAMM 340
I think the idea that intellectual truths are selected on the basis of
Quality, on the basis of a non-subjective sense of harmony, flies in the
face of the neopragmatic assertion that words and thoughts are selected on
the basis of mere utility, of usefulness. The "whatever works" theory of
linguistic practice gets into hot water when we ask questions like, "works
for who?" and "Works to accomplish what?" With those genocidal fascists,
atom bomb droppers looming and fundamentalist terrorists looming in the
background, I think we have to find a better justification for our beliefs
and attitudes. As I understand it, the idea of a transformational experience
is to get beyond the various competeing static interpretations, devotion to
which only leads to conflict, and wake up to a more immediate empirical
reality....
Here's Alan Watts in his "MYTH AND RITUAL IN CHRISTIANITY":
"mysticism ...of this kind involves a far more acute awareness of the plain
evidence of the senses than is usual, and that, so far from retreating into
a subjective and private world of its own, its entire concern is to
transcend subjectivity, so that man may 'wake up' to the world which is
concrete and actual, as distinct from that which is purely abstact and
conceptual. Those who undertake this task unanimoulsly report a vision of
the world startlingly different from that of the average socially
conditioned man - a vision in whose light the business of living and dying,
working and eating, ceases to be a problem. It goes on, yes, but it ceases
to be the frantic and frustrating pursuit of an ever-receding goal, because
of the discovery that time - as ordinarily understood, is an illusion.
Yet another consequesnce of this acute awareness of the real world is the
discovery that what has been felt to be one's 'self' or 'ego' is also an
abstraction without reality - a discovery in which the 'mystic' oddly joins
hands with the scientist who 'has never been able to detect any organ called
the soul'. That which takes the place of the conventional world of time and
space, oneself and other, is properly described by negatgions - 'unborn,
unoriginated, uncreated, unformed' - because its natue is neither verbal nor
conceptual. In brief, the 'seers' of this reality are the 'disenchanted' and
'disillusioned' - those who are able to employ thoughts, ideas, and words
without being spell-bound and hypnotized by their magic."
This disenchanted reality, the one that is neither verbal nor conceptual, is
one that is denied by thinkers like Rorty, for whom there is no reality
beyond words and concepts. And Sam's belief in the self or ego is also
denies it, although for different reasons...
Bernadette Roberts in "THE EXPERIENCE OF NO-SELF":
"The whole problem is that until we come upon this final event we do not
know it is missing from the literature; thus we have no way of knowing what,
specifically, to look for. In other words, until we know first hand or by
experience exactly what to look for, we are not is a postion to judge
whether or not this event is in the literature. This does not mean that
millions of people have not come upon the no-self event, indeed, sooner or
later everyone will do so. All it means is that an accurate, distinguishable
or clarifying account is not in the literature. The challenge of providing
such an account is what my writing is all about. ...It may be that for
centuries our various censors have eliminated any event they did not
understand or which they thought too upsetting to their clientele."
"To journey beyond the self means leaving behind our relative notions,..
going beyond our usual frames of reference and encountering areas of
theologcial sensitivity which, alone, would necessitate such account
remaining unrecorded. I have always been of the opinion that John of the
Cross, with the Spanish Inquisition breathing down his neck, failed to give
us the full story. We know that his writings were left incomplete."
Plato's blunder, the one where he turned DQ into a static form, has a very
interesting parallel in the history of our Western religion. Or rather, the
church committed a variation on Plato's blunder, just like everybody else.
Or maybe we could just think of it as another chapter in the story of how
mysticism was lost...
"Nearly all the peoples around the Mediterranean had at some point adopted
the Pagan mysteries and adapted them to their own national taste. At some
point in the first few centuries BCE a group of Jews had done likewise and
produced a Jewish version of the Mysteries. Jewish initiates adapted the
myths of Osiris-Dionysus to produce the story of a Jewsh dying and
resurrecting godman. , Jesus the Messiah. In time this myth came to be
interpreted as historical fact and Literalist Christianity was the product".
Jesus and the Lost Goddess, p 123
This is another way of saying that DQ was buried under static clap trap,
static misinterpretations that prevent one from seeing the DQ those static
forms were meant to represent...
"In synthesizing the perennial myth of the dying and resurrecting godman
with Jewish expectations of a historical Messiah the creators of the Jewish
Mysteries took an unprecedented step, the outcome of which they could never
have guessed. And yet, upon analysis, the end was already there in the
begininng. The Messiah was expected to be a historical, not a mythical,
saviour. It was inevitable, therefore, that the Jesus story would have to
develop in a quasi-historical setting. And so it did. What had started as a
timeless myth encoding perennial teachings now appeared to be a historical
account of a once-only event in time. From this point it was unavoidable
that sooner or later it would be interpreted as historical fact. Once it
was, a whole new type of religion came into being - a religion based on
history not myth, on blind faith in supposed events rather than on a
mystical understanding of mythical allegories, a religion of the Outer
Mysteries without the Inner Mysteries, of form without content, of belief
without Knowledge." The Jesus Mysteries, p.207
Beyond the problem of historicalization, of literalization, ou may recall
Northrop's comments on the need for a saviour in Western religions. (“Logic
of the Sciences & Humanities”,p.376-77): “The divine object in the West is
an unseen God the Father. This means that He cannot be known by the
aesthetic intuition after the manner of the divine being of the Orient.
...If the divine is given with immediacy then it is here in the world of
immediate intuition already without the mediation of a divinely inspired
representative." By constrast the MOQ supports the "Thou Art That" view of
the Self, not the God and man duality of Western theism. But bashing
religion isn't really the point, its just that it tends to get in the way of
seeing what Pirsig is saying, which is what lots of thinkers are saying...
"My favorite defintion of religion is 'a misinterpretation of mythology'.
The misinterpretation consists precisely in attributing historical
references to symbols which properly are spiritual in their reference."
Joseph Campbell
So, instead of asserting virtue in that hopelessly static Victorian form,
instead of asserting that goodness and truth are whatever works in helping
us cope, the MOQ is saying that personal gumption and peace of mind come
from Quality, not the static forms produced by it. Its about duty and
rightness in terms of one's dharma, one's center and not in terms of
obedience toward religious forms or linguistic practices...
"When an American Indian goes into isolation and fasts in order to achieve a
vision, the vision he seeks in not a romantic understanding of the surface
beauty of the world. (Its not seen with the eye of flesh) Neither is it a
vision of the world's classic intellectual form. (Its not seen with the eye
of the mind) It is something else. Since this whole metaphysics had started
with an attempt to explain Indian mysticism (Seen with the eye of
contemplation.) Phaedrus finally abandoned this classic-romatic split as a
choice for the primary division of the MOQ. The division he finally..."
You may recall Anthony's recent post in which he explains the centrality of
Native American mysticism and the vision Pirsig recieved during that peyote
ceremony. The classic romantic split is abandon because it can't explain
Indian mysticism and takes up the static/Dynamic split because it can. And
since the whole metaphysics was aimed at explaining it, I get a little
bummed when MOQers suggest we minimize, reduce or otherwise take the Dynamic
back out again.
Near the end of chapter 30:
"He could only guess how far back this ritual-cosmos relationship went,
maybe fifty or one hundred thousand years. Cave men are usually depicted as
hairy, stupid creatures who don't do much, but anthropological studies of
contemporary primitive tribes suggest that stone age people were probably
bound by ritual all day long. There's a ritual for washing, for putting up a
house, for hunting, for eating and so on - so much so that the division
between 'ritual' and 'knowledge' becomes indistinct. In cultures without
books ritual seems to be a public library for teaching the young and
preserving common values and information.
These rituals may be the connecting link between the social and intellectual
levels of evolution. One can imagine primitive song-rituals and
dance-rituals associated with certain cosmology stories, myths, which
generated the first primitive religions. From these the first intellectual
truths could have been derived. ..."
There are various theories about the origins of language. One says that it
began with gestures and one says that it began with music, with song. I
think Pirsig's description of pre-historic man as bound by ritual all day
long, that myths and religions preceded our intellectual truths accomodates
both of those those theories - and more. And I think that mythological and
psychological approaches, which are intertwined in many interesting ways,
are among the best ways for Westerners like us to get around the clap trap
of religion and get closer to the source. As I understand it, the hero's
journey is a psychological journey. The myths depict an archetypal character
undergoing a transformational experience just as Orpheus or Christ. Instead
of viewing this pattern as refering to an actual, historical event, we are
to view this as a model of our own transformation, our own death and
ressurection. Death is letting go of the static forms, most especially
letting go of one's ego. These old myths have quite a pull upon us, even if
we don't know it and shape our view of reality. Our linguistic practices and
intellectual explantions were built upon this older layer of myth and
ritual, if you will.
"The psychiatrist Jung wrote that we all live in a world of values derived
from ancient myths. Old tribal experiences control our lives without our
even knowing it, and when sometimes a story or a scene has a strong
emotional impact its because one of these ancient value-myths have been
tapped." Pirsig's letter to Redford
And in a week or so, I shall try to explain how the Western assumption of
the pre-existing subjective self is the very assumption that prevents us
from seeing this. By way of classical Bhuddist philosophy, I hope to show
how "...the belief in one's own individuality can be seen as the ultimate
form of self-deception and that customs and rituals can be seen as one of
the most powerful mechanisms by which this deception is sustained." Richard
Hayes in a paper titled "RITUAL, SELF-DECEPTION AND MAKE-BELIEVE: A
CLASSICAL BUDDHIST PERSPECTIVE"
Thanks for reading,
dmb
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