From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Sun Mar 23 2003 - 22:34:34 GMT
Hey Rick:
> CAMPBELL (from Myths to Live By, ch7 p 127-129)
> Let us imagine ourselves for a moment in the lecture hall where I
> originally presented the material for this capter. Above, we see the many
> lights. Each bulb is separate from each other. Regarded that way, they
> are so many empirical facts; and the whole universe seen that way is
> called..., "the universe of things."
> But now, let us consider further. Each of those separate bulbs is a
> vehicle of light, and the light is not many but one. The one light, that
> is to say, is being displayed through all those bulbs; and we may think,
> therefore, either of the many bulbs or of the one light. Moreover, if this
> or that bulb went out, it would be replaced by another and we should again
> have the same light. The light, which is one, appears thus through many
> bulbs.
> Analogously, I would be looking out from the lecture platform, seeing
> before me all the people of my audience, and just as each bulb seen aloft
> is vehicle of light, so each of us below is a wehicle of consciousness.
> But the important thing about a bulb is the quality of its light.
> Likewise, the important thing about wach of us is the quality of his
> consciousness. And although wach may tend to identify himself mainly with
> his separate body and its frailties, it is possible also to regard one's
> body as a mere vehicle of consciousness and to think then of conscioussness
> as the one presence here made manifest though us all. These are but two
> ways of interpreting and experiencing that same set of present facts. One
> way is not truer than the other. The are just two ways of interpreting and
> experienceing; the first, in terms of the manifold of separate things; the
> second, in terms of the one thing that is made manifest through this
> manifold.
>
> RICK
> I think Pirsig was saying that though the "bulbs" burn out, the light
> shines on.
Thanks for the beautiful Campbell quote. Here's a similar one from Aziz
Nasafi:
"On the death of any living creature the spirit returns to the spiritual
world, the body to the bodily world. In this, however, only the body is
subject to change. The spiritual world is one single spirit who stands
like unto a light behind the bodily world and who, when any single
creature comes into being shines through it as through a window.
According to the kind and size of the window less or more light enters
the world. The light itself however remains unchanged."
I'd guess that the "light" in both quotes is analogous to Pirsig's "Quality"
although in his 'Afterword' Pirsig refers to a "larger pattern that holds us
all together." I don't think of Quality as a pattern. But I suppose it
becomes a pattern as soon as you cleave it into static and Dynamic. so
maybe "larger pattern" fits with "light" after all.
Platt
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