[MD] Quantum Physics, Amerindians, Zen, the woods, beyond SOM

[Heather Perella]

Platt, dmb, Ian and Arlo,


     Chapter Nine of Lila:  "This, Phaedrus thought,
was why little children are usually quicker to
perceive Dynamic Quality than old people, why
beginners are usually quicker than experts, why
primitive people are sometimes quicker than those of
'advanced' cultures.  American Indians are
exceptionally skilled at holding to the ever-changing
center of things.  That is the real reason they speak
and act without ornamentation.  It violates their
mystic unity.  This moving and acting and talking in
accord with the Great Spirit and almost nothing else
has been the ancient center of their lives.
     Their term manito is often used interchangeably
with 'God' by whites who usually think all religion is
theistic and by Indians themselves who don't make a
big deal out of any verbal distinctions.  But as David
Mandelbaum noted in his book 'The Plains Cree', 'The
term manito primarily referred to the Supreme Being
but also had many other usages.  It was applied to
manifestations of skill, fortune, blessing, luck, to
any wonderous occurrence.  It connoted any phenomenon
that transcended the run of everyday experience.
     In other words, 'Dynamic Quality'.
     With the identification of static and Dynamic
Quality as the fundamental division of the world,
Phaedrus felt that some kind of goal had been reached.
 This first division of the Metaphysics of Quality now
covered the spectrum of experience from primitive
mysticism to quantum mechanics."

     And so, we see Pirsig notices that primitive
mysticism (Great Spirit, manito, Supreme Being) AND
quantum mechanics (superposition, nonlocality, the
strange events of the quantum) all are in the spectrum
of the MoQ.  When we put this all together,
intellectually, we will need to understand what does
spirit mean?  This became a hang-up for some, not so
sure why, other than some have not gone mystical
enough, and on top of that, some have not been able to
translate that mystical, dynamic experience into an
intellectual framework that is an MoQ intellect.  How
does the MoQ define spirit intellectually?  I say it's
none other than dynamic quality.  Having an experience
of high-spirit is an experience of excellence, where
everything seems to have found a groove, including one
self.  It all seems to be coming together for us, I
would call that a group that has a strong spirit, even
amidst adversity.  Spirit seems to have many
connotations, and spirit doesn't necessarily have to
be exactly dynamic quality such as Dq=spirit, pound
for pound, but spirit does take ones experience
outside of the usual everyday life that the U.S.
culture upholds.  Oh, and then there is quantum
physics.  We can not turn our eye away from the finds
here.  This is not a Newtonian physics where
everything has turned into a zoo or a museum where we
walk around observing, thinking, we can stay untainted
and special and separated in our personality from the
supposedly SOM world of rocks that are just sand and
silt.  What does that mean - just sand and silt?  What
is sand and silt to me?  Sand is here.  Silt is here. 
I am here.  Let's beautify the world and come up with
a better story than us human beings having this life
and everything else is just dead - oh how sad that is.
     So, we observe electrons and they change
according to how we look at them.  What the heck is
that?  Electrons found everywhere in this universe,
move about in ways that our presence is involved in a
relationship with electrons that involves action,
movement.  No wonder each static level must stabilize
each other.  Our eyes change the behaviors of things,
'out there' - how can that be.  Just by looking at
something - changes occur.  This world is very, very
sensitive.
     
     Some more quotes from "The Way of the Human
Being" that speaks volumes on this
quantum-mystical-intellectual world of quality as
follows:

     "For me (the author), heir to the western
metaphysic, the world begins a mere hairbreadth beyond
my fingertips.  Like Michelangelo's famous painting in
the vault of the Sistine Chapel, I reach out to touch
the Spirit of the Universe outside of me.  I, ego, am
something else; I am not event.  Though mythology and
now quantum mechanics insist I am.  This is a
revelation, a new metaphysic..."

     "They worry about friends and relatives:  someone
might be out on the tundra on a snowmobile (formerly
dog-team) being stalked by the storm.  I am amazed. 
It's not just that weather is viewed as a person; it's
that their personality and its personality converge. 
The event is one of a piece, a whole; it is completely
participatory - there are no spectators in this world
of theirs."  
      Or mine, or yours I add.  We are not G-ds or
Kings or Queens moving about more holier than thou or
better than this world in some kind of untouchable
place - yet, some are so detached, so isolated,
building walls from this world, in fear probably. 
Getting connected is not that terrible, it's very
complete actually.

     "The missionaries sowed discontinuity.  This, I
fear, is the atom-splitting impact of my civilization
- not just the missionaries with their verses and
hymns and exhortations, but the entire voice of this
metaphysic that drives the west.  Raven's Children,
Coyote's Children, Hare's Children, Spiderwoman's
Children, are struggling.  Yet, 'we will survive,'
assures a Navajo woman..."

     "He and his people would become enslaved to these
manufactures, and they would lose their old
relationship, in truth their powers, with the land and
waters.  I warned, too, that the game would not give
itself so readily anymore - the Gift would likely
disappear.
     He had as much as confirmed this when I picked
him up this morning:  he had been out seal hunting
yesterday down in Kong and had shot at a seal, and
missed.  Came home with nothing.  Driving to the bank
he laughed:  he swore those seals have been 'trained'
already by the other hunters this season, meaning that
the seals (especially the spotted) that are around now
are extremely wary of men with guns.  They keep their
distance."

     Anybody that knows about how the hunters in the
north used to stand/sit quietly for a very long time
over seal holes, in a focus and patience that matches
any Zen practitioner, and anybody that has studied
domestication v. wild animals, will understand how we
can 'train' not only ourselves, the animals, but prune
the land itself to our likes and dislikes.  It's that
simple.  It's just as Pirsig says in Lila, again
Chapter Nine as follows:

     "In this way static patterns of value become the
universe of distinguishable things.  Elementary static
distinctions between such entities as 'before' and
'after' and between 'like' and 'unlike' grow into
enormously complex patterns of knowledge that are
transmitted from generation to generation as the
mythos, the culture in which we live."

     So, we notice another culture, a culture of
seals, meaning, a culture centered upon seals, as the
buffalo was the center of the Plains culture, and with
such a central pivot in any culture moving about in
the ocean or grasslands, such entities that seemingly
control life or death of a people, we move into the
mystical where seals and buffalo are life and death of
a people, they are dynamics outside the culture of a
people, wildly moving about in a way that shatters
rigid static patterns that any people may come up with
for their own society of human beings.  The wildness
of buffalo and seals will break the static patterns,
at times, intellect must sharpen, be quick and nimble
in order to keep up with static patterns that wildly
move about with a quality that shines dynamism on a
daily basis.  This whole relationship is one of
quality.  Dynamic quality I would say is what we call
change, which is also what we call wild - the
wilderness, the quantum bouncing of electrons that do
unexpected 'things', and then we apply static
patterns, the world applies static patterns, and yet,
we still notice how wild everything, including people
in their crazy art-talk, can be.

     Another important quote:
     "Perhaps, over the years, there has been too much
trauma for these extraordinarily perceptive, artistic
people.  The vibration of piano string and guitar, the
interval of the internal combustion engine, the grain
of driftwood on its way to becoming the mask, the
figure leaping out of the walrus tusk:  they see and
hear and touch and, ultimately, participate in the
'becoming' of it.  Maybe it's the loss of this
perception, this field of force, this 'art', which is
the mysterious X factor that has driven so many of
them to despair, made them susceptible to drink.  I
don't think liquor is the fundamental problem; there
is something more powerful, more profound, anterior to
that.  I sense they have lost something of the Story: 
they no longer synthesize the cosmos with their hands,
their music and dance, clothing and homes and tools,
their language, even their names.  Living ceases to be
artful, cosmically artful.  The art they do now is
fragmented, disconnected; it doesn't speak one
seamless Story."

     If this isn't the code of art transformed from
quality, a code of art that we can intellectually
understand, then I don't no what is.

     Last quote:
     "There can be no accidents in the world
constituted here, firmly corrects the Eskimo. 
Accidents are fiction; the very word betrays a failure
of explanation - more than that, a failure of being, a
failure at 'seeing the life in something.'  Failure to
see the co-mingling, the seamlessness , the possession
even, of oneself by the wholeself.  Accidents, like
manuals, are for kass'aqs (white men of
western/Aristotle rationality I now add) - for people
who think the universe and its ways are discontinuous,
like the world of Newtonian physics.  The reality of
nonlocality:  the physicists discovered the truth of
this only within my lifetime; the Yup'ik Eskimos and
other Native Americans have known its truth for
millennia.  When I lectured on quantum theory at the
seminary, Sarah Owens confided afterward that her
grandparents had told her as much."

     And there's something outside the door, something
in the night, speaking and grumbling... and the
thunder and rain continue to fall as I experience this
moment energizing, doing something with me, everything
is storming and dare I say I feel love and peace in
this storm tonight as I know all near me are safe. 
And we are the storm, too, the storm is the leaves
blowing, the trees rocking back and forth, the birds
not seen (probably doing what I'm doing) which is
sitting here, listening, heartfull, mindful, yes, very
alert - this is a storm, such an event it is.

Thanks,
SA

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