[MD] Music as intellectual?

[Ham Priday]

Marsha and All --

> Maybe this is wanting to be enveloped in the whole
> without regard to the individual jigsaw pieces.

What a marvelous statement, Marsha!  It captures the DQ of Pirsig's 
philosophy as well as the cosmology of Essentialism in one simple sentence.

Indeed, all experience is the "envelopment" of individualized awareness in 
the value of the Whole. When we intellectualize this value we perceive it as 
SO reality--as the self participating in a world of objects and events.
But when we sense it directly, stripped of its objectivized constructs, we 
become absorbed in its essence and lose our sense of self-estrangement.

This is why music and art has the power to "move" us; not because it's an 
intellectual phenomenon, but because we can surrender our selves (and our 
intellect) to it.  In moments of rapture, we literally identify with the 
undifferentiated value-sensibility (Pirsig's "pre-intellectual experience") 
which is our primary Essence.  We are then no longer just an observer 
"outside the loop" of reality, we are "at one" with it.  Of course such 
experiences are finite in time, yet even that limitation does not intrude on 
our value realization.  I submit that only human beings have the capacity to 
appreciate esthetic value in this way, to bring it into consciousness as a 
creative abstraction and enjoy it sensually rather than as just another 
object of our experience.

All this talk about "mind" attaching to "intellect" at various levels to 
produce SOM is a circular analysis with no way out.  Life as a human being 
is an experiential manifestation of Essence, a coming together of 
sensibility with its estranged undivided source.  The "Quality experience" 
is one where individual sensibility is enveloped in the Oneness from which 
all difference is perceived, without regard to time, space, and otherness. 
Man is a valuistic creature.  As I see it, the purest form of human 
sensibility is the appreciation of music and the arts.  As artists, you, 
Platt, and some others here will understand this concept; unfortunately for 
others, the essence of reality will always lie in numerical probability, 
intellectual patterns, or objective matter.

Happy New Year to you all!

--Ham