[MD] Food for Thought

[David M]

Hi DMB

A few questions for you below:

David M

> Ken Wilber...
> "The Perennial Philosophy (the term was made famous by Huxley but coined 
> by
> Leibniz) - the transcendental essence of the great religions - has as its
> core the notion of 'nonduality', which means that reality is neither one 
> nor
> many, neither permanent nor dynamic, neither seperate nor unified, neither
> pluralistic nor holistic. It is entirely and radically above and prior to
> ANY form of conceptual elaboration."

DM: How do you see the relationship between what is transcendent
and what is available to be experienced? Does transcendence imply
a reality beyond experience (loaded question of course, do you
know how to disarm it)?

>
> Lila. pages 364-5...
> "...James...RADICALEMPIRICISM.. meant that subjects and objects were not 
> the
> staring point of esperience. Subjects and objects are secondary. They are
> concepts derived from something more fundamental which he described as ' 
> the
> immediate flux of life which furnishes the material to our later 
> reflection
> with its conceptual categories'. In this basic flux of experience, the
> distinctions of reflecive thought, such as those between consciousness and
> content, subject and object, mind and matter, have not yet emerged in the
> forms which we make them. Pure experience cannot be either physical or
> psychical: It logically precedes the distinction."
>

DM: Yes and James goes on to say that therefore we are entitled to our
beliefs that are in accord with our 'passionate' natures and cannot 
demonstrate scientifically.
Radical empiricism embraces many qualities that cannot be objectified.
I get the impression that your calls to base al beliefs on experience does
not reflect the richness of this idea that James intended.

"In science, James notes, we can afford to await the outcome of 
investigation before coming to a belief, but other in other cases we are 
"forced," in that we must come to some belief even if all the relevant 
evidence is not in. If I am on a isolated mountain trail, faced with an icy 
ledge to cross, and do not know whether I can make it, I may be forced to 
consider the question whether I can or should believe that I can cross the 
ledge. This question is not only forced, it is "momentous": if I am wrong I 
may fall to my death, and if I believe rightly that I can cross the ledge, 
my holding of the belief may itself contribute to my success. In such a 
case, James asserts, I have the "right to believe" - precisely because such 
a belief may help bring about the fact believed in. This is a case "where a 
fact cannot come at all unless a preliminary faith exists in its coming" (WB 
25)."

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/james/#4


> James Essay, page 23...
> "The instant field of the present is at all times what I call the 'pure
> experience'. It is only virtually or potentially either a subject or an
> object as yet."
>

DM: James had a lot to say about openness and potential,
and how this underpinned pragmatism, I think you should take
a look. Bergson influenced James who influenced Husserl on
this.

> Ron DiSanto in the Guidebook to ZAMM. page 23...
> "In the spiritual traditions of both the East and the West - I am thinking
> not about any particular religion, but about the mystical element to be
> found in them all - we find the claim that eventually one must let go of 
> the
> activities of thought and imagination in order to enter regions of
> consciousness that such symbolic activity cannot reach."

DM: I think SA may hekp us here. We encounter a tree. Is there more
to a tree than what we experience? Is there something in excess of our
experience that we are aware of about the tree? Is the tree holding
something back? Do we feel the trees silence? That the tree transcends
what is exchanged in the limitations of experience. I'm answering my
own question above now of course.

>
> It might seem like I'm mixing in too many elements but I want you to 
> notice
> a theme here. These quotes all make reference, in one way or another, to 
> the
> notion that reality is fundamentally undivided. This is not only presented
> as the realization of enlightenment, as the core truth of the world's 
> great
> religions and it is also presented as the starting point of the MOQ's
> radical empiricism. There are lots of names for this undivided experience.
> Pirsig calls this the primary empirical reality, James calls it pure
> experience or the immediate flux of life, Northrop call it the
> undifferentiated aesthetic continuum. And we see another theme here too. 
> The
> guidebook says that this reality can be known only if we let go of 
> thought,
> Lila says it is outside language, James says its prior to our conceptual
> categories, Wilber says its prior to and above any conceptual elaborations
> and in the annotations Pirsig says its intellectually unknowable. They all
> make reference, on way or another, to the notion that it can only be known
> directly and immediately, through a non-rational experience.

DM: I guess we are given and open to each other is what this is getting at,
when we meet we encounter Others and Things that have meaning for us,
SQ must be seen in the context of rich qualities and values that exceed
what can be conceptualised, DQ may be about change, but it is also
contextualised by meaning, by how we re-spond to what is given in
experience. The re-sponding allows 'what is' to emerge.

>
> Pirisg's assertion that the Metaphysics of Quality is a contradiction in
> terms is predictated on the notion the the mystical reality (DQ) can't be
> captured by metaphysical concepts (sq). When he says that Quality can't be
> defined, its not because its outside of experience but because it is an
> experience prior to any such conceptualizations. Notice also that this 
> sort
> of mysticism is not based on any kind of belief or doctrine, but upon a
> certain kind of experience. One known regardless of culture...
>

DM: Funny that the same guy who bangs on about clarity to Ian refers to
what cannot be objectified as primary.

> Carl Jung:
> "The arch sin of faith, it seemed to me, was that it forestalled
> experience".
>
> Matthew Fox:
> The Christian West was too alienated from its own mystical tradition to
> resist this secular effort to eliminate a living cosmology,"
>
> Pirsig in the annotations:
> "The MOQ does not rest on faith. In the MOQ faith is very low quality 
> stuff,
> a willingness to believe falsehoods."
> "When you hear the words "spirit" and "faith" always look for a 
> traditional
> religionsit trying to sneak his goods in the back door. ..like the
> positivisits, the MOQ drops spirit and faith cold."
>
> Wilber:
> The enlightenment pointed out - quite rightly - that religious claims 
> hiding
> from evidence are not the voice of God or Goddess, but merely the voice of
> men or women, who usually come with big guns and bigger egos. Power, not
> truth, drives claims that hide from evidence."
>
> Okay, that's plenty. Now maybe you can disagree with this better now that
> I've laid it all out. The perennial philosophy also says that manifest or
> static reality is divided into levels of being and so Pirsig's system
> reflects that part of it too. There are also some interesting things to be
> said about why the West became alienated from its mystical self. 
> Psychology
> is no stranger to this topic either, but I wanted to answer your basic
> question. What brand of mysticism am I talking about? Its a version of the
> perennial philosophy, its compatible with the esoteric core of all the
> religions and with a number of philosophers. If the doors of perception 
> were
> cleansed, everything would appear as it truley is; infinite. Just ask
> William Blake or Aldous Huxley. Channel the spirit of Jim Morrison. He'll
> tell you too, if he's not too stoned.

DM: This is all very well but does not do enough for me. Yes we do need to
ensure that we give our attention to experience and remain connected to it,
and uncover its riches, but we still need to refine our intellectual SQ in
the context of this realisation, the MOQ is not a primitivism, it does not
embrace consumerism and hedonism. The description of experience that
MOQ begins needs to offer something more positive than a call to experience
the pre-linguistic unity. I prefer a value oriented pragmatism as per 
William
James, looking to improve how we live. Your talk of unity is too otherwordly
for my liking, its like ceasing to exist, its smells of death and 
withdrawal.
Is thou art that the death of DQ? where everything is familiar and there is
nothing alive and new? Does MOQ exceed the perennial?