[MD] Reality Lies Outside Linear Time

[Platt Holden]

Hi Khoo,  

A few comments. Basically I think we agree. 


> Just one or two quick points to follow up from your questions:
> 
> I am in two "minds" here. Sorry for the pun.
> 
> There is on one hand, the mind that is continously thinking, generating
> thoughts and from these thoughts, concepts. For this mind, these
> thoughts
> are objects, just as concepts are objects. These thoughts and concepts
> are
> "real" and can be reduced and constructed. The mind in this buddhistic
> sense
> is another sense door - the sixth - after the usual five and with these
> six
> sense doors - the conventional reality appears.
> 
> This is the world in which subject object metaphysics (SOM) will arise.
> This
> is the world in which linear time as invented is percieved and is as real
> as
> is illusory. IF I am at the level where I can generate thoughts and
> concepts
> with memes as their building blocks, I guess I am an intellectual,
> intellectualising, but there is no real experience. Dead end.
> 
> There is on the other hand, the unthinking mind. Not mindless. But
> mindful.
> Mindful because it has been stilled, from generating thoughts and
> concepts
> as objects....
> 
> Why is it preferable to still the mind so it does not generate objects ?
> 
> Because we get to experience Reality as it is, because objects get in
> the
> way of doing so. If this is Pirsig's pure experience prior to concepts,
> then
> it must be this state of mind that sees objects for what they are:
> machine
> code, bits and parts of thought components and patterns generated by the
> five senses and their aggregation that is called 'mind'. And by creating
> objects, we create ourselves, subjects which observe objects. Its a
> false
> creation. I am only an aggregate of my six sense doors.

I was with you up to this point. It's my understanding that Pirsig's pure 
experience is prior to "machine code, bits and parts of thought components, 
and patterns generated by the five senses and their aggregate that is 
called 'mind.' " Those are all concepts. Pure experience is without 
concepts of any kind.

> That way the Subject Object Metaphysics creates a reality premised on
> making
> permanent patterns which are actually instrinsically changing all the
> time.
> If one might say, at the same time. That way SOM prevents the experience
> of
> a reality devoid of objects and subjects( a truism !) And if the subject
> is
> a false creation; its yardstick of good and bad has no premise.

Yes. SOM has no yardstick of good and bad. That's Pirsig's main complaint.

> Values and Morals therefore have to lie outside the SOM; based on what
> is
> real, pure experience. In other words, I can never get to the root of
> what
> is good and bad by breaking down the universe into its percieved little
> parts. It should lie in the other direction; outside our constructs of
> time
> and of what holds everything together in the first place.

Yes, outside our concepts entirely -- except if we wish to philosophize 
about it, we have to attribute a split to pure experience which in the MOQ 
is Dynamic/static Quality. 
 
> The Universe is always dynamic. It is always in action. Acting. It is as
> if
> we lapse from pure experience and fall into thinking; the spontaneous
> generation of thoughts and of generating concepts. Intellect or concept
> forming is a reflex, just as smiling, just as breathing, just as
> evaporating. Patterns that have found form and then persist.

Yes, humans can no more stop thinking than breathing. But the premises on 
which thinking begins can be questioned, if not controlled. The Ayn Rand 
warning of "Check your premises" is an MOQ perspective (although she never 
knew it and would probably deny it if she did)..  

 > Of the two minds, one bound by concepts age and grow old - ONLY because
> the
> mind has attached itself to patterns; time based thoughts, concepts and
> objects that can grow old.
> 
> The other mind of pure experience, that has transcended patterns has no
> attachments and is therefore free of form, perpetually in flux with the
> everchanging universe. There was no beginning and there is no end, it
> can't
> therefore grow old.
 
But, the question remains. Does the "other mind" survive the body's death 
so that it will recognize itself then?

Platt