[MD] Cosmic Experience

[plattholden at gmail.com]

All:

An ancient conundrum facing S/O science which assumes every event 
has a cause is the problem of First Cause. For example, what caused 
the Big Bang? If you think you know the answer then the question 
arises what caused  the cause of the Big Bang. Then, what caused 
that? Quickly you are into infinite regress. 

Among the many things that attracted me to the MOQ is Pirsig's 
answer to this perennial problem. In a little noted response to the 
question, "How could experience arise from a level of no experience?" 
Pirsig  said in his annotations in Lila's Child:

"Since experience is the starting point, it doesn't arise from a lower 
level of no experience. Logically speaking, a starting point that arises 
from something else is no longer a starting part."

So what is science's starting point? Something like a "quantum 
fluctuation" that just happened (oops) to have caused the Big Bang. 
>From whence came the law governing quantum fluctuations? Science's 
answer, "Don't ask."

By contrast, in the MOQ the starting point is boundless, timeless, 
causeless experience "which cannot be called either physical or  
psychical. It logically precedes that distinction." (Lila, 29)

This leads me to conclude that the ground of being is perennial 
experience or, as some prefer, "cosmic consciousness," a conclusion 
backed by no less a scientific light than Erwin Schroedinger: "The 
external world and consciousness are one and the same thing."

This leads me further to conclude that the brain, rather than being 
the seat of consciousness, is like the ears, eyes, nose, mouth, and 
skin - a sense organ accessing consciousness (experience), the 
cradle of existence suffusing the universe, immutable and eternal..

What do you think?

Platt