[MD] Thus spoke Lila

[Horse]

Hi Platt

On 12/12/2010 21:25, Platt Holden wrote:
> Hi Horse,
>
> Our difference seems to be a difference in the meaning of "knowledge" and "understanding."

Both are intellectual patterns (words) which refer to other intellectual 
patterns (static reality) as opposed to pre-conceptual and 
pre-intellectual experience (mystic reality).
Knowledge and understanding are post-experiential and stem from prior 
experience. To confuse the pre-conceptual experience of mystic reality 
with the post-experience concepts of knowledge and understanding is 
where the problem lies.

> You appear to consider them only pointing to static intellectual patterns of value.

Not necessarily. The words we use, the analogies, metaphors etc. we 
employ may also point to the mystic reality, but they are still 
post-experience. Knowledge/understanding of or about experience are 
still static patterns. They are pointers to something and not the 
!?*^*(#_#)*^*?!  that is being pointed to. By using the terms knowledge 
and understanding when referring to mystic reality you are confusing the 
two. To even use the term 'mystic reality' is to pattern what is 
unpatterned and free of concepts or knowledge!
Mystic reality (DQ) has no concepts or patterns - it is pure, undivided 
and immediate value/experience. As soon as you start applying concepts 
or words you have left this reality behind.

> I see them as also pointing to aesthetic experience prior to the formation of the static patterns of value, that is, knowledge of Dynamic value before descriptive words.

Here again is the misunderstanding. Unpatterned, immediate experience 
has no analogues or concepts. These always occur after the reality. 
Experience that can be known, expressed or understood is not the actual 
experience of mystic reality.

> You described this Dynamic value below in referring to it is as a wordless state of being
> "engrossed" in pure experience before being dropped "back into the static world" of words and analogies.

Yes. I have also said that I'm off somewhere else. In a trance-like 
state. Gone! Away with the fairies. Spaced out. Tranced. I think the 
term used in Zen-Buddhism is mu-shin or no mind.

> I consider this "engrossment" to be direct aesthetic knowledge of pure reality.

Yes. I agree. And it is not as difficult to achieve as some would have 
you believe. One way is to close your eyes, sit back and drift off.

> Or, as Huang Po put it: Here it is -- right now. Start thinking about it and you miss it."  This knowledge "without conceptual distinctions" is aesthetic rather than intellectual, cited by Northrop and implicit when you are musically "in the zone."

But it is not knowledge or knowing - these come after the experience. 
What you are trying to do is to dump the state of knowing and just 
experience. The moment is not about knowing but experiencing, which is 
why there are no conceptual distinctions such as knowing/not knowing. 
You just are. You are here, in the moment.
All this talk about knowing and understanding is peripheral to pure 
experience and one of the main reasons why I rarely talk about it - 
there's no point. It just confuses.

Cheers Platt


Horse


-- 

"Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid."
— Frank Zappa