[MD] Pragmatism and Philosophical Mysticism

[David Thomas]

DMB, All

It is clear that "mystic"xxx" words and experiences are central to Pirsig's
work. To that end I went ahead and isolated all those quotes in his two
books for all that want them. (Copied below)

My question about mystical experiences centers around this quote from near
the end of Lila.
>[Lila-pg 186]
> Strictly speaking, the creation of any metaphysics is an immoral act since
> it's a lower form of evolution, intellect, trying to devour a higher mystic
> one.

It is common that talk about mystical experiences whether religious or not
to claim that they are "higher", "transcendent", "enlarged" etc or as Aldous
Huxley says in "Drugs That Shape Men's Minds":

"The ordinary waking consciousness is very useful and, on most occasions, an
indispensible state of mind; but it is by no means the only form of
consciousness, nor in all circumstances the best. Insofar as he transcends
his ordinary self and his ordinary mode of awareness, the mystic is able to
enlarge his vision, to look more deeply into the unfathomable miracle of
existence."

But a couple of pages later he says: (in the 1950's context that maybe in
the near future "powerful but nearly cost-less mind changers [drugs] " will
be available.)

"In the past, very few people have had spontaneous experiences of
pre-mystical or fully mystical nature; still fewer have been willing to
undergo the psychophysical disciplines which prepare an insulated individual
for this kind of self-transcendence."

If we accept that "natural" mysticism is accessible to all humans with
sufficient practice or the right kind of drugs and reconfigure, somehow
we're not really sure how,  the chemical/neurological operations of the
brain; How is it Pirsig can claim that it is "higher" than the intellect?
Could it not be just as likely to be lower?

Dave

Mystic"xxx" 17 items inZaMM

"Like into realms beyond reason. I think present-day reason is an analogue
of the flat earth of the medieval period. If you go too far beyond it you¹re
presumed to fall off, into insanity. And people are very much afraid of
that. I think this fear of insanity is comparable to the fear people once
had of falling off the edge of the world. Or the fear of heretics. There¹s a
very close analogue there.
"But what¹s happening is that each year our old flat earth of conventional
reason becomes less and less adequate to handle the experiences we have and
this is creating widespread feelings of topsy-turviness. As a result we¹re
getting more and more people in irrational areas of thought...occultism,
mysticism, drug changes and the like...because they feel the inadequacy of
classical reason to handle what they know are real experiences." ZaMM 98

"The text started with the premise that if rhetoric is to be taught at all
at a University level it should be taught as a branch of reason, not as a
mystic art. Therefore it emphasized a mastery of the rational foundations of
communication in order to understand rhetoric." ZaMM 104

Why he chose to disregard this advice and chose to respond to this dilemma
logically and dialectically rather than take the easy escape of mysticism, I
don¹t know. But I can guess. I think first of all that he felt the whole
Church of Reason was irreversibly in the arena of logic, that when one put
oneself outside logical disputation, one put oneself outside any academic
consideration whatsoever."Philosophical mysticism, the idea that truth is
indefinable and can be apprehended only by nonrational means, has been with
us since the beginning of history. It¹s the basis of Zen practice." ZaMM 105

"But first, to give this other specter his walking papers, I should say the
following: Perhaps he would have gone in the direction I¹m now about to go
in if this second wave of crystallization, the metaphysical wave, had
finally grounded out where I¹ll be grounding it out, that is, in the
everyday world. I think metaphysics is good if it improves everyday life;
otherwise forget it. But unfortunately for him it didn¹t ground out. It went
into a third mystical wave of crystallization from which he never recovered"
ZaMM 143

"Phædrus remembered Hegel had been regarded as a bridge between Western and
Oriental philosophy. The Vedanta of the Hindus, the Way of the Taoists, even
the Buddha had been described as an absolute monism similar to Hegel¹s
philosophy. Phædrus doubted at the time, however, whether mystical Ones and
metaphysical monisms were introconvertable since mystical Ones follow no
rules and metaphysical monisms do. His Quality was a metaphysical entity,
not a mystic one. Or was it? What was the difference?
He answered himself that the difference was one of definition. Metaphysical
entities are defined. Mystical Ones are not. That made Quality mystical. No.
It was really both. Although he¹d thought of it purely in philosophical
terms up to now as metaphysical, he had all along refused to define it. That
made it mystic too. Its indefinability freed it from the rules of
metaphysics" ZaMM 146

"Quality [romantic Quality] and its manifestations [classic Quality] are in
their nature the same. It is given different names [subjects and objects]
when it becomes classically manifest.
Romantic quality and classic quality together may be called the "mystic."
Reaching from mystery into deeper mystery ,it is the gate to the secret of
all life" ZaMM 147

"Sylvia knew what she was talking about the first day when she noticed all
those people coming the other way. What did she call it? A "funeral
procession." The task now is to get back down to that procession with a
wider kind of understanding than exists there now.
First of all I should say that I don¹t know whether Phædrus¹ claim that
Quality is the Tao is true. I don¹t know of any way of testing it for truth,
since all he did was simply compare his understanding of one mystic entity
with another. He certainly thought they were the same, but he may not have
completely understood what Quality was. Or, more likely, he may not have
understood the Tao. He certainly was no sage. And there¹s plenty of advice
for sages in that book he would have done well to heed." ZaMM 149

"This inner peace of mind occurs on three levels of understanding. Physical
quietness seems the easiest to achieve, although there are levels and levels
of this too, as attested by the ability of Hindu mystics to live buried
alive for many days. Mental quietness, in which one has no wandering
thoughts at all, seems more difficult, but can be achieved. But value
quietness, in which one has no wandering desires at all but simply performs
the acts of his life without desire, that seems the hardest." ZaMM 173

"It was apparent that the term "Quality" was not within any one discipline
unless that discipline was philosophy. And he knew from his experience with
philosophy that further study there was unlikely to uncover anything
concerning an apparently mystic term in English composition.
He became more and more aware of the possibility that there was no program
available where he might study Quality in terms resembling those in which he
understood it. Quality lay not only outside any academic discipline, it lay
outside the grasp of the methods of the entire Church of Reason. It would
take quite a University to accept a doctoral thesis in which the candidate
refused to define his central term.
He looked through the catalogs for a long time before he discovered what he
hoped he was looking for. There was one University, the University of
Chicago, where there existed an interdisciplinary program in "Analysis of
Ideas and Study of Methods." The examining committee included a professor of
English, a professor of philosophy, a professor of Chinese, and the
Chairman, who was a professor of ancient Greek! That one rang bells" ZaMM
196

"He admitted the claim was grandiose and that value judgments were actually
impossible for him to make since no person could be an impartial judge of
his own cause. But if someone else were to produce a thesis which purported
to be a major breakthrough between Eastern and Western philosophy, between
religious mysticism and scientific positivism, he would think it of major
historic importance, a thesis which would place the University miles ahead.
In any event, he said, no one was really accepted in Chicago until he¹d
rubbed someone out. It was time Aristotle got his."ZaMM 202

Mystic"xxx" 62 items in Lila

a description by the anthropologist, E. A. Hoebel, of a Cheyenne Indian
male:
"His thinking is rationalistic to a high degree and yet colored with
mysticism. His ego is strong and not easily threatened. His superego, as
manifest in the strong social conscience and mastery of his basic impulses,
is powerful and dominating. He is 'mature,' serene and composed, secure in
his social position, capable of warm social relations. He has powerful
anxieties but these are channelized into institutionalized modes of
collective expression with satisfactory results. He exhibits few neurotic
tendencies." pg 24

Now if that isn't a description of William S. Boyd playing Hopalong Cassidy
in twenty-three or fifty or however many films, there never was one. With
the single exception of the Indian 'mysticism' the characterization is
perfect. Pg 24

It has two kinds of opponents. The first are the
philosophers of science, most particularly the group known as logical
positivists, who say -that only the natural sciences can legitimately
investigate the nature of reality, and that metaphysics is simply a
collection of unprovable assertions that are unnecessary to the scientific
observation of reality. For a true understanding of reality, metaphysics is
too 'mystical.' This is clearly the group with which Franz Boas, and because
of him modern American anthropology, belongs.
The second group of opponents are the mystics. The term mystic is sometimes
confused with 'occult' or 'supernatural' and with magic and witchcraft but
in philosophy it has a different meaning. Some of the most honored
philosophers in history have been mystics: Plotinus, Swedenborg, Loyola,
Shankaracharya and many others. They share a common belief that the
fundamental nature of reality is outside language; that language splits
things up into parts while the true nature of reality is undivided. Zen,
which is a mystic religion, argues that the illusion of dividedness can be
overcome by meditation. The Native American Church argues that peyote can
force-feed a mystic understanding upon those who were normally resistant to
it, an understanding that Indians had been deriving through Vision Quests in
the past. This mysticism, Dusenberry thought, is the absolute center of
traditional Indian life, and as Boas had made clear, it is absolutely
outside the domain of positivistic science and any anthropology that adheres
to it.
Historically mystics have claimed that for a true understanding of reality
metaphysics is too 'scientific.' Metaphysics is not reality. Metaphysics is
names about reality. Metaphysics is a restaurant where they give you a
thirty-thousand page menu and no food.
Phasdrus thought it portended very well for his Metaphysics of Quality that
both mysticism and science reject metaphysics for completely opposite
reasons. It suggested that if there is a bridge between the two, between the
understanding of the Indians and the
understanding of the anthropologists, metaphysics is where that bridge is
located.
Of the two kinds of hostility to metaphysics he considered the mystics'
hostility the more formidable. Mystics will tell you that once you've opened
the door to metaphysics you can say goodbye to any genuine understanding of
reality. Thought is not a path to reality. It sets obstacles in that path
because when you try to use thought to approach something that is prior to
thought your thinking does not carry you toward that something. It carries
you away from it. To define something is to subordinate it to a tangle of
intellectual relationships. And when you do that you destroy real
understanding.
The central reality of mysticism, the reality that Phaedrus had called
'Quality' in his first book, is not a metaphysical chess piece. Quality
doesn't have to be defined. You understand it without definition, ahead of
definition. Quality is a direct experience independent of and prior to
intellectual abstractions. Pg 32- 33

The Metaphysics of Quality subscribes to what is called empiricism. It
claims that all legitimate human knowledge arises from the senses or by
thinking about what the senses provide. Most empiricists deny the validity
of any knowledge gained through imagination, authority, tradition, or purely
theoretical reasoning. They regard fields such as art, morality, religion,
and metaphysics as unverifiable. The Metaphysics of Quality varies from this
by saying that the values of art and morality and even religious mysticism
are verifiable, and that in the past they have been excluded for
metaphysical reasons, not empirical reasons. They have been excluded because
of the metaphysical assumption that all the universe is composed of subjects
and objects and anything that can't be classified as a subject or an object
isn't real. There is no empirical evidence for this assumption at all. It is
just an assumption Pg 49

By even using the term 'Quality' he had already violated the nothingness of
mystic reality. The use of the term 'Quality' sets up a pile of questions of
its own that have nothing to do with mystic reality and walks away leaving
them unanswered. Even the name, 'Quality,' was a kind of definition since it
tended to associate mystic reality with certain fixed and limited
understandings. Already he was in trouble. Was the mystic reality of the
universe really more immanent in the higher-priced cuts of meat in the
butcher shop? These were 'Quality' meats, weren't they? Was the butcher
using the term incorrectly? Phaedrus had no answers Pg 53

Phsdrus had spent an enormous amount of time following what turned out to be
lousy openings. A particularly large amount of this time had been spent
trying to lay down a first line of division between the classic and romantic
aspects of the universe he'd emphasized in his first book. In that book his
purpose had been to show how Quality could unite the two. But the fact that
Quality was the best way of uniting the two was no guarantee that the
reverse was true - that the classic-romantic split was the best way of
dividing Quality. It wasn't. For example, American Indian mysticism is the
same platypus in a world divided primarily into classic and romantic
patterns as under a subject-object division. When an American Indian goes
into isolation and fasts in order to achieve a vision, the vision he seeks
is not a romantic understanding of the surface beauty of the world. Neither
is it a vision of the world's classic intellectual form. It is something
else. Since this whole metaphysics had started with an attempt to explain
Indian mysticism Phaedrus finally abandoned this classic-romantic split as a
choice for a primary division of the Metaphysics of Quality. The division he
finally settled on was one he didn't really choose in any deliberative way.
It was more as if it chose him. He'd been reading Ruth Benedict's Patterns
of Culture without any particular search in mind, when a relatively minor
anecdote stopped him. It stayed with him for weeks. He couldn't get it out
of his mind. Pg 53-54

A subject-object metaphysics presumes that this kind of Dynamic action
without thought is rare and ignores it when possible. But mystic learning
goes in the opposite direction and tries to hold to the ongoing Dynamic edge
of all experience, both positive and negative, even the Dynamic ongoing edge
of thought itself. Phaedrus thought that of the two kinds of students, those
who study only subject-object science and those who study only meditative
mysticism, it would be the mystic students who would get off the stove
first. The purpose of mystic meditation is not to remove oneself from
experience but to bring one's self closer to it by eliminating stale,
confusing, static, intellectual attachments of the past. Pg 57

Soon after that Phaedrus ran across another example that concerned neither
art nor morality but referred indirectly to mystic reality itself.
It was in an essay by Walker Percy called 'The Delta Factor.' It asked, ....
Phaedrus saw that not only a man recovering from a heart attack but also a
baby gazes at his hand with mystic wonder and delight. He remembered the
child Poincare referred to who could not understand the reality of objective
science at all but was able to understand the reality of value perfectly.
When this reality of value is divided into static and Dynamic areas a lot
can be explained about that baby's growth that is not well explained
otherwise.  Pg 58

This, Phaedrus thought, was why little children are usually quicker to
perceive Dynamic Quality than old people, why beginners are usually quicker
than experts, why primitive people are sometimes quicker than those of
'advanced' cultures. American Indians are exceptionally skilled at holding
to the ever-changing center of things. That is the real reason they speak
and act without ornamentation. It violates their mystic unity. This moving
and acting and talking in accord with the Great Spirit and almost nothing
else has been the ancient center of their lives.
Their term manito is often used interchangeably with 'God' by whites who
usually think all religion is theistic and by Indians themselves who don't
make a big deal out of any verbal distinctions. But as David Mandelbaum
noted in his book The Plains Cree, 'The term manito primarily referred to
the Supreme Being but also had many other usages. It was applied to
manifestations of skill, fortune, blessing, luck, to any wondrous
occurrence. It connoted any phenomenon that transcended the run of everyday
experience.' In other words, 'Dynamic Quality.'
With the identification of static and Dynamic Quality as the fundamental
division of the world, Phaedrus felt that some kind of goal had been
reached. This first division of the Metaphysics of Quality now covered the
spectrum of experience from primitive mysticism to quantum mechanics. What
remained for Phaedrus to do next was fill in the gaps as carefully and
methodically as he could. Pg 59

In other cultures, or in the religious literature of our past, where the
immune system of 'objectivity' is weak or non-existent, reference to this
light is everywhere, from the Protestant hymn, 'Lead Kindly Light,' to the
halos of the saints. The central terms of Western mysticism,
'enlightenment,' and 'illumination' refer to it directly. Darsana, a
fundamental Hindu form of religious instruction, means 'giving of light.'
Descriptions of Zen sartori mention it. It is referred to extensively in The
Tibetan Book of the Dead. Aldous Huxley referred to it as part of the
mescaline experience. Phaedrus remembered it from the time with Dusenberry
at the peyote meeting, although he had assumed that it was just an optical
illusion produced by the drug and not of any great importance. Pg 158

In other cultures, or in the religious literature of our past, where the
immune system of 'objectivity' is weak or non-existent, reference to this
light is everywhere, from the Protestant hymn, 'Lead Kindly Light,' to the
halos of the saints. The central terms of Western mysticism,
'enlightenment,' and 'illumination' refer to it directly. Darsana, a
fundamental Hindu form of religious instruction, means 'giving of light.'
Descriptions of Zen sartori mention it. It is referred to extensively in The
Tibetan Book of the Dead. Aldous Huxley referred to it as part of the
mescaline experience. Phaedrus remembered it from the time with Dusenberry
at the peyote meeting, although he had assumed that it was just an optical
illusion produced by the drug and not of any great importance...........
In other cultures, or in the religious literature of our past, where the
immune system of 'objectivity' is weak or non-existent, reference to this
light is everywhere, from the Protestant hymn, 'Lead Kindly Light,' to the
halos of the saints. The central terms of Western mysticism,
'enlightenment,' and 'illumination' refer to it directly. Darsana, a
fundamental Hindu form of religious instruction, means 'giving of light.'
Descriptions of Zen sartori mention it. It is referred to extensively in The
Tibetan Book of the Dead. Aldous Huxley referred to it as part of the
mescaline experience. Phaedrus remembered it from the time with Dusenberry
at the peyote meeting, although he had assumed that it was just an optical
illusion produced by the drug and not of any great importance. Pg 174

The Metaphysics of Quality says that what sometimes accidentally occurs in
an insane asylum but occurs deliberately in a mystic retreat is a natural
human process called dhyana in Sanskrit. In our culture dhyana is
ambiguously called 'meditation.' Just as mystics traditionally seek
monasteries and ashrams and hermitages as retreats into isolation and
silence, so are the insane treated by isolation in places of relative calm
and austerity and silence. Sometimes, as a result of this monastic retreat
into silence and isolation the patient arrives at a state Karl Menninger has
described as 'better than cured.' He is actually in better condition than he
was before the insanity started. Phaedrus guessed that in many of these
'accidental' cases, the patient had learned by himself not to cling to any
static patterns of ideas ‹ cultural, private or any other.
In the insane asylum this dhyana is underrated and often undermined because
there is no metaphysical basis for understanding it scientifically. But
among religious mystics, particularly Oriental mystics, dhyana has been one
of the most intensely studied practices of all.
This Western treatment of dhyana is a beautiful example of how the static
patterns of a culture can make something not exist, even when it does exist.
People in this culture are hypnotized into thinking they do not meditate
when in fact they do.......
The Metaphysics of Quality associates religious mysticism with Dynamic
Quality but it would certainly be a mistake to think that the Metaphysics of
Quality endorses the static beliefs of any particular religious sect.
Phaedrus thought sectarian religion was a static social fallout from Dynamic
Quality and that while some sects had fallen less than others, none of them
told the whole truth.
His favorite Christian mystic was Johannes Eckhart, who said, 'Wouldst thou
be perfect, do not yelp about God.' Eckhart was pointing to a profound
mystic truth, but you can guess what a hand of applause it got from the
static authorities of the Church. 'Ill-sounding, rash, and probably
heretical,' was the general verdict.
>From what Phaedrus had been able to observe, mystics and priests tend to
have a cat-and-dog-like coexistence within almost every religious
organization. Both groups need each other but neither group likes the other
at all. Pg 175

He thought some more about Lila's insanity and how it was related to
religious mysticism and how both were integrated into reason by the
Metaphysics of Quality. He thought about how once this integration occurs
and Dynamic Quality is identified with religious mysticism it produces an
avalanche of information as to what Dynamic Quality is. A lot of this
religious mysticism is just low-grade 'yelping about God' of course, but if
you search for the sources of it and don't take the yelps too literally a
lot of interesting things turn up. Pg 176

Within the Hindu tradition dharma is relative and dependent on the
conditions of society. It always has a social implication. It is the bond
which holds society together. This is fitting to the ancient origins of the
term. But within modern Buddhist thought dharma becomes the phenomenal world
- the object of perception, thought or understanding. A chair, for example,
is not composed of atoms of substance, it is composed of dharmas.
This statement is absolute jabberwocky to a conventional subject-object
metaphysics. How can a chair be composed of individual little moral orders?
But if one applies the Metaphysics of Quality and sees that a chair is an
inorganic static pattern and sees that all static patterns are composed of
value and that value is synonymous with morality then it all begins to make
sense.
It occurred to Phaedrus that this was one answer, perhaps the basic answer,
to why workmen in Japan and Taiwan and other areas in the Far East are able
to maintain quality levels that compare so favorably to those in the West.
In the past the mystics' traditional low regard for inorganic static
patterns, 'laws of nature' has kept the scientifically derived technology of
these cultures poor, but since Orientals have learned to overcome that
prejudice times have changed. If one comes from a cultural tradition where
an electronic assembly is primarily a moral order rather than just a neutral
pile of substance, it is easier to feel an ethical responsibility for doing
good work on it pg 179

A wave of very un-mystic anxiety came over him. Pg 180

Strictly speaking, the creation of any metaphysics is an immoral act since
it's a lower form of evolution, intellect, trying to devour a higher mystic
one. The same thing that's wrong with philosophology when it tries to
control and devour philosophy is wrong with metaphysics when it tries to
devour the world intellectually. It attempts to capture the Dynamic within a
static pattern. But it never does. You never get it right. So why try? Pg
186

The experience of William James Sidis had shown that you can't just tell
people about Indians and expect them to listen. They already know about
Indians. Their cup of tea is full. The cultural immune system will keep them
from hearing anything else. Phaedrus hoped this Quality metaphysics was
something that would get past the immune system and show that American
Indian mysticism is not something alien from American culture. It's a deep
submerged hidden root of it.
Americans don't have to go to the Orient to learn what this mysticism stuff
is about. It's been right here in America all along. In the Orient they
dress it up with rituals and incense and pagodas and chants and, of course,
huge organizational enterprises that bring in the equivalent of millions of
dollars every year. American Indians haven't done this. Their way is not to
be organized at all. They don't charge anything, they don't make a big fuss,
and that's what makes people underrate them Pg 190