[MD] Pragmatism and Philosophical Mysticism

[david buchanan]

Dave said:
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." ... 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?



dmb says:

The quote is another way to express the DQ/sq distinction. Metaphysics is a set of static intellectual patterns while DQ is the mystical reality. In the quote, he's putting this distinction to work in the moral hierarchy of the MOQ. At the end of chapter 29 he invokes this same principle but applies it to science, saying that it is immoral for philosophers of science to try to suppress DQ in that area. 

When it comes to radical empiricism or even just the train analogy from ZAMM, DQ isn't higher so much as it is first. The primary empirical reality, he calls it, or the leading edge of experience. "Primary" means first and most basic but it also implies importance. So maybe being first and being highest aren't so different.

But I think words like bigger, broader, wider, richer, deeper all get at it. James talks about DQ or pure experience with terms like "thickness' and 'overflowing'. These terms are all relative to normal consciousness and rational thought. Again, this is just another way to talk about the DQ/sq distinction. Since sq is derived from DQ, it is always something less, some small portion of the total flux that was taken up and conceptualized. Trying to put DQ into sq is like trying to carry the ocean on a boat.

Thanks for gathering all those quotes, by the way. That'll make a handy reference tool.


Now if your talking about a mystical experience in the sense of a mind blowing, life altering vision or realization, I think words like "higher" make sense because they so often amount to a kind of sudden growth spurt. When problems or issues come along that can't be solved from within one's existing conceptual arrangements, we expand and rearrange and otherwise rise to the occasion. Hopefully, anyway. I suppose enlightenment is like the mother of all rearrangements. To fully realize the lack of division, so much that the distinction between yourself and the universe is dissolved.

Atonement used to mean At-one-ment. Atone for your sins! Instead of a reference to identification with the widest field of consciousness, now it refers to a moral penalty, a reconciliation to authority. Whew! That's a long fall.






    

  		 	   		  
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