[MD] BeTteR-neSs (undefined or otherwise)

[118]

Hi dmb,
Thanks for the post.  My comments after your explanation.
Mark

>
> Dan said:
> We cannot think of Dynamic Quality as a mover. Dynamic Quality must be kept
> concept-free.
>
>
> Mark replied:
> Why is this?  What puts DQ out of the bounds of metaphysics?   By labeling
> Dynamic Quality as concept free, aren't you pointing towards a concept?  How
> do you get around this, by not talking about it?  Are you suggesting that we
> should not discuss DQ?  If DQ is concept free, what is it besides concept
> free?  Please explain, I thought we were discussing concepts.
>
>
>
> dmb says:
>
> DQ can't be defined because the term refers to experience prior to
> conceptualization. It is direct and immediate awareness, the empirical
> reality you know before you can think about it. Obviously, definitions are
> not pre-conceptual. To define something is to put limits on it. To
> distinguish one idea or thing from another requires distinctions, the
> drawing of lines and borders. But DQ is undivided experience or pure
> experience or undifferentiated experience.
>
> This is the first and most basic distinction in the MOQ. This is the DQ/sq
> split. There is no way to properly understand the MOQ without first grasping
> the distinction between concepts (static quality) and reality (Dynamic
> Quality).
>
>
> "Mystics will tell you that once you've opened the door to metaphysics you
> can say good-bye 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. Quality is
> indivisible, undefinable and unknowable in the sense that there is a knower
> and a known, but a metaphysics can be none of these things. Ametaphysics
> must be divisible, definable, and know able, or there isn't any metaphysics.
> Since a metaphysics is essentially a kind of dialectical definition and
> since Quality is essentially outside definition, this means that a
> "Metaphysics of Quality" is essentially a contradiction in terms, a logical
> absurdity." (Lila, chapter 5)
>

[Mark]
Yes, that is where it is left, at this point, as a logical absurdity.  The
Trouble with SOM (or Tribbles as it were).  Check out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzSyLkPuUX8&feature=related

For more about SOM's proliferation.

This is of course where metaphysics comes in, as you say tossing out the
SOM.  Holistic phenomenon can be described, Brahman is a good example of
that. Western thought is a bit behind, but can also be used.  Therefore to
say that Quality is outside of discussion is self-defeating, and not
necessary.  Different tools are needed.  These tools are used to convey the
awareness of Quality that you and I have, to others.  By conceptualizing Dq
as that which happens prior to conceptualization is one such effort. This is
what you mean by first grasping distinctions.  Yes, this is one path.

By the way, I believe that mystics would consider their understanding of
reality as genuine.  Tricky words, all of these...with apologies to Pirsig.

Cheers,
Mark

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