[MD] Step One

[Andre Broersen]

Marsha to Mark:

The Intellectual Level, the fourth level, is comprised of static patterns of value such as theology, mathematics, science and philosophy. The way that these patterns function is as reified concepts and the rules for their rational analysis and manipulation.  Reification decontextualizes.  Intellectual patterns process from a subject/object conceptual framework creating false boundaries that give the illusion of independence as a ?thing? or an ?object of analysis.?  The fourth level is a formalized subject/object level (SOM), where the paramount demand is for rational, objective knowledge, which is free from the taint of any subjectivity like emotions, inclinations, fears and compulsions in order to pursue, study and research in an unbiased and rational manner.

Andre:
This was a program brought to you by valky-Rat.com, (sponsored by a Scandinavian soap producer) who is apparently still unaware of what William James wrote more than 142 years ago. She doesn't like James, she doesn't like radical empiricism but still, these were the days before James had fully worked out his ideas, not based on the armchair bouncing idea against idea. No. He bounced ideas against his own, his student's and colleague's and other's experiences as they were related to him directly, through letters, anecdotes or his own scientific investigations in the lab.

Just a apropos: the MOQ subscribes to pragmatism and radical empiricism.

James called his paper:'The Sentiment of Rationality' in which he proposes an exploration of the action of consciousness. Please remember that 'consciousness' is designated in the MOQ as 'intellectual patterns'... as the 'collection and manipulation of symbols created in the brain that stand for patterns of experience' (Annotn 32). The intellectual level therefore indicates 'action'.

James argues that 'rationality is at bottom a feeling' ( keep in mind Phaedrus' pre-intellectual romantic fused with classical reflection bit). Also remember that James was at the beginning of trying to formulate this dawning awareness. He says:
[rationality] ' Not a matter of logic or math, not reasoning or ratios, not induction, deduction, or syllogism, not something higher than and detached from the senses, not the opposite of a feeling or emotion -rationality itself is a feeling or emotion'. (William James. In the Maelstrom of American Modernism, Robert D. Richardson, p184)

But, of course it is not just pure biology. The MOQ adds a sense of intellectual quality, an aesthetic appreciation of beauty, the recognition of the affective role (pre-intellectual) part. James shows his sensitivity and brilliance in this paper through relating his experience (and not seeing it as purely personal but recognizing it) as a universal attribute of humanity.

What this oft repeated valky-Rat program leaves us with is that the intellectual level is not capable of recognizing elegance, harmony, beauty. It is not capable of recognizing values, morality, quality.

This is SOM propaganda. We are not talking SOM! We are talking MOQ.

It appears to me that this program is hopelessly out of date by at least some 150 years...event hough Heraclitus had a pretty good 'feel' of things as well when he suggested that you cannot step into the same river twice. This program reifies the river, it reifies experience, it reifies DQ into sq. This program is indeed out of date through the ignorance of its own invention which is based on nothing.

Alas. Keep on meditating...OhhhMmmmmmmm.