Hi Lila Squad.
The self/soul issue has, in fact, been discussed in many forms
throughout the LS 3 years' history - not to speak of the millenia of
subject-object metaphysics; "free will" its most frequent guise. If I
remember correctly there was a thread over at the MD a short while
ago where some weighty argument was delivered (possibly by David B.
or Rogert Palmer) Still, no-one seems to take notice and poses the
quandary over and over again.
JOHN BEASLEY
Started the show with an impressive criticism of the MOQ. It had a
personal touch with John comparing himself with Phaedrus
leaving the school at Benares upon learning that the atom bomb was
regarded illusory (John leaving the MOQ because it scraps the
soul/self/identity notion).
To expand on that, I want to point out that the narrator of ZMM says
that young P left India because he didn't understand what the
instructor meant, and what's more, even the quality idea was heavily
modified when it emerged as the MOQ in LILA. So, in my view, it
becomes doubly wrong to use ZMM as a source when discussing the MOQ.
Maggie Hettinger once expressed her misgivings with the postscript
of ZMM, and I think it should be regarded as Pirsig's reflections
after the death of Chris, and not an official MOQ teaching.
But John's criticism goes on:
> And just as Pirsig's whole metaphysics is driven by the urge to confront the idol of a value
> free science, which he saw as destructive of humanity, so I would want to confront his
> equally soulless world view. Pirsig bases his metaphysics upon the primacy of experienced
> value over a rational division into subjects and objects. 'Value' is an abstraction, as real or
> unreal as 'God', without experience. Pirsig is right to assert that our primary experience is
> NOT neutral, hence value free science is a human construct, useful as far as it goes, but
> always less than primary experience. Science is put in its place by attending to what is more
> primary than ideas or concepts or world-views.
Souless world view? OK but the introduction of a value filled
universe more than compensates for the dropping of the soul
term....something that is not so unequivocally accepted in the SOM
either. But then he goes on to a more substantial objection and
asks:
> What attends? Attending is a dialogue. Our experience is not just a flow of
> sensory impressions. It is the interaction of a mind, an order
> making entity, with its environment. "What attends"? What is the
> order-making entity....etc
You are quite right in raising these questions, we don't experience a
jumble of sensory impressions but an ordered reality: our
consciousness a seeming UNITY focused on only one subject at a time.
Earlier I have claimed that it is Dynamic Quality that directs our
focus - and I still maintain this - but realize that it may sound
as if we are leaves in a MOQ storm instead of leaves in a SOM storm.
How do we escape this quandary? I will try to answer but first to
DAVID BUCHANAN
Who wrote (in response to John):
> I'd like to respond to Mr. Beasley's call to all "experiental mystics",
> but I'm really not sure what assertion he wishes such people to
> "challange". Perhaps this will become more clear to me as this month's
> debate unfolds. But I certainly don't think Pirsig makes the case that
> we are merely "the playthings of static quality", as John puts it. And I
> definitely don't think the MOQ is soul-less. The amoral scientific idea
> that we are mere functions in meme and gene machines is very far from
> Pirsig's view and is hardly comparable to the MOQ.
Pirsig skirts many ideas in LILA. At one point he seems to be a
Dawkinian (genes the primary unit) but I sense that this is not his
real business, rather something that he - in the passing - found
supportive for the MOQ. Neither Dawkins nor Blackmore (memes) have
the faintest resemblance to the MOQ.
> "Soul" is a word with nearly as much theological baggage as the word
> "righteousness". But I did not submit a topic and did not vote, so
> there's no room for me to complain.
> Back in ancient Greece the word they used for "soul" is more accurately
> translated as "psyche", which I like a lot more. The soul's ability to
> "transmigrate" to another body was a belief held by almost everyone in
> the fifth century B.C.. I believe it was Pythagoras who used the phrase
> "transmigration of the soul" to describe what we might think of as
> reincarnation. But this seems to be a life-after-death issue and sheds
> only a little light on the issue of soul and self in the MOQ. But it
> clearly underscores the idea that we are not just bodies.
Thanks for your scholarly research David.
> In checking a contemporary dictionary for definitions of self, I had to
> go to the third definition of the third entry to get a satisfactory
> answer for our purposes.
> "noun. the union of elements (as body, emotions, thoughts and
> sensations) that constitute the individuality and identity of a person."
> Its not designed to accomodate the MOQ, but its not too bad. One can see
> all the static patterns in the "elements" listed parenthetically.
Right! Body (biology/sensation) - emotions (society) -
thoughts (intellect/reason). That's my "sequence" of how the various
Q-levels express themselves! (missing only the Inorganic/Interaction
one!)
> Dictionary definitions of "soul" were much better than I expected to
> find.
> 1. the immaterial essence, animating principle or actuating cause of a
> life.
> 2. the spiritual principle embodied in human beings, or the universe.
> 3. a person's total self.
> Again, these definitions aren't built for the MOQ, but they're not too
> bad.
> Couldn't the "immaterial essence" be Quality itself. Quality is
> "embodied in human beings," (and) "the universe". Atman and Bhraman are
> "essentially" the same, different kinds of the same Quality. And isn't
> it the particular vortex of patterns that constitute each person's
> individuality exactly what we mean when we say "a person's total self".
> These SOM dictionary definitions are little clumsy, but not totally
> alien to the MOQ.
No, they are not alien and the "immaterial essence" may well be
compared to Quality. Yet I feel that this is trying to harmonize the
MOQ with the traditional terms, very well as a first tidbit for
non-Moqite, but for us - the esoteric "inner circle" - a definition
more on MOQ's own terms is required. I must wield the SOLAQI
(subject-object-logic-as-Q-intellect) idea again.
Soul and self are Intellect's creations. The lower Q-levels demand no
ideas while Intellect (as language) is nothing BUT ideas - along
with their negations - spawned from the original subject-object
split. Amoebas aren't troubled with self-doubt or depressed by lack
of free will, nor does a human totally absorbed by a social "cause"
feel self-divided, but acts "naturally". This way the MOQ stands
apart from anything previously thought (....even in the East ....is
my bold assertion) and it is seen that all quandaries stems from
Intellect (super)imposing itself upon the rest of existence.
The SOLAQI idea requires that Intellect is being tried transcended,
something that fits MOQ's tenet of DQ constantly trying to circumvent
the last static latch. It would result in a MOQ where nothing would
change (except everything!) The Intellectual level IS the human
reality, its moral and ethics would be like under a SOM "reign", its
subject-object divisions are the highest value. Soul, self, identity
...the scientific research for objectivity...the judicial quest for
justice..the general search for TRUTH would go on as before only with
one gigantic difference: Everything is regarded through the quality
glasses.
I honestly believe that I have followed the Q-idea to it's ultimate
conclusion and that this is the only way to "save the soul" ....or
does it waste it?
Bo
"Quality isn't IN the eye of the beholder.
Quality IS the eye of the beholder".
(Platt Holden)
MOQ.org - http://www.moq.org
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