John B.
Taylor makes a common mistake in his view of mysticism. There is a 99%
probability that I'm not as smart as you, but I'd like to explain it anyway.
You're probably not interested. You'd just dismiss it as the ravings of a
true believer, eh? Well, I suppose you'll at least read it and I'll just
have to hope for the best...
Here's the mistaken notion: Mysticism is regressive. I understand what you
mean and that Taylor and others also view it that way - there are even folk
who call themselves mystics and still agree with you and Taylor. Instead,
Mysticism is precisely the opposite of regression. It's about the crowning
achievement, the cutting edge of the evolution of consciousness. Pirsig
paints his MOQ with a mystic center, where DQ is pushing the whole
evolutionary process. Its PROgressive.
The confusion about the difference between regression and progress is
similar to the confusion between degenerates and those rare heroic
contrarians, but I won't go off on that tangent... But I mention it because
SOM handles both badly, and for the same reason. The evolutionary process is
not taken into account, subjectivity can't be weighed properly and so it
views mystic bliss as nothing more than some weird coma and its sees the
visionary radical as nothing more than a social misfit. SOM can't see the
evolutionary implications involved in this issues AND the fact that they are
occuring at the cutting edge of things makes it very difficult for the
average person to grasp the meaning of it. Hell, you'd have to be in the top
1% to comprehend it. You'd have to be an artist and and intellectual to
really see what the cutting edge is up to, eh? : )
Well, actually a person can have a mystical experience at almost any stage
of development. What the studies show is that a person will interpet the
experience in terms of their present state of "maturity" and then they'll
usually grow to the next step as a result of the experience. Remember the
posts on the hierarchy of ideologies? Its very much related to that kind of
model. I've been reading Wilber's A BRIEF HISTORY OF EVERYTHING and he has
built a very detailed model based on the research of 60 or 70 scholars
(Maslow is just the most famous one.) who have also constructed such models.
I mean, a hierarchy of cognitive and moral development is a well established
concept. You probably know all about this stuff already, eh? And they all
show how these "peak experiences" or mystical experience engender personal
growth and expand our intellectual capabilities as well as our moral
reasoning. And generally speaking, these mystical experiences become more
available as a person moves up the ladder of development.
The confusion between regression and progress is caused by another reason.
An infant does not yet make a distinction between itself and the world. In
the babies' view there is no difference between the inside and the outside.
The world is fused into one thing. But as it grows and learns to make all
sorts of distinctions the infant becomes an individual with a mind full of
all sorts of distinctions. And at the age of 30 that same person might have
a mystical experience, and because of the progress that has occured in the
persons life it can no longer be thought of as mere fusion. Instead, the
mystical experience is a re-integration, a re-union, atONEment. Both
regression and progression are marked by an absence of ego-boundries, an
absence of self if you will, but oh, what a difference! The infant is not
yet differentiated, its just a big blur. Must mystical union is about
re-integration of all the distinctions made in the process of growth.
This is difficult to talk about. Am I making sense?
Say you're an illiterate primitive sitting in the mud. You were raised by
wolves and haven't got a single idea in your head, not a single word in your
vocabulary. But the sun is high and the mud is warm and it feels all squishy
in your hands. So you sit, playing, all blissed out, totally Zen, totally
lost in the mud. Compare that to the state you find yourself in while
sculpting. Its the same, but its not the same at all. Its the same theme at
an entirely different level, which makes it an entirely different thing. A
laundry list and a metaphysical novel are both written works, but they have
very little in common with one another.
In a certain sense, mysticism is about losing your self. But you've got to
first have a self to lose!
And its not a permanent state, so much as an event and a goal.
AND this is the kind of stuff we should be discussing if we want to
understand Pirsig's concept of self in the MOQ!
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