David Buchanan wrote:
> 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?
Yes a great deal of 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!
>
I'm with you on that one. I think that you've made some very good points here
(it certainly seems to make sense as far as how I've come to understand what
Pirsig is on about).
>
>
>
>
>
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