Hullo David,
I would indeed be interested in talking more about Wilber and Campbell with
you. When you are ready!
You said "I used to think that some people like to play dumb and be
disengenuously coy as a debating tactic, but have since come to realize that
they're being quite sincere in their incomprehension. I'm at a loss there.
Trying to explain things in plain, simple and literal terms usually just
ends up being met
with charges of arrogant condesension. At the same time, the insights that
excite me most are usually met with silence, as in the case of the perennial
philosophy. I prefer to think of Wilber's "elitism" as a profound respect
for excellence, but I think he's quite right in either case."
Yes, I think that is near the mark.
I mentioned "It would be interesting to attempt to build a 'worldview' that
starts with communication as the fundamental. This would particularly
interest me in relation to how communication is involved in the making of a
mystic."
I was thinking on my feet, sort of, as I wrote that. I think the key would
be to try to link Wilber's understanding of holarchy, the stages of
development that each individual travels through, with a meta theory of
quality, that examines how quality impinges at each level to move us on to
the next. It seems to me that a mystic is usually 'made' through a process
of education, broadly speaking. (There are exceptions, such as John Wren
Lewis, who seemingly just fall into a mystical way of being, and he argues
that this may indeed be the norm, in which case my argument is wrong.)
It seems to me likely that at each 'moral' stage that Wilber identifies,
there is a particular 'flavour' of quality that acts as the spur or stimulus
to move on to the next transition. Each stage, then, brings into awareness a
new kind of quality, which includes and transcends those before. However,
each stage also brings into awareness the issues, the incompleteness, that
only a new flavour of quality can transcend. So when Pirsig assumes that we
can all know quality without any debate, he is failing to take into account
that quality is experienced differently at each stage of development. Of
course Pirsig only sees four broad evolutionary stages, while Wilber sees a
greater number of developmental stages. They agree that the stages are in
some sense 'moral', though. (Spiral dynamics may be a suitably 'neutral'
version of this moral progress, I suppose, which is why Wilber has adopted
it, I think.)
If this is correct, one reason that debates on moral issues in this forum
are so frustrating is that each person sees the issue differently, depending
upon the level of their own moral development. Each person's quality is then
different, though two people at the same level are likely to find they are
in substantial agreement. The post modern mistake is to assume that because
each person is experiencing quality, there is no difference between Hitler's
quality and Chomsky's quality, for example. Wilber has explored this in
depth in a few of his books, and makes the point that it can be just as hard
to accept the moral rightness of those in levels higher than one's own, as
it can be to accept it in levels one has already passed through. (Hence his
problems with the Mean Greens, which seem to be totally misunderstood by
some in this forum.)
I am interested in asking, what is it at each level of experience, that
engages us with the new flavour of quality that can emerge there? My
suspicion is that as we move up the levels, the emergence of a new variant
of quality has less to do with biology, social issues or intellect, and more
to do with learning a 'transformational praxis', a way of doing things that
allows the emergence of the new flavour of quality. Meditation would seem to
be a clear example of this. As I understand meditation, it is assentially a
way of maintaining awareness of the here and now, noting when one's thoughts
hijack this immediacy, and gently returning to the immediacy of presence.
The intellect has little real role here, and in fact is a distractor. But
over time one learns to focus on what is real, rather than on the content of
one's verbal productions, which are always, insofar as they refer to the
past or the future, technically fantasy. From this, as I understand it,
emerges the new moral stage which is part of the evolution beyond the
intellectual level into what is usually known as the spiritual or mystic
level.
So, to be more specific, I want to explore how it is that the language of a
teacher can facilitate the emergence of a new flavour of quality in the
student. This is a long way from the usual post modern trivialization of
language, but not totally unrelated to it. It may be that in some quite
intelligible sense "In the beginning is the Word". Note that I am not saying
that we can learn the new flavour of quality via language. (I wonder if the
influx of 'mystic gurus' in this forum recently are actually coming from a
high moral level, or are simply intellectualizing about such a level. There
is a difference between speaking one's truth, and yapping, and I am inclined
to be cynical, especially when many of their words of wisdom seem to involve
a subtle put-down of their opponents. Wilber talks about the great divide in
moving into "Second-Tier Consciousness", in 'A Theory of Everything' p13ff,
and I think it makes all the difference in the world whether this sort of
critique is genuine second-tier.)
It may be that language is actually a powerful aid in our individual
evolution of quality. If so, mysticism is not just an accident of grace, as
Wren Lewis suspects, nor something achieved through a few peak experiences,
or drug trips, but the higher levels of a spectrum of practice that focusses
attention on what is, rather than on the driven egoic fantasies that fill
our heads much of the time. It is both an undoing of previous conditioning,
and a coming to rest in what is, when this conditioning is removed; so is a
purified attention to immediate experience. This, at least, is my thesis. If
it is true then groups such as the Sufi "Sarmoun Darq", (the gatherers of
honey), are not just some exotic curiosity, but are the carriers of the
knowledge that allows transformation, knowledge that is passed on through
language.
I hope this has fleshed out my interest. You say "I think information,
spirit, God, consciousness, the void, nothingness, the undifferentiated
aesthetic continuum, the ground of being and a whole host of other labels
work just as well as the word "Quality"."
Yes and no. Information is indeed part of the equation, but as "the
difference that makes a difference" it is nothing without a deeper
appreciation of what makes a difference, that is, quality. Pirsig has indeed
chosen well in his key term! My project would seek to unravel how quality
itself changes in the human moral evolution, and how we can understand the
use of language in the higher levels of our search for quality.
Thanks for your interest.
Regards,
John B
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