John and DMB,
Two separate comments:
[DMB:] Yea, mostly that's true. But I'd say that the views of those at lower levels
are easier to understand simply because we've been there and done that, so
to speak. You know, we transcend and INCLUDE those lower levels.
[Scott:] There is a hazard here, though. That is when level n+1 is a
return of sorts, but spiralled upwards, to level n-1. So someone at
level n may misinterpret level n+1 as level n-1, since level n+1 isn't
preceived.
[John:] 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.
Ok so far (though I think there is a lurking SOM in the phrase
"immediacy of presence")
[John cont.] 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.
[Scott:] Here you are failing to distinguish between two kinds of
thought. The kind of thought that interferes with meditation is driven
by social concerns (and sometimes biological/inorganic). The key word is
"driven". It is not thought at the intellectual level. True, one also
doesn't want to be doing intellectual thinking if one's meditation is of
the "quiet mind" variety, but one can also meditate on a thought (see
Georg Kuhlewind's "Stages of Consciousness"). The point I want to make
is that failing to make this distinction is what leads to falling into
the pre/trans fallacy in regard to the intellectual level.
[John cont.] 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.
[Scott:] I have mentioned before, but nobody has seemd to show much
interest, that I view the intellectual level as not having yet been
achieved, though we have our moments of it. Bo is quite correct that one
cannot equate "thinking" with "q-intellect". The latter is thinking
completely under our control, not driven by socially-based emotions or
prejudices. So it won't come up unwillingly in meditation, and rarely
comes up at all. I wouldn't rule out that the fully-achieved
intellectual level IS the spiritual level. After all, one can't be fully
intellectual without being fully detached from egoic concerns.
- Scott
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