Hullo Scott, Gary,
Scott says "They were saying that the SOT mind is an illusory mind (maya).
But to say it they had to be in a SOT framework, since that is what their
audience is in."
Yes, it gets complex, though. How do you talk to 'illusory minds'? Can you
talk to anything else? Is there any value in this?
Scott: "I take this as given, that Subject/Object Logic is Q-Intellect"
I dislike this language. What does "Subject/Object Logic" mean that differs
from just plain 'logic', and how does "Q-Intellect" differ from 'intellect'?
Both intellect, and logic, as a tool of intellect, are developed in
language, which is predicated on both polarities and objects. That I
understand. (As you say later, "our intellect is unavoidably dualist".) What
do the terms above add?
Scott: "I ... insist on the high value of SOT: it is training in
detachment."
You have lost me here. I am unsure what you mean by 'detachment', but in my
view thinking is a step away from here and now reality, and in my reading of
mysticism this is part of the problem, not part of the solution.
Now to your points. I have no problem with Point 1.
Point 2 is more complex. The key point seems to be that thinking, at least
in a subject/object form, creates paradoxes, which can alert us to the
possible truth of the mystic claim that SOT is maya. I've always thought
that in a way it was mystic perception of truth that created 'paradoxes',
(which are part of the SOT framework). As my father used to say "If it ain't
paradoxical it ain't true." By this he was pointing to a higher truth than
the truth of logic.
(I do intend to get Barfield's book, which hopefully will make your point
clearer.)
In Point 3 you say "while SOT and observable existence in general are maya,
we make a mistake in thinking that SOT should just go away. Patterns are
"static patterns of value" and the creation of patterns is Good. That
includes patterns of q-intellect. We do have to learn that patterns of
q-intellect, like all
patterns, are not Ultimately Real"
I take this to mean that while the creation of patterns is good, seeing any
significance in them is not. I find this a bit hard to follow, especially
given your next point...
"we make a fundamental mistake in denigrating the intellect in favor of
non-intellectual patterns , and that is why I dislike the phrase "the map is
not the territory". It tends to reinforce the pre/trans fallacy, that if we
could only stop thinking we would restore the experience of DQ "out there"
as was the case in "original participation""
This seems the same issue that has arisen between Hameed Ali and Ken Wilber.
Ali argues that as infants we knew, in a primitive way, perhaps, our
essential natures. Wilber argues that enlightenment is nothing like the
experience of the infant, hence this becomes an example of the pre/trans
fallacy. But Ali is not saying that to become 'enlightened' (I am using this
word as a common shorthand) I simply revert to a childish state. What he is
saying is that if we had not experienced our essential natures as children,
we would have nothing to guide us towards enlightenment. One part of the
'process' is to regain contact with our essential states, which are present
in adulthood, but scarcely noticed by most of us. In doing this we must also
deal with the issues that arose in infancy that led to the formation of the
egoic self. This is what Wilber points to in his book 'No Boundary', where
he sets out beautifully how in our development as adults we created
boundaries which had the effect of limiting us, and that part of the work of
therapy and spiritual development is the undoing of those boundaries in the
context of our adult strengths, which include our intellect.
However, I am mindful that the intellect can become the greatest barrier to
this process, and this is what I want to stress. It is put very simply by
Aubrey Menen in his book 'The New Mystics' where he says mysticism "is a way
of stopping you thinking. It has no appeal to people whose worry is that
they never seem to have started; but more intelligent people do often feel
that they need a holiday from their own minds, while leaving them intact to
come home to when the holiday is over." (p 7) Susan Blackmore's
understanding of meditation as weeding the memes, strikes a similar note.
Perhaps this is to trivialize mysticism, or meditation, but it seems a
common enough ingredient in the words of a great many mystics for me to see
it as significant.
When I work as a Gestalt therapist, I see intellectualizing as one of the
symptoms of neurosis, and drawing attention to the bodily cues that often
contradict the words is an important part of the work. Of course both
Gestalt therapists and mystics use their intellects, and write books, and so
on, but an important part of development seems to be to undo a restrictive
form of intellect through using 'lower' levels of experience as levers.
You see it as an error "that if we could only stop thinking we would restore
the experience of DQ "out there" as was the case in "original
participation". Rather we can learn to experience DQ in our thinking."
I understand what you mean, though I do not see DQ as "out there" at all. I
think a lot of the argument about Bo's SOLAQI and such like is prefaced on
this oversimplification. I am interested in your suggestion, if I understand
you correctly, that it is possible to learn to detach our ego from our
thought in order to experience the quality in our thinking. Can you
elaborate?
Finally, you expand on the sentence I criticized as nonsense by adding
""dissolving all static patterns" does NOT mean that they just "go away", as
mistaken notions of Nirvana sometimes suggest. Rather, they "go away" as
objective reality, and along with it, "I" as subject also "go away". To the
extent that static patterns are experienced as objects, they are NOT
experienced as Quality."
I suspect it is the 'active' voice of the original statement that concerned
me. So the issue remains how 'someone' who sees static patterns as objects,
and themselves as a subject, gets to change from this perspective. Again, I
would be interested if you can elaborate.
Regards,
John B
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