Hi John, and all,
----- Original Message -----
From: John Beasley <beasley@austarnet.com.au>
To: <moq_discuss@moq.org>
Sent: Monday, July 29, 2002 5:11 AM
Subject: Re: MD Consciousness
My overall point was that first there is a non-verbal experience, it could
be as mundane as sitting on a hot stove, or looking at the sunset, or waking
up and remembering a dream, or having a mystical experience, all of these
are first some sort of non-verbal experience. But, once we try and make
'sense' of each and everyone of them, once we try to communicate that
experience to ourselves or others--then all we have is words. It is not the
non-verbal experience that is words, It is after the primary quality event,
"the morning after" was how I was [trying to be] humorously referring to
that moment in time when we try and understand what happened. The attempt
at understanding is done in language. Thus revelation, which is the product
of the experience of mystical experience and is the attempt at communicating
that experience, this is conveyed in human language. And each mystic draws
upon the images, the ideas, the metaphors that were available in his/her
mind before the mystical experience took place. The mystic may now use
those images, metaphors, what have you in new ways, with new meanings, new
combinations, new textures, etc, but it they don't come up with some random
image or thought. That is what I meant to convey when I said a Christian
mystic would never say they experienced communion with an Aztec god.
Especially if they never knew anything about Aztec culture.
> Gary: "revelation is transmitted in the language of humans"
>
John: > Perhaps. My reading suggests that mystic knowing is not verbal,
though
> undeniably we can only talk about it in language.
Gary: Exactly.
>
> Gary: "mysticism, the product of that Divine union is totally contextual.
> Totally particular to the specific culture and individual history of the
> participant mystic."
>
> I'm not convinced by this. Certainly mystic experience is often
interpreted
> within the language and thought forms of a particular religion or culture.
> As you do by using sexual imagery. The mystic who most intrigues me is
John
> Wren-Lewis, who 'fell' into a mystic state after a near death experience,
> and who had a low opinion of mysticism previously. He is also an
intelligent
> and articulate man, a scientist interested in religion, and of a naturally
> skeptical bent. He also appears to me to be extremely honest, and as good
a
> person to comment on 'the dazzling dark', as he termed it, as any in
today's
> world. What is significant to me is that for him there was no path to
mystic
> experience - he had it thrust upon him. So he can affirm the powerful
> reality of living in the moment, with a freedom from any special pleading.
> He has no axe to grind, no ideology to uphold! And what I also find
> interesting is that mystics from quite different traditions often have
> little trouble communicating the core of their experience, at least to
each
> other.
GARY: Check out the writings of your guy John Wren-Lewis. Check out his
background. Did he after his experience use images, names of god/goddesses,
etc that he had no prior experience to or with? My strong belief is that
you will find that this is not so. I will be seriously surprised to find
out otherwise.
> Gary, quoting Rufus Jones "The fact is nobody seriously thinks of applying
> the term mysticism to the classic manifestations of the great religions."
>
> But they do, Gary. Or at least to the originators of these religions. If
we
> mean by "classic manifestations" the eventual shape of the religion that
has
> evolved, then I must agree. But references to the words of the founders of
> these religions abound in the mystic literature, and imply that most major
> religions are, if you like, epiphenomenona of the mystic experience of
their
> founders, the largely static social fallout of intensely dynamic
> 'individual' mystic experience.
GARY: That quote of Jones by Gershom Scholem was trying to say that there is
a difference between the mystic and the general participant & clergy of the
major religions. This is more valid for Western, Christianity, Judaism, and
Islam, then perhaps Eastern [Hinduism, Buddhism]. My phrase : People shape
and are shaped by ideas, is valid here, my guess that Rufus Jones's own
background was biasing him to Western religions. Making a statement valid
to the context of what he knows about even though he was making a
pronouncement that seemed and was intended to be 'universal.'
> Gary: "All mystics have a revelation that is appropriate to their
experience
> prior to the mystic union!!! No human has ever had a different event"
> "People/mystics were shaped by the ideas in their heads!"
>
> Well, to the extent that their words about their experience are the same
> words that they learnt in earlier experience, this must be so. But that
the
> experience was simply an outworking of earlier ideas; no, no, no. A few
> minutes contemplation on the development of language in individuals should
> convince you of that.
GARY: Yes! We agree. We only have what words and ideas are in our head, but
that does not prevent us from being creative! Pirsig took a word that was
in his head "quality" and made a whole new idea out of it! He transformed
the word with new meaning and new significance.
>
> I would argue that what Wren-Lewis experienced was quite outside the
realms
> of his previous experience, and this makes his story most significant.
What
> is also significant is that this changed way of being still persisted when
I
> spoke to him some twenty years later. He would not describe his experience
> as something that happened in time, to which he could refer later. He
> described it as having "everything to do with a dimension of aliveness
here
> and now which makes ... each present instant so utterly satisfying that
even
> the success or failure of creative activity becomes relatively
unimportant.
> In other words, I've been liberated from what William Blake called
obsession
> with "futurity", which, until it happened, I used to consider a
> psychological impossibility. And to my continual astonishment, for ten
years
> now this liberation has made the conduct of practical life more rather
than
> less efficient, precisely because time consciousness isn't overshadowed by
> 'anxious thought for the morrow'". (The Dazzling Dark, p 3) This has
> considerably shaped my view that mysticism has little to do with 'peak
> experiences' or 'revelations' or 'sex with the divine', or what not, and
> lots to do with immediacy, and maintaining contact with the here and now
of
> experience, undistorted by our memories and projections.
>
> Gary: "All we got is human words."
>
> This really is a postmodern fantasy. As Pirsig points out, when I sit on a
> hot stove what I get is not words, though some oaths may quickly follow,
but
> a low quality experience (and a burnt bum). The extreme deconstructionist
> myth is that experience is just another form of language, just as elusive
> and slippery as any other language. Pirsig argues differently, that the
> experience of quality is the primal reality. Language is a static latch.
GARY: First always comes the non-verbal Quality event then once we try to
understand that experience-- all we have is words.
Gary
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