From: Scott R (jse885@spinn.net)
Date: Sat Oct 05 2002 - 12:05:13 BST
John,
John Beasley wrote:
> Hi Scott,
> You say "The barrier to immediate experience is a SOM ego, not intellect."
> Again, it all depends upon how you define intellect, and ego.
Well, yes. My purpose is to expand the definition of intellect from the
narrow strait-jacket that SOM has imposed on it. Just as in my
discussion of the word "faith" with Erin, my position is that SOM has
given us a false attitude toward intellect, in that it treats it solely
as a tool for understanding and manipulating what it considers as the
only "true" reality: the objective. My position (following Barfield) is
that it is the intellect that creates that objective reality *as*
objective in the first place, but this is merely a stage that intellect
has to go through to become aware of itself. The ego, however, depends
on the SOM understanding, since it is the ego that does the
"understanding and manipulating of objective reality". So, on the one
hand, we need to appreciate the intellect as the shaper of reality, and
so in a way "more real" than what is shaped, and on the other, be aware
that the intellect can work on itself to move beyond the limited
subject/object form.
It is the SOM attitude, in my opinion, that leads one to see the
intellect as a hindrance to mystical awakening. Rather, the hindrance is
the SOM attitude.
I am not
> convinced that the MOQ does anything to remove ego, and in fact I see this
> as a glorious 'red-herring' in this forum. The MOQ is a metaphysics that
> happens to talk about such things as undefinable quality, as metaphysics
> tend to do, but that does not make it a path to a mystic experience of such
> quality. Understanding the term dynamic quality is no substitute for a
> mystic praxis, should one exist. I have not yet met a MOQ convert without
> clear indications of an ego, and will be suitably surprised when I do.
All true, but only if one continues to treat metaphysics from a SOM
attitude (which Pirsig didn't help with his metaphysics as menu bit). A
little while back I recommended to Matt that we replace the Rortyian
"irony vs. metaphysics" position with inquiring into the possibility of
an "ironic metaphysics", one that starts with irony (which I see as a
recognition of something like Original Sin, but post-modernized.)
>
> I don't want to deny that "mystical experience has noetic content", though I
> suggest you wade through my long post to Sam if you are interested in my
> understanding of what that means. Saying "intellect *becomes* immediate
> experience" though is just too confusing in my view. Let's stay within the
> general bounds of convention when redefining words, or at least make clear
> what your meaning is when using them in such idiosyncratic ways.
To stay within the bounds of convention is exactly what I don't want to
do, because the convention is SOM.
>
> SCOTT: "Again, haven't I said a thousand times that intellect without
> transcendence gives no ultimate answers? (And transcendence allows no
> ultimate description.) Why else did I emphasize that dogma must be
> inexplicable? Otherwise one might believe that it contains answers."
>
> Well, no, not a thousand times, I fear. But yes, I do hear that you are
> annoyed that I hadn't remembered that this is your position. I fail to
> understand what use a dogma might be that contains no answers. I sort of
> thought that was the whole point of dogma. However I do take your point that
> dogma can be constructed so as to incorporate paradox. I just wonder if it
> really achieves anything. It seems sort of sad and futile to me.
Again, I am trying to change the SOM attitude to dogma. We all have
dogmata -- isn't your "language gets in the way of immediate experience"
a dogma? And isn't it dependent on the SOM attitude toward language
(nominalism, another dogma)?
As to its being futile, that is the point. The intellect as it currently
is (locked in SOT) has to *experience* its futility, and not just
declare itself futile. The latter is nihilism. The former is a path.
- Scott
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