From: Scott R (jse885@spinn.net)
Date: Fri Oct 11 2002 - 22:04:36 BST
John
John Beasley wrote:
> Hullo Scott,
>
> SCOTT: "What the intellectual level does is allow us to a) become conscious
> of ourselves, and b) become detached from the biological and social
> attachments that bedevil us."
>
> Your comment is a description of the world that I see Pirsig inhabits, one
> where the isolated intellect is both self conscious and detached from the
> biological and social levels. The last three words are a judgement on the
> biological and social levels that I doubt even Pirsig would make. He does
> not view the lower levels as bad in themselves, only that the domination of
> a higher level by a lower is bad. Your take sounds like a version of
> original sin. Pirsig, for example, believes that a person can cultivate his
> intellect and still be attractive to the ladies, meaning have both
> intellectual and biological quality.
You're overlooking the word "attachment". Yes, there is nothing wrong
with biological or social patterns -- quite the contrary. What is wrong
is attachment to them.
>
> SCOTT: "We also need to become detached from intellectual attachments,
> meaning the intellect has to learn to look dispassionately on itself. "
>
> I see detachment is the key word here, but again in your view detachment is
> also 'dispassionate'. I happen to believe that the path to 'enlightenment'
> is not about becoming super-intellectual and super-disconnected, but is
> rather a reclamation of our unconscious minds, and our passionate bodies.
> The mystic, on my reading, does not deny passion, whether it be in the Zen
> master operating as a "happy madman", or Krishnamurti in his extended affair
> with his 'manager's' wife, or in the writings of Hameed Ali. Rather he
> asserts that the passion is part of the upwelling of what is and is good,
> along with everything else. He is just aware that passion is and has its
> place, but is not overwhelmed by that. The best book on this is Wilber's 'No
> Boundary'.
"Passion" refers to feelings that overwhelm us, that happen to us. So
the extent to which we are driven by passion we are not autonomous. In
itself, this would be ok, just as it is okay to be rained on. What is
not ok is to be attached to these moments of passion, as we are, for
example, when we attempt to justify our anger, thus becoming
self-righteous, or when fear becomes an excuse for bellicosity. To learn
the difference requires intellect, to be self-observant.
>
> SCOTT: "On "ironic metaphysics" I (idiosyncratically) mean that we
> acknowledge that mystics know what's what and we don't, which means we are,
> by definition, insane (out of touch with Reality). But we do have
> intellect, which in at least one case (mathematics) we can be confident
> that we are not fooling ourselves."
>
> In general terms I would accept your first point as an abstract statement of
> how things are. But it is not that we are totally out of touch, just largely
> so.
No, it is total. Why isn't DQ (or God, or what-have-you) obvious. You
mentioned original sin, and that is exactly what we are talking about
(changing, as DMB noted, the word sin from meaning "disobedience" to
meaning basic ignorance, of looking in the wrong direction).
And it is precisely those elements of our being that are 'in touch'
> which are the key to our path, and it is precisely NOT mathematics that I
> have in mind here. Someone else has replied with a very apt quote from
> Einstein as to how helpful mathematics is. Einstein, and the bulk of his
> fellow physicists actually saw that mathematics did not give them what they
> sought in life, hence most of them became mystics of some form or other.
> Read their own words in Wilber's 'Quantum Questions'.
I've read it, but I don't see that there is any conflict between
mathematics and mysticism. See the quote from Merrell-Wolff below. This
is not to say that mathematics is a mystic path, no more than physics.
What I am trying to do is counter the typical philosophical presumption
that mathematics, or intellect in general, is somehow less real than the
"starry heavens above", or our feelings.
>
> SCOTT: "I have faith in mysticism, that it is possible to become sane."
>
> I have too, which only goes to show that I am no mystic, since it is only
> when I totally lose hope of becoming sane that I can indeed find my sanity.
Shankara would disagree with this attitude. "An intense desire for
liberation" is one of his four preconditions for the mystic wannabe (the
others are learning to discriminate between the permanent and the
impermanent, not attaching oneself to one's accomplishments, and
cultivating calmness). Merrell-Wolff has an interesting bit on how to
reconcile this with the general notion of becoming detached from one's
desires:
"The [meditation] manuals emphasized the necessity of killing out
desire. This proved to be a difficult step to understand and far from
easy to accomplish. Desire and sentient life are inseparable, and so it
seemed as though this demand implied the equivalent of self-extinction.
It was only after some time that I discovered that the real meaning
consisted in a changing of the polarization of desire. Ordinarily,
desire moves toward objects and objective achievements, in some sense.
It is necessary that this desire should be given another polarization so
that, instead of objects and achievements in the world-field being
sought, an eternal and all-encompassing consciousness should be desired."
And a little later:
"I did not find it difficult to appreciate the logic of this requirement
[that egoistic feeling be dissolved], but again, as in the case of
outwardly polarized desire, the difficult part was the actual
dissolution of the egoistic feeling. The ordinary technique is the
practice of practical altruism until personal self-consideration sinks
well into the background. But this is not the only means that effects
the result. A desire for the transcendent Self and a love of universals
also tend toward the required melting of the egoistic feeling. In this
part of the discipline, I found that my already established love of
mathematics and philosophy was an aid of radical importance that,
supplemented by more tangible practices, finally produced the requisite
degree of melting." [Experience and Philosophy, pp 255-257]
Please note that neither Merrell-Wolff nor I are saying that the
cultivation of intellectual pursuits is sufficient by itself as a path
to Awakening, nor that it is required for all paths. All I am trying to
argue is against your saying that intellect is a *hindrance* to
Awakening (well, and also to argue that the intellect is somehow less
real than the physical universe or one's emotions). Merrell-Wolff is a
clear counter-example, in that for him not only was it not a hindrance,
it was an aid "of radical importance".
- Scott
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