hi, david:
welcome to the squad.
you say:
I see the MOQ as a good
picture of mysticism. MOQ is a good explaination of the underlying or
transcendent reality that mystics describe.
lithien:
i agree. however, pirsig admits that he had second thoughts about defining
Quality and felt uneasy about it at the start (p.74) since it lay in the
mystic realm. he felt like he was selling out. but then decided to do it
anyway.
david adds:
The
mystics see the apparent differences between theologies as merely a
matter of style.
lithien:
i dont know if all mystics do...but i know that is the way i feel.
again welcome,
Lithien
http://members.tripod.com/~lithien/Lila2.html
-----Original Message-----
From: David Buchanan <DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org>
To: 'moq_discuss@moq.org' <moq_discuss@moq.org>
Date: Monday, December 14, 1998 3:23 AM
Subject: MD quality and mind
>To my favorite motorcycle gang:
>
>This is my first posting. I read the Dec 12 and 13 entries and am
>astonished and amazed. The conversation is better than I hoped for,
>although surprized at the scatology and brutality. I'm very psyched to
>chime in.
>
>Please count me among the mystics. Even further, I see the MOQ as a good
>picture of mysticism. MOQ is a good explaination of the underlying or
>transcendent reality that mystics describe. Further still, I think
>philosophical mysticism isn't the only valid kind. Each of the world's
>great religious traditions have an esoteric core of thinkers who are
>mystics, and at that esoteric core all the great religions agree. The
>mystics see the apparent differences between theologies as merely a
>matter of style. Its the same person in different clothes, so to speak.
>The differences are only cultural inflections.
>
>I'd love to go on, but the topic is brain, mind, and intellect, isn't
>it?
>
>The neurosciences are inherently reductionist. I can't believe that even
>a perfectly valid scientific experiment on the brain could ever make
>claims about the nature of human consciousness. Chemistry could never
>explain shakephere or the blues. Besides the brain/mind split is classic
>SO thinking. Its the old mind/body problem.It becomes an impossible
>situation when the subject is also and object. I think it's at the heart
>of what Pirsig was trying to overcome in his quest for Quality. His
>copernican revolution in consciousness was meant to overthrow this exact
>problem.
>
>In the real world history has shown repeatedly that biological
>explainations for human nature and behavior have been used by
>authoritarian governments to justify exploitation, slavery, war and
>genocide. Reductionism is a right-wing thing and it gets alot of people
>killed. In Pirsig's MOQ it would be a matter of confusing the various
>levels of Quality; that it confuses the biological, social, and
>intellectual levels.
>
>Joseph Campbell's last book, "The Inner Reaches of Outer Space", sheds
>light on the issue and i think its consistent with the MOQ. He was a
>scholar, a post-Jungian mythologist and a mystic. He make a case for
>Freud's view that the sex organs exerted a certain pressure on the mind,
>and that resulted in unconscious motivations. But Campbell goes much
>further. He says that all the organs exert their own kind of pressure on
>the total organism. Each organ has its own needs and issues demands on
>the mind. And here's the fun part. THE BRAIN IS AN ORGAN. Its just one
>of many organs in competition to effect the will of the whole organism.
>
>The brain is the king of organs and my personal favorite. It seems to
>run things, and that is a big part of the confusion. Again - the
>biological level is confused with the intellectual level when brains are
>confused with minds. The mind and the intellect are dependant on the
>brain, and have grown out of the organ to reach a new level of Quality.
>Within every brain are areas more primitive and wild. Remnants of former
>brains lie beneath as building blocks of our present state. One could
>even say there are levels of quality within the organ itself and levels
>of quality in the mind that grows out of it. Who wanted to talk about
>complexity? Nature seems to be inclined to produce our kind of
>consciousness. DQ is the underlying evolutionary force and it created
>our brains and minds. The MOQ is very flattering to human consciousness.
>
>One more idea. This one is from Robert Thurman. He's a Tibetan Buddhist
>scholar and Uma's dad. He studied with the Dali Lama... Blah Blah Blah
>In "Inner Revolution" he says if you want to understand consciousness
>you gotta go East.
>He says Western science has mastered material reality and was able to
>put a man on the moon, but that the East has achieved an equally
>stunning feat in the inner realm.
>
>That's it for now.
>
>
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>
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