David, and Struan if you are still there,
When I said that I considered the Mysticism question to be resolved I
meant for myself. (good SOM term). I suspect that there about as many
definitions of Mysticism as there are people that use the term. Without
pushing the question any further Struan's explanation allowed me to
substitute Dynamic Quality as a mystical term. As of now, I consider
Mysticism and Dynamic Quality to be synonymous. This means that I consider
Mysticism and Dynamic Quality to be intuitive insight. Pirsig declares DQ
to be indefinable. By this I think he just means that DQ is an intuitive
function the operation of which cannot be stated for a particular event
because it is not within the purview of cognition. It has not yet become
Static Quality. Dynamic Quality as it functions in the circular operation
of DQ and SQ is not indefinable. It's function is very clear in my mind.
It seems that most people on the squad have a mystical outlook. I would
prefer my universe to be mechanistic since I would prefer to have the
effects of the physical operation of the universe predictable. The
difference between Mysticism and Empiricism currently is probably not that
great since the complexity that has developed due to the evolution of the
universe could make the difference hard to spot. Pirsig himself says
somewhere that Quality is Empirical but I can't find it at the moment.
The problem I see with Mysticism is that we have no way of knowing what
definition each mystic is operating under. It would be fine if we could
define mysticism and have it universally accepted but I seem to see a wide
range of mystical interpretations just within the squad.
David and Struan, I am sure my interpretation of Mysticism is torquing
your jaws so I will be glad to hear your rebuttals. Ken
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