From: David Buchanan (DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org)
Date: Sat Jan 01 2005 - 04:21:53 GMT
Hi Mark, Sam, and all MOQers:
Sam quoted theologian Nicholas Lash:
"...If James, of all people, could be shown to be still mesmerised by the
Cartesian spell, then the power of that bewitchment's grip would have been
dramatically displayed. I was, moreover, well aware of the fact that I was
taking issue with what is probably still the most widespread account in our
culture of what is meant by 'person' and 'experience', by 'religion' and by
'God'; an account subscribed to by both the friends of religion and its
foes. ...the chances are that those who still endorse more or less Jamesian
accounts of what is meant by 'consciousness' and by 'experience', by
'religion' and its 'objects', are still operating within Cartesian
parameters...."
Sam said:
...this is what I accuse DMB - and now Pirsig - of doing...
In other words, when we use the word 'experience' we tend to still use it in
a SOMish way. My
suspicion - growing stronger all the time - is that Pirsig doesn't escape
this problem, and the
metaphysical apparatus that he set up in Lila is still conditioned by the
Cartesian/Kantian
framework. But I'll spell all that out in longer form. This was just a
taster :-)
dmb replies:
I'd begin by echoing Mark. SOM is embedded in our language and thought
categories. We're stuck with it. And we wouldn't want to abandon it
altogether anyway. That's why SOM is embedded within the MOQ. But when it
comes to the mystical experience Pirsig leaves SOM behind. And in fact he
MUST leave it behind when we enter into a discussion of mysticism. As I have
hinted at several times already, I think that traditional theology is the
mother of SOM and that as a result we have a major blindspot in our culture,
both secular and religious. It probably seems silly to some readers, we each
accusing each other of being unwitting SOMers, but I hope to explain it as
clearly as I can and not just assert it. The first thing that leaps to mind
is that the creation of the MOQ is aimed, in large part, at overcoming this
exact problem. To paraphrase your man Lash, to understand what Pirsig is
saying we need to overturn the common conceptions about little things like a
"person", an "experience" and "God" is. I hope this means that we are again
on the verge of a breakthrough and that we might even be talking about the
same thing - or almost anyway. If the blindspot is a feature of our culture
and our language, then it only makes sense that we might have to overturn
some common conceptions and assumptions in order to get at it. Please don't
loose this thread or gloss over anything despite such a difficulty.
To get more specific, the mystical experience is described NOT as a personal
or subjective experience, but as the direct perception of the reality that
comes before subjects and objects. So in a very broad and basic sense, the
MOQ's mysticism is an explicit denial of subjects and objects as the root of
experience. This why we call the MOQ a radical empiricism. It goes to the
root. Its not because the MOQ offers an epistemology that political
revolutionaries can love, although that might be true for different reasons.
No, we call it a radical empiricism because its based on experience that is
even more primary than sensory or mental experience as we imagine it. The
common conceptions of what counts as "experience" in SOM are replaced here
so that they no longer refer to subjects or subjectivity.
That's why the One is not other than you, that's why God is not something we
have a relationship with. Otherwise we'd have the Two and not the One. And I
think that's where the dreaded dualism began. I hope to explain how the
ontological distinction between God and Man became the ontological
distinction between Nature and Man, in other words how Western theology
begat SOM. And this is not aimed at bashing theology so much as uncovering
the cultural assumptions that constitute our blindspot toward mysticism. I
won't even try to squeeze into a single post. I don't know how many it'll
take, but promise to make an effort to keep them as short and simple as the
topic will allow.
William Barrett traces this connection in his "IRRATIONAL MAN; A Study in
Existential Philosophy", but my old friend Alan Watts seems to be what the
doctor ordered in this particular case. Not only does he illuminate Pirsig's
view, he was trained as an Anglican Priest and may have even been trained at
the very same school as you, Sam. He knows theology, he knows about
philosophical mysticism and, most importantly, he knows the difference. This
is not an argument from authority. Its just about finding a voice that fits
the need. I'm trying to get an Anglican theologian to understand mysticism
as Pirsig describes it and Watt's just happens to be one who spans the gap.
I sincerly hope he makes things more clear for everyone, but this is
tailored for Sam's needs. Speaking to our cultural blindspot to the
perennial philosophy, here is Alan Watts in the prologue to his "MYTH AND
RITUAL IN CHRISTIANITY".
"To the degree that we realize its existence at all, we call it
'metaphysics' or 'mysticism', but both the insights on which it is founded
and the doctrine and symbols in which it is expressed are so generally
misunderstood that 'it would hardly be an exaggeration to say that a
faithful account of it might well be given in the form of a categorical
denial of most of the statements that have been made about it' both by its
contemporary critics and by many of its present day enthusiasts. For amongst
both the opinion prevails that 'mysticism' is a retreat from the realities
of life into a pruely subjective frame of mind which is declared to be more
real than the plain evidence of our senses.
By way of 'categorical denial' I might begin by saying that a traditional
'metaphysic' of this kind involves a far more acute awareness of the plain
evidence of the senses than is usual, and that, so far from retreating into
a subjective and private world of its own, its entire concern is to
transcend subjectivity, so that man may 'wake up' to the world which is
concrete and actual, as distinct from that wich is purely abstact and
conceptual. Those who undertake this task unanimoulsly report a vision of
the world startlingly different from that of the average socially
conditioned man - a vision in whose light the business of living and dying,
working and eating, ceases to be a problem. It goes on, yes, but it ceases
to be the frantic and frustrating pursuit of an ever-receding goal, because
of the discovery that time - as ordinarily understood, is an illusion.
Yet another consequesnce of this acute awareness of the real world is the
discovery that what has been felt to be one's 'self' or 'ego' is also an
abstraction without reality - a discovery in which the 'mystic' oddly joins
hands with the scientist who 'has never been able to detect any organ called
the soul'. That which takes the place of the conventional world of time and
spcace, oneself and other, is properly described by negatgions - 'unborn,
unoriginated, uncreated, unformed' - because its natue is neither verbal nor
conceptual. In brief, the 'seers' of this realty are the 'disenchanted' and
'disillusioned' - those who are able to employ thoughts, ideas, and words
witout being spell-bound and bypnotixed by their magic."
I'll end with the footnote to this last paragraph about the 'seers', where
Watts writes...
"The doctrine of these 'knowers of the real' constitutes the central core of
three of the freat historicxal religion-philosophies of Asia - Hinduism,
Buddhims, and Taoism. In Islam it appears in a sectarian form as the
teaching of the Sufis. In Judaism it is found chiefly as the Holy Kabala - a
corpuus of teaching contained in an early mediaeval work called the Zobar,
descending, perhpas, from Pholso Alexandraeus. In the traditions of Greece
it appears, somewhat diluted and confused wtih other elements, in a line of
doctrine which runs from the Orphic mystiers, therough Plato, to the
Neoplatonists of Alexandria - in particular Plotinus, Proclus, and the
Christian Clement. In Christianity itself it exercised a rar-reaching
incluence from the Syrian monk known as Dionysius the Areopagite in the
sixth century, through John Scotus Erigena, St. Albert the Great, Meister
Eckhart, and John of Ruysbroeck, to Nicolas of Cusa in the fifteenth
century. In the Near East and in the West, that is to say, in Judaism,
Christianity and Islam, the doctrine has almost always been 'at odds' with
an offical orthodoxy bitterly opposed to its universalism, because of an
immature compulsion to believe in the exclusive perfection of one's own
'party-religion'."
OK. That's enough for now. I'll unpack this first installment and/or dish up
another episode after I bring in the new year and get a good night's sleep.
Thanks
dmb
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