From: David Buchanan (DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org)
Date: Sun Oct 05 2003 - 18:59:23 BST
-----Original Message-----
From: Scott R [mailto:jse885@spinn.net]
Sent: Saturday, October 04, 2003 9:20 AM
To: moq_discuss@moq.org
Subject: Re: MD MOQ and idealism
Scott asked:
How can Quality produce ideas if it is not Intellect?
Paul replied:
Quality produces ideas; intellect is the manipulation of those ideas.
Scott countered:
Our intellect manipulates those ideas and creates new ones. In the latter
case is where we are connected to Intellect, as for example in Poincare's
mathematical insights.
dmb says:
I think Paul makes an excellent case and the MOQ really does resemble
idealism in many important ways, but I also think that the name is a bit
misleading. What were really talking about here, I think, is the
EPISTEMOLOGY OF MYSTICISM, or something like that. Let's start with
Poincare. Here is where we get a very specific answer to Scott's question.
In the quote from ZAMM he says that the subliminal self is "an entity that
corresponds exactly with what Phaedrus called preintellectual awareness."
Just as in the case of "subliminal seduction", the word refers to a level of
awareness that is BELOW conscious awareness, not percieved by our normal
waking consciousness. Its the UNconscious or SUBconscious self. There are
whole worlds down there, but for our purposes its quite enough to draw just
one line, the line between our normal ego consciousness, the front lobe kind
of awareness that does the manipulating of intellectual symbols, and the
subliminal self. As the same quote goes, the subliminal self "looks at a
large number of solutions to a problem, but only the interesting ones break
into the domain of consciousness." The intellect can look dynamic in a way.
It can put the static patterns together in novel ways just as we can compose
an infinite variety of sentences following the rules of grammer, standard
definitions and all that only static stuff. The intellect can do work that
only looks creative in a certain sense of the word, but when a genuinely new
idea emerges out of the pre-intellectual reality I think we're talking about
an actual expansion of the static universe. Something new has been born,
rather than just shuffled around into a different order. And this is where
we start to get at the mysticism of it all...
The example of the hot stove serves to illustrate that the intellect need
not be involved at all, but its also worth remembering that Pirsig also says
that the mystics would be the first to jump off. We can even think about
physical laws like cause and effect in terms of the preferences of inorganic
static patterns, so that the whole of static reality is infused with a sense
of value, an ability to respond to that undifferentiated, dynamic,
pre-intellectual Quality. Its also worth remembering that "when we associate
DQ with religious mysticism it produces an avalanche of information as to
what DQ is". As I understand it this dynamic undifferentiated aesthetic
continuum is called "nothingness" and the "the void". We in the West tend to
misinterpret such words to mean something like "empty space", but I think
both Paul and Scott know perfectly well that empty space is a static thing
and is quite different. Instead, a better word for it in english might be
William Blake's version of Eternity. "If the doors of perception were
cleansed, everything would appear to man as it really is, infinite.". Its
kind of like static patterns are only capable of representing a tiny
fraction of the infinite possibilities, and the finite world of static
patterns is in some kind of harmonious relationship with that eternity, and
that its apparent independence as a separate reality is an illusion. As you
likely know, in the East this illusory reality is called the "maya" or more
descriptively, the "World of the ten thousand things" - or something like
that.
I can only sketch it. But this is why I think were talking about the
epistemology of mysticism. Pirsig's empiricism goes beyond our biological
senses to include an ability to respond to Quality at even the lowest levels
of awareness and thereby paints a picture of reality that is nothing that
but Quality. Cleave a piece of wood, and I am there. The Father and I are
one. We see this same kind of mysticism in our own tradition too. And that's
why its nothing new. As Pirsig explains, mysticism is not just some exotic
imported notion from an alien culture, but a deeply submerged root in our
own culture.
Thanks,
dmb
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