Bodvar Skutvik (skutvik@online.no)
Wed, 19 Nov 1997 03:54:47 +0100
14 Nov. Platt wrote:
(that I wrote):
> "Still, his latest paper amazed me greatly (referring to Robert Palibo, a
> Swedish student who Bo corresponds with). In it he inverts the usual
> concept where mind is considered ordered-or bringing order-and the world
> chaotic. His new idea is the other way around: Mind is dynamic while the
> world is ordered. Isn't this Pirsig's claim too? Reality (the world) is
> ordered in four discrete levels, while "mind" is everything and nothing;
> another way of calling it chaotic or dynamic."
> Yes. I think this is Pirsig's idea. But it is far from being new. Here' s a
> quote from Master Huang Po of Zen:
> "All the Buddhas and all sentient beings are nothing but the One Mind,
> besides which nothing exists. This Mind, which is without beginning, is
> unborn and indestructible. It is not green or yellow, and has neither form
> nor appearance. It does not belong to the categories of things which exist
> or do not exist, nor can it be thought of in terms of new or old. It is
> neither long nor short, big nor small, for it transcends all limits,
> measures, names, traces and comparisons. Only awake to the One Mind."
>
> Lest you believe this to be "too mystic," here is what Erwin Schroedinger
> the founder of quantum mechanics said:
> "The only possible alternative is simply to keep to the immediate
> experience that consciousness (i.e. Mind) is a singular of which the plural
> is unknown; that there is only one thing and that what seems to be a
> plurality is merely a series of different aspects of this one thing; the
> same illusion is produced in a gallery of mirrors . . . The external world
> and consciousness are one and the same thing."
Hi Platt and Lila Squad.
I have baited Robert Pallbo heavily to try to get him to appear at
the LS, but he has not showed up. However, what you bring of
quotations, seems to underpin the parallel between his
"chaotic mind/ordered world" idea and Eastern mysticism (Master
Huang) and also the Quantum Physics founder Erwin Schroedinger.
I would go as far as saying that all this plainly REMOVES both mind
and world. Schroedinger statement: "The external world and
consciousness are the same thing", is another way of saying that a
new reality is created when two lesser ones merge (as in particle
physics). Perhaps this is what Master Huang also says, but in our
culture that STARTS with the Subject/Object duality it leaves us a
little bewildered to say the least.
Before Pirsig it was either Eastern mysticism in which the world was
an illusion, or Western materialism where mind was "subjective"
(another illusion). Master Huang spoke from a metaphysics
that was plain to him - the one that Pirsig reveals in LILA, and
perhaps did Schroedinger share that, but they lacked the key for
the"Enigma" machine that could be fed one code and produce another
- called "plain language" in the actual culture.
For Westerners it was mostly inscrutable, few understood what it
implied. The "world" still hit us hard and the "mind" still swarmed
with thoughts. Pirsig's radical solution: the value- centered
universe presented a system that - for me - was the Enigma code
breakthrough, but this I hardly need repeat.
I think Pallbo's theory is interesting even if he is "re- inventing
the gunpowder" and I would have liked to have his explanation why he
just can't use the MOQ openly. He has said earlier that it would harm
his academical effort which proves Maggie's Machiavelli quotation.
I should have liked to probe deeper into your surprising and
interesting 'MOQ-as-the-next-level' idea, but this will do for now.
Bo
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