Donald T Palmgren (lonewolf@utkux.utcc.utk.edu)
Wed, 8 Jul 1998 19:15:15 +0100
Hi gang,
First, a relavent correction to Johnathan on his July 4th post:
You said that Brahman is "God" while Pirsig leaves God out. Brahman as a
god is actualy a symbol. In the more "philosophical" rafters of Hinduism,
Brahman is more clearly not a god -- rather Brahman is a trancendent
energy. The gods are symbolic of the entrey of this trancendent power
into the field of time -- the connection that we (in the temporal
universe)have w/ the trancendent, atemporal, timeless essence. Now one
starts out thinking rather Aristotilian and dualisticly (A/not-A = the
world of waking, ego consciousness [maya]) and concieves of maya and
nirvana (the transendent "realm") as two , mutaualy opposed things... but,
again in philosophicaly interpreted Hinduism (Vedanta) MAYA AND NIRVANA
ARE ONE. Temporal, atemporal; pre-intellectual, post-intellectual --same
thing. But I don't want to go jumping ahead.
(Do allow me to insert here that I really like Horse's continuous
[vs. discrete] thinking, but I still don't buy the idea that "SOM" refers
to A/not-A. If that's what P ment he would have wrote "Aristotilian
logic." But he wrote "SOM" and "subject" and "object" have spicific
refrences.)
First, let me address the scientifically minded of us.
Depending on what book you read, there are 6 or 8 or 10 potential
explanations for quantam phonomina. One of the best I'm familer w/ is the
"holographic universe" theory. Breefly, the phonomina is this:
Nothing goes faster than light in a vacume. Keep that in mind. Now
one trait of photons (light particals) is that they pair-up into twins: +
and - based on their "spin." If you alter the "spin" of one photon, then
it's twin will change as well, in order to stay paired. Now, scientists
have fired two twin photons directly away from one another. Then they
changed the "spin" on one guy, and, miraculusly, his brother
SIMULTANIOUSLY changes his spin. Now the particals are moving away from
each other at the speed of light, so how did the little guy know exactly
the moment his brother changed spin? Two options: There is either some
sort of information wave that travels faster than light that we haven't
detected (unlikely) or else the universe is a "unified whole" in which
every part is in simultanious contact w/ every other part of space and
(maybe?) time!
Now the hologram analogy:
W/ a hologram every piece of photographic film contains the whole
image. If I tore off a corner, I'd have a smaler version of the whole
picture. (Weird, but that's how they work.) Bohm, a quantum physicist,
says that our everyday, tangable, "Aristotilian" reality is a kind of 3-D
illusion. To quote from Tim Allen's *I'm Not Really Here*:
"Underlying [the waking world] is a deeper order of existance, a
vast and more primary level of reality that generates the world as we know
it, and like a holographic picture, even the tiniest piece of our physical
world contains the whole universe. [Bohm] calls this deeper level of
reality the implicat (which means enfolded) order, and he refers to our
own level of existance as the explicat, or unfolded, order."
Now, for the philosophers in the group, a Kantian paralel. Kant
describes an atemporal nominal world -- the world in-itself. Set
over-against this is the temporal phenominal (experienced) world -- the
world for us. The nominal is a totality; the phonominal, a manifold or
multitude. Now that's all well and good, but the thing that Kant had a
huge snag w/ was in trying to figure out the interaction between the
nominal and the phonominal world. He says first that the nominal world
creates the phonominal world of time-space. But how does something create
time? That implies that there is X, and X does Y, and in doing so, creates
Z. Time is implied. Time cannot be created! But Kant, just as rigerously
shows that time cannot be infinite. The universe had to begin somewhere!
Thus: a parodox. Kant declairs that whenever we approch the nominal world
-- the trancendent wholeness -- we will always enconter paradox (because
our Aristotilan A/not-A logic mushes out). Therefor, he declairs, like a
mystic, the nominal is unknowable/un-tellable. Later Kant goes on to show
that it is perfectly reasonable (however) to belive -- to have faith in --
such a unity.
Hinrich Zimmer: "The best things cannot be said [because they are
beyond language]. The second best things are always misunderstood [because
they are metaphores and symbols (like Brahman) which are taken to be
literal].* The third best things -- that is the stuff of everyday
discorse."
>>>>
* Take, for example, the image of Vishnu (a Hindu god) dreaming the
world/we are all Vishnu's dream. Is that to be interpreted literaly? No.
The secret of a dream is that, in a dream, subject and object are one. I
dream myself encountering (say) a black dog. But this dog is a
manifestation of my psyche. Both are me, only I identify w/ one. That's
the meaning behind the Vishnu myth.
>>>>
Anyway, the question is, how does the atemporal unity interface w/
the time-space manifold? In mythological terms: The trancendent energy
poors into the field of time through (symbolically) the sun gate (which is
why, in a mandala, the gate is always in the East). What is the nature of
this sun gate?
That's the riddle of DQ and the quality event.
****************************************************************
There seem to be a group of people in the squad who (like Pirsig
himself I do believe) favor the Kantian/mystical answer of the unknowable
thing. Others don't buy it, and you guys have historical presidence as
well. After Kant, the next 3 great philosophers to come along were
Fichte, Schelling and Hegel. All of those 3 had this in common: Where Kant
said, "there is this thing which no one can know of," they all balked,
"Well, then, how do you know that!" They felt that nothing can exist, or
can be said to have any kind of disernable or significant existance, that
was unknowable. They all took stabes at rendering the mysterious,
paradoxical Absolute intelligable. Hegel makes the biggest advance when he
drops Aristotilian logic all together and replaces it w/ his own temporal
(dynamic) dialectic logic, in which A transforms into not-A and I and This
are the same thing viewed from different angles... Weird crap that makes
the man so damn hard to follow.
So there's a classic philosophical mind game:
unknowable and beyond language
vs.
knowable, but requiring a new type of thinking
TTFN (ta-ta for now)
Donny
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0b3 on Thu May 13 1999 - 16:43:27 CEST