An excellent post, Dave!
At 03:29 PM 2/2/2009, you wrote:
"The whole stance of science is hostile to
mysticism." (letter from Robert Pirsig to Anthony McWatt, March 29th, 1997)
Marsha said to Michael:
I like the quote very much, but I do not think
it is relevant to theism because mysticism is not dependent on theism.
Paco said to all:
Can/will there be a metaphysics or ethics that
can handle handle mystical experience and the transpersonal world?
dmb says:
Yes, the MOQ is meant to handle mystical
experience and that's one of the reasons it
rejects traditional empiricism for radical
empiricism. And DQ (the primary empirical
reality) refers to mystical experience. That's
why I find assertions of theism so objectionable
in this forum. Chapter 30 of Lila is especially
rich. There Pirsig writes, "Phaedrus thought
sectarian religion was a static social fallout
from DQ and that while some sects had fallen
less than others, none of them told the whole
truth. ...From what Phaedrus had been able to
observe, mystics and priests tend to have a
cat-and-dog-like coexistence within almost every
religious organization. ...In all religions
bishops tend to gild DQ with all sorts of static
interpretations because their cultures require
it. But these interpretations become like golden
vines that cling to a tree, shut out its sunlight and eventually strangle it."
William James puts the same idea this way; "A
survey of history shows us that, as a rule,
religious geniuses attract disciples, and
produce groups of sympathizers. When these
groups get strong enough to 'organize'
themselves, they become ecclesiastical
institutions with corporate ambitions of her
own. The spirit of politics and the lust of
dogmatic rule are then apt to enter and to
contaminate the originally innocent thing; so
that when we hear the word 'religion' nowadays,
we think inevitably of some 'church' or other;
and to some persons the word 'church' suggests
so much hypocrisy and tyranny and meanness and
tenacity of superstition that in a wholesale
undiscerning way they glory in saying that they
are 'down' on religion altogether." He also
says, "when a religion has become an orthodoxy,
its days of inwardness are over; the spring is
dry; the faithful live at second hand
exclusively and stone the prophets in their
turn. [They] can be henceforth counted as a
staunch ally in every attempt to stifle the
spontaneous religious spirit, and to stop all
the later bubblings of the fountains from which
in purer days it drew its own supply of inspiration."
I think this idea goes a long way toward
explaining how the MOQ can be anti-theistic and,
at the same time, a form of mysticism. I think
it's worth pointing out that when James says
"religious geniuses" he's not necessary talking
about people with extremely high I.Q.s, although
that's certainly the case with Pirsig. He's
talking about those who have a fresh and
original vision, who've actually had a mystical
experience or otherwise seen it for themselves.
This is what Arlo is getting at, I think, in
following Campbell and saying we don't need
faith if we have experience. Here, faith refers
to those static interpretations or, as James
refers to them, orthodoxies. Not only do the
exoteric religious forms "stifle the spontaneous
religious spirit", they even sometimes kill
people for saying the sorts of things that
Pirsig, James and even Jesus said. (I and the
father are one.) Socrates was killed for not
believing in the state sanctioned gods too. How
many other geniuses have we lost this way?
And so what is the mystical experience, exactly?
Well, you can't say in advance what it will be
like. That's what makes it fresh and original.
That's what makes it Dynamic as opposed to
static. That's what makes it ineffable and, like
mel was saying in connection with Taoism and
Judaism, why the divine cannot be named.
Enlightenment is different for every person.
They are, so to speak, tailor made for each
person and so it totally depends on who you are,
where you are and when you are. It'll present
itself in such a way as to be meaningful for
you. So it's not a singular or specific
event. It's more like a category of experience.
Sadly, the golden vines that strangle and darken
the original vision are very lethal in our own
time. For the most part this pollution take the
form of concretizaton. So much of the bloodshed
we've all seen in the middle east comes from
taking a symbolic idea literally, namely "the
promised land". It has been taken to mean that
an actual supernatural being likes to make a
gift of actual real estate. What is supposed to
be a symbolic reference to a transformation of
consciousness is confused with dirt. Same thing
happens in India with the Ganges river, which is
taken as a literal source of the divine so that
now it's littered with corpses in an attempt to
make the trip to heaven shorter, or some such
nonsense. And in our own culture we have a
situation where almost every Christian believes
that Jesus literally rose from the dead but this
again is a symbol of that transformation of
consciousness. Even "transformation of
consciousness" is a static idea and can be taken the wrong way.
"In every country and in every age, the priest
has been hostile to Liberty." Thomas Jefferson
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