"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." 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