John to Bodvar: Here is something you've been explaining for a long time, and yet somehow I've had great difficulty in following you. But as I've gone along and investigated the MoQ on my own, I've found myself at times starting to come to some conclusions which have made me think, "This sounds like what Bodvar has been asserting." So we shall see where my rollercoaster train of thought leads and if I end up on the same track.
Andre: Hello John, Bodvar, Platt and All. I second the sentiments above John and what Bodvar says but it doesn't resonate with me either...I hear what B says but it doesn't gel. Anyway, having just read Platt's post here is the following from ZMM: 'Al the time we are aware of millions of things around us...aware of these things but not really conscious of them unless there is something unusual or unless they reflect something we are predisposed to see. We could not possibly be conscious of these things and remember all of them because our mind would be so full of useless details we would be unable to think. From all this awareness we must select, and what we select and call consciousness is never the same as the awareness because the process of selection mutates it. We take a handfull of sand from the endless landscape of awareness around us and call that handfull of sand the world. Once we have the handful of sand, the world of which we are conscious, a process of discrimination goes to work on it. This is the knife'(p 75). 'Classical understanding is concerned with the piles and the basis for sorting and interrelating them'' (the Aristotelian, dialectical method and clasification?). Romantic understanding is directed toward the handfull of sand before the sorting begins' (note this is separated from the 'endless landscape') (ibid,p76) It appears to me (and please correct me if I am distorting things) that Pirsig agrees here with Krishnamurti who simply said that consciousness is its content. Consciousness is all the static stuff you 'know' and feel and prefer to look at and listen to. Your static patterns of value. However, as any Buddhist will tell you, there are different levels of consciousness. Now, before Bodvar suggested to John that consciousness is yet 'another SOM-generated platypus, the biggest of them all' I was going to suggest that, at present our 'consciousness' is dominated by S/O analyses.Which gives us data...bits of knowledge. This has thrown up platypi, paradoxes. However,the resolution of these paradoxes allows us to reach a 'higher' level of consciousness, a higher level of 'understanding', a higher level of awareness... by going deeper and realising that apparent contradictions in fact, at this deeper level, complement eachother. What I am getting at is that standard logical methods, as a tool, have high intellectual value. However, as a guide to aid our understanding they are very inadequate. For this you need, as Reanney would have it, the non-algorithmic, aesthetic approach. Bodvar, I am real interested in finding out about your views on this 'consciousness' thing arising out of this, as you say mind/matter enigma. Andre Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
