[Horse said to Platt] > Knowledge of, knowledge about or knowledge that etc. X refers to > something that can be known. The whole point of DQ/Mysticism in the MoQ > sense is that it can only be experienced and not known. > Or perhaps I've got it wrong. Anyone else agree or disagree?
[Dave] A while back I snipped out 9 pages of quotes from ZaMM and Lila containing "mystic" quotes. It's clear that Pirsig understood the ramifications of coming down on the side of "mystic reality" as the dynamic source, highest moral order, and the ultimate "good" (DQ). Here are three that stick out for me: [Pirsig] ZaMM 105 "I think first of all that he felt the whole Church of Reason was irreversibly in the arena of logic, that when one put oneself outside logical disputation, one put oneself outside any academic consideration whatsoever. "Philosophical mysticism, the idea that truth is indefinable and can be apprehended only by nonrational means, has been with us since the beginning of history. It¹s the basis of Zen practice." ZaMM 202 "But if someone else were to produce a thesis which purported to be a major breakthrough between Eastern and Western philosophy, between religious mysticism and scientific positivism, he would think it of major historic importance, a thesis which would place the University miles ahead. In any event, he said, no one was really accepted in Chicago until he¹d rubbed someone out. It was time Aristotle got his." Pg 32- 33 Lila "The second group of opponents are the mystics. The term mystic is sometimes confused with 'occult' or 'supernatural' and with magic and witchcraft but in philosophy it has a different meaning. Some of the most honored philosophers in history have been mystics: Plotinus, Swedenborg, Loyola, Shankaracharya and many others. They share a common belief that the fundamental nature of reality is outside language; that language splits things up into parts while the true nature of reality is undivided. Zen, which is a mystic religion, argues that the illusion of dividedness can be overcome by meditation. The Native American Church argues that peyote can force-feed a mystic understanding upon those who were normally resistant to it, an understanding that Indians had been deriving through Vision Quests in the past. This mysticism, Dusenberry thought, is the absolute center of traditional Indian life, and as Boas had made clear, it is absolutely outside the domain of positivistic science and any anthropology that adheres to it. Historically mystics have claimed that for a true understanding of reality metaphysics is too 'scientific.' Metaphysics is not reality. Metaphysics is names about reality. Metaphysics is a restaurant where they give you a thirty-thousand page menu and no food. Phasdrus thought it portended very well for his Metaphysics of Quality that both mysticism and science reject metaphysics for completely opposite reasons. It suggested that if there is a bridge between the two, between the understanding of the Indians and the understanding of the anthropologists, metaphysics is where that bridge is located. Of the two kinds of hostility to metaphysics he considered the mystics' hostility the more formidable. Mystics will tell you that once you've opened the door to metaphysics you can say goodbye to any genuine understanding of reality. Thought is not a path to reality. It sets obstacles in that path because when you try to use thought to approach something that is prior to thought your thinking does not carry you toward that something. It carries you away from it. To define something is to subordinate it to a tangle of intellectual relationships. And when you do that you destroy real understanding. The central reality of mysticism, the reality that Phaedrus had called 'Quality' in his first book, is not a metaphysical chess piece. Quality doesn't have to be defined. You understand it without definition, ahead of definition. Quality is a direct experience independent of and prior to intellectual abstractions." [Dave] In some cases he refers to "mysticism" as "philosophical mysticism" in others "religious mysticism", Is he referring to the same phenomena? I'm not sure but surely it must have something to do with "mystic experiences" of real people and how they explain and integrate these experiences into their "real life." Whether this is "knowledge" or not, I'll leave up to you. I recently found this interesting book: http://mystrokeofinsight.com/ by Jill Bolte Taylor on the publisher remainder (cheap) table, bought, and read it. At 37 she was a PhD brain researcher on the fast track when she suffered a massive stroke in her left side of the brain. She maintained consciousness through the whole process while the left side nearly completely shut down leaving her almost paralyzed on the right side, no speech or language skills and many other problems. After brain surgery it took her nearly eight years to retrain the left side of her brain to near normal functioning. But what is relevant to mysticism is her account of her experiences living with primarily only the right side of her brain functioning. She likened it to the account of Nirvana in Buddhism. During her recovery she had to actively fight against this feeling because trying to regain use of the left side of her brain was so difficult and tiring that dropping back permanently into a "la la land" right brain state was always a very real option. Look at her TED talk for synopsis of the book and then re-ask your self: If mystic reality is Dynamic Quality, the highest good, is that where you really want to be? Dave 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/md/archives.html
