On Aug 20, 2011, at 1:08 AM, Michael R. Brown wrote: > Hi, Marsha V - > >>> "He conceded that while he hoped his new book would "open a million doors," >>> he still had further work to do "on where exactly love fits in to the >>> metaphysics of quality." > >> Where Michael, where do you think love fits into the picture? > > I'm not sure, yet. I'm just getting re-acquainted with the carburetors and > beer-can shims and such of Bob's work and the MOQ. As for pictures, I want to > say we need to transcend pictures, yet our minds sure like to make them. I'm > a Classicist-Romantic, so I'm wanting to find true synthesis. The first order > of business is to find out what exactly the MOQ is/says and where it is. > Toward that end, I'm going to one of the beginnings and trying to track down > the 1961 Quality essay and work my way forward. > >> Do you have an answer? Does Mary MacLane point towards that answer? > > I think she did. I had the answer when I read her first words and was dazzled > with a light that hasn't dimmed in 25 years: > > * * * * * > > Butte, Montana, > January 13, 1901. > > I OF womankind and of nineteen years, will now begin to set down as full and > frank a Portrayal as I am able of myself, Mary Mac Lane, for whom the world > contains not a parallel. > I am convinced of this, for I am odd. > I am distinctly original innately and in development. > I have in me a quite unusual intensity of life. > I can feel. > I have a marvelous capacity for misery and for happiness. > I am broad-minded. > I am a genius. > I am a philosopher of my own good peripatetic school. > I care neither for right nor for wrong—my conscience is nil. > My brain is a conglomeration of aggressive versatility. > I have reached a truly wonderful state of miserable morbid unhappiness. > I know myself, oh, very well. > I have attained an egotism that is rare indeed. > I have gone into the deep shadows. > All this constitutes oddity. I find, therefore, that I am quite, quite odd. > I have hunted for even the suggestion of a parallel among the several hundred > persons that I call acquaintances. But in vain. There are people and people > of varying depths and intricacies of character, but there is none to compare > with me. The young ones of my own age—if I chance to give them but a glimpse > of the real workings of my mind—can only stare at me in dazed stupidity, > uncomprehending; and the old ones of forty and fifty—for forty and fifty are > always old to nineteen— > > * * * * * > > It was like putting my finger into a light-socket, and it's still difficult > for me to read the words even now. There are some books that feel so intimate > that I handle them with ginger fingers. Mary's first book is one of them. > ZAMM is another. And yet I also seek to get far, far into them and wrestle > them. They're my angels. > > The answer? Being a whole person, with whatever evolution has given you and > personal experience gives you. And for most of us, the love-drive is strong. > So we'd better get right with it, or we'll be wrong with it. Ultimately I see > all interesting systems of thought as extractions, unfoldings. We pull them > out of life and splay things out. The dangerous summit Phaedrus got to was > where the splayed-out system was in danger of swamping out life itself. Once > unfolded, you do stuff with them and then they get folded back into life - or > should. That which is differentiated must be reintegrated. > > Since I'm going back to the beginnings, I just started looking at Plato's > "Phaedrus" again, and I had a memory. I went to a college set up by > associates of The Chairman, and it was based on the Great > Books/discussion/seminar model. I found the "Phaedrus," when time came to > read it, fascinating because it was set *outside.* I very much wanted to > bring this up in Seminar, but the Lead Tutor was strangely discomfited by my > question and wouldn't take it up. > > > MRB
Hello Michael, I think there is a Big Love which is the same as a Big Self which is pure Dynamic Quality. And maybe it can be awakened through words in a book and their author, words expressed with honesty and intimacy like ZMM and Ms. MacLane's first book. I am quite sure of this love. I Know it. Not always, of course, but I know this love. It is love without condition: unconditional love. It might be what drives some people toward enlightenment; to want to sacrifice their selves at its alter; knowingly or unknowingly. (If not me, then who? If not now, then when?) Nirvana is suppose to be a state that is uncovered, not created. Marsha ___ 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
