>From: "John and Ruth Beasley" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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>Subject: MD More Dynamic and Static Spillover
>Date: Wed, 02 Jun 99 23:56:55 PDT
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>Roger,
>
>Many thanks for your posts which I find quite reassuring. I'm not
>discouraged by the clash of
>ideologies and I've learnt a lot.
>
>Your do know how to ask the hard questions. I'm not sure I can do justice
>to them. It seems
>we are dealing with core issues here, and I struggle to grasp the issues,
>let alone put them
>clearly.
>
>You ask "Would you go so far as to agree that "Quality is the experience"?"
Doesn't 'experience' here imply that there is a subject which experiences
the quality? If so Pirsig's position (as you all know :�)) is that subject
object is derived from the quality.
>
>No, I don't. Otherwise I would scrap the word 'quality' and just use
>'experience'. But when I
>try to disentangle the two it all sounds phony. "Quality is what you see
>out of the corner of
>your eye."
I used to read a lot about Zen Buddhism (D T Suzuki Alan Watts) and this
kind of phrasing was often used. Often referring to things outside the
'spotlight' of attention (ie intellectual razor blading) - using peripheral
vision. Maybe Pirsig got his phrasing from such sources.
(Zen Ch 28) Can I start with your comments to Bodvar, which I thought were
spot
>on, especially with thinking being a form of experience, and your comment
>to me that
>"thinking is the experience that creates all the levels, and the thinker to
>boot. In this light, it is
>the same Quality."
>
>I would suggest that the infant experiences without thinking, but certainly
>with quality.
>Animals also can experience, and discern quality. They don't think, so far
>as we can tell, so
>don't lie awake at nights wondering about subjects and objects. What
>thinking does is take
>the raw material of experience, and using the already static forms of
>words, concepts, and so
>on, extract significance from the experience. So in itself thinking seems
>very much a second
>order activity. In this it is little different to memory - a static trace
>of a once dynamic
>experience. However as you have noted, thinking can also be dynamic. I see
>this most
>clearly in the "Aha" experience. For now I use Krishnamurti's distinction
>between thought and
>intelligence even though I am not quite comfortable with this. For him,
>intelligence is
>something encountered, and it is clearly dynamic. Whereas he constantly
>treated the mind
>and thought as burdens, as barriers to understanding and enlightenment,
>because they are
>always static, being derived from past experience, so tending to prevent
>contact with present
>experience.
>
>My interest in Gestalt therapy leads me to recognise that experience comes
>in many forms,
>some of which are toxic. Projection is the big example. If there is
>something I loathe or fear in
>myself, almost invariably I manage to project it onto others, whom I then
>fear or loathe in turn.
>(It can be positive too; most of what we 'respond' to when we fall in love
>is projected.) While
>we all know people who do this, we are often oblivious to the extent that
>we do this
>ourselves. Fritz Perls, at the end of a long life working with people,
>suggested that about
>90% of what we 'think' we experience is actually projection. I'm inclined
>to think he is right.
>
>To take an imaginary example. I meet a man who reminds me of my Father, who
>used to beat
>me as a child. The resemblance may be very slight, the way he holds his
>mouth, or the way
>he stands, or a certain rumble in his voice, but instinctively I feel
>dislike, perhaps, or fear, or
>some other emotion that is inappropriate to the situation. If he starts to
>talk I shall probably
>disagree with what he says. In time, if my contact is extended enough with
>this person, I may
>come to 'see' the real person, and discover that he is not the fearful
>father of my first
>encounter. The experience I had initially was largely projection, but
>sustained contact may
>allow for a different experience to emerge. Nevertheless, the initial fear
>was real, even if
>misplaced. Technically, the experience was fantasy. Something real
>triggered my fear, but it
>was my projection which misplaced the fear, and attached it to the
>stranger. Using therapy to
>develop awareness of what is happening, the fantasy can be dealt with, and
>I am freed to
>contact what is there in reality.
>
>What shall we say of the quality of this experience? The fear was real, the
>threat imaginary.
>The dislike was unearned. To turn to your second question "Would you agree
>that 'you' are
>derived from the encounter?", it seems just as relevant to say that 'you'
>created the
>encounter. This raises the issue of whether there are differences betweeen
>the directness of
>an encounter with what 'is', and the phoniness of encounter with one's own
>fantasies. I think
>there is, and Pirsig seems to be going along with this when "He singled out
>aspects of
>Quality such as unity, vividness, authority, economy, sensitivity, clarity,
>emphasis, flow,
>suspense, brilliance, precision, proportion, depth, and so on." (Zen Ch 17)
>These are almost
>identical to the words used by Paul Goodman to describe 'contact'. Dynamic
>quality resides
>in contactful experience! Not all experience is contactful, inded most is
>fantasy, derived from
>our own projections, and built on our static categories of memory and
>thinking (as in 'thinking
>about', not 'Aha' contact).
>
>I haven't time now to even attempt to take up your other questions, but
>perhaps this
>excursion into the Gestalt field will help clarify some of the issues.
>
>I'll be interested in your comments.
>
>John B
>
>
>
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