> dmb says: > In Wilber's conception "Spirit" is detectable and natural.
DM: I genuinely enquire, now does he demonstrate this? DMB: As Keith points out, this materialism gutts the > interiors. DM: How do interiors fit into the MOQ scheme described by Pirsig? > dmb says:Wilber is interested in the more > advanced forms of consciousness, ways of seeing that are a little more > rare > but which are more or a continution of increasingly complex cognitive > structures outlined by Piaget. DM: How are complex cognitive structures described in MOQ terms? How are advanced forms of consciousness created? DMB: > But I was surprized to learn that Piaget's work shed so much light on the > subject-object distinction. Against Freud, Piaget argued that infants did > not repress memories because of their dark or shameful (Oedipal) nature > but > simply because they lacked the cognitive tools to form a memory. Lacan > later > picked up on this work and re-interpreted Freud's Oedipal phase in terms > of > Piaget's stages. The upshot of all this is that it explains how the infant > moves from a psychologically undifferentiated state so that it does not > yet > make any distinction between itself and the world. The young infant is One > with mommy, so to speak. But then the father enters the scene to shatter > their coziness. This is not to be taken literally, of course. The father > here represents the intrusion of what Lacan calls "the symbolic order", > which is basically the acquisition of language and the transmission of > cultural values that go with it. This is when the infant begins to form a > conception of itself as distinct from the world, from its mother. As > Eagleton describes the point of agreement among them all, "at an early > point > in the infant's development, no clear distinction between subject and > object, itslef and the external world, is yet possible" (Literary Theory > 182). Or as Pirsig puts it in Lila (opening of chapter 8), "The culture in > which we live hands us a set of intellectual glasses to interpret > experience > with, and the concept of the primacy of subjects and objects is built > right > into these glasses". DM: I agree that this stuff is useful to expand our understanding of the MOQ. > Its interesting that the infant lives in that unified state of > consciousness > but of course babies are not mystics. One has to acquire an ego > consciousness before it can be transcended. As Wilber would say, confusing > pre-rational babies with trans-rational mystics is a pre/trans fallacy DM: I agree that you need to go on this journey to overcome dualism, but have eastern mystics really experienced the full extent of dualism created in the west? > > "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." (keith quoted Lila) DM: But to transcend dualism do we not need to be able to embrace an understanding of language that only divides a reality that is ultimately one. And what is so difficult about that? 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/
