Marty, Yes, it does get a bit interesting.
MARTY:
> Then I say: I may have missed the point; I was trying to avoid speaking
> about 'souls' and how this differs from the personality, but I see now that
> this is the important part. Who, or what, HAS this soul? In the DQ, as I
> read it, there is DQ as the ultimate, only reality - everything else is a
> pattern, static or dynamic, of Quality. Are you now saying that there are
> TWO things that comprise reality, Quality and souls? In order for there to
> be distinct individuals, outside or beyond static/dynamic patterns, there
> must be distinct stuff other than Quality. This seems to go against
> Pirsig's whole point. As far as 'selfless' goes, that is a stated
> characteristic of the static pattern I refer to as 'me'. The soul seems to
> me to be just a step back from 'me' - a deeper version of the ego.
ELEPHANT:
There are a lot of points for me to think about here. (1) Your talk of
possession ("HAS") makes no sense. For something to be possessed there
would have to be a distinction between the possessor and the possessed,
which is precisely what there cannot be here (which is after all your
point). (2) Two things, not one? Yes, purely from a grammatical point of
view, it does seem to me that you can't have experience without an
experiencer. But what the word 'experiencer' denotes in practice, and
whether there can be said to be a *real* distinction between the experiencer
and the experienced (as opposed to a grammatical one) is another matter.
Don't forget that this observation about the gap between the grammar and the
real situation cuts both ways: I mean that if you want to stick with the
"there is only Quality" answer you have to reinterpret the relevant concept
of 'experience' in such a way as also to embrace 'experiencer'.
Are you with me?
Up to a point, this sort of discussion can become quite intractable: simply
a matter of how you choose to put it, which grammatical form you prefer for
the underlying reality. Either rework the meaning of 'experience' (which is
fine so long as you own up to it), or accept that the experience and the
experiencer are distinct. To my taste, though, and following Plato, it
seems that so long as you continue to talk of 'experience' with any meaning
you have to remember the distinct 'experiencer', that so long as you talk of
'The Good' you have to remember 'Eros', that so long as you talk of the
magnetic you have to speak of the magnetism. More to the point, so long as
you talk of 'Quality' you have to remember 'Taste', or, if you prefer
something for the prelinguistic situation, 'Intuition'.
> Elephant said:
> It is true that in so far as we transcend personality we cease to have
> distinct *goals*, private fantasies, self-serving histories e.g... But a
> man who has transcended personality and become both enlightened and
> compassionate (for the two are one) does not thereby destroy the
> individuation of his consciousness. It is *his* consciousness which is
> enlightened, it is *he* who is compassionate, it is *other souls* to whom he
> is compassionate. Do you follow?
MARTY:
> First of all, I don't see enlightenment and compassion as the same
> thing; I see it as enlightenment LEADING TO compassion, for once you see
> reality as it is, compassion is the only thing that makes sense.
ELEPHANT:
I agree, of course, but there is also a sense in which it isn't *really*
enlightenment until it actually *has* lead to compassion. And that's a
theme in Jamesian pragmatist thought as well: beleifs are action guiding or
they aren't beleifs. We shouldn't pay attention to what Descartes *says* he
beleives or doubts, we should pay attention to what he actually does. The
'mal genie' "doubt" was just self indulgent pretence. I think this makes
the connection between compassion and enlightement slightly stronger than
the 'leading to' account. And that chimes with some remembered C of E
thinking: it matters not what you *say* about the Love or God, it matters
whay you *do*. Or Eckhart, the theologian that Pirsig refers to - something
to the effect of 'do not yelp about god'. What matters is what you *do*
(though thoughts and words are actions too, they are certainly not the whole
of action, nor in all situations the most important).
MARTY:
> I don't see it as "his' compassion or 'his' enlightenment, it is simply
> compassion and enlightenment. Where is the 'his'? If I help someone who
> needs it, the help I give is dynamic quality. I may try to describe it and
> call it 'compassion', but the act itself is simply dynamic quality in
> action. I don't see the 'he' behind it, other than the static image. There
> is only the experience, the quality itself. So I guess I don't follow.
>
> When I look for 'me'
> The soul I see
> is Quality
> defined
ELEPHANT:
Well quite: a trully generous man should try to make himself absent from his
gifts, because it's the Quality of the gift that is important, not the
personal identity of the giver. But they are still his gifts, even if
completely anonymous. Likewise compassionate acts are still *acts* even if
it is only the compassion that appears to the onlooker and not the actor.
The actor is there, because acts have actors - that much is non-negotiable.
What the good man does acheive, I would say, is that the attention and focus
of the act is on the other and not himself - that's a kind of definition of
compassion. And why good men are so hard to depict in art.
The normal situation is that the world is seen in the light of a tool, tools
of the self. The connection between enlightenment and compassion lies
partly in this situation being turned miraculously on it's head: the world
seen though the good of others before oneself. And that is fairly
miraculous. Rare. Unlikely. But like quality itself I suppose we do
recognise it when it happens. Nelson Mandela?
Puzzled despite appearences,
Elephant
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