Kabbalah, Jungian Psychology, and the Challenge of Contemporary Atheism
Version of record first published: 29 May 2012.
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Kabbalah, Jungian Psychology, and the Challenge of Contemporary Atheism
Abstract: The major symbols of the Lurianic Kabbalah are examined from both theological and psychological points of view. It is argued that these symbols, including Ein-sof (the infinite), Ayin (divine nothingness), Tzimtzum (divine concealment/contraction), Sefirot (value archetypes), and Shevirat ha-Kelim (the breaking of the vessels), provide the basis for a conception of God that is spiritually and psychologically meaningful, while at the same time suggestive of, and fully compatible with, the open-ended, diverse, and multicultural mode of experience and understanding that is often thought to herald the demise of faith and provide the basis for an atheistic critique of religion.
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A spate of recent books on the presumed errors and evils of religion (Harris, 2005; Dawkins, 2008; Hitchens, 2007, Dennett, 2006) prompts a fresh consideration of the nature and value of the God archetype and idea. Indeed, within the Jungian community itself there has recently been heated debate about the metaphysical and psychological status of the deity in analytic psychology, with such thinkers as Giegerich (2010) and Mogenson (2010) arguing that Jung entered into a historically and psychologically regressive mode of understanding when he remained favorably disposed to God and religion. This is a weighty charge, as it has often been observed that one of Jung’s great contributions to both psychology and theology was to rethink the experience and function of religious symbolism in the context of the modernist critique of religion and the “death of God” as these had been proclaimed in his day.
In this essay I argue that a mystical understanding of the divine, particularly as it is expressed in the Kabbalah of Isaac Luria, provides the basis for a conception of God that is both psychologically meaningful and fully compatible (indeed expressive of) the transition to the open-ended, multi-perspectival, multi-cultural mode of understanding that is often thought to herald the demise of religious faith. I will explore the God idea as it is manifest in the Kabbalah of Isaac Luria, and examine this idea in relation to aspects of the contemporary atheistic critique.
Isaac Luria (1534-1572) was born in Alexandria, Egypt, but later became the leading figure in the Kabbalistic community of Safed on the shore of Lake Tiberias. Luria developed a complex mystical theosophy that integrated earlier Kabbalistic symbols and ideas into a general account of the cosmos and the respective roles of God and man within it (Scholem, 1946; Drob, 2000). I will explore several of these symbols and the Lurianic system as a whole from both theological and psychological points of view. In the process I hope to show that the concept of God that emerges from Lurianic mysticism can help to restore the God idea in the wake of criticisms raised by contemporary atheism, just as Jung’s archetypal reformulation of the God-idea helped to restore the meaning of religious faith and experience in his own time. I will endeavor to show how Luria’s theosophical/mythological system can lead us to a conception of God or the “Absolute” that is satisfying from contemporary theological and psychological points of view. In the process I will explain how the symbols of the Lurianic Kabbalah produce a coincidentia oppositorum not only between the positive and negative aspects of God and Self but also between mysticism and reason, and theism and atheism. Indeed, it is my view that a contemporary reading of the Lurianic symbols leads to theism and atheism dissolving into each other.
While Jung repeatedly claimed that theology was completely outside his province as an empirical scientist (Jung, 1963, p. 7),[1] a close reading of Jung’s writings reveals him to be continuously struggling not only with religious images and symbols but with the very existence of God, and endeavoring to respond to the demise of traditional religious faith brought on by modernity. This has become even clearer with the recent publication of the Red Book, where Jung attempts to reformulate the reality of God in imaginative terms, experiences God as a coordinate of the self, and is personally involved in the healing and rebirth of a sick and dying deity (Jung, 2009).
The Lurianic Kabbalah
Isaac Luria produced a complex theosophical system, a fusion of earlier Kabbalistic notions and symbols to account for the origin and destiny of God, humanity and the universe (Schochet, 1981; Jacobs, 1987; Scholem, 1946). Luria himself wrote very little, but his ideas were transmitted by his followers, the most important of whom was Chayyim Vital (1542-1620), whose Sefer Ez Hayyim (Menzi and Padeh, 1999) and other works contain detailed accounts of the Lurianic system.
According to Luria, the creation of the universe involves a cosmic drama in which Ein-sof, the unknowable “Infinite,” generates the cosmos through an act of contraction and concealment (Tzimtzum) of its infinite essence. This contraction produces a relative void in the divine plenum, within which finite entities can subsist without being annulled by God. Creation, for Luria, is a process of subtraction rather than addition; one, to use a modern analogy, that is akin to the production of a detailed visual scene by the interposition of a photographic film that partially obstructs a uniform field of white light. It is in this manner that the Infinite God is said to form the Sefirot, the ten archetypal structures, which are comprised of the remnants of divine light that remain in the void after the Tzimtzum, and which crystallize into such values as wisdom, knowledge, kindness, judgment, beauty and compassion (Drob, 1997). The Sefirot serve as vessels or containers for a further emanation of God’s creative energy, and in this manner they become the structures or “molecules” of the created world. In addition, the sefirotic emanations contain or comprise the Otiyot Yesod, the 22 “primordial letters,” which are also held to contain the divine thought and light. As a result of their assembly into the words of Torah, these primordial letters become the template for the meaning structure of the world.
Together the ten sefirot and the 22 letters constitute the “32 paths of wisdom.” However, according to Luria, the Sefirot and the letters were disjoint (for example, “judgment” was completely divorced from “kindness” and the letters were not yet assembled into words) and were therefore not strong enough to contain the light emanated into them. Because of this, a majority of the Sefirot shattered, resulting in the cosmic catastrophe known as the Shevirat ha-Kelim or “Breaking of the Vessels.” The “shevirah” or “rupture” produced shards of the sefirotic vessels that fell haphazardly through the metaphysical void. Portions of divine light, the netzotzim or “holy sparks” adhered to and were ultimately trapped within the plummeting shards and were dispersed throughout the world. The sparks of divine light were, and continue to be, estranged from their source in God, and as prisoners of the broken shards they animate the “Husks” (Kellipot), which are the metaphysical source of all that is negative, alienated and evil. The Husks exile a portion of divine light from its source and give rise to an alienated, evil realm, the Sitra Achra, the “Other Side.” Our world, according to the Lurianic myth is largely submerged within the husks of the Other Side.
Luria held that the Breaking of the Vessels also resulted in a disturbance in the conjugal relations between the masculine and feminine aspects of the godhead, producing a disruption in the flow of divine procreative energy throughout the cosmos. It is this (pro)creative energy that is entrapped in the “Husks” of the “Other Side,” and it is humanity’s divinely appointed task to encounter these Husks and, through proper spiritual and ethical conduct, to liberate or “raise” the sparks (Netzotzim) of light and energy within them, thereby restoring the Sefirot to their full value and meaning. In this manner, humanity is said to liberate the “feminine waters” necessary for a conunctio between the feminine and masculine aspects of God, and for returning the holy sparks to their proper place as forces serving the divine will. The act of liberating the sparks, reuniting male and female, and restoring divine light or energy to the service of the infinite God is known as Tikkun Haolam, the Restoration of the World. According to Luria, each individual is enjoined to raise those sparks he or she encounters within the world, as well as the sparks within his or her own soul, in order that he or she may ultimately achieve the tikkun (repair/redemption) of self and world. Luria taught that by restoring the vessels, humanity prompts the transformation of the Sefirot into Partzufim, divine “visages” or “personas,” which represent the development of the Primordial Human (Adam Kadmon) through both genders’ progression from youth to parenthood and old age. The “World of Tikkun,” having traversed the phase of rupture necessitating humanity’s ethical, aesthetic and spiritual restorative acts, is far richer and more valued than the “World of Points” that was originally emanated by Ein-sof.
“God,” in the Lurianic Kabbalah, is thus an evolving completion, rather than a static perfection. The entire Lurianic system, beginning with the infinite, Ein-sof and its contraction in Tzimtzum, proceeding through the emanation of Adam Kadmon, the Sefirot and the Primordial Letters, their rupture (Shevirah), and ultimate restoration and emendation in Tikkun, is constitutive of the deity, whose completion involves the participation and partnership of humanity. We will see that Jung himself was very much in accord with this Lurianic idea.
Jung and Luria
The Kabbalists held that the cosmic drama described by Luria is both an account of the inner workings of God and creation and a representation of psychological events within the human mind; and if we examine the symbols of the Lurianic Kabbalah from a Jungian perspective we find a rich basis for the view that the Lurianic account of God accords both with the phenomenology of spiritual experience and the dynamics of the self. Jung, who late in his life stated that a Jewish mystic, the Maggid of Mezihirech anticipated his entire psychology (Jung, 1977, pp. 271-2), took an active interest in the symbols of the Kabbalah, which he knew through early Latin translations of Kabbalistic texts, the writings of Gershom Scholem, and indirectly through their presence and metamorphosis in European Alchemy. Indeed, Jung was very excited about Luria’s ideas when he encountered them later in life. In a letter to the Reverend Erastus Evans, Jung wrote:
In a tract of the Lurianic Kabbalah, the remarkable idea is developed that man is destined to become God’s helper in the attempt to restore the vessels which were broken when God thought to create a world. Only a few weeks ago, I came across this impressive doctrine which gives meaning to man’s status exalted by the incarnation. I am glad that I can quote at least one voice in favor of my rather involuntary manifesto (Jung, 1973, Vol. 2, p. 157).
Jung recognized that alchemy was deeply influenced by the Kabbalah (Jung, 1963), and as I have argued (Drob, 2003a), by uncovering the spiritual and psychological “gold” that lay hidden behind its pseudo-chemical metaphors, he was in large measure reconstituting the Kabbalah that had served as its spiritual foundation. I have previously discussed the psychological significance of the Kabbalistic symbols in some detail (Drob, 2010). Here I will do so only sufficiently to show how these symbols, and the conception of the deity which they circumscribe, yield a psychologically and spiritually rich notion of God.
(1) Ein-sof (the Infinite) is the unknowable, source of all being, within which all contrasts and oppositions are united. Ein-sof is the “nothingness/fullness” that is the object of contemplation in various mystical traditions. It is the God of the negative theologians, unknowable except through the assertion that it is not what anyone might think it to be. The Jewish mystics held that Ein-sof (and the entire sefirotic system) is mirrored in the human soul. From this psychological point of view, we can regard Ein-sof as the infinite plenum of the unconscious, the wellspring of creativity and desire, and the foundation and origin of a subject or Self which is essentially beyond the reach of conscious awareness. From a Jungian perspective, the notion that Ein-sof embodies a coincidence of opposites between being and nothingness, good and evil, spiritual and material, etc. means that it conforms to our phenomenological experience of both God and Self.
(2) Tzimtzum (Divine contraction), as we have seen, is the concealment, contraction and withdrawal of God¹s presence that “makes room” for the world. The Chasidim understand the Tzimtzum as the contraction of the personal ego that enables one to “let in” the infinite God, and enables other people, indeed all things, to achieve their fullest expression without being subject to our control or interference. Psychologically, the Tzimtzum can also be understood as an archetypal concealment or “repression,” which separates the ego from the unconscious, and creates the structures and characteristics of the personality.
(3) Adam Kadmon (Primordial M), the first created being, emerges from the Tzimtzum. His body is said to comprise the Sefirot, the value archetypes through which the world is created. Jung, who made considerable reference to Adam Kadmon in his later writings, held that the Primordial Human is the archetype of the Self (Jung, 1963, p.p. 383-4), the “universal soul” (Jung, 1963, p. 409) and the process of personal transformation. According to Jung, Adam Kadmon is man’s invisible center, and the psychic equivalent of the archetypes of both God and Self. From a psychological point of view, the emergence of Adam Kadmon from the unknowable void is symbolic of the psychological birth of the self, a self, however, that in order to be completed must first enter into a process of deconstruction and restoration. Spiritually, the experience of Adam Kadmon involves an identification with humanity as a whole, and the fulfillment of the spiritual, ethical, and emotional values of the Sefirot.
(4) The Sefirot (Value Archetypes): For Luria as for all Kabbalists, the sefirot are value archetypes that reflect the inner workings of the godhead and are the molecular components of both the world and individual men and women. In the conjugal metaphor common in the Kabbalah, each sefirah is understood bisexually, as a receptive female to the sefirah above it, and an emanating male to the sefirah below it. Further, each sefirah is complemented by a counter-sefirah, which embodies the negative/evil aspects of such value archetypes as desire, wisdom, knowledge, kindness, judgment, beauty, etc., In this manner, the Kabbalists were able to integrate what is effectively the shadow and anima archetypes into both the deity and the human psyche. The purpose of creation, according to Luria, is the full realization of the value archetypes, but this can only occur once the values shatter become entrapped in the Kellipot (Husks), pass through the shadowy realm of the sitra achra (the Other Side), and are finally liberated, reconstructed and emended through human acts of Tikkun. These acts reunite both the masculine and feminine and positive and negative aspects of God and humanity, thereby restoring the flow and balance and divine and human energy. Spiritually, the sefirot represent the struggle with, and commitment to values that is at the core of religious experience and faith. Psychologically, they signify the recognition that this struggle and commitment must involve an awareness and integration of the negative and counter-sexual, aspects of the Self that are initially thought to be antithetical to this quest.
(5) Otiyot Yesod (Foundational Letters): Using a metaphor that complements the image of the Sefirot, the Kabbalists held that creation is also comprised of the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet, each of which they understood as carrying a unique essence and significance. For the Kabbalists, everything in the world, from stones, water and earth to the human individual has a soul or spiritual life-force determined by the letters of divine speech from which their names are comprised, and it is for this reason that all meaning and spirit is intimately tied to language and scripture. From a psychological perspective, since the self and cosmos are structures of significance, the key to understanding the “soul” of both man and the world is to be found in the hermeneutic disciplines that originally applied to the interpretation of narratives and texts. We will see later that for the Kabbalists the variations in such textual interpretation of humanity and cosmos are nearly infinite.
(6) Shevirat ha-Kelim, (The Breaking of the vessels) involves the displacement and shattering of the sefirot and their distribution as “sparks” (netzotzim) of divine light throughout the cosmos. Jung himself took considerable interest in the Lurianic symbols of shevirah (rupture) and tikkun (repair and restoration) when he encountered them in the 1950s, and he came to believe that they anticipated and confirmed his own ideas, expressed those he articulated in Answer to Job (Jung, 1960), regarding humanity’s role in repairing the damage wrought by creation. Earlier, Jung had encountered these Kabbalistic ideas in their alchemical guises, as the chaos and disorder which the alchemists saw as a condition for the alchemical opus and which Jung understood as a necessary precondition for the forging of an individuated self. The Breaking of the Vessels suggests that the psyche, as James Hillman observed, develops through its “falling apart” and “deconstruction.” It is only through life crises and the confrontation with mortality, alienation and the uncanny that we glimpse the chaotic unconscious that is the source of our creativity and personal renewal. Kabbalistically, it is only when the “vessels break” that the individual can become truly human.
(7) The Kellipot (“Shells” or “Husks”) capture and obstruct the sparks of divine light, thereby giving rise to the negative realm of the sitra achra or “Other Side.” According to the Kabbalists, this malevolent realm, which has its equivalent in the Jungian archetype of the shadow, is part of the divine plenum and must be recognized and given its due. For the Kabbalists, as for Jung, evil and negativity are also an essential part of the self, and the individual’s baser instincts must be integrated into the total personality rather than ignored or repressed. The Zohar recites:
Mark this! As Job kept evil separate from good and failed to fuse them, he was judged accordingly; first he experienced good, then what was evil, then again good. For man should be cognizant of both good and evil, and turn evil itself into good. This is a deep tenet to faith (Sperling, Simon and Levertoff, 1931-4, p. 109).
(8) Tikkun Haolam (the Restoration of the World) involves a partnership between humanity and God in the restoration and repair of the shattered vessels, and a “second creation” which, by virtue of having passed through a phase of disorder and deconstruction, is superior to the first. As a result of the Breaking of the Vessels, divine sparks were scattered throughout the cosmos and ultimately implanted in the heart of all things, including the human soul, and in Tikkun these sparks are extracted from matter and raised on high in service of humanity’s and the world’s redemption, Jung was familiar with the symbol of the sparks or “scintillae” from both the Kabbalah and alchemy and he came to believe that they were primordial symbols of the collective unconscious (Jung, 1963, p. 48). However, he was not fully conversant with this symbol as it appeared in the later Kabbalah and Hasidism, where, in contrast to Gnosticism, which understood the sparks as a means of escape to a higher world, they are spoken of as the vehicles for the spiritualization and redemption of humanity and this world.
According to the Hasidim, in the course of a lifetime an individual encounters sparks both within his/her own soul and the world that only he/she can redeem. Each individual is responsible, through ethical, spiritual, aesthetic and intellective acts, for redeeming these sparks of divine energy and contributing to the tikkun of his/her own soul and the world. The sefirot as they were originally emanated by Ein-Sof are abstract, empty values, and it is only through the activities of humanity in a “broken” world that the “wisdom,” “knowledge,” “kindness,” “beauty”, “judgment”, “compassion” of the Sefirot attain full, concrete reality: and for this reason, according to the author of the Kabbalistic Sefer ha-Yichud humanity not only helps complete creation, but is credited as if he created God Himself” (Idel, 1988, p. 188).[2]
(9) The Partzufim (Visages) are, understood by the Lurianists as the archetypal personalities through which the Primordial Man must evolve as the world proceeds towards tikkun. The partzufim correspond to basic archetypes within Jungian psychology, archetypes that express essential organizing principles of the human personality. Attika Kaddisha (the Holy Ancient One) corresponds to the Jungian Senex (the old man: wise, conservative, reasonable, beneficent), Abba, to the archetypal Father, Imma to the Mother, Zeir Anpin to the Puer (the emotional, romantic, impulsive eternal boy) and Nukva to the anima (the feminine, seductive, soulful young woman). Each of these archetypes has their place in the unity that constitutes the overarching archetype of Primordial Man, or in Jungian terms, the Self.
Kabbalah and the Open Economy of Thought and Experience
Thus far, and within the limitations that are inherent in this brief account, I have endeavored to provide a summary of the Lurianic understanding of God in psychological, spiritual and axiological terms. What remains to be considered is the compatibility of the Lurianic conception of God with the open-minded, critical, multi-perspectival modes of understanding that are said to constitute modern and postmodern consciousness.
The notion that Kabbalistic symbols are compatible with modern notions of science and epistemology receives considerable impetus from Alison Coudert’s (1995, 1998) studies of the Kabbalah and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716) and Francis Mercury Van Helmont (1615-1698). Coudert argues that Leibniz, one of the key figures of the enlightenment, was profoundly influenced by the Lurianic symbol of Tikkun ha-Olam, which embodied for him the idea that humanity is enjoined to direct the course of history and complete creation . For figures like Leibniz and Van Helmont the symbol of Tikkun provided both a spiritual and rational justification for their pursuit of free philosophical and scientific inquiry. On Coudert’s view, the Kabbalah, which is typically thought of as a farrago of occult symbols and ideas, was instead an impetus to modern modes of open, scientific inquiry.
Even without a specific historical warrant for a modernist interpretation of the Kabbalistic symbols, we are entitled (as have past ages) to pass Kabbalistic symbols through the sieve of the thought of our own age. Let us re-examine several of the Kabbalistic symbols from this perspective. Our examination of these symbols will reveal that the Lurianic Kabbalah points to a decidedly non-dogmatic consciousness and an increasingly open economy of thought, understanding and experience.
Ein-sof and Ayin: “Unknowing”
The Kabbalists held Ein-sof, the “Infinite God” to be both everything and nothing (Ayin), the object of all attributes and completely ineffable and unknowable. According to Azriel of Gerona, Ein-sof cannot be an object of thought, let alone of speech, even though there is an indication of it in everything, for there is nothing beyond it. Consequently, there is no letter, no name, no writing, and no word that can comprise it (Tishby and Lachower, 1989, I, p. 234).
According to the Zohar Ein-sof is:
the limit of inquiry. For Wisdom was completed from ayin (nothing), which is no subject of inquiry, since it is too deeply hidden and recondite to be comprehended (Zohar 1:30a, Sperling, Simon and Levertoff, I, p. 114).
As an unknowable, unsayable “absolute,” Ein-sof lies behind and before the subject-object, word-thing-distinctions that make knowledge and representation possible. For this reason Ein-sof is Ayin, or “no-thing,” and as such, it is not the sort of entity that can either be known or unknown. While it falls completely outside the realm of conceptualization and comprehension, it is paradoxically also the one true “reality.” On the other hand, the finite, discrete entities that comprise our world are products of the Tzimtzum, the divine contraction that creates a rupture between subject and object, mind and matter, words and things. For this reason, the Kabbalists, and the Chabad Chasidim who based their philosophy on the Lurianic symbols, held that all knowledge, and hence all “knowable things,” are a fallible construction of the human mind, and, “the world” exists, and is known only “from the point of view” of humankind. What exists in itself cannot be known and understood, and what is known and understood exists only within human experience.
For these reasons, our approach to Ein-sof should be one of “unknowing” and a concomitant deconstruction or “forgetting” of conventional theological knowledge. As the Kabbalist and philosopher David ben Judah ha-Hasid states, “The Cause of Causes…is a place to which forgetting and oblivion pertain…nothing can be known of It, for It is hidden and concealed in the mystery of absolute nothingness. Therefore forgetting pertains to the comprehension of this place” (Matt, 1995, p. 81). The Maggid of Mezeritch, who succeeded the Baal Shem Tov as the leader of the nascent Hasidic movement, and who Jung once said had anticipated his entire psychology (McGuire and Hull, 1977, 271-2), held that an intuition of the divine involves a forgetting in which one returns to a pre-conceptual, pre-linguistic, pre-conscious condition. This is the significance of the Maggid’s phrase: ‘Wisdom comes into being out of nothingness” (Matt, 1995, p. 87).
“Unknowing” liberates us from the idea that there must be a single answer to our philosophical, psychological and theological questions, opens us to the possibility that there is an inscrutable mystery at the core of both the world and psyche, and implies that it is an illusion for us to believe that we have a complete or even “true” view of God. This brings to mind Jung’s view of the impossibility of attaining complete knowledge of the self:
There is little hope of our being able to reach even an approximate consciousness of the self, since however much we make conscious there will always exist an indeterminate and undeterminable amount of unconscious material which belongs to the totality of the self (Jung, 1966).
Tzimtzum: The Contraction of God and Self
With Tzimtzum, God conceals and contracts Himself in order, as it were, to make room, for a finite world. Here we have one more phase or logical moment in the “indeterminate” God; indeed with their doctrine of tzimtzum, the Kabbalists held that the very existence of the finite world and humanity is conditioned by God’s concealment and unknowability. Yet beyond this there is yet another aspect of tzimtzum that makes it congenial to an open-ended, open-minded mode of thought and action. The Hasidim held that we should imitate God and perform an act of tzimtzum in our dealings with the world; for it is only by contracting and concealing ourselves (i.e. our egos, desires, demands) that the other (both human and natural) is able to blossom in its own nature. This “ethics of tzimtzum” is not only a general guide for our interaction with others, but is specifically relevant to the psychotherapeutic process—where it is often incumbent upon the therapist to get out of the way of his/her patients so they can experience their own desires and identity. Such “getting out of the way” is diametrically opposed to the dogmatic assertion of a particular set of beliefs and specific prescription for conduct. It is also essential to a truly open, scientific view of knowledge, where one must give up one’s preconceptions in the spirit of inquiry and experimentation.
Sefirot
As the middah or “traits” of the deity, the values and constituent elements of the world, and the components of the human psyche, the seefirot are the nodal points where God, humanity and the world meet. Subject to a myriad of permutations, combinations, descriptions, and interpretations, the sefirot provide the Kabbalists with an archetypal language that can be applied to everything from biblical exegesis to personal transformation. However, one intriguing aspect of the Sefirot is their epistemological character, as each can be understood as a mode of knowing that can only be completed by each of the others. Very briefly, through the lens of the highest sefirah Keter (Crown, also referred to as Ratzon, Will), the world is understood as a function of desire. Chochmah (Wisdom), grasps the world through cognition and perception, while Binah (Understanding) harmonizes desire and cognition into a form of intuitive empathic awareness that might be likened to what Dilthey referred to as “verstehen,” interpretive understanding. Successive sefirot grasp the world through the aspects of Chesed (loving-kindness), Din (judgment) and Tiferet (harmonizing beauty). A third triad Netzach (endurance), Hod (splendor) and Yesod (Foundation) add historical and cultural aspects to the quest for knowledge, while the final Sefirah, Malchuth/Shekhinah, integrates the prior perspectives and establishes a point of view that takes into account the (feminine) other. Understood in this manner, the Sefirot, like the four functions that Jung described in Psychological Types, open a succession of perspectives upon self, world and God that is, again, conducive to an open, multi-perspectival, economy of knowledge and experience.
Otiyot Yesod and Infinite Interpretation
Isaac Luria and his followers developed the view that the world is like a narrative text that is subject to an indefinite, if not infinite number of interpretations (Scholem, 1969, pp. 32-86; Idel, 1988, pp. 83-99; Dan, 1999, pp. 131-162).This followed from their “linguistic atomism,” in which they held that since heaven and earth came into being through God’s word, all things are comprised of the “primordial letters” (Otiyot Yesod), their permutations and combinations (Zohar I:29b-30a, Sperling, Simon and Levetoff I, p. 114). The Lurianists held that the creative process involved a divine tzimtzum or contraction into the letters/phonemes that comprise the Torah , and that the interpretive, hermeneutic, process is a mystical act that reverses this contraction and penetrates beyond the superficial appearance and significance of the letters, and brings one into proximity with the divine essence (Drob, 2000a, pp. 236-62). However, because there are at least 600,000 “aspects and meanings in the Torah” (Scholem, 1969. P. 76), corresponding to the 600,000 souls who were liberated by Moses from Egypt, scripture, text, and cosmos alter their meaning and reveal new depths of meaning in response to changing inquiries and circumstances (Idel, 1988, p. 101). Indeed one of Luria’s disciples, Israel Sarug, held that the Torah itself could be interpreted in terms of all the potential letter combinations in the Hebrew language (Scholem 1969, p. 73). Such interpretive latitude yields an archetypal consciousness that opens a myriad of epistemological and hermeneutic possibilities, permitting multiple (including atheistic) perspectives on self, God and world.
Ha-achdut Ha-shvaah: The Coincidence of Opposites
The Kabbalists utilized the term, achdut hashvaah to denote the “unity of opposites” (Scholem, 1974, p. 88) that in their view characterizes Ein-sof, the Infinite God. The notion of a unity between aspects of the cosmos that oppose or contradict one another (Scholem, 1987, p. 312; Elior, 1993, p. 69) leads to a form of consciousness in which one recognizes the interdependence of conflicting attitudes and ideas. For example, the 13th century Kabbalist Azriel of Gerona held that Ein-sof is the union of being and nothingness, and is thus “the common root of both faith and unbelief” (Scholem, 1987, pp. 441-2). In the 13th century Kabbalistic text Sefer Ha-Yichud we find the doctrine that God creates man, but that man by writing a Torah scroll is credited with creating God (Idel, 1988, p. 184). Isaac Luria suggested that God is both Ein-sof (everything) and Ayin (nothing), that creation is both a hitpashut (emanation) and a tzimtzum (contraction), that God both created the world is Himself created/completed through by humanity, that the Sefirot are both the origin of the cosmos and only come into being when that cosmos is displaced, shattered (shevirat ha-kelim) and then reconstructed by humanity (tikkun). Later, the Chabad Chasidim held that “the revelation of anything is actually through its opposite” (Elior, 1993, p. 64), that “all created things in the world are hidden within His essence…in coincidentia oppositorum…” (Elior, 1987, p. 163) and the unity of the world’s opposites brings about the completeness (shelemut) of God. In all of this the Jewish mystics were in accord with what Jung once referred to as the “unspoken assumption (of Eastern thought) of the antinomial character of all metaphysical assertions…not the niggardly European ‘either-or’, but a magnificently affirmative ‘both-and’” (Jung, 1953). Such views are thoroughly inimical to dogmatism, as they invite and even celebrate propositions that are opposed to the doctrines of normative religion.
Shevirah, Kellipot and Tikkun
As we have seen, Luria held that the Sefirot, the vessels, values or archetypes that comprise the cosmos, failed to contain the divine light that was emanated into them. As a result each of the ten Sefirot overflowed with divine energy, were displaced, and the lowest seven shattered, resulting in sefirotic shards falling through the metaphysical void, each shard trapping a spark of divine light. The Lurianists held that the Breaking of the Vessels was not a one time occurrence, but is rather inherent in all events and things. Each moment, each entity, each self, each idea has an aspect of shevirah or rupture that must be emended or repaired. This suggests that all conceptions of God, world, and self are subject to revision and, indeed, that it is precisely this revisionary, emendating process that is essential for the completion of God and the world.
There is yet another emancipatory significance to the notion that divine light is entrapped and alienated in the husks of the other side. These shards penetrate deeply into our world, the world of Assiyah (the world of “action”), and according to Luria and his followers, it is humanity’s divinely appointed task to both acknowledge and integrate this negative, alienated energy, and through the mitzvoth (divine commandments), i.e. spiritual and ethical action, to liberate this energy for the service of Tikkun ha-Olam, the restoration, emendation and redemption of the world. Prior to this redemption, which is represented by the symbol of the messiah, the kellipot sustain the forces of negativity and evil, and thereby provide an essential balance between good and evil in the world, a balance, the overcoming of which is essential to the world’s and God’s completion.
It is important to recall that the kellipot or husks entrap light that was originally emanated into and was intended to illuminate the vessels that represent the intellectual, spiritual, ethical, emotional and aesthetic values that were to comprise the world. By entrapping the energy that was to infuse these values, the kellipot resulted in the imprisonment, alienation and rigidity of thought, faith, emotions, ethics and taste. From a psychological perspective, the kellipot symbolize a closed economy of thought, values and experience, a dogmatic mindset in which the individual is unable or unwilling to change in response to dialog and experience. As the Kellipot are thought to be the origin of evil, we can infer that for the Kabbalists, evil is precisely that which is impervious to dialectics and change. By way of contrast, Tikkun, which extracts and liberates divine energy from the Kellipot, emends, restores and redeems the world through an open economy of ideas, experience, action and interpretation.
Tikkun Ha-Olam
Luria and his followers promoted an ethic in which every moment, act and encounter is an opportunity for the individual to engage in tikkun ha-olam, the repair and restoration of the world. The Hasidim followed Luria in holding that there is an “exiled” spark of divinity in all things, a spark that constitutes each individual’s and each entity’s essence, and which must be liberated in order to achieve the redemption of humanity and the cosmos The Hasidim held that the very meaning and purpose of human life is to extract and raise on high both those sparks, that one discovers within oneself and those that one encounters in the world. Indeed, the people, places and objects that one encounters in life are thought to be uniquely suited to aiding one in raising the sparks within one’s soul and fulfilling one’s unique role in the world’s redemption The sparks are traditionally thought to be liberated through adherence to the 613 mitzvoth or divine commandments, and it is these mitzvoth and the ethical, spiritual, cognitive and artistic activity that they entail, which constitute the unique opportunities for tikkun for each individual soul.
Interesting parallels can be drawn between the raising of the sparks and the psychotherapeutic process. Jung himself suggested that the gnostic’s and Kabbalist’s “sparks” or “scintillae” represent aspects of the collective unconscious, and it is possible to understand the entrapped sparks as libidinous energy bound by neurotic complexes that prevent the individual from actualizing his or her personal and creative potential, and which must be freed in therapy en route to the client’s individuation. However, the Kabbalists and Hasidim, held that the raising of the sparks must move beyond the liberation of the individual psyche. Like James Hillman, who teaches that psyche also exists in the world, the Kabbalists and Hasidim held that the process of therapy (tikkun) is incomplete if it remains only on the individual/personal level.
As we have seen, the Kabbalists held that the holy sparks entrapped in all things derive from the broken Sefirot, the archetypal values which constitute the tangible world. It is because of this that the raising of the sparks and Tikkun involves the realization of the intellectual, spiritual, and emotional values that the Sefirot represent, and a liberation of the intellect, emotion and spirit within the individual’s soul. Indeed, the liberation of these values constitutes both the meaning of human existence and the completion and perfection of God and the world. In restoring the vessels, humanity brings value and meaning into the world, and in effect realizes the essence of God Himself, which Jung, as early as The Red Book identified as “The Supreme Meaning” (Jung, 2009, p. 229b). That such emendation involves the liberation of values, feelings and ideas that have been entrapped by the husks of the “Other Side” is yet one more indication that the Lurianic theosophy is commensurate with an open economy of thought, experience and values.
The Open Economy God and Contemporary Thought
The open economy of thought and experience that we have uncovered through our consideration of the Lurianic symbols, reflects the nisus of western culture over the past three hundred years, as it has moved increasingly away from dogma and authoritarian religion. (Indeed, we would be fooling ourselves if we did not acknowledge that our own interpretation of the Kabbalistic symbols is conditioned by this very movement.) One needs no more than a general awareness of modern intellectual history to recognize that so many of the critical developments in philosophy and psychology over the last four centuries have expanded horizons in a manner that is inimical to dogmatism and the authority of tradition. In addition to developments in natural science, we can cite the Kantian revolution, through which hitherto unrecognized contributions of the subject to “truth” and “reality” are progressively understood; Hegelian dialectics, which holds that any particular perspective upon self and the world must be critiqued and transcended in favor of more comprehensive points of view that are themselves subject to similar critiques; historicism, which brings into awareness the contributions of history and culture to knowledge; Husserlian phenomenology and the verstehen approach to interpretive understanding, each of which expands the notion of knowledge to include modes of apprehension that are not expressible in positivistic terms. In addition, thinkers from Nietzsche to Derrida have expanded knowledge and experience through an interest in and elevation of the formerly disenfranchised poles of opposing ideas, Freud widened our understanding of experience through his attention to unconscious ideas and affects, and Jung, broadened the horizon of the self through his insistence that experience is informed by multiple functions (sensation, feeling, reason and intuition) and the excluded aspects of the personality symbolized in the anima (animus) and Shadow. Each of these thinkers and movements have reinforced (and have themselves been reinforced by), the ideals of an open society that have become increasingly tolerant and welcoming of differences in experience, world-view, race, culture, religion, gender, sexual orientation, etc.
However, there are many psychological, sociological and religious factors that continue to fuel dogmatism and a closed economy of thought, action and experience, and the recent “atheistic” reaction to fundamentalism in religion is, in my view, both understandable and warranted. While the idea that liberal interpretations of religion are compatible with a secular open society certainly has its adherents, the mystical traditions within the major faiths remain a largely untapped source for rapprochement between God and secular liberalism, and even between theism and atheism.
I have argued that the view that God can and should be understood in the context of an open economy of thought follows from the mystical view of an infinite, unknowable God in general, and the Kabbalistic view of God in particular. Having seen how this view of God follows from several key symbols of the Lurianic Kabbalah, it should now be clear how the conception of God that arises from these symbols is not only spiritually, psychologically and axiological rich, but is also compatible with contemporary thought and culture, commensurate with an open society, and rooted (at least in certain key aspects) in a religious/spiritual tradition. We might, however, ask, is this “God” a fitting object for spiritual contemplation, worship and prayer?
The history of mysticism is replete with affirmations that the God or “absolute” experienced in states of mystical union and ecstasy is so vast, so all-inclusive as to be ineffable, undefinable, and unsayable. Yet this is the very God or Absolute that in mysticism is held up as the highest goal of spiritual contemplation and union. In the Kabbalah, God’s essential unknowability is expressed in a series of symbols that articulate a system of ethical, aesthetic and spiritual values, but which derail any efforts to claim certain and final knowledge about God, world and self, and which yield a form of consciousness that is increasingly open to unknowing, multi-perspectivism and change. In contemplating Ein-sof we are prompted to confess our ignorance; in tzimtzum we imitate God by concealing and withdrawing our ego-investments; through the Sefirot we learn that all things have multiple values and aspects; through otiyot yesod we acknowledge the possibility and value of multiple if not infinite interpretations; through Ha-Shaweh we come to recognize truth in the opposite of what we at first believed; in shevirat ha-kelim we find that all our concepts and experiences “deconstruct”; and, finally, in tikkun, we repeatedly revise our ideas and selves in the service of mending our lives and our world.
I would suggest that an encounter with the ineffable God, Ein-sof in the Kabbalah, occurs in moments of thought and experience that reflect the “open economy” inherent in these symbols; for example, when one is awed by the infinite expanse of being and the mystery of its origins, when one suddenly breaks through previous constraints on thinking or experience and sees life and world in a completely new light, when one contracts one’s ego to fully permit the emergence and recognition of another, where one traverses a dialectic among multiple perspectives and interpretations and comes to understand the deep interdependence of all things and points of view, and when one works towards an as yet unrealized meaning and value in one’s life and world. Such encounters, such a God, in my view, is certainly a fitting object of contemplation and spiritual awe. It is also, I might add, a God that accords with the principles and process of psychological change, and with a science and philosophy that does not rigidly (and idolatrously) adhere to certain theories and methods. It is a God that has the potential to unite scientist and mystic, atheist and theist, psychotherapist and theologian.
According the Chabad Chasidic Rabbi Aaron Ha Levi, “…the essence of [the divine] intention is…that all realities and their levels be revealed in actuality, each detail in itself…as separated essences, and that they nevertheless be unified and joined in their value” (Elior, 1987, p. 157).” This is a God who is open to all perspectives, possibilities, transitions and transformations and who creates and informs a world that is only fully realized through the full blossoming and expression of nature, thought, knowledge, life and humanity in each of their varied forms; each species, each culture, each idea, and each person, actualized and individuated according its nature; each contributing to Tikkun Ha-Olam, the manifestation of the divine and the completion of the world.
Notes
[1] See, for example, C. G. Jung, Mysterium Coniunctionis, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963), p. vii, where Jung writes:
if I make use of certain expressions that are reminiscent of the language of theology, this is due solely to the poverty of language, and not because I am of the opinion that the subject-matter of theology is the same as that of psychology. Psychology is very definitely not a theology; it is a natural science that seeks to describe experienceable psychic phenomena…But as empirical science it has neither the capacity nor the competence to decide on questions of truth and value, this being the prerogative of theology.
[2] In Sefer ha-Yichud we find the dictum that “each and every one [of the people of Israel] ought to write a scroll of Torah for himself, and the occult secret [of this matter] is that he made God Himself (see Idel. M. Kabbalah: New Perspectives, p. 188.
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Sanford L. Drob is Professor Emeritus in the doctoral program in Clinical Psychology at Fielding Graduate University in Santa Barbara, California. He holds doctorates in Philosophy and Clinical Psychology and is the author of Symbols of the Kabbalah: Philosophical and Psychological Perspectives, and Kabbalistic Metaphors: Jewish Mystical Themes in Ancient and Modern Thought (both published by Jason Aronson, 1999), Kabbalah and Postmodernism: A Dialog (Peter Lang, 2009), Kabbalistic Visions: C. G. Jung and Jewish Mysticism (Spring Journal Books, 2010), Reading the Red Book: A Guide to C. G. Jung’s Liber Novus, and Archetype of the Absolute; The Union of Contradictions in Mysticism, Philosophy and Psychology. (Fielding University Press, 2017). He is also a narrative painter whose work centers on Jewish and archetypal themes.