Mysticism – Lesson 2

Table of Contents

• [0:04] What is mysticism? An attempt at an initial definition
• [1:09] Mysticism as an esoteric claim: trust rather than accessibility
• [4:40] The distinction between philosophy and mysticism
• [7:37] Fundamentalism versus mysticism: a critical test
• [14:45] Critique of Wikipedia’s definition of mysticism
• [26:31] The theoretical and practical branches of mysticism
• [28:29] Kabbalah and rationality: is it mysticism?

Summary

General Overview

The speaker defines mysticism as an esoteric claim that is not accessible to others for examination, and therefore can be accepted only on the basis of trust in the person making the claim, unlike scientific, mathematical, or philosophical claims, which can be traced and evaluated through shared reasoning. He rejects common definitions that identify mysticism with irrationality, non-scientific thinking, or falsehood, and argues that mysticism is determined not by its subject matter but by the type of discourse and the way the knowledge is attained and presented. He goes on to argue that mystical systems sometimes offer alternative explanatory frameworks for the same phenomena that science or the revealed tradition explains, and then examines whether two “full” explanations can exist in parallel, showing that exceptions such as an unexplained scriptural decree and a miracle break the correlation and bring back the problem of contradiction between levels of explanation.

Defining Mysticism as Esotericism and Accessibility of Knowledge

Mysticism is a claim or a field that is not accessible to other people, and therefore its acceptance depends on trust in the person saying it, not on the ability to verify it independently. A scientific, mathematical, or philosophical claim allows one to follow the line of reasoning and be convinced or unconvinced, without attributing to the speaker some unique capacity that the listener lacks in principle. Prophecy is mysticism because there is no way to see the prophetic vision or reconstruct the path the prophet went through; all one can do is believe or not believe. Mysticism is not necessarily false, and even a true prophet may speak the truth, but the listener cannot ascertain its correctness and can only accept it on the basis of trust.

Mysticism versus Non-Observability and Philosophy about God

Non-observability is not the criterion for mysticism, because philosophy is not observational either, and still it is not mysticism when the argument is accessible to every listener. The claim that there is a God is not mystical when it is presented as a philosophical position whose reasons can be examined and either accepted or disputed. A claim becomes mystical when it rests on an esoteric encounter that cannot be checked, like someone who says that something was revealed to him and he was told such-and-such; then the decision is left to trust alone.

Mysticism versus Fundamentalism

Fundamentalism refers to the way one holds a position and one’s willingness to subject it to critical examination, not to the question of whether the claim is accessible or esoteric. One can hold a mystical or non-mystical position in a fundamentalist way, and one can be a mystic without being a fundamentalist if one is prepared to retreat when one no longer believes. The demand “accept it because I said so” defines the mystical dimension, whereas uncritical attachment or the ability to be persuaded defines fundamentalism on a different plane.

Universal Intuitions and the Distinction from Basic Assumptions

Basic philosophical assumptions such as the principle of causality and the principle of induction are not mysticism, even though they are not products of observation. The speaker attributes this to the fact that they rest on intersubjective or universal intuition, so that people accept them because they recognize them intuitively, not because some authority told them so. The example of the geometry teacher who proves the sum of the angles in a triangle or the Pythagorean theorem shows that acceptance through learning and proof is not mysticism, because the student can reconstruct the path.

The Subject of Discussion versus the Type of Discussion, Spiritual Charisma, and Trust

The category of mysticism does not characterize content areas like God, demons, or angels, but rather the type of discourse and the source of authority. Even a claim about the law of gravity becomes mystical if one demands that it be accepted on the basis of credibility or exalted intuitive perception rather than accessible justification. Angels and demons become mystical because most people have no direct contact with them, and so acceptance depends on a witness who says he encountered them. Spiritual charisma is defined as a capacity for spiritual perception that others attribute to a person, and the discussion becomes mystical when it rests on such personal authority rather than open argument.

Critique of Wikipedia’s Definition and the Etymology of “Mysticism”

The speaker criticizes the definition “the hidden doctrine, a field that departs from science and concerns magic and spiritual experiences,” because it defines by subject matter and identifies mysticism with what is non-scientific, whereas philosophy too departs from science and is not mysticism. He accepts the etymological connection to the Greek mystikos as “closing” or “concealment” as more fitting, when the concealment is understood as the esoteric nature of acquiring the knowledge rather than as a mode of whispering it. He rejects the claim that mysticism deals with things not perceived through the five senses, because there are many non-sensory fields that are still not mystical. He points to a formulation in Wikipedia according to which mystical predictions do not stand up to scientific testing, saying that this implies that mysticism is identified with falsehood, and he concedes at most that there may be a correlation, but not a necessity.

The Context of Discovery and the Context of Justification, and Mysticism as Part of Science

The speaker uses the philosophers of science’s distinction between the context of discovery and the context of justification in order to argue that a theory can be discovered in mystical ways and still be scientific if it stands up to tests of falsification and justification. He gives the example of a mystic who predicts, “The messiah will arrive in five years,” and argues that the mysticism lies in the way he arrived at the claim, even if the claim is in principle testable in the future. He argues that mysticism does not necessarily “move away from science,” and that a mystical mode of discovery can be integrated into the scientific process as long as the result is tested and made accessible.

Kabbalah, Practical Kabbalah, and Rationality within a Mystical System

The speaker distinguishes between a theoretical-analytic branch of mysticism and practical tendencies such as “practical Kabbalah,” which applies practices in order to produce results in the world or in the soul. He argues that a kabbalist can engage in Kabbalah as systematic inquiry without aspiring to experiential union with a spiritual entity. He cites Rabbi She’ar Yashuv as saying in the name of Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda that Kabbalah is not mysticism but a rational field, because after accepting the basic assumptions “from above,” one engages in it through the logic of difficulties and resolutions and the construction of conceptual structures. He disagrees and argues that the rationality of the inference does not cancel the mysticism if the basic assumptions themselves are esoteric and inaccessible to verification by anyone who does not share trust in them, and he adds that someone who does not work systematically is not a mystic but a babbler.

Religions, Mass Followings, and the Case of the Mormons

The speaker accepts that in common usage one does not use “mysticism” to describe widespread religious beliefs, but rather the hidden elements of inner religious experience. He argues that a religion can be mystical if it is accepted on the basis of trust in a prophet or founder and not on the basis of evidence that allows independent persuasion. He brings the Mormons as an example showing that millions of believers do not cancel out mysticism when the faith rests on trust in Joseph Smith. He argues that mass acceptance can be an indication that people were persuaded and did not merely believe, but it is not necessary, because even mass acceptance grounded in charisma and trust remains mysticism.

Mysticism as an Alternative Explanatory System for Phenomena in the World

The speaker argues that mystical systems are anchored in what happens in the world, but explain those same phenomena in terms of mystical theory, much as Aristotle could explain a falling stone by saying that it “wants to return to its source” instead of speaking of gravitational force. He illustrates this through Jewish law and kabbalistic interpretation, where the hidden tradition gives a different framework to the same fact, such as waving the lulav as “repairing the eternity within splendor” as opposed to the revealed explanation of the four directions of the heavens. He argues that mysticism is not identified with a particular domain, but offers different tools for the same set of facts to which ordinary tools are applied.

Multiple Levels of Explanation and the Possibility That All of Them Are “True”

The speaker argues that people tend to accept several levels of explanation for the same phenomenon without assuming that one cancels the other. He gives examples of a scientific versus theological explanation for an apple falling, philosophical versus psychological explanations for repentance and for leaving religion, and Oscar Wilde’s story “The Happy Prince,” in which the lead heart breaks both “from the cold” and “from sorrow.” He argues that people’s choice of a particular level is connected to their outlook and inclinations, but this does not rule out the possibility that another level may also be true. He seeks to avoid identifying mysticism with error just because it offers another explanation.

Sufficient Condition, Necessary Condition, and the Difficulty of Two Full Explanations

The speaker states that an explanation must be at least a sufficient condition, and shows that if both the scientific explanation and the theological explanation are full sufficient conditions, they clash, because each one entails the result independently of the other. He argues that when two levels of explanation seem correct, sometimes each is only a partial explanation, and only their combination is a sufficient condition, as he suggests regarding psychology and philosophy in a person’s decisions. He argues that in the case of the laws of nature, one tends to view the scientific explanation as a full explanation, and therefore it is hard to claim simultaneously that the theological explanation is also full without falling into contradiction.

The Exceptional Case of “Equivalent Languages” in Physics: Forces and Potentials

The speaker presents a single possibility for two full explanations to be correct simultaneously: when there is mapping and full equivalence between them, so that they are the same explanation in two languages. He gives the example of a ball rolling down a slope as described in terms of gravitational forces versus description in terms of striving toward minimum potential energy, and argues that there is a mathematical translation between the languages, so these are not really two different explanations. He adds that in modern physics “there really is no language of forces at all, only a language of potentials,” and argues that physicists’ preference for the causal explanation over the teleological one is not very well justified, and may be connected to fear of introducing intentional entities into the background.

Breaking the Correlation: Scriptural Decree and Miracle

The speaker argues that if the hidden tradition were only a translation of the revealed tradition, perfect correlation would be expected, but an unexplained scriptural decree shows a law that has an explanation in the hidden tradition without any revealed explanation, and so the correlation is broken. He argues that a miracle is also a breaking of the correlation between the laws of nature and the theological account, because in a miracle one gets a result that the laws of nature do not yield, such as the splitting of the Red Sea. He concludes that such a break indicates that these are not two equivalent languages for the same explanation, and therefore if both levels are perceived as full explanations, a contradiction results that forces one to choose that one of them is incorrect. He ends by pointing ahead to the next time, and to the question of whether science and mysticism can be seen as synchronized, and he answers that in a miracle theology “throws science aside and takes over the stage,” while noting Nachmanides’ view that the splitting of the sea was not an overt miracle, cited in the logical context.

Last time I started talking about mysticism, and I tried somehow, from different directions, to distill what this thing actually means, what the meaning of the concept “mysticism” is. Along the way I went through various common claims about mysticism, which basically identify mysticism with something incorrect, with something that isn’t observational, or various things like that, something irrational, unscientific, all kinds of things of that sort. And in the end I rejected all those possibilities. What do I mean, I rejected them? A definition—you can define things however you want—but it seems to me that definitions of that kind don’t really fit what we mean when we say “mysticism.” In the end, bottom line, the claim was that mysticism is a claim, or a field, or a statement that is not accessible to other people. Meaning, if I receive it from someone, it’s because of the trust I have in that person, and the fact that he tells it to me does not give me any way to check it for myself. And that is unlike a scientific statement, or even a mathematical or philosophical statement, or any other kind of statement, where you’re supposed to follow the line of reasoning or the line of inference and be convinced or not be convinced—but you can go through the same process as the person who is telling you the thing: the teacher, the scientist, whoever, a colleague, whoever it may be. In the end you don’t attribute to him any special abilities that you don’t have. He may be smarter, more talented, maybe a professional in a field you don’t understand—but in principle it’s accessible to you too, if you study and think about it more and so on, you too could go through the process he went through. In the concept of mysticism, I think what we really find is the esoteric. Meaning, the fact that a statement I hear from someone, or a claim I hear from someone, cannot be checked by me. I have no tool to test that claim, to agree with it or disagree with it, and in the final analysis I remain dependent on the trust I have in that person. Or even, I said, the mystic himself, yes, the one who raises these claims and doesn’t hear them from someone else—he too has to rely on his inner trust in the thing, but he also knows that it is accessible only to him. Meaning, he himself also understands that maybe he sees it, but others won’t see it. Meaning, even though he sees it, he is aware of the esoteric nature of the matter, right? A prophet who tells me things he sees in the vision of prophecy—that is mysticism. That is mysticism because I have no way whatsoever to see it myself or check him, to go through the same path he went through and see whether I agree or disagree, whether it is true or not true. All I can do is decide whether I believe him or not. A path not trodden by the many—that is mysticism. Okay? And that is to exclude all the other definitions. And I think this is an important point, because I am not claiming by this that mysticism is false—not at all. It could very well be that the prophet tells me claims that are entirely true; if he is a true prophet, I assume his claims are true. It’s just that I cannot verify their truth; I have to accept them only by virtue of the trust I have in the prophet. That is not the same as those who identify mysticism with false claims. But it’s also not the same as those who identify mysticism with claims that are not observational. Because, for example, philosophical claims are also not observational. Philosophy is not science. When you reach a philosophical conclusion with some theoretical argument, that is not something that comes from observation. And still, since that argument—when I present that argument to you—you too can follow it and decide whether you agree or disagree, it is accessible to you exactly as it is accessible to me, I have no advantage over you, therefore I would not call philosophy mysticism. Therefore, for example, the claim that there is a God, which many people might see as a mystical claim, in my view is not a mystical claim. You can agree with it or disagree with it, but it is not a mystical claim. Why? Because when I make that claim, I am not making it on the basis of some esoteric encounter I had with Him. If I came on that basis, then it would be a mystical claim. Meaning, if, I don’t know, Muhammad or someone came and said, “I met God, He was revealed to me in a cave, I met Him and He said such-and-such,” that is a mystical claim, because I have no way to check him, and all I can do is either believe him or not believe him. But if I now come and conduct a philosophical discussion about whether God exists or does not exist, and I raise philosophical arguments that lead to the conclusion that He exists—now, you can agree with the arguments or disagree with the arguments, but a discussion of that sort is not a mystical discussion. It is a discussion that is open to you exactly as it is open to me. You can agree, you can disagree, but everything is out in the open. I am not claiming some esoteric ability or some unique ability that only I have, and therefore you all need to listen to me because I have this ability. Okay, that is basically the point. In other words, mysticism in the end seems to me almost a synonym for esotericism. Esotericism as something personal, subjective, mine—not accessible to other people. Rabbi, so what’s the difference between that and plain old fundamentalism? What do you mean? That’s supposedly the other side of the same coin; it’s a kind of fundamentalism. I, as a believer, say there is some knowledge, I rely on it because I rely on it, not because of some logical consideration, and therefore I accept it. That’s not essentially different from, I don’t know, saying that I believe in aliens. Who said it’s different? I didn’t understand. Why should it be different? Why, for that matter, call it by a different name—mysticism? What does this concept give over the other concept? What’s the comparison? Say it’s just a broader family of fundamentalist beliefs—why call this subtype by another name? Fundamentalism isn’t even on the same plane at all. There are fundamentalist beliefs in mysticism; there are fundamentalist beliefs in other things that are not mysticism. I don’t see why you are linking those two things. Fundamentalism means whether you are willing to put the claim to a critical test—at least that’s how I understand fundamentalism. Is there any possibility that you would retreat from it if I raised arguments to you, various refutations of one kind or another? That, to me, is fundamentalism. Now, you can be fundamentalist about moral rules, you can hold mystical principles in a fundamentalist way, you can hold a philosophical belief in a fundamentalist way. I don’t know. Fundamentalism is the manner in which you hold things, or the intensity, or the way in which you hold them. Mysticism is something completely different. It’s not on the same plane. These are not two concepts that differ while being on the same plane; they are on different planes. Clear? So you can be a mystic without being a fundamentalist. Say if you become convinced that it isn’t true, that you don’t believe the person, then you won’t accept what he says. But still, what he says, and his demand that you accept what he says, is a mystical demand. In other words, I ask you to accept what I say because I said it, not because I persuaded you that I’m right. Now, you can accept it or not accept it—that depends on whether you are fundamentalist or not. But I’m talking about how the field is defined, not the way in which you accept the field, or the certainty you have in the field, or your willingness to subject it to critical testing. Those are a different plane. Okay? So that seems to me, at least, to be the definition of mysticism. And I’ll sharpen things I already said: there are, for example, philosophical assumptions—causality, induction, all kinds of things. Foundational assumptions of that kind are, in my view, not mysticism, even though they too are not products of observation, and if someone argued with me I don’t know how I would manage to persuade him of those principles. But that isn’t mysticism, because it seems to me that anyone who hears a principle like this, such as causality—so I tie it to intuition, yes, it’s a kind of intuitive cognition, it serves me like observation. But as long as it is universal, or intersubjective, let’s call it that—all people subjectively arrive at that conclusion, or most people do—that is not called mysticism. They will not accept it because I said it, but rather they will accept it exactly as I accept it, because they understand it intuitively. And even if they didn’t know how to formulate it until I formulated it for them, that doesn’t matter. Once I formulated it for them, now I have conceptualized it for them, and now they too understand that it is true. I gave the example of the geometry teacher who shows the students that the sum of the angles in a triangle is 180 degrees, or teaches them the Pythagorean theorem. So is that mysticism? Do they accept it from the teacher because the teacher knows? No, he proved it to them from the foundational assumptions. After he taught it to them, they too can go through the same process and reach the conclusion themselves; therefore it is not mysticism. Okay? It seems to me that this is the definition. And therefore, notice that in principle I haven’t entered here at all into the question of what subjects mysticism deals with. God, demons, angels, religious beliefs, mystical experiences—“mystical experiences” is a bit circular, but people often attach it that way; when you see definitions of mysticism, they often give a list of subjects that are considered mystical. There is correlation, of course, but that is not a good definition. Because for me, even someone who claimed in favor of the law of gravity and demanded that I accept it because he is a trustworthy person, or because he grasps the law of gravity in his sublime intuition, and not because he persuades me that it is true, shows me that it is true—that too is mysticism, even though it deals with a law of nature, a law in physics. In other words, I do not identify mysticism with certain fields of discussion. No—the category of mysticism does not, in my view, characterize specific fields of discussion as such. True, there are obviously affinities; someone who deals with angels or demons will probably be dealing with mysticism, regardless of the question whether angels and demons exist or not. I said: I do not identify mysticism with false statements, but because I—or I think you too—cannot determine whether angels and demons exist or not, we do not meet them. At most we would accept it from someone because he said he met them and we believe him. Since that is so, it is mysticism. So it is mysticism not because it deals with angels and demons. The definition of mysticism is not “dealing with angels and demons”; rather, angels and demons are simply creatures that ordinary human beings generally do not come into contact with, do not have the ability to encounter themselves. Therefore, if at all you accept the existence of these fellows, it will only be because you trust someone who says they exist or someone who says he met them. That is where it becomes mysticism. So it is not the field of discussion but the type of discussion. Okay? It doesn’t matter what the field is, but rather how I conduct the discussion. Am I building it on authority, on some special charisma that I have and others don’t have—or charisma in the sense of spiritual charisma, not in the sense that I succeed in drawing people after me as in the everyday meaning of the term. When people say someone has spiritual charisma, they mean that he has some sort of spiritual perceptive ability that others do not have. I don’t really know why the same term is used in both contexts; it’s not exactly the same thing. There is a connection, again of course—someone who has spiritual charisma, that’s because people say he has spiritual charisma, meaning he really is charismatic in their eyes, he succeeds in persuading them that he has such spiritual powers of perception. Anyway, that was the definition I proposed last time. Someone asked me on the website—I don’t remember who it was—someone asked me on the website what I think about the definition of mysticism that appears in Wikipedia. The truth is that, to my shame, I hadn’t checked Wikipedia beforehand. Usually I do, but for some reason I didn’t think of it. So I went to look at Wikipedia’s definition; here, I’m sharing it with you, and we’ll look at it a bit critically in light of what we discussed last time. So it begins: “Mysticism is the doctrine of the hidden, a field that goes beyond science and touches on magic and spiritual experiences.” Again, a definition that is basically a definition through the subjects you deal with and not through the type of discussion. And I do not agree with that definition. For one thing, when you tell me “a field that goes beyond science,” that is certainly not true. Philosophy also goes beyond science, and nobody defines philosophy as mysticism. So I won’t repeat the whole move I made last time, but all the arguments I made last time really show why, at least in my view, this definition is not good or not correct. Now look at the next sentence: “The word mysticism derives from the Greek word mystikos, meaning closure or concealment.” And that is excellent, it seems to me. Because closure or concealment is usually connected to the question of how it is transmitted, yes? For example, Kabbalah—it is transmitted quietly from rabbi to student; it is not taught publicly. I do not tie it to that. I tie it to the question of how one gets the information or how one learns it—and the information is acquired in an esoteric way, a hidden way, a subjective way, a personal way. Okay? Something personal, individual, subjective, like that. In any case, the meaning of closure or concealment, I think, in a certain sense—again, not everyone uses it in this sense—but I think in the interpretation I proposed it fits very well. Because it really is concealed from the many, from the public domain; it is something I arrive at through my own personal abilities, and others can either accept it or not accept it. Because look, he ties it to closure and concealment in that mysticism deals with hidden things, or things passed in whispers, and with the closing of the senses, since the concern of mysticism is with things that are not grasped by the five human senses. Again—not correct. That is, it is true, but too broad. There are many things not grasped by the five senses that are not mysticism. Therefore, yes, philosophy—or even psychology, or whatever, all kinds of fields that belong to our ordinary occupations and are not all empirical, or at least contain strong non-empirical elements, many non-empirical elements. And he ties it to how it is passed from one person to another, whether it is passed in whispers or not. As far as I’m concerned, a mystic could stand in a big concert hall before four thousand people—or you know what, in a huge stadium before tens of thousands of spectators—and teach them mysticism, and it would be mysticism in every respect; it doesn’t have to be whispered. Rather, we are supposed to accept it because he said it, not because he teaches it and now we see that it is true. In that sense it would remain mysticism even if it were public before tens of thousands of people. Now, all these definitions are definitions that don’t hold water. They’re simply not right. They don’t hit the meaning of the concept. You see: “Mysticism distances itself from science, whose concern is measurement and quantification in the physical world.” Really? Is everything that is not science and does not deal with measuring and quantifying the physical world mysticism? Then psychology is also mysticism, at least a large part of it. In my view, that’s just wrong—but it isn’t mysticism. Not to accuse psychology of mysticism—it’s just that these are simply incorrect statements, or alternatively trivial ones. In any case, yes, sometimes mystical theories do make predictions even about phenomena in the material world, but the validity of these predictions generally does not stand up to scientific testing. For example, a mystic might say: the messiah will come in five years. Okay? So here I have no way to know whether he is right or not—that is mysticism. But his mysticism says something that in principle can be observed; it stands a chance of falsification. In that sense one could say it is a scientific theory. You can subject it to a falsification test and see whether he is right or not. So why is it mystical? It is mystical because of the way he obtained that claim, came to that claim. And last time I mentioned the distinction made by philosophers of science between the context of discovery and the context of justification. A scientific theory can be arrived at in all kinds of ways—the context of discovery. It might have suddenly come to you, or Elijah the Prophet revealed it to you, or you dreamed it at night; that’s how you came to the conclusion that there is such-and-such a scientific theory. If it stands up to falsification tests, if it is found justified in the laboratory, then it is an acceptable, valid scientific theory. I don’t care if it came to you through mystical tools. Okay, so what he is saying here is that mystical theories can sometimes make predictions even about material phenomena—which of course is also true of science. Science is like that too, or can be. You can arrive at a scientific theory through mystical tools—and by the way there have been examples of that in the history of science. Various people who arrived at their theories through mystical experiences they had, or I don’t know exactly what sorts of things like that. Not to mention cosmology, ancient cosmology, with all the spheres and epicycles and deferents and all that—that was their science. Where did they get it from? From their fantasies that everything has to be in circles. Okay? But this is also true in later science, in modern science. There are people who arrive at some scientific illumination through mystical experiences, or someone appears to them, or I don’t know exactly what—and in the end they test it and it turns out to be a correct scientific theory. So that is part of science. Again, you see that mysticism does not distance itself from science. It is simply an incorrect definition. Mysticism can really be part of science itself. It’s just that the way I arrived at that information was by a mystical route. True, if I put it to a falsification test, then it may cease to be mystical in the sense that others can test me and be convinced whether I am right or not. Then it stops being mystical, because they accept it not because I know, but because they were convinced it is true. Once that is the case, it stops being mystical. But say I say that the messiah will come in five years—in five years it will stop being mystical. But right now, if they accept it from me, or I myself accept that claim by virtue of, I don’t know, some intuitions or other—that is mysticism. Okay. Now he says, “But the validity of these predictions usually does not stand up to scientific testing.” What does that mean? Is it just a general statement, or does he mean to say that if it stands up to scientific testing then it is not mysticism, it is science? In other words, only false things are mysticism? I don’t know. Yes. “And in cases where they have been put to such a test, they were refuted or were ambiguous.” Here you can already see the agenda of the author of this entry, or the authors of this Wikipedia entry, yes? The claim is that basically mysticism is just something false. That’s all. Again, there is a correlation that I agree with. Most mystical things, in my opinion, are false. And indeed, most mystical things, when you subject them to falsification, will be refuted—or they will be ambiguous. That is true. But I do not think that is the definition of mysticism. It is not necessary. There is such a correlation, but it is not necessary. Okay. Now he continues: “Generally, the term mysticism is not used to describe common religious beliefs, but is restricted for use only with respect to their hidden components, those connected to inner religious experience, as distinct from their external expressions.” Here there is an interesting point, because indeed in the accepted terminology in the world, when I am a religious person, religion is not necessarily linked to mysticism. When we speak about mysticism, for most people, most people are not talking about religion. Although if you ask major rationalists or atheists, of course they will make that connection. But the common use of the term “mysticism” deals not necessarily with religions as such, but maybe with components—like he says earlier—the esoteric components, yes, the hidden ones, connected to inner religious experience. What does that mean? Those things that you cannot verify for yourself, so you have to accept them only because someone describes them to you, or someone tells them to you. In that sense there really are mystical components there. But, for example, belief in God—I can argue for it on the basis of tradition, or philosophical arguments, or whatever—and that is completely non-mystical. You can accept it, be convinced or not convinced, but it has nothing to do with mysticism. When you say that you meet God and He gives you such-and-such experiences and as a result you arrive at all kinds of conclusions—that is mysticism. Because that is not something where you present arguments that I can follow. Okay? Maybe one or two more sentences. “The aspiration of the mystic is usually to bring his soul into union with a spiritual entity existing in the world beyond.” Here too I’m not sure I agree. Because if the things in the world beyond are accessible to many people—and here there are many people who share in this—then naturally it isn’t called mysticism. Something essentially mass in character is not considered mysticism. Now, it is not considered mysticism because if it is mass, that means that probably many people are able to verify that it is true. So that is indeed a good indication, whether it is mass or not, although not a necessary indication. Because, for example, if many people follow someone, but not because they are convinced he is right, rather because they trust him, then it is still mysticism. Again, it may be that they are also right that he is right, and their trust is justified—but they arrive at that conclusion not because they are convinced, but because they trust that person, who knows the truth. In that sense it is mysticism. Those who issue a Jewish law ruling because that’s what Maimonides said are mystics. Those who study Maimonides and understand why he ruled that way, and it convinces them, and therefore they rule that way—they are not mystics. Okay? That, I think, is the more precise distinction. By the way, what he says here, that the aspiration is usually to bring one’s soul into union with a spiritual entity—here too there’s another important point that we’ll get to later. There are two branches of mysticism: there is a theoretical, contemplative branch, where one studies mystical doctrine; and there are practical tendencies—in Kabbalah too there is Kabbalah and practical Kabbalah. What does that mean? These are practices that draw on mystical theory, but use it to bring about things in the world or in the soul or whatever it may be. That is practice, okay? That too is called mysticism, and in most mysticisms there are practical branches as well—not in all of them, but in many of them. But I do not think that the aspiration of the mystic is to bring his soul into union with a spiritual entity. A person can study Kabbalah, delve into it all his life, learn it in depth down to the smallest details, understand everything, internalize everything—but not out of some practical intention to attain some experience of union. Okay? That does not necessarily characterize kabbalists. There are rational kabbalists who basically study Kabbalah like Torah, like Mishnah—something theoretical that must be studied because it is true. Just as one studies science, or literature, or philosophy, or whatever, so one studies Kabbalah. The practice of practical Kabbalah is indeed an aspiration to apply it in order to bring about results in the world or in the soul. But for me, “mystic,” or “mystical field,” defines two kinds of mystics. A mystic is someone who studies the mystical field or engages in the mystical field, someone who perhaps has the ability to encounter these mystical domains and others either will believe him or not believe him; and another kind of mystic is also someone who wants to make use of it, meaning to do practical things with mysticism. Someone once told me—I was at a memorial gathering for Rabbi HaNazir, and afterward I caught a ride with Rabbi Shear Yashuv, his son. So we talked a bit in the car, and he told me—I think in the name of Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda, if I remember correctly—that some people think Kabbalah is mysticism. He said Kabbalah is not mysticism; Kabbalah is an entirely rational field, except that the foundational assumptions on which it is built are assumptions we received from above, but from there on we deal with it logically, rationally, intellectually—with analysis, distinctions, difficulties, resolutions, building theoretical structures, and various things of that kind. Here there is a somewhat subtle point. I do not accept that. I accept it as a description, but I claim that this does not mean it is not mysticism, because the assumptions that I accept are assumptions that come from an esoteric source. It is not accessible to everyone so that they can be convinced that these assumptions are true. Therefore the fact that I afterward do a logical analysis and derive conclusions from those assumptions does not mean it is not mysticism. What he meant to say is that there is a certain perception that mysticism is usually something irrational, where conclusions are not derived from the assumptions and you just make non-logical jumps. I do not think that is true; someone who works irrationally is just an idiot, not a mystic. Someone who works in mysticism rationally is still a mystic; he is simply a mystic who draws conclusions systematically from his assumptions, which is perfectly fine. I do not accept it—or he can choose not to accept it—because I do not share those assumptions. The assumptions themselves are not open to me, and I do not trust them, so I do not accept them. But the fact that you take those assumptions and build a logical structure on them—that does not mean you are not a mystic. It means you are a mystic who works systematically. On the contrary: someone who does not work systematically and just makes various jumps—then I don’t know, maybe he’s just a babbler, not a mystic. To not identify that with mysticism is very problematic. Now, really, what he said—and what I said earlier—in the major religions, yes, Kabbalah in Judaism, Sufism in Islam, and so on, these are certain wings of the religion, but the religion itself is not perceived as mysticism. And here there is a somewhat subtle point, because if a person becomes religious because he believes the prophet, then that is indeed mysticism. Even broad religion is mysticism. Say, what are they called, that American religion—I mentioned them a moment ago—the Mormons. The Mormons, which are basically the newest religion. So a religion that arose, I don’t know, about two hundred years ago, something like that. The Mormons basically build their religion, if I understand correctly, on the trust they have in Joseph Smith. Okay. Therefore in that sense, even though there are millions of Mormons, it is still mysticism. Because they did not arrive at the conclusion that it is true; they arrived at the conclusion that Joseph Smith knows that it is true. In that sense it is mysticism. But if he had brought some evidence and people had been convinced by the evidence, then it would not be mysticism. In other words, the fact that there are millions of believers can be an indication that we are not dealing with mysticism, but it is not a necessary indication. If there are millions of believers because everyone was convinced, then it is not mysticism. If there are millions of believers because that fellow was very charismatic, and therefore everyone follows him and trusts him—that is mysticism. And again, it may be that the trust is justified. “Charismatic” not in the sense of manipulation, that he fooled them. No—maybe the trust is justified. But if they trust him and therefore accept his doctrine, not because they were convinced it is true, then that is mysticism, despite the fact that there are millions of believers. Fine. As for New Age in the 21st century and so on, we’ll still get to talk a bit about mysticism and New Age. Okay. Now I want to move one step further. Up to this point these were just supplements to the definition I proposed last time. Now, when we talk about a mystical system, very often—indeed in most cases—the mystical system is anchored in things that happen in the world. But it offers them an explanation in terms of a theory that is a mystical theory, as distinct from a scientific theory, or a philosophical one, or an ideological one, or whatever. In other words, mysticism offers an explanation for the same set of phenomena that science also offers an explanation for. For example, science can say that the force of gravity pulls mass toward the ground, and Aristotle can say that the stone wants to return to its source, and therefore it falls to the ground. Okay? So Aristotle is simply offering an alternative explanation for the same physical phenomenon that science also explains. He is not dealing with a different field. He is dealing with the same field, except that the explanations he offers for these domains use concepts that are not accessible to the public—yes, to the public—but rather I am supposed to accept them because someone said so, or because I trust someone. In contrast, science operates on a broad front and people need to be convinced, whether they are convinced or not convinced. Therefore mysticism—and this is the point, now I’ve left the definition behind, now I’m starting to talk about characteristics—so mysticism is basically some alternative system for relating to a set of facts from our world. Yes—for example Kabbalah. Kabbalah can give an interpretation of verses of the Torah or various rules in Jewish law, where the interpretation—say in the revealed world, the revealed aspect—one can give some interpretation using the reasoning of the revealed aspect, and Kabbalah will give it an interpretation in terms of the hidden. “It repairs the eternity within splendor,” therefore one should wave the lulav. Someone else will say one should wave the lulav to the four directions of the sky in order to say that the Holy One, blessed be He, fills all the earth with His glory. The second is a revealed explanation; the first is a hidden explanation; and both explain the same fact: that we wave the lulav. Or, I don’t know, verses when we speak about Abraham and Sarah—in Kabbalah this is kindness and judgment. Okay? Now what does that mean? We are referring to the same people and the same events. True, but Kabbalah places it in some mystical framework, and the plain or revealed interpretation places it in a revealed framework. And therefore I think that mysticism—and all mysticisms, I think all of them, I’m not such a great expert, but I think all of them—basically revolve around facts that are from our world, which we are usually accustomed to dealing with by ordinary tools, and mysticism wants to deal with them by other tools, its own tools. Okay? Now here is an important point. Why? Because, as I said earlier, I do not want to identify mysticism with what is false. Now if I say that mysticism offers another explanation for natural phenomena—say, for phenomena in physics, for example, or in Jewish law, or elsewhere—then if there is a mystical explanation and a non-mystical explanation, one is true and one is false. And then if I accept the revealed explanation or the scientific one, or whatever in another context, it would seem that the mystical explanation is false. So here you have the identification of mysticism with what is false. But that is not precise, because usually when we speak about explanations—different levels of explanation for the same phenomena—we do not assume that one of the explanations is true and the others are false. We are willing to accept several explanations in parallel, all of which can be true. The example of this—and I think I’ve mentioned this more than once already, I’ve given several examples—there is, for example, yes, Newton. Newton sitting under a tree, an apple falls on his head, and he discovers the law of gravity. Okay? So whenever I hear that story, the question comes to my mind: why did Newton wonder about apples falling on his head and find an explanation in terms of the law of gravity? He could have found a theological explanation: that the Holy One, blessed be He, was punishing him for the sin he committed yesterday, and therefore threw an apple at his head. What’s wrong with that explanation? The answer that I think most people would give you is: nothing is wrong with it. That’s a theological explanation and this is a scientific explanation, and both of those explanations exist in parallel. Okay? Another example—yes, I have canonical examples to explain this. I always come with three examples; these three examples always accompany this thesis, and some of you have surely heard them from me. The second example is the person who becomes religious and the person who leaves religion. Yes? The person who becomes religious—the religious friends who welcomed him see that at last he understood the truth and abandoned falsehood. They examine his move through a philosophical prism. His former secular friends say, well, he probably went through a crisis, I don’t know what happened, and that’s why he became religious; maybe his grandmother died, or he had a very hard time when he came back. So he went through a crisis and therefore became religious. So they are psychologists. In other words, the religious people treat it within a philosophical framework, and the secular people treat it within a psychological framework. What happens with someone who leaves religion? Then of course it’s the reverse, right? The religious people explain it as: “The people of Israel sinned only in order to permit themselves forbidden sexual relations,” meaning they are psychologists, the religious people, and the secular people say: ah, finally he understood the nonsense he had been living in until now; he discovered the truth. So they are philosophers. Okay? So what is the truth? The truth is probably that every step we take has an explanation on the psychological plane and an explanation on the philosophical plane. But each of us chooses the plane that is more comfortable for him. So if someone takes a step that benefits me—he becomes religious—then I am a philosopher. Because obviously he discovered the truth; I’m not looking for psychological crises, although that could certainly be part of it. The secular person who sees this as a step in a direction he disagrees with, a step against him, naturally attributes it to various psychological crises. He is a psychologist. And vice versa with someone who leaves religion. In other words, the fact that each of us chooses to focus on one explanatory plane may be our dishonesty—or maybe not dishonesty, I commented on that once—but it does not mean that the other explanatory plane is false. On the contrary: there is a psychological explanatory plane, there is a philosophical explanatory plane, and precisely because of that each person can focus on the explanation he wants, and both explanatory planes are correct. The third example is of course Oscar Wilde’s “The Happy Prince.” You surely all know the story, a children’s story, about the swallow—yes, in cold Europe all her friends had already flown to warm Egypt for the winter, and she got stuck there on the statue of the Happy Prince. He is made of gold and precious stones and so on, and he begins sending this swallow on various errands, distributing the gold and the precious stones to all the miserable people in the city. And the winter deepens, and then of course at a certain stage—the swallows do not fly to Egypt for nothing; winter is dangerous for them, they cannot function in winter—and this swallow stayed there because she was so righteous. Then the cold of winter came and she feels that she is going to die. There is a heartbreaking scene of the swallow’s farewell to the Happy Prince, and then the swallow dies. Then he writes there: “Then there came a low cracking sound inside the statue, as if something had broken. The leaden heart had snapped right in two.” And then he adds another sentence: “Ah! How bitterly cold it was.” Now the question is: why did the leaden heart crack? Was it because his heart hurt over the swallow, out of sorrow? Or because of material strength, simply the temperature changes—the lead did not withstand the cold and so it cracked? So the answer, of course, is that the scientific explanation is the second, and the psychological explanation is the first. Okay? The prince is a statue, of course, it is literature—but the claim is that both explanatory planes exist in parallel. You are not supposed to choose between them. Oscar Wilde adds that sentence there just to challenge us philosophically, but what he really wants to say is: there is an explanation—whoever wants can focus on the scientific explanation, and whoever wants can focus on the emotional, psychological, literary explanation. So ostensibly we often explain the same set of facts, or the same fact, in several different explanatory planes or modes of reference, and that does not necessarily mean we need to choose one and throw away the rest. Therefore when I say that mysticism explains the same set of facts as science, or as Jewish law, or as whatever—it does not necessarily mean that mysticism, or one of the two, is false. Both may be true, and these are two parallel explanatory planes. But still, one has to be a bit careful here. Why? Because when we talk about an explanation for a phenomenon or phenomena, there are disputes among philosophers about what exactly an explanation must satisfy, or what can count as an explanation. Does the mechanism that the explanation proposes need to be a necessary and sufficient condition, or is it enough that it be a sufficient condition? Okay? That’s a dispute. In other words, does it have to be necessary and sufficient, or is sufficient enough? Okay? That’s a dispute. But what both camps have in common is that a necessary condition is not an explanation. Necessary but not sufficient—that certainly is not an explanation. In other words, an explanation must be a sufficient condition. Maybe it is sufficient and necessary, and maybe only sufficient—but sufficient it definitely must be. Okay? So let’s talk for a moment about the meaning of a sufficient condition. A sufficient condition means that when the condition exists, when the cause exists, the result will come about. It cannot be that the cause is there and the result does not occur. The cause is a sufficient condition for the result. Okay? When I say that gravity is the explanation for why bodies fall to the earth, what this means is that given gravity, bodies have to fall to the earth. That is a sufficient condition. Gravity alone. If there is a balancing force, of course, it will balance it—but where there is only gravity, or there is a net force, then the body will fall to the earth. It has to be a sufficient condition. The problem is that if the explanation is a sufficient condition, then there cannot in principle be two explanations. Why? Think about Newton sitting under the tree. An apple falls on his head. So we said there are two explanations: the scientific explanation is that the apple was pulled by gravity and fell on his head. The theological explanation is that yesterday he sinned, and therefore the Holy One, blessed be He, sent him an apple to smack him on the head as punishment. Now, what would happen if Newton had sinned, and therefore deserved an apple on the head, but gravity was not strong enough to overcome the attachment of the apple to the branch? Scientifically, the apple is not supposed to fall. Now if the theological explanation is an explanation, that means what it proposes as a condition is a sufficient condition. In other words, if Newton sins, an apple will fall on his head regardless of the relation between gravity and the apple’s attachment to the branch. And likewise with the scientific explanation. If the scientific explanation is an explanation, then it means that if gravity overcomes the apple’s attachment to the branch, then the apple will fall on Newton whether he sinned or not. Because gravity is a sufficient condition for the apple’s fall. But then it turns out that one of these explanations must be false. Let’s put it this way: at least if we are not assuming that every time Newton sins, the apple over his head somehow loosens from the branch, and therefore does not withstand gravity. Because then I’ll come back and ask: how is the loosening of the branch caused? That too has a scientific explanation and a theological explanation. And once again I will ask: how can there be two sufficient conditions? Again one of them has to be false. And thus we will continue retreating all the way, and there is no way out. And therefore, I come back and say: the fact that we are used to living with two explanatory planes in parallel and claiming that both are true is a nice habit, but it seems dubious. If both are explanations, then they cannot both be explanations. There is one explanation. By the way, Maimonides in the first root assumes that only the plain meaning is an interpretation of the verse. Because a verse has only one interpretation. Derash cannot count as an interpretation of the verse. It is not another interpretation of the verse; it is not an interpretation at all. Because there can only be one interpretation. At least that is what Maimonides assumes. That is similar to the logic here. In any case, this claim basically says that there cannot be two explanations, both true, where each is a sufficient condition. Now look: there are places where this really is not so. For example, let’s take becoming religious and leaving religion. It seems to me that the more balanced approach to such phenomena, to decisions a person makes—becoming religious, leaving religion—is that the full explanation is the combination of psychology and philosophy together. For example, a person went through a crisis, and therefore he begins to search; his current outlook is shaken; he tries to examine alternative outlooks; and then he suddenly reaches the conclusion that the religious—or secular, or whatever—outlook seems more convincing to him than his current outlook, and he becomes religious or leaves religion. So if you ask me what is the explanation for the step he took—the answer is psychology plus philosophy; together they constitute the explanation. If you ask me what is the sufficient condition for him to take such a step—psychology alone is not a sufficient condition, and philosophy alone is not a sufficient condition. The sufficient condition is when there is both psychology and philosophy. In other words, he needs to go through a crisis that causes him to reexamine his path, but he also needs to become convinced that the path he found is better than his current path, because otherwise he will not adopt it despite the crisis. And then it turns out that neither the psychological explanation nor the philosophical explanation is an explanation. Each offers only part of the explanation. And if you ask what the explanation is—the explanation is the sum of the two. In very many cases that is true. And this means, by the way, that a psychological explanation can never, for example, be complete for human actions. A psychologist—even after all psychological research is finished and they discover everything—will not be able to predict what a person will ultimately do. This is not only a problem of complexity and our not yet having complete knowledge. Even given complete knowledge, he still cannot, because psychology is only part of the explanation for why people do what they do. There is another part that belongs to philosophy, cognition, decisions, free will, values, and various things of that kind. But why say that the relationship is “both-and” rather than “either-or”? Why not assume that there is a person who, for example, returns to religion or leaves religion only for philosophical reasons? No—there may be. But then one side is really wrong, so the two explanations are not both true. I’m talking about a place where both explanations are true; that is only if each one by itself is not an explanation, but only the sum of them together is the explanation. If a person does something only for psychological reasons, then one could basically say it is an irresistible impulse; that is, he was not responsible for the outcome, he did not make the decision, rather he was driven by the circumstances. Okay? But fine, there are such cases. There are cases where a person does something only by force of his psychology—on automatic pilot, yes? When you’re on automatic pilot, when you’re driving a car and not thinking, then what is driving is your instincts. Okay? So basically your autonomic system is doing the work, not your conscious system, your conscious intellect. So there are occasional cases like that. I’m only saying that where two explanations are both true, that is only if their sum is the explanation, and each one by itself is not an explanation but only a partial explanation. Okay? But what about Newton? There the situation is more difficult. Because with Newton, we are usually accustomed to thinking that a scientific explanation is a complete explanation. And if gravity is such that it overcomes the strength of the apple’s attachment to the branch, then the apple will fall, regardless of whether the person sitting there sinned or did not sin. Right? That is the accepted scientific view. In other words, we treat the scientific explanation as a complete explanation, not a partial one. On the other hand, there are people who treat the theological explanation as a complete explanation. But that cannot be. There cannot be two correct, complete explanations. Okay? Therefore—yes, that is my own view—that only the scientific explanation is correct and not the theological one. But I won’t go into that here. Now look, the point is this: the only exception, the only kind of exception possible to there being two complete explanations, both true, is only if there is a mapping between them. That is, they are both really describing the same thing, just in different languages. For example—those who know the basics, everyone knows this—there is a ball on the top of a mountain. Now it rolls downward, right? Laws of mechanics. You can describe this in two ways. You can describe it by saying that gravity exerts a downward force on it—the component, yes, in the direction of the slope—and gravity sends the ball downward. One description. A second description: the ball strives to reach the place with the lowest potential energy, the lowest potential. Two formulations, both accepted in physics. The first is in terms of forces, the second in terms of potential. Two descriptions, and both are complete descriptions, they are always true, there are no exceptions, and both are complete. Each one by itself describes the map. If there is force, the ball will fall. If there is a potential difference, the ball will fall. Only—what?—the potential difference and the force are simply saying the same thing in different languages. The force is the gradient of the potential, and the potential is the path integral of the force. Never mind—in short, there are mathematical tools to get from one to the other. It’s a mapping; it’s just a translation into another language. You can speak in the language of forces, and you can speak in the language of potentials. These are simply two different languages for talking about the same thing. In such a case there can be two explanations, each of which is true, each of which is… fine, equivalent languages. There is a mathematical proof that these languages are equivalent. By the way, in passing, since I already mentioned it: once I gave a seminar about this. I came from Yeruham, from when I was teaching in the yeshiva, after I had already left physics, and I came to give a seminar in the physics department at Bar-Ilan. A seminar on the relation between teleological explanations—goal-oriented explanations—and causal explanations. Physicists are not aware of this, but the whole language of potentials and potential energies is a teleological language, a purposive language. The little ball falls downward because it wants—do you hear Aristotle?—because it wants to get to the place with the lowest potential energy. It strives, yes, it goes downward in order to; it does not go downward because of. The language of forces says it goes downward because there is a gravitational force pulling it; there is a cause. In the language of potentials there is purpose. It goes downward because there it will have the lowest potential energy. Now, if you ask physicists, they will all tell you—those who know, know—there is what is called analytical mechanics. And in optics too there is Fermat’s principle. One can actually show that there are two parallel languages for describing all the phenomena in mechanics, in optics, in many areas of physics: a causal language and a purposive language. Okay? Only what—ask the physicists and they will tell you that this is an anecdote. The real explanation is the causal one. The teleological explanation is a mathematical anecdote. Interesting—there is another mathematical formulation equivalent to the causal formulation, but what is really true is the causal formulation. Why? On what basis do you determine that? God knows. But that’s what physicists will tell you. I told them more than that in that seminar. I told them: after all, in quantum theory and field theory and all the modern fields of physics—from quanta upward—there is no language of forces at all, only a language of potentials. People do not know how to speak in the language of forces in quantum theory. The concept of force does not exist in quantum theory. In quantum theory there are potentials, not forces. So this is an amazing thing. In classical physics there are two ways of describing phenomena. In modern physics there is only the teleological form. And that does not stop physicists from thinking that the teleological form is an anecdote, while the causal form is the correct explanation. I say the opposite: the teleological form is probably the correct explanation, and the causal explanation is the anecdote. What bothers people? If you say that the ball falls downward because it has a purpose, because it wants to reach the lowest potential energy, after all the ball doesn’t want anything—the ball is inanimate. That is the criticism of Aristotle, right, that the stone wants to return to its source. The stone doesn’t want anything. Yes, but I am not talking about Aristotle. I am talking about Lagrange, yes, the father of analytical mechanics. I am not talking about Aristotle. Lagrange did not mean to say that the body wants to arrive at an optimal path or move along an optimal path. That is just a figure of speech. Rather, the body moves in the direction that yields minimal potential energy—without wanting. Leave “wants” aside; it has no other option. It’s not that it could also have chosen not to want it; it doesn’t have free will to want or not to want. To be or not to be, that is the question. No, that is not what is being discussed—that is Aristotle. I am speaking about a teleological but deterministic description, simply teleological. What bothers people about such a description? That of course the Holy One, blessed be He, is in the background. If the body wants to get somewhere—what does “the body wants” mean? It means the Holy One, blessed be He, wants the body to get there. The body itself wants nothing; it is inanimate. For people, desire is usually connected to someone who desires or strives for some purpose. Now, since the body itself does not strive for that purpose, perhaps there is someone else who strives and causes the body to move in order to realize His purposes. And that of course introduces entities that scientists do not like bringing onto the playing field. And that seems to me to be the reason why scientists prefer the causal description over the teleological one. But in fact, from the standpoint of physics, the teleological description has a great advantage. It is not even merely equivalent. Even if it were equivalent, I would say: why are you choosing… choose that one. But it is not even equivalent. In quantum theory there is only the teleological description; there is no causal description. In any case, for our purposes, what I want to say is just that this is an example—the teleological description and the causal description—of two explanations, each of which is complete and a sufficient condition, and both can be true in parallel. Why? Because they are not really two different explanations. It is like teaching mechanics in Hebrew and in English. So did I create two different explanations for the phenomenon? No. It is the same explanation formulated in two different languages. And once I can map one explanation onto the other, or show equivalence between them, then these are not two explanations. They are two different languages for describing the same explanation. That is the only exception. Only if that is the relationship between the explanations can there be a situation where there are two different explanations, each of which is an explanation in the sense that it gives a sufficient condition, and both are true in parallel. That can only be if they are not really two explanations, but the same explanation in two languages. Only what? If that is so, then let us go back to mysticism. I want to claim that mysticism gives an explanation for the same set of phenomena that science, or revealed halakhic thinking, gives an explanation for—but it gives the explanation in terms of spiritual, kabbalistic, abstract concepts. So that basically means that it is not really another explanation; it is a translation of the revealed explanation or the scientific explanation. And therefore, is mysticism really something else, or is it just a language? If it is just a language, it is less interesting. When we take mysticism seriously, we take its claims as claims about the world: that there are demons and sefirot and spirits and angels and all kinds of such things in the world, and that they act in such-and-such ways and other ways. And that basically means that I am indeed offering some other explanation, and not just the same revealed explanation in another language. I’ll give you perhaps an indication that there is another explanation here and not merely the same explanation in another language. There are two examples I am thinking of where there is a break in the correspondence between explanatory planes. One is a scriptural decree, and the other is a miracle. Let us start with a scriptural decree. Usually we are accustomed to thinking that Scripture can be approached on four different planes: plain meaning, allusion, homiletic interpretation, and secret. And therefore I can basically interpret Scripture or give it different explanations in parallel, and all of them can be true. Now, if there were really a correspondence between the revealed and the hidden—let us focus for the moment only on the revealed and the hidden, like some Einstein equation between the revealed and the hidden, some sort of thing—let us focus on those two for a moment. So if I focus on those two and say that the hidden is merely a translation into another language of the revealed, I would expect there to be perfect correspondence. Every calculation I make in the language of the hidden would match the results of the same calculation in the language of the revealed, because what difference does it make whether I’m speaking Hebrew or English, or whether I’m speaking in a teleological language or a causal language? It doesn’t matter; I arrive at the same results. It is completely equivalent. There is correspondence between the parallel worlds. So what is a scriptural decree? A scriptural decree is a law for which we have no revealed explanation, right? We have no explanation. But if that law exists, then of course it has an explanation. The Holy One, blessed be He, intended something when He established that law. Only what? Apparently it is an explanation in the hidden. But in the revealed there is no explanation. There you have an example of a break in the correspondence between the revealed and the hidden. The revealed explanation and the hidden explanation. There is something I can do in the language of the hidden, but in the language of the revealed I do not reach the same result. So that means there is no full correspondence between them. I’ll give another example: Newton, Isaac Newton. Someone who believes in the theological explanation and the scientific explanation as two explanations both true in parallel has to assume that the theological explanation is a translation of the scientific explanation—a translation into theological language, into the intentions of the Holy One, blessed be He, into spiritual worlds, or whatever. You see? It is really just like the relation between plain meaning and secret, only not in relation to verses of Scripture but in relation to facts in the world. These are the ten utterances by which the world was created, not the Ten Commandments. So if there is such correspondence, that means that every calculation I make using the laws of nature, which tells me that a certain phenomenon will occur, then the calculation I make in theological language should also yield the same result. There is correspondence. It is simply two different languages to describe the same thing. But what is a miracle? A miracle is basically an event where the laws of nature cannot explain what happened. There is no explanation in terms of the laws of nature. But there is a theological explanation. The splitting of the Sea: the Holy One, blessed be He, because of His theological intentions—whatever He wanted there to happen—He needed the Jewish people to be saved. In terms of the laws of nature, that should not have happened. The sea was there, and the Egyptians were stronger than they were, so according to the laws of nature they should have been destroyed there. And the Holy One, blessed be He, sees that nature is not doing the job, so He breaks nature. Why? Because in His theological calculations the sea has to split. But according to the laws of nature the sea is not supposed to split. So you see that the theological calculations are not the same thing as the laws of nature simply translated into theological language. No—it is something else; in some cases it gives a different result. Maybe not in most cases, maybe only in some cases, but there are cases where it gives a different result. All cases of miracles are cases like that: the Holy One, blessed be He, sees that the laws of nature are not doing what He wants to happen. Why does He want it to happen? For theological reasons. But the laws of nature do not do it, so He makes an exception to the situation and does not let… okay? So that is basically a break in the correspondence between the explanation of the laws of nature, the scientific explanation, and the theological explanation. And a scriptural decree is a break in the correspondence between the revealed and the hidden. But if there is a break in the correspondence, that means it is not true that one is a translation of the other. If it were the same—yes, there is no break in the correspondence between causal explanation and teleological explanation in physics. There is a mathematical proof that whatever this gives, that gives too, and vice versa. So you will not find a natural phenomenon that can be explained in terms of—let’s not talk quantum now—in classical physics, that can be explained in terms of forces but cannot be explained in terms of potentials, or vice versa. There is no such phenomenon. Why? Because there is full equivalence. It really is not two explanations; it is the same explanation in two languages. But where I get different results, that is an indication that these are two different explanations. And now we are in real trouble. Because if the mystical explanation, the hidden explanation, and the revealed or scientific explanation or whatever, are both complete explanations—enough and sufficient and true—but they are not translations of one another, then that cannot be. Such a thing cannot be. So we are back to saying that mysticism is a synonym for what is false, if I believe in the revealed, or vice versa, it doesn’t matter. They cannot both be true. Well, I… or we already have to stop. I’ll stop here. I’ll continue this next time. I hope it will be clearer. I don’t know how clear it was just now; I hope it was. But you can ask if you want. Rabbi, why not answer the same way we said about psychology and philosophy, and simply say that science and mysticism happen to be synchronized in that case? No, not “happen to be.” Rather they join together into the explanation. Together they are the explanation, and the fact that we see that science works in the overwhelming majority of cases is because mysticism also happens to be working together with it. Science is not part of the explanation; science is anti-explanation. It is not that the explanation for the splitting of the sea is theology plus science. No—the theology shoved science aside and took over the stage. In fact Nachmanides, if I’m not mistaken, is the one who claims that the splitting of the sea was not a miracle, certainly not an open miracle, because otherwise the Egyptians would not have entered the sea. Their generals are not such fools. I’m not getting into Torah interpretation; I only brought it as an example of the logic of the relation between the planes. One can argue about it, but let us assume for the moment that it was an open miracle, okay? For the sake of discussion. Once it is an open miracle, then I say: this cannot be. There are two explanatory systems here, both are complete explanations, both are sufficient conditions, they are not translations of one another because clearly there is a practical difference, there is a point at which the correspondence breaks down. But if that is the case, then it cannot be, so one of the two is false. Or in other words: how can it be that mysticism is true? I’m now returning to our topic—but I’ll explain it more next time, and I’ll also bring a few examples so it will be sharper. Did someone fall asleep there? Those are some strange noises. Someone didn’t mute. What about next week—Hanukkah—regular? You tell me; as far as I’m concerned it makes no difference. Who plans to participate next week? Anyone? Yes? There are some without cameras, but I already saw three. I’m not sure. What about all those without cameras? Can I get some indication? Ezra Brick, others? Well, shall we hold it? Fine, so we’ll hold it, yes. Good night, good evening, good evening, Sabbath peace. Thank you very much, good night, Sabbath peace.