Mysticism – Lesson 12

Table of Contents

• [0:01] Introduction and presentation of the central claims
• [1:37] The second claim: access to inaccessible worlds and coherence
• [3:35] An initial illustration through a post by Yisrael Yagal
• [4:43] The story of Mendel Rata and his mystical experiences
• [6:08] Description of the Passover Seder night experience at age 15
• [8:43] The question of authenticity and trust in mystical testimony
• [12:27] Philosophical skepticism regarding sensory perception
• [16:06] The neurology of imagination and cognition
• [23:05] The Matrix-style challenge and its practical implications
• [26:31] Criteria for evaluating mystical claims
• [30:24] The connection to Jewish law and future implications
• [32:03] A contradiction with the promise to Isaac
• [33:37] Was Abraham supposed to refuse?
• [41:31] The parable of the blind man and the sighted man
• [48:16] How to test the reliability of the mystic
• [53:06] A Kabbalistic distinction: kindness versus judgment

Summary

General overview

The text formulates two claims about mysticism: mysticism rests on the possibility of spiritual intuition that allows individuals to grasp insights inaccessible to the public, and yet mystical claims can still be judged critically through the question of whether they build a coherent worldview that unifies many phenomena. Mysticism is defined as esotericism that is not directly accessible and therefore requires trust in the source, but it is not immune to conceptual scrutiny in terms of whether it “makes sense,” similar to a scientific theory. The text proposes tests for whether an unusual experience is perceived as cognition rather than imagination, and illustrates how a Kabbalistic distinction between kindness and judgment gives broad meaning to phenomena, texts, and practical patterns.

The two claims about mysticism: spiritual intuition and coherent criticism

The first claim says that if mysticism exists, its basis is that there are people with spiritual intuition that enables them to grasp insights that others cannot grasp. The result is esotericism and subjectivity, because these things are not directly accessible to the wider public, and accepting them depends on trust in the source. The second claim says that even without direct access, such teachings can still be judged to some extent by their coherence and their ability to place many phenomena into a unifying context, in a way similar to a scientific theory, and thus one can make an informed decision whether to adopt a mystical doctrine or reject it. The text presents this sharpening as a summary of part of the series, before moving to a halakhic stage that applies the conclusions to Jewish mysticism and Jewish law.

The example of Mendel Rata and psychedelic experiences as problematic authenticity

The text brings a post by Mendel Rata, apparently the grandson of a Hasidic rebbe according to the author’s understanding, describing mystical psychedelic experiences from childhood until recently. The text quotes descriptions such as the feeling that from age 15 he had within him a spark of Shabbetai Tzvi, an experience on Passover Seder night in which “a great curtain opened for me and I saw divine visions,” and descriptions of the body trembling, “an encounter with a supreme chariot of light,” and experiences of oneness with God during the bedtime recitation of the Shema. The author argues that Rata’s text is relatively “clear-headed,” because he is aware of the problematic nature of the genre, raises question marks, and distinguishes between the sincerity of the experience and the question of what it says about reality. The author is willing to believe in the authenticity of the report as an experience, but raises the central question whether this is the perception of something outside the person or hallucinations and imagination.

Ayahuasca, intersubjectivity, and the gap between culture and objectivity

The text mentions ayahuasca as an example considered “stronger,” because according to reports different people experience “more or less the same things,” including experiences of “the chariot” even among those with no Jewish background. This cross-cultural similarity is presented as a possibility that the experience is not culturally dependent but describes something that seems objective, yet the text also offers an alternative explanation according to which these are patterns shared by the human structure itself. The text emphasizes that even intersubjective agreement is not decisive proof of objectivity, and it could be a “universal intersubjective hallucination” rooted in human structure.

Skepticism, the Matrix, and the accompanying feeling that distinguishes cognition from imagination

The text raises the philosophers’ skeptical question about the senses: there is no tool independent of the senses that verifies the senses, and therefore one can always claim that what appears is imagination. The text replies that there is no conclusive answer to skepticism, but there is an internal distinction between imagination and cognition that is expressed in a feeling accompanying the image, not in the image itself. The text proposes a neurological image according to which the same neurons may operate in imagination and in vision, but there is “something extra” that signals whether this is cognition or imagination. The text acknowledges that a skeptic can argue that even the feeling of distinction is imagination, but states that at least for self-judgment the experiential distinction is sufficient, even if there is no full external resolution.

What counts as mysticism: not experiences but claims about the world

The text states that personal experiences by themselves are not mysticism but “psychological hallucinations,” and mysticism in the essential sense is an attempt to make claims about the world on the basis of such experiences. A mystic is defined as someone who claims to have seen “divine visions” in the sense of perceiving an objective reality outside himself, even though it is accessible only to him and not to others. The text states that the first step in confronting such a person is to clarify whether he himself relates to what he experienced as cognition or as imagination, because if he admits that it is imagination, then he is outside the subject under discussion.

Two tests for the mystic: immediate certainty versus reflective conclusion

The text adds a nuance and distinguishes between two ways in which a person may claim that something is real: a reflective conclusion drawn from the experience, or an immediate perception in which it is clear, “like sight,” that this is cognition and not imagination. The text argues that if the statement is a conclusion of the kind “if I experienced something strong, apparently it is real,” that is a weak argument that does not inspire trust, even without accusing the speaker of lying. The text argues that if the speaker describes an immediate clarity that is not the product of deliberation but part of the experience itself, then there is room to respect the testimony and not dismiss it out of hand, even if there is still no obligation to accept it. The text conjectures that Mendel Rata, given his hesitations of “maybe imagination, maybe not,” seems to be writing more on the level of conclusions than on the level of immediate certainty.

The binding of Isaac, prophecy, and the parable of the blind man and the sighted man

The text uses the binding of Isaac as an example of a mystical experience of divine command and raises the question why Abraham did not conclude that this was a hallucination, given contradictions such as “through Isaac shall your seed be called” and the moral difficulty. The text mentions an article by Ravitzky that cites Eastern commentators claiming that Abraham failed because he was supposed to refuse, but rejects this as interpretively implausible even if the difficulties are real. The text states that the only possible answer is that someone who has not experienced revelation cannot judge the certainty of the prophet, because the prophet can only say, “I know it isn’t,” in the sense of experiential clarity. The text brings a parable from the Chozer of Chabad about a sighted man and a blind man: the sighted man sees a room filled with furniture despite the blind man’s logical proof, and the sighted man does not conclude that he is imagining things but says “this requires great analysis,” because sight is decisive for him. The text presents this confrontation as the structure of an unbridgeable gap between someone who has the “sense” and someone who lacks it, and suggests that this may be the relation between someone who experiences mystical cognition and someone who does not.

Kabbalah without Mount Sinai: the possibility of mystical cognition in different generations

The text argues that if the source of mysticism is spiritual cognition, there is no need to assume that Kabbalah was transmitted in a tradition from Mount Sinai in order to take it seriously. The text presents the common claim that if it is not from Sinai “then it probably isn’t true,” and suggests reversing the direction: if there is a capacity for mystical cognition, it can also appear in the twenty-first century, the sixteenth century, or the tenth century. The text suggests that one can understand an elaborate Kabbalistic doctrine, such as that of the Arizal, as the result of an ability to encounter dimensions of reality and extract insights from them, without necessary dependence on Sinai. The text emphasizes that this does not prove truth, but it removes Sinai as a necessary condition for serious consideration.

The “it makes sense” criterion: a unifying context as a condition for consideration

The text states that after the mystic has passed tests of reliability and the distinction between conclusion and immediate certainty, one further test remains: does the picture he offers “make sense” and unify many phenomena within one framework? The text compares this to the way a scientific theory places many phenomena in context and explains what was unfamiliar, and presents this as a possible indication that the speaker “has put his finger on something real.” The text illustrates this again through the parable of the blind man, who would seek indirect indications such as the absence of echo in a room full of furniture, as a way of weighing the testimony of someone who can see.

Kindness and judgment in Kabbalah as a distinction that grants broad meaning

The text presents the distinction between kindness and judgment, the right side and the left side, as one of the basic distinctions in Kabbalah and as an example of how Kabbalah grasps a “deep structure” and not just hallucination. The text argues that pairs such as male and female, matter and form, light and vessels, kindness and judgment “map onto one another” as aspects of the same distinction, and finds echoes of this in yin and yang and in Jungian psychology. The text argues that in everyday language kindness and judgment do not connect, but in a non-Kabbalistic translation it becomes clear that judgment is action by force of a binding law, whereas kindness is action that is not obligatory, and therefore they are opposites in the sense of action within rules versus action outside rules. The text expands that kindness in the abstract sense is action outside the rules even if it is not beneficial, and cites the Torah’s phrase “it is kindness” as meaning an act that does not fit into logical patterns.

Abraham, Rebecca, pure ideas, and the inclusion of the attribute of mercy

The text cites Rabbi Pincus as giving examples that illustrate overflowing, disproportionate kindness: the midrash about Abraham slaughtering three calves in order to serve “three tongues with mustard,” and Rebecca at age three drawing water for all the camels. The text argues that Abraham is the “pillar of kindness” as an idea, not as a model for direct implementation, and Isaac is the pole of judgment and strength, while Jacob is the synthesis that produces beauty. The text cites Rashi’s commentary on Genesis that the Holy One, blessed be He, “intended to create the world with the attribute of judgment” and saw that it could not endure, and therefore “associated” the attribute of mercy with it, and explains that the world cannot stand either with pure judgment or with pure kindness. The text states that in practice one needs kindness shaped by judgment, and that both pure poles are required in order to understand the ideas, even though they cannot be fully implemented.

Halakhic examples of pure judgment and the limits of what can be demanded of a person

The text brings an example from Tosafot on Sabbath page 4 about someone who sticks bread to the oven on the Sabbath, and argues in the name of Tosafot that it cannot be that removing the bread is forbidden if the prohibition would lead a person to be punished by stoning, because “he will not listen to us,” and if a reasonable person will not obey Jewish law in such a case, that is a sign that the prohibition cannot be accepted in that form. The text raises a difficulty from the Talmudic passage about a fire on the Sabbath in the chapter “All Sacred Writings,” where extinguishing is forbidden even when it is labor not needed for its own sake, and there are even decrees limiting rescue lest one come to extinguish. The text describes how halakhic decisors broaden leniencies around concerns of danger to life even when they are remote, in order not to put a person to a test he will not withstand, and expresses the feeling that some prohibitions sound “declarative” relative to human ability to uphold them.

Ideal models as founding literature and a supermarket without cashiers

The text concludes with a participant’s remark about the social need to anchor ideal states even if they are not currently realizable, by means of the example of a “supermarket without cashiers” where people pay without supervision in order to engrave a moral goal into consciousness. The text agrees and suggests that the Torah does this in a literary way when it describes Abraham and Rebecca as models, not as instructions for annual implementation but as the presentation of an idea meant to shape understanding. The text closes by saying that the continuation will go deeper into the criteria by which one can test whether mysticism “makes sense,” with further elaboration on kindness and judgment.

Okay, let’s begin. In the last few meetings I tried to argue two things. I want to sharpen each of them a bit now. The first claim is basically the foundation of mysticism—if there really is such a thing. Again, assuming there is such a thing, without claiming right now that this is necessarily so—it’s that apparently there are people who have, yes, I muted it, there are people who have a spiritual intuition. Meaning, they can grasp with some kind of faculties certain things that other people can’t grasp. And again, I’m not talking about experiences; I’m talking about acquaintance or perception. I’ll get to that in a moment. So that’s the first point. And from that also follow the esotericism and subjectivity of the matter, and the fact that it’s not accessible to the public. That’s why I identified mysticism with claims that aren’t accessible. Basically, mysticism is esotericism. Esotericism in the sense that it isn’t accessible to the general public but only to select individuals. Not directly accessible. Now you have to trust the source of the claims in order to decide whether you accept them or not. That’s the first point. The second claim was that there is still a possibility of grasping such worlds, which aren’t really accessible to our senses or our direct experience, and judging them to some extent critically through the question of whether they present us with some coherent worldview, whether they bring many phenomena into one context. And then that gives some sense that maybe there’s something real here, even though we don’t have direct access to the mystical theory. But we can still try to think about it, or decide whether to accept it or not, through the question of whether it gives us some context that unifies many phenomena. Like a scientific theory in a certain sense. And therefore I argued that there is some possibility of making an informed decision whether to adopt a mystical doctrine or not, even though it isn’t directly accessible to me. Those are basically the two claims.

Now I want to sharpen each of them. Because this is really the end of this part of the series—those two claims are basically the conclusion of what we’ve done up to now, so I want to sharpen them. The final stage of the series will be: okay, so what do we do with this on the halakhic / of Jewish law level? Which I touched on a bit in various aspects that we’ll discuss further on. Meaning, to move from mysticism in general into specific aspects regarding Jewish law, regarding Jewish mysticism, and so on. So I want, as I said before, to sharpen those two claims. At first I wanted to sharpen only the second one, but after Yisrael Yagel sent me a very interesting passage from Facebook, I thought maybe I could use it to illustrate the first claim too. Basically, what the first claim was—I’ll remind you—was that the source of mysticism is some kind of spiritual intuition, some ability of certain people to encounter those things that other people can’t encounter. So I think this is an interesting passage; I’ll show it to you. Yisrael sent it to me today. Wait, what. Okay.

There’s a Jew here בשם Mendel Rata, who is the grandson of some rebbe, if I understand correctly from what he writes. I didn’t have time to check exactly who it is. Connected to Rabbi Meshulam Rata, I don’t know. In any case, he posted something on Facebook about psychedelic mystical experiences that he himself went through from childhood until very recently. Now of course I’m not going to go through the whole story, but we’ll sample a bit of it, because I want to use it to sharpen this point about mystical intuition. Yes, he says like this—look here: “Since age 15 I’ve been walking around with very deep and intense feelings that in at least one of my previous incarnations I was none other than Sabbatai Zevi, or at least that I have one spark of him within me, and I came to repair something from his story.” Fine. And then, yes, he read things about Sabbatai Zevi’s biography that reminded him very much—and by the way, his brothers too—of things that he himself had gone through. Meaning, he saw some similarity between what he had gone through and what is described regarding Sabbatai Zevi. For example, here he says: “Once, when I was 15, in the middle of the Passover Seder, while sitting at my grandfather the rebbe’s table together with the Hasidim gathered around, suddenly, in the middle of reciting the Haggadah, I began to experience a wondrous and exalted experience, as if a great curtain had opened for me and I saw divine visions.”

Now, this man is very lucid here in the sense that this is a text stronger than all the aliens floating around in the world today, or those who communicate with aliens, because I think he shows impressive awareness of the problematic nature of the genre. Meaning, he isn’t simply captive to the whole thing. If I understand correctly, he really did experience things, and he himself is torn and aware that he doesn’t know—maybe it’s imagination, maybe it really reflects something real. Meaning, there’s an honesty here that in many of these descriptions simply doesn’t exist. That’s why I think this passage is powerful, because precisely for that reason I’m more inclined to believe him—or at least to believe that this is what he experienced. What it means is another question. Because yes, he is willing to place question marks there. He’s aware of the problematic nature of trusting these things, but he says: listen, this is what I experienced. So for example, he says his body began to shake, to fly forward and backward and sideways—here, this is about that same matter. Later he says: “It was an encounter with a sublime and compassionate chariot of light, and an intense and wondrous experience of remembering the upper palaces and ‘the children returned to their border,’ an ancient wondrous vision that is entirely beyond ordinary human consciousness, far beyond what I can try to describe here in poor words.” And in the end he had depression and so on. Later he also says, yes: “In those periods, from age 13, I would recite the bedtime Shema all night long, with arms and legs spread on the floor, and I would experience an intense feeling of the soul’s unity with God, an experience reminiscent of a man’s longing for a woman, except that this was entirely spiritual and exalted. ‘When will I merit becoming the husband of the Matronita?’—that was my prayer at that time.”

In short, all kinds of experiences like these. That’s fine; the rest is less important for our purposes. But all kinds of experiences like these, in which the person describes to us visions or phenomena he encountered. Now, you can think maybe he’s a liar. That’s not the impression I get—just from reading this, he probably is really describing experiences he had. We can then discuss: okay, these are the experiences he had, but what does that mean? Still, he’s describing them as experiences he really, truly had. And now the big question is: okay, assuming I accept his sincerity, his authenticity—what does that mean? Did he really encounter things that I or other people can’t manage to encounter? Meaning, did he manage to experience things, or grasp—sorry, not experience—grasp things that other people can’t grasp? Can he describe to me the visions he saw, the insights he received, and so on? Or is all of this hallucination, wild imagination, I don’t know, things like that?

I mentioned ayahuasca last time, where the advantage of ayahuasca is that—at least that’s what people say—everyone who takes it experiences more or less the same things. A friend of mine who first told me about it—the one I mentioned—said that before him, in that same village in Bolivia, there had been some German researcher or something, I don’t know exactly what, decades before him, and with no Jewish background of course, and nothing—and he experienced the chariot, meaning he saw the chariot, he saw the same visions that others see. Meaning, ostensibly this is not culture-dependent. It’s not that you’re bringing up from your imagination things implanted there by the culture in which you grew up and functioned. No, it’s something supposedly objective: all people from all backgrounds see roughly similar things. Again, that’s the claim; I haven’t checked it in depth. But that’s what he told me, and he’s a very reliable person, I trust him. So that really raises a question here.

In the case we read—the passages I quoted before—there’s nothing objective here; these are his subjective experiences. With ayahuasca, in a certain sense, it’s stronger, because there everyone sees the same visions. So ostensibly it is an encounter with something outside me. Of course one can argue there too that fine, human beings as such—regardless of what culture they come from—probably have certain things embedded in our very human structure, things common to all of us, not culture-dependent. And then it brings something up from within us; it’s not an encounter with something that really exists in some objective sense. Rather, all of our imagination is similar, because in the end we’re all human beings. And in a certain sense, it may be that certain things are embedded in all of us and are shared. So even that still isn’t clear proof that there’s something objective there, but it’s stronger.

Okay, I’m presenting all this because when I read the passage he describes, it really does seem authentic. And now the question is whether to believe the things he describes—not whether to believe that he isn’t lying, because I don’t think he’s lying, but to believe that he really saw and didn’t imagine. That’s what I mean. Now the question is: how do I measure or test such a thing? How do I know whether this is a hallucination or a certain cognitive encounter? Just to sharpen the difficulty further: the skeptics in philosophy—it’s not described there, I think at least, from what I’ve read—it’s not described there that there are special insights in the passage he wrote. Maybe he has them, I don’t know, I didn’t ask him, I don’t know him. The answer to the chat—yes. Skeptics in philosophy also raise doubts even about things we encounter in our sensory experiences, in our sensory cognition. When I see something, the skeptic asks me: who told you it really exists there? Maybe you’re imagining it.

Now this is a claim that most of us, I assume, tend not to take seriously. What I see probably exists, don’t bother me. But in fact, why really? Why are we so convinced that the things we see—and I’m talking now about the senses, not prophetic visions and psychedelic states, but the things we see, hear, smell, all our sensory experiences, or our sensory cognition—who says these are cognition rather than experiences? Or hallucinations, or fabrications, or imagination? After all, we have no means independent of the senses to verify what the senses give us. We feed off the senses; we have no other tool for interacting with the world. Now the skeptic comes and says: okay, but who says the senses really bring you something from outside? Maybe you’re imagining.

Now here someone really says: well, maybe the intersubjective test, let’s call it that. Everyone sees the same thing. All of us are looking here and we see a wall. Okay? So there’s something here that is ostensibly objective. But it’s not certain. You could say it’s intersubjective, not objective. I remind you of ayahuasca: there too everyone experiences the same thing, and still I assume that many people—certainly those who define themselves as rationalists—would say it’s still a hallucination, just an intersubjective, universal hallucination in some sense. Meaning, it probably stems from the human structure as such, regardless of culture, assuming I accept the descriptions. And still there will be people who say this is hallucination and not really cognition or perception. So why not say that about ordinary vision? The fact that we all see the same thing is still not conclusive evidence.

What I would answer the skeptic, I think—I don’t have another answer—is that beyond the cognitive image I have inside me of a wall in front of me or a table in front of me, there is also attached to it a sense that it is real, that there is something more here. Meaning, it’s not just the visual image itself; together with the image there comes something else, right? I discussed this at length in the first notebook, or in the first talk of The First Existing Being, in the context of Anselm’s ontological argument. And there I called it neuro… I don’t remember exactly what I called it there. There are some neurons that are responsible for the distinction between imagination and reality.

Because today neuroscience knows how to say that when I imagine my grandmother and when I see my grandmother before my eyes, the same neurons are active in me. The same neurons. But after all, in a situation of imagination, I know I’m imagining, or dreaming, or whatever it may be, and when I see her I know I’m seeing her. Meaning, there is something in my experience or in my cognition that accompanies the image as such. The image itself of my grandmother—whether in imagination or in reality—is the same image, and it activates the same neurons. But together with the image—which is common to imagination and reality, or to dreaming and reality—there is some other neuron or neurons responsible for signaling to me: here this is cognition, and there this is imagination. Apparently. Again, I’m saying this—I’m sure it’s true, even though I’m not saying it from concrete knowledge—but it’s obvious, we know, we experience these two things differently. We know when we’re dreaming and imagining. Even though skeptics always like to ask: when you’re dreaming, you’re also sure it’s real. I don’t think that’s true. When I dream, I generally know I’m dreaming. It seems to me. I’m not one of those people who remember dreams, by the way, so it’s hard for me to judge, but it seems to me, as far as I can tell about myself, that I know I’m dreaming. Meaning, it’s not…

And therefore the medium of dreaming or imagination and the medium of cognition are very similar on the visual plane. Meaning, the visual neurons—the same neural map is responsible for this and for that, the same activation of the same neurons. But together with that there is something else, some sensor that tells me: yes, but this is imagination. Okay, but this is factual cognition. And it seems to me that the answer I can give skeptics—and again, not a knockdown answer, there is no knockdown answer to skepticism—but the answer I can give them is that no, I really do experience imagination and real cognition differently, imagination and cognition differently. And of course they can argue that that very difference also all takes place in imagination, that it’s simply two kinds of imagination, even if they’re two different kinds. Fine. About that claim, I have nothing to say. But at least regarding the first-order claim, I can say something. Meaning, I do distinguish between an image that arises in my imagination and an image that stands in my cognition. There is a clear difference in the feeling toward this and toward that. And therefore, at least for me, that suffices. Others may cast doubt on it, but for me it suffices. When I feel that same sensation accompanying the image, telling me: here this is cognition and not imagination—then I assume this is probably really true. That’s my indication that it is true. Again, nothing is certain. They can tell me that this indication too is imagination. Fine, I don’t have a decisive answer. But for me internally—not as an answer to the skeptic from outside, but for me, when I’m dealing with myself, giving an account to myself—for me, what distinguishes is that sensation that accompanies the image, not the image itself. The image itself is the same image, but the context tells me: here this is an image in imagination, and here this is an image in cognition.

Now beyond that feeling… I’m saying—someone asks—beyond that feeling of the distinction between something imagined and something real or tangible, why not simply go to the plane of tangible things? As opposed, say, to the phenomenon you described with drugs, you can handle tangible things, you can touch them, you can assemble them, you can relate to them on the level of reality. To touch is no different from seeing. The sense of touch is also a sense. When you speak about the image you form from all your senses together, someone can still come and say: this is imagination, not cognition. You have no indication that is non-sensory that can give you independent feedback. So this is like a Matrix argument? Yes, exactly. Correlation—so that’s in the fourth notebook of The First Existing Being. Yes, I bring there the argument from epistemology. And I say there that the coordination between hearing and seeing, or between touch and seeing, is not proof. It is evidence that sight is not imagining something separate from touch. But the question whether the picture formed by sight and touch together reflects something in the world or is imagination—that is a question with no answer in that context. When you’re speaking about my sensory whole in general, not sight alone.

I can only say, at least about myself, that for me, living in the Matrix is reality. Meaning, I don’t really see much practical difference between living in the Matrix and living. I didn’t say there is a practical difference. A practical difference for kiddushin of a woman, but they’re still two different things. The question is whether there is something outside or nothing outside. A skeptic. Okay. There’s no practical difference. In the end you can say, fine, this exists within my own imagination, but I conduct myself as if it’s happening because that’s my life, that’s how I work. And someone else will say, no, no, I think there really is something outside. And they may behave in exactly the same way—and that’s usually what happens. Fine, so a practical difference for kiddushin of a woman. But they’re still two different things.

Yes, “a practical difference for kiddushin of a woman” serves two purposes. Sometimes it’s said jokingly about someone who draws a conceptual distinction between two sides that are basically the same thing. Meaning: there’s a practical difference for kiddushin of a woman between those two distinctions. But among the Briskers, when you say “a practical difference for kiddushin of a woman,” it’s a rebuke to the question. When you ask me what the practical difference is, I tell you it’s a practical difference for kiddushin of a woman—don’t bother me. Because when I present two possibilities to you, if they are different, then even if there’s no practical difference I still care, because they are different and I want to know which one is true. And if there is no practical difference, so what? Positivism identifies practical difference with the claim itself. A claim with no practical difference is not a claim. But in my view that’s nonsense, it isn’t true.

Not so much on that plane, but more on the level that if we’re talking about a person who, as you phrased it, through the totality of his senses and the totality of his cognition comes to a certain impression, and then someone casts doubt on all of that with a Matrix-type argument, then I’m saying the objection feels very unnecessary. At least that’s how it feels. The objection—what? The objection seems, ostensibly, unnecessary. The Matrix objection, let’s call it. Unnecessary. Whether it’s true or not, I don’t know. You understand there is a difference between Matrix and not Matrix. There’s no practical difference, but there is a difference—two different things. The question is whether there is something outside me or not outside me. Two different claims, two different world-pictures. Maybe there’s no practical difference, and maybe there’s no way to decide between them. Fine. But they are still two different pictures. So you said: in what sense is the question unnecessary? It’s unnecessary in the sense of practical difference. But it isn’t unnecessary in the sense of practical difference for kiddushin of a woman; it’s practical difference for what the truth is.

So the big question here—and this is exactly the problem in mysticism—is that when, say, this Mendy describes to me the experiences he had in his psychedelic experiences, would I ask him whether there was also a sense that this really reflects something real? Is this cognition, or is it imagination? Because I, as someone who didn’t experience it, have no way even to ask myself that question. I don’t know, because I didn’t experience it, so I have no idea what accompanies that experience—an experience I myself never underwent. But someone who did undergo such an experience, and assuming I believe him and that he is a serious person and not just talking nonsense, then you can ask him: tell me, was there some sense accompanying it that you were dealing here with cognition and not imagination? Or not?

Because someone can come and describe very authentically—and I’ll believe him—that he had all kinds of experiences, but he’ll tell me: look, I know I’m imagining this. I’m not lying to you, I’m not telling you stories, I’m describing the experiences I went through. So he’s someone testifying about experiences he had. But he says: these experiences are not accompanied by the feeling that they are cognitions. They are not—or at least I didn’t feel that they were. No. It’s imagination. Just as I can dream and describe my dreams to you, but I can also tell you that parallel to those experiences I understood that I was engaged in dreaming and not in cognition.

So with the mystical person too—it depends what he’s talking about. If he’s talking about his personal experiences, I don’t call that mysticism. I call that psychological hallucinations. Fine. A person has all kinds of experiences, imagines all kinds of things—in my view that’s not mysticism, at least not in the essential sense. Because fine, so various imaginings come up for him—so what? The mystic is trying to make some sort of claims about the world by virtue of the psychedelic experiences he undergoes. I think that’s the true meaning of mysticism. Again, in ordinary discourse people don’t really distinguish between these two things, and many times they relate to the mystic as some kind of hallucinating person. That’s what’s called a hallucinating mystic. Certainly rationalist people often relate to it that way. I want to argue no. Meaning, what I mean by “no” is: categorically, mysticism is something else. Whether it exists or not, I don’t know. But categorically, mysticism is some kind of perception of something outside me by means not accessible to everyone—not through the senses, not by means possessed by all human beings. Okay?

So when someone comes and tells me himself that he is only imagining, then for me that’s not my topic, that’s not a mystic. When I speak of a mystic, I mean someone who says: no, no, I saw divine visions—meaning divine visions. Meaning, I saw something that exists in some sense in objective reality outside me. It isn’t just my internal imagination, but it’s accessible only to me and not to you. Yes—while I don’t see it, he saw it, and that’s what he says. Now then, I really think that the first step I need to take with such a person—because often the person himself isn’t aware of this—if I want to ask myself whether I believe him or not, or whether I’m willing to consider what he tells me, not yet accept it but first of all consider it, the first thing is to ask him: what was the feeling that accompanied your mystical cognition? Was the feeling accompanying it a feeling of cognition, or not?

Now here it’s very delicate. Again, I haven’t experienced it, so it’s hard—but I’m doing all this analysis as a conceptual analysis by someone who never experienced such a thing in his life. Okay. But that’s what I’m supposed to test in such a person if I want to consider adopting what he says. Because there’s another nuance I want to add. Even if he tells me: I experienced it as something real—there are still two ways of experiencing that. There is a direct way, like how I experience something when I see it. I don’t give myself an account of whether it exists or not; it’s obvious to me that it exists. Together with the visual image there automatically comes that neuron that tells me: here you are seeing, not imagining. Okay? It isn’t some judgment I make and then conclude that what I see indeed exists. It’s built into my seeing. Okay? True, it’s different from the imagined image, but it’s built into the ordinary experience of vision.

So with the mystic I would ask: first, do you yourself think this is something outside you, or is it just your imagination? But that’s not enough. I would ask him another question. Even if you think it’s something outside you, is that your conclusion, or is it your immediate perception? Those are two different things. Because if it’s his conclusion, then someone can come and say—like I said—if I see experiences so fascinating, not drawn from my inner world or my culture or something I encountered, then it’s probably real. There can be such an argument; I’ve heard many people make it. In my view it’s a weak argument. So if he himself says that, I will not seriously consider accepting what he says, because I don’t think it’s true that if he experienced it, that is an indication that it reflects something real. But if he says to me: look, no, this wasn’t some judgment or decision I made reflectively—I looked at what I experienced and asked myself whether it was real, and answered myself that it very likely was because it was a very intense experience, or because there’s no smoke without fire—if I experienced something, there’s probably something outside—that does not inspire confidence in me. Not because he is a liar, but because I don’t accept his assumption that if you experience something like that, it’s probably real.

But if he says to me: look, I felt about it the way you feel about vision. It was simply naturally obvious to me that I was seeing here, not imagining. It wasn’t some judgment or conclusion he reached—it was self-evident. Then if that is so, that’s already something I would take more seriously, because then I would really say this is almost innocent testimony; it’s not a philosophical conclusion but a kind of experience he had, and it isn’t accessible to me, which is why it’s called mysticism. So I’m trying to interrogate him: what kind of experience did you have?

Let me give you perhaps an example that will clarify this a little. Once I wrote an article on Jewish law during the Holocaust. Later, in the third book of the trilogy, I also talked a bit about halakhic rulings made by decisors who are not in the situation and do not understand the situation. Maybe I mentioned it one of the previous times, I don’t remember anymore—in Mary’s room. I argued that a decisor who does not understand or did not experience the situation basically cannot issue a halakhic ruling about that situation. He can direct, he can advise, but he cannot make the decision. To make the decision, it has to be someone who understands from within the experience of that situation.

And I brought there the example—yes, Abraham our forefather was commanded to bind his son in the trial of the binding. The famous question—Kierkegaard presents it in Fear and Trembling—but it’s a question many ask: who said it wasn’t just a hallucination? After all, Abraham had several indications that should have led him to conclude that he had simply imagined this command. It couldn’t be that there was really a divine command here. Now understand: that’s a mystical experience—a divine command. And therefore Abraham our forefather could have said: listen, this is simply a hallucination, it’s not that I’m really encountering God here, it wasn’t an encounter with God, it’s imagination. Then of course he should have ignored it, because it wasn’t really a divine command, it was imagination.

What’s the proof? Several proofs. First, it contradicts what God Himself had promised me before: “through Isaac shall your seed be called.” So how can I now go and bind him? How then will I have offspring through Isaac? So clearly it cannot be that what the Holy One, blessed be He, is now telling me is to bind Isaac. Second, of course, the moral problem involved. How can it be that God, who expects me to be a good person, commands me to bind my son just like that, to kill him? It’s absurd. So there are all kinds of indications, very strong ones, that should have led Abraham to conclude that what he experienced was a hallucination, imagination. He did not really encounter some external reality—God. It wasn’t an encounter with God, it was imagination. And then, obviously, he should have ignored it, because it wasn’t really a divine command; it was imagination.

But Abraham didn’t do that. Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his donkey, and set out running to battle. Why? Many ask. By the way, once I saw in an article by Ravitzky that he brings there that there really are Eastern commentators who claim Abraham failed the trial of the binding, because he should have refused. It was a test to see if he would refuse. It sounds absurd to me and doesn’t fit the plain sense of the verses or anything else, but the difficulties are real. I don’t think that conclusion is very plausible—I mean in relation to the text, not in itself. On the interpretive level it’s not very plausible. But the difficulties that lead to it are real difficulties. In the end Abraham should have refused, or at least not believed that he was really being commanded to do such a thing. So why did he go anyway? Why didn’t he entertain the idea that maybe it was imagination?

Sorry for interrupting, I heard in the name of someone here from Ra’anana that he met the son of Rav Gedaliah Nadel and asked him whether your father thought that maybe the whole matter of the binding of Isaac wasn’t something that really happened, but—as the Rabbi says now—some kind of inner psychological test? But that doesn’t matter. Once the Torah describes this thing, then the Torah is basically telling us: think about this story and draw conclusions from it. So I don’t care right now whether the story happened or didn’t happen, but this is the story the Torah chose to tell me. So now I want to understand what this story says. Should a person in such a situation obey the divine command, or decide it’s imagination? Okay? Suppose I were now to undergo a similar situation—suddenly the Holy One, blessed be He, reveals Himself to me and says: take your son and bind him. What am I supposed to learn? Ostensibly, the Torah is supposed to teach me that I should obey. Even if Abraham didn’t exist—it doesn’t matter—it’s a founding myth, but… What is it educating toward? It educates toward the idea that this is the proper thing to do.

Now I ask why. In such a case, ostensibly I should have concluded that this was imagination and not done it. In my view, the only answer in this context is that whoever asks the question—including myself—has never experienced such an experience. God has never revealed Himself to me, okay? Therefore I cannot ask the prophet: how do you know that this revelation is real? Maybe it’s a hallucination. Maybe it’s imagination. People imagine things. A question that sounds very reasonable, right? It could be. After all, all kinds of people imagine things. So how do you know not?

The prophet cannot tell me anything except: listen, I know it’s not. He tells you, as someone who experienced that experience, it is obvious to me that this was a prophetic vision. Something revealed itself to me; it isn’t imagination, okay? That’s the only possible answer. And the same with Abraham our forefather. If I had asked Abraham: tell me, are you sure this isn’t imagination? He would have said: yes, I’m sure it isn’t imagination. I’m telling you I encountered God, I saw Him. What does “saw” mean? Some encounter—it doesn’t matter right now whether it’s visual—but some encounter in which He commanded me, that’s all. It was clear to me that this wasn’t imagination but cognition.

Now I can’t argue with such a thing, because it’s something I never experienced. I don’t know. It’s like someone who is blind—blind from birth, say. Look, this reminds me of another story, maybe I told it there too in the third book. There was the Chozer of Chabad, Rabbi Yitzchak Kahan—he has since passed away. He once stayed with us at the yeshiva in Yeruham. I hosted him there; Rabbi Lumentzweig wasn’t there. And he gave a talk in the study hall to the guys. And I remember to this day a parable he gave there about two people, one blind and one sighted. And they both enter some room and see that the room is sealed except for the door; there is no opening, no window, nothing, and it is completely empty. Completely empty and sealed. They go outside, lock the door with a key, and both sit on chairs by the door. Fine.

Now after an hour, the sighted man gets up, opens the door, goes in, and says: Yankel—that’s the blind man sitting outside—you won’t believe it, the room is full of furniture. So Yankel says to him: Berel, that can’t be. An hour ago we were there, the room was empty. There is no opening to this room, no one came in through the door because we sat by the door. Therefore the room is obviously still empty. QED. I have a logical proof. What is Berel supposed to do? He also understands the logical proof, but he sees with his eyes that the room is full of furniture. So should he conclude that he’s imagining? I think not. No. He’ll say: this requires very great analysis, I have no idea how this happened, but the furniture is here. How do I know? Because my eyes show me there is furniture here.

Maybe you’re imagining? That can happen. There’s also a fata morgana. I don’t know. To me it is obvious that together with vision there comes something telling me that here I am seeing, not imagining. Now the blind person, who lacks the sense of sight, will not be able to be convinced of this. He has a logical proof that the room is empty. And if I tell him I see that the room is full, and he doesn’t know what sight is—he’s blind from birth—then he’ll say: fine, then your sight is apparently imagination; probably a fata morgana, clearly. And therefore the blind man is right on his own terms, but I am also right on my own terms. I have no way to convince him, but he won’t manage to convince me either. And why? Because I have no way to describe to the blind man, or to place him within, the experience of what sight is. How clear it is to me that sight is something reliable, something that faithfully reflects reality. Not mere imagination. Those neurons that accompany the visual image I grasp with my eyes. I have no way to transmit that feeling to the blind person, because he has never experienced it. But I, who have experienced it, know clearly that if I see, then that’s how it is.

So just as the sighted man cannot transmit that feeling to the blind man, because the blind man has never experienced it, likewise Abraham our forefather, or a prophet, cannot transmit that same feeling of certainty to someone who has never experienced prophecy—like me, for instance. So I can act all wise and ask Abraham: look, you probably imagined it. It’s obvious. It can’t be. I have a logical proof that the Holy One, blessed be He, did not command you. Because earlier He said “through Isaac shall your seed be called,” and He commanded you to be a good person, and both those things contradict this command. So that’s a logical proof that this command never was and never existed—it’s imagination. You see? It’s exactly like the blind and the sighted person.

Fine. But Abraham our forefather would not be convinced by what I tell him. I’m sure he wouldn’t be convinced. There are even midrashim—yes—that Satan came to him and tried to convince him it was imagination, and Abraham our forefather paid no attention. Again, of course these are midrashim, but these midrashim are saying that Abraham had some kind of clear perception that this was cognition and not imagination. And that cannot be argued with. All the logical proofs in the world won’t manage to convince me that what I see doesn’t exist. And Abraham our forefather saw—or experienced in an immediate way—the divine command.

I bring all this as an illustration of what I want to say about the mystic. If the mystic tells me: look, this isn’t my conclusion, it’s not that I thought and had premises and reached the conclusion that if I experienced it then it’s probably true—if it’s a conclusion, conclusions I can draw too. True, I didn’t experience it, but if you didn’t derive it from the experience itself and instead have some conclusion from the experience, then I draw a different conclusion: that you probably experienced an experience and it was a hallucination. But if he tells me: look, it’s a kind of seeing, it’s obvious that it’s true; if you experienced it too, you would also know it’s true—then that, such a statement, I already respect. Again, I’m not sure I’ll accept it, but it’s not a statement I reject out of hand. It may be that he has some sort of mode of perception like the sighted man relative to the blind. I’m blind to this kind of perception; I don’t have it, I’m not a prophet. Therefore I have no way to critique what he says. It may all be imagination and he may just be talking nonsense, I don’t know. But if he tells me, and he’s a trustworthy person, and he says: look, first, I’m telling you my clear feeling is that this is not imagination, it is cognition. Second, this feeling accompanies the experience itself. It’s not a logical conclusion I draw from the experience; rather, the experience itself tells me—it’s like seeing, it’s a kind of cognition. Then I already say: okay, this is something I cannot reject out of hand.

And this is a point that’s very important to clarify, after we come to the conclusion, of course, that the person standing before us is trustworthy—meaning he isn’t lying, he isn’t an idiot. From that point on, after I have reached those conclusions, I need to ask him those two questions, and then think about whether I accept or don’t accept—I don’t know—but then to think. And therefore I would also ask this Mendy the same question. The fact that you experienced various experiences is perfectly fine, but the question is whether your conclusion that these experiences were an encounter with something real and cognitive—is that a conclusion you draw, or was it an experience that clearly accompanied your experiential process? Because from the dilemmas he himself presents in those passages, it seems he is on the level of conclusions, not on the immediate level. Otherwise he wouldn’t raise these doubts. The problem that he raises—maybe it’s imagination, maybe not—apparently even the side that says it isn’t imagination is speaking about a conclusion, not immediate experience.

Yes, regarding my own seeing, I don’t raise possibilities—maybe it’s imagination, maybe not—and then conclude that it isn’t imagination. I have no initial assumption that it’s imagination. It’s obvious to me that it’s true. It’s not… You can attack me, you can say I’m mistaken, that’s not the point, but it’s obvious that this is how I’m built, and I assume that’s true of all of us. Okay? And therefore, in this context, precisely the experiences he describes there, and the doubts he describes around those experiences, tell me that maybe he passes the first test but not the second one. He passed the preliminary tests, yes? He seems to me like a trustworthy man. Again, I don’t know him, but from what he wrote—that’s how it seems.

Then I ask him the first question: tell me, did you experience this as an encounter or as imagination? So he tells me: it seemed to me like an encounter, not imagination. Then I ask him: tell me, is that a conclusion—that it was an encounter and not imagination? Or was it clear to you from within the experience itself that it was an encounter and not imagination? Again, I didn’t ask him, so I don’t know. But from what he describes here, it seems to me that on that he would answer in the negative. That may be a conclusion, and even about that he’s hesitant. It isn’t clear to him like the sun, it isn’t clear to him the way his own sight is clear to him. And therefore I say that even if I’m willing to accept the possibility that mysticism exists, I think you have to put the mystic through these tests before I seriously consider what he says.

That’s the clarification I wanted to give regarding the first point, about the spiritual intuition underlying mysticism. From this I also perhaps want to say one more thing before I move to the second point: if the source of mysticism really is some kind of spiritual cognition, then there is no necessity, for example—if I now return to Kabbalah—to assume that Kabbalah was transmitted by tradition from Mount Sinai, as people often try to persuade us. And why are they trying to persuade me of that? Because the assumption is that if it didn’t come from Sinai, it’s probably not true. But I want, in a reverse move, to argue: leave that aside. It may be true—maybe yes, maybe no, I don’t know—and it doesn’t depend on whether it came from Sinai. I’m willing to discuss the possibility that it’s true even without the assumption that it arrived from Sinai. Why? Because I claim that there may be—there is such a possibility—a faculty of mystical cognition. And if there is such a faculty, it can exist in the twenty-first century or the sixteenth century or the tenth century. It doesn’t have to come from Sinai. That isn’t the only encounter we can have with spiritual worlds; Sinai isn’t the only such encounter.

If there are such capacities—maybe there are, maybe there aren’t, I’m not one hundred percent sure; I tend to think there are, but I don’t know. If there are such capacities, then it isn’t impossible that people in later generations also have them. And if the Ari brings me all sorts of elaborate Kabbalistic teachings with all kinds of concepts and complex structures and so on, it may be that he has some ability to encounter those dimensions of reality, and from there he extracts all those insights, all those pictures. Therefore it doesn’t have to come from Sinai in order for me to take it seriously. On the other hand, if it didn’t come from Sinai, then it may also not be true. Fine. But it may also be true. Coming from Sinai is a necessary condition? No—necessary but not sufficient? Fine. So how can I test or formulate a position on this matter? If I come to the conclusion that there is such a thing as spiritual intuition, or at least give it a chance, and I’ve put the person through the tests I described before, then I just want to close the circle and say that what remains for me to do is simply to see whether the picture he describes to me—it makes sense. It makes sense. Okay? The question—and here I return to what I said last time—is whether it puts many phenomena into one context. Like a scientific theory: is it something that gives some explanation of the known through the unknown? What I talked about last time. If it gives meaning to many phenomena, or laws, or biblical passages, or whatever, then it is certainly possible that the person offering me this interpretation—the Ari, for the sake of discussion—really does have some kind of spiritual intuition by which he manages to quarry from reality spiritual pictures that I cannot. And my indication is that this picture really does give meaning to things, and it sounds convincing. It still remains mysticism, because that picture is not accessible to me; it is accessible only to him. Only he sees it. But I am not completely helpless with respect to it, because I can try to examine whether it puts things in context, whether it gives me some meaning, whether it unifies many phenomena under one roof or within one conceptual framework. Then there is some indication that there is substance there, that the person has put his finger on something real. And that’s what I spoke about in the previous class.

And that is the second point. The second point I wanted to discuss is really this: after I come to the conclusion that there may be spiritual intuition, how can I test the person—whether this is in fact spiritual intuition or whether it’s a hallucination? And here I said: it’s the context, the integration of many phenomena into one conceptual framework. Those are the kinds of indications that can help me formulate a position about it.

And here I want to illustrate that point—this second point—of how I test the mystic, not how he discovered these things. He discovered them through spiritual intuition. But how do I test whether I believe his spiritual intuition? After I’ve put him through all the preliminary steps I described before, then it’s already on the table. I already understand that from his point of view this is indeed what happened. Now I ask myself: okay, now I need to test whether I accept it. It only means that he passed the tests, so it is a live possibility. I’m not rejecting him out of hand. But that still doesn’t mean I accept it. In order to accept it, I will test the insights he presents to me and see whether this really is a theory that makes sense, okay? That’s what I described before.

Like that blind man who hears from the sighted man that he sees a room full of furniture—the blind man can perhaps accept that the sighted person possesses some sort of sense with which he himself is not equipped. Therefore, if he says to him: look, I’m convinced, it’s obvious to me, if you knew this too you would be convinced too—then maybe he’ll accept it, maybe not. At least he can’t reject it out of hand as hallucination. Still, I assume he’ll want some indications before accepting it. For example, he’ll try to check for some indications of the presence of furniture in other ways, say through hearing. If he can produce sound there—a room that is empty has an echo, a room full of furniture has no echo—then he’ll have some indication. It makes sense—suddenly there’s no echo. So apparently the room really isn’t empty. Then he will accept what the sighted person told him. Meaning, all the tests he does on the sighted man merely turn the sighted man’s statement into something that can be considered. But you still have to consider it in order to decide whether to accept it or not.

So how do we consider? I said: we look at the integration created by this theory, at the overall picture—what it looks like, whether it gives significant meaning to many things, and so on. So here I want to bring an example, an example of how this works. I want to discuss a pair of concepts in the Kabbalistic world. I’ve spoken about this already in several contexts in the past. A pair of concepts in Kabbalah that, in my view, is a very powerful distinction. And for me this is a good example of the way Kabbalah probably grasps something that is not merely hallucination. Meaning, there is some kind of deep perception of reality there. I’m not committing to all the details, but there is something in the Kabbalistic picture that manages to give meaning to things in a way that even convinces me there’s something to it.

And perhaps the clearest example of this is the distinction between kindness and judgment. Right? The right line and the left line. Basically, this is almost perhaps the most basic foundation of Kabbalah. There are other Kabbalistic distinctions, but this may be the most basic, or one of the most basic. And let’s see for a moment how I test whether there really are these two poles in the world, these two forces in the world.

First of all, we talked about how many mystical traditions speak in similar languages. That itself is an indication. And it seems to me that this pair—kindness and judgment, or male and female, and it’s all the same thing, that’s the whole idea—those pairs that are ostensibly different—matter and form, male and female, kindness and judgment, light and vessels—all these things are mapped onto each other. It’s the same distinction. Different aspects of the same distinction. You can see it in yin and yang in one place, or in male and female even, if you want, in Jungian psychology or things of that sort—which of course stands on the edge of mysticism, on the side of mysticism, not on the non-mystical side. The similarity between different mystical doctrines is one of the indications that can perhaps lead me to consider that mystical proposal more seriously.

But beyond that, I want to argue that the distinction between kindness and judgment receives in the Kabbalistic world a much broader meaning than in the ordinary world, when you speak with an ordinary person not versed in Kabbalah about kindness versus judgment. And that in itself gives me some kind of intuitive smell that there is something real here. Now what exactly do I mean?

In this conception of kindness and judgment—when we talk about kindness and judgment in ordinary contexts, everyday language, we know what kindness is and we know what judgment is. Laws—Jewish law is a collection of judgments. Judgment, or law, yes—judgment is a kind of law. Kindness is being benevolent, helping another, doing him kindness, and so on. In the revealed, ordinary language, I don’t think the concepts kindness and judgment connect to each other at all. They are two concepts, each of which I understand, but I don’t see a clear link between them. In the Kabbalistic world, not only is there a connection, but they always come as a pair of opposites. Now when you try to think about that, about the meaning of it in non-Kabbalistic language—I always translate it into non-Kabbalistic language in order to understand what lies behind Kabbalistic distinctions—so I examine the concepts kindness and judgment themselves. And I say: there really is a point where kindness and judgment touch—not in the sense of similarity but in the sense of anti-similarity, of opposition. What do I mean?

Judgment means basically doing something by force of a binding law. Right? The law obligates, and therefore that’s what I do. Judgment is some kind of law that tells me this and this must be done, or this and this is forbidden. Kindness, in its everyday meaning now—leave Torah sources aside—means doing something I am not obligated to do. Right? I think that’s what kindness is called: benefiting someone or doing something I am not obligated to do. If so, we already begin to see the first lines emerging that illuminate why kindness and judgment do in fact speak to one another; they are not just two unrelated concepts. In a certain sense, they really are opposites. Judgment is acting according to the law, according to rules. Kindness is acting outside the rules, in a place where the rules do not obligate me.

When I perform kindness for someone, I give charity to a poor person, then I give him money even though I do not owe him. When I repay a loan, I pay money that I owe. So payment there is an act of judgment. The law obligates the borrower to repay—the halakhic law, the legal law. If you borrowed, you must repay. So when I pay, I am performing an act of judgment. When I give money to a poor person, I am performing an act of kindness. Judgment is Choshen Mishpat, yes; kindness is Yoreh De’ah. Meaning, after it was fixed in Yoreh De’ah as an obligation, it suddenly becomes judgment, but yes, conceptually. So this distinction—the Kabbalistic distinction between kindness and judgment—when I suddenly begin to think about it in the revealed world too, I suddenly see that it gives me some sort of depth-meaning I hadn’t thought of before I knew this Kabbalistic pair of kindness and judgment.

I’ll say more than that. After I understand this distinction between kindness and judgment, I can already extend it even further. I can already understand that any action outside the rules is called kindness, even if it is not an act of beneficence. Kindness generally is associated for us with goodness—I’m doing a good deed. But if I now abstract the concept of kindness, then I basically say: it’s an action outside the rules, an action not mandated by the rules. That can also be an action for harm, not for benefit. I’ll remind you that the Torah speaks about one who lies with an animal or with his sister—I don’t remember which one of the two—and says: “It is a kindness.” What does “kindness” mean? The claim is that kindness means it does not enter into the rules; it does not make sense. The logical rules—it is not understandable to us. In that sense it is kindness. It is an act so not logical, not fitting with what we are used to in ordinary thinking, that this is what is called kindness. It is outside the laws, outside the rules.

Adultery with another man’s wife, for example, is also outside the rules, but it is not kindness in the extreme sense, because many people have that urge. It’s forbidden, fine, but I can understand why a person did it. Something that is not understandable, that doesn’t fit into logical patterns, apparently is also called kindness. There’s an example of this—from the first time I heard these explanations of kindness and judgment. It was in a talk by Rabbi Pinkus from Ofakim—Tifrach, sorry, Tifrach or Ofakim, I don’t remember which one, one of the two. I think Tifrach maybe. He really spoke about these things, and he gave two examples from the Torah. One of them is Abraham our forefather, who hosted the angels. So the midrash says that he slaughtered three calves in order to serve them tongue with mustard—three tongues with mustard. Now remember that in those days, of course, there was no refrigeration. You slaughter three calves for tongues with mustard? I don’t know, maybe they managed to preserve meat, I don’t know exactly, but it sounds like insane wanton waste. You could have slaughtered one calf, given each of them a smaller piece of tongue, and the rest he could eat as drumsticks. Why do all three absolutely need three tongues with mustard, no less? It sounds totally disproportionate, illogical.

If someone were to do that today, I would say: I am not educating my child to behave like that, because it’s not logical. Even your kindness has to be bounded by reasonable limits, not scatter your money in every direction and do things without proportion. That is not a reasonable way to act. You need to weigh your actions even when you perform kindness, when you host guests. Therefore I would not educate my children to behave like Abraham our forefather. And yet Abraham our forefather is considered the pillar of kindness. Abraham’s sefirah is kindness; Isaac’s is judgment. Abraham is kindness. And that’s what the Torah is saying—I don’t know if the angels were really there. Maimonides, for example, says this was in a dream, right? So you can say it never happened. But what is it saying? It’s coming to teach me what kindness is. It doesn’t mean that this is how one should act. One should not act like this. But kindness means acting outside the rules, in an illogical, disproportionate way—something bursting forth. And in that sense Abraham our forefather was the pillar of kindness. He behaved in an unreasonable way.

Now we, as human beings who are supposed to implement this in the world, are not supposed to be pillars of kindness. We are supposed to perform kindness, but it should be mixed with judgment, because he was the very idea of kindness. But we are supposed to be the practice of kindness, not the idea of kindness. And in the practice of kindness it always has to be mixed with a bit of judgment. It is not right to behave with pure kindness. But we do need to recognize the concept of pure kindness. And in that sense, Abraham for me was a kind of myth. It doesn’t matter to me whether he existed or not, but he is some kind of idea that is supposed to represent one pole, the pole of kindness. And Isaac represents the pole of judgment. And Jacob is the joining of Abraham and Isaac together, producing beauty—kindness, might, beauty. Right? That is the joining of these two things. Someone reminds me there is a column about this—column 241. I didn’t remember that right now. But some joining of these two things, which is really the way they need to appear in the world. In the world, abstract ideas cannot appear—not the idea of kindness and not the idea of judgment. In the world they need to appear together. But in order to understand well what kindness and judgment are, I need to look at them in some kind of ideal sense, at the abstract idea of kindness, which it is not correct to apply as is, but one does need to look at in order to understand what it says.

And what it says is basically: ignore the rules, don’t work with logic, work with some bursting goodness, or behavior not according to rules. And judgment is “Jerusalem was destroyed only because they based their rulings on Torah law.” Right? Meaning, judgment is to cling to the Shulchan Arukh and not move from it right or left. And that, of course, is improper behavior. But it is a certain pole—Isaac. Isaac our forefather goes joyfully to be bound. That is Isaac’s might. I’m not supposed to go joyfully to be bound. If someone sentences me to death—the Socratic problem—if I’m offered a chance to escape prison, will I escape or not? Personally, I would escape. Why? Because with all due respect to judgment, and judgment says I must be killed—fine—but I can’t behave in a way that is fully attached to judgment. There is some place where I will break the attachment to judgment.

There is a Tosafot in tractate Shabbat on page 4, a very interesting Tosafot. The Gemara there discusses someone who sticks bread to the wall of an oven. If he stuck the bread in the oven and afterwards it gets baked—he stuck it there on the Sabbath—and now if it waits there in the oven and bakes, then it turns out that he committed an offense punishable by stoning and is going to die. So now, after he stuck the bread in the oven, he wants to remove it, to take it out so it won’t bake, and then he won’t have violated the labor of baking—cooking and baking, yes, it’s the same primary category. So the Gemara discusses whether it is permitted or forbidden to remove it, because removing bread is a skill and not a labor; there is a rabbinic prohibition on removing the bread. Tosafot says: it can’t be that they forbid him to remove the bread. Why? Because he won’t listen to us. Suppose we said it really was forbidden to remove the bread. So am I now supposed to sit with folded arms, not remove the bread, and be led out to death by stoning because I leave the bread to bake and then it turns out I transgressed the labor of cooking and I’m liable to stoning—say intentionally, with witnesses and warning, it doesn’t matter right now. Okay? Nobody will listen to us. He’ll violate a rabbinic prohibition, and the main thing is he’ll save himself. Tosafot says: if he won’t listen to us, then it probably isn’t forbidden either. It can’t be. If a reasonable person would not obey me, then it can’t be that Jewish law obligates me to do that.

By the way, I have a bit of a difficulty on this. The Gemara in the chapter “All Holy Writings,” chapter 16 of Shabbat, says there: what happens when a fire breaks out in my house on the Sabbath? First of all, I am forbidden to extinguish it. Yes, it doesn’t quite fit, but I am forbidden to extinguish it, okay? Even though people already note that extinguishing in such a case is labor not needed for its own sake; you don’t need the charcoal. Extinguishing when you don’t need the charcoal is labor not needed for its own sake, so it’s only rabbinically forbidden. So for a rabbinic prohibition I am required to give up all my property? My house with all my possessions is going up in flames, and I’m forbidden to extinguish the fire? I have to lose all my property in order not to violate a rabbinic prohibition? More than that: I’m also forbidden to rescue things from the fire, lest I come to extinguish it. Now that’s already really strange. Even if I actually extinguished it, it would only be rabbinically forbidden. Here there is merely a concern that I may come to a rabbinic prohibition, and because of that concern I have to lose all my property? That’s already two layers of rabbinic prohibition.

Now I ask: would anyone listen to that? Obviously not. What person would let his house burn down with all his possessions, everything he accumulated in life, because there’s a concern he might come to a rabbinic prohibition? So I’ll violate the concern that I might come to a rabbinic prohibition, but at least I won’t come to starvation. By the way, there are indeed various devices that help us do this. You know that today they permit extinguishing a house because it can also endanger the neighbors and then it may come to danger to life and so on. But the decisors very, very broadly expand that permit, even where the concern for danger to life is very remote, because essentially their goal is a kind of legal workaround so as not to place a person in a test he won’t withstand. Not to violate a rabbinic prohibition and lose all my property—so I don’t know. Also with that prohibition I often get the feeling that it’s a declarative prohibition. No one really expects someone to stand by it. But Tosafot on page 4 in Shabbat says that if no one would stand by it, then it isn’t forbidden either. So I don’t know how to relate to that.

Okay, in any case, for our purposes what I want to argue is that the second story Rabbi Pinkus brought was about Rebecca. According to the midrash, Rebecca was three years old. Now the servant comes from a long journey with all his camels, and a three-year-old girl comes and draws the water for all the camels—and camels drink huge amounts. Alone. “Drink, my lord, and I will also draw for your camels”—this is insane. Help him a little, give him his vessel, I understand. But a three-year-old girl should do all the work instead of a grown man in the prime of his strength? Fine, let him rest a bit and then water the camels. Help him, I understand. But taking on all the work is just not logical.

So he says there too we see that Rebecca also had some kind of bursting kindness, some kind of conduct not according to rules. And the claim is basically this—and with this I’ll conclude—the concepts kindness and judgment are ideal concepts. They are not the concepts we know from our own world. And in their ideal sense they really are two opposites. Conduct of kindness is conduct not according to logic, not according to laws, not according to rules. Conduct of judgment is according to rules and laws, attached to rules and laws. What happens with us is that pure kindness and pure judgment cannot endure. That’s what Rashi explains there, in the difference between chapter 1 and chapter 2 of Genesis, between the name Elohim and the Tetragrammaton together with Elohim. He says that the Holy One, blessed be He, thought to create the world with the attribute of judgment, and saw that it could not endure, so He joined to it the attribute of mercy—Hashem Elohim.

In the sense I’m speaking about here, the plain meaning is that the world cannot endure conduct that is pure judgment—but neither can it endure conduct that is pure kindness. In practice, we need to conduct ourselves with kindness shaped by judgment. Neither of the pure models is a model for implementation—not pure kindness and not pure judgment. You are not supposed to surrender yourself to death like Isaac, or like Socrates, or like Shimon HaTzaddik—yes, that story, the Socratic story about Shimon HaTzaddik and his son. And you are also not supposed to perform kindness like Abraham our forefather, because those are two ideas, abstract ideas, and they are not meant to be implemented in the world. But understanding what those ideas are, and the opposition between them—that would not have arisen had Kabbalah not told me that we are dealing here with two opposing ideas. Then suddenly I see that this yin and yang, this mysticism that speaks to me about kindness and judgment, male and female, left and right, all those kinds of things and connects them to one another—it makes sense. It means that apparently we have grasped some abstract idea that underlies many phenomena we know from our world.

And therefore this criterion I mentioned earlier—that I can test mysticism by whether it gives meaning or interpretation to phenomena, and links together phenomena that seem unrelated—that is a certain indication that there is something to it, that the person telling me this has grasped an important point.

Now I’ll expand on this a bit more next time, because I think it sharpens what I said before: the extent to which we really do have some tools to test whether mysticism makes sense or not. I’ll continue a bit further with this matter of kindness and judgment next time too. Okay, let’s stop here for now. Comments or questions?

I can share something. I remember that in yeshiva a rabbi of ours once gave us a description of something that very much resembled what you just said. He said that as a society we need to give some anchor to ideal situations, even if today they cannot be realized. So he gave a very nice example of days when people will be decent and there won’t be desire for theft and things like that—and running a supermarket with no sellers. So he said: one day in the Jubilee year, have a supermarket with no sellers, and everyone buys and pays on his own, with no supervision, no nothing, in order to imprint on consciousness that there is some moral state we want to reach. Right. So there you go—you can, by the way, do it in a literary way and write a book about a supermarket run with no sellers. That’s what the Torah does when it describes Abraham and Rebecca to me. It is basically presenting the model before me. It doesn’t tell me to do it once a year, but it says: listen, there is such a model. You’re not supposed to implement it as is, but there is such a model. Thank you. Okay, good, so goodbye. Sabbath peace to everyone. Thank you very much, Sabbath peace.