Q&A: Mysticism
Mysticism
Question
Hello Rabbi,
2 questions regarding the lecture series on mysticism.
According to the definition you proposed for mysticism, is psychoanalytic theory mysticism? (And really all psychotherapy theories.) To me this is completely esoteric; there’s no way to connect to the theory of the subconscious and so on. Or once many people use it (and sometimes succeed), does it somehow cease to fall under the definition of mysticism?
On another topic, when you refer to the splitting of the Red Sea as a miracle and a suspension of the laws of physics, there’s a circular argument here: you have to assume it was a miracle in order to assume there was a suspension of the laws of physics. If you don’t assume it was a miracle, then you learn from it new laws of physics. So basically there’s never any way to know that something is a miracle; it’s just some law that we don’t know yet. How can one know with certainty that something is a miracle?
Answer
Two excellent questions.
1. There may indeed be room to define it that way. In principle, though, as I explained in the lectures, a scientific theory is not mysticism even though it too deals with entities not directly accessible to us. If the reasoning of a reasonable person leads from the observed facts to the theory and its entities, then that is not mysticism. The question is whether psychoanalysis is like that. It’s borderline. There are arguments there in favor of the theory and its connection to the facts, and quite a few people do accept it—and not only because of Freud’s personal authority.
2. This is a question about the definition of the supernatural, not necessarily connected to what I said about mysticism. The claim is that everything that happens in the world is natural by definition. Even if we have no explanation by means of the laws, who says nature operates according to rigid laws? After all, the midrash of the Sages, which is also brought by Maimonides, is that the Holy One, blessed be He, made a condition with Creation—that is, the opening of the donkey’s mouth, the swallowing of Korah and his congregation, and the splitting of the sea were all built into creation from the outset. That is a thesis according to which there really are no miracles in the sense of a present divine intervention. But of course that empties the concepts of natural and supernatural of content. The accepted assumption/definition is that there are rigid laws of nature, and whatever conforms to them is natural, while whatever deviates from them is a miracle.
The attitude toward the miracles of the Bible is complex and goes in two directions. On the one hand, I definitely begin with the assumption that this is a miracle (the Torah and the Holy One, blessed be He, told me so), and then arrive at the conclusion that there was a deviation from nature here. On the other hand, when I see the sea split, it is intuitively quite clear to me that this does not fit the laws of nature (see the previous paragraph), and therefore my conclusion is that this is a miracle unless proven otherwise.
Discussion on Answer
Intuition is a cognitive tool that serves us in all fields. But if it’s only your intuition that something is so, then that’s esoteric and mystical.
The question whether you are consistent and whether the thing is true is not connected to the question whether this is mysticism or not. In my lectures I carefully distinguished between the two questions.
If you end up concluding that psychoanalysis is mysticism, then look for a new definition of what “mysticism” is—assuming we’re looking here for one single definition that perfectly matches the hidden intuition in the hearts of people who use this term. Maybe I didn’t understand what exactly is being looked for.
It’s not much of an achievement to set a definition and then classify the data by it, instead of the other way around. By the way, maybe one could add a scale of intensity and say that psychoanalysis has a mysticism level of 30, and so on. After all, we’re not looking for a binary, razor-sharp touchstone that will cut through all fields with precision, but only for pure poles.
By the way, it might be worth checking translations into different languages; maybe there there are words with higher resolution that would help classify things into subfields.
I don’t really know your views on everything precisely.
You go on at great length about everything, and that makes it hard to understand you.
But the general spirit of your remarks,
and the title you gave this lecture series,
made me want to respond to you and share with you a nice line
that I saw Rabbi Aviner wrote, in the context of Prof. Leibowitz,
in the name of the Hatam Sofer (who himself said regarding sending away the mother bird: “We have no business with hidden matters”).
And this is his wording:
“One who in the revealed realm [that is, says openly] does not believe in the hidden realm [that is, calls Kabbalah and the inner dimension of Torah and Hasidism ‘mysticism,’ and the like], should be suspected that perhaps, in the hidden realm [that is, secretly in his heart], he does not believe in the revealed realm.”
Friends opened my eyes that perhaps the above comment was inappropriate,
especially since I don’t read and listen, and don’t fully understand you [because of my own impatience and limited strength].
(And perhaps you mean entirely different things from what I think and imagine and read on Wikipedia.)
And especially since you are greater than I am in wisdom and years.
And especially since I heard that you were the teacher of my current teacher [Rabbi Avi Luria, may he live long],
when he was in his fourth year in Yeroḥam [I’m now at the end of my sixth year in Tzfat],
so you’re a bit my rabbi too, and apparently this is not respectful toward one’s rabbi. And especially in these days, etc.
Thank God, I’m not free of mistakes, and “bold as a leopard” sometimes turns, for me, into brazenness and insolence.
In any case, I didn’t mean to offend, Heaven forbid, but only to express a firm opinion,
and we fight not with people but with opinions.
So sorry for the comment, which was a bit out of place!
And success in all things!
Everything is fine. Good luck and all the best.
Thank you very much.
1. Don’t we see here some sort of middle path, where people believe in something even though they can’t connect to the line of reasoning or the understanding of the person who said it, and also not merely on the basis of personal trust, but rather some kind of feeling that there’s truth in it? I don’t know how to define it.
2. So if, when I see Jesus walking on water, I assume it’s something I don’t know, while when I see the splitting of the Red Sea I assume it’s a miracle—am I being inconsistent? Because I really don’t believe that God would intervene for Jesus, but on the other hand these are two cases that intuitively seem similar, so it’s strange to distinguish between them.