I.
INTRODUCTION
II. THE NEED
FOR DEFINITIONS
III. JEWISH PERSPECTIVE
I N D E
X O F T E R M S
- Self\Ego
- Creativity\Self-preservation
- Being\Doing
- Pleasure\Duty
- Belonging\ Freedom
- Head/Hand/Heart
- “The
Two Scriptures That
Contradict…
- Patriarch: Divine Measure of
Judgment - Matriarch: "Divine Measure Of
Compassion
- Inner/ Outer
- The Axis that Connects the
"Lower Awakening" (Shma Yisrael)
with the "Higher Awakening"
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I. Introduction
by Robert Borens
Psychology - A New
Jewish Approach
Is Psychology a Science?
The traditional and popular sense of psychology
as a scientific discipline needs examination and
clarification. A scientific framework, as such,
is assumed to be fixed, containing defined
components, with clear and established dynamics,
excluding involvement of any factors not part of
the pre-defined framework. The operative
question that should be asked is: Can the key
factors driving human behavior be captured in
such a framework?
Attempts to reduce human behavior to scientific
models are inevitably self-contradictory.
Psychology as a discipline emerged with the
diagnosis of bodily pain, generally referred to
today as clinical pain, whose physical causes
were not clear or identifiable. Those symptoms,
which we refer to today as "psychosomatic", are
believed to originate in some undefined area
hovering between the physical and the
mental/spiritual. There is little consensus or
clarity here. There are those who attribute
psychosomatic phenomena to neurological changes
in the brain, those who insist on purely
physical explanations, and others see
mental/spiritual components. However, there is
no school of thought which attributes purely
spiritual origins to psychosomatic symptoms.
As generally viewed, mind exists as an
expression in the realm of consciousness and its
components, and is formed and fixed by external
factors. And it is here where much confusion
lies in providing mental/spiritual explanations
to behavior. Analyses done examining the
efficiency of various therapeutic approaches
show no difference in success between somatic,
spiritual, and social scientific methodologies.
The respective results are more indicative of
the population treated rather than in technique
used. That is, the best results can be expected
with children, impressionable personalities,
weak dependent populations lacking confidence in
their ability to solves their own life problems
with a relatively undeveloped sense of free
choice. Psychology patients are victims of a
technological culture that is only capable of
addressing "how" questions, and futilely tries
to reduce values and ideals that address the
"what for" questions of life to technique.
Human behavior, from the point of view of
Judaism, is complex and multifaceted. It has a
material component, which gives expression to
the legitimate physical requirements of the
meaningful life, and also has a "dimension of
height", whose source is a continuum of values
which originates and derives authority from the
divine above and whose base sits in the realm of
human morality. There is also a "dimension of
depth", whose source is in the human soul, at
the center of which is the spark of the divine,
through which is transmitted human originality,
talent, and personality.
Individual Uniqueness - That Which Distinguishes
Each Individual
Free choice is the factor residing at the center
of discriminating behavior, and its basis is the
individual's sense of confidence in his ability
to choose his way, to improve or impair, and to
be an equal partner, with concomitant rights and
responsibilities, in his own micro- world and in
the micro- world at large. Completion of self,
understood as a high level of qualitative
perfection, enables the individual to deviate
from the circle of his personal micro-world and
influence the macro-world at large. Such
self-completion may be understood as a
complementary balancing between the spirit,
matter, and the self.
It is here we make the distinction between the
ego and the self, between material and spiritual
needs, and we begin to understand the creative
impulse as the challenge to bring to realization
the uniqueness of each individual.
Self-realization of this nature goes beyond
survival as an existential objective and becomes
the creative expression and crystallization of
the unique and original quality hidden within
each individual.
According to this approach, there exists a
behavioral dynamic that integrates the natural
contradictory and opposing forces of the
microcosm and creates a complete and original
unity.
Summary: Principles of Jewish Psychology
Psychology, as popularly understood, defines
human behavior as driven by the principle of
survival, or alternatively, the instinct for
self preservation. Human behavior from a Jewish
perspective is seen as a creative axis giving
rise to expression to the unique original
quality of the human being.
Values - Human behavior should be understood as
the individual unique expression of goals rooted
in the divine. The value-driven goal drives and
is expressed through the realization of one's
uniquely original quality.
The material and the spiritual converge, focus
and concentrate around human reality.
The value of man - Free choice is of central
importance in defining the ability and value of
the individual. It reflects the status of man as
an equal partner in creation with his Creator,
and his ability to repair and impair himself and
the world at large. Through free choice we also
understand the importance of conscience and how
it can be used as a vehicle for constructive
goals.
Man needs guidance as opposed to "care." The
notion "care" implies that the individual does
not have the ability to take responsibility and
solve his own problems. Guidance, however,
assumes that the individual is indeed capable of
solving his own problems but needs objective
guidance in identifying his unique qualities.
The individual is not capable in alone
identifying these qualities, following the
talmudic principle "A prisoner cannot release
himself from prison."
Clarification and identification of such
qualities must come from outside. The
individual, working alone, has access only to
those parts of himself that are rooted in the
ego and driven toward the objective of
self-preservation.
Judaism rejects any approach that views human
reality within a superficial and two dimensional
construct of good and bad. The distinction
between the self and the ego does not imply nor
instruct that one should focus on one's self and
do battle with one's ego. The "self" in our
sense is the good inclination or drive. The
"ego" is the evil inclination or drive. Rather,
the ego, the evil inclination, is the vehicle
through which the self is given tangibility and
brought to sensory actuality. Thus the
directive: "And that shalt love the Lord they
G-d with all thy heart" - that is, with both
your drives, good and evil.
Reward and punishment, that occupies a central
role in most religions, plays a far more
marginal role in Judaism. Reward and punishment,
as generally understood, conceives of a distant
and superior role to the Creator which stems
from a primitive, two-dimensional, and
inherently materialistic construct of strong
versus weak. Judaism, in contrast to this, is
built on the notion of reciprocity between men.
The reciprocal relationship as such also exists
between Man and his Creator. This understanding
points to the need for the individual to look
inward in search for his uniqueness and to
appreciate the interaction between those aspects
of it derived from the "on- high" and their
basis below. Psychology in its popular and
traditional sense, constructed in the famework
of science, ignores internal human quality and
looks only to the material outside for
influencing and causative factors.
II. The Need for
Definitions
A list of definitions is essential if we wish
to communicate our understanding of Jewish
psychology to the western reader. Not every term
that is accepted by western perception is
compatible in its meaning with our perception.
The term self for example does not differentiate
between the self that is the source of quality,
and the ego. This distinction is critical to our
attempt to describe human activity. The
distinction between mechanical activity and
qualitative activity is somewhat foreign to the
western conception, whereas for us it serves as
a key and a cornerstone. Another point is
categorization: Dividing personalities according
to type – an approach that we apply extensively
in order to describe behavior based on the
differentness inherent in individual human
qualities. It is superfluous to point out that
the western perspective, built as it is upon the
quantitative and the mechanical, attempts to
ignore differentness among human beings,
limiting itself to a quantitative grading of the
relationships between personality components.
Differentness in Intelligence Quotient is purely
quantitative, while a qualitative perception
would attempt to define differentness in the
qualities that determine behavior. It would
define quality of talent and not merely level of
talent – rather, the level of the character and
the personality. Our qualitative perception
strives to define the uniquely original as a
determiner of differentness, and we grant the
uniquely original a legitimate and even ideal
status, whereas for the quantitative perception,
being different constitutes an ethical problem,
in that the quantitative perception strives for
a definition of the common denominator among all
human creatures. It is forced to buttress its
position by calling upon liberalism, in order to
justify the reality of differentness; it is
called the inevitable exception. We have no
problem at all with differentness, in that it is
a trait of uniquely original quality and thus an
ideal, first choice state.
Furthermore, we relate qualitative behavior to
certain traits of character. We view these
traits as the identifying feature that will aid
us in defining the category of personality. We
are not alarmed by the prohibition that
liberalism has decreed against categorizing
personality types.
[1]
Superficiality and broad generalization have
never been the indicators of the scientific
approach. One must not mix social/political
perceptions with scientific inquiry, which
strives for an objective truth that is free of
fear or prejudice. We therefore maintain that
one person may be more endowed than another with
any one of the qualities of which the human
structure is comprised, just as knowing how the
relationship between the qualities is different
from one individual to another will make it
easier for us understand an individual's
behavior and an individual's response to self
and to environment. Along with each quality, we
note the category derived from it: May it afford
pleasure to the open and curious reader.
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III. JEWISH PERSPECTIVE
An Explanation of the Structure of the
Worlds
Man's Place
The Jewish perspective deals with a human
being's place in the cosmos, which reflects a
reciprocal relationship between human
beings and the cosmos. The human being is
perceived as a microcosm whose presence embodies
not only the essence of the entire cosmos, but
even of the Godly Presence Itself in all Its
glory. Here we derive the concept of the
exclusive importance of the human being in the
universe, and from this importance, we derive
the concept of the human responsibility for the
creation, as well as the human ability to create
rather than merely to flow with creation. Hence
the capacity for choice, which obligates, and
which also grants reward and punishment, and
above all the capacity and the privilege of
being an ally to the Creator of the universe –
an ally whose influence over the creation weighs
- if such were possible - on a scale with the
Creator's own power.
This fundamental perspective characterizes
Judaism and sets it apart from the other
religious perspectives, which give man a modest
place in the creation and capabilities that are
not substantively different from those of any
other creature. The mystical belief systems,
needless to say, decree an utterly insulting and
humiliating reduction of stature upon man,
viewing him as the victim of cosmic powers whose
influence decides his fate.
In the Jewish perspective, human being possess
powers that surpass every existing power in the
created universe without exception. Only the
Creator is greater than the human being. Only
toward one's Creator may one feel bondage and
obligation. Here we derive the obligation to
view and to relate to one's existence through
the Divine prism. To this end, God endowed human
beings with the Torah and its mitzvahs,
the commandments. "Let all your deeds be for the
sake of heaven." By way of heaven, one
contemplates one's existence and rules over it
and over all of creation. However,
should a human being attempt to relate directly
to existence – that is to say, not through the
Divine prism, why then, "the mosquito preceded
you" God rebukes the suffering Job. One
loses one's Godly power – one's unique human
quality - the moment one presumes to throw off
the yoke of obligation to one's Creator.
Or HaChaim, in his commentary on
Leviticus (22) captures the essence of the
Jewish perspective with succinct, methodical
clarity: "And I have seen fit to awaken human
hearts to the great mystery alluded to in this
portion: Know, that Hazal have said
(Sanhedrin 93A) that the nation of b'nei
Yisrael – their rank is above the rank of
the angels. And they have said further that God
created four worlds, one above the other. And
they are listed (hinted at) in the verse in
Isaiah (43:7): 'All that is called, by My name
and for My glory – I have created it, I have
formed it, I have even made it.' 'For My glory';
the supreme world, which is called atsilut,
nobility. 'I have created it,' which is called olam
habria, the world of creation. 'I have
creatively formed it,' yetsira,
'creative forming'. 'I have done it,' asiya,
doing."
Or HaChaim adds that a parallel exists between
the structure of the worlds and the structure of
human beings. In human beings, the levels of the
structure, in ascending order, are called
physical//emotional life force - spirit -
soul. The worlds too are structured one
above the other in ascending levels. Just
as a dynamic vector exists that binds them and
unifies their activity according to a
rule-governed pattern, from the lower world to
the one above it, so a dynamic vector exists in
human beings that binds the purely material
needs to the physical//emotional needs, binding
these in turn to the spiritual needs, and these
to the needs of the soul.
(Incidentally, this dynamic vector
has nothing in common with Abraham Maslow's
humanistic theory. Maslow too ranks human needs
from basic to higher – and even to "peak
experience". According to Maslow, a higher need
cancels the needs below it, whereas in the
gradation of naran: nefesh, ruah, neshama
– physical//emotional life force - spirit -
soul, all of the stages unite into one texture,
with each component having its own well-defined,
active role within the whole.)
Human beings are to be found only in olam
hayetsira, "the world of creative
forming". (See section on creativity.) In the
world of yetsira, the human being is
sole ruler. Within human boundaries only, a
human being is omnipotent. Human influence is
decisive; human beings determine the state of
affairs, their meaning and their value. Human
activity is qualitative rather than mechanical.
We mean by quality the ability to create new
meaning and to grant new and ever-changing
validity and value to the meanings that exist.
It is important to emphasize that the world of yetsira
is one's own private world, tailored to one's
own size and bearing the unique features of
one's own authentic personality. Human creative
activity is expressed in the ability to use the
raw materials found in olam ha'asiya,
"the world of doing" that is the world of
physical matter and that includes all the
components of the survival instinct found in
existential reality.
According to this perspective there is no
significance whatsoever – neither positive nor
negative – to any of the events that transpire
in olam ha'asiya. Human beings
alone determine their function for good or evil.
In relation to a human being "the world of
doing," the world of physical matter, serves
merely as a reservoir of raw materials that lack
any feature or capacity of their own. From olam
habria, "the world of creation" which is
the world of ideas – the world of spirituality,
values, and quality – human beings draw values,
ideas and qualities, which they then process and
fit to their own existential conditions
according to the levels of nefesh, ruah, and
neshama - physical//emotional life force,
spirit, and soul. Making use of these qualities
is expressed at the practical level by giving
meaning to the existential reality in which you
are immersed and which is subject to your
control.
The self belongs to the world of yetsira.
Ego is subject to the world of asiya.
According to the rules that characterize the
values of ego versus self, ego is subjugated by
self when man activates his creative will.
Alternatively, self is subjugated by ego when
man does not make his presence felt in the
creative world, when he finds himself doing
(creating) nothing – merely being immersed in
the material level of existence, found in the
world of asiya. The moment that man
activates his self, union takes place between
all three worlds. In the cover diagram we
clearly see ego's subjugation to "the world of
doing", and the self's close attachment to olam
habria, "the world of creation," of ideas
and spirituality. On the other hand, we can see
the connection between ego and an individual's
subjugation to "the world of doing". At
the moment that one activates one's olam
hayetsira, all the other worlds unite
around it. The one bestows the raw
materials, as mentioned, and the other the
spiritual meaning. As they merge together, an
encounter occurs in the world of creativity.
This is the moment of grace. When man neglects
his duty in olam hayetsira, a rupture
forms, which is potentially disastrous, dividing
the worlds from one another – as a consequence
of the absolute antagonism that intrinsically
exists between them. As the Or HaChaim writes:
"...You must know that materialism opposes the
spiritual connection more than fire opposes
water." Hence the split, the terrible ripping
apart that one experiences who does not fulfill
his role as a creator, who does not activate his
self's authentically unique quality. Such a
rupture finds expression not only in one's body
and one's physical//emotional life force, but in
all of creation as well. Cosmic clash and
natural disaster is the result, since nature's
raison d'etre, the entire reason it was created
by the Creator of the worlds was to serve the
human being, God's servant. When man neglects
his role, the very nature of creation's
functioning is affected.
Hence the polar divide separating
the Jewish perspective from that of the other
religions, which grant the Creator a
central-exclusive role, with man filling a
powerless, passive and docile role. Self-
nullification sustains his existence opposite
the Lord. This polarity sharpens further when
contrasted with the Far Eastern religions, which
see man's final and absolute merging into the
cosmic vastness as the ultimate goal of his
existence. Opposite these views of God and
universe stands the Jew, the leader of the
cosmos who bears the burden of the creation upon
his shoulders, whose influence reverberates
throughout the worlds. "Everything is beneath
his feet." Consolidating and actualizing the
human self - its authentically unique quality -
is nothing less than actualizing God's presence
in the universe.
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1. Self and Ego
Human activity unfolds
within two cycles – a vicious cycle and a
virtuous cycle – which are opposite in
character, yet interact with one another. The
self is defined as the authentically original
expression of those qualities that characterize
an individual as an autonomous, unique entity.
The self includes talents and features of
character such as personal affinities and
tendencies. These include will, human
sensitivity, intellectual sensitivity, creative
talent, creative imagination, originality of
approach, etc.
From a Jewish perspective, the self is an
expression of the "Godly spark" that is unique
to one as an individual. This spark expresses
itself in the root of the soul of that
individual. The self is the sum total of the
unique by which one individual differs from
another.
The self does not accept outside
orders. Its activities are not dictated by the
external stimulation of the environment.
Rather, the self is activated by an inner
dynamic born of its Godly element, which
aspires to be actualized in the real
existential world, through the human being who
has been given the mandate to actualize it,
within the framework of his role in the
universe, for it was to fulfill this role that
his soul came down to the universe, by force
of the law that determines that every talent,
ability or other feature of quality whose
source is in God, aspires to move from
potential to actual, from inner to outer.
The self possesses an energy that in principle
subjugates every existing force of nature
found in man and environment – to the extent
that this energy is activated by free will.
The capacity for free choice, for balanced
judgment, for arriving at a verdict and for
making a decision, has its source in the self.
Discerning truth from falsehood and good from
evil, accepting personal responsibility - and
indeed the entire realm of moral
considerations belongs to the territory of the
self.
From the distinction between self and ego, we
may derive a category for a leader
personality: A leader is distinguished by a
self that is strong, original, qualitative,
and powerful, that takes initiative and that
takes control of the mechanical system, as we
have mentioned. This is also true of all true
artists and of all those blessed with uniquely
original quality of talent or of character.
Ego
Ego belongs to the
mechanical system that inheres in the nature
of the universe. Ego is activated from the
outside by the law of brute force; strong
versus weak, in which the stronger vector
activates or controls the weaker.
An additional
feature of ego derives from this law, which
represents the system of the world of matter.
It is comprised of the needs of matter, which
are a mechanism for survival or
self-preservation.
These needs divide into three elementary
components: Kina, ta'ava, vekavod.
"Envy" – possessiveness, territoriality;
"lust" – the body's needs; "honor" – social
needs. This is a mechanical system
devoid of the abilities that characterize the
self. It is devoid of will, decision,
determination, moral//spiritual judgment, free
choice, or personal responsibility. It is a
blind system that is not autonomous and that
is not self-activating, just as a machine is
not self-activating, but is rather activated
by an outside force.
A dynamic interaction exists
between the system of self and the system of
ego, which follows the classic prescription
for understanding the relationship between
Jacob and Esau: "When 'the voice is the voice
of Jacob,' then 'the hands, [which] are the
hands of Esau,' have no control."
In principle, originally, the
self was meant to activate the ego as a tool
that would bestow material realness upon the
self and give it expression. Therefore, when
the self is in control and taking the
initiative, then ego yields and becomes
subject to the self.
When the self (Jacob) is
inactive, then ego (Esau) is activated by
stimulation originating in the external
environment. This distinction must
necessarily catalog every egoist as a prisoner
of his environment, a weak character. A
big ego is not a trait that characterizes a
leader personality, contrary to the western
perception.
2. Creativity /
Self-Preservation
Western psychology in its
original version views the self-preservation
instinct as the sole basis and root of
motivation for all human actions, including
creativity. We have found that creativity
is born of a pair of opposites that work to
effectively express the functional aspect of
the self/ego as two opposite sources
of energy: Creativity and self-preservation.
Creativity has an internal source of energy that
urges the expression of creating: This is the
self's authentic quality.
Creativity moves along a vertical
axis. At its base lies the self. At its summit
are gathered the values that belong to the
"dimension of height" in the structure of
reality. "Dimension of height" is the "third
scripture" defined in section seven, which
deals with the structure of the "two
scriptures that contradict each other until
the third scripture comes and resolves them".
It is important to emphasize the
difference between the prevailing notion of
creativity and what we define as creativity.
In the common understanding of the term,
creativity is anything that deviates from
predictable action or that deviates from a
structure of routine activity. Creativity in
our understanding is a feeling, insight, or
action that has its source in the uniquely
original quality of a self that is specific to
a particular private individual, and that
differs from person to person.
Creativity is not a response to an external
stimulus as is its opposite partner, the
self-preservation mechanism. Creativity is
original talent as it aspires to move from
potential to actualization, to direct and mold
action in accordance with its own original
way, unique to itself. The ambition towards
self-actualization characterizes every force
that is in a state of dormant potential.
This ambition does not depend
only on stimulation that come from the
external environmental system, as Western
psychology believes, for they may not be
compatible with the original uniqueness of the
talent that aspires towards expression.
Originality recoils from external directives,
for they are the result of external
stimulations that do not suit - that are not
amenable to – the inner need to express that
talent unique to the self.
The dimension of height is the
source of those values that provide creativity
with direction and goal, and that answer the
question: Is this activity justified?
To
What Purpose?
Creativity does not confine itself to art,
music, and other minor actions. Every human
activity is accompanied by a creative indicator
if that activity is adequate to express one's
unique talent, and if it has a value-oriented
goal that is compatible with one's authentic
quality. Thus, an activity in the field of
business or social organization or even
political activity can join the creative
aristocracy as long as it is tailored to the
unique size of the one involved in it, and as
long as it expresses character, talents, and the
values that endow that particular activity with
meaning, content, and justification. When this
is the case, creativity wins the yetser tov's
seal of approval.
Self-Preservation
Self-preservation is the action
opposed to creativity. Its source is a technical
mechanism that attaches to the structure of
materialism/brute force. This structure contains
a mechanism that is blind and that is devoid of
qualities, values, or originality. It cannot
answer the need for expression that the
qualities of the self have, such as will, free
choice, balanced judgment, and talent.
The need for survival is what exists at the
bottom of the self- preservation system. It does
not differ, in man, from the instinctual system
that characterizes every animal. It belongs to
the material nature of creation. It has no
workings of awareness, balanced judgment, or
will, but is activated, like every mechanical
system, by an external vector that exerts force
on it. The name of the game in every
material/mechanical system is brute force.
The Torah denies self-preservation as a
fundamental perspective or as an approach to
understanding existence, accepting neither the
disappointments and fears that derive from this
approach, nor even the "positive" view found in
its achievements. It sees these as temptation,
the aim of which is to repress and to distance
the influence of an existentialism that can be
found only in the cycle of creativity.
The Torah sees creativity in the symbol of
Yaakov, and self- preservation in Esav. Just as
Yaakov's hand grasps Esav's heel, so did
creativity and self-preservation come down to
this world joined together. According to the
Godly plan for the creation of man, survival is
required to minister to and to obey creativity's
needs and will, and to serve as the tool that
gives substance to creativity, which in turn
gives meaning to human existence.
"And nation from nation will grow mighty, and
the greater will serve the younger." "When 'the
voice is Yaakov 's voice', then 'the hands that
are Esav's hands' cannot rule [Ya'akov]." We see
here that a constant tension rules between these
two opposites: Who will dominate whom?
When creativity rules self-preservation--the yetser
hatov (the 'good-creating urge') rules
the yetser hara (the 'evil-creating
urge') and thus is fulfilled a cardinal rule of
God's service: "'You shall love God, your Lord,
with all of your hearts.' [The sages explain:]
with both of your creating urges." The yetser
hara, against its will, replies 'amen' to
the yetser hatov, and serves it
humbly.
When creative activity grows weak, the survival
mechanism prevails over it, and drafts it into
its own service. Thus a creative thief is
possible, and a uniquely original murderer –
though their ultimate purpose is civilization's
destruction.
This is because survival was not created in
order to ensure its own continued existence,
despite its name, but rather to bestow realness
and substance on and to serve as the tool of the
yetser hatov, as a means only. When survival
becomes the goal of existence, it becomes a
vicious cycle that destroys itself and
everything in its path.
Behavior based on creativity will be remarkable
for its innovativeness and its courage, and for
its intellectual and artistic achievements. It
will preserve its own uniqueness. It will be
capable of dealing with pressures and
confrontations, which the war of existence saves
for those who are faint-hearted and weak in
character, who draw their sustenance and courage
from the self- preservation mechanism: The more
they drink from this false source, the weaker
they grow, and the more they succumb to the
environmental pressures that surround them in a
vicious cycle – reminiscent of a thirsty man
attempting to relieve his thirst with salt
water.
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3.
"BEING" and "DOING"
The opposite members of the pair
"Being" and "Doing" can complement each
other. They can also interfere with each
other and even destroy each other, depending on
specific circumstances that we will describe:
"Being" and "doing" are concepts that derive
from the very sense of existence. A form of
existence exists that can be defined as 'being,'
and as opposed to this, or alternatively, man
can live with a sense that expresses itself in
activity, in "doing".
The sense of being is controversial. Some
maintain that every sense of existence is
attached to a practical view, to an action that
expresses it. As far as they are concerned,
there is no existence – and mainly no sense of
existence – without activity. On the other hand
it appears to us that no activity has a chance
of becoming a sense of existence if it lacks a
dimension of "being", an experience that
penetrates into or derives from the inner space
of the self.
This means that the self has forms of
expression that endow its existence with
substance, and these are not necessarily
dependent on being attached to activities that
take up space in the dynamic world of mechanical
"doing".
Lovers' very experience of 'being together' is a
"love is not dependent on something else", and
it is sustained even when no sign of external
communication passes between them, nor any
practical cooperation. 'They're just happy being
together,' without utterance or sound. This
experience of existence is one of deep and
unifying silence.
The experience of "being" is built on an
intimate contact that takes place within the
depths of the self; between the self's need for
expression and actualization and the
environmental conditions that respond to this
need. Any other happening that merely passes
through the environment, that is not absorbed by
the senses, that does not exist in the "being"
dimension, lacks all significance for that
person's existence.
We must note that the need for a "being"
experience becomes more vital and necessary the
more the component of the self takes central
place in an individual's personality. An
individual with a richly original personality
cannot drown it in forgetfulness among the
riotous noises of "doing" that are happening in
the environment. The self that is in one must
receive its appropriate attention, directed
toward one's qualitatively unique needs and
sensitivities. Small talk is not to one's
liking, nor is following the crowd one's habit.
One can never finish reading a book just because
it is fashionable, or join the "in" crowd, or
fit the style of one's existence to external
directives. One's "doing" is attached by a
direct bond to the self's expression of inner
being, and takes orders to action only from the
headquarters of one's own specific personality.
"Doing"
"Doing" that is not bound to
"being" is that activity which takes its
directive from the external mechanical system:
From fashion, from the pressure of the crowd,
from the intrusion of the public sphere into the
Holy of Holies of the private space. Such
"doing" is not necessarily opposed to "being",
as long as it does not substantively contradict
the needs of the self. Only the "doing" that is
capable of interfering with those life needs
that characterize uniqueness of personality –
the "doing" that does not serve as an expression
for the self's sensitivity and need for
creativity – such "doing" does as it pleases,
makes up its own rules, and threatens one's very
sense of existence.
It should be noted that in a world that seethes
like a madly bubbling cauldron due to a
multitude of artificial stimulations that is
nearly infinite, which peep out of every corner
every day anew, one who possesses a rich and
authentically original personality feels that he
is floundering in deep waters; there are no
fish.
Whereas a meager personality – a person of
paltry uniqueness – on finding himself in the
mad cauldron, feels quite like a fish in water.
Because of his lack of inner experiences and
sources of stimulation, he is in need of
stimulation from the outside. He is like that
extrovert who requires deafening thunder,
extracted from a grotesque system of amplifiers
and drums, in order to conceal his absence of
any experience with the inner happiness of
existence, and his lack of ability to convey the
minimal experience he has. There is no need to
speak when deafening noise rules the atmosphere,
and serves as a substitute for the void,
emptiness, and lack of experiences that derive
from the source of the self.
This explains the increase in the
external/competitive element: Grades and tests
serve as a substitute for study for its own
sake, the indicator of creativity.
This explains the constant and desperate search
for a system that will boost work activity in
business and industry, instead of awareness of
the need to fit "the right person to the right
job" or, as we would put it, the need for a
"doing" that fits and expresses the "being" –
the needs of the self.
It is important to note that excessive emphasis
on "doing" can choke the self, by turning the
personality into a machine devoid of human
sensitivity. "A break in the fence calls for a
thief", calls for a cruel harshness toward human
needs, and calls for the declaration of every
liberal, humanistic theory, as lip service and
as an empty vessel.
The human element that flowers around the inner
kernel of the self is responsible for behavior
that overflows with tact, and for the balance
between emotion, mind, and "doing". A deficiency
in the human element causes a destructive clash
between mind and emotion, and is a prime cause
of personality deterioration and mental illness.
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4. Pleasure – Duty
The various perspectives in western psychology
share in common a view that the distinction-making
that is the basis of human behavior is the
distinction between pleasure and duty. As similar
to the distinctions made by every primitive animal
that distinguishes between pleasure and pain,
human beings distinguish too between pleasure and
duty. One is drawn after an activity that promises
pleasure, and one flees a situation that threatens
pain. Common to both of these is that they are
both stimulations from the outside. Like the
carrot and stick method, they determine the
character of human behavior, just as they
determine the behavior of all the other creatures.
The Jewish perspective views both pleasure and
duty as intrinsically legitimate goals.
In contrast with the Catholic view that sees sin
in pleasure and virtue in duty, Judaism relates to
both affirmatively when they work as complementary
opposites, and negatively the moment they are
separated from one another.
Precisely the same negative attitude is given to
duty severed from pleasure as to pleasure severed
from duty.
Pleasure does not draw its resources only from
the self- preservation instinct, as they believe
in the mechanical-materialistic west. Pleasure
is the result of the self's own fulfillment,
having succeeded in expressing and actualizing
its own uniqueness. Such pleasure has no quarrel
with the sense of duty. On the contrary, duty
supports it, and celebrates its victory with it.
The self cannot move from dormant potential to
actualization except along an axis of
creativity, which is supported at its upper end,
as mentioned, by the values of the "dimension of
height". From these values, duty draws its
strength. According to this introduction,
pleasure would be the expression of creativity
in its perfect state.
Pleasure is comprised – and embraces – the
merging of all emotions, intuition, imagination,
and desire. With their help, it becomes an
excitingly dynamic vector, opening – for the one
experiencing pleasure – the vastness of the
horizon, enabling one to embrace the sensation
of one's own existence.
This is a sensation that allows one to exercise
control over it. One governs it according to
one's own will and aspirations, out of happiness
and the soaring vision of free choice made
tangibly real.
Duty
Action done out of duty that belongs to the
survival instinct, coerces man into compulsive
behavior, enslaving and strangling every power
of imagination, excitement, and joy of creation
that were in him.
There does indeed exist a duty that is not
related to the survival instinct, but rather
draws justification for its existence from the
great umbrella of values that shelters over the
entire vastness of existence, and that includes
both pleasure and duty in its scope.
This being so, we view duty as the fulfillment
of a creative need: It is meant to support and
to fortify the value of the self, and to build
the foundations of positive and negative
self-image.
Duty is an expression of
responsibility. The feeling of duty is not
caused as a result of fear of punishment, but
rather from the will to experience and to
explore one's capabilities.
Thus is duty tied to feeling,
and to the will to bear responsibility –
because responsibility is an expression of the
self's ability to take control of reality, to
get things moving, to determine, to decide,
and to lead.
This is the most tangibly real expression of
the power of the self, as opposed to ego,
which is directed by the self-preservation
instinct, which is made up of nothing more
than existential fears.
The act of taking control requires fuel. Duty's
energy is drawn from pleasure, and its
components are joy and excitement, as pavers of
the emotional path. Through this path flow
creative imagination and intuition, and all
other central components of creativity, pouring
meaning and quality into the activity by which
the self takes control of the existential
system.
Thus pleasure and duty join together in mutual
complementarity, along the self's creative
route, whereas on the plane of the survival
mechanism, both are left behind, mutually
hostile and mutually exclusive: Duty source lies
in existential fear, while pleasure is the
compensation for that fear.
Balance between duty and pleasure is created
through the "third scripture", which is the
value-based "dimension of height" that makes
possible the impossible: To enjoy duty, and to
relate responsibly to pleasure.
Judaism thus rejects the compulsive moralist no
less than the wanton hedonist who takes no
responsibility for his actions.
Judaism does not view either side as offering a
solution for a perfect human being, unless both
unite together under the "dimension of height".
Introducing the "dimension of height" gives
perspective to duty and pleasure, enabling these
two opposites to cooperate and pursue a common
goal.
An ideal requires, in order to be realized, the
soaring momentum of pleasure ignited by the fire
of the ideal, and in order to take a stable and
serious course, the element of duty, while both
of these are motivated by an elemental
motivating force, the power of will. [2]
This enables them to break free of the
self-preservation mechanism, which merely
revolves around itself.
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5. Belonging –
Freedom
This pair of opposites is found where the private
space and the public space intersect. Its function
is to regulate one's relationship to the other, to
the environment, and to oneself. The various
perspectives in western psychology encounter
complications when determining the relationship
between belonging and freedom.
On the one hand, belonging is a goal, the
heart's desire. Happy is one whom everybody
likes. Quantitative evaluation of the measure of
popularity decrees the fate of a candidate's
achievements: To life or to death – and not only
politically, but professionally as well, and
even academically. Here we derive a criterion of
the similar and accepted one as the positive
one, and the dissimilar one as negative, or at
least as strange.
Yet on the other hand, psychology sees the
march of human development as a march along an
axis that opens with dependency and concludes in
independence. What guides society in its search
for an appropriate punishment for the deviant,
if not the removal of his freedom for a given
period of time.
Individual rights parallel individual liberties,
and are built around the principle of the right
to freedom: Freedom of expression, freedom of
movement, and the freedom to belong!
Absurdity arises out of this: An individual's
willingness to renounce a considerable portion
of the right to freedom, in order to choose
belonging: To a spouse, to family, or to some
other social, religious, or cultural framework.
These are frameworks that impose strict
conditions on those who seek to belong to them,
the common factor in all of which is a
renunciation of personal freedom for the sake of
belonging to that specific, demanding framework.
This paradox confounds even the proper
procedures of democracy, because liberalism,
which calls civil freedom sacred, and raises it
to the top of the scale of values, falls from
grace the moment it gets into government and
must put on garments of flesh and blood like
ordinary people.
This ordinary person of flesh and blood loses
his liberal patience the moment he is forced to
relate to another ordinary person whose bad luck
it is that he does not belong to the accepted
and enlightened camp. To this fellow, the
principles of liberalism and social justice do
not apply at all. One may persecute him and
slander him until he is torn out by the roots
and eliminated from the liberal landscape of
enlightened society.
Enlightenment, as is well known, is a synonym
for liberal, and liberal, as is well known, is a
synonym for belonging to the camp that for some
reason sees itself the correct camp. Here we see
a freedom that is turned into a belonging that
is restrictive, harsh, and intolerant, and that
ultimately makes a sham of the freedom to belong
and the right to self-definition.
Our perspective sees freedom as a derivative
function of the self, of the unique, the
authentically original, and the different that
characterize one's quality. It is not only every
human being's right, it is also every human
being's obligation to pursue self-definition and
self-expression, on the basis of the self's
unique quality. This right is canceled only and
whenever one person's right obstructs another's
path to personal freedom.
Human development too from the first stages of
childhood to maturity can be explained as
traveling along an axis from belonging to
freedom: A newborn's sign is absolute belonging
while in its mother's womb. It undergoes a
rather cruel wrench from the umbilical cord as
part of the separating liberation.
The stages of its development are characterized
by a continuation of the transition from
belonging to freedom, which finds expression in
an increasing need for independence – until the
ideal stage of belonging through freedom,
through the choice of a spouse. "Therefore a man
shall leave his father and his mother and cleave
to his wife." So one turns from belonging to
freedom and from freedom to belonging, and it is
free choice – the value-oriented embodiment of
freedom, created by introducing the "dimension
of height" – that creates the new belonging:
Belonging through freedom.
Protecting and developing this freedom requires
a protective framework, a preserving vessel.
This protective framework is the need to belong.
The vital importance of this need is derived
from that other basic and universally accepted
need, the need for freedom.
A baby belonging to its mother, and a child to
its family, and a man to his wife and to his
society, is not secondary to the need for
freedom but rather parallels it in its vital
necessity to human existence.
If a person does not succeed in attaining the
conditions necessary to his belonging (for
instance, in the wake of a war or tragedy that
severs his ties to close friends and family) he
may forego his freedom, casting it away as a
useless vessel and even, in the extreme case,
despising his own life. "Why should I live life,
if no human being would feel my absence?" a man
demanded once of me, immersed in depression over
his lack of belonging. This man was a healthy
and successful person by all conventional
criteria.
Belonging and freedom do not exist and are not
nourished each respectively from its own
separate source. The need for belonging draws
from the need for freedom, and vice versa. They
complement one another despite their being
essentially antithetical, and this is due to the
mutual nurturing and fertilizing between them:
Belonging is what connects the materials,
stimuli and conditions of the environment to the
self's needs for expression and creativity.
Belonging is what enables a selective,
differentiating attitude, unique to the
authentic needs of the self. The self dictates
belonging's goals, and determines its path and
the conditions under which it operates. The self
is what raises the issue of its unique needs
(freedom).
A person has no need of a belonging framework if
this framework is inadequate to provide the self
with an expression for its uniqueness, with an
attentive ear, with empathy, with support, and
with protection of its freedom.
This existential absurdity is the secret of
belonging to God: This is a belonging that flows
along an axis of hashgaha pratit, Divine
Providence at its top (belonging) and free
choice at its base (freedom). This axis is
positioned vertically toward the "dimension of
height", and along its course a unique
experience of existence flows, that receives
direction and definition from the "dimension of
height". The "dimension of height" acts as the
"third scripture" that resolves two scriptures
that appear to contradict each other by their
very essence – belonging and freedom.
When freedom and belonging are balanced, these
two elements truly come into their own: They
find their fullest and most tangible expression
in the framework of the family – a microcosm of
its own – and their noblest and most exalted
expression in the bond between man and his
Creator. On the one hand: "I am dust and ashes."
On the other hand: "His heart grew proud in the
ways of God".
It should be pointed out that the
freedom/belonging paradigm can be used to
diagnose and to understand various human
behaviors, as well as determining a wide range
of personality categories. As a diagnostic tool,
this paradigm has consistently proven sound.
We mean by this classifying according to human
intellectual qualities, and according to those
that find their expression in art, and even
determining separate categories for male and
female. As the role of the intellectual
component increases, so the need to belong
decreases, in favor of the need for freedom.
Objective thought aspires to free itself from
bias, from sticking to the known and fixed
tracks, even attempting to free itself from
structures of thought, and concepts that have
the tendency to get in through the back door of
"self-evident" and other mixtures of thinking
habits, the rotten fruit of routine and mental
laziness.
The more the influence of the
survival mechanism increases, the more the
scales tip toward the eternal vicious cycle,
the blind mechanism that pulls toward
belonging, being that the survival instinct
itself is a prime feature of belonging to the
mechanical system of the material nature of
creation.
This belonging mechanism [3] is a blank, vacuous
mechanism, completely void and devoid of any
hope of an ability to break free of itself.
Freedom then would be a prime indicator of
spirit, which rises above the limitations of
belonging to space and time.
Belonging Through Freedom--Woman
To speak of family is to speak of woman.
"Honored is the king's daughter within." "His
home – that is his wife." "She is the mainstay
of the home."
It is woman's very nature to create belonging -
attraction to her and from her, the man's
attraction to her, and her attraction to him. A
woman has the power and the ability to create a
connection – to make another belong to her, and
to belong to another. Even woman's liberation
and her ability to create are crowded into the
narrow framework of belonging. This explains the
jealousy that characterizes woman more than man.
"One woman envies the other's loin", Hazal teach
us, and also "a woman recognizes [the true
nature of] the guests", and also "much more
insight was given to the woman". Woman is bound
in belonging to the natural biological mechanism
more than man. She demonstrates quicker and
superior ability to adjust (to belong) to the
environment, and to sudden change, and is
blessed with senses and with
survival/existential instincts that far surpass
the man's in their efficiency.
She is the framework that creates the container
that expresses and preserves all that her man
has to offer (if he has anything to offer).
Alternatively, she will show impatience and
indifference to a man who is not compatible, in
his content, with her ability to create an
actualizing container.
Here we can understand woman's natural belonging
to space and to time – to the extent that the
Torah saw no need to obligate her to perform
time-bound commandments. These were intended to
ground the man, who lacks belonging, and to
attach him to a tangible reality that possesses
dimensions of space and time.
The principle of ideal union between belonging
and freedom finds its prime human expression in
the love of man and woman, toward realization of
the ideal union between cosmic male and female.
"For all is in heaven and in earth."
From the religious perspective, belonging brings
one to awe of God, to humility and to bitul
hayesh, canceling ego. Freedom brings one
to love, which means initiative and choosing to
belong.
"A slave is comfortable with moral abandon,"
meaning precisely the slave, who represents the
extreme of belonging, separated from all freedom
– precisely this belonging causes a reaction to
the opposite extreme, to a freedom that lacks
belonging – moral abandon; freedom without
responsibility.
A law of the fundamental structure of creation:
It is built of opposites that complement one
another by virtue of (their merging through)
"the third scripture". "By God's word, Heaven
was made." "For in His high mightiness, He
created the high vault of the heavens."
This is the "third scripture" that unites – and
creates a dynamic vector out of – the tensions
born of the two opposing factors. The dynamic
vector creates unity and complementarity between
antagonists.
When there is no such triangular structure,
there is no service of God, and relating to the
"dimension of height" is not feasible since a
relating that creates awe but not love exposes
itself to pressure from the opposite direction,
and eventually succumbs to that pressure,
becoming freedom's opposite reaction: "Insolence
thrives," moral abandon.
Love that is a product of freedom with no
container, flows into channels that stimulate it
and drag it into becoming a love with no
"dimension of height", which becomes a love that
enslaves, erases the self, blurs the image, and
then repeats the process.
A dynamic vector operates within belonging: The
initiative to belong to the good versus the urge
to belong to evil. Oy li miyitsri v'oy li
miyotsri. "Woe to me from my creature('s
urge) and woe to me from my Creator('s urge)."
The freedom that enters the picture then chooses
the positive belonging – belonging out of free
choice:
- Belonging/hishtadlut, investing
effort
- Freedom/bitahon baHashem,
confidence in God.
- Choice.
- Hishtadlut and bitahon
regulate one another by relating to the
"dimension of height", to awe and to love.
This dynamic relationship fluctuates according
to one's dependency on the "dimension of
height". What was confidence, bitahon,
today might be the obligation to invest effort,
hishtadlut, tomorrow, and vice versa.
Of Yissachar, the pack-bearing donkey, the Zohar
says (section 1, 242; 2) that he did not love
his duty because of its pleasingness and
goodness, but rather desired it because of its
yoke and its burden (belonging). For there is no
greater rest for the spirit than the bearing of
burden willingly (belonging) through choice and
through freedom.
Hishtadlut in the direction of the
"dimension of height" saves one hishtadlut
in the direction of the battle for existence; a
value- oriented hishtadlut in place of
an existential hishtadlut.
An artist and a child stand on opposite sides of
the fence: The artist stands on his freedom –
freedom of the spirit. The child is tied by his
umbilical cord to his mother, to his family.
Grant the child freedom and he will not know
what to do with it, and he will bring it to his
mother. An artist seeks to reveal the unique and
the authentic. Routine is the artist's enemy; it
is the very embodiment of belonging to the
material frameworks. Soaring vision and
imagination run away from any belonging to the
present, to space and to time. Hence, the
artist's tendency to reject conventional
assumptions – of society, of fashion, of
religion, of family, and of all the other
frameworks of belonging that chain an individual
to society, to the public, and to all the other
conventional assumptions.
Attitude to the Law
Our attitude to the law is an embodiment of
obligatory social belonging. A model for the
developmental process of such belonging can be
found in studies conducted by the Swiss pioneer
of developmental psychology, Jean Piaget.
Piaget investigated children's attitude to the
law through their attitude to the rules of
playing marbles. At age six, the children
related to the rules of the game as to an
absolute and sacred value. The rules originated
in God, they reasoned, or in the House of
Parliament. One could never, and it was
forbidden to change the rules of the game in any
way, under any circumstances. At age ten, the
children attributed the rules of the game to the
big children in the eighth grade. Only they were
allowed to change the rules of the game.
It was only at age thirteen that Piaget received
an answer at the democratic level: Children of
our own age invented the rules of the game, and
if all agree, we can decide to change the rules
any way we wish.
A citizen's attitude to the law indicates his
level of maturity no less than his level of
culture. Excessive recourse to the law
represents the grasp of a drowning man, in a sea
of reality that is too complex for his level of
maturity: A belonging that does not stand in
balanced relationship with one's freedom.
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6.
'Head,'
'Hand' and 'Heart'
"And you shall bind them as a sign on your hands,
and they will be as totafot between your eyes, and
you will write them on the doorposts of your house
and in your gates."
Their union is choice's goal – the very heart
of choice, with the help of a device called
will.
Head, hand, and heart are symbols that point to
three paths through which attitude and activity
flow between oneself and one's universe, between
oneself and one's environment. Some use, with a
similar meaning, the symbols of thought, speech,
and deed: Thought-head, speech-heart, and
hand-deed, activity. These are tools that
express the talents that are the devices that
create the sense of existence.
A guiding principle: Note that each of these
relates to only one dimension of the sense of
existence, and is inadequate to fill or
encompass it all.
'Head'
One thinks in order to fill existence's need to
understand events, and to predict in order to be
able to plan ahead, to organize one's existence
around a goal that gives it meaning, and that
answers the need to know: "For what purpose?"
"Why?" ...Intelligence.
'Heart': Binat
HaLev, the Heart's Insight
Heart as the source of
emotions, as in emotions of love, hate, fear,
and all the other emotions that make possible
a personal relationship to existence.
Yearning, aspiring to attain a goal with which
one identifies as the object and purpose of
one's existence, getting excited, devoting
oneself, undergoing personal change,
rejecting, withdrawing – and all the other
emotions capable of halting one's sense of
existence.
Mechanical-Quantitative Intelligence
Qualitative Intelligence
It is customary to view intelligence as the
ability to attribute connections and causes,
and to build a unified structure out of
existence's components, in the present, past,
and future. Intelligence today is defined
quite well, and has even won numerical
measurement, in the framework of I.Q. It is
divided into defined sections according to the
various functions of thought.
It appears to us that an intelligence assumed
as such can be no more than partial. It
expresses thinking's technical ability –
technical-functional – which measures and
evaluates dynamic relationships between the
components of a given situation. We call this
function by the name of 'connecting
intelligence', and its role is to study the
dynamic field created by the components of a
defined, given situation. It includes memory
(input/output), absorption and discharge of
information, and its functional application.
IQ tests suffice with measuring absorption and
discharge, with the functions of precision,
order, and method, and speed of grasp. From here
we can see that a person possessing a high
Intelligence Quotient is different from a person
possessing a low Intelligence Quotient in the
capacity to absorb and discharge information, in
precision and speed, and in the ability to apply
information to a given situation. We may add
that this ability helps in finding solutions to
problems. Helps only, but cannot bear sole
responsibility for the solution of the problem,
because a person with a high Intelligence
Quotient is able to think with greater
efficiency and precision than the person with
the lower Intelligence Quotient, but he is not
able to think differently than him, or with
greater originality and innovativeness – with
greater efficiency but not differently.
Therefore, we call Intelligence Quotient by the
name of mechanical-quantitative intelligence, as
different from qualitative intelligence that
does not flow through the path of 'head' but
rather through the path of 'heart' specifically.
Emotion – Imagination – Binat Halev,
Heart's Insight
The heart's insight includes intuition, which is
composed of an inner sense of emotional
identification with the object that is being
thought about, with imagination joining the
party. Thus is born the intellectual experience.
This is an immeasurably richer experience than
mere intelligent thinking. Intellectual quality,
in addition to and as different from
intelligence as a device, contains also values.
It binds together thinking, emotion, and
personal identification, which encompass and
penetrate the inner essence of the object being
thought about, connect the thinking person with
the object being thought about, and turn it into
a new existential experience; into creativity as
we define it. (See
creativity/self-preservation).
Measuring Intelligence Quotient lacks the
intelligent quality, the components of which
are: Originality, sensitivity to subtleties, and
creative imagination. These are the components
of quality, and without them, the experience of
intellectual innovation is not feasible.
Mechanical-quantitative talent deals only with
examining what exists, with criticism,
comparison, and measurement, with the methodical
evaluation and arrangement of material; in
short, with scientific research, but not with
artistic innovation or creation.
From here we draw the conclusion that high
level literary artists such as Tolstoy,
Dostoyevsky, Lawrence, Flaubert, and others,
demonstrate an ability to penetrate and
comprehend the human mind that far surpassed
that of Freud and other great figures in the
"science" of psychology. Likewise, an artist
demonstrates an intelligence that in quality far
surpasses that of Aristotle, Newton, and
Einstein, whose inventions are impressive only
by virtue of their mechanical functionalism, and
their benefit lies only in their pragmatic
utility for the external functioning of existence,
having no trace of a contribution to the quality
of life. It would seem that even a
mechanical/quantitative intelligence superior to
that which served the man of science would have
been necessary in order to write the sort of
works that many of the literary artists wrote.
Qualitative Intelligence
As different from quantitative-mechanical
intelligence that reaches maturity during
adolescence (age fifteen) qualitative
intelligence is only just beginning. Therefore a
person whose development is arrested at this age
will not attain qualitative intelligence at all,
in that emotional maturity is crucial to the
development of qualitative intelligence, for its
purpose is to shape human quality.
Emotional maturity is given to definition and to
treatment, in our opinion, just as every human
ability deserves education and treatment in
order that it might continue to thrive.
For emotional maturity to grow and thrive,
confrontation with the very experience of
existence is required – a wide range of
experiences that require contending and coping
with the environment and with oneself. We do not
mean the one-sided coping that deals with 'head'
alone, or with 'hand', with the life of action
only, as is typically forced upon young people
who have not yet completed their maturity.
Security obligations in the form of required
military service, or the labor of earning a
living at too early an age, would constitute an
example of 'hand' coercing 'head' and 'heart',
paralyzing the wellsprings of wisdom and
feeling, closing the heart's openness, and its
ability to receive and to learn new lessons.
Spoiling
Spoiling is the danger from the opposite
direction, for it too prevents one from
personally contending with the experience of
existence and confronting hardships. A spoiled
person expects others (parents and friends) to
solve problems that he would have been capable
of solving for himself. This person finds
himself on the sidelines of life, which passes
by him as a spectacle in which he takes no part.
The Rich Personality
A third factor in emotional maturity is
complexity and richness of personality. The more
a personality is multi-faceted and rich, the
more time it requires to mature.
Heart: Abode of the Talent for Humanness
Whereas qualitative intelligence requires the
services of mechanical intelligence – in which
quality and quantity merge with one another as
content and container – the talent for humanness
guards its aristocratic independence and its
special quality.
This human talent, the talent for empathy,
grants the ability to understand behavior, to
detect its external factors and its internal
causes, through the miracle of identifying with
another.
For a miracle it is, since the capacity to
identify with another does not derive from any
combination of causes, nor from any analysis of
personality components. It is intuition,
deriving from an emotional empathy that has no
rational explanation. It would seem correct to
associate empathy with art, or even with
spiritual values. Understanding another is art
mixed with values.
Artistic talent does not unfold at the binary
level, nor does it deal with re-hashing what is
already known and given. The artist deals with
what exists, but his aim is to move past
superficial reality. He seeks after the causes
and laws that are above and beyond the given.
An artist is capable of reaching into the depth
of an image and revealing its hidden roots, and
then illuminating it by a light that the image
itself could not have brought forth.
An artist attains this revelation by sensitive,
penetrating introspection, through personal
involvement, and sometimes even through a
mystical bonding with those higher roots of a
humanness that belongs to the Godly core. For
humanness is the uniquely original quality that
characterizes a private individual, who is an
entire universe unto himself, something of a
microcosm of all the worlds, and not a detail,
not a cog in the general machine.
Human talent – empathy – is not dependent on
talents of any other category. It is a talent
that is rarely occurring, and found at its best
only in a small segment of society. Women have
been blessed with it more than men. This talent
is found usually – though not necessarily – in
combination with a high level of sensitivity.
Despite the fact that it belongs to its own
independent source, it is bound to causative
thinking-- of the sort that aids in
understanding, and in reasoning, and that is far
removed from linear or mathematical thinking.
For this reason, those who possess the quality
of human empathy, tend to be uninterested in
numbers, chess games, and technical issues.
Their thinking is closer to 'the heart's
insight,' that intuitive wisdom that is
comprised of emotion and imagination, and
removed from the colder external/objective forms
of analysis. Human insight takes place in the
inner spaces of the self, being related to the
human quality, which is the abode of creative
original thinking, and of understanding
causality – traits that have their source in
God.
A person who possesses the gift of human empathy
is destined for human work, for dealing with
people. The greater his human quality, the more
he will be involved with the innermost view of
human behavior, and the less he will be
satisfied with involvement in the "doing"
fields, such as business, sales, marketing, and
even medicine or law, but rather only issues
that are educational and emotional/spiritual.
An interesting detail characterizes these
people: They incline away from one specifically
defined profession, and are in perpetual doubt
as to which profession to choose, in that their
curiosity drifts from one occupation to another.
It appears to me that this multi-faceted
tendency derives from their destiny for a human
calling, which relates to human beings who are
all different from one another. Therefore one
who is occupied with them and discerns the heart
of each one of them, must himself contain a
broad range of tendencies that can encompass the
tendencies of many people.
What is common to those people who tend to work
at a wide spectrum of occupations is that they
possess "human talent" and that this talent
occupies a central place in their personality.
We must note further that "human talent" can
accompany those who possess intellectual
personalities, just as it can be found among
deeply emotional people, and even among
practical and business people, being that "human
talent" dwells at the crossroads, where head,
hand, and heart intersect.
It contains them but they do not contain
it.
I would therefore tend to place human talent –
the talent for empathy – at the top of the scale
of talent priorities.
The cooperative role of head, heart, and
hand. / The damage incurred when one of these
is absent.
When any of these elements operates in
isolation, it becomes a destructive force,
resulting in the following symptoms:
'Head' without 'hand' and 'heart': [4]
The absent-minded professor or the detached
genius.
Skeptical responses; lack of certainty.
Thinking is empty of the personal, devoid of the
original.
Binary, critical thinking limited to the
ontological, to the here and now.
Thought confined within a framework and within
rules that characterize systemized, global
patterns:
Only what is there.
Thinking devoid of emotional involvement,
lacking any concrete realness.
Accompanying sensations:
Despair, cynicism, warped judgment, distorted
logic.
Excessively speculative thinking.
Lack of straightforward 'common sense'
comprehension.
Senility.
'Heart' without 'head' and 'hand:' [5]
Lack of permanence and consistency.
Indiscriminate expression of emotions that are
fleeting, that come and go, born of the external
environment. The intuitive inner space lacks
tangible realness, seriousness, or
responsibility, in that value-oriented thinking
is the result of a cooperation that unites the
three.
Isolated emotionalism drags in its wake an
approach to reality that is influenced by the
outside stimulations of the self- preservation
mechanism, in that this mechanism is composed
entirely of environmental conditions.
Characteristic features: Egocentric, childish
attitude lacking in scope and balanced judgment,
lacking in stability and permanence, inability
to withstand pressures.
This egocentric attitude is accompanied by a
contradiction in the form of perpetual distress
from the frustration of the human- social need,
because 'heart' requires social belonging, yet
egocentricity impedes the stable, responsible
bonding processes, which is based on the element
of reciprocity.
This contradiction creates excessive – yet
fleeting – emotional involvement to the point of
loss of self, undiscriminating excitement – a
car without a steering wheel. Symptoms: Anger,
insult, jealousy-hatred or falling madly in
love, panic, attacks of temporary insanity,
mental ailments, helplessness, psychosomatic
symptoms such as blood pressure, chronic
fatigue, breakdown.
'Hand' without 'head' and 'heart' [6]
A cruel machine. Harshness that obeys
environmental directives. Pushes aside personal
involvement and encourages brutal and
reactionary behavior.
Mechanical behavior, "doing" without "being",
absence of moral/human balanced judgment.
Dependency upon experts.
Childishness, emotional retardation.
Systematized behavior that erases the
original/personal, which is rejected as
"over-qualified".
An objective, scientific, logical-mathematical
approach dominates all areas of life.
A danger of the entire package of
head/hand/heart coming undone out of a blind
belief in the scientific-objective system, plus
an arrogant contempt for anything to do with the
language of heart and spirit. This explains the
absence of creativity, values, or morality.
Sexual deviations, physical lust unchecked by
mind or values – what is common to all parts of
the package that has come undone is an inability
to cope with life.
Certainty:
Separation between the three immortalizes doubt,
in that each one cancels out the other. What the
'hand' discovers, the 'head' and the 'heart'
will declare void, and vice versa. The sense of
certainty is the result of a merging between all
three, from which grows "the heart's insight".
"My heart tells me." Harmony between the three
is a vital condition for peace of mind.
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7. Two
Scriptures: Complementary Opposites
"Two scriptures contradict one
another, until the third will come and resolve
them." This rule of Rabbi Akiva's constitutes a
key to the interpretation of halacha.
The Jewish principle of unity sees halacha
as the foundation for a perception of life that
includes and encompasses the sum total of all
behaviors of man and universe. Therefore the rules
of halacha express the principle of
unity by bearing an existential meaning as well.
The concept of Godly unity creates a dynamic
vector within a dualistic, antagonistic
structure. Two elements that are antithetical in
their essence, yet possess the potential to
complete one another, create unity in their
encounter.
The condition of completeness is created by the
intervention of a third side, by the
intervention of the Creator of the universe, or
of his representative, the human being.
Shamayim – heaven – is derived from esh
– fire – and mayim – water. "By God's
word, Heaven was made." "For by His rebuke He
created the vault of the heavens." God "rebuked"
the two opposing elements – fire and water. His
rebuke was the "third scripture," the third
component that was introduced into the system of
two antagonistic elements. In its merit, it
prevailed over the two opponents, and encouraged
the potential for complementarity and
compatibility that lay hidden in them.
So it is in the whole of creation, and so too in
heaven, including the Godly force that rules
creation, which too in its dynamic view consists
of a fusion of two complementary forces: Dukra,
male, and nukva, female. When the
human being, who represents God in the creation,
succeeds in uniting these two opposites, his
sphere of influence rises to the heights, even
exerting a unifying effect on the dynamics of
heaven, upon dukra and nukva.
(Union is reflected in the two kruvim,
'cherubs' of the mishkan: At a moment
of grace, the 'cherubs' of the Temple were found
embraced, as male and female during union. At a
moment of wrath, they turned away from each
other, their faces averted.)
Through this imagery we are to understand the
constructive and destructive dynamics in the
behavior of the creation: "A time for war and a
time for peace," and all the other "times" that
are in Kohelet, Ecclesiastes. This
three-dimensional structure contains two
opposing elements, while above them the role of
the human being, which is to seek or to find,
and to firmly place into a given situation the
element of values – the "dimension of height"–
in the form of an aspiration or a goal that
endows the situation with meaning and direction.
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8.
Matriarch-Patriarch
For those who ask where human
relations fit in according to my approach, I
usually respond that they fit with the pairs of
"doing" – 'being,' and of 'matriarch' –
'patriarch.' On the surface of things it appears
that I should have attributed the ability to
create and sustain human relations to the human
talent, to empathy, since we have devoted such a
place of honor to human empathy as a central
component of personality within the innermost
space of the personality, at the "being" level.
And if we were to continue to attribute
connections, we would not deny that
belonging-freedom find their main qualitative
expression on the plane of human relations, in the
cycles of public-private interaction.
Nevertheless, it seems to me that the creative
workshop where human relations are formed and
consolidated, at their earliest stages – before
they come forth into the light of day by being
exercised through social channels – is in the
pair 'patriarch' – 'matriarch.' This is their
birth place, through a fusion of the basic
components of the Divine, which is reflected in
the foundation and in the mystery of the forming
of creation.
Dukra / Nukva
Male / Female
The kruvim, "cherubs" in the Beit
Hamikdash that sheltered over the aron habrit,
Ark of the Covenant in the kodesh kodoshim,
Holy of Holies were formed in the image of
children, in which one was male and one was
female. At a time of grace in heaven, they would
unite.
The kodesh kodoshim in the Mikdash
and the Mishkan were an earthly
reflection of heavenly sanctity. "For all is in
heaven and in earth. Yours, God, is greatness
and might, etc." The Mikdash, as is
known, constituted a place of encounter between
heaven and earth, in which the most basic
opposites of the creation, matter and spirit,
attained completion. This encounter came about
through the reflection of the heavenly structure
within the earthly structure.
Earthly male and earthly female are a faithful
reflection of the heavenly structure, which too
relates to creation by an image composed of
united male and female. Male is the actor, the
influencer, and female is the acted upon, the
influenced. Alternatively, giver and receiver,
or contained and container.
We have before us a structure that reflects
power and spirituality in two forms – influencer
and influenced. In heaven, masculine power
contains judgment and the power that receives,
that is feminine, contains compassion.
When the universe was whole, and connected to
heaven, the heavenly reflection was discernible
in the form of 'the measure of judgment' and
'the measure of compassion.'
Once the Temple had been destroyed, the package
came undone (from a superficial perspective
only). Earthly male and earthly female became
mere power vectors, fixed from that time onward
into a dynamic of tension between opposites,
between conquering male and conquered female,
"and he shall rule her," including all the
conflicting tensions inherent between male and
female, which reach their peak and their
fiercest intensity in the human creature, for
better and for worse. It is in the human
creature also, that they attain reconciliation.
In the heavenly reflection, 'male' was expressed
as the 'measure of judgment', as mentioned. This
is the harsh measure, straightforward and
direct, reflecting truth, in its naked and pure
form. The "measure of judgment" is measured in
absolute power, in that it draws its strength
from the measure of truth and justice, which
serve as both its expression and its basis.
With the great break between heaven and earth,
at the destruction of the Beit Hamikdash,
the "measure of judgment" (of truth) was left in
heaven, while coarse and brutal force was left
in all its nakedness on the face of the earth.
This force did not recognize, nor was it
supported by any values of truth at all.
Hazal reveal to us that "the Holy
Blessed One saw that the universe could not
stand with the 'measure of judgment,'" [with the
harsh measure, Ramban adds,] "therefore He stood
and mixed the 'measure of compassion' with the
'measure of judgment.'" From that time onward,
brute force could not stand alone and continue
to exist, and it was forced to accept a marriage
with the soft and tender "measure of
compassion".
"Patriarch" from that time on, is that which
reflects coarse brute force, which finds
expression in human relationships, between
private individuals and in the public domain.
"Patriarch" is that which exploits its greater
strength to subjugate and dominate the weaker.
At the level of the heavenly reflection, power
appears charged with the 'measure of judgment',
a measure that expresses the values of judgment:
Justice, honesty, honor, awe, and authority. Its
business is the direct response between a sinner
and his punishment.
When it is not mixed with the 'measure of
compassion', this measure appears in a state
devoid of mercy, kindness, flexibility,
tolerance, and all other issues of loving,
forgiving consideration that eat at the table of
"the measure of compassion".
"Until the third scripture [the 'dimension of
height'] comes and resolves them." It will teach
them both how the measure of awe stands firmly,
and bows humbly before the measure of love, and
learn tolerance from it, and leniency and
consideration for human limitations, and more of
compassion's measures of the same kind.
As opposed to this, 'the measure of judgment'
enhances love with regularity and discipline,
and a scale of good and evil, and boundaries,
and other similarly marketable currencies from
the world of "doing".
Thus love comes out strengthened and in control,
and empowered to distinguish and to discriminate
between "love that is dependent on something
else" and love that is not. It learns the
meaning of "one who is compassionate toward the
cruel will end by being cruel toward the
compassionate", and by making judgment into
compassion and compassion into judgment,
confusing the orders of universe and society.
They come forth arm in arm, in the end, in the
figure of Father – the 'measure of judgment,'
that establishes boundaries and principles and
goals, and Mother – imbuing Father's principles
with love, concerned with fitting them to the
children's capacity to absorb.
Indeed it is into the microcosm of the nuclear
family that the elements of heaven come and
receive their existential tangible substance. We
see from this that male and female, when there
is love and unity between them, bring heavenly
male and female to perfect unity-which is good
for heaven and good for the universe.
Similarly awe and love, and judgment and
compassion assist one another and arrive at
unity, and coarse materialistic brute force
cannot celebrate its victory, as it has
celebrated it in the historical past, marked and
stained with the blood of citizens persuaded by
nationalistic movements, the offspring of brute
force that appears in the center arena when the
people have no vision to unite them around a
ideological, moral, or spiritual goal.
How very wretched then becomes the relationship
between the opposites, patriarch and matriarch,
when the "third scripture" does not resolve
them. Wretched, for the simple reason that brute
force knows no other pleasure than humiliating
its weaker rival: "Because you drowned someone,
they drowned you, and in the end, your drowners
will be drowned," Hazal warn. What you caused to
others will be caused to you. When one gets to
the top of the mountain, there is no higher to
go. One will come down in the end, to make room
for another.
The ancient states, tribes, and races teach us
this important lesson through their own stories.
Rome, mistress of kingdoms, attained the
pinnacle of brute force in the ancient era, only
to be broken by savage tribes in the end.
No more did the world believe in the eternity of
brute force. Turning its back on might, it found
its total antagonist from the opposite direction
– matriarchalism. Pity and love, identifying
with the other, understanding (psychology!) and
tolerance promised protection and stability at
an apparently lower price than its brutal
adversary.
Both of them, brute force and pity as well, had
bloomed in the garden of survival. Brute force
promised survival through the use of force and
subduing the adversary, the enemy, by modes of
cruelty and fear, and a hierarchical,
authoritarian rule that imposed law and order,
while the competing matriarch offered peace
among nations, which cancelled the need for war
and aggression, automatically canceling the need
to be stronger.
The slogan "make love not war" is an illusion
capable of seducing pacifistic souls who labor
under delusions, which must eventually crash to
the ground of existential and historical
reality. Christianity carved the seduction of
love upon its banner, stumbled on its own path,
and never hesitated to make use of the swords of
Crusaders and Inquisitions that sowed
destruction and murder in their path to
religious redemption.
The United States as of today represents the
peak flowering of the matriarch, and we have the
opportunity to examine and to compare what has
become of this compassionate approach. The world
that flows with signs of matriarchalism
overflows with blood. Bloodshed and cruelty seem
to have moved up a grade in the twentieth and
twenty-first centuries, which preen themselves
with the feathers of liberalism, tolerance, and
love.
Also in the human microcosm, in the bosom of
the family of man, in which the father
represents the patriarch, the man of principles
and order, and the mother – love, compassion,
and tolerance, the situation has never been
brighter in the matriarchal era.
The young criminal blossoms as part and parcel
of primitive societies, where the beast stumbles
over his own sword – yet he flourishes just as
well in the matriarchal society, among the
wellborn, from the best families, well-treated
and pampered.
We have before us additional proof for our
claim that without the "dimension of height",
sheltering over the pair of opposites, hostility
blooms between them, and separates them. When
each does not complete its fellow, the
patriarchal is left with its cruelty and the
matriarch with its loose weakness, lacking any
stable principles or red lines, and ending by
being compelled to defend itself against the
strong one, who would conquer it, take its
place, and rule the family of man.
This distinction can be quite illuminating at
the microcosmic level of the family: In
patriarchal societies, the father takes the
central role, as single and solitary ruler, to
whose will, all must bow. The mother takes a
secondary place; she lacks all authority, being
nothing more than the meek servant of father and
children. We do not need to exercise our
imagination excessively in order to predict the
behavior of children who have been raised in the
lap of cruel brutality, devoid of consideration
for the rights of others. The rule is: Whoever
is stronger is more admired, and his right to
live is greater than the right of the weak, who
is a scorned and contemptible creature.
In a matriarchal family (a contemporary family)
single-parent families bloom – meaning, families
where the mother plays the exclusive role. The
father serves as a milking cow, whose role is to
fill the duties of butler, servant, and menial
laborer.
One would have expected of the matriarchal
family – where the atmosphere, values, and
education that prevail are imbued with love for
the other – that it would produce progeny of
pleasing ways, for whom love, kindness, and
compassion would be their guiding light. Yet
here to everyone's disappointment, the progeny
comes forth an overindulged egoist who expects
the measure of kindness and mercy from others,
whereas he himself relates to others as though
they are obligated to him. For his part, he
himself feels no commitment toward others, and
ends by robbing his fellow creatures, and
finding himself in prison in the company of his
fellow criminal from the patriarchal society.
One by virtue of brute force, and the other by
virtue of a compassion that lacks any
understanding of the principle of balance
between receiver and giver, united in service of
the "dimension of height", which unites them
through a commitment that is at once
value-oriented, spiritual, and moral.
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9. The Power
of Will
Will: Inner
Brute Force: Outer
Will is the force that executes free choice, whose
goal is achieved by will. It is the very heart of
choice and its goal; it is the unifying merger of
'head,' 'hand' and 'heart'.
Will is not related to any of the other forces
that make up reality's cybernetic cycle. It is
not part of any larger mechanism, nor stimulated
by any outer vector. It is its own primordial
force from which a human being begins to
activate his behavioral mechanism in all its
aspects.
Will does not exist in the other creatures, and
was given directly to human beings by the Former
of human beings. In the ability to activate the
power of will, a human being resembles the
Creator Himself in all His glory. Recognizing
the basic nature of will is prerequisite to
understanding free choice.
A precondition of the ability to activate will
is liberation from the mechanical systems, for
it sends its stimulations from the outside.
Whereas will belongs to the qualitative inner
essence, the mechanical system belongs to the
outside, to the environment.
From this, an equation:
Will = Inner Space = Quality = Uniqueness = Self
= Creativity.
Outer Space = Mechanism = Materialness = Brute
Force = Ego = Self- Preservation.
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10.
MAN
UNITES SEPARATE WORLDS
"The Lower Awakening"- "The Higher
Awakening:" From Inner to
Outer
Will expresses Godly quality. The dynamic feature
of this quality is a tendency to self-expression,
to moving from a state of dormant potential to a
state of realized potential. Will is the
expression of this tendency, which flows from
inner to outer.
This awakening is the expression of free choice
seeking its Creator, yearning to connect with Him,
dvaikut. "Open for me [even only] an opening as
the point of a needle."
The initiative taken by human choice arouses
itarut dil'aila, the Higher awakening", as a
response to: "My beloved's voice is knocking [at
my door.]" This response is expressed by
personal attention from heaven to the individual
or to the community that has taken the
initiative. It is a response of hashgaha pratit,
"private Providence" that is granted human
beings in proportion to and to the extent of
their awakening from below through choice. Thus
is formed the bond between human being and
Creator.
Quality differs from person to person, and it is
that which determines one's different and unique
character. The greater the quality, the more
powerful the will. Quality's will dominates,
enslaves, and occasionally even pushes aside the
survival mechanism's existential needs.
Thus a sense of existence that relies on
expectations of the mechanical systems' proper
functioning, is substituted for a qualitative
experience of Godly will, as it is expressed
both in human beings and in the Torah.
In this way, the existential axis of inner-outer
is canceled in favor of an axis of inner-higher,
according to the following structure: "For your
saving I have hoped, God. I have hoped, God, for
your saving. God, for your saving I have hoped."
This is a three-staged mechanism. At the lowest
stage, one still feels dependent on the
existential needs of the survival mechanism.
At the second stage, one feels the awakening of
yearning to connect with height.
At the third stage, one feels the need to
identify with God, on one's journey towards
self-actualization as a Godly presence. One no
longer feels ego's sense of existence.
The three stages might be defined thus:
From outer to inner, as a first stage.
From inner to outer, as a second stage.
From inner to higher, as a third stage.
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Footnotes:
[1] For example, two pairs of
qualities that are fundamental – strong/weak
and wise/foolish – are erased from
psychology's "politically correct" list of
personality and behavior components, not to
mention values, which met the same fate.
[2] See section 9, Power of Will,
regarding this term.
[3] The belonging decreed by the
survival mechanism is devoid of the power of
free choice. Compulsion and enslavement stamp
their image on such behavior.
--The Peter Principle and Parkinson’s
Law celebrate, and create the systematic
method, which seizes control of all functional
systems. Frankenstein turns on his creator.
Human beings find themselves trampled by
mechanical systems that swell to grotesque
proportions. The rules of the game slip out of
human control.
--“Politically correct” behavior
prevents people from being spontaneous.
Language itself loses its main function as
personal expression, and turns into a
communications system. Also written language
loses the personal tone. (The accepted style
for academic research is notorious for its
barrenness and ugliness.)
--Bureaucracy instead of a personal
relationship, and localized thinking undoes
all good achievements even in medicine, which
treats the disease, loses the patient, and
drives other patients into the warm, natural
arms of alternative holistic medicine.
--The primitive person is the real
victim, in that he has difficulty adjusting to
a complex and arbitrary system that does not
consider the immediately felt reality. He
becomes entangled with the law, which is the
prime expression of arbitrary systemization.
He talks back to the judge and is indicted for
contempt of court.
--Statistics, with its scales of
probability, push aside the real local
components of reality. Clinging to reference
sources puts quotation in place of
understanding and explanation – though the
Talmud asks: “Why do I need text? It is simple
reasoning” – and in place of creative thinking
and judgment, and suppresses originality.
--One refrains from taking
responsibility, evades the need to stand
behind one’s actions, and takes advantage of
the cover of the system. Blame for wrong
decisions is placed on the lowest-ranking
recruit. Administration is never wrong.
--The most painful result is the arrest
of human/emotional development at the age of
childhood, the signs of which are emotional
retardation, a lack of comprehensive and
balanced judgment, localized responses
according to immediate environmental stimulus,
a dependency upon immediate and fleeting
gratification, and a loss of the ability to
withstand pressures.
--Lack of human/personal relatedness .
Politeness devoid of content in place of
profound gratitude. Human values are pushed
aside.
--Compassion for animal and plant life,
at the expense of the real needs of man, who
is pressed into crowded building blocks and
ghettoes so as not to disturb the scenery or
the earth.
--Tactlessness.
--The law’s intervention in
interpersonal relationships, and the damage
this causes to human/spiritual values:
Enslavement to the law in a compulsive and
blind fashion appropriate to a six-year-old's
conception of law makes a sham of the
principle of mutual agreement, and becomes a
legal dictatorship. The citizen loses his
rights to the system, which decides his needs
for him according to rules of a game that is
devoid of sensitivity to individual rights and
needs.
“Pious fool” is the term the Sages of
the Talmud apply to the man who fears the
prohibition of contact with a woman and
therefore refrains from rescuing a drowning
woman. “With purity of the vessels he is
strict, and with bloodshed he is lax.” Purity
of vessels, that is, technical laws, cause
contempt for the most severe prohibition of
all--bloodshed.
--Refusal to provide medicine when it is
known that this refusal is life-threatening,
because the patient does not have a doctor’s
prescription, etc.
--Lack of the “dimension of height”
abandons the opposites, “belonging and
freedom” to their own destructive clash.
Freedom is pulled toward abandon, and
belonging is pulled toward slavery. This
conflict creates a reverse reaction. “A slave
is comfortable with moral abandon.” Abandon
meets slavery, and gives birth to treason.
Treason brings guilt, in a vicious cycle that
goes round and round, tightening its grip at
every turn. Freedom and belonging together
form the noose around one’s neck:
Strangulation and creativity.
--Similarly, a vicious cycle can appear
with the duty/pleasure pair of opposites.
[4] Linking emotion
to mind: Though he was
constantly reading religious philosophy books,
the Talmud scholar was tormented by religious
doubts. I advised him to focus on developing
the emotion of personal gratitude.
[5] Linking
"doing" to feeling: For
example: Hatavat halom,
"improving a dream." A young girl dreams a
painful dream about her father. Hatavat
halom links the painful feeling
created by the dream to the mind, which gives
a positive interpretation to the dream –
alongside a practical linking: Doing the
action required for "improving a dream",
fasting the "fast for a dream", actions such
as repentance, prayer, and charity, and the
actual going to the sage who improves the
dream.
[6]
Lack
of reciprocity creates a flawed morality, in
that this morality serves the ego, and is not
linked to the value or the objectivity of the
‘head,’ nor to the values of spirit.
‘Heart’ and ‘hand’ without ‘head’ create
enslavement to and dependency upon the brute
force level of reality, according to the
mighty-weak law of the jungle. This level is
characterized by immorality, because it lacks
the “dimension of height”.
Behind every fact stands a theory, but
behind every theory, it is not certain that
there stands a fact..
‘Head’ and ‘heart’ without 'hand': Politics,
detached ideology.
This is the reason, apparently,
that women do not show interest in politics,
thanks to their bond with reality, stronger in
degree and in kind than the man's, Politics,
like business, is a result of the package
coming undone: Head and hand without heart,
and sometimes head and heart without hand, or
alternatively, heart and hand without head,
and it all runs according to the system of
external pressures, because they belong to the
type of behaviors that run in the following
direction: From outer to inner, and even from
outer (the self-preservation system) to outer.
Absurdity celebrates in either case.
According to this, the leader's
personality can be seen in a new light. A
leader in general, and the modern leader in
particular, requires a harmonious personality,
in which are merged 'head,' 'hand' and 'heart'
in solid, indivisible form that makes them,
most importantly, resistant to pressure.
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