Whitman and Kabbalah
Whitman and Kabbalah
Whitman and Kabbalah
(For simplicity's sake, I will refer to the Vessel as singular, which is how I
first encountered it in these readings.) According to what I read, there was the
original, primordial creation of the Vessel (ex niliho) which received the Light
of the Creator. They originally existed in perfect harmony. The perfect giver
and the perfect receiver. But, in the same way a glass will warm up when you
pour hot liquid into it, the Vessel took on the qualities of the Light of the
Creator -- of wanting to give, to create. This caused a paradox within the
Vessel: it was designed as the perfect receiver and yet it now wants, also, to
give. To create. In an attempt to resolve this paradox, the Vessel pulled back
against the Light and this, in turn, caused the Creator to withdraw, to contract.
The vessel immediately realized its "mistake" and the Light came back in and
then the shattering occurred.
Do you know where this version of creation originates? If you have any
comments on it at all, especially any psychological dimensions, I would be
most appreciative. Psychologically we are taught to build a container in which
opposites can co-exist -- and here it is being shattered in the primordial
beginnings.
Thank you for your excellent contribution. I'm so glad I happened upon
your website.
Respectfully yours,
Victoria, B.C.
Canada
Response:
Dear Michael Hoppe:
Thank you very much for your most articulate and interesting letter. It is
certainly very satisfying to me that you have thought deeply about the ideas in
my book and carried these thoughts into your own life. The quote from
Whitman is wonderful and gets precisely at one of the most important aspects
of not only Kabbalistic thought but also at what I regard to be therapeutic
thought in general: the capacity to live with antinomies, opposites and
contradictions--on the spiritual, intellectual and emotional level. My own
reading of the Kabbalah is that it creates an open economy of thought and
feeling and shatters all rigidities and dogmatics. This reading grows out of my
understanding of (1) the symbol shevirat-ha-kelim (breaking of the vessels) (2)
the idea that Ein-sof is a Unity of Opposites, and (3) the Kabbalistic view that
Torah has an infinity of interpretations. Now, of course, if one reads Vital and
other Kabbalists there is plenty that is dogmatic and closed in their writings as
well--the stringent atonements for minor sexual prohibitions come to mind, and
there are many others as well--but I believe that the principles that underlie the
Lurianic system create the very "therapeutic container of all" that your email
suggests.
I need to think more about the paradox of giving and receiving, so I will
make just a few very brief associations. Of course, for Luria, the acts of Tikkun
are a wonderful gift to God as they actually help constitute and complete the
actualization of Ein-sof itself. In this regard we might consider the French
philosopher Jacque Derrida's understanding of a gift as something that is
given without creating debt and without any expectation of recompense. All
other gifts are really barter and exchange and are not truly gifts. I am reminded
of Maimonides degrees of charity: the highest is where neither giver nor
receiver know each other's identities!
I found your recent dialog with Michael Hoppe interesting, especially with
reference to his comment on Walt Whitman, and Whitman's famous line, "Do I
contradict myself?...." I am participating in a poetry discussion group this
summer and the first poet we are considering is Walt Whitman. I thought I
would send along a few comments on Whitman which come to mind in relation
to your New Kabbalah, and the coincidentia oppositorum.
Whitman's Leaves of Grass was published in its final form in 1892, after a
lifetime of revision. It might be said that his life was a creative process which
can be seen as a continuing shattering and restoration of his book, a book
which he thought of as a companion and a person. The process only stopped
with his death, but seemingly would have continued indefinitely, to the end of
his life. Reminds me of your article on the creative writing process in which
many Kabbalistic elements are present.
In Song of Myself, Whitman considers the meaning of grass, "A child said
What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands; How could I answer the
child? I do not know what it is any more than he." Grass seems to represent
the unknowable. He guesses that "the grass is itself a child...or a uniform
hieroglyphic...Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones..." Grass, to
Whitman, seems perhaps to suggest an image of God, a language underlying
everything, and God in a macrocosmic as well as a microcosmic sense. Later
he says, " I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the
stars."
Whitman seems to relate to the idea of the unity of the knower, the known,
and the act of knowing in many places, for example, also in Song of Myself,
"To me the converging objects of the universe perpetually flow, All are written
to me, and I must get what the writing means." Additionally, his attempt
to identify much of the detail of the world within this poem, details he finds
within himself, expresses such unity.
And then about evil in Myself, Whitman says, "I am not the poet of
goodness only, I do not decline to be the poet of wickedness also...Evil propels
me and reform of evil propels me, I stand indifferent,..." Perhaps a statement
of the coincidentia of evil and good, and the transformation of evil into good.
Then, Whitman's When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd, one might
start in many places to show the unity and blending of his thought. The hermit
bird, whose death song is "Sadly sinking and fainting,...and yet again bursting
with joy.
So I guess that I would urge any visitors to your website to read the best
and powerful poetry of Whitman and note the relationship to the New
Kabbalah, and especially the underlying coincidentia oppositorum in many of
these poems.
Charlie Coon