Consciousness of Abstraction and Kabbalah

Consciousness of Abstraction and Kabbalah

by David A. Linwood

Below, I have sketched several diagrams from both “disciplines” side-by side so that you can note where I saw similarities (and differences.) Notice that each discipline has a “basic” reality, with infinite possibilities and characteristics. These realities are not directly “knowable” at the non-verbal (silent) levels of the human nervous system.

The next comparative diagram, below, shows detailed structure of the silent levels of the human nervous system. Notice that the Kabbalist has sketched the nervous system of the person as a box with five openings (the five “senses”) and that each opening is blocked by a transducer so that the characteristics of the external reality is transformed into a nervous system pattern – which is notthe external process level (WIGO.)

The transducer may be an ear-drum, a retina, a taste bud, a skin sensor, the Hubble telescope, etc. The point is that the internal characteristics are not the process level characteristics. The process level is “hidden.”

From this point on the two disciplines part company in a big way.

The Kabbalist then maintains that the external reality is “knowable”. The procedure is to develop an internal “sixth sense” which is not transduced but which contacts the external reality “directly”. For what purpose? The human, as a “creature”, must receive from the “Creator” what the Creator wishes to bestow — namely complete, endless delight., by becoming a “bestower” also, and hence similar in structure or “closer” to the “Creator”.

The hand motions that Kosinec uses to supplement his description of this climactic event I find disturbingly “sexual”. I was reminded of the story of Pygmalion and Galatea:

Pygmalion saw so much to blame in women that he came at last to abhor the sex, and resolved to live unmarried. He was a sculptor, and had made with wonderful skill a statue of ivory, so beautiful that no living woman came anywhere near it. It was indeed the perfect semblance of a maiden that seemed to be alive, and only prevented from moving by modesty. His art was so perfect that it concealed itself and its product looked like the workmanship of nature. Pygmalion admired his own work, and at last fell in love with the counterfeit creation. Oftentimes he laid his hand upon it as if to assure himself whether it were living or not, and could not even then believe that it was only ivory. He caressed it, and gave it presents such as young girls love.

I paraphrase from “Mythology”,

In the Kabbalist view of the Universe I compare the “Creator” to the mythical master artisan, Pygmalion, who cannot bear the flaws of human womenhood (the “creature”), and so he creates a “woman”, a statue, who is “perfect” but lifeless. Pygmalion seeks to bestow endless delight which his true love must learn to requite.

Another aspect of Kabbalah which turns me off is the dependency on “super-gurus”, masters of the Kabbalah (they, and no others). In General Semantics we have also “super-gurus” who could not, or cannot, brook the writings of “ lesser lights”.

I suppose it’s endemic. Every discipline has it’s super-gurus – masters, who hold court on every detail of the discipline. In mathematics we have the worshippers of Karl Friedrich Gauss, or Leonhard Euler. In physics we have the worshippers of Einstein or Feynman, and formerly, Isaac Newton. And historically, we worshipped the Ptolemaicists who invented the earth-centered universe, which only they knew how make move -- to suit the Church (who were the super-super-gurus, and still pretend to be.).

Kabbalah claims to be five-thousand years old, and apparently predates formal religions. It is only in the last century, however, that the discipline will now admit even the most lowly commoner into the sacred mysteries and offers them immortality and endless delight if only they will study endlessly -- and serve without complaint.

So what else is new?

David Linwood