Lecture 1: Introduction (1) - Mysticism [9:30]

Welcome. I'm very glad to be joining you in this course. This is very exciting, because what we're going to do here is not only find new ways of looking at mystical texts and mystical life in general, but also new ways of looking at psychology, at modern psychology, in a way at modernity itself, in the modern period that we all live in, the European modernity, maybe other modernities as well. And what we'll be doing now is not just absorbing information, but really learning skills: learning how to approach mystical texts, how to understand the mystical phenomena, how to understand psychological phenomena, how to understand historical processes. So that's what we'll be learning, and let's begin the adventure. So what we want to start with: we'll be working on two levels. Each time I'll present a logical structure for understanding modern psychology, for understanding the place of mysticism in modern psychology, for understanding what mysticism is about in the first place. And later on, we're going to specific texts, and then we'll learn how to read texts, because, as I said in the welcoming video, basically, what we learn in here is a set of skills, rather than merely absorbing information. So, what I want to start with is to speak about the phenomena of mysticism. Now, mysticism, in a very broad sense, is part of religious studies, which of course is part of humanities in general, but it's almost like a field in itself. It's a world of study, a world of research, because it's also a world of life. It's a whole community, or network of communities, which extends across thousands of years, across continents. Now the first question that is usually asked is: what is mysticism? And it's very hard to come up with one definition of mysticism. But I'll give you my own working definition, and I think, really, the number of definitions is like the number of scholars working on it. My own definition, which we'll use as we go along, and we'll refine it, is that mysticism is a means of experiencing reality, the everyday reality that we all experience, in a much more intense, powerful, focused, and, I would say, rich manner, that leads this reality to transform itself, until it becomes maybe an alternative reality, or at least a much deeper, a much broader form of reality than we all usually inhabit. So what I mean by ordinary reality: I'll build an example of how ordinary reality is experienced, and how mystical reality can be experienced according to the testimonies of the mystics. So let's say if I was now in a classroom, which is something which happens a lot to me, and I was looking at a group of people. So in ordinary reality, what we would see is an assortment of faces, I would say usually nice faces with the usual features that we associate with the human face. A mystic looking at the same classroom would suddenly see glowing orbs of light. Would see the faces, the face transform into one circle of light, the body transform into a sphere of light, maybe with a slightly less circular shape, so it's the same reality. It's the same classroom. But the perception is entirely different. And the minute we use this definition, that mysticism is first of all a transformation of perception, just how we perceive the world, then immediately psychology comes into mind, because it's one of the main topics of psychology, is how we perceive the world. So here is, we already began to see this overlap between mysticism and psychology that will concern us. Now, having given this working definition of mysticism, almost immediately, we feel splits, or used to split, at least, into two camps, or two approaches. And I'll briefly present the two approaches, and then I'll say what I think about it, which I think is the way people in the field are beginning to, to think these days. The first approach says that this transformation of perception, since it speaks about reality that

we all experience, everyday reality, and that mysticism try, works with this shared reality that we all inhabit, and then tries to lead it into a different place. So the first approach focuses on what's shared: that mystics work with the same ingredients. They work with the human condition: with the human body, with the human mind, with the human psyche, psychology. And then they want to transform it. So, according to this approach, mysticism is really the same phenomena in different cultures. So the Jewish mysticism, which is my field, and Christian mysticism, and Muslim mysticism, Sufism, Buddhist mysticism, Hindu mysticism, etc, etc, all of these traditions are really variations or different forms of the same phenomena. So these different mystical systems are really all sharing the same reality, and just using different language, which is, of course, affected by culture, by language itself. If we say it in Arabic, we say it in Hebrew, we say it in Greek, but really, they're saying the same thing. So this is the first approach. Of course, I'm simplifying a bit, but this is the the gist of it. The second approach focuses not on the reality that everybody shares, but where we're going from it. And this approach says that since mysticism is about transforming reality, so really, we're going to different places, that each mystical tradition wants to transform reality in a different way. Each tradition wants to build a different alternative universe to the one that we usually inhabit. So for instance, if a certain mystical tradition believes in God, and we go back to the example of a person facing a classroom of people, so a mystic in a tradition, a theistic tradition, that is a tradition which believes in God, like Jewish mysticism, Christian, Islamic, Hindu, so the theistic mystic, that's a rhyme, will look at this classroom and maybe see the face of God, however we understand that concept. Now a non-theistic mystic, such as somebody coming from a Buddhist or maybe Daoist tradition, or maybe some modern mystics, New Age mystics, that don't belong to a religious tradition, won't see the face of God,

will see something else, will see the light. They could see other things. So really we see that the transformation of the reality that is shared is shared, but the way it transforms, the way it morphs, the way it changes, goes in different directions. And according to this approach, there are different forms of mysticism rather than one form with different expressions. So, what is my own approach? And I'll conclude this preliminary orientation to what is mysticism by saying that, in many cases, the answer is both are right. That is to say, the reality is shared, the transformations are different, and really, mysticism is a bit of both. There are elements in mysticism which are shared, and there are elements which are different. Now, psychology is one of the shared elements, because all mystics work with the same psyche, and we know that the human psyche, on the one hand, there's certain things about us which are, cut across cultures. Most people, if you start yelling at them and insulting them, will get angry. That's a, almost universal. And it, most people when they have a, a, let's say, a child of theirs is born, will be joyful. So there are some things which are virtually universal in the human psyche and emotion. And also in cognition, the way we perceive the world, cognitive science, and with the whole discussion of perception, we perceive the world in a very similar way, the human species. However, of course emotion is also what's called socially constructed. That is, different cultures cultivate emotions in a different way, how they're expressed, but not just how they're expressed, how they are held, how they're maintained. Even in, if you look at your own tradition, which I come from the Jewish tradition, one can find one group, more mystical group, a Hasidic group, in which people seem to at least be more open about expressing joy, and perhaps even feel joy more. It's more of a positive value. And another group, which is the non-Hasidic group, one can find people who are somewhat more somber, more serious. So emotion is constructed by culture. So if we focus on the,

our topic of psychology, we'll find that mysticism can have a shared psychology. Different mystical systems can have a shared psychology on one hand, and yet the way culture shapes emotion, and generally the psyche, the way we experience ourself, how much we experience ourself, for instance, as a

separate self, how much we experience ourselves as individual, the way we experience ourselves can differ from culture to culture, from society to society, and therefore from one mystical system to another. Jewish mysticism and Buddhist mysticism will have a different sense of psychology of emotion of the self.

Lecture 1: Introduction (2) - Magic, Mysticism, and Psychology [9:58]

Before we conclude our general discussion of mysticism and start speaking more about modern means, modernity, modern mysticism, and then move on to psychology. I want to speak about a certain overlap between mysticism and another realm, which is a very fascinating realm. Which, in some way, is connected to mysticism and in some ways it isn't. And that's the whole world of the paranormal, of magic. Which is not exactly the same thing. So when we speak about magic, we speak about changing the world. When we speak about mysticism we're not speaking so much about changing the world but rather about changing the perception of the world. So those of you who've seen the movies of Harry Potter will recognize terms like transfiguration, but in magic that idea is to take things and transform it, you can take a piece of lead and transform it to gold. When we're speaking about mysticism, we're not speaking about change in objects, we're speaking about change in perception on objects and the same actually relates to psychology because in magic, if a person comes to a magician and has problems in life. So the magician will, for instance, give them spells or charms or amulets which will help them to become rich. Based on the idea of, if it real or illusive, that being rich gives more happiness or maybe given them a love spell, a love portion also familiar from Harry Potter that will help people find a match which is also supposed to bring happiness. Now, mystics will not work on that level usually. But will try and, and change the way people experience reality. And that's really is very similar to what psychologists, psychotherapists, or psychoanalysts do, is try change the way people hold themselves in the world, the way people experience the world, the way they interact with the world. We're not trying to change the world itself. The physical substance of it will change people's external destiny. [INAUDIBLE] Internal state. So here is the big overlap between mysticism and psychology. And it seems to be a difference between mysticism and magic. But then we have the realm of the paranormal. That maybe they, the way the mind is, before it's transformed by mysticism, the mind itself, not the world, the mind itself, maybe the ordinary mind has different abilities than the transformed mind after the mystical experience or after mystical experience after mystical practice, or after being absorbed or saturated in mystical life. So, mystical transformation can perhaps empower the mind to operate on a different level, a bit like the difference between ordinary light and laser. That a laser is a focused form of light, and this focused form of light actually enables the laser to perform operations that ordinary lights wouldn't be able to. The question is, can consciousness, maybe behind is a big word. Can consciousness the way we perceive the world, the way our perception of, of ourselves or other people of the world itself changes Can we perform different feats? Do we have different abilities after the mind is transformed by mystical experience of life. So here I want to speak about a scholar called J.B Hollenback who wrote a book called Mysticism, Empowerment, Experience and

Response. That this book states the following thesis. It takes about 600 pages to do it, but it's a very powerful thesis, really. That the, in transformed, empowered mind is Capable of different operations than for ordinary mind. Let's take how we perceive other people's thoughts. Usually, we perceive people's thoughts either by them verbalizing and conveying them to us in language, which is something we learn to use as children early on. And with life, we learn to interpret people's body language, their facial expression, the way they hold their body. We can tell if people are angry or sad or happy. We have greater abilities or less, we know that some people have certain challenges in interpreting body language if it can create certain social issues, we know that some people are very good at it and some of them become psychologists. And basically what we see, is that we don't have direct access to people's thoughts. Now perhaps through mystical practice, one becomes so subtly aware of things. Whether one's own thoughts become so subtly aware of one's own thoughts. It becomes easier for meditation for instance, to pick up other people's thoughts. Or whether we can maybe develop such a subtle awareness to people's body language, and to their facial expression, and to the tone of voice, etc., that we begin to sort of pick up what's going on between the words, not just the words itself, but the subtext of what they're saying, on a much deeper level. So this is the example of how mystical practice can maybe transform our perception and grant abilities that we don't always have. Or maybe through transforming perception, we see that reality is in fact deeper or broader than we imagined, that maybe time doesn't quite operate the for, the way we think it is, because time, of course, is such a mysterious thing to start out with. So much has been written about this, so that maybe there's access to the future, and not just to the present, and past. Or maybe it's possible to use dreams in different way that may be for certain practices,

what the Tibetans call dream yoga. It's possible to dream of the future or dream other people's thoughts, so all of this is a very large question. And here I want to refer to one more author and the book is actually called Authors of the Impossible by Jeff Kripal of Rice University. That, Kripal, in this book claims that the scientific es, establishment, the psychological establishment for example, is not entirely eh, open to a lot of evidence as to paranormal abilities. That there has been quite a lot of research which has been somewhat overlooked. Now, I don't want to decide on this issue at this point, I just want to raise it. At the very least, we can say that mystics feel that their experience of the world is different, is radically different. They themselves experience themselves as having greater powers. And maybe the surroundings, the adherents, the people who are devoted to mystics, and often mystics create this kind of flock around them of people who are admirers or devotees. The word Hassidim that I used before, Hassidism, a mystical form of Judaism, to be a Hassid means to be a follower of a mystic. So. The, mystics themselves and believers in mysticism certainly feel that mystics have paranormal powers and is not the same as magic. It's not about changing the world, it's about changing ourselves and how we interact mostly with other people. Now, we've seen therefore, three possibilities, I would say. One is that mysticism is shared because it speaks about reality. The other is because it's different, because it speaks about transformation. And the third possibility is that mysticism transforms reality itself, so that we perceive it differently. And if we perceive it differently, then maybe the way we perceive it differs from culture to culture. So different cultures will create new realities in different ways. So before going onto the next topic, I'll just like to conclude in the following way. And explain why I focus on the modern period and why I focus on Europe, which will really lead into the next topic. That what I am proposing is what we call controlled comparison, when rather than

trying to compare all the mystical systems, which is too much of a, a mouthful, rather than trying to say that mysticism is the same, and therefore try and compare Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, Jewish Mysticism, Sufism etc. And rather] than taking the opposite extreme and leaving everything in atoms and small units and saying okay, we will only study Jewish Mysticism or only study modern Jewish Mysticism. What I want to do is to take a controlled area of comparison, that is to limit our inquiry, not artificially, we'll soon see why, what the logic of it is, but to limit our inquiry to about 4 or 500 years from about the 16th century onward, to the modern period, and to

one continent, to Europe. And this is not to be Eurocentric. It's not saying, of course, God forbid, or whatever it is if one isn't in a theistic system, that we're not interested in Buddhism, Hinduism, Shamanism in Africa, in South America, et cetera. No. It's just that there's a limit of how much one can compare at one fell swoop. And the focus is to compare one continent, which is Europe, and limited to the modern period, there are good reasons for these limitations, which I'll explain. The main thing is to limit the comparison and then we can navigate between the extremes of universalism or atomization.

Lecture 1: Introduction (3) - The Transition to Modernity [10:19]

So, after introducing the topic by a discussion of mysticism, I want to move to the next theme, or the next item in the description in the title of the course, that is modernity. And I want to speak a bit about the transition to modernity. Now, modernity is a very complex process with no one process of modernization. But actually it's best to think of multiple modernities. And when we think about mystical modernity, and we think about psychological modernity, Then we have to focus on those processes which are relevant to mysticism and relevant to psychology which took place in the last, say, four, four, 500 years since the 16th century' till today, which is more or less how we define modernity for purposes of mysticism and psychology. So I want to first think about the goal of technology. The very fact that you're viewing this course is of course a product of a certain technology, and indeed, technological development at ever-increasing speed and scope, is one of the main characteristics of modernity. Now the first question that one might ask is what does this have to do with mysticism. Why is mysticism related to technology? Surely, we are speaking about internal processes which are happening on some sublime or mysterious realm which do not have anything to do with eh, eh, machines. And the same question could be asked about psychology. Maybe the psyche in some ways is eternal. As we said last time, maybe even human emotions, there's a certain constancy. So why would we say that psychology is historical? Now, I don't want to answer these questions in one fell swoop, but rather to begin to work, work them out gradually. And first of all, to say something about How we know about mystical life, how we know about mystical ideas. Until the invention of uh,uh, computers, of Internet, et cetera. Through books, whether through mass distributed books or books of far, limited distribution. We know about mystical ideas, because they were written down in books. We do not have consecutive oral traditions going all the way back to the 16th century. It's not something which exists. We can have traditions which go back three or four generations. It's certainly possible. We can have traditions which go back maybe to the 19th century, maybe even before that. It's very hard to imagine eh, consecutive exact tradition going back 4, 5 hundred years. So ultimately we rely on books.

Now, there was a huge development in the 15th, 16th century, which changed the accessibility of mystical writings. And that is print. And I'll give one example from my own field of Kabbalah, of Jewish mysticism. One of the main books of Jewish mysticism, Zohar, the Book of Lights, the Book of Radiance, was printed for the first time in the 16th century. Now, this printing had a huge impact. And it was debated whether it was a good idea even to print such secrets and to make them accessible through print. But once it was decided to print Zohar, it is a very large impact because many hundreds of thousands of more people became exposed to Zohar and today I think we can find many hundreds of thousands of people who have copies of Kohar at home. So the classical Jewish mysticism, pre-modern Jewish mysticism became available only in the 16th century, to a large extent. Until then, it was eh, eh, scattered I would say over 7 hundred manuscripts or so. Now, it's not that it was made available but the very fact that you take whats found in 700 manuscripts and make a few volumes out of it. It takes the form of a book. That's a big difference. There's a big difference between manuscripts and printed books, not just in accessibility, but also in the form. It's far more organized. It's far more cohesive. It's not as scattered. And we are in the midst of a huge change from the era of the book to the era of the internet. And other digital technologies, so I think that will help us appreciate the role of this huge change from manuscript culture to a cultural fit. So this is one big development in the history of mysticism which makes modernity very different from a pre-modern period. The development of new technologies, of print, of other technologies afterwards, communicative, transport at, transportative technologies that make mysticism far more circular circulative, that is circulates far more rapidly, and then by way of comparing different mystical traditions becomes far more logical in a modern period. Because these different cultures are communicating more, because of technology,

and people are moving around more, because of transport and so on, so these technological changes that took place in Europe in the sixteenth century make European mystical modernity different from mysticism in premodern Europe. So that's the first thing. Now, I want to speak about another factor which is sociology of knowledge. That's because of improvement of technology and because of other complex cultural changes in modernity we have networks, we have much more working groups in networks of intellectuals. So again, if you take the example of Kabala, which comes readily to mind with my field, then in pre-modern Kabala, we had work by individuals, we had students, but we didn't have groups of people working together like we have in modern Kabala. Groups of really organized clusters of mystics that work together on projects. And this is one big change in modernity, the, the whole, [INAUDIBLE] we participated in is one huge network. Generally, the modern university itself is a kind of international network, almost every university is part of the international network. So I think in our present situation, we're able to appreciate what it means to work as part of a network. And what it means to work in far more small groups individuals and so on. So this is the second factor when we move to modernity is that the whole sociology of knowledge is different. That is, the whole social structure of mystical life is different. It's far more organized in groups and networks. So we have got two differences so far and that's technology and sociology and now I want to speak about third factor, which is psychology. Now, the interesting thing about psychology is that psychology always tends to individualize. That is psychology always tends to focus on the individual and on a family structure if you take Fruedian psychology The focus is on individuals and on the parents usually, but on free people, individual and two parents, sometimes a bit of siblings, maybe other relatives. This is a completely not sociological approach. And that's why psychology is often oblivious of its

own sociology. We need the development of social networks in order to create modern psychology If we take the example of Freud, which again, comes readily to mind, Freud himself worked in a network. Today, the whole narrative is is we're speaking about some individual genius that created psychoanalysis out of nothing, or something. But that's a, a fallacy in a way, a fallacy which Freud himself hoped to develop, to establish his own reputation as an individual genius working in the dark. And he even actually wrote about the only modern, genius about Leonardo Da Vinci. And Da Vinci is a good example because he was also an inventor, so somebody who was actively involved in this development of modern technology. And Frued describes this as individual genius, with individual psychology. That's. All this is a very one-sided view. Actually Freud himself worked in a network. He had a Wednesday night circle. He had a group of people that he worked with every Wednesday night developing the ideas of psychoanalysis and Freud wouldn't have been able to develop his ideas without the assistance of people like Karl Jung and others who worked very closely with him and actually also an important woman. Sabina [UNKNOWN] and others, afterwards his own daughter, Anna Freud, et cetera. So, individ, creators are part of networks, and this is true of mystics, and this is true of psychologists. There might be attempts to deny this. However, we, the fact of the matter is that the modernity, which in, facilitates the developments of networks, that

somebody like Jung can come from Zurich to Vienna easily, and have these long conversations with Freud, and then go back in the train and so on. Freud always had this phobia about train rides. He didn't do so much in the opposite direction, but if you're speaking about individual psychology So all of this develops in certain technological conditions and certain cultural conditions. And these are the conditions of modernity. So modern psychology itself develops under these circumstances. Now I want to say something about before we conclude this preliminary discussion on modernity. About the role of individual in modern psychology, that the individual is, is really the result of a long historical process. We weren't born individuals, and we weren't always individuals. The level of individuation is the level of independence of individual group. The extent which individuals perceive themselves as being separate from a group that itself is a historical process and this had many waves in the late antiquity the first centuries of the common [INAUDIBLE] in the 12th century, the 16th century was enough of big wave of individualization. People began to perceive themselves as individuals, increasingly from the 16th century onwards Throughout modernity this is a process which is still continued. Psychoanalysis is part of this process it's very focus of psychoanalysis and individual is part of this process. So the part of a ongoing process which technology is assisting mediums like the Facebook etc of defining us of as individuals. Which is a very modern process.

Lecture 1: Introduction (4) - Defining the European Context [9:20]

Now I want to speak about very important religious development, which is of course naturally related to mysticism, which had a big impact in how we perceive ourselves as individuals. And this is the protestant revolution of the 16 century, of early 16 century of Martin Luther. Very big split in western Christianity. Now, before I speak about Protestantism and how it developed individuality and how developed psychology and how developed mysticism, I want to say something about Christianity and the whole approach will be taken to Christianity in this course, because when we're speaking about Europe and our focus is on Europe of course, we're speaking about a Christian continent.

Now it's true that in Southeastern Europe there are muslim countries in the Balkans et cetera and this is part of European life and culture and it's true that in the premodern period there was a strong muslim presence in Western Europe, in Spain but if we're speaking about modernity, we are speaking mostly about Christian Europe. And these developments we're speaking about before individualization and psychologization, technology, sociology are very much related to the Christian world. It could have happened in different ways in the Balkans as well, again it's not my expertise, it's not my focus. We're speaking about three worlds of Christianity. The first world, which developed from a split which happened, it took a long time to develop, but it's often associated with the 11th century, with 1054, is the split between Eastern and Western Christianity, that is between the Orthodox churches, Greek, Russian, and the Catholic church, so this is the pre-modern split. This is not something created by modernity. And this is a huge change in the structure of Christianity, that you've got the Eastern and Western Churches. But this again, this is something which happened 500 years before modernity, so it's a very old story. But in the modern period, another great Split took place between the Catholic and the Protestant world. That is, the Protestant world splits off from the Catholic world and develops its own identity. Now, this has a huge impact, and I want to recommend a book by Brad Gregory about the Protestant Revolution, which is worth looking at. This had, even if it doesn't just doesn't every single argument, he makes every strong arguments. It's very hard to understand modernity without the Protestant Revolution. And specifically, there are political aspects to it, but specifically when we're speaking about psychology, Protestantism had a big impact on the development of individual, because one of the main claims of people like Martin Luther, is that rather than relying on the mediation of the structure of the church, the mediation of the authorities of a church that

one confesses to. That's, one studies the scripture through the mediation that's come out with dogmatic decisions on, on the nature of belief. Protestantism placed far more focus on individual conscience. One doesn't confess. One works out one's individual conscience with oneself. And one interprets the Scripture, the Bible, with one, one's own reason rather than through mediation of authorities. Now, this is a very general description of Protestantism, and of course there's many subtleties here. But generally, Protestantism is generally associated with a big push to this development of a modern individual. Now, this relates very much to mysticism, because one would say that Protestantism developed all kinds of interesting forms of mysticism, which we're going to throughout the course, and this is very logical. If one has a revolution, if one has a schism, a split, then this creates all kinds of forms of instability. That is the accepted structures begin to become less solid. And in this flux that we have, various forms of mystical life begin to develop as well. Mysticism often zeros in on these windows of opportunity that are created by, by flux, by unstable situations, by when things suddenly come to doubt, mystics often have something to say about this. They say, okay, we've got a crisis. We've got a doubt. It's a huge religious crisis, that the religious world of Christianity is divided into two, and suddenly it's not obvious that the Pope is preaching correct doctrine. We've got, Luther attacks the Pope. And there's two options people have. People have to make a choice. They have to define identity, which is also part of individuation. And decide which religious world they belong to. And mysticism often comes with answers to work through these kind of issues. This is part of the social role of mysticism, really. So again, Protestantism has a big impact on the development of modernity in general, of especially European modernity, till this day, and it has a big impact on the development of modern individual. And of course the Catholic world also changed as a result. The Catholic

world has to, that's why with what's called, we have a Protestant Reformation and some people speak of a counter-Reformation, or a Catholic Reformation. Some people call it the Catholic revival. Maybe it's more accurate to speak like that. It's not only because of Protestantism, but there's also internal developments in the Catholic world. But the Catholic world changes after Martin Luther. It has to address these issues that he's raised, you know, of individual, and find answers for individual, which are often mystical answers. So the Catholic Revival includes also a new form of mysticism. So throughout the course we'll be speaking really about three forms of Christianity. We'll be speaking about the Eastern form and especially the developments in Greece and Russia connected to the Ecclesiastic movement which will go into. We'll be speaking about the Catholic world, and we'll be speaking about the Protestant world. Now, I want to go into something which is seemingly less related, which is that of literature. And from the 19th century onwards, but perhaps to some extent even in the 18th century, we have a new development in writing, which of course is connected to this revolution of print that I spoke about. We have this revolution of a novel that is people think that psychology hold some kind of monopoly on psychological descriptions or understanding. The literature has a great deal to say about psychology and very early modern writer William Shakespeare has a tremendous amount to say about the individual, about individual conscience in Hamlet and other plays. And the whole idea of individual psychology, gets big impetus from modern literature, modern theater. Now, therefore I think that one of the, one of the resources we have for understanding modern psychology, is that of literature. And because of print and other developments, because of modern situation, literature gives us a big insight into psychological processes. And literature certainly in earlier stages of modernity is intimately linked with religion.

For instance, one of the first novels, Samuel Richardson's Pamela Pamela. Very classical early novel, 18 century. Its goals is defined as follows. To cultivate the principles of virtue and Religion in the minds of youth of both sexes. So first of all the focus of youth is interesting because one part of modernity's demographic revolution that we'll be speaking about in a moment, that is far more young people, life expectancy grows, but especially birth rates, infant mortality drops, far more young people. So it's very interesting that same people addressed by certain mystical movements, that, like or religious movements, like Catholic movement, the Jesuits, in early modernity. The same target audience of youth is also addressed by this novel, and it's to call, inculcate the principles of virtue and religion, so it's a completely religious goal. So the novel itself is a religious art form, which afterwards has a secular version, and this is true of many things. This is also true of psychology, as we'll see. But we have religious roots and then develop secular variance. So this is just to point at various avenues in which the individual begins to emerge for psychology, for religion, mysticism, literature more and more in the modern period we have this emergence of individual. Now, I want to conclude this discussion by saying the following. That we, first of all we presented a certain framework of European modernity as mostly Christian modernity, and soon I'll go into that a bit more. We showed how European Christian modernity is part of a process of individuation, of a development of a modern individual, and we also spoke about the role of literary interest, and it's something we'll return to throughout the course. Because really, the approach taken here is interdisciplinary. The idea of using different disciplines, psychology, religious studies, using sociology at some points, always having history in mind in the background, because of the focus on modernity, it's a very historical kind of frame, thinking of things like technology as well. And now also introduced

another play here, literature, and also subtly I mentioned a few other things that maybe you

would have picked up.

Lecture 1: Introduction (5) - The Situation of Judaism in Modernity [6:43]

So, now I want to speak a bit about Judaism, not only because it's my field for Jewish mysticism through Kabala, but because the Jewish world has a very interesting place in European modernity, which is sometimes repressed and sometimes exaggerated. It's true that modernity is mostly Christian modernity. That's hard to dispute. But the Jewish world, of course, also plays a role in the development of yoga, even before the modern period, and certainly in the modern period. There's a very contentious but interesting book The Jewish Century, by Yuri Slezkine. And he speaks about the prominence of Jew, Jews, of Jewish world, in the modern era. But in a sense, the characteristics of a Jewish world if they are not focused in a certain country but almost like a network of communities, and the tendency of the Jews to concentrate in urban centers, both for protection and also for communal cohesion and these are of course non-historical processes that there were limitations about the ability of Jews to own land in pre-modern Christian Europe. So we have a very interesting anomalous situation of Jews in modernity, that on the one hand, the Jewish world comes into its own in the modern period, and that's one of the things that Slezkine points out, that there was a great success of the Jews in the modern period, because this whole idea of networks, and the possibility technology opens, in terms of communication between different countries, are very conducive for a community which is scattered among different countries and different cultures, and which is not focused in one country, in one territory, in one region. So the transnational communities that Judaism has developed over two thousands of years of exile which are not entirely ended, but maybe began to end with the establishment of Israel towards the end of the modern period we are speaking about. So, on one hand this gave many opportunities. And on the other hand, the situation of the Jews became precarious in the modern world, because of a development of the modern nation state, and then the Jews didn't always fit into a strong national identity because they're not related to one strong, specific territorial region. And also, the whole conflict between Catholicism and Protestantism, people had to define themselves according to their religious belief. Where the Jews, where do the Jews fit into this picture? Neither Catholic nor Protestant. So, also the demographic processes. Now, the demographic benefits of modernity, the huge drop in infant mortality and so on, were especially beneficial for the Jews, but really in the urban centers, where there used to be high infant mortality. We have a very rapid demographic increase in the cities of the sheer number of Jews increased by leaps and by bounds in the modern period, and this is part of what created the complex situation of the Jewish modernity. Of course, these problems came to a, to a very tragic climax in the Holocaust. And the establishment of Israel is part of the attempt to solve this problems one, one solution, not the only solution. So, on the other hand these very demographic processes made the Jewish world more prominent, more present in urban centers. Certain cities in Europe had a very high percentage of Jews. So, urbanization, technology, communication, demographics, all of these change the situation of the Jewish world in modernity. The Jewish world in the modern period is different from the Jewish in

the pre-modern period. The Jews become far more focussed on the European world. In the Middle Ages, in the pre-modern period, they were dual Jewish centers. There were the centers in Europe, and there were far more established and prestigious centers in the Orient and the Middle East, in Muslim countries. In the modern period, before the Holocaust, 90% of the Jewish world lived in Europe and America, that is, in Christian countries, only 10% or so in Muslim countries. This changed after the Holocaust, of course, this demographics, but then of course the Jewish communities in Muslim countries more or less came to an end around 1950 and moved to Israel, and to other places. So, generally, one could say that the Jewish world comes into far closer interaction with Christianity in the modern period, and a lot of what we focus on here will be this position in the Jewish world vis-a-vis Christianity this will be part of what we're speaking about. The comparison between Jewish and Christian mysticism. One process which is very interesting in the Jewish world is the role of mysticism inside the totality of Jewish religion. Now, the Jewish religion has many components, it's very rich tapestry of streams of traditions of practices or ways of life, it includes very strong emphasis for law on how to perform various practical commandments, rituals, festivals, et cetera. And there's a strong philosophical tradition which developed mostly in the Muslim countries that I mentioned before. And also

there's the tradition of I would say, psychological writing, which is what they call musal, or self-development, sometimes translated incorrectly as ethics. So, it's a third tradition, and then of course, there's mysticism, and there's other traditions one could mention, musical traditions and so on, which I won't go into at the moment. Now, in the modern period, with a move of centering in Europe, the focus becomes mysticism, self-development that is musal, of course the how to perform the law, the legal literature al-ahal, of legal practice. But in terms of, of systems of thought, and of theoretical systems, the focus shifts more and more to mysticisim and [FOREIGN], and philosophy becomes sidelined in many, many communities, not all. However, in many communities throughout the modern period, philosophy goes into a decline, intellectual rationalistic philosophy goes into decline, mysticism becomes far, far more prominent. Now, I won't go now into all of the history of Kabala, but this is all in the way of illustrating how Jewish modernity is different in many ways from non-Jewish modernity. However, it's all different from pre-modern Judaism. Jewish modernity is a world in its own, which we have to explore, and here exploration of course is for Jewish mysticism. All this in order to buttress our claim that modern mysticism, modern European mysticism, is different from premodern mysticism, that modernity, has a very strong impact. Both in the Jewish world and the general world on the structure of mysticism.

Lecture 1: Introduction (6) - Psychology [10:26]

So now, a lot of things we've been saying until now towards the end of this first unit, will begin to converge together. And this is part of what I'm trying to show is how can one can use the kind of convergent learning, or come in from various angles, various disciplines, and reach in a certain structure, which, soon the structure will begin to materialize to, to take form, take shape. So one of the problems when approaching this issue of modern psychology is that psychoanalysis often presents itself as being the only been the main form of modern European psychology and this is a, a real fallacy in a way. That psychoanalysis is just one of the many psychologies that developed in the modern period.

Now, it claims to be like the master key. In a way, psychoanalysis claims that it can interpret any figure, like we spoke about Leonardo da Vinci, or can interpret any text, maybe Kabalistic text as well. It's very fashionable today. And show that they uncover, reveal psychoanalytic truths. Now, not to knock this interpretation, it has its value, it has its merit, it has its power. But just to say that we have to put things in perspective. There are many forms of psychology. Even in psychology itself, cognitive psychology begins to develop in the 20th century together with psychoanalysis brain science, which is very strong today, begins to develop. It's not exactly psychology. It has overlap with psychology. There are many Freud himself started out with learning hypnosis, wasn't so good at it, so he moved to develop psychoanalysis. Hypnosis is still a strong tradition. There are many psychological traditions, but psychology can be found in places, one doesn't always have to look under the, the flash lights, as they say. And in obvious places when we spoke about the way one can uncover psychology inside literature. Freud did a lot of work on literature and, and theater and rightly so. So one can see theater and literature as resources for psychology. Maybe today we can think of internet as a huge resource. All these blogs, all these autobiographical outpouring of confession on Facebook and so on. It's a huge resource for people studying psychology. And philosophy is a form of psychology. They were, philosopher were very, modern philosophers very interested in psychology, Friedrich Nietzsche at the end of nineteenthcentury, just before Freud began to develop his ideas. And, someone like Arthur Schopenhauer was influenced, Nietzsche was influenced by. Or the religious philosopher, Kirkegaard, existential philosophy, existentialist philosophy. These are all things I'm afraid not, you can always go and research things, these issues in more depth if you wish, through the internet and other mediums.

And people like Henri Bergson in France who were working on a certain form of psychology, of psychology of energy, of creativity. And so on and so forth. And mysticism is another form of psychology. Whether Jewish mysticism or Christian mysticism or other forms of mysticism in other continents. So mysticism has its own psychology and one shouldn't assume that psychoanalysis is a master key that one has to interpret mysticism through psychoanalysis or through some other official psychology. On the contrary, one can use it in another way as well. One can maybe critique psychoanalysis through mysticism, or re-examine psychoanalysis through mysticism, or cognitive psychology. Maybe some mystics also have to, things to say about cognitive psychology, about how we think. So if one looks at it this way, one has a far more pluralistic, a far more open, varied, rich assortment of psychological ideas, all interacting with each other. So this is my first claim about the multiplicity, just like we spoke about multiple modernities, multiple psychological modernities. Now, the second thing if no one system has a master position, has a master key then each psychology has to be interpreted, first of all, on its own terms. It's good to compare. It's good to compare mystical psychology with psychoanalysis and so on. But first of all, let's understand mystical psychology, Kabalistic psychology, and so on, on its own terms. How it itself describes the psyche, how it speaks about psychological processes, what kind of psychological language does it use. This is, I think, a certain shift in thinking that this course is trying to convey. Now, if going back to the very beginning introduction that we started out with, if one really does a control comparison and focuses on modern Europe and focuses on, on basically on two traditions. The Christian tradition, which is split into several traditions. The Jewish tradition, which is also more complex in looks at

first glance. We already saw that it's Kabbalah and Saba is really two things going on here. But if one does this kind of control comparison and focuses on European modernity, and focuses on these specific contexts, then a certain picture begins to emerge in which one can then begin to compare this competitive controlled context of modern European Mysticism to modern psychology, to other forms of modern psychology and we can use these, this investigation to enrich our understanding not just of mysticism, but of European modernity. Now, another argument I want to raise here is that psychoanalysis itself has religious roots. This is very obvious in the case of Carl Jung. And again Freud was not a solitary genius working by himself. He worked very closely with Jung in the early years. This was a very good book about that, movie actually as well. Made, based on the book, Dangerous Method. And the, Jung, Jung in psychology is very obviously indebted to mysticism to mystical psychology, to religion, there to mythology often the ancient forms of mysticism, but also modern forms. Jung studied texts from the Catholic revival that we spoke about. He studied texts like Nietzsche, philosophers as well, not just mystics. But even in the case of Freud, it can be shown that certain structures of thought, not necessarily Jewish structures even though Freud was Jewish but he himself said he's a godless Jew. He said only a godless Jew could create psychoanalysis. So Judaism maybe is not the place to look at. Freud in Vienna was operating in a very protestant world. Maybe there certain protestant values of self-control and so on that lie behind Freud's psychology of winning everything under control of ego. And of saving, like thrift, what's called a Protestant ethic of saving of, of saving one's energy, of delaying satisfaction, so maybe the Protestant structures behind Freud's thought, and practice. So psychoanalysis itself has religious roots. Psychoanalysis is influenced by religion, and not just something you can use to interpret religion the way Freud did in his books, Moses and Monotheism, Totem and Taboo, that I

recommend looking at. But Freud is not just an interpreter of religion, but he's indebted to religion. You can use religion to interpret Freud no less than you can use Freud to interpret religion.And that includes mysticism. Even though again, for mysticism it's best to look at Jung. So, now very interesting thing is that these systems interacted. Freud actually, I spoke about aestheticism in the previous discussions and Freud actually met a major aesthetic leader, a aesthetic mystic. But if it was Freud or a close disciple of his, and, and he did, he analyzed him. He psychoanalyzed him. So there were meeting points between psychoanalysis and Jewish mysticism in the early 20th century. So we're not just speaking about systems that one can compare on some theoretical level. But there were actual interactions going on. Jung's study had visions of himself playing a role in Kabalistic scenes that one could say, or Kabalistic imagination. Certain Kabalistic symbols that he, he felt that he was acting out in his visions, because he had visions, he had mystical visions. So there were actual concrete interactions. This isn't just a theoretical comparison. So now all this begins to come together. One can almost say like kind of, logical syllogism. Like a logical structure. The following principles that we'll conclude this discussion with. Psychoanalysis is one form of modern European psychology. So therefore it has no master position or key, master key for interpretation and therefore all forms of modern psychology including mysticism and other religious forms need to be interpreted first and foremost on their own terms and we could use them to interpret psychology and psychoanalysis no less than we could use psychoanalysis to interpret them. And using a method of controlled comparison, mystical psychology of European mystical traditions, Jewish and Christian, is very much part of European modernity, and of modern European psychology. So one can study it, not so much as part of a global category of

mysticism together with Islamic or Buddhist and Daoist mysticism, or South American shamanism, so on. It's one way of doing it, and I've done that. But there's other things you can do. One can study modern European psychology, mystical psychology as part of modern, European psychology, as part of European modernity. Now, we see there's a certain logical structure here, and therefore, mystical psychology, and psychology in general, are not irrational. They deal with forces which may seem irrational, but you can bring them into a logical structure. This is actual an important contribution of Freud and his associates. And this is what one writer Wolfgang Giergrich called, and it's a book I very much recommend, The Soul's Logical Life. The soul has a logical life and the interesting thing he points out in his book is that part of this logic is historical logic. The soul itself, the

psyche, is historical. It's not something universal, ahistorical, detached from geographical location. It's something which emerged in a certain historic, develops in a certain, historical conditions. The psyche itself, as we spoke a while back, has, goes through historical processes and transitions, and develops with history. And Protestant psyche is not the, the psyche of the world before Protestantism. And so on and so forth. The world of the internet develops a different psyche than the world before the internet, technology again. So this is the, the thought that I like to conclude with, is that the soul has a logical life and this list life is historical. This is what Wolfgang Giergrich, a very close reader of Jung, was called third generation of Jung school, called Jung school in psychology. This is a very important contribution of his.