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 Mus, 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 con, 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 ex, 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.