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.