~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Syncretic Studies in Neo-Sabbatian Kabbalah by Yakov Leib HaKohain-kalidas (Lawrence G. Corey): C. G. Jung, God Still Wants to Become Man ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ BH Welcome, In keeping with the universalist, syncretic nature of our Neo-Sabbatian Kabbalah, these regular Monday postings from C. G. Jung are part of an ongoing, multi-part project in which I contrast Yalhakian Neo-Sabbatian Kabbalah with the esoteric teachings of other religious philosophies including Judaism (Zohar), Christianity (Gnostic Gospel of Thomas), Islam (Sufi Poetry of Rumi), Hinduism (Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna), Buddhism/Taoism (The Tao Te Ching of Lao Tzu), Frankist Sabbatianism (Dicta of the Lord, Jacob Frank) and finally -- to coin a word C. G. Jung himself certainly would hate --Jungianism (Collected Writings). Jungs magnum opus, Answer to Job, from which many if not most of our quotes are taken, has been hailed by many Jungian scholars as the third dispensation, following the so-called Old and New Testaments. Indeed, my own mentor, James Kirsch (an early member of Jungs original inner circle) often told me, Answer to Job should be attached as the third book of the Bible, and another of my teachers, the late Edward F. Edinger, wrote of it: At the outset, let me state candidly my appraisal of this book. In my opinion it has the same psychic depth and import as characterize the major scriptures of the world-religions. (Edward F. Edinger, The Creation of Consciousness: Jungs Myth for Modern Man, Inner City Books, 1984, p. 60) C. G. JUNG: God...[still] wants to become man, and for that purpose he has chosen, through the Holy Ghost, the creaturely man filled with darkness -- the natural man who is tainted with original sin...The guilty man is eminently suitable and is therefore chosen to become the vessel for the continuing incarnation, not the guiltless one....for in him the dark God would find not room. (Answer to Job, par. 746) REB YAKOV LEIBS COMMENTARY: Through a perverted humility one can remove himself from the service of God. -- The Holy Baal Shem Tov Elsewhere Ive written, And even then, not all of us [are chosen from among the ordinary ones to be prophets], but only those who say, with Saul, Hinayni! Here I am! Even more than Saul and the other Old Testament Patriarchs who said, at one time or another, Hinayni, the prophet Samuel illustrates my point about being called by God. When he was a boy in Elis care, Samuel heard a voice calling to him in the night, Samuel! Samuel! But each time, he thought it Eli, and ran to him. Finally, Eli realizes it is Yahweh calling to Samuel, and the following happens: Eli then understood that it was Yahweh who was calling the boy, and he said to Samuel, Go and lie down, and if someone calls say, Speak, Yahweh, your servant is listening. So Samuel went and lay down in his place. Yahweh then came and stood by, calling as he had done before, Samuel! Samuel! Samuel answered, Speak, Yahweh, your servant is listening. Then Yahweh spoke to Samuel]. (1 Samuel 3:1) So even Samuel required a mentor, Eli, from whom to receive not knowledge but wisdom. It was Eli who finally understood -- not by consulting books, but from his own experience -- that the voice calling out to Samuel in the night was Yahwehs voice: Once again Yahweh called, the third time. [Samuel] got up and went to Eli and said, Here I am, since you called me. Eli then understood that it was Yahweh who was calling the boy, and he said to Samuel, Go and lie down, and if someone calls say, Speak, Yahweh, your servant is listening. So Samuel went and lay down in his place. (1 Samuel 3:1) Nevertheless we are often prevented from seeking such an Eli out of our mistaken notion that those who Know, dont say; and those who say, dont Know. Eli knew and said he knew -- not, of course, by saying I Know, but by saying, Go and lie down, and if someone calls say, Speak, Yahweh, your servant is listening. Now, notice that Samuel did not challenge Elis sources for this statement; he did not say to him, Who are you to tell me -- and what makes you think youre holy enough to know -- that its the voice of Yahweh speaking? In other words, he never once said to himself of Eli, Who is he to think he knows? After all, those who Know dont say, and those who say dont Know. Instead, he turned and did as Eli had instructed him. Had he not -- had he questioned Elis right to tell him what he did -- he would not have met with Yahweh, face to face, as he finally did, to receive his commission: So Samuel went and lay down in his place [after Eli had told him it was Yahweh calling]. Yahweh then came and stood by him, calling as he had done before, Samuel! Samuel! [This time] Samuel answered, Speak, Yahweh, your servant is listening. Then Yahweh [spoke] to Samuel [and said] . . . You are to tell [Eli] that I condemn his House for ever because he has known that his sons have been cursing God, yet he has not corrected them. ( 1 Samuel 3:10) Thus, Eli points Samuel to God so that God can tell Samuel that he is to tell Eli that his house is to be cursed because he has practiced what amounts to false humility -- that is, he has not corrected his sons for cursing God, but instead remained silent rather than be thought of as arrogant. It is nonsense to think that those who Know dont say, and those who say dont Know. If that were so, there would be no teachers. It is the insecure, inflated ego that says such things; it is the ego that comforts its own lack of Knowledge by saying to itself, Those who Know dont say, and those who say dont Know -- which is just another way of saying, If I dont know, then neither do you. Had Eli thought this way, he never would have told Samuel to say, Speak, Yahweh, your servant is listening. Had Samuel thought this way, he never would have done as Eli told him, and thereby receive his commission as a prophet. Indeed, Through a perverted humility one can remove himself from the service of God. In what follows, I describe my own Samuel experience while working with my mentor, the Jungian Kabbalist, James Kirsch almost 20 years ago. I will do it not to boast, but only to illustrate how anyone -- even a prostiker yidd such as I -- who is, in Martin Bubers words about himself, no one assured in God, rather a man endangered before God, a man wrestling ever anew for Gods light, ever anew engulfed in Gods abysses -- how even a man such as that can, in the night, be called by God to prophecy if first he says, Hinayni -- and then, Speak, Yahweh, your servant is listening. God Wants to Become Man Was I not an [uneducated] fool in your eyes,Torah-less and illiterate? You look upon me [as such a one] and reckon the whole Torah will be destroyed by my hand. [But] if scholars were needed someone who had read and studied everything would have been sent. -- Yakov Leib (Jacob) Frank, 18th Century Before describing the Hinayni Experience I had with God, almost 20 years ago under the guidance of my mentor, James Kirsch, let me place such exceptional things in perspective. I have already, in the first lecture of this series, discussed how every-day contact with the Divine is impeded by our conviction that it is confined to those few saints who are pure and holy. But, as Jung points out: God...wants to become man, and for that purpose he has chosen, through the Holy Ghost, the creaturely man filled with darkness -- the natural man who is tainted with original sin...The guilty man is eminently suitable and is therefore chosen to become the vessel for the continuing incarnation, not the guiltless one....for in him the dark God would find not room. (Answer to Job, par. 746) Equally as pernicious a deterrent to our encountering God face to face, as did the Biblical Samuel (whom I discussed in the first part of this lecture), is the belief that another precondition to doing so is that one must first be learned or a scholar. Yet, we find in the Talmud: Simeon [the son of Rabban Gamaliel] said: All my life I have been brought up among the sages, and I have found nothing better for a person than silence; study is not the most important thing but practice; and whoever talks too much, brings about sin. (Pirke Avoth 1:17) Samuel himself, whom I mentioned earlier, was only a boy and an ignoramus when he was called by and encountered the living Yahweh. As Scripture states he, as yet [had] no knowledge of Yahweh and the word of Yahweh had not yet been revealed to him. (1 Samuel 3:1) In other words, like Sabbatai Zevis 18th century spiritual heir, Yakov Leib (Jacob) Frank, and most of us, Samuel was Torah-less and illiterate. Yet God called him three times, Samuel! Samuel! to which he finally answered, when Eli instructed him in what to say, Hinayni (I am here) -- speak, Yahweh, your servant is listening. Like most of you, I am no scholar or saint and make no claims to either. Like my namesake, Yakov Leib Frank, I loudly proclaim, in all sincerity, that I am Torah-less and illiterate, a prostiker Yid (ignorant Jew) who knows whatever he may know not because of books, but because in the night my inmost Self instructs me (Psalms 16:2). Like Simeon ben Gamaliel I have learned that study is not the most important thing but practice. One need not be a saint or a scholar to hear the voice of God calling in the night, or any other time for that matter. One need only listen and say in reply, Hinayni, Lord, I am here; speak, your servant is listening. On the other hand, in the words of the Baal Shem Tov, Pride is more serious than all sin because God says of the proud man, I and he cannot dwell together in the world. (Instructions in Intercourse with God, trans. by Martin Buber in Hasidism and Modern Man, p. 211) However, notice first that the sin of a proud man is not his pride before other men, but his pride before God. Self-assurance is not pride -- just as a strong ego is not an inflated one -- and, despite its demand that he do so, it is not the world before whom a strong, self-assured man must be humble but God. Who am I that you should humble yourself to me? Or I to you. We are both nobody. We are both fools. The only difference is, the wise fool knows hes ignorant; the ignorant fool, does not. Here I Am, Since You Call Me Once again Yahweh called, the third time. [Samuel] got up and [again] went to Eli and said, Here I am, since you called me. Eli then understood that it was Yahweh who was calling the boy, and he said to Samuel, Go and lie down, and if someone calls say, Speak, Yahweh, your servant is listening. So Samuel went and lay down in his place. (1 Samuel 3:1) Ive taken great pains to set the context for follows, even though what follows is only a side-bar, as it were, to the major subject of these lectures -- which is that like Sabbatai Zevi, Yakov Leib Frank. C.G. Jung and others -- it is the broken and soiled, not the perfect and spiritually elite, who are called by God to be the vessels for His continuing incarnation. As Jung points out: The indwelling of the Holy Ghost, the Third Divine Person, in man, brings about a Christification of many. (Answer to Job par. 107) But as he also says: The guilty man is eminently suitable [for this indwelling of the Holy Spirit] and is therefore chosen to become the vessel for [its] continuing incarnation, not the guiltless one who holds aloof from the world and refuses to pay his tribute to life, for in him the dark God would find no room. (Ibid, par. 746) It is you and I -- we who have been crushed and dirtied by life, but who, in the words of the old ditty, have picked ourselves up, dusted ourselves off, and started all over again -- that is, we who have been tested by Gods love and survived it -- we who are not Saints, not Pious, not Perfect, not Sages -- we who are Sinners who have sinned and will sin again because, in the words of the old Zen story, it is in the nature of the scorpion to sting -- in short, it is someone even like me (and, if you ask, like you) whom God chooses to break open His word into the world. What follows is an example. Early in my work with James Kirsch, I was lying on my bed in that hypnogogic state between sleep and wakefulness when I heard a voice -- like a rushing wind -- whispering in my ear, Laaaaaaaw-rence! It was so clear that I was both startled and terrified, and I sat bolt upright breathing very hard and in something of a panic. When I related this to James, he asked: What did you answer it? Nothing, I said, I was too frightened. When you hear it again, you must answer, I am here Lord; speak, your servant is listening. That night, the Voice again called me by name while I lay in my bed and, as James had told me to do, I replied very softly, I am here, Lord; speak, your servant is listening. To which it replied in a whisper, Whaaaat are you dooooing here? This reply was so unexpected that it again shocked me into normal consciousness. When I related this second episode to James, he again asked me, What did you answer Him? Nothing, I said, Like the first time, I was too frightened. When he asks you what you are doing there, James said, you must say, I want to be seen by you. So again the Voice came, and again asked me what I was doing there, to which I replied, I want to be seen by you. And then the He said, in a voice I can still hear, I seeeeee youuuuu. * * * * Jungs St. Paul, Edward Edinger (with whom I was also privileged to study at the Los Angeles Institute when I was an analyst-in-training there), once wrote: The experience of being the knowing subject . . . . is only one half of the process of knowledge. The other half is the experience of being the known object. (The Creation of Consciousness: Jungs Myth for Modern Man, p.41) It was through that living experience that I, like Samuel, was led by James, who was my Eli. It was, as they say, the start of something really big, at least for me. Something that would ultimately take me down a path where I could see the Biblical Jobs footsteps clearly in the sand -- and, ultimately, follow them. Just as you can, if you choose, but should think twice about before you do. Not everyone returns. In the Continuing Incarnation, Yakov Leib HaKohain, Founder & Director DONMEH WEST donmeh-west I bless Yahweh, who is my counselor, and in the night my inmost self instructs me. -- Psalms 16:7 ALL ORIGINAL MATERIAL, WRITTEN AND OTHERWISE, BY REB YAKOV LEIB HAKOHAIN IS (C) BY DONMEH WEST, INC. AND IS THEIR SOLE INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY; IT MAY NOT BE COPIED, QUOTED, PUBLISHED ON OTHER WEBSITES, CROSS-POSTED TO OTHER INTERNET EMAIL LISTS, OR OTHERWISE REPRODUCED IN ANY MANNER WHATSOEVER WITHOUT THE AUTHORS PRIOR WRITTEN PERMISSION.
Posted on: Mon, 10 Nov 2014 20:00:30 +0000
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