Howl

Editorial notes:
This is one of Shai’s longest essays, written in seven instalments, six within a period of just ten days in 2016 (from 13th October to 23rd October 2016) and the seventh, a year later, on August 31 2017.
Reflecting on Shai’s complete collection of writings, this can be seen, perhaps, as the zenith and culmination of his intellectual journey. As he was writing this essay he was acutely aware of his physical and mental state and is expressing his anguish via a “howl”, a painful cry, reflecting perhaps on the complex decade long journey he had undertaken and its possible futility.
Shai’s intellectual journey is an inward-looking phenomenological one where he studies his own consciousness, striving to understand his own thought process in observing and studying diverse areas of knowledge. The beginning of the search is through a deep examination of Western philosophy, commencing with attempts to understand the meaning of the ‘self’ through an exploration of Kant, Spinoza and others. He then explores “the interaction of the ‘I’ with the world it occupied”. To that end, he plunges into Buddhism and Hinduism. These give him “a minimal appreciation for ‘different places to put your mind inside the mind‘”.
Shai sums up his continuing journey as an attempt to answer four fundamental questions:
1. What is this place?
2. With what are we engaging?
3. Who are we?
4. What are the tools of engagement?
But before he addresses these existential questions, Shai takes a detour to present his credentials, his justification to be allowed to address these questions. He elaborates on his extensive study of the matters he believes he “needed to know” beginning with the teachings of Einstein and Wittgenstein. “The original spark was to comprehend how Einstein had changed the world without moving, and how Wittgenstein had defined the space for that to happen, changing the world, without moving”. He believes this necessitated a deeper exploration of philosophy, studying the writings of Plato, Spinoza, Kant, Schopenhauer and Husserl (a similar attempt to detail his qualifications, and in particular the journey from Einstein through to Wittgenstein’s, is also found in an earlier essay, Apology, written in December 2016).
The next stage was Shai’s exploration of Buddhism, which introduced Shai to “an appreciation for an alien tradition, which contains some unique insights, and expand the application of the Western toolkit”, and Hinduism which “created awareness of the incongruity of certain phenomenological features which I would not have considered”. Molecular Biology and the Talmud, each helped Shai experience an “awareness of the incongruity of certain phenomenological features which [he] would not have considered [otherwise]”. Shai concludes with a study of Seder Hishtalshelut (Kabbalah) and Hassidic instructions for Hit’bonenut.
I suggest it is worth taking a pause here to note that Shai documented his intellectual and phenomenological journey in great detail and the 430 essays found in this compilation alone testify to his thoroughness. Having integrated and evaluated the various schools of thought from the East and the West, Shai is able to make some fascinating statements and arrive at far-reaching personal observations and conclusions. [I have deviated from my overall policy, of not making any formatting changes to the text, and highlighted paragraphs and sentences that, for me, are revelatory and fundamental to understanding Shai’s state of mind as he approached the end of his life].
Shai’s journey is a phenomenological investigation, in which he places himself at the core of the investigation. At each step, he pauses to confirm his understanding of his own experiences based solely on the domain he investigates. It is only now, as he writes this essay, that he allows himself to look back, perform a comparative analysis and, reach the soul searching outcomes arising from it.
I am deeply indebted to Dr. Evan Zuesse for providing further detailed commentary below, opening my eyes and allowing me to better understand and appreciate some of Shai’s more esoteric writing.

{Part 1 -13/10/2016}

Editorial notes:
This essay gives an account of Shai’s spiritual journey, searching heroically for a meaning of life in a seemingly tragically meaningless and painful world, commencing with a review of Western philosophy, continuing with an exploration of Buddhist thought and meditative practice, and concluding with a summary, in Item 13, below, of general conclusions (“temporary answers from which to pursue further”) about the nature of being aware at all (drawing from the phenomenological analysis of experience as developed by Husserl on a very Kantian basis). From this perspective, the experience is its own justification, if probed fully. Being a person while suppressing all desires is the only reality of life, and its own reward (applying Theravada Buddhist schema of dependent origination, the voidness of self), but also admitting doubt about these conclusions. The concept of a person in Kabbalah, the Partzufim or modes of the divine, are invoked as useful heuristic metaphors. Item 15 focuses specifically on the problem of personhood, who am “I”? Awareness of self is said to arise out of modes of communication with others, with even memory defined as self-communication over time, and “soul” as “the differential of identity” underlying all awareness and “the highest abstraction of the will.” Item 15 concludes by mentioning that his recent encounter with Kabbalistic sources has begun to change his views of the self, consciousness, and much else. In Item 16, Shai summarizes his intellectual journey through long years spent studying Western philosophy and Buddhism, and his growing appreciation and discovery of Judaism’s depths. Item 17 turns to Shai’s discovery of the rich and profound Jewish resources, especially Hasidic and Kabbalistic, giving surprising answers to the questions that had previously guided his studies. He writes that without having explored Western philosophies, especially Kant and Spinoza, and Buddhism, he doubts he would have been able to appreciate the depths of Judaism. He says: “There is more wisdom in Judaism than anywhere else I have ever seen. It frightens me. I don’t think I would have appreciated it without my other explorations.” etc. However, in a later paragraph, Shai comments that on the basis of his previous studies he doubts the validity of the Jewish religion. “And I fully declare that this world looks to me like it is impossible for any religion, and including Judaism (with its set of principles of faith) to be true.” He confesses his mental confusion and despair at the situation he finds himself in _[EZ].

Biographical preface:

These days I’m killing myself, body and mind.

Which makes it the best of times (most pressing) and worst of times (least consistent) to write down what I think this world is.

This isn’t a thesis. I’ll not let myself be distracted by the urge to fully map connotations or proofs.

This is more, what I think, that what I want to say.

What is this place?

Define realms of reference (including self, world, etc)
Deconstruct by some sort of phenomenology
1. I like combining Kant (in spirit, no need to be restricted by his Aristotlean schema) and Buddhist phenomenology (plus some Spinoza, Husserl, and using Plato as a diving board to these)
This leaves a sufficiently subtle and considered substrate for the next step
Target the lacunae left by the above – the self
Look for the self
1. Nb. considering the antinomies of reason and unity of apperception per Kant
2. Nb. considering Buddhist Annata^(I)
3. Can incorporate more phenomenology or existentialism, but I think similarly significant is addressing instincts about what matters to “me” about what I would know (even if impossible) about, if I knew “me”
This leaves a sufficiently subtle and considered substrate for the next step
Having deconstructed the material of experience, and provided an analytical reference point for a putative self that is that the centre of this reality, now ask
What is the mode of interaction of the “I” with the world it occupies
1. Consider embodied phenomenology for considering principles of investigation (e.g. bracketing, horizon, etc)
2. Combine with 4 frames of attendance and 5 aggregates of Buddhism for considering experiential qualities of investigation
3. This leaves the mechanism of action, which can itself be given a texture using something like Schopenhauer’s Will, or by use of principles in Spinoza’s Ethics, or other intuitions
Order of the next few steps is arbitrary
Explore different modes of knowledge
1. Buddhist experiential (nb. Explore more than just anapanasati^(II) or vippassana^(III))
2. Hindu yoga (esp. Bhakti)
3. These two alone should impress upon one a minimal appreciation for “different places to put your mind inside the mind”
Seek a demonstration of the mechanism of action that was analysed for the will
1. My conclusions involve abstracting differentials of behaviour and witnessing that level of will as that experience
  1. Two examples:
    1. Set-up using mindfulness but the aim is samadhi^(IV)“Samadhi (Sanskrit: समाधि, Hindi pronunciation: [səˈmaːdʱi]), also called samāpatti, in Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism, Sikhism and yogic schools refers to
      a state of meditative consciousness. It is a meditative absorption or trance, attained by the practice of dhyāna”. For further details see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samadhi, not vipassana (i.e. to have a reasonable concentration). Then study the body across different frames of reference (e.g. conceptual, sensational), then study the body as it moves, then study the body as you imagine a series of imagined variant movements, and occasionally enact motions, then look at the thing that is causing those motions. I find it helpful to use all the steps bar the last to establish a sense of “this primate” and coming to appreciate the level of sophisticated autonomy it has, including a certain level of thought, and then looking at the thing that is operating to control that (i.e. the primate) level. This “thing” is essentially what stops the “primate” from being completely autonomous, will be composed of something like intentions or thoughts, but also have another logic to be defined below.
      1. Nb. anyone who concludes that the “primate” is only the physical aspect of experience will be disagreeing with me. This should be a surprising experience. And would highlight the texture of the differences of abstraction, which is not the same knowledge as a knowledge of conceptual differences across abstractions.
    2. Adopt a new domain of experience, do this a few times, each will take about 4 weeks. Make sure to engage in focused awareness of that new domain every day. This is important for reasons explained in cognitive neuroscience, and relates to the oscillatory character of memory consolidation
      1. But I would also mention interleaving and cross-domain mapping, mostly researched in language, but I advice expanding this understanding to meet neuroscience principles of embodied cognition, overlapping functions of networks, especially interoceptive, and thereby a theory of the generated experience of interoceptive sensations in relation to interoceptive comprehended as being a sensation of homeostasis disequilibrium [and requiring more explanation, also I would mention a theory of chakra meditation^(V) cogsci [Cognitive Science?], and requiring more faith, Fourier Analysis^(VI) and systems ontology in cell signalling chemistry.
      2. Study whether there are differences to other aspects of awareness. Note that after a certain point your awareness of those differences dissipates, and will no longer be directly accessible except as a memory. This should highlight the nature of differentials, awareness, and what a “change in conscious substrate” feels like. Also the role of time, and intensity of novelty, and paradigm of “novelty” for these.
Seek to define what the limits of things are, or whether there is any, etc
1. May want to start/end with Wittgenstein
2. I recommend the problem of why some things are “a thing” while others are not “a” thing, but “are things”. And employing an archetypal sense of unity in the experience of there being a single awareness.
  1. Characterise the unification of self-experience as depending on a relationship through time
    1. Cf. Husserl^(VII) and Merleuau-Ponty^(VIII)
    2. I used a pathological feature for study: experiences of a split in the narrative of self-hood, seeking to comprehend what defined each carriage of self-identification, and what unified them beyond shared reference points (esp. in memories and embodiment)
    3. Then I employed the same strategy on things, using different frames
3. I end with something like Wittgenstein^(IX)“Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein was an Austrian-British philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language”. For further details see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Wittgenstein., but with an emphasis on the possibility of there being a higher level perspective that is the result of the relationships of the occurrences of perspectives (cf. Studying the mechanism of action for will)
  1. Two examples:
    1. Metaphorical idealism
      1. This is also very beautiful and maybe spiritual
      2. This was a big moment for me, putting into words, and also impressing upon me philosophy as a practice (or what I just now imagine as a ‘technology of ideas’ for doing things in the mind, including epistemological investigations, and whatever existential hubris)
    2. Conceptual synthesis (where ideas are seen through a lens that is different from normal as is syn from normal)
      1. Use example of abstracting perspectives of plants to create a new prism, how that is experienced, and what that implies for any epistemologist and phenomenologist who wishes to push the boundaries of the “where” they are studying (i.e. people think that their experiences are the lowest level, and only modified by context and bias, but these can be moulded in a differential manner and that reveals another degree of observation)
This leaves one with the following temporary answers from which to pursue further:
1. What is this place? It is the perception of an act of engagement.
2. With what are we engaging? With a series of mental abstractions that end up in a world, recognized as physical, and which a can be located, and which are perceived by means of phenomena, but constructed by some sort of idealism which recognizes an object by collecting a series of observations, each observation being a perception of that manifold (Kant’s term) synthesized by a concept (riffing off Kant) that is itself identified as an object (or idea), and arranged according to conditioning and a calculus of the impact of salient experiences that display a capacity for entropy and trauma.
  1. I don’t think I’ve explained the central role of ‘fate’ for limiting the sets of things that exist.
3. Who are we? We are degrees of abstraction, that lead up into primary reasons, and what looks to be a truly transcendental primordial logic. We are the experiencing, which manifests via various substances (riffing off Spinoza’s definition). It remains to be seen whether the Buddhist schema of dependent origination is accurate in principle or detail, but their general qualities defined, esp. the tilakhana^(X)“In Buddhism, the three marks of existence are three characteristics (Pali: tilakkhaṇa; Sanskrit: trilakṣaṇa) of all existence and beings, namely impermanence (anicca), unsatisfactoriness or suffering (dukkha), and non-self(anattā). These three characteristics are mentioned in verses 277, 278 and 279 of the Dhammapada. That humans are subject to delusion about the three marks, that this delusion results in suffering, and that removal of that delusion results in the end of suffering, is a central theme in the Buddhist Four Noble Truths and Noble Eightfold Path”. For further details see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_marks_of_existence., are unarguable at the basest levels of experience, which would mean that we are also in some sense an illusion. I nonetheless have sought to see the soul.
  1. And have also since been able to express a limitation in their truth, that the Buddhists may not have been able to see.
4. What are the tools of our engagement? Different sets across levels of abstraction that are based in a physical primate in an environment, and ascend into a continuum that (at first impression) includes and extends through emotions, thoughts, and into will.
  1. Recently I have been enamoured with the theories of Tikkun Partzufim, esp. defining from Atik to Zeir (but also their classifications, e.g. Yitzchak, etc) as a model for characterizing (in a way that is technically false but I think true from the view of a Parmenidean sphere^(XI)“Of the cosmogony of Parmenides …he conceived the spherical mundane system, surrounded by a circle of the pure light (Olympus, Uranus); in the centre of this mundane system the solid earth, and between the two the circle of the Milkyway, of the morning or evening star, of the sun, the planets, and the moon; which circle he regarded as a mixture of the two primordial elements”. For further details see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parmenides. ) the act of actual/real Will in lived time.
    1. I say that it is not true insofar as I think it is easier and is a better fit for easily employing in a very pragmatic way.
I have simplified my answers because later developments obviate the need for defining some earlier ones.
Nb. There is left the question of who am “I” as a subject that is prioritized. Is it the higher abstractions? This is intuitive but naive. We swim, creating a wake, and then are dragged by that wake, that does not make such a swimmer their wake.
1. I approached this from the following question, “Given the nature of the vessel of experience and my engagement with it, thus being a vessel for my experience of reality in total, what are the avenues for “controlling” or interacting with the higher levels of engagement (esp. the abstraction of intention, the abstractions of perception of the self as a thing, whether by synaesthetic or metaphorical degrees, and a higher abstraction yet [presumed to be, I call, the “soul”])
  1. This came to include a study of “communication”, between people, as an underpinning for self-hood across memories, and as a static tool (esp. text, esp. as the possibility of talking to oneself through time to try and steer higher abstractions of the will).
  2. This lead to a conclusion that might be fanciful, but has convinced me by sheer capacity as a rosetta stone^(XII) for addressing some difficulties of understanding: Communication is a type of harmony of meaning. Memory is a type of communication (i.e. of one person with themselves through time), identity (of a person) is (what we see as) a cohesion of memory (and thus differentiated for decohension of memory in a person-body through life, whether by salience, qualification, etc), and the “soul” is that force recognized as the differential of identity (ie. the logic that transcends awareness, and is the highest abstraction of will, to see the logic of the changes of changes of changes of changes – or whatever the best count is, some details here have been changed recently due to kabbalistic insight).
Some biographical notes on highlights of study:
1. [My study involved] Skipping a lot. There have been quite a few quantum leaps of focus, and I honed in on what it is that I “needed” to know. Nb. The original spark was to comprehend how Einstein had changed the world without moving, and how Wittgenstein had defined the space for that to happen, changing the world, without moving.
2. Plato, Spnizoa, Kant, Schopenhauer, Husserl [were chief foci of my philosophical studies].
3. Study of Buddhism introduces an appreciation for an alien tradition, which contains some unique insights, and expand the application of the Western toolkit.
  1. Btw. The theoretical implications for the use of the 40 subjects in the Vis. Is to my sights not asked about. Even if its specificity is questioned^(XIII)The probable reference is to the Visuddhimagga or “The Path of Purification,” the most important Theravada Buddhist meditational text outside the standard canon of Theravada Buddhist scriptures. It lists 40 traditional forms of meditational focus in its second part but does not explain the reason for each one [_EZ]..
    1. And I would tie this into my imagined idealized study of divine text.
4. Study of Hinduism created awareness of the incongruity of certain phenomenological features which I would not have considered.
5. Molecular biology and Talmud give an appreciation for integrating different abstractions of comprehension, and for attempting to study a logic that is putatively infinitely richer than anything the mind can actually comprehend.
6. Natural horsemanship gives an appreciation for measuring the coherence in the human mind, and thus assisted a search for things unseen.
Very recently [I have studied the] Seder Hishtalshelut^(XIV)The “chain”-like unfolding of the multiple worlds and levels of the cosmic order as laid out in Kabbalistic thought [_EZ]. and Hasidic instructions for Hitbonenut^(XV)Analytical and focussed forms of meditation [_EZ]., and lessons derived from Mussar^(XVI)Mussar literature, from the late 18th century onward, developed an extensive analysis of self-awareness, of the will, and of repentance and moral action – it was promoted as a mode of self-purification and elevation. As such, it was practised throughout non-Hasidic “Misnagid” yeshivot in eastern Europe and is still important in many Orthodox yeshivot today. By “pragmatic phenomenology” is apparently meant methods of altering the experience of the world and consciousness itself [_EZ]. for pragmatic phenomenology.
1. When I first read Kant (and Spinoza before him) my mind was shattered in a direction I had thought I had already known, but had never truly been there until a whole new dimension opened up. So too many times to various degrees
2. Including Buddhism, most especially for that which was alien in it, and for introducing an awareness for the substrate of knowledge
3. There is more wisdom in Judaism than anywhere else I have ever seen. It frightens me. I don’t think I would have appreciated it without my other explorations. Partly because sometimes there is mention of principles which – when seen in the light of some non-Jewish philosophy or architectonic – is hugely revelatory, creating new spaces, and yet was only mentioned in the Jewish text for a specific reason which invariably serves a ubiquitous thread that is the lived religion.
  1. I have a lot more I could say about the utility of sefirot^(XVII), in particular, form and in general principles, and in terms of their atomic principles of comprehension, and as their utility for combining metaphysics, psychology, and phenomenology, and for understanding in concrete the abstractions of the self (as alluded to above). Also the theory of Da’at^(XVIII) and the use of exercising creative intuition and analytical construction is all fascinating – no one in the East is doing anything like this, and for those who understand everything here, shows how the great truths in the East might be only relatively so, as if they found a small jewel that was grand enough to light a beautiful palace, not knowing that there is an entire palace made of jewels in Israel – [all this] has tremendous implications for the quest to explore the attributes of the experiential substance (riffing Spinoza [who equates the substance of the natural universe with “the mind of God”]), let alone for suggesting principles of pragmatic phenomenology (i.e. to modify one’s internal landscape by design [to alter awareness and consciousness itself]).
  2. Also the Torah, the rest of the Nach [the Prophets and Writings], the Mishna, and the Talmud. I had always known the last was beautiful… As for the others… I think that for anyone who is modern and wants to approach the Torah seriously, it’s better not thought of as a “Jewish bible book”. Maybe [one should, instead] see it as a transdimensional artefact that is technology made of semiotics, and the product of an alien creature capable of the same dazzling command of expression as displayed by the semiotics of biology. I think it is easier to study it, not as a Sunday school historical and puritanical document, and more as you would if you found a magnificent piece of technology from an alien race millions of years advanced. [It should be studied] Methodically and with great creativity (cf. The creativity needed to comprehend the holism in molecular biosemiotics mechanisms of action). Add to this the premise that it was made for communicating to us [down through the ages] through the limits and untapped potential of unfolding history.
    1. In case it isn’t clear. I advocate some study of molecular biology to assist in expanding one’s imagination for just how fractal and holistic perfection can be. A key difference is that in any biological question, there is an unquestioned paucity of data, and the more we know the less we know. Whereas in theory, the Torah should be study-able.
  3. It also scares me because it makes me wonder if everything I’ve ever thought and learned has resulted in nothing worthwhile, except insofar as it helps comprehend parallel thought in Judaism.
    1. I am hoping that there remain some pragmatic theories and elaborations (i.e. instructions) that I can offer to make everything I’ve ever been proud of, still have some value. And if not, it’s hard to know whether there’s anything worth keeping (there might be) or whether it’s just a vain repackaging of truths superseded by way of Judaism.
      1. I would have said from the first, “I can explain why x in Judaism is so relevant since it fixes y in philosophy” but I would need to first come to terms with the very epistemology OF epistemology (which is not only theoretically and phenomenologically approached in Judaism, but also existentially weighted).

Anyway. So I know that’s mostly jargon. And I didn’t bother elaborating the metaphorical idealism stuff, but it would boil down to either a series of instructions for a practice, or a description would sound conceivable, but irrelevant, and likely poetic (and thus suspect to those with a Platonic sensibility [re poets] and those with a naive sophistication, which seems to be very practical and common). I also skip on anything that follows from a perception of the self by use of these techniques, because once again, it has to be experienced. It’s not that hard at the lower levels, and at the highest, sublime, but it requires a certain amount of “meditation” – and can feel frustrating when uneffective: since it’s predicated on trying to create a perception of the space between perceptions, and since its trying to do so by affecting a higher level of cognition by way of a lower level, then the very things one must engage in their mind, are not the things they seek, and this can be uninspiring in itself, and very a very alien presumption for how to interact with the mind (normally this is aka “thinking” or “attending” but here it is “thinking and attending as a means to something else”).

And also, to be honest, sometimes I wonder if I’ve confused myself with some of these practices. Metaphorical thinking blurred a lot of lines between paradigms (which are themselves the delineators of concepts and things), while various sati practices highlighted the choice of placement in the mind, and thereafter the attempt to practise a bhakti yoga within a Buddhist metaphysics, not only taught me an unexpected form of engaging, but also an unexpected capacity for phenomenological incongruence amongst motivating schema whose appearance of practice (esp. attendance) look the same. Also the reasons, and relevance of such incongruence. BUT having said that, it does feel like there’s a certain “flexibility” (for want of a word) along these parameters (which I have mostly bemoaned as that perennial sense of confusion of “wait, in what way am I meant to shape my mind for this thing that I’m doing?”) that can be acutely allowed to twist when studying Jewish divine texts, even throughout a single sentence. Whether or not this is delusional is beyond my current capacity for determination.

Also. If the Torah is even a fraction of the singularity that would be a text from an infinite source…. Then where did it come from…..

Let alone the Mishna which offers a whole other paradigm for things I don’t want to say. Let alone the Talmud which is like a magnifying glass and telescope for those same things I can’t say. I would say that Kabbalah is ironically the least terrifying because it isn’t simultaneously an informational mine shaft and vortex of reality, instead, it is “just” some philosophy to be applied. Having said that, I feel like as insightful as Kabbalah is – and it is probably underappreciated because of fundamental underpinnings that are commonly missed (not least that it includes a mode of engagement and not just principles to be applied during engagement) – I have no doubt that I don’t know anything at all by the measure of the potential it offers. Just like it is not enough to be taught the numbers and their arrangement in order to prove a Fourier analysis (and nb. Someone taught numbers is so paradigm-shift wiser than before). I note that the Vilna Gaon placed a special significance on the tosafot dots and lines in the Torah – I can’t imagine this level.

It’s vain. But I imagine the gematria^(XIX) to be experienced like music. (I would add just one putative kabbalistic feature for this: the orders of magnitude are overlapped in their relativity: this should be understood vis relationship of higher Malchut with lower Keter). If I could, I would not be looking for just any words that have the same value, it’s about motifs, and also about their ubiquitous presence (i.e. not just in special cases), and thereby being sensitive to their subtle forces of rhythm and not just their clear-cut and static comparisons, which I think would mostly be of value for comprehending the Otiyot of and also qua language.

Similarly, with the letters, there are allusions between letters that may sometimes reveal a single clear insight, but mostly I would expect to operate by subtle forces.

Similarly with the letters, with regards their association with particular Tzinorot, I have wondered about how one could first “study tikkunim relating to such a combination” and thereafter apply that insight (preferably via D, and not just CB) to their nuanced reading. (Obviously also the other ways of their relations, but I highlight this one out of myriad, since it offers a sensitivity to a quality of engagement that is somehow opposing the Shvira, and thereby I am unable not to wonder whether there is any way to see across any Curtain (vis force opposite to Tzimtzum in some incomplete respect) but this is especially vain and would be incredible to even be able to attempt, let alone attempt).

I think the greatest challenge, is that from first principles, it requires so much foundational study, and yet the most insightful approach is the least forced. A form of Yoniso manasikara^(XX) in a way that the term has never been used.

But then this is all vain. Or at the best, representatives of the genus of considerations that could be made to make a proper study.

But then one cannot read the Torah and study it without the religion. It says too much.

And I fully declare that this world looks to me like it is impossible for any religion, and including Judaism (with its set of principles of faith) to be true.

But in my limited understanding of the sodot… that’s an incredible failure of comprehension of what this reality is. For those interested, I recommended observing the selection/placement of the title “… of Tzevaot” (esp. in Tefilim, and I have wondered about a naive misunderstanding of the nature of the Ketubim (as if the Tanach was “a single substance and equally kadosh”, and how to approach this text in particular) and the nature of Kadosh (via a metaphysical approach, seeing to define its meaning when taken to be a feature of reality [including in relation to seder hishtalshelut and Yisrael etc.] and also via a divine “psychology”, by way of divine roles and utterances in the texts, and by a more clearly terrifying vista, viz. the halacha [which, for those that understand, is the practice of …, and so a matrix of a something that might be understood like a “will” – cf. The metaphorical approach that uses differentiations at various levels, here. I don’t know if this is something that should be aimed at in general.)

But like I say. I’m mentally addled these days. So who knows. I remain beset by fear on all sides.

So read this as “this is what he was experiencing in his last days…” who can say whether anything here reflects the rest of my life. No doubt I’ve got a lot of jargon and motifs of abstract expression, but do they mean anything?

Is it possible that the greatest Copernican revolution (per Kant) remains to be understood?

Wittgenstein asks “What’s the difference between, It looks like the sun goes around the earth, and it’s not?” This is a very beautiful story and a favourite of mine. It’s simultaneously profound and tragic.

If I were to regain mental foundation, I should make a mundane investigation (into the utility of Jewish mysticism for my own investigations) and also a terrifying investigation.

(btw I choose the word terror per the allusions of Nora [?], not to be taken in a mundane expectation)

But also, how can I suspect so much in this, and yet attend to a pattern of behaviour that is shamelessly opposed to their implications?

Answer: It’s not easy. I don’t want to have so many rules. I am astonished by even the possibility of theological revelation. I want short-term pleasures. I want to be my own master. It leads to accepting some things that are terrifying in a way that nearly no one in this world would think to fear. It’s another level of solitude. It’s another source for anxiety. It’s very big. It turns everything upside down and inside out. I would be left without anything that is mine to give to the world.

[And I have tried to say, “But you could write this book of philosophy”, but how foolish that follows after the premise of a divine text”. It would mean there is no advice I could teach that would supersede “Learn it properly and practise it thereof”. And when I have tried to say, “Perhaps you could write commentary”, but again how foolish. And this is most obvious since considerations of the encoding of wisdom within cultures, added to Levinas^(XXI) on the temporality of Judaism, combined into a more sophisticated and less dictionary-strict description of the oral law.]

{Part 2 – 21/10/2016}

Editorial notes:
Part 2 continues this very probing and philosophical discourse with an extended reflection on the dubiousness of any possible construction of reality, as revealed by Western philosophy as understood by Shai. Our experience is likened to a dream from which one must escape, but no way out into truth and reality is evident_[EZ].

All the philosophies and psychologies and mysticisms and religions agree on a fundamental tenant:

The world as is most easily described is not the world as it is “truly”, nor as we would be wont to engage it. But beyond this, the schools and traditions vary substantially; most perniciously, regarding the manner by which we should engage appearances if we are to discern the controls beneath.

I list here only whatever comes to mind in this moment, and haphazardly: reason (in its general form throughout the Western philosophies, and in specific aspects, e.g. logical for the Peripatetics, aesthetic for the Stoics), by mode of attendance (especially for the yogi, e.g. sati, with various emphases and approaches), by mode of religious dedication (e.g. bhakti for the yogi, faith of various slants in the West), by dissociative acceptance (viz for want of a description per the elders), by contemplation (viz for the Hasid). I could of course add all the tinted glasses that form the necessary springboard for so many ventures (e.g. the very phenomenology of ethics for those deriving genealogies), let alone the myriad prisms that form a deciphering code for witnessing reality (i.e. virtually all the schools and traditions named and unnamed, e.g. to view the world per the Parmenidian sphere). I have not listed here any of the paradigms that are described by persons but lie outside their sphere of exploration (esp. the scientific hypotheses that prove statistics but defy imagination).

Furthermore, to these should be added the “consensual hallucinations” that overlap societies at so many different strata of aggregation and devolution, and which so often form corollaries to their spiritual, but also to their contractual, heritages.

Thus each of us may discover at rare moments that we are trapped within overlapping matrices, and whose arches signifying escape can only lead to altering delusions.

Let’s adopt the simile of the dream.

In which case, what we need is an epistemology whose lessons are hermeneutical, whose design enables (if not insists) an existentialism that must be experienced and willed, and applied with a sensibility that not only admits the idiosyncratic but expects it and pursues it. All of which must be imprinted upon the first principle: If we are caught in a dream, we must strive to escape.

{Part 3 – 21/10/2016}

Editorial notes:
Parts 3 and 4 focus on the philosopher whose thought most influenced Shai’s outlook. This was Immanuel Kant. Kant opened Shai’s eyes to the otherness of the real world, whose attributes or qualities we only project into things due to our own sensory organs and bodily needs and expectations, and a priori synthesizing generalizations we build on them — not only colours, but time and space itself, and even casuality as such. All these sense-objectifications and generalizations help us to deal with the appearances of things (“phenomena,” appearances), but their actual reality in themselves (“noumena,” des dinge an sich), is and will forever be alien and unknowable. This is the “Copernican Revolution” said to have been made by Kant, replacing the reality of the sensory world of appearances assumed in classical Western philosophy with attention to the senses themselves as human constructs that create “appearances,” but cannot contact “things-in-themselves.” The “weak Sapir-Whorf hypothesis” referred to below is that the particular traits of given language help to shape our experience of the world, and our thinking as such – we recognize or value some characteristics of the world around us, and devalue or do not recognize other characteristics. To take an extreme example, the language of the Piraha people, a small and isolated group of hunter-gatherers in the Amazon forest of Brazil, does not have in it distinct numbers, colours, etc. So, it seems, they do not recognize such things, and cannot learn to count to 10 or even add 1 + 1 = 2. Their use of pronouns is the simplest of any known language. Their view of time and personal relations is very oriented to the present moment, as a result. They have no historical accounts or myths. The result of the “Copernican Revolution” of Kant, plus the “weak Sapir-Whorf hypothesis,” is that we cannot reach reality per se, and we are also at least to a very large degree imprisoned by the languages we speak and the cultures we live in. It is impossible to translate from one language to another (linguistic/cultural relativism), or really know reality in itself (radical scepticism, undercutting any meaning to life)_[EZ].

Biography: For me, Kant was an expanding experience. He solved a problem I had begun with Plato, continued for over a thousand years until hope and imagination were rekindled by Spinoza, and then his Critiques. For me, he is the archetypal philosopher, who shifts and redefines reality and everything in it, without moving from his armchair. I describe his greatness by an inability to ignore (i.e. except insofar as accepting default metaphysics whose comprehension must respond to him), and by a lineage, I trace through Wittgenstein and into the arguments of the Vienna circle and thus modern physics.

Nonetheless, after all these years, not much is left of the original Kant within my own thoughts. Mostly I admire him for making stark an unspoken assumption (which he flips into his “Copernican revolution”), but also for answering the problem of matter as an attribute of substance – here I link backwards only to Spinoza, ignoring Leibniz and the facts of history – permitting me a new metaphors for relating space and time to each other. And after perusing his successors, I add an appreciation for what reality qua total phenomenon is, taking the noumenal to be either an epistemic tool, or the boundary (made liminal) of its being experienced qua being experienced.

His specific arguments regarding the specific categories I discarded sceptically almost immediately, and the antinomies I treated as exercises of a perspective and a strategem for justifying – by necessitating – some humility in the philosopher. I appreciated his ethics, but declared them to be insufficiently true to the course, and looked to Nietzsche as getting closer to his vector’s end. Whereas his aesthetics I admired but segregated from the architectonic, and eventually read within some sort of phenomenology (e.g. Husserlian).

And now, as I engrave all my glasses and windows and mirrors with reminders, “this is a dream”, I am voiding sentimental value against a terror Kant did very well to describe (as an aesthetic sensibility of sublimity arising from that which is synthesizable but defying reach, negating by unexperienceable scope).

Which is to say, I am testing whether there is anything from Kant I still need, and what, and how?

{Part 4 – 21/10/2016}

“Which is to say, I am testing whether there is anything from Kant I still need, and what, and how?”

Kant blesses the day he awoke from a dogmatic slumber, but he was only questioning the possibility of conceiving and perceiving causality. All starts are impressive, but their standing withers by their successors’ vista.

Kant realized that the conditions of phenomenal reality might be better described as conditions of the acts that perceive that same (heuristically presumed) reality. To know that (noumena) x exhibits causality is to know that the manifold intuited by x is amenable to a synthesis of causality. However, Kant either denied or stalled an imagining of the possible mappings (for which Wittgenstein is a better inspiration) and therefore never investigated the relationships of maps. Consequentially, he could not ask whether there were any limits on mappings (which I presume to be some sort of congruence that is primordial to any phenomenon/ology). Similarly, he could never describe anything of the noumena/phenomena dichotomy, much further than one being knowable and the other not. Paramount to all these missed opportunities is the venture:

I may speak coherently of a “source” of phenomena but can say nothing of it. But between such an unknowable and that which I experience, can I speak of preceding logos? And I can I speak of the relationship between my experiences and that logos (even if I can’t prove any specific category, and even if my very speaking of a relationship must be studied and validated in its own right)?

Thus I leave this:

Kant impresses us with the abyss before the pure origin of reality to be experienced.

Kant describes form and concept as the creators of our (naive) experience. But we need not limit ourselves to his accounting, and instead allow (by bracketing for the moment) that these are how we experience, no matter the content or mode of engagement.

Kant explains why the forms and concepts of our experience in themselves are attributes of the substance of our apperception, as opposed to being qualities recognized in the manifold.

But we should reinforce this explanation with a yearning to know why these attributes are viable, and whether we can conceive of an interim layer of the manifold’s exposition which is non-noumenal.

(I consider that the recognition of the “unknowable” may be enhanced by analogue exploration. I had admired and feared the implications of the language Piraha, whose epistemic distance from discrete, ordinal, fixed integers [etc] evoke interstellar space, whose conceivable bridge [e.g. via ladders of the weak-Sapir-Whorf hypothesis] is only to prove the “not impossible”. Furthermore, the theories of language and culture being dual attributes may help imagine the terrible depths of those distances, whose lacunae can not be missed, and most barely alluded.)

{Part 5 – 21/10/2016}

Editorial notes:
Parts 5 (October 21, 2016) and 6 (October 23, 2016) address Shai’s later critical analysis of Kant, finding his arguments limited in certain crucial aspects, and turning to Spinoza, Hobbes, and other later Western philosophers to fill in the gaps. Part 6 finds some hope in Spinoza and some later thinkers insight that the world of things and the world of words can be said to have an analogical relationship (i.e., this thing is to that thing as noted in words that state a relationship between the two) so that there is at least some tracing of reality in language_[EZ].

“Which is to say, I am testing whether there is anything from Kant I still need, and what, and how?”

Post-script:

Kant’s arguments using the antinomies and dialectics may be taken as an appreciation of the limited applicability of attributes (forms, concepts). But I recommend his conclusions into a more general format: The forms and concepts that may be used to elucidate within a strata of experience, cannot be used to elucidate that strata as a whole, nor can they be (presumed to be) applied to the strata that emanated the experience’s “hyule” (relatively speaking, i.e. relative to the experienced strata).

By the way of situating my references: I take any analytical reading of Kant to be sufficient, but starving. I read him as preceding Schopenhauer and Husserl, and don’t care for Frege and Hegel et al. I was strongly taught by the Allison school of interpretation. I strongly admire one peculiar outlier, which is an attempt to read Kant as solving a problem of (Leibniz’s) monads, but consider that philosophy as a parallel Kant, and not the one known by his name. Also, I am fully aware that I am ignorant by comparison with those who define their vocation here, and would define my familiarity as “overenthusiastic university library-card [ex] holder”.

{Part 6 – 23/10/2016}

Biography: Spinoza sparked a single eureka for me, and with regards to its singularity, I suspect that I have neglected much that he had to offer. The spark was an approach to (nb. to situate it in its historical era) the Cartesian problem of the pineal gland. In its more general form, it is the mind-body problem. In a more specific form it is “How can we talk about physical things and mental things at the same time?” (but which has had implications for the general form). I remember how disappointed I was with the rest of that era after having discovered Spinoza. Descartes is primarily to be thanked for washing the whiteboard. Berkeley as a corollary of possible hypotheses (thus more useful, as shorthand, than inspirational). Hume has some great points, at least one of which inspired me, but none of which are revolutionary in themselves. Leibniz seeds originality but is overcome by the novelty of his vision, and hence the devolution into Wolff (who became the foundation for the next generation). Hobbes and Bacon are more useful for their few pithy phrases than for their verbosity (which is not deny the utility and contribution of their ideas).

[Not being particularly interested in political or anthropological philosophy, I have little right to evaluate these. But in any case, whilst I do appreciate Hobbes, for me he was only an aspect of a larger face that included Rosseau, Bentham, and Mill(s). Marx, in my mind, births a new lineage.]

Btw, Spinoza is also the reason I was so excited when first approaching Hegel, as if I would finally solve that problem which persisted despite both Spinoza and Kant. But alas.

That single thought which Spinoza birthed for me could have been derived from a prior reading of Hofstadter’s eclectic tome (and in any case combined with that and many others, across the years).

That single thought was that the same thing could be two different things, whose interactions were in parallel (nb. J Bennett calls it parallelism). I do better to quote:

The order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things.

A mode of extension and the idea of that mode are one and the same thing, but expressed in two ways.

{Part 7 – 31/08/2017}

Editorial notes:
A year after the above reflections, in August 2017, Shai felt he had found a possible “universal translator” of the world of appearances and things-in-themselves, in the Kabbalah. But in terms of applying this to his own life and practice, and actually taking on an Orthodox lifestyle, he still feels reluctant and adrift_[EZ].

Notes after 1 year:

A year ago I thought that the question “What is this place” required an answer which could be known without consideration for the limits of experiential awareness of knowledge (viz. knowledge of the theory behind the answer). Now I know that “What” is a less important question than “Who”.

I thought that MI [?] was superior for being higher than other POV [Points of View]. But now I think that all POV are arbitrarily non-infinite, and selected on an idiosyncratic basis, not objective.

I thought that Kant was crazy. Now I take it for granted that I have a universal translator, though am far less rigorous or legalistic in my justifications (viz. of the translations, and of inspired &c).

I thought of Seder [Histalshelut, as being] top-down, [but] now [see it] intuitively [as] also [as a way] to go from own-life, e.g. Malchut, [the all-embracing worldly reach] of a thought, then ascend to A”K [Adam Kadmon, the Primal Adam, God in Himself] &c.

No motivation to write up, but yes motivation to continue feeling the pulse of my gut-reaction to “What is this place”. Now I say, “Keyboard of life dressed up in an existing world” and “the previous answer was too amazed by Bina‘s capacity for deconstructing”… however the previous answer created Chochma in which new answer was built)

Notes on
“But also, how can I suspect so much in this, and yet attend to a pattern of behaviour that is shamelessly opposed to their implications?”

Answer: Rolly-polly backsies and morsies && because caught between the dilemma of knowing that IFF Torah THEN the world is hidden, and the patterns of behaviour may be opposed, but if so their opposition is hidden. However, it can be that the world is hidden and need to abstain. But to abstain requires a foot-hold in a permanent world &c &c. Loop +1 Till you stop. Then see that you’re free from the loop. Because you can’t see it, not even now.

^[^I^] “Anatta, (Pali: “non-self” or “substanceless”) Sanskrit anatman, in Buddhism, the doctrine that there is in humans no permanent, underlying substance that can be called the soul. Instead, the individual is compounded of five factors (Pali khandha; Sanskrit skandha) that are constantly changing”. For further details see https://www.britannica.com/topic/anatta.

^[^II^] “Ānāpānasati, meaning “mindfulness of breathing”, is a form of Buddhist meditation originally taught by Gautama Buddha in several suttas including the Ānāpānasati Sutta. Ānāpānasati is now common to Tibetan, Zen, Tiantai and Theravada Buddhism as well as Western-based mindfulness programs”. For further details see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anapanasati.

^[^III^] “Vipassanā or vipaśyanā, “insight,” in the Buddhist tradition is an insight into the true nature of reality, defined as dukkha, anatta, and anicca, the three marks of existence in the Theravada tradition, and as sunyata and Buddha-naturein the Mahayana traditions”. Fur further details see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vipassan%C4%81.

^[^IV^] “Samadhi (Sanskrit: समाधि, Hindi pronunciation: [səˈmaːdʱi]), also called samāpatti, in Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism, Sikhism and yogic schools refers to a state of meditative consciousness. It is a meditative absorption or trance, attained by the practice of dhyāna”. For further details see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samadhi.

^[^V^] “Chakra meditation is a form of meditation that consists of a set of relaxation techniques focused on bringing balance, relaxation and well-being to the chakras”. For further details see http://www.chakras.info/chakra-meditation/.

^[^VI^] “In mathematics, Fourier analysis (/ˈfʊrieɪ, -iər/) is the study of the way general functions may be represented or approximated by sums of simpler trigonometric functions”. For further details see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourier_analysis.

^[^VII^] “Edmund Gustav Albrecht Husserl was a German philosopher who established the school of phenomenology. In his early work, he elaborated critiques of historicism and of psychologism in logic based on analyses of intentionality”. For further detail see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Husserl.

^[^VIII^] “Maurice Jean Jacques Merleau-Ponty was a French phenomenological philosopher, strongly influenced by Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger”. For further details see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_Merleau-Ponty.

^[^IX^] “Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein was an Austrian-British philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language”. For further details see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Wittgenstein.

^[^X^] “In Buddhism, the three marks of existence are three characteristics (Pali: tilakkhaṇa; Sanskrit: trilakṣaṇa) of all existence and beings, namely impermanence (anicca), unsatisfactoriness or suffering (dukkha), and non-self(anattā). These three characteristics are mentioned in verses 277, 278 and 279 of the Dhammapada. That humans are subject to delusion about the three marks, that this delusion results in suffering, and that removal of that delusion results in the end of suffering, is a central theme in the Buddhist Four Noble Truths and Noble Eightfold Path”. For further details see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_marks_of_existence.

^[^XI^] “Of the cosmogony of Parmenides …he conceived the spherical mundane system, surrounded by a circle of the pure light (Olympus, Uranus); in the centre of this mundane system the solid earth, and between the two the circle of the milkyway, of the morning or evening star, of the sun, the planets, and the moon; which circle he regarded as a mixture of the two primordial elements”. For further details see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parmenides.

^[^XII^] “The Rosetta Stone is a granodiorite stele, found in 1799, inscribed with three versions of a decree issued at Memphis, Egypt in 196 BC during the Ptolemaic dynasty on behalf of King Ptolemy V”. For further details see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosetta_Stone.

^[^XIII^] The probable reference is to the Visuddhimagga or “The Path of Purification,” the most important Theravada Buddhist meditational text outside the standard canon of Theravada Buddhist scriptures. It lists 40 traditional forms of meditational focus in its second part but does not explain the reason for each one [_EZ].

^[^XIV^] The “chain”-like unfolding of the multiple worlds and levels of the cosmic order as laid out in Kabbalistic thought [_EZ].

^[^XV^] Analytical and focussed forms of meditation [_EZ].

^[^XVI^] Mussar literature, from the late 18th century onward, developed an extensive analysis of self-awareness, of the will, and of repentance and moral action – it was promoted as a mode of self-purification and elevation. As such, it was practised throughout non-Hasidic “Misnagid” yeshivot in eastern Europe and is still important in many Orthodox yeshivot today. By “pragmatic phenomenology” is apparently meant methods of altering the experience of the world and consciousness itself [_EZ].

^[^XVII^] The ten modalities of the divine image replicated throughout all worlds and also within human beings [_EZ].

^[^XVIII^] Unification of awareness with the beings or things studied [_EZ].

^[^XIX^] Gematria is an alphanumeric code of assigning a numerical value to a name, word or phrase based on its letters. People who practice gematria believe that words with identical numerical values may bear some relation to each other or to the number itself. A single word can yield multiple values depending on the cipher used. For further details see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gematria.

^[^XX^] “Yoniso manasikara – The ability to be a good teacher to oneself”. For further details see https://yonisomanasikara.wordpress.com/2010/09/27/yoniso-manasikara/.

^[^XXI^] “Emmanuel Levinas was a French philosopher of Lithuanian Jewish ancestry who is known for his work related to Jewish philosophy, existentialism, ethics, phenomenology and ontology”. For further details see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmanuel_Levinas.

Levinas

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