Readings of R.D. Laing’s Existential Psychology

Another transposition of the mysteries of the half shekel coin comes to the fore when we consider the Torah’s mention of an exchange rate of 20 gerah (Shemot/Exodus 30:13) for a whole shekel. From this seemingly superfluous detail, we now know with certitude that our half shekel trades at an even 10 gerah. But what is unique about this alternative name for money? Could it be that every denomination of currency circulates distinct psycho-dynamic values?

Before we explained that the shekel alludes to the soul or psyche and then we went even further and showed how the Yud (=10) is the intuition of our undivided wholeness which then gets divided into inner and outer dimensions (Hei = 5, Hei = 5). Now we can also reinforce the idea of a shekel being a standard weight on a scale (avna l’miskal) in that the root of the word shekel also means ‘weighing’ or ‘balancing’ (shikul). When we bring any of our partial experiences and want to uplift them (terumah) in a bottom-up fashion, they are measured within our intuition against our sense of wholeness. However, this circulation of value does not only get ‘traded-up’ and compared in one direction (that of bringing both subjective and objective re/presentations back to their undivided origin); it also has to descend and find a translation into the realm of incompletion. We have to find expression for the inexpressible. We need to be able to think the unthinkable and say the unsayable.

This top-down standard of economizing within the psyche is signaled by the gerah monetary unit in that it can also refer to a female convert (garah) as well as to gerut or ‘conversion’ in general. In this sense, a gerah relative to the shekel is similar to a conversion rate for expressing oneself to the outside (to the recipient which is designated as ‘feminine’ in Kabbalah). My many forms of self-expression are thus foreign currencies for use in foreign lands. The multiplier which is used simply doubles the quantity of the shekel (10 = 20).

In his discourse on the half shekel coin (in Derech Mitzvotecha p.132), the Tzemach Tzedek demonstrates how this structure is embedded within the full spelling of the name of the letter Yud. While graphically a Yud [י] is but a single character with the numerical value of 10, when it is pronounced as a name Y-u-d [יוד] we articulate a Vav (= 6) and a Dalet (= 4). Altogether these three letters (the expanded form of theYud) bear witness to a situation where we are to understand 10 (the Yud itself) in terms of Vav and Dalet (the filling in letters of the Yud). Obviously 10 can be broken down in an number of different ways. In this example, we are enjoined to see it in terms of 4 and 6 [Note that in the 10 dimensional model of String Theory, this is the essential division of 4 explicit or macro dimensions and 6 hidden or micro (rolled-up) dimensions]. What we really have here is a 10+10 = 20 phenomenon where the first set of ten is undivided, while the second set gets split into a group of 6 and a group of 4.

What then does all this signify in the soul?

Here the Tzemach Tzedek reiterates how the original lived experience of undivided wholeness within intuition (chochmah) is just the Yud itself. When this single character appears its name cannot be said, it cannot be expressed, without the addition of the Vav and Dalet. Thus, in its ‘source’ state it is unfulfilled (read: un-filled) and inexpressible. Pure intuition operates in a pre-linguistic universe and while it eventually engenders poly-linguism (discursive thought and speech-acts), its ‘default’ mode resides in silence. The gem of our unfiltered and unmediated experience remains unapproachable to all kinds of re/presentational orders. It eludes capture and flies away no matter how fast we chase it. For the poet, the Yud is the sanctuary for the last stand against invading concepts and words. It resonates as infinition. With insight we may perceive the faintest quivering of a protoplasmic idea prior to conception and with this our poetic imagination is fired.

The undivided wholeness of our lived experience signified by the Yud (= 10) can’t remain closed up within itself. As the Chassidic masters often reiterate “God wants a dwelling place below.” In other words, the unrepresentable, the limitlessness and infinite of the Divine, somehow needs to be expressed within the world, within various re/presentational strata (but without becoming something separate and therefore being mistaken for an idol). In the soul, the Divinity within each one of us is our inarticulatable and unrepresentable essence (Yud), yet we too need to find finite expressions of ourselves. We have to be willing to push thought and speech to the limit, to the point where the concept and the word heat up so much that they could burst from all of the internal pressure that has built up inside of them.

Once reflected upon, intuition impregnates thinking which goes on to beget feelings. Sometimes I can even be said to have a feeling for my thoughts. In this way, I register those thoughts as intensities of consciousness. From these felt-thoughts I forge my unique voice, the voice which hopefully characterizes my words and invigorates them with spirit. In this way expression evolves from non-expression.

For the Tzemach Tzedek, the Vav signifies the kol or ‘voice’ while the Dalet marks dibur or ‘speech.’ The Vav is 6 in number in that it alludes to the six emotions of character attributes which themselves have a spatial situatedness (up/down/left/right/front/back). Dalet relates to the word delet or a ‘door’ (a communications outlet) that is dal (also from Dalet) or ‘impoverished.’ My words are detached from me as a speaker (they went out the door) and were disseminated to the four (Dalet = 4) ‘corners’ of the world.

A word, ‘davar,’ also means ‘a thing.’ In this case it is a detached thing. My relation to detached things that issue from myself can easily lead to my dismissing them as not me. Statements like ‘I can’t believe I said that’ and ‘that is not what I meant’ attest to this. In Laing’s description, when my sense of ‘person’ transforms into a thing (or in this instance a word-thing), it suffers from petrification. A “…being turned from a man with subjectivity to a thing, a mechanism, a stone, an it, being petrified…” is the risk of allowing a subversive division to creep into the psyche, according to Laing (The Divided Self p.75).

If we remove the Vav of voice (‘I hear you when you speak’ in that your voice ensouls your words) then the silent essence may become totally divorced from the words of speech in which case I am no longer invested in what I say. My modes of self-expression would turn into what Laing called the ‘false self.’ The reductionistic transformation of living experience into dead stone that is shaped to recall that living experience dances around the same totem, the same golden calf, that transgresses against the unpresentable Infinite.

What we learn from this new manner of division in the psyche is that neither my words nor my voice are complete. Stated otherwise, there is a partiality to my voice which can never fully represent the whole of me if I cannot find the right words. Likewise, even the most carefully weighted words will not balance the scale when stacked against my intuited essence. The other half in the form of my voice has to also be added in. Voice plus words gives me the best chance at matching the weight of silence. Hence, we are continually making contributions to balance who we are with how we are expressed.

The aporia of how we can say the unsayable will be the topic for Part Four as we delve into the that idea of the half shekel being a ‘fire’ coin.

http://www.interinclusion.org/inspirations/the-whole-half-self-part-4/

http://www.interinclusion.org/inspirations/the-whole-half-self-part-2/

Print PDF