Readings of R.D. Laing’s Existential Psychology

If left untreated, schizoid inclinations will fortify our sense of a false self. As a result, Laing envisions the following consequences:

1. The false-self system becomes more and more extensive.

2. It becomes more autonomous.

3. It becomes ‘harassed’ by compulsive behaviour fragments.

4. All that belongs to it becomes more and more dead, unreal, false, mechanical. (p.  143)

This distillation provided by Laing equips us with the means of understanding how the natural world can appear to be so uncaring and let loose a path of destruction. It is as if the expressions of Divinity have become schizoid. From our perspective, it seems that Creation itself has been mistaken by the Creator. By placing God in a ‘divided Self’ condition, we would be opening up the possibility that He would ‘see’ (as it were) His manifestation as ‘Nature’ and as ‘lower reality’ as a kind of inauthentic mode of being or a ‘false-Self.’ This would undoubtably produce a world which ‘becomes more autonomous’ and ‘unreal.’ It would give rise to a ‘mechanical universe’ where entropy rules (i.e. things become ‘more and more dead’). When we are perplexed by the events of history, we might think that God in this guise has been “‘harassed” by compulsive behaviour fragments.’ Do bad things just happen on their own? Where is the oversight?

While the Divine in and of itself is always whole, the manner in which Divinity is expressed to us varies and is conditioned by our performance. In Kabbalah it is our primary task to repair the divided Divine self. In other words, the higher aspect of Divinity (the compassionate and the transcendent) must be reconnected with the lower aspect (the immanent and indwelling sphere which feigns autonomy as well as highly inflexible laws). By removing any semblance of division between God above and beyond the world and God ‘housed’ in the world (comprising the ‘body’ of the world mystically speaking), we can then remedy the ‘petrification’ of our objective, mundane reality. A schizoid universe is a ‘clock-work’ universe in the Newtonian sense. A Divine watch maker would sit back from His Creation with detachment. The ‘watch’ is a non-self or false-self. ‘I’ am uncommitted to it. Once again, in our eyes, for the Creator to get involved (which really means for us to be conscious of the Creator’s constant involvement) we have to make the links explicit. It is important to note that for the kabbalists, the entire study of Torah and the performance of mitzvot (commandments) serves this end.

One of the most power examples of a primordial rift in the Divine ‘economy’ entails a subtle reading of a phrase in Bamidbar/Numbers 7:86 which, while it is interpreted in context as “each ladle was ten of the sacred shekels,” literally says“…ten ten [is] the spoon according to the sacred shekel [b’shekel hakodesh which alternatively can mean the ‘Sanctuary weight’]. Paraphrasing the Zohar (III 12a) which expounds upon this phrase we find that: ‘there are two sets of 10 (just like our shekel coin which exchanges for 20 gerah) which are a determinate and non-arbitrary (sacred) weight (shekel) that come together in the kaf (which means a ‘ladle/spoon’ as well as the ‘palm of the hand’ [a concave vessel]). Kaf is also the name of the 11th Hebrew letter whose numerical value is 20. Thus, the expression may be taken abstractly as an equation that outlines  a ‘sacred’ balancing act that joins these two sets of 10 within a grand unifying framework of 20.

According to the Zohar, the first set of ten are the 10 Utterances (asarah ma’amorot) of the first week of Creation that appear in the opening verses of Genesis. This set of ten would be the source code and operating software for all of the natural world which are weighed and balanced (shekel) against the aseret hadibrot (10 Commandments) which function as the ‘spirit’ of the world. A rough approximation of this comparison of these two kinds of ‘speech-acts’ would be to say that the first provides the information for the universe and the second addresses the question of what to do with it. The fact that things exist (10 Utterances) does not automatically offer instruction (Torah) as to how we are to comport ourselves in light of their existence. For that we need the Sinaitic revelation in order to learn the proper way to harness and interrelate everything within Creation. Thus, there is a positive tension between these overarching expressions which represent the ‘discretionary’ natural world and the ‘imperative’ ethical, moral and spiritual compass for navigating and elevating it. Managing our lives requires an overlaying of a set of instructions with which we can produce accurate analytics about our progress; it is the hybrid view of the earth that incorporates both map and satellite imaging.

What this is coming to tell us is that a natural world perspective is fundamentally incomplete. It is only half a shekel. Likewise, the spiritual dimension of reality (superadding Divine ‘intentionally’ into the picture) is also incomplete if it has no way of concretizing itself. For it to remain a purely internal matter with no bearing on outside activities, if it would not effect the materiality of our lives, then it would have questionable relevance. Applying the spiritual to the physical (‘in order to form a more perfect union’) can only occur once we realize that each one is an incomplete description of reality and that both hang in the balance. Schizoid reality stems from our taking into consideration only one side or the other. Instead of the ‘divided self’ we are dealing with a divided sense of existence.

The schizophrenic may come to feel “…persecuted by reality itself” (p.81) according to Laing. This goes a long way to setting up the events that led up to the Purim Holiday which are recorded and liturgically read in the Megillah (the Esther Scroll). In the Megillah, we hear of how Haman ‘the wicked’ tries to extinguish the lives of all the Jews (men, women and children without exception). Not only is God not mentioned once in the entire story of Purim but with total extermination seeming inevitable, we have to assume that the ‘face’ of Divinity was withdrawn from the world. In God’s apparent absence, the world seems to run itself in a most arbitrary way (the word Purim means a ‘lot’ as in a lottery, just a bunch of random chance). In this case, the natural world (10 Utterances) are presented as existing on their own (in Chassidic thought they even mirror the mentality of the Tree of Knowledge). Where is the morality of the 10 Commandments? The challenge of the situation is to expose the direct and sustained involvement of the Creator which is deeply hidden behind the scenes, underneath the randomness. Rather than simply state His name, this game of Divine hide and seek, encrypts allusions to His name all over, if only we have the right tools to detect it.

For the meta-historian armed with the esoteric insights of Kabbalah, we learn of how Haman was really a reincarnation of the snake from the Garden of Eden (Mordechai, as the leader of the people at the time, is a recycling of Adam and Queen Esther is Chava/Eve). Without rehashing the entire story, we find that Haman is defeated and hung upon the very tree that was intended for Mordechai. Haman’s connection to this tree is already foreshadowed in the Torah itself as the Sages maintain that a hint of this future event is woven into the episode with the eating of the Tree of Knowledge. It shows up after Adam and Chava/Eve are tricked by the snake when God addresses Adam saying: “Did [you eat] of [ha-min, identical in spelling to the name Haman] the tree?” (Genesis 3:11)

Consequently Haman is connected to the Tree of Knowledge—the self-consciousness which causes us to hide behind a false self. In fact, the opportunity to attack and suppress the Jews came as a result of schizoid or inauthentic behavior when they participated in the decadent feast of King Achashverosh. Having duplicitous attitude that rationalizes that we have to act in a proper way in most ordinary situations but which permits us to let loose in a immoral way under other circumstances (‘what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas’ and ‘when in Rome do what Romans do’) places the psychic stumbling block that puts us at odds with ourselves (as in the tension of real and false selves). An unburdened natural world free of ethical and moral mandates would be ours for the taking or ours to lose. Even the new dressing of the Tree of Knowledge holds the pretense of delivering a purely objective world where objects reside in and of themselves without being subject to anyone’s subjectivity (much less that of Divine subjectivity). The objective ideal, if handed over to the human, would pretend to be the perfect and complete currency (the whole shekel) when in truth it is only half. In this way, the totalization of the objectivity of the object renders it ‘ideal’ which puts it only a half step away from being an idol.

Knowing this, Haman (or the abstract principle personified in Haman) offers Achashverosh 10,000 kikar of silver in order to annihilate the Jews. The Tosfot commentary to the Talmud (Megillah 16a) explains that this amount was the equivalent to giving a half shekel for each of the 600,000 root souls (the official witnesses of the giving of the Torah) who came out of Egypt during the exodus. The amount was meant to cover the entire community with each individual having been manipulated using the person’s fractured psyche. Not knowing how to cope with our divided self (and more particularly the divided communal identity which fragmented), we almost succumb to the nefarious plan.

Thankfully, unity is always an option. By donating our halfness to the communal offering (an offering which requires everyone, rich or poor, to contribute the half shekel) we close the social and psychic gaps. This entire thought thread teaches us to move beyond our self consciousness and realize how essential others are to our own completion. All of the obstacles in our way (snakes, Golden Calves, and the Hamans of the world) can ultimately be overcome. Moreover, to heal the world we are forced to take into consideration how our social psychology makes or breaks our experience of Divinity.

http://www.interinclusion.org/inspirations/the-whole-half-self-part-6/ 

http://www.interinclusion.org/inspirations/the-whole-half-self-part-1/

Print PDF