Thoughts of the Day #10/2013: Elliot R. Wolfson (11)

Elliot R. Wolfson (*1956 - )

annunciation

attain
nothing
essential
beyond
three-prong
quadrangle
transfigured
open-ended

- Elliot R. Wolfson

(from his collection of poems

entitled "On one foot dancing")

(P.S. This photo is used with the very kind permission of Prof. Elliot R. Wolfson. Thank you very much)

Thoughts of the Day #9/2013: Elliot R. Wolfson (10)

Elliot R. Wolfson (*1956 - )

constellation

nearly
distant
death
project
death
of death
prior
to death
emerge
in image
of death
distantly
near
to where
forgiveness
is forgiven
in giving before
there is one to give
or one to receive
as love deceive
in taking leave
before it arrive

- Elliot R. Wolfson

(from his collection of poems

entitled "On one foot dancing")

(P.S. This photo is used with the very kind permission of Prof. Elliot R. Wolfson. Thank you very much)

Thoughts of the Day #1/2013: Elliot R. Wolfson (9)

Elliot R. Wolfson (*1956 - )

(Professor Wolfson is author of several admirably deep and

thoughtful books. He is one of the leading scholars in the field of kabbalah,

mysticism and the phenomenology of mystical experience)

Today I want to present a passage about the problem of dream and the prolepsis of redemption from Professor Wolfson's brilliant and absolutely outstanding book "A Dream Interpreted Within a Dream. Oneiropoiesis and the Prism of Imagination" (Zone Books, New York 2011):

"The dream is a prolepsis of redemption, which is depicted as a seeing of the essence without any garment (beli levush), beholding the real, one might say, beyond the veil of metaphor. But Shneur Zalman and those who followed his path appropriated and elaborated the dialectic of disclosure and concealment enunciated by previous kabbalists, a dialectic especially conspicous in the sixteenth century, and thus they discerned that there can be no disclosure of the divine that is not concomitantly a concealment.

What is revealed is the infinite essence, but the infinite essence cannot be essentialized and remain the essence that is infinite; hence, what is revealed must always remain concealed, and the seeing without a garment amounts to seeing that there can be no seeing without a garment.

Utilizing apophatic modes of speech, it can be said of this essence that there "is no comprehension with respect to it" (ki ein bo shum tefisah), that is the "negation of thought" (afisat ha-ra'yon), the silence that is the "complete nullification of essence" (bittul ha-asmut mi-kol we-khol), the void (efes) that is "more than nothing" (mer eyder nisht), the "essential concealment that is not in existence at all, as it is also concealed itself" (he'lam ha-asmi she-eino bi-mesi'ut kelal we-hu he'lem gam le'asmo).

We can speak of the essence, so to speak, only to the extent that it is unspoken. The oneiric imagination is privileged, because the way to reach the unknowable and unnameable is through the mental faculty that combines opposites and thus points to the mystery of equanimity, the state of indifference wherein opposites are identical in their opposition.

Restoration to infinity - the mystical nuance of the traditional notion of repentance, teshuvah, which is etymologically from a root (shin waw beit) that means to return - is predicated on the removal of consciousness, which is indicative of exile, but also on the illumination of the supernal light, the vestment of concealment, since it is only by being concealed that the concealment can be revealed as concealed.

Through the dream, therefore, the schism between sleep and wakefulness, exile and redemption, is itself transcended in the luminal darkness where the difference between dark and light is no longer operative. Esoterically rendered, one will awaken to the dream no longer dreamt as a dream, the vision of truth imagined to be true."

- Elliot R. Wolfson, A Dream Interpreted within a Dream. Zone Books 2011, p. 216-217

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Have a nice week !

Stay tuned and expect the unexpected!

(P.S. This photo is used with the very kind permission of Prof. Elliot R. Wolfson. Thank you very much)

Thoughts of the Day #33/2012: Elliot R. Wolfson (8)

Elliot R. Wolfson (*1956 )

(Professor Wolfson is author of several admirably deep and

thoughtful books. He is one of the leading scholars in the field of kabbalah,

mysticism and the phenomenology of mystical experience)

Today I want to present a passage about the problem of essence and the coincidence of opposites from Professor Wolfson's brilliant and absolutely outstanding book "A Dream Interpreted Within a Dream. Oneiropoiesis and the Prism of Imagination" (Zone Books, New York 2011):

"From the vantage point of the inessential essence, the essence whose essence it is to resist essentialization, opposites coincide, and therefore what appears to be false is true, just as what appears to be true is false. In uncovering the truth of the ruse that is the corporeal world, the dissonance between real and make-believe is effectively undermined.

The essential truth of (non)being, consequently, is neither true nor untrue, for to say that it is either true or untrue, for to say that it is either true or untrue would be too limited for the limitless truth of the essence.

As I have suggested elsewhere, to comprehend this meontological perspective, it is beneficial to adopt a logic akin to the madhyamaka, the middle way, in the Mahâyâna tradition, a logic that posits the identity of opposites in the opposition of their identity, a reclaiming of the middle excluded by the law of the excluded middle.

Betraying an affinity to the Buddhist wisdom, Habad speculation on the nature of being and nonbeing posits an emptiness - the void (efes) that is above the nothing (ayin) - in which all things become empty, even or especially of their own emptiness.

The comportment of the dream to combine conflictual images provides a mechanism by which one can reach the abyssal indifference of the essence of infinity (asmut ein sof). The imagination,  accordingly, is allocated a prominent role on the pietistic path as the means by which the visible cosmos is exposed as the epiphany of the invisible and the mask of truth is unmasked as the only truth that cannot be (un)masked."

- Elliot R. Wolfson, A Dream Interpreted within a Dream. Zone Books 2011, p. 212-213.

Thanks for reading my blog !

Have a nice week !

Stay tuned and expect the unexpected!

(P.S. This photo is used with the very kind permission of Prof. Elliot R. Wolfson. Thank you very much)

Thoughts of the Day #26/2012: Elliot R. Wolfson (7)

Elliot R. Wolfson (*1956 - )

(Professor Wolfson is author of several admirably deep and

thoughtful books. He is one of the leading scholars in the field of kabbalah,

mysticism and the phenomenology of mystical experience)

Today I want to present  a passage about the problem of transcending transcendence from Professor Wolfson's brilliant and absolutely outstanding book "A Dream Interpreted Within a Dream. Oneiropoiesis and the Prism of Imagination" (Zone Books, New York 2011):

"The transcendence I affirm transcends the idea of transcendence that unfailingly entails recourse to the theopoetic imagination, the figural iconization of the invisible in anthropomorphic and anthropopathic imagery.

I hasten to add that the transcendence I avow should not be interpreted atheistically, as the ineffable abyss one confronts in acknowledging that there is no God outside the cosmos, a stance that is the obverse of the theistic portrayal.

Others have argued that the property of ineffability can equally describe the respective experiences of the atheist and the theist, although the experiences plainly must be differentiated - for the former, the ineffable is linked to the void, for the latter, to the plenitude of being.

In my estimation, there is no need to bifurcate the two; even the locution "beyond the beyond" is inappropriate, since it still implies a boundary - albeit the boundary demarcated as being outside all boundaries - that must be breached.

Transcendence neither is nor is not this boundary, and consequently, the theist's sense of plenitude and the atheist's sense of void need not to be set in opposition. Logically, the transcendent is what is not, but this is only so because it is not what is.

Metaphorically, we may construe it as the plenitudinal vacuum, swarming with the fullness of being's nothingness, the intrinsic reality that intrinsically lacks reality, the ultimate emptiness that is itself empty, even of its own emptiness, and thus the space of nonlocality that resists the reification of nothing as something or of something as nothing."

- Elliot R. Wolfson, A Dream Interpreted within a Dream. Zone Books 2011, p. 27.

Thanks for reading my blog !

Have a nice week !

Stay tuned and expect the unexpected!

(P.S. This photo is used with the very kind permission of Prof. Elliot R. Wolfson. Thank you very much)

Thoughts of the Day #23/2012: Elliot R. Wolfson (6)

Elliot R. Wolfson (*1956 - )

inside out

outside/in
expanding
to point
diminishing
at crown
of light
lusting
light
no more
to see
but sight
blinded
inside/out  

 

- Elliot R. Wolfson

(from his collection of poems

entitled "On one foot dancing")

 

Thanks for reading my blog !

Have a nice week !

Stay tuned and expect the unexpected!

 

 

(P.S. This photo is used with the very kind permission of Prof. Elliot R. Wolfson. Thank you very much)

Thoughts of the Day #22/2012: Elliot R. Wolfson (5)

Elliot R. Wolfson (*1956 - )

ex nihilo

from
nothing
come
nothing
in guise
of nothing
seemingly
nothing
blindsighted
vision spurt
openfisted
sky shed prayer
the dead knot
into despair

- Elliot R. Wolfson

(from his collection of poems

entitled "On one foot dancing")

Thanks for reading my blog !

Have a nice week !

Stay tuned and expect the unexpected!

(P.S. This photo is used with the very kind permission of Prof. Elliot R. Wolfson. Thank you very much)

Thoughts of the Day #21/2012: Elliot R. Wolfson (4)

Elliot R. Wolfson (*1956 - )

Tathâgatha

suchness
the name
in nothingness
resounding
voice of mute projecting inward
halfway beyond
unifying infraction
in the exculpation
of forgiveness
escaping through
entry of mutual
seclusion
who becomes
nameless
in such
thunderous silence

- Elliot R. Wolfson

(from his collection of poems

entitled "On one foot dancing")

 

Thanks for reading my blog !

Have a nice week !

Stay tuned and expect the unexpected!

 

(P.S. This photo is used with the very kind permission of Prof. Elliot R. Wolfson. Thank you very much)



Thoughts of the Day #18/2012: Elliot R. Wolfson (3)

Elliot R. Wolfson (*1956 - )

Today, it is again time to present a long passage from a book by Elliot R. Wolfson. Last time (click here) I have already informed my dear readers, that he is one of my most admired scholars, who should be known and read around the globe. Often, when I want to refocus my thoughts, I pull out one of his books or essays by chance out of my book shelf and start to read. Nearly instantly, my thoughts were absolutely revitalized.

Yesterday I have chosen his book "Open Secret" (Columbia UP 2009) again, which should be considered as one of the most important books about Habad and the secret ever written. Its lecture is even more rewarding than the lecture of Derrida's often awkward reflections on the secret.

The passage that I would like to present today is taken from the "Postface" entitled "In an instant - Advent of the (Non)event" of the aforementioned book. It is about the paradoxical non-temporal moment of redemption and its relation to repentance:

 

"The nonoccurence in no way effects the belief in the possibility of the advent of the future; on the contrary, insofar as that advent is not an event that can materialize in time, the nonoccurence is, strictly speaking, what guarantees its occurence. The point is underscored by the fact that the catalyst for redemption is repentance, "which is not worship that demands the duration of time [meshek zeman], but rather, as in the words of the Zohar, "in one moment and in one second, in the second that is as [long as it takes to utter a word]!

The content of the worship of repentance is, indeed, that he receives on himself the fulfillments of all matters of the Torah and its commandments, but nonetheless there is here no division into 613 components - the 613 commandments of the Torah - and not even into two components, but rather solely one point. Therefore it is not bounded in time, but only 'in one moment and in one second'.

The time of redemption is the second that is not confined by past or future, the instant in which the individual, who is not hemmed by the burden of retention or the buoyancy of protention, can be suddenly transformed from being completely wicked to being completely righteous.

To traverse abruptly from one extreme to its opposite is possible only in the space wherein opposites coincide in the sameness of their difference, a space that cannot be measured chronoscopically. Correspondingly, the time of redemption is this timeless moment, which cannot transpire temporally and therefore must always be capable of occuring (in)temporally - this is the nuance of Schneersohn's "immediately and without delay".

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Have a nice week !

Stay tuned and expect the unexpected!

(P.S. This photo is used with the very kind permission of Prof. Elliot R. Wolfson. Thank you very much)

Thoughts of the Day #16/2011: Elliot R. Wolfson (2)

Elliot R. Wolfson (*1956 -  ) 

Today, it is again time to present a long passage from a book by Elliot R. Wolfson. Last time (click here) I have already informed my dear readers, that he is one of my most admired scholars, who should be known and read around the globe. Often, when I want to refocus my thoughts, I pull out one of his books or essays by chance  out of my book shelf and start to read. Nearly instantly, my thoughts were absolutely revitalized.

Yesterday I have chosen his book "Open Secret" (Columbia UP 2009) again, which should be considered as one of the most important books about Habad and the secret ever written. Its lecture is even more rewarding than the lecture of  Derrida's often awkward reflections on the secret.

The passage that I would like to present today is taken from the "Introduction" entitled "Behind the Veil Unveiled" of the aforementioned book:

"Consider for example, the formulation of the sixth Rebbe: "It is impossible for there to be a disclosure of the intellect without the garment of thought, and thus, when the light of the intellect is disclosed, letters are produced, but above there can be a disclosure of light without any garment."

The phenomenological question that beckons to be asked, however, concerns the nature of what is disclosed in this disclosure of light without any garment. Can such disclosure be anything but occlusion?

I think it is closer to the spiritual marrow of Habad, as it were, to surmise that the seeing without a garment consists of coming to see that there is nothing ultimately to see but the garment that there can be a seeing without any garment. The very notion of removing all garments, in other words, is the ultimate garment, and, consequently, what is seen of the light without any garment is the very garment through which the light is (un)seen. The soteriological promise of a gnosis that consists of the disclosure of the essence (gilluy ha-asmuth) does not betoken the revelation of an entity subject to representational replication, but rather the event of unconcealment in which the manifest ceases to be hidden in its manifestation.

In the epochal metamorphosis of the eschaton, the concealment, as such, is unconcealed, the withdrawal itself withdrawn, and hence the nature of being will not be thought of as what abides as concealed in its unconcealment but as what transpires in the concealing of the concealment. [...]

As Epstein put it elsewhere, in the days of the week, which figuratively symbolize the fragmented time of history, "the divine light is intentionally hidden and concealed", so that there might be the semblance of an autonomous nature, but on the Sabbath, which symbolizes the atemporal time of redemption, one can comprehend the light in its essence, and the differentiated beings are revealed to be, in truth, aspects of the Infinite, which yields the paradox that "in relation to the Infinite, concealment is also disclosure, as disclosure is infinite".

To be exposed, the Infinite must be camouflaged, to be forthcoming, it must be withheld. Envisioning the essence in Habad tradition may be cast as apprehending the "absolute nonbeing of the event", which "results from an excess of the ultra-one", the oneness beyond the distinction of one and many.

The unicity consigned to the end is a visual attunement to the void of all being, the void of all things fully void, the breach of unity by which the unity of the breach (dis)appears in and through the cleft of consciousness. In this temporal crevice and spatial hiatus, the symbolic is imagined as real, the real as symbolic."

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Have a nice week !

Stay tuned and expect the unexpected!

(P.S. This photo is used with the very kind permission of Prof. Elliot R. Wolfson. Thank you very much)

Thoughts of the day #10/2011: Elliot R. Wolfson (1)

Elliot R. Wolfson (*1956 -  ) 

Today's thoughts of the day come from one of the greatest scholars of our times: Elliot R. Wolfson. He is one of the leading scholars in the field of kabbalah, mysticism and the pheno- menology of mystical experience. He is professor at the New York University. He has written several admirably deep and thoughtful books and essays in this field, but he is also a philosopher, a painter and a poet. His publications have won several prestigious awards for Excellence in Scholarship. Today I have chosen a few lines from the postface of his impressive last book called "Open secret" (Columbia UP 2009). Here Wolfson writes about the paradoxical figure of the Messiah, who is always to come but never ever arrives:

"The pledge about the messianic future is, invariably, a put on, the putting off of what is forthcoming. At the most extreme, one might be tempted to think of the eschatological drama as a cover-up, a dogmatic cloak in which to envelop the truth that there is no Messiah for whom we must wait, the cloak that lays bare the final divestiture of the cloak, the pretense of describing the end as the full disclosure of the essence without any garment, a seeing of the divine light as it is manifest in the garb of the material world, which (dis)appears, finally to reveal its concealment. The concluding exposé at the fringe of time is the hierophany of this occlusion."

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Have a nice week !

Stay tuned and expect the unexpected!

(P.S. This photo is used with the very kind permission of Prof. Elliot R. Wolfson. Thank you very much)