Imagery Techniques in Modern Jewish Mysticism

Daniel Reiser

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9783110533941
• eBook ISBN: 9783110534085
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Jewish History

This book analyzes and describes the development and aspects of imagery techniques, a primary mode of mystical experience, in twentieth century Jewish mysticism. These techniques, in contrast to linguistic techniques in medieval Kabbalah and in contrast to early Hasidism, have all the characteristics of a full screenplay, a long and complicated plot woven together from many scenes, a kind of a feature film. Research on this development and nature of the imagery experience is carried out through comparison to similar developments in philosophy and psychology and is fruitfully contextualized within broader trends of western and eastern mysticism.

Chapter One
Models of Imagination

Contemporary thinkers have noted the philosophical transformation of the imagination that occurred between classic and medieval philosophy and modern philosophy in the Western tradition. As Richard Kearney has stated:

There is of course a fundamental difference between the image of today and the former times: now the image precedes the reality it is supposed to represent. Or to put it in another way, reality has become a plane reflection of the image.… The real and the imaginary have become almost impossible to distinguish.50

I shall depict different models of imagination in Western philosophy as they have been primarily presented by Kearney and Meyer Abrams.51 These models will mostly allow us to understand what lies at the foundation of different imagery techniques that I will introduce throughout this book, and will assist us in distinguishing between them.52 Additionally, through the utilization of these different models I will clarify and categorize the different developments in relation to the imagination and thus attempt to provide an answer to the question of why these imagery techniques developed precisely in the twentieth century. Presently, I will briefly outline different models of imagination that developed in Western philosophy, from the Hellenistic period until the twentieth century; afterwards, I will concentrate on the conceptions of imagination embraced by a number of Jewish thinkers in light of these models.

A Models of Imagination in Western Philosophy

Imagination in Hellenistic conceptions was never understood as an internal process of subjective autonomous forces within man. The imagination was always considered in relation to something external: man’s relation to cosmic potencies or to a sublime celestial power of the imagination itself. Imagination is an aliorelative concept, which acts through the imitation of external matters.53 This understanding is founded upon Plato’s theorization of the imagination. Plato viewed the imagination as possessing a mimetic function, which binds man to a lower order of existence and also separates him from supernal reality. In his opinion, the utilization of the imagination leads man upon an erroneous path, since the imagination is merely an imitation of material existence, which is itself only an imitation of the world of Forms, of true being, and thereby it is an imitation of an imitation.54 Another negative attitude towards the imagination in Plato’s thought is linked to the Greek preference of the universal over the particular, and politics over art. The creations of the imagination are deemed unproductive and are therefore rejected, for they do not contribute in a practical manner to the functioning of the polis or serve the public.55 The artist’s imagination imitates God’s creation by turning a mirror towards the surrounding world, “If you should choose to take a mirror and carry it about everywhere. You will speedily produce the sun and all the things in the sky, and speedily the earth and yourself and the other animals and implements and plants.”56 This metaphorical use of a “mirror” to characterize the imaginative function would become a standard motif in the classic aesthetic doctrines and will serve us as well in this book as a model of conceiving the imagination in classic and modern Western philosophy.

In contrast to Plato’s disposition to present the imagination as a mimetic act of exterior reality, Aristotle tends to focus on the psychological status of the image as a mental representation. According to Aristotle the imagination constitutes an intermediary stage which mediates between sensorial and rational experience, “The thinking faculty thinks the forms in mental images… for mental images are similar to objects perceived except that they are without matter.”57 As Yohanan Gliker wrote regarding Aristotle’s philosophy, “When a man contemplates he must do so through certain images. Thus, there is no thinking in pure, imageless, concepts, since the concepts exist in actual reality, which is grasped through senses (and not in the world of ideas).”58

In On Memory and Recollection, Aristotle emphasizes that in order to think of theoretical mathematical concepts, like “magnitude,” man must imagine something with magnitude:

It is impossible even to think without a mental picture. The same affection is involved in thinking as in drawing a diagram; for in this case although we make no use of the fact that the magnitude of a triangle is a finite quantity, yet we draw it as having a finite magnitude. In the same way the man who is thinking, though he may not be thinking of a finite magnitude, still puts a finite magnitude before his eyes, though he does not think of it as such. And even if the nature of the object is quantitative, but indeterminate, he still puts before him a finite magnitude, although he thinks of it as merely quantitative.59

Ultimately, in Aristotle’s opinion as well, the imagination serves as an imitation of the original and not the original item itself. While according to Plato it is an imitation of an imitation and therefore has illusionary elements; according to Aristotle the imitation is more faithful, for it constitutes a precondition for rationality. Whether like the former or the latter, the imagination remains an action of reproduction rather than original creation, a servant rather than a master, imitation and not invention.60

Kant’s Copernican revolution in philosophy brought about a turning point regarding the imagination as well. The mimetic paradigm of the imagination was exchanged with an inventive paradigm – the creative imagination. According to Kant, reality is not able to be known ontologically, but only epistemologically. Therefore, the imagination is not an imitation of the original, since the original in itself cannot be known. Indeed, the imagination is not a reproduction of reality; rather it is an original production of human consciousness! In other words, the imagination, according to Kant, acts as the main component in human consciousness. Following Kant, and the German Idealism of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, the creative imagination was officially recognized in mainstream Western philosophy.61 Henceforth in modern philosophy a new path has been paved, in which the imagination is understood as an autonomous human potency which creates a world of values and genuine truths.62

This Copernican revolution also influenced the conception of art in general and poetry in particular, as expressed by the poet William Yeats (1865 – 1939), “It must go further still: that soul must become its own betrayer, its own deliverer, the one activity, the mirror turn lamp.”63 While in the pre-Kantian paradigm, the imagination was presented through the metaphor of a “mirror,” thus constituting an imitation and copy of true external existence – the Kantian paradigm’s metaphor is that of a “lamp,” a creator and disseminator of inner light towards the exterior, a creator of existence.64

German Idealism (Fichte and Schelling) and Romanticism advanced further. Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762 – 1814) claimed that all of reality is formed only and solely through the imagination.65 In fact all objects are representations, or in Fichte’s words – images (bilder).66 Kant claimed that we cannot know nature in and of itself, but rather only through images, whereas Fichte pushes the envelope further – nature itself is fashioned through the imagination. In Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling’s (1775 – 1854) thought this claim is intensified. He maintains that the external object is nothing other than a product of the creative imagination. Through imaginal contemplation actual reality is produced. There is no world unless the spirit (geist) knows it.67

The theme of the creative imagination of German Idealism was warmly accepted and adopted by the Romantics. The absolute power that was given to the imagination, human freedom, liberty, and the like was apposite to the aspirations and perspectives of Romanticism.68

Postmodern philosophy conceived the imagination in a different manner than what has been presented so far and offered a third model. While classic philosophy saw the imagination as an imitation of the original and modern philosophy saw it as the creator of the original, postmodern philosophy denies the entire idea of originality. The “textual revolution” of postmodernism heralded the deconstruction of the category of original. “Language” is already not understood as relating to “true” external meaning, rather as an infinitely open process of meanings.69

This understanding of imitation lacking the original reached its sharpest formulation in Jacques Derrida’s (1930 – 2000) thought. Through deconstructionist thought Derrida refutes the dichotomy between imagination and originality (truth), existent from Plato until Sartre, whether truth is external (as in the Greek conception that places reality before the imagination, in which reality is the original and the imagination is the imitation) or internal (as in the Romantic conception imagination is placed before reality, in which reality is a product of the imagination). Ultimately, Western metaphysics constantly preferred truth over the imaginative. This preference is based on the presumption that there is something true and original. Derrida’s deconstructionism, which neutralizes the term original, in fact neutralizes the mimetic and imitative as well.

The image, according to Derrida, is a type of writing which does not imagine something preceding it. This is a writing that composes a parody of itself. In actuality, there is neither imagination, nor an imaginer. It is no longer possible to ask, “what is imagination?” for the question is constructed through the presupposition that there is something differentiating the true world from the imagined. In Derrida’s opinion, the distinction between imagination and existence (truth, original) dissolves within the mimetic textual process. The world becomes text without a beginning and without end, in which everything is reflected in the text. Just like the text has no author, so too there is no imaginer.70

There is no imitation. The Mime imitates nothing. And to begin with, he doesn't imitate. There is nothing prior to the writing of his gestures. Nothing is prescribed for him. No present has preceded or supervised the tracing of his writing. His movements form a figure that no speech anticipates or accompanies. They are not linked with logos in any order of consequence.… We here enter a textual labyrinth panelled with mirrors.71

Hence, three primary models regarding the imagination may be found in Western philosophy from the classic until postmodern periods.

1. The “Mirror” Model:

Variations of the Platonic and Aristotelean model, in which the imagination is conceived as serving or imitating the original, and is itself not original. The original is external to the imagination and the imagination’s function is to mimic the external original.

2. The “Lamp” Model:

This model reflects the conception which views the imagination as a productive one, as man’s internal creator of original matter (Romanticism), or in the more modern variation, a form of thinking that does not imitate, but rather originates. This model emphasizes inner originality without appealing to anything external. It is generally referred to as the “creative imagination” or “productive imagination,” where the imagination is understood as an autonomous human potency creating a world of values and original truths.

3. The “Mirroring Mirrors” Model:

Following postmodern philosophy’s objection to the concepts of original and imitation, a third model of imagination was presented: a multitude of mirrors mirroring one another in an infinite mirroring, thus widening the infinite infinitely. In this maze of mirrors, the distinction between imagination and reality dissolves, as the categories blend into one another.

B Models of Imagination in Jewish Thought

Unfortunately, there is not sufficient space to explore the subject of the imagination in Jewish thought throughout its history, a subject that could fill several volumes. I will briefly elucidate the conception of the imagi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Acknowledgements
• Translator’s Note
• Contents
• Introduction
• Section I: Imaginative Models
• Chapter One: Models of Imagination
• Section II: Parameters for Mystical Praxis
• Chapter Two: Empowerment
• Chapter Three: Prophecy, Ecstasy, and Mysticism
• Section III: Imagery Techniques
• Chapter Four: Imagination as an Empowering Factor in R. Kalonymous Kalman Shapira’s Thought
• Chapter Five: Imagination as a Prophetic Factor: The Yearning for Prophecy in the Twentieth Century
• Chapter Six: A War of Imaginations: Imagery Techniques in R. Menaḥem Ekstein’s Teachings
• Chapter Seven: War of the “Senses:” Imagination in the Musar Movement
• Section IV: Adventures of Ideas: West and East
• Introduction: Similar Thought Patterns
• Chapter Eight: “My Heart is in the East and I am at the Ends of the West”: Imagery Techniques in Light of the West
• Chapter Nine: “A Voice Calls from the East:” Imagery Techniques in Light of the East
• Afterword
• Bibliography
• Index of Persons
• Subject Index