Dialogos and Mysticism 4： Buber vs. Jung (SKQZY30YZQk)

https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=SKQZY30YZQk

Welcome everyone to another episode of Dialogues and Mysticism and I’m joined once again by my dear friends Zevi Slavin and Guy Sendstock and well first of all gentlemen please say hi. Hi everybody, it’s great to be back. Yeah so there’s been a gap because something wonderful has happened. Guy has had a child, a newborn and so congratulations and hooray. Yay, yes, amazing. So we’re going to continue the series and I’m going to be, I’m going to begin by introducing the problem that we’re going to wrestle with today and then we’ll enter into dialogue and hopefully theologos. So we left off and the last time we mentioned this issue which is the debate between Bouvier and Young and this is important for a few reasons. If you remember this is not a series about Bouvier but Bouvier is serving as a foil because he starts out as sort of an avowed mystic, he sort of officially rejects that, turns to dialogue, what I think we would all agree is properly dialogos and yet there are these mystical elements deep within the dialogos so we’ve been exploring that tension and that tension comes to a kind of an explicit place in the debate with Young and you can read the debate, you can read about the debate. So some of the core issues I want to introduce in the debate and these are just by way of introduction, we’re going to get into them but I want to remind everybody this is again not going to be focused on Bouvier and Young, we’re going to use them as again a foil for talking about dialogos and mysticism but in adding some dimensionality or at least explicating this dimensionality. So the core of the debate between Bouvier and Young is I think can at least initially be framed, it’s not going to be sufficient, we’re going to have to open it up, as a debate between existentialism and psychology and a specific version of psychology known as depth psychology or it’s some type called depth psychology or it’s called psychodynamic psychology. I like depth psychology because this form of psychology typified by people like Freud and Young places a tremendous emphasis on the relationship between the conscious mind and the unconscious mind and what’s interesting already about Young for our project is Young has at least what seems to be important dimensions within his understanding of the psyche. The psyche is his name for the entirety, both the conscious and the unconscious. There’s an organizing principle of that he calls the self like with a capital S, it’s inspired by Atman within the Upanishads and then there’s an organizing thing, organizing archetype for the conscious mind, that’s the ego and then Young understands the process of healing and growth and they overlap in Young as a dialogue and I mean that deeply, a dialogue between the ego and the self and so an inner dialogue is constitutive of the functioning healing and growth of the psyche. So that of course already gets us into one dimension of our discussion. Second though is that Young is very clear that that relationship to the unconscious, the relationship between the ego and the self is a spiritual, he often understands it this way, is a spiritual relationship in which individuals can have encounters with the numinous and he uses that very explicitly like Rudolf Otto does and that and of course Rudolf Otto’s definition is properly mystical because the tremendous mystery is at the core of the definition. So you see the mystical within Young, John Duley has a way of talking about this that I think is very good. Young sees the psyche as a sacrament, this is a symbol that you participate in, so think of the Christian sacrament of the Eucharist, you participate in it, you consume it, you’re one with it in order to enter into a deeper relationship with the divine, the sacred. So Young has within the core principles of his model of the psychological functioning, growth and healing, the dialogical and the mystical, they’re there and they’re profound and they’re important. So you would think that perhaps that would make him somebody that Buber would like and appreciate and reach out to, but exactly opposite is the case and I’ll let Zibi go into some of the details, but the exchange between Buber and Young, I think it’s fair to say it becomes kind of nasty in places and Buber says in a couple, I read a couple letters where he says something to the effect that the biggest threat around is Young’s psychology and it’s like whoa, like what’s going on and why is this so threatening? It’s fair to say that because he invokes the notion of a threat. So we’ll explore this a bit, but the key seems to be that Buber is, and he uses the term in places that I’ve read, I don’t know how extensively he uses it, but he accuses Young of what is called psychologism. So this notion goes back most prominently to Fraga and this is very quickly what it means, what the concern is. So Fraga’s concern was about logic and the point about logic is that logical relations are supposed to have necessity to them. If P then Q, P therefore necessarily Q. There’s a necessity to them and that necessity gives an overarching normativity to them. The problem that Fraga was worried about is that people who are studying, who are psychologically studying inference, seeing how people make inferences, right, that’s a descriptive enterprise because the events happening in people’s minds are purely pertinent, are purely contingent, causal events. They don’t have the necessity of logic has and they don’t have any normativity therefore. In fact, we tend to judge our inferences against the normativity of logic, which means logic has to be independent of our psychological processes to serve as a guide. And so, psychologism at least initially meant trying to replace logic, which has a more transcendental status with the empirical processes of psychology. And so, what that means is like, we will, especially people like Fraga, Fraga would want to say something like the the truths of logic are true even if there are no human beings. But obviously, it can’t possibly be true that human reasoning could exist independently of human beings. So there’s a deep, deep difference there. Okay. Now, Buber is not talking properly about logic, but he’s talking as an existentialist. So what’s the diff, what’s the fundamental difference between an existentialist and psychologist? And the lines blur because there are people who call themselves existential psychologists and I’ll give you an important, another important blurring or at least integrating person. I’ll talk about Tillich in a few minutes. So what is existentialism? So the basic idea coming out of Heidegger, Heidegger was loathe to describe himself as an existentialist. Sartre was happy too because Sartre was ruthlessly self-promotional. And the basic idea is this, and I like Charles Taylor’s take on existentialism. And I’m going to invoke Charles Taylor because I’m a Canadian and therefore Charles Taylor is the most important authority on this because if you don’t know he’s a Canadian, how possible. So Charles Taylor’s point is, right, there, and he, Taylor’s right, this goes back to an aspect of the Stoics. There is a fundamental difference between human beings and other organisms, other animals. So when a gazelle is born, a gazelle is, a gazelle has an essence and we can, well, essentialism, I don’t, I’m not going to get into whether it’s an Aristotelianism. What it means is the gazelle is a gazelle. There’s no problem in it, in its being a gazelle. It has problems of surviving and reproducing but it’s not like, how do I be a good gazelle? Like, I think I’m losing my way towards gazellehood, right? None of that makes any sense. So for them to use this language, essence precedes their existence. Their existence just unfolds from the structural functional organization that is given to them by nature. Human beings, and this is Taylor’s point, are self-defining, self-interpreting, right, and to use Heidegger’s famous formulation, we are the beings whose being is in question. That is why we have a fundamental relationship to the question of being, right? That’s Heidegger’s sort of philosophy in a nutshell and I hope that’s not insulting but because we are the beings for whom being is in question, we are the beings that for whom the question of being is fundamental to us. So existentialism has those two poles to it, right? Self-defining, self-interpreting means we are the beings whose beings are in question. We can seriously wonder, am I a good person? Who am I? What am I supposed to be? What’s the meaning of my life? And we can ask questions about that and they’re always in a creative tension with questions of, well, what is being? What is it to be? What is the goodness of being? That whole project is not specific, right, and this is what we’ll have to be careful. That whole project is not specific to the psychological history of any particular human being. Let me say that again. That project is not specific to the psychological history of any human being. Heidegger’s deeply influenced by Kierkegaard. Some human beings might not face this project, they turn away from it, there’s inauthenticity, there’s a critique there. I’ll just put that out there because I want to concentrate on the point that Heidegger, and also Sartre, Gabriel Marcel are making Camus, is that project is existential and not so because it’s constitutive of, because our capacity and need to be self-defining, self-interpreting, calling ourselves into question and also simultaneously calling being into question or raising the question of being, that is constitutive of our personhood, of our being a human person. And therefore, it is not, it is in that sense a universal feature, like the universality of logic. Obviously, it wouldn’t exist if there’s no human beings, but it’s not bound to the psychological history and development of any particular person. So that’s existentialism is a deep philosophical reflection on that structure, that we are self-interpreting, calling ourselves into question, and therefore, we’re raising the question of being and we’re raising the question of the relationship between those. And that is a project of personhood. That is not the project of John Vervecky, right? It’s the project of personhood, of my being in the world as a person, as a moral agent, as a reflective self in community with other persons. Okay, now the issue is, but, and this comes up in the Elusive Eye series that I did with Greg Enriquez and Christopher Master Pietro, but surely there’s a deep relationship between me becoming a person and me becoming John Vervecky. Are those projects really deeply separable? And surely there are deep aspects of me becoming John Vervecky that are completely responsible to and caused by my idiosyncratic history. I could have, for example, I could have been born in Spain and I wouldn’t be speaking English and I would be exposed to Spanish culture rather than Canadian culture, etc., etc., right? And that would go into who I am, even what myself is. So this is the problem. The problem is there is a real difference, as I tried to explain, between the existential study of a person and the psychological study of the psyche, but they’re not, they also interpenetrate and overlap. And I think what, so that’s why the people that are closest to us have the capacity to, you know, worry us the most and concern us the most. And I think because Jung is doing psychology that has theologos and the mystical properly within it, and he’s talking about this process of individuation, the process by which I become my authentic self, that sounds to Buber a lot like what he’s talking about with dialogue and the mystical and, you know, the process of becoming, you know, authentically oneself in relationship to others. And this, I think, pisses him off because he’s worried that Jung is making an existential phenomenon into a psychological one and then thereby losing something crucial and essential, the existential dimension of how human beings are self-interpreting, self-defining beings. So that’s the nature of the problem. Now I want to point out that this interpenetration is sometimes, instead of being backgrounded and the difference being emphasized like in the debate, the interpenetration is emphasized. And a figure who does that, to my mind, very prominently and importantly is Paul Tillich, especially in something like The Courage to Beat. So Tillich, first of all, Tillich is clear and explicit that he is trying to integrate depth psychology with existential philosophy and theology. He explicitly says that, he references it, and it’s interesting that when Durley is talking about the psyche of sacrament, that’s the name of Durley’s book, he talks about both Jung and Tillich, it’s in the title, right, Jung and Tillich and, right, the psyche of sacrament. Because Tillich is very much appreciative, in both senses of the word, of Jung’s proposal that the depths of the psyche are sacred in some important way. It’s kind of an existential depth psychological version of the soul, if you want it that way. And don’t forget, Jung entitled one of his books, Modern Man in Search of a Soul. So again, I’m not imposing, I don’t think, in any way on them. The interesting thing about Tillich is he, and he uses the term individuation, I think, because of Jung, he says, yes, we have this individuation project, but Tillich is an existentialist, too. And so the relationship to being, and the being of others, and what he calls the ground of being itself, is also important and sacred. And so he has this other thing he calls participation, and he’s directly, obviously, you know, putting his finger on the Platonic tradition, and the Platonic idea that we’re after these two things, peace within the soul, and the contact with the deepest aspect of reality. And so for Tillich, there is an existential tension between individuation and participation, and the existential and the depth psychological. So that relationship of our self-defining self-interpreting, and the relationship between the ego and the self, the conscious and the unconscious, they interpenetrate. And the individuation and participation, so there’s an ongoing dialectic, a tonos, a creative tension. And Tillich sees the relationship between human beings and God, for Tillich, God is the ground of being, as he called it the method of correlation, but it’s a biological relationship, which is human beings pose questions, but the questions have to be answered by the ground of being, from the ground of being. Because if human beings answer the questions, they can’t get the relationship to reality that they need. So they’re self-interpreting, self-defining, insofar as they ask the questions, but they seek a kind of biological relationship to something that is ultimate in order to receive the transformative answers to those questions. So Tillich is, in a sense, somebody that offers an alternative to the Boomer and Young debate. So that’s, I hope, a good or helpful introduction. I want to point to a book that I found helpful, The Search for Roots, C.J. Young and the Tradition of Gnosis by Alfred Riebe. As I said, the second chapter is explicitly on the debate and then that reverberates through. I’ll warn you so that you will read other books. Riebe is ultimately a Jungian and he will take Young’s side, mostly fairly, a couple places I think he wasn’t properly fair to Boomer, but hopefully we might also talk about the topic that comes up here, which is exactly Gnosis. Because Gnosis seems to be the kind of knowing that lies on the boundary between the existential and the psychological. You can clearly see that, for example, in the work of Hans Jonas. You can see it here. And so Merker has a similar idea in his book on Gnosis. And so I want to, hopefully we’ll get to that. Where is Gnosis within the Deologos and in mystical realization? So there, I’ll shut up because I’ve talked a lot, but that’s me trying to set up the framework within which we can have our discussion today. So I’m going to turn it over first. Maybe, maybe, I’ll just go first. Maybe, maybe, you know, some quick initial reactions from both and then turn it over to Zevi to give a longer, his longer take on this. Maybe just some initial reactions from both of you. Guy, do you want to go first? Well, you did a great, you did a great setup because my, I’m already having thoughts about, it’s, it’s, it’s the, the dialectic is already happening. You said, you set up all the tensions really, really well. And they’re deep questions and they’re also, you know, I think one access point that we could look at is kind of a study about this, this thing between the personal and the existential. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Is, is our course that we did. Yes. And yeah. Yeah. And I think that was an example of the two deeply, not only fitting together, but informing each other. And yeah. Yeah. So I think that’s one of the things that we’ve been having our eye on with, with, with the DL logos and what we’ve been discovering. Yeah. Yeah. I, I thank you, Guy. That’s an extra, excellent proposal. Zevi, we’ll, we’ll talk a little bit about the workshop, but I think that’s a good way of trying to bring this tension into at least the DL logos aspect. So Zevi, how would you like to respond? Yeah, I’m glad we have 10 hours to even begin to open up the table here. I mean, wow, that’s, we have, we have a lot of work set ahead of us if we’re going to do justice to any of that. I really like the, the layup that you’ve given of juxtaposing the psychologist or the psycholo, psychologizationism versus the existential going on here. And whether that’s a, I think depending on what word we’ll use is whether that’s a legitimate thing to be doing or it’s something that we should be concerned about and see as, as a thread as Buber saw it. Right. And I really do appreciate the way that you brought Tilich in as a, as a third figure to mediate between, between those two. To me, I want to, I want to maybe, and the question of individuation and the, and the inherent problematic and paradox between individuating as the Zevi, the John, the guy that we are in the languages and the cultures and the context that we’re given and the human project as a whole. And that as perhaps framing the, a large difference of perspective between, between the psychologist and the, and the existentialist and the overlap there is, is, is very rich as you’ve, as you’ve laid out. I want to lay in perhaps another pane of glass to see this conversation through as well, which is how I’ve been reading the Jung-Büchner debate. And I think it very much relates to this. Just to, just to give a bit of historical background to the debate. So the debate kicks off properly in 1952 with an article that’s entitled religion and modern thinking that appears in a German magazine called Merker. And the responses between, between Jung and Buber go on in that journal itself. I’m, I’m joining here from Barbara Stevens. She wrote a great article. She’s also a Jungian, which is interesting to see another Jungian address the Buber debate and herself trying to be not too partial and trying to hear out Buber. And I think she does actually a good job with that. The article is called the modern Buber Carl Jung disputations protecting the sacred in the battle for the boundaries of analytical psychology. I recommend that 2001. So in this article that Buber publishes, which is actually a reprint of a chapter from earlier work, and it ends up being published all in a work of his called Eclipse of God, Adair, Buber is going on his themes of, you know, reality, religion, philosophy, ethics, and he goes on to attack three people specifically, this German, a French and a Swiss. He attacks, he attacks, you know, the existentialist Heidegger, although as we said, himself didn’t reject that term, whatever it is, whatever his label is, Martin Heidegger. He attacks Jean-Paul Sartre for the Americans and Canadians, and he attacks the Swiss Carl Jung, who’s the focus of today’s discussion along with Buber. And his critique of them, what really unifies his critique of the three is, and this is a quote of his, the radical subjectivism of modern thought that he feels is blocked access to the transcendent, which results in his opinion and spiritual blindness to the living presence of God. These are these are his words, and he calls that the eclipse of God. And that’s that’s what he sees as the big threat of modernity. It’s very true what you said, John, that sometimes we don’t see that the enemy that’s very far away doesn’t seem very threatening to us, because we know that they’re not in they’re not in real discussion with us. Right. So the staunch theist and staunch atheist, they’re they’re they’re enemies, but there isn’t there isn’t a lot of love lost between them. But between, you know, the co-religionists and the closer you are to home, the closer the relative, the more the more ferocious the fight can be. So I see this fight between Buber and Jung. And as you said, it actually at sometimes devolves into into some things which you wouldn’t expect from from gentlemen. And I see it just as a sign of their of their real closeness and how much they were concerned that that that the influence that was being brought by the other in a way that was so close to as be done in a way that wasn’t corruption in the field. I know, I know, I mean, I’m very passionate about philosophy of mysticism. And what irks me the most is seeing people doing mysticism in a very non rigorous way. And I don’t care if someone’s talking about, you know, they could be talking about theories of of nutrition and making things up. And that doesn’t bother me. Once they talk about mysticism, which I think there’s like so much that the world needs for it to be done properly. So I can see that Buber and Jung both care so much that they want to be properly understood. And they’re both doing it in response to real existential issues. They’re both talking in response to World War Two and a lot of in World War One, a lot of madness around them. So I see I do see even even their their bitterness to one another, the accusation that that clearly the other hasn’t even read my works, which which is not which is very clear that they both read each other’s works extensively. Jung writes at one point that that it’s very clear that Buber just doesn’t understand Emmanuel Kant. And that’s why there’s no discussion here. He hasn’t read Critique of Pure Reason carefully enough or else we wouldn’t have be having this talk. And he really he really gets quite nasty at some points. But I just want to I want to talk about this critique of Buber’s for a second and then lay that in as an additional panel to talk about. Buber writes this one paragraph and this I think is the crux of Buber’s critique against all three and particularly against Jung. Because when he’s writing about all three, about 50% of the quotations that he brings in his critique are quotations from Jung. So all Heidegger and Sartre are important to him. His critique, it’s clearly Jung who’s the main antagonist and they and they blossom into into this disputation which becomes quite famous. And Buber writes like this and he’s very he’s very particular with his words. Man, we would now say man or woman, but I’m just going to use the gender language that he uses. Man now draws back the projections of himself, of a god outside of him, without thereby wishing to deify himself. Man does not deny a transcendent god, he simply dispenses with him. He no longer knows the unrecognizable, he no longer needs to pretend to know him. In his place he knows the soul or rather the self, clearly a sting at Jung. It is indeed not a god that modern consciousness appalls, which is a response to a quote from Jung that the modern consciousness appalls god, but faith is what the modern consciousness appalls according to Buber. Whatever may be the case concerning god, the important thing for man of modern consciousness is to stand to no further relationship of faith to him. So there’s something interesting going on here and I want to bring in this theological language and I hope that the viewers who don’t care much for theology don’t run away once with a bit of god talk because I think when they’re speaking about god they’re talking about something much more than what we think what that word means and I’ll try to explain what that means in a second, I think for Jung and Buber. Buber throughout the debate with Jung is on the facade he’s criticizing the fact that Jung rejects this, that there is an ontological thing out there which we can call the divine, the unknowable, the transcendent and he criticizes, he gets quite specific in his critique of Jung, he says that Jung claims to be a psychologist and claims not to be talking about metaphysics or ontology and yet he makes claims in the negation of the existence of god saying that such a being cannot exist or cannot be known and he says that is a metaphysical claim and you’re no longer just being a psychologist you can’t hide behind that label and Buber, and that they go back and forth in that in a way that gets almost a little petty which we don’t want to focus on here but the important point I think is that Buber is saying to Jung that what you’re doing is not only are you saying that there is no greater being outside of us called god, there is no relationship to anything outside of us at all and the real threat of psychologization for Buber is this fact that there’s no relationship, whether or not there’s a god or not, like Buber is not some sort of bible bashing theist who cares to prove the existence of god, Buber cares about relationship and relationship means there needs to be something real outside of you and if all you’re ever relating to even in your deepest experiences is just the self and more of the self and more of the self there is no relationship, there is no I thou and I take Buber’s critique seriously as someone who has a worldview which is very much centered around monism, idealism, mysticism, this is a very real critique and this is I think the brunt of his critique against Jung and I think this question of the being of other and the ground of being, so is the ground of being only locust within the self or is it outside or in between as Buber likes to see it, if the depth of the self as we’re saying this sort of new platonic idea that the truest depth of the self, the ultimate is the Brahman, the depth of the self is the depth of the reality, where is the space for relationship to something outside of us to others and that question of where ultimate being is and if there is ultimate being outside I think is the real debate here and we spoke last time perhaps you know some psychological explanations of why there’s so important to Buber, his abandonment by his mother at the age of three and all kinds of other things but putting aside putting aside those kinds of explanations because those tend to be just reductionistic, the point is a very real one that in a psychologization not only are we abandoning the capacity to identify with the human subspecies humanitarian or subspecies humanis whatever that would be that we can that we can that we’re part of a project which is bigger than just the self and the individual is not just psychologized to the individual to become the truest I that I can be but there’s something outside of me there’s something real outside of me that I can connect to and the space between whether this real is within me is outside of me is a tricky thing and I think that bringing the language of participation which we brought up last time which I think yeah really helpful and has been actually reshaping my thinking around these issues is really an important space to work between these two great thinkers so just to just to conclude this remark I think that the initial question of when I first read Eclipse of God when I was I don’t know like 17 or 18 like to me some coming from religious backgrounds interested in psychology and philosophy the question was is God a real thing out there or is God just in our minds and to me that was a real question I was really chewing over that and now when I read the debate I’m reading a different debate I’m reading the question of are we really relating to something that’s really other inside of us or are we only ever relating to the self and that’s my two cents. That’s beautiful yeah so the indication by Jung of Kant is relevant to that point you just made Zevi and I keep saying this people don’t take how serious of a Kantian Jung was all right and so Kant is invoking the critique of pure reason and with sorry Jung is invoking the critique of pure reason in which Kant sort of convincingly to many people I have criticisms but I’m just trying to I’m trying to get into Jung’s mind right now. Kant you know shows the impossibility of metaphysics as a project right and so Jung thinks that anything metaphysical is precluded when we’re trying to do science and therefore he doesn’t want to talk about this now but to get I’m going to try and go back and forth to give Buber his point a lot of people don’t know this about Jung as Jung goes deeper and deeper and by the 50s we’re getting into towards the end of Jung’s career right Jung starts talking about the psychoidal and the psychoidal is something that extends beyond the psyche it has a transpersonal this is where this is one of the where transpersonal psychology comes out of right so the idea the neo the gnostic and the neoplatonic elements that had always run through Jung and be very important become more and more prominent in Jung and you can look at the current work of Jeffrey Rath of the alchemical imagination and so for example the the figure of Sophia right is psychoidal Sophia is not just an archetype in the psyche but somehow a perennial pattern within the external world and Sophia is the psychoidal bridges between those in some way I would use Corban’s term they’re talking about the imaginal here right and Jung and Jung and again Jung is also being deeply influenced by Corban through all of this too and I think the psychoidal is his way of trying to acknowledge the imaginal what I call the transjective and see that there is a sacredness in in the between space not just the within space so I take it that we have to be careful because I’m not trying to negate Bueber’s critique but what I’m saying is actually there’s a conflict within Jung about exactly this topic right and I think because Jung was coming to increasingly realize existential participation and self-definition self sorry self self-interpretation that are integral to his understanding of individuation take place because he has to account for the therapeutic relation yeah what’s going on if it’s all like yeah right right and so he has to he has to he has to acknowledge the deep interconnection between the inner dialogue and the outer dialogue and therapy is properly when I think it’s done properly is and it is a kind of theologos right and he’s got to right and so he starts to bend his metaphysics and he starts to introduce metaphysics and so I think although this sounds like a defensive young it’s actually in his honoration of Bueber because Bueber’s critique actually I think holds because you see Jung actually having to give way on it in his theoretical project and in his theoretical work now like I said I think what that brings up is that and again given especially Tillich I think that brings up something I’d like to focus in on which is the crux that if we if we get rid of sort of that I don’t mean get rid of if we addressed it I think the crux of the issue is exactly one that that he put his finger on which is you know the notion of faith and how it transcends subjectivism and egocentrism and sort of a Kantian self-enclosure right and that faith and so and notice what that requires that requires a pre-modern notion of faith where faith is not the assertion of belief but exactly that sense of participating in right relationship with something other than yourself that transforms you like that that and that’s why sexual intercourse metaphors are repeatedly used in different sacred traditions it’s clearly in the Bible it’s in you know it’s in the Upanishads it’s all over the place right as a primary metaphor and so the question then I think is oh and I’m going to use I’m going to use the ancient word so because the our word faith people they they use faith and belief as synonyms so I want to step out of that I want to use the ancient term pistis right for right to mean that that what I just talked about that sense of being in right relationship and you’re conforming to some other that is therefore transformative view you and you only know them in the transformation of your own self-knowledge so your self-knowledge and your relationship to them and how you’re conforming to them are inextricably bound together and that’s a platonic proposal as well so here’s the question that that pistis means all of that what’s the and because and this is an ancient debate and it runs through right the mystical tradition what’s the relationship between pistis and gnosis because young clearly centrally has a place for gnosis and I think Tillich exemplifies it because of how gnosis lies on this fecund juncture between the existential and the psychological right and of course you and and the the groups of people that were called gnostics the gnostics aren’t like a church they’re more like a style like fundamentalism right but the gnostics are like hodge jonah sees them as existential other people see them as depth psychological and that’s not a coincidence you know many people have I think quite correctly said that what young was doing was revalorizing gnosticism for the modern and this is in the title here the search for roots cj young and the tradition of gnosis so the question I think then comes down to this question of what’s the relationship is there they’re not the same and they they historically entered into conflict early christianity is wrestling with are we based on pistis or are we based on gnosis right and there’s and it’s it lasts for centuries right I think maybe this is the question and then what I want to ask is what did the dialogical and the mystical have to have to say about the relationship between pistis and gnosis how’s that for taking us another step further is that okay anyways I got a quick can you summarize just really quick um gnosis and pistis so I so I have the two really distinct just is there just a brief summary the bottom line essentially and and the question is are they ultimately fundamentally different or are they because I thought I thought before you said I was I was like oh I thought maybe that was gnosis that you were you were describing before you distinguish it yeah so so the the difference comes down to and perhaps it’s a difference of emphasis but I’m posing it as an open question and I think it’s a question that’s at the core of the logos and the mystical I write at the core right I would put it this way there and again there they are on this on this juncture point between the existential and the psychological right and I mean the existential in that deep ontological sense I tried to lay out right but I would say pistis emphasizes right relationship and gnosis ultimately emphasizes a kind of knowing I would call it participatory transformative knowing but it’s a kind of knowing right where right and so one thing that’s the notion of love is more at home within pistis than it is within gnosis I’m not saying the gnostics don’t talk about love but the gnostics put much more emphasis on knowledge and wisdom than they do on love and being in right relationship now there’s there’s a lot of overlap exactly that’s exactly what your reaction but that’s the emphasis and you see how that kind of maps on to the existential and the psychological at least Jungian depth psychological can I bring in a word from Jung on the distinction between pistis and gnosis in this regard yeah because this ties very interestingly back into their own the Jung-Boo debate yeah I just want to say one thing before that which is that there’s this constant sort of bullying by Jung against Boober that he doesn’t he just doesn’t understand Kant at all and that’s just where he was wrong and you got Kant’s critique I just in defense of Boober because I feel I feel close to him Boober when he was like 17 writes in his diary how he discovered Kant’s polygoumena how he describes the book how it changed his life and how he lived with it and it was his bible and so any notion that that Boober wasn’t aware of or influenced by or transformed by Kant is just simply not fair so to all the Jungians out there that’s for Boober and I think Boober just I just overheard Booper say to you the primal word was spoken thank you he felt bad by you welcome the other there’s another funny thing is because Jung is very witty in his letters Boober accuses Jung of being a gnostic right yeah and he accuses him based on a few things he one at one time he refers to God under a gnostic name and another thing a poem that he had written at a that Boober says I was just drunk at a party when I wrote it I didn’t mean it to become used as blackmail against me so that’s it that’s interesting part of the debate and Jung writes very wittily he says that he says you Boober accusing me of being a gnostic there’s there was a Christian theologian who’s accusing Jung of being an agnostic yeah and he says he says if you think about it gnostic and agnostic are literally opposite things so if I’m being accused of both it stands to reason that I’m either not being understood or you guys don’t understand these categories and he’s doing something cheeky there because yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah there are only antinomies in in a literal sense but but it’s it was very it made me laugh when I read that so this this this this this accusation of gnostic and when Boober means that he means that when he’s accusing Jung he means that he’s that he’s sort of devaluing or demonizing or dualizing the world or presenting some sort of you know evil God and you see that in answer to Jogue and other places and although although Jung deflects the criticism because he’s he’s trying to play this card of hey I’m just a psychologist I’m just a scientist yeah it’s very clear that he has gnostic themes running through him oh yeah yeah yeah yeah so in terms of in terms of pistis and gnosis pistis um so I I can’t recommend reading this letter I sent this letter to an email to both of you it’s a letter which Boober which Jung responds to a certain certain Bernard Ling June 1957 you can find it online very easily if you google that and the letter is I think it’s a must read for any religious person for anyone that’s interested in religious experience and theory of religion it’s it’s just a stunning letter brilliant letter of brilliance and both of these men are just such brilliance in yes the clash is a brilliant one so in so Jung himself in this letter writes that while he well he’s not going to say that he believes in God he says that he he can better say that he has pistis um he says so when you ask me if I’m a believer this is the question I was posed to him by Bernard Ling he says I must answer no he says I am loyal to my inner experience and have pistis in the Pauline sense and pistis in psychology and psychology and religion in other words he himself Jung defines as um trust or loyalty faith and confidence in a certain experience of a numinous nature and this is really the key theme throughout this letter this specific letter where Jung stands behind the experience and he differentiates between the experience and interpretation and he says that when we try to give an interpretation of our numinous experience what we’re doing is we’re saying that this experience which we believe to be transcendent I now can say that it’s within my grip to interpret and that my interpretation is right and everyone else is wrong and he really and he really goes hard on that point and he and he really pushes for a subjectivism he says that if we don’t if we respect the numinous experience enough we’ll try not to interpret it but just to live in the experience itself and see what the experience itself has to teach and demand for us and so pistis versus gnosis in relationship to the numinous experience I think in in Jung’s own conception as far as I can guess is that pistis means I’ve had the experience the numinous and I have faith and loyalty in that experience and he actually references the the conversion event of Paul and the rota domesticus in first Corinthians 12.9 and it’s holding on to that experience and not interpreting it I think gnosis for Jung would mean moving from the faith in that experience itself to an interpretation of the experience to knowing reality based on that experience right so I now have a participatory or propositional grip on what happened and and that knowing unites me and and brings me into right reconciliation and salvation with that numinous divine reality and so I think pistis means that he’s not going into gnosis he’s saying I don’t know he’s saying I am ag not at least he claims I am agnostic about the ultimate claims that this experience makes in any sort of a priori or categorical universal way but I’ve pissed us in the in the transformation of the experience itself and that’s a fact for me so I want to push back on that because I think what he’s doing is he’s that’s a dodge I think he’s collapsing the difference between pistis and gnosis at the very end in the very famous interview he was asked if he believed in God and he says I don’t believe I know and that’s a claim of a gnostic right that’s the claim that the experience ultimately grounds the ability to say I know and the faith in the experience and the transformation right that’s ultimately the gnostic faith because the gnostic and this is a point many people make the gnostic emphasizes an experience of transformation with respect to God as opposed to the otherness and the independence in fact the otherness right is given a very negative understanding except for the otherness of the ultimate non-god right so what I’m saying is I think you’re actually you’re right that that’s what young is saying and I and why bring it up but I think he’s actually that’s a dodge I think he’s collapsing the distinction between them what he’s saying is I’m experiencing transformation and I have faith that this transformation is going to keep going but that’s gnosis that’s what gnosis is it’s the experience of transformation and that that transformation is saving you that’s the defining feature of gnosis right whereas pistis is so supposed to be I’m in relationship and the otherness and the beyondness is constitutive of the relationship and for him to what’s paul’s response his response is jesus is lord not hey I’m being saved right that and so again I think young is I think that’s I I I don’t want to besmirch your that that’s a great letter I agree with you it is but I’m saying I have a I’m very critical of that and I think that’s that’s a move where young is not not being fair to how these terms are being and he’s not I don’t think he’s being fair to paul’s damascus experience at all rightfully so rightfully so I want to I want to I want to step down for a second and hear um guy’s voice as well yeah yeah sorry going back but I but I think I think I think that you’re right and I think I think that what what you does around these letters and debates is very slippery and he very much retreats into a position where he’s like oh I’m not a gnostic I’m not a metaphysician I’m not a theologian and then at other times he’ll say I know and he makes these incredibly gnostics so so I think I think I think you’re right in saying that what he’s doing here is an obfuscation of categories that he really is mashed together but I’d love to hear to bring in guy and hear and hear you well I’m loving this I’m this this distinction this this dialectic between gnosis and pistis is striking to me um because I’m just seeing flashes of arguments I’ve seen people have and complaints about each other like one like the classic one is get out of your head like just don’t interpret right just be with the experience of which it seems like like pistis right and and then there’s the other side which is more I guess or more more gnosis right which is no deeply understand and be transformed by it right through the understanding is through newing right those those two things and there’s a there’s even in the human potential movement groups and yeah there’s that there’s that debate right yeah which in in in itself that it seems to be it seems to be an argument that comes up in multiple contexts as we’re talking about what does that without them explicitly knowing about these things right um but yet we’re seeing that argument like even at a local like a local pre-reflective level socially in like personal growth groups right there’s that debate yeah yeah so what is what is what is that reveal about the phenomena that we’re talking about that’s it that’s the question I want to I want to look at and I’m wondering if if if that it’s popping up like that right um in multiple levels if that in itself is starts to get at the the thing that starts to bring it more into resolution so a couple of things I would say I would say one one place that um that I’ve had experience with who age almost started something called I in here in Berkeley um called uh the diamond heart diamond heart work and it’s yeah and he’s a he’s a he’s a psychologist um and he started working with I think you know it’s he really comes from like a an eastern and a Sufi perspective and a pretty deep one but he’s also he’s also um like heavy duty objects relations psychologist right and what makes his work really unique and what I really liked about it is that he he was saying that like not only is the psychological and the transpersonal right or the archetypal right or the unitary not only are they not only are they not different but you actually the likelihood that unless you unless you go through the personal right the likelihood that you’ll be able to actually see the transpersonal right starts to be diminished right and in what what he he the way he puts it he says that that that the east and a lot of the religious um logos really talked a lot about the structure of like the ego or the structure of the world right um or as a structure the entity of the ego whereas psychology psychology came in and started to not only talk about just the structure the structure of the ego but the substructures of all of the ego you know and there’s all the different theories about what what makes that up you know like everything from objects relations and internalized right parental figures and all of that kind of stuff right and and he’s like this has only been like for a hundred years if we actually kind of opened up at this level so his project right basically he started a religion right it’s called diamond heart his project is bringing these two together in a very very deep and he’s a very descriptive technical way bringing them together but guess what you know what you know what his main method is his methodology through this whole thing that the actual practices inquiry he calls it is socratic inquiry yeah exactly exactly right and he emphasizes that a lot and i think that that’s really interesting because um because there is a sense and this has actually been my experience too with circling when you when you get someone’s world usually people don’t usually start off talking about you ask about their life they usually don’t start off talking about well well you know the um the one yeah you know it’s normally oh my mom or you know my wife or but one thing i found is is that is that if you can if you can be with that in an in an in an open way right in a socratic way in an inquiry way that you could start to get that that very that any one of those threats if you just keep pulling on that threat eventually you’re going to start to get into these deeper conversations and i’ve seen that over and over and over and over again where where it’s kind of like you know it’s like if you just look at is for if all you see are these four fingers and then eventually come down and pretty soon you’re gonna as that gets revealed right the psyche right in the in the in the particular that if you unfold it right in in in in i think something around like dialogue and dialogs starts to reveal this and i think that’s part of what we saw in our course where we brought those two together so those are so those are some of my responses and just to what i’m seeing here i think bringing in the socratic dimension i think is important and and yeah and i i i agree with you the course we did shows like that that juncture point is is profound and perhaps it’s more important than the two poles for people in it trying to separate the depth psychological from the existential what happens is yeah people people there’s a dialogue between the existential and the psych the depth psychological that is going on as they’re dialoguing with other people and that’s and and then what happens in the socratic fashion is that the self-knowledge and knowledge of the other that then gets dialoguing into but what is being itself or what is what is wisdom and they they get into those three dimensions and you know and we’re writing about that and that i yeah i think that was unquestionably um i think this is the right verb demonstrated in the course i think yeah very much um but for me so there’s two possible responses to you and then i’ll let debbie talk one is well does that mean the pistis-gnostic distinction is actually a false distinction and it seems that that’s not right because there seems like young is like conflating things that shouldn’t be conflated boober has a point there’s a point to the debate even if it gets vociferous right um so i don’t i don’t want to do that but i so that’s what i meant when i want to understand in a socratic fashion um you know pistis and gnosis and then now you brought up socrates and this is the right thing to bring up eros like there’s those three and because pistis talks to love and yeah right like they said a lot and there’s agape and then gnosis has something too it’s not love but it’s this eros this the desire to return the profound longing to return that’s supposed to motivate the gnostic journey um and and we we see all three of those and but what i so i’m acknowledging that i see all three of those deeply interpenetrating in dialogos right especially when dialogos moves towards the mystical so but i that that’s not the same as understanding their relation i want to understand the relation right i acknowledge what you’re saying i think it’s profound and right but yeah what what i right so for example yeah socratic inquiry right that’s like that’s that’s very much like till it now is that an act of coming to understanding is that an act of coming into right relationship right is that an act of returning uh to the source of being like right do you see what i’m saying that’s what i want to understand uh so when when dialogos is on the horizon of the mystical what is the relationship between pistes and gnosis and eros and agape that’s yeah yes yeah i think it’s a very it’s a very it’s a very specific it’s good to have that specificity in language in terms of in terms of questioning what it is we’re trying to figure out i want to i want to step away from the language a little i feel like i feel i’m feeling slightly alienated by the language i don’t feel like it’s my language i want to i want to bring us to to our own experience here like what are we what are we doing here like yeah three people who spend a lot of their time thinking and reading um john took the initiative to to get the three of us to sit together not the first time to record to talk to listen to hear to share to explore to to debate and disagree and to educate hopefully somehow ourselves and others what i what i see here is is a real combination of of a lot of those categories all of those words that we’re talking about right there’s there’s this nagapi we love this we love coming here to sit together yeah we we we we care about it we care about the world and the people in it and how they’re living and the narratives which they’re living in the metaphysics which they’re which are shaping their lives we there’s there’s some grasping for knowledge we’re not just trying to make art and poetry we’re trying to come to a knowledge about what a thing is and to be in in reconciliation and demonstration with that and to demonstrate that in in the Socratic method sitting here and talking together and i think i think that i may not have an analytical answer to separate linguistically where each of those things sit between mysticism and d logos but but i think i think if we if we examine what is what we’re doing here in this moment we’re doing those things we’re doing all the above and i feel driven into this moment by all of those things yeah let’s do it i think that’s a great proposal if the terms make you comfortable i’m just using the terms to try and point to something because yeah there there’s a knowing there’s i mean that one of the main one of the central claims of gnosis right that distinguishes it from the cartesian project is that there are truths that are only accessible through transformation right that there’s levels of reality so Descartes the idea Descartes no no i just have to have a universal method and it will get me all the truths that are possible to be gotten right but if you look at somebody like the christian tradition emphasizes this but i think this is something that the gnostic right made central like no no there are there are aspects of reality hidden aspects of reality that are only accessible in transformation so this is this is the gnostic aspect i’m feeling in our conversation that we are not only talking to each other because that’s not the logos we are trying to provoke emergence we are trying to provoke transformation in each other that’s the gnosis for me the pistis is the sense that you too have both become deep friends of mine like such that i feel that both the world and myself are better because i’m in relationship to both of you and that you’re in that world and and that i want to care and take care of that relationship but those two things although you can distinguish them in thought for me they are bound up because if i didn’t i think this is right if i didn’t trust you as friends i couldn’t engage in the transformation for the truth right it’s almost like troughing you know betrothed where the word trough points points to both trust and to truth there’s a troughing going on that’s at the core of for me that’s my attempt to give an initial way of bringing it into the concrete guts of what we’re doing right now i um i was first of all i really like what you just did like um where basically you pulled it right into right into here right into now like and when you when you did that that’s because of zevi right i i one of my besetting that’s what i’m able to spin off into abstract theory very easily uh so i great right yeah right right the the what zevi did is just brought each i i felt the logic level um become present right to me or into my awareness that was was background at some level and so for example like with with with john what i’ve come to understand that is like when you’re when you’re going off into theory actually what i what i feel is love it’s like you’re loving right and the more and that there’s and i would say that the one thing that seems that there’s we have in common that that i hope that our friendships just continue to deepen and i think they will because there is a there is a commonality to um something inexhaustible that that we that we care about right and and therefore there’s a when you set and i’ve noticed this just these setting these things up right these these these kind of islands and putting them into relationship i feel this like i almost feel drunk in in um in in in my in the fate that i get to listen in and care in this way right and so i think that’s the thing that’s mostly for me that’s really the ground of all of this levy when you talked about care that’s that’s the thing that’s um i could say i care but there’s also a way to how i experience it it’s more like care eyes right there’s something really important um about about the notion of care or surge in german can i say a word about about care and transformation um firstly i want to say guy um thank you and i feel like just talking about transformation before getting to the actual point although this is an actual point too i feel that when i there’s kind of this interesting play of like of like being present and thinking what to say and thinking what’s appropriate and the relevance realization of that in communication and i feel like the there was a certain um guy in this that i embodied in what i was saying i feel like i’ve been transformed by you in conversation had before these dialogues i never would have stopped to make an observation like that and i feel like i was very much channeling the the self of myself the self of me which is transformed by you um which is which i think why it resonated back um so so i appreciate it i appreciate your appreciation and i think as well i think i think the transformation from john about the way that we think about these things and the way that we’re able to to merge the care and knowledge together in a way that can be potentially transformative as well as transform me as well i have a lot of gratitude towards you um to towards both of you in that regard in terms of in terms of very simply in terms of care and transformation um which which we can use as kind of standing words for for pistis and gnosis which i feel i feel a bit closer to that language yeah okay there’s there’s which i which i which i i appreciate that that um that modification there’s a very i remember when i was in primary school there was a teacher i had um he was teaching us english grammar and i did not care about english grammar like i could not care about like how we’re supposed to structure sentences correctly and like there was no logic to it it made no sense it still doesn’t but he he told me a story um about um the student that he had many years before he was quite a veteran teacher and the student had come i grew up in sydney australia and the student had come from from from the country from from australian country and had grown up on farms and came his father had you know raised enough worked enough money in agriculture to send his child to school and the child comes to school and at the time he was teaching mathematics um and he he’s he’s trying to get him to understand very simple arithmetic and the kid is just not getting it at all and everyone else is like kind of laughing at the kid he’s a country boy like what does he know he’s never going to get it it’s like really simple stuff like you know two times two and like just like very simple and and what he did was and he tells me himself john lennon should i should i should say his name because because why not um credit to him he he took out the numbers and he gave him farm objects he says you have you have two potatoes and you have you have you have two you have two potatoes now you have you have them together or times by each other how many potatoes you have now and right away the kid was able to respond he talked about tractors and cows and things that were things that the kid cared about he cared about these things were meaningful abstract numbers didn’t mean anything to him he didn’t he didn’t have that appreciation but the second he was able to talk about heptas and acres and potatoes and and and vegetables right away the kid rose to the top of the class of mathematics and this this deep relationship between between care and understanding care and transformation um i think is i think it’s just a very simple psychological fact i know sorry i know i know for myself that that i can pick up i can pick up a book that other people can find very you know difficult and obtuse but if it’s something which i care about the words just flow right into my mind if it’s something which other people find really simple i just don’t care for the subject it’s just a blank page for me and i can read it 100 times another word has gone in this deep this deep deep deep psychological relationship between between care and the capacity for that knowledge just not just to enter us but to transform us and i think i think i think you’re right john in talking about how how pistis and gnosis um ultimately aren’t separate categories that they need to be they need to be blurred because i think that without caring there is no capacity to absorb and be transformed by something there’s no there’s no capacity at all to be in relationship and participate in participation with something to identify with something however it’s being done without without deeply caring about it and care is what pulls us into that and i think that we sometimes we sometimes kind of poo poo we kind of we kind of like look down on these on these oh these are like emotive these are like that’s like some sort of effeminate thing who needs care like we’re talking about real we’re talking about we’re talking about the unknown we’re talking about transcendent but but unless there is that what what guys are about unless there is that purchase of individual unless there is that pistis that that that care that’s that’s one side the other side i think is is is that is the belief that something can happen right is being open to the magic of of the of reality that it can transform us and i think when i think about the hebrew equivalent right in hebrew we have two words we have emunah and betacham which which which kind of they both get translated as faith faith and trust sometimes but emunah is related to the hebrew word omen which is actually like some sort of craft or artistry practice yeah yeah where there’s a sense of of faith means that you that you work on the belief that this thing that you’re encountering may actually transform you you work to you work on on on on the artistry in having the faithfulness that that thing may affect something in you and i think so i want both both the care that can bring to transformation and both the sense that that there’s a need to to if if we don’t believe that the universe can knock us off our feet and radically change us to be new people radically new people in in in a moment or over the course of years it’s not going to happen and and pistis seems to me to be to be to believe in the possibility of that experience and i’m curious to know if that if that maps for you well i think it does but let me try to bring in something and i’ll try and keep it concrete again but i think it’s existential and in response to what you just said part of what was occurring to me is the idea of pistis as the sense of being called to care right where that call isn’t just an utterance but like you said that there’s there’s something in us that can respond to the call the sense of being called to care whereas gnosis is about what you’re talking about gnosis is okay now i’m going through the transformation and what the care discloses is being disclosed in my transformation right yes so that’s so it’s i’m using a talikian model here there’s the there’s the call and the response notion where when where pistis is i i i have a genuine real i believe in it sense of being called to care but but then that that’s not enough right and even in even in protestantism you make a distinction between being saved and being sanctified right which is the idea that you know this is the faith gets me the faith is the response to the call but i still have to go through the gnosis and and christians have used that word in the past too by the way i i have to go through the gnosis uh uh right to properly respond to the call so the gnosis the pistis is the proper sense of being called and the gnosis is the proper sense of responding it responding by transforming towards what calls me how about that as a response to what you said hmm yeah i really i i love that i i also know that when you’re talking about gnosis i i it’s so important to to constantly reiterate that we’re not talking about something which is simply cognitive and cerebral no no no i think it’s so important i think i think and i think this happens in all languages i’m just the in arabic maharifah is to know and knowing in this in this deep transformative existential sense yes yes i think that’s that’s important i’m trying to think of how i’m trying to bring boober or you or the discussion back into this i’m not seeing i’m not seeing the end maybe if you have something there well i mean i see boober i see one of the things that the vow is existentially is a call to care that precludes my understanding but affords me entering into the that interpenetration of self-knowledge and the knowledge of the other that’s the socratic gnosis right that’s how that’s what i see but what i see young emphasizing is young young is emphasizing the the the the although as i said he had the psychoidal dimension he’s he’s trying to get a yeah but what does this self-knowledge that makes me capable of responding to the numinous look like how like like so i get like the i get the call from the depths of the unconscious but how do i again what does it what does the self-knowing look like that allows me the self the gnosis the self-knowing transformation right towards something how does that allow me right to respond to the call within i’m sorry this might be too simple but are we hearing two great thinkers talking about the call within and the call without and not properly understanding like the way prepstilic did that they’re not really separable calls they’re not identical but they’re not separable that’s a question i don’t know the answer i’m posing it like i like tillich precisely because he brings that that relationship out right you have the call to care but also right the how do you the response to the call and the response has to be a deeply participatory transformative response yeah and that and that there’s also that there’s a way where the more the more you respond to the call right in some sense the response to the call is something like the pistis right you get into relationship with it where it’s like that there’s that experience of wow you don’t even have time to interpret it it’s just so meaningful in its yeah world world worldness right and then it seems to me that there’s that that that transformation seems to just i don’t know if i want to say naturally but it seems like it there’s a there’s a logos that kind of swings back and you go what was that yeah right and and and you start to you start to like look at that experience and you start to usually usually what happens is you start to talk about it with people but what are you doing when you’re talking about that experience right you’re in some sense you’re you’re bringing you’re drawing out or you could say bringing the logos to the experience right um which which what’s interesting is is the more that you do that right the more that you actually do do that that in itself affords attention to be more integrated and be able to go back into relationship but because you have more distinctions right you understand more you can you can see more of of that horizon or that domain or that person or that relationship such that you can actually have more of of the of the pistis right at a deeper and deeper level and i would say that really like we’re all here because there have been horizons in our lives where that keeps happening right and in some sense in some sense when we get excited right there’s those are moments of like you know these kind of ecstasies that come up when something opens up or there’s that insight and i would say that that’s that there’s that that that notion of where our conversations in our reading in our understanding that comes evokes from our care and is called right draws us into relationship profoundly and and in in understanding that relationship right that understanding itself allows us to go deeper into relationships yes very much you get you get what’s called mindsight resonance speaking of it psychologically um so so if i have a if i’m not a psychopath right i have a capacity uh to take your perspective on my perspective and this is vagatsky’s idea and paul polanyi’s idea that i can indwell you right and then i can i can see myself in a way i couldn’t possibly see myself by myself because what i do is like socrates talks about how you see yourself in the eyes of the other person and that’s a very boober thing to say i think right and so you come back and you what you get is it’s simultaneously a knowing and a transformation because what happens is i can now know myself but i’ve also developed a metacognition that i properly did not have so i both transformed to the mind and know it and that’s to me a problem so i indwell because i care i’m called to care and then i internalize because that only by doing that can i properly response now we make this concrete um right here right now i’m picking up on your perspective and then what i can do is i can transform my perspective so that i can more clearly reveal my mind to you you pick up on that and you do the same thing and then we do a mind we do this mind site resonance that’s uh oh what’s his name daniel i wrote mindset i can’t remember his name but you do the uh goldman and you do the comment that’s such do this mindset resonance a reciprocal opening by the way just to bring back the other metaphor that’s what’s happening when people fall in love yep yep reciprocal reciprocal disclosure yeah yeah yeah i want to it’s it’s interesting it’s interesting that i mean it seems i know for myself at least i have a tendency towards um syncretic as away from analytic i like to see how things are working together as opposed to working separately um and and and and i do see that we’re moving towards a merger which is quite a fruitful one between those two directions of the co within the co without and how they they yeah yeah what you’re saying absolutely how they have they mold each other i was just thinking though that that there there is and this is slightly against my own nature which is which is fine that there is i think a place for both of these things to be held separately the within and out um and and we can we can talk about booger as the without and young is the within in this regard and i think and i think this is something which which young mentions in his own letters young writes and over here this is not young of the red book and young of i know this is young of i’m hiding behind the psychology mask and he says he says listen i have you and he laughs at the metaphysicians and theologians he says i have patients you know that are sick that are suffering if if any of the theologians at goober if you want to come if any of the poets want to come and heal them you’re more than welcome to but i am the doctor i’m using the empirical method and i have to heal these people and when i read that initially it seemed it seemed very lowbrow it seemed uh it seemed like an unfair shot as if like the only thing this world needs is actual scientists and healers and there’s no place for for poetry and philosophers and theologians and as if that like the entire welton shung in which a society dwells in doesn’t create the very issues that need to something be solved by this urgent with their hands you know um so there was a bit of a narrow mind perspective there but but now i’m seeing something a bit different uh and this just dawned on me that there really is time for these two different modalities right but i’m when i’m working to to be there for someone else in their trouble in their in their problem i’m i’m i’m really working to get into their self right this is it’s it’s it’s not the other in that regard it’s it’s it’s the self of it’s their psyche which needs which needs work which until i need to be i need to put myself aside to be present to that when i’m when i’m working myself i can i have the luxury to be open to to to taking on the realities of others i was just i’m thinking about this because young is the psychologist booger is the post-war theologian who then moves to israel palestine and gets very very involved in the israel-palestine conflict and tries very hard to bring some sort of solutions and solace to it with not much success at all and the sense that the sense that there’s a real that there’s a real other there that needs to be listened to and heard for any work to happen um is really important whereas the psychologist can really just go let’s go into the self and and that’s that’s good for that’s good that’s for that purpose that’s right that’s the core of the self that needs to be heard and listened to for for for booger who’s trying to bring reconciliation with other it’s to hear other i was just not so like toot my own horn i i just got back from from hanging out with with uh with some palestinian friends that i just made in west bank and we were having an amazing time together we were out on a farm we were drinking tequila we had a barbecue together i kosher didn’t eat but whatever started an amazing time went for swimming that pool and in my mind i was like guys like we’re in the middle of like a conflict a struggle there are people suffering i like i i wanted to work i want to sit down i want to record you i want to share your narratives tell a different story show how like we’re not enemies we can we can we can all be humans together and we don’t have to be afraid of one another and i i wanted to tell them like like how how how dare you guys be here like celebrating and like partying and barbecuing like let’s get let’s get to work let’s let’s write let’s you know let’s work let’s contact people let’s video let’s film and they’re like zevi put away the camera like put away the phone and i realized that like it was it wasn’t my work there to like to tell the other how they’re supposed to be affecting me or affecting what random the the role there when you’re engaging with the other is just to be present with the other to be open to hear them to experience them to allow them to celebrate whatever it is when you’re not if you’re coming as a psychologist right from coming as a doctor be like like no like you needed this needs to happen these are the steps you’ve ruined like and i think there are two modalities here i think there’s a young modality and there’s a boob modality the young modality is for when there is work to be done within the individual and there’s a space for for work that there’s a space for for that and they’re both transformative but the question of that directionality is is which which one is the right moment for which and it may just be that that boober and jung didn’t have to be enemies of this they and what’s the shame is that they never came in they never came into dialogue and they both they both seem to bemoan that that it never transcended from from disputation to dialogue yeah and a point which is so important to both of them to realize that that there’s a time for for self-direction there’s time for other direction there’s a time to to listen and be present there’s a time to be active and to share and the sense that those that that we can we can we can hold pistis and those are separately and we can we can we can allow those things to to have their own time and space i think it’s also an important idea i agree and that i think that’s tillich’s main argument right the individual i think the thing he’s trying to point to that with the individuation participation and he calls it a tonus because he wants to keep them distinct but he also wants to keep them in permanent relation i tend to think of it i i don’t know if this is wrong so it’s open but i tend to think of it the way i think of relevance realization as opponent processing that allows for mutual self-correction right right rather than them being atomic modes that we just switch between right i see them as i think that’s very much how tillich sees them and i think that’s what i like about tillich is exactly that right that proposal that right so for me this is different like than other modal distinctions uh for me it’s much more i agree with you that there’s an appropriate time and place of finesse for each mode but their ability to exercise finesse is not autonomous to them it’s dependent on their tone-offs with each other that’s what i’m proposing that’s what i’m proposing yeah i i i i was thinking about that there’s listening to xavi talk about this yeah this not having modal confusion in fact there’s thought about the sense of in polytheism there’s the i think it’s miller like pointed this out and he’s done some work on this george miller i think it is where he talked about in polytheism there is an inherent monotheism in that in that when you’re in the temple of apollo you’re only worshiping apollo right when you’re you’re in the temple of you know whatever you’re you’re you’re only you’re fully in it in in worshiping that god and i that always struck me right that always really really struck me um because the and it also seems to be true in terms of like boundary conditions of like going deep deep into a mode and like honoring that god of that of that time like right and when you’re coming out you’re like in the other temple you only honor that and that there’s something there’s something essential about those about polytheism there’s a wisdom there right that i think is is i’m hearing in what you’re saying as well about this but i was also wondering what john the thing i want to i want to also kind of come back to what was the thing that you were you were talking about like that about about this pistis right and um and uh um gnosis that you’re saying okay like okay so we see how they work together yes but we don’t necessarily it doesn’t give us any more understanding of them oh well no well i what i meant was i what i i think i’m trying to remember correctly at that point in the the dialogue between us i was using them to point to things but i was unclear about the relationship and yeah i think zevi did i think the most important response was you’re not going to find the answer to your question staying in the abstract conceptual space you have to move back to how is it being exemplified how are we participating in it and and so that move it’s funny because it’s in it’s it’s actually that move itself was also exemplifying what we’re talking about here right that that was a move so i i heard the call and i cared about the call that zevi ushered he didn’t make a statement he said he called he called to me and then i entered into a kind of gnosis i transformed not conceptually i transformed my whole orientation by the way i’m coupled to the situation and i entered into a transformative relation so there was the call the piss the call right the call to care that’s the pistis and then there was the you know the the entering into the gnosis in response and so i found that in the in in in in participating in the response i was actually i wasn’t generating the answer i was the vehicle through which the answer was emerging that i was asking for and then and then i heard zevi say but don’t let that understanding lose the relevant differences between them and then i i tried to invoke piliq as a way of okay i’ll let’s acknowledge the difference again i’m called to it but let’s try to now understand the difference and i propose it’s an opponent processing rather than just a simple difference or contrast right that’s that’s how i’m seeing what happened yeah i mean that was that was really that was really nice demonstrative recap as well there’s something bothering me about about about the about this debate the the young buber debate which is that there seems to be quite simple avenues of resolution towards this i mean some simple metaphysics which they are both well aware of i mean we’re invoking new platonic ideas of participation of the the ssangsao co-identity of the depth of the self and the depth of the other and the depth of reality i mean jung and buber are no no ignoramuses they they know these these metaphysics and they indulge in them all the time even after they claim to not be indulging in them what’s what’s stuck i mean maybe we’ll never know and it may have been they maybe they didn’t like the shape of each other’s noses like it could have been anything i mean we hope it’s not something so petty but what’s what’s stopping them from from stepping into a place where they can embrace a an ontology that that allows to see that they’re not talking about two simple things but talking in even in this tilakian sense that you’re talking about of of of of two poles of that need to be oscillated between depending on what’s around that moment how both of those are in relationship with one another is it is it is it something about the the the the german jew and the swiss protestant is it is it something about the the philosopher and the and the you know the some trained in psychoanalysis is it the scientist and the and the and the humanist i mean there’s so much there’s there’s as close as the others also worlds many worlds between them it’s just it seems it seems it looking at it from it from you know from with with the hindsight of history and seeing all the very easy ways in which they could have come to such fruitful dialogue you know with with even even even just what we’ve been proposing here tonight that didn’t take too much difficulty what’s what’s what’s what’s not what’s what’s what why is why is it not getting there you have you guys have any any any instinct any sense i think one factor it’s a factor that picks up on the dimension the dimensional differences you pointed out i don’t i don’t i don’t i don’t i’m not highly confident but i’ve seen this in my milieu i’ve seen people who lose some of the distinction between their theory and their identity their position we have this notion of position that merges theory and identity think about the word position just really let it sink into you right and i think that that confusion is going on in both of them they are locked in in the way i’ve just described they’re locked into their positions and that makes and you see this in academic disputes a lot people get locked into the positions and people from the outside are saying but like you basically agree and no we don’t agree at all and you see that a lot precisely because so i don’t know if this is right but i’m offering it as a hypothesis you see people become like they they identify with their position they lose the difference between their theory and their self or their identity and they get locked in in certain ways and both of them are invested in projects that they i think correctly see as trying to respond to the meeting crisis and save the world right so they’re trying so this is urgent it’s deep it’s profound and then that’s like i say i’m offering that as a hypothesis yeah that’s that’s that’s interesting particularly when there’s particularly when you have these ultimate stakes at hand and what do you feel guy you have like a sense yes there’s a sense where there’s a i think i would imagine that dialogue that they were talking about them coming into contact just that just the contact i bet they’d look at each other and the thing would happen right and and and uh in that thing that would happen that would be something about they would probably go oh that’s right you’re you’re more complicated like oh we were talking about the same thing oh we were caring about that there’s the the coming into relation is well when i was younger when i used to really struggle with judgment and resentment and conflict and stuff like that we used to hold things in and get resentments with people and i would notice i would notice that you know i get to a fight with somebody and it wouldn’t resolve and then i go away for two weeks or something and over those two weeks i would just build up a case right about them and about me and about and it was it was ever you know it was everything and then when i started in my life started to actually kind of confront and come back into relate and talk about it i would go and meet with them and i’d look at them and i’d spent two weeks having them be a very definite position and then i’d look at them and in there’s something about the face that is so much more than the face reveals or calls out more you will look it’s that fundamental thing that when we really get present with somebody else we realize that you you will always outlive my conception of you right there’s something about the face that does that we have this thing to face like we have this as a verb to face just to just to throw that into perhaps help you like we have yes we have facing as a verb right yeah yeah so uh so i’m imagining just those those more participatory levels right the that that that happen in in in dialogue that could just happen in instant in them facing one another because it sounds like their debate was happening um not with each other but in response to one another with another audience reading it yeah right we want to talk about so many different you know protective mechanisms and threats and and threats and egos and all kinds of stuff and that that sets up yeah yeah there’s there’s there’s definitely a lack there’s a lack of encounter because there was a lack of encounter i think that’s very i think that’s very point on and young writes young young writes in a letter that he’s he’s very upset that boober before waging his war against him um in in this journal piece they didn’t come and sit down and talk to him young writes that um i came across that while reading this this week um so it’s that’s definitely that’s definitely true um the the i think i think the importance i was thinking i was thinking of this we’re just talking about how they’re both concerned with this ultimate concern the the meaning crisis yeah and and i was thinking to myself whether there and i think guy you speak to this point very well whether their debate um furthered or hindered our work in coming to some sort of um soulless or some sort of salve to the meaning crisis and i think that in their debate we can learn so much right even we can idealize what may have happened had they agreed and how they work together and cooperate and collaborated what would be wonderful but but even in the disagreement i think there’s something of greatness here and i don’t and i hope i’m not romanticizing or idealizing things that shouldn’t be but there’s like there’s a notion in jewish thought that there’s there’s a there’s two types of disputations machloket in hebrew there’s that which is just ego which is which which you know needs to be abolished and needs to be ended and then there’s what’s known as machloket l’shem shemaim which is which is quite a uniquely at least as far as i understand a uniquely an original jewish idea that there’s a actual disputation and debate for the sake of heaven for for the sake of god um and and and the mishna comments on something very interesting which is that a machloket l’shem shemaim so fully will be will remain its its destiny is to stay on which which you think is not like the good thing you think that if it’s a if it’s a machloket if it’s a debate for the sake of heaven then it should come to resolution right it should come to some sort of facing or some sort of encounter and the mission the mission says quite enigmatically that that its fate is that it shall stand and the idea here is that that if we if we do believe that this great debate between these two great men was uh in in the jewish language it was for the sake of a higher purpose right then the debate stands and it’s not resolved it stands for us to look back at it and say what can we learn from the debate what can we see um to in our own way going forward and and i love this idea that what we could learn from it is the need to to face each other to encounter each other um without without without throwing too much judaism here i can do that very easily but in there’s a biblical prohibition there’s so there’s 613 commandments uh from the bible the way that the rabbis read the text one of them is um i believe the i believe the biblical text is to not hate your brother your fellow in your heart which means that there’s a biblical of of not a not a not for having a grudge against someone but for not confronting someone that you have a grudge towards because it’s natural to have a grudge we’re all gonna have grudges yeah the bible according to the rabbis forbids an individual from not facing the person to whom they have a grudge and tell them i have a grudge against you for x y and z let’s talk about it let’s face each other um yeah and i and i think i think i think so we’re not aiming to be angels we’re not looking to to transcend you know having negative feelings but but to to to stand up and say hey i’m not happy with with the way that you’ve treated me i’m the something that you’ve done in the way that i perceived it and and the so so i think that i think i think that far initially my question was sort of bemoaning the fact that there was no rapprochement now i’m actually happy that that they never came to a resolution because because there is no resolution between these between the debate will stand and we will continue to learn from it and i think one thing is we can learn that to face the people with whom and and had boober had maybe in a very different story i think that was beautiful i i like that that that that tradition is beautiful it reminded me it’s not the same but it reminds me of a convergent tradition the the socratic tradition because i was going to say another thing is that they only were writing to each other and i’m reminded of playdoh’s worry about writing and that you lose something like so and and darodai i think does not get playdoh’s point i think he doesn’t get playdoh’s point right that you if you don’t have right if you can’t encounter socrates right um yeah there’s there’s there’s something lost there so maybe that was also yeah following up on what both of you said the fact that they were writing to each other they’re locked into the propositional they’re locked into the literate right and so they lose the capacity for the socratic they radically lose the capacity for the socratic and you see playdoh wrestling with this and how he writes the dialogues and the dialogues undermine each other and point to each other and like he’s trying like he’s trying to get speech so he’s trying to get writing as close to speech as possible play this is my this is this is what here if we if we could resurrect playdoh he would love what we have here because we have living speech but it has the the permanence also of writing right in this new medium um yes i so here’s here’s something i want to just i want to i want to i want to highlight and you just you you caught in the the possibility side of it but i think what we saw right what you described zev about that that interaction right it’s essentially like what is happening what most people live in right social media and it’s precisely this yeah i i have a feeling i have a feeling we do not remotely get the consequences of this right now oh yes but well i think it started with the i talk about this in my um in my chapter of the on the dialogus book that that were that were going to get published that of that when you when the answering machine comes on and of course that’s just the beginning because then there’s text and email and all these things was the first time that if you needed to exchange information before before before the the answering machine you would always have to at least call the other person there was always some element of communion right in facing one another right and there’s there’s so much that goes on right explicitly and and implicitly in the machineries that that happen when you’re in the presence of another person answering machine comes on then texting all of a sudden you have a true you introduce a choice and you uncouple something that’s never really been uncoupled before right and because you’re uncoupling two things and because relationship is inherently terrifying right pretty much for everybody because it’s filled with ambiguity i could say something that ends up like changing my life and you could say something that like destroys my life and upsets everything that’s always the possibility so if i if you if you uncouple that and we can just exchange information or something without having to make contact my nervous system is just going to do the easiest thing and i think that we’re through we’re in so many iterations of that now yeah that i think that is a dramatic thing and i think this this what you highlighted here with with with where they didn’t come together what would have been possible they would have faced one another i just want to remind us that we’re all actually living in technology that that that supports that very thing right that’s a good point but also what you just brought up john is i think it’s really here’s the here’s the bubbling up of this because i think what we’re doing and what we’re seeing on youtube my my my sense is that we’re looking at something we’re looking at something for for one thing it’s it’s one place where technology is provided it’s one place where technology isn’t just leading to more technology it’s like what we’re doing right now is like so un-technological right we’re these long form conversations right but you’re right because we can record it we can read we can listen back to it right yes and we have the experience of life and we can face each other there’s so many incredibly good things about that that i also don’t think we even have any idea what that will lead to but i have more of a like a much more positive sense of that so so i just wanted to highlight like in some sense i think we found ourselves in the putting our finger on something that’s like we’re deeply inside of right with these things i totally agree with that i think that was that was astute i think that was very astute my friends i’m going to need to bring this to a close and i think that’s a good place to close with and i just wanted to thank you for all of this and this was wonderful and i wanted to as i do when i’m the host i’d like to give the two of you the chance to give any final words you want to give before we think to a close this was awesome this was awesome awesome okay well i i i can’t think of a net i mean i’ve been sort of proposing the next one of you proposed the next topic then yeah we have to um i think we have to bring booger into sorry we’ve been talking to you have to bring spinosa into the conversation um yeah i think i think he’s been he’s been patiently knocking at the door on the outside i would love that i would love yeah yeah seve would you like to host that yeah i would be that would be a pleasure i definitely have a a soft spot for him well i’ve been reading spinosa precisely because i anticipated this coming up um yeah i just want to i want to i want to share my my appreciation to both guy and john for for for creating this space and for for for living so self consciously and aware within this technology that we’re employing to try and utilize it for the good in the face of all of the destruction and havoc that it causes so that’s um there’s something there’s something heroic about that and even if we’re going down on the ship we’re going down together and we’re trying to to to to make the last moments um ones that are positive and uplifting and and encased in care and friendship uh in ways that are that are transformative and i feel transformed um by these continually so thank you both yeah ditto ditto