Kabbalistic Reflections on T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets

Epigraph Two

How does a biologist know how to select the right level of magnification when examining a slide under a microscope? We might ask this same question of ourselves, as we attempt to peel back the second aphoristic wrapping of Eliot’s poem cycle. Even small words under the right interpretive lens reveal hidden worlds of subcutaneous meaning. The second Heraclitan fragment, painted with an opaque twist of logic, is perhaps even more enigmatic than the first:

The way up and the way down are one and the same.

Photo by Nava Crispe 2012

Though cited as a relic from an ancient world, a sentiment from a primordial stratum of human thought, the spacial metaphors of this quotation remain vital to the shaping of modernity. Clearly we are not speaking of bi-directional traffic patterns. “Up” is more than a physical terminus or trajectory. The same holds for “down.” Neither possess the net neutrality of homogenous space.

Each term of our fragment in question must be first encountered like a row of unfertilized eggs waiting to be impregnated by the imagination of the reader. Let us suggest that “up” is a signifier in search of a ‘signified’ to mate with. We can then take the next step and perform a ‘find and replace’ augmentation of this term and exchange it with the word “spiritual”. And, since every new marriageable word invites its semantic family and closest associates to the wedding, we have to embrace ‘heaven,’ ‘soul,’ ‘abstraction,’ ‘Divinity,’ ‘transcendence’ ‘eternity’ and a host of others at the same time. Likewise, “down” denotes the physical, the worldly, earth, the body, immanence, the concrete, the temporal and more.

Consequently, this Heraclitan disclosure, which plays with the unity of opposite or Coincidentia oppositorum, attests to a complex and often paradoxical relationship between body and soul, heaven and earth, the spiritual and the physical. Much like the great unifications of Einstein, where space and time became space-time and matter and energy were demonstrated to be but two manifestations of the same thing, Heraclitus proves to be an early explorer of possible unities.

Just as matter is now understood to be a form of concentrated energy, could we not say that the body represents a kind of congealed soul? That earth is a concretized heaven? Or time, ‘the moving image of eternity’ à la Plato?

Do we need to climb higher to descend lower? If being ‘really high up’ describes the lofty thoughts of a brilliant professor, then ‘bringing them down’ and rendering them intelligible to the layman presents a challenge. In Chassidic philosophy, only the teacher with the highest level of comprehension can truly integrate his or her knowledge to the fullest degree so as to recognize it in new forms–one ideational soul in many bodies– and thus freely transform it from its original mode of expression and technical language into the accessible terms that are appropriate for the student on the student’s level. In other words, if you are not that high then you cannot come down that low. Education demands the humility of a giant. “Up” and “down” are pedagogically co-dependent.

Where else do we find in a Jewish context an echo of this equivalency between up and down?

There is one striking example brought by the medieval Hebrew grammarian Rabbi Yonah Ibn Janach (990-1050). In his book of on Hebrew roots (Sefer HaSharoshim) under the root yud-reish-dalet which normally denotes descent (going down), he points out how this (and many other Hebrew roots) sometimes enter a state of exception and signify their opposite. In this case, he quotes a phrase from a verse in the Book of Judges (Shoftim) 11:37 which is normally translated as “that I may go down upon the mountains.” A more sophisticated translation might be that “I go up and down upon the mountains” even though there is only one word used in the Hebrew original that carries the dual significance of “up” and “down” which remains undecidable to the honest translator and thus commands a twofold representation.

The root is the same–yud-reish-dalet but the ambiguity created by the phrase seems to imply I go up the mountains (even as) I go down. “Mountains” clearly represent the upward dimension as extended objects framed from the perspective of the foundation of the earth and presumably one could not be higher than the mountains so how can one go down ‘upon’ the mountains? From here ibn Janach concludes (if you will permit me to hyperlink back to Heraclitus) that sometimes  ‘up and down are one and the same.’

On an even more abstract plane, we might reap the rewards of an unusually mathematical allusion in Kabbalah. Beyond examining the numerical value of the Hebrew word, we sometimes look at the mathematical midpoint or nikuda ha’ emtza’it, drawing analogies from this and other geometric relationships. So what is the value of the word for descent (going down) yireda [ירידה]? It’s 229 [yud = 10, reish = 200, yud = 10, dalet = 4, hei = 5). Given that 229 is an odd number it has a midpoint which is 115 or aliyah [עלי’ה] meaning ascent (going up) [ayin = 70, lamed = 30, yud = 10, hei = 5]. So what we learn from this is at the center of the descend is an ascent! “Up” is inwedged in this expression of “down.”

Finally, we have the kabbalistic concepts of yichuda ila’a and yichuda tata which mean the higher unification and the lower unification. The most familiar context within which these ideas make an appearance is the first two lines of the familiar Shema prayer. Without going into the liturgical specifics, we can suffice to say that the higher unification amounts to affirming ‘all is God’ (all of creation “below” becomes nullified in God (the Creator) above i.e. it has no independent existence of its own. On the flip side, the lower unification amounts to drawing down the higher term (God above or the Creator) into His Creation which is often expressed by the counterpoint statement ‘God is all.’ Kabbalah emphasizes that without both statements or unifications we cannot have an accurate description of reality. Up goes down and down goes up in a circuit of reciprocal solicitation.

A further mystery for the mystics revolves around the super-essence or atzmut of God  for which opposites cease to be opposite. From this ‘perspective’ so to speak, one cannot even properly distinguish up from down, the spiritual from the physical, eternity from time. These distinctions become somewhat artificial.

The atzmut of God lies outside of all attributes. In Chassidut, one cannot even reduce it to the Kabbalistic notion of the ayin sof (literally no-end, a term for infinity, limitlessness) nor the Greek equivalent apeiron.  God, who has the capacity to sustain these distinctions, also can be the equalizer dissolving above and below. For our more average everyday consciousness we require and maintain the distinctions between up and down. But the poet in us all–the metaphysician and the mystic–leaps beyond, melting these concepts in the cauldron of advanced conscious. What follows from Eliot is an incendiary tale.

We wish to dedicate this series of articles to the memory and elevation of the soul of Yaakov Ben Tzvi Hersh (Ballan) whose soul should experience the reality where ‘time present and time past’ are both definitely ‘present in time future…May his soul be bound in the bundle of life. –The 5th of Tamuz 5772.

http://www.interinclusion.org/inspirations/when-up-is-down-part-4/

http://www.interinclusion.org/inspirations/when-up-is-down-part-2/

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