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

What might have been is an abstraction

Remaining a perpetual possibility

Only in a world of speculation.

What might have been and what has been

Point to one end, which is always present.

–T. S. Eliot Burnt Norton I

Of all the interpretations of quantum mechanics floating around in the hallways and classrooms of higher learning, as well as the theaters of public opinion, the one that has captured the imagination the most is commonly known as the many-worlds interpretation. First expressed by Hugh Everett in 1957, others may have gone further to publicize it (none so successfully as the manufacturers of fiction with Hollywood films like Sliding Doors and short stories such as Borges’ Garden of Forking Paths) the real and imagined implications of ‘many-worlds’ runs along the same lines as popular notions of parallel universes and alternative realities.

Eliot, too, has thrown his hat into this rink. Coursing through memory are abundant signs of personal choices which led to bifurcations in our universe. But does the version of myself who chose differently–my hypothetical alter ego–also get to live? Why are we continually haunted by the specter of ‘what might have been?’ Our minds’ eye scans our experience-soaked mental habits and mills a fresh story out of the artifacts of memory and imagination. We anticipate and contrive potential outcomes. We fantasize. We time travel.

Replaying the past allows us to step outside of time and scrutinize it as an object. The repetition solicits insertions, deletions, and all manner of experimentation. The conjectural ‘what if’ hires our creative powers to produce the screenplay for a different world populated by different people, who are in different places, doing different jobs whilst engaged in different interpersonal relationships. It is under the foliage of these suppositions that we must learn to recognize that they are somehow all the same person who sometimes tracks imperceptibly close to my own life and at others diverges greatly.

Would I be where I am today if I had waited? If I took the lower road? If I had paid attention? Am I even alive and kicking over there in another pocket of the multiverse? The series of steps that brought me to myself and to write my current autobiography bear the stamp of design. I can explain away the contingencies. But the version of myself in the adjacent world (the phantom nature of which Eliot correctly casts as an ‘abstraction’) abides just outside of reach for all except the presentiments of the higher intellect. Those souls were not given bodies in this world due to their discontiguous character–but the ‘absence of evidence’ does not commute to being the ‘evidence of absence.’ Perhaps they (a myriad of copies and loose approximations of myself) are standing apart from me by a mere one degree of separation–a parallax gap which might also be regarded as the infinite distance that one traverses by adding but one more dimension.

In Kabbalah, our memories are affiliated with out faculty of intuition or chochmah which itself originates in the superconscious crown or keter (the highest of the powers of the soul).  The crown processes two sides: the inner aspect known as atik yomin (literally: ‘the ancient of days’) and the external aspect known as arich anpin (literally: ‘the elongated face’). However these definitions do not sufficiently lay bare the fluid metapsychological dynamics of the crown.  For that we will have to excavate further.

When Eliot writes of how “what might have been and what has been point to one end” he is capturing the essence of the crown. In terms of the structuring of the soul, midrashic literature proffers five levels or names of the soul: nefesh, ruach, neshamah, chayah and yechidah which themselves correspond (in order) to the seats of the behavioral, emotive, and cognitive within the conscious self along with our transcendental intuition and lastly our superconscious or unconscious roots. For the present discussion, we are only concerned with the last of these–the yechidah which means ‘singularity.’ The ‘singularity’ of the self is the soul root as it is still submersed in the superconscious which is “always present” in Eliot’s description. Indeed the temporality of the crown can be thought of as a kind of ‘metapresent.’ It not only holds together past, present and future, but it also conjoins the possibilities of ‘what might have been and what has been.’ In the context of the crown, the actual and the real collapse into a singularly. When it comes to the origins of experience from within the unconscious, the possible– ‘what might have been’–has the potential to impact us in all kinds of ways that makes it comparable to the real– to ‘what was.’

How does this work with the two levels of the crown? Atik yomin does not only mean ‘ancient of days,’ as if to suggest some anarchical or primordial time. Atik also means to ‘copy’ or ‘transcribe,’ (as in ha’ataka [העתקה]). Just as any transcription error in the genome will lead to genetic differences which in turn could touch off the genesis of something new within the entire organism, the entire dimension of time could be knocked off its axis and produce an alternative time line. All our days keep being copied. The basic temporal units are transcribed.

This regulation of this time image (one of the most abstract in Kabbalah) gets invested within the external aspect of the crown or arich anpin. More than just an ‘elongated face,’ arich anpin is the correspondingly abstract space image. A more sufficient translation would render it as the ‘macrocosm.’ Having been attached to the human soul, we could say that its a macro-anthropos. While often the ‘elongation’ pertains to how this facet of the unconscious casts a shadow over the entire unfolding of consciousness from top to bottom, in this case, it has an even broader significance. This face is infinitely ‘long’ because it covers all worlds. In the Zohar, we learn that it may even contain olamot ein sof or an ‘infinite number of worlds.’ Thus together, these two parts of the crown facilitate temporal iteration and transcription from a singular source (it begins as a sort of ‘undivided wholeness’) which gives rise to an endless multiplicity of worlds to choose from.

Together atik and arich are a time operator and a space operator routing the spacing of time and the timing of space through convergence and divergence. From out of them memory bursts forth out the unconscious into the conscious mind. Its last staging area is the ‘external’ aspect of the crown which is also understood as the unconscious facing outwards towards the consciousness. It ‘reaches’ out. It denotes an act of volition. Will or ratzon makes a selection (a formative selective memory) which gets channelled towards some object of desire. Even the Hebrew word ratzon permutes (being comprised of identical letters) to spell tzinur or ‘channel’ according to the mystics. All will is therefore a channelling.

Consequently, our many-worlds are copies of time which open up a multitude of possible worlds, the selection or initiation of which comes from a decision, a choice, a determination, which jumps a person from channel to channel. Every choice opens a new channel. Every choice instigates a jump. We extract a drop from the abyss of co-present memory storage. Perhaps it stores the future along with the past. It stores the alternatives–the possibilities along with the actualities. But we apprehend this only in ‘speculation’ says Eliot. The specular is consistent with the kabbalistic notion of chochmah as memory and intuition. Often, it is straight out identified with visualization–and ‘abstract visualization’ is speculation.

“Point to one end which is always present” might sound like Heidegger’s being-towards-death where death is the only eventually–the common terminus to both “what might have been and what has been.” However, this is not the sole ‘end.’ Heidegger only perceives the collapse of something back into nothing without being able to acknowledge the reverse–the something which emanates out of nothing, the natality or continual birth. For Eliot as well, there is not yet a clear picture of ‘what might be coupled with the what will be.’ Ultimately the Divine name designated for the crown is ekeyah (‘I will be’) which summons the future–the presencing of futurity.

In thinking about the future to come, the Kabbalists insist that it is not held in reserve to be assembled and constituted only in the future, as if to say: ‘we’ll get around to fashioning the future in the future.’ Contrary to this hopelessly remote future, the inner dimensions of the Torah tell of a future which is already always present. It’s available now should we wish to realize it. Jewish Messianic expectations “point to one end, which is always present” not as grounds for despair and disillusionment but as an enduring promise. Could it be that the ‘ingathering of the exiles’ may also manifest itself as the congregation of times chosen and unchosen, lost and rediscovered? May our many-worlds find reconciliation and merge? Will they eventually enjoy a certain kinship?

For Part Seven we will comb through the trope of the echo in its relationship to memory.

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-7/

http://www.interinclusion.org/inspirations/when-up-is-down-part-5/

Print PDF