The Dynamics of Spiritual Growth (1)

 

     The practical aim of Mussar is to achieve personal growth and change. Of course, these are processes which "happen" to everyone during his or her lifetime. But in Mussar, we strive to determine the direction and actively influence the outcome. How is this to be accomplished? Certainly, the issue of practical methodology must be considered. But I think it advisable not to jump straightaway into specific educational approaches, for I believe that our efforts will be more fruitful if we succeed in first clarifying the objective.

    

     This is particularly the case in the present day and age, when the objective needs to be defined in terms which differ from those which sufficed in previous generations. I am not implying that the classical ethical ideals are no longer appropriate, but rather that the obstacles to change in the modern world are substantially different, and more formidable. We need not only to know where we would like to go, but to be aware of what must be overcome on the way.

 

A. Mussar in the Metropolis

 

     The proposition that a person change himself for the better implies that that he has a measure of control over himself. Of course, when it comes to specific actions, we perhaps have little trouble accepting the soundness of the principle of free will, a fundamental component of the Jewish outlook. But what about changing not only one's deeds, but oneself? Do we have control there, too, or are we being buffeted by the aggressive forces of the environment? Consider the following:

 

Man is a differentiating creature. His mind is stimulated by the difference between a momentary impression and the one that preceded it. Lasting impressions, impressions which differ only slightly from one another, impressions which take a regular and habitual course and show regular and habitual contrasts - all these use up, so to speak, less consciousness than does the rapid crowding of images, the sharp discontinuity in the grasp of a single glance, and the unexpectedness of onrushing impressions. These are the psychological conditions which the metropolis creates. With each crossing of the street, with the tempo and multiplicity of economic, occupational, and social life, the city sets up a deep contrast with small town and rural life with reference to the sensory foundations of psychic life... [In rural settings] the rhythm of life and sensory mental imagery flows more slowly, more habitually, and more evenly...

 

     Thus did sociologist Georg Simmel describe the psychic reality facing urban man at the outset of the twentieth century (Man Alone: Alienation in Modern Society, Eric and Mary Josephson ed., Dell Publishing, N.Y., 1962, pp. 152-3). Human living means interaction with one's surroundings. The demands of the metropolis, the preeminent habitat of modern man, are more sharply pressing than those of rural life. But as Simmel goes on to describe, the difference is not merely quantitative. City living requires the development of a psychological mechanism, without which survival would be precarious, but whose constant activation tends to paralyze a good part of our emotional makeup.

 

Precisely in this connection, the sophisticated nature of metropolitan psychic life becomes understandable - as opposed to small town life which rests more upon deeply felt and emotional relationships. These latter (i.e. emotional relationships) are rooted in the more unconscious layers of the psyche and grow most readily in the steady rhythms of uninterrupted habituations. The intellect, however, has its locus in the transparent, conscious, higher layers of the psyche; it is the most adaptable of our inner forces. In order to accommodate to change... the intellect does not require any shocks and inner upheavals; [but] it is only through such upheavals that the more conservative mind could accommodate to the metropolitan rhythm of events. Thus the metropolitan type of man... develops an organ, which protects him from the threatening currents and discrepancies of his external environment which would uproot him. He reacts with his head instead of his heart... The reaction to metropolitan phenomena is shifted to that organ which is least sensitive and quite remote from the depth of the personality...

 

     Simmel wrote this at a time when there still were places to live in that were not cities. Today, for the most part, this situation no longer exists. The same unabated flow of information, of advertising, of attempts to direct and divert our attention, today characterize most corners of the globe. Moreover, the sources of the bombardment are no longer the immediate metropolitan environment. Technology has made our minds prey to incessant intrusions from virtually everywhere in the world.

 

     Because of this, our emotional selves tend to become deadened. Our interaction with the environment becomes superficial and intellectualized. Were we to react humanly to every event, to attempt to tie all the rapid-fire events to our existential beings, we would go insane. Our only option is to condition ourselves to live with our nimble, clever minds, ignoring our deeper selves to the point where we can go on sipping our coffee while watching the most calamitous news reports.

 

     The implications for spiritual change can be seen readily. The locus of growth is the whole person. Much like any living organism, human growth thrives on stability, and is harmed by upheaval and rupture. In a non-conducive environment, it becomes too risky to take up residence in the basic, inner chambers of our personality. Yet our conscious goals and awareness can hardly affect our emotional foundations, if we live in a way that leaves those foundations psychologically off-limits. This realization calls for a re-assessment of one's lifestyle. One could seriously consider reducing electronic consumption, allotting time for quiet hours, seeking out more secluded surroundings (yeshiva, country, etc.).

 

B. Is There a Yetzer Tov?

 

     The complexity of our efforts to practice Mussar is compounded by another feature of our times. This second factor, like the first, is related to the psychological makeup of the modern man, but the problem here is not a result of the urban lifestyle, but of a truncated emotional stereotype which has become endemic to our time.

 

     The noted Israeli religious thinker and educator, Yitzchak Raphael Etzion, contrasted the religious man with the non-believer in terms of their inner "workings."  He claimed that in either case, world-outlook is determined primarily not by reason, but by needs and preferences.  The following is from the concluding chapter of "The Psychology of Heresy and Faith" (Iyunim Bi-vaayot Emuna [Studies in Issues of Faith], Kfar Chabad: Yad Ha-chamisha Press, 1969, pp. 66-68).

 

In chapter 1 of this article I concluded that the psychological basis of non-belief in God is the glorification of man, that is, the belief in man's omnipotence.  This faith satisfies man's arrogance, his psychological need to view himself as the greatest of creatures.  But from the other chapters of this article it may be concluded that belief in God, as well, satisfies the same psychological need, for this belief includes (among its long-range corollaries) the following principles: that man is the only living creature 1) who has free will; 2) whose soul is eternal; 3) to whom the Creator revealed Himself and charged with various tasks.  It follows that both faith and heresy satisfy the very same need of man - the need to hold himself in esteem above the other creatures.  The question then is: What are the factors which produce such diametrically opposed ways of satisfying the same need, in the believer and the non-believer?

 

On the basis of the previous chapters, we may reason that the difference is that the non-believer, i.e. he who believes in man's omnipotence, sets a higher value on the IMMEDIATE results of his belief, whereas one who believes in God considers the LONG-RANGE results of his belief to be more important.

 

This is seen in the following psychological phenomena:

 

1) To the non-believer, the present and the near future are more important, whereas to the believer, the distant future is more important.  The first says, so to speak, "Eat and drink, for tomorrow we die," and after death there is nothing.  But the second is concerned with what will be after death.

 

2) The believer in man's omnipotence who denies God is enraptured with the feeling of great freedom, which his belief grants him in an IMMEDIATE way - for who is his master? And even if his belief in natural law brings him to determinism and the assumption that man has no free will, he does not see this as belittling his own worth, because the same is true of all men.  But the believer in God is not satisfied with the feeling that he himself is no lower than other men.  He cannot make peace with the belittling of HUMANITY IN GENERAL, which is the upshot of placing man alongside all the beasts and inanimate objects that have no free will.

 

     Dr. Etzion goes on to demonstrate this distinction in other ways, but I think the idea is sufficiently clear.  Both types - the believer and the non-believer - are responding to the instinctive feeling of man's unique stature.  But one thinks that man's superiority signifies mainly his birthright to live as an uninhibited, self-glorifying despot - a view which requires the removal of God from the universe.  The other translates man's uniqueness into the power to achieve moral greatness - a power which on the one hand comes from God, and on the other hand makes one responsible towards God, and requires man's life-long effort to realize.  The non-believer is motivated by the need for immediate gratification.  The believer's needs have a more far-reaching, long-range character.  He is concerned with life after death.  He is not exhilarated by a feeling of freedom, which profound analysis exposes as the mere self-delusion of a cog in the cosmic causal chain.

 

     It follows that a personality habituated towards immediate gratification, whose repertoire of needs does not include those that are based on thoughtful analysis of man's place and role in the world, will find itself inclining towards "heresy."  The last word was deliberately put in quotation marks.  One does not have to profess heresy intellectually in order to feel like a heretic, or to live like one.  The goal of Mussar can be said to be the constant, progressive banishment of heresy from all aspects of our life.  It is not enough to believe in the importance of spirituality.  One must possess the requisite psychological "workings," the inner structure which incorporates the inclination towards morality, the NEED for a higher life-style.

 

Here modern man is at a distinct disadvantage, because dominant trends in classic psychological theory have dealt a serious blow to the possibility of developing such inclinations.  The following excerpt from an article by Prof. Reuven and Rav Raphael Feuerstein (a psychologist and rabbi respectively; Prof. Feuerstein is chairman of the International Center for the Improvement of Learning Skills) explains the background of this state of affairs.  The authors describe a debate regarding the origin of man's moral nature.

 

We would like to distinguish between the conceptions which assume continuity in the development of moral judgment and needs, from the primary levels to the more developed, which we will call the "consecutive approach;" and those conceptions (which we ourselves will represent) that assume that moral judgment and needs are created in a manner quite detached from the primary levels, which we will call the "non-consecutive approach." 

 

Freud stands out as representing the consecutive approach.  A group of theories that originate with Freud argues that the moral needs of the mature adult are an outgrowth of the system of primary needs (the id).  The primary needs, dominated by the pleasure principle, are transformed by several mechanisms, one of which is "sublimation" ... [but] the primary needs still activate the needs which are more progressive and developed.

 

To illustrate this point: A man walking on the street sees a house ablaze.  From within are heard cries for help.  The man runs with all his strength, leaps up the stairs and breaks down the front door.  He locates the cries for help in an inner room of the burning house, runs through the flames oblivious to the danger to himself, and rescues a child from the burning room.  According to Freud and his followers, this supremely moral behavior of the rescuer is a product of the primary needs themselves.  It is just that these needs undergo a set of transformations until the moral needs are created.  It is like the primary motion of the piston in the motor of a car, which through complex systems of gears, ultimately causes the rotation of the wheels of the car.

 

As opposed to the "consecutive" theories, the theory of mediated learning of Feuerstein (as well as that of Wigotzki) argues that man's more developed thought structures, as well as his complex (as opposed to primary) needs, do not come from primary thought structures and needs which have developed continuously.  Rather, they originate in learning processes generated by society...  They are not an extension of the primary-primitive structures, but a developmental leap.

 

("The Crisis in Education Towards Jewish Values Through the Spectrum of the Theory of Mediated Learning," in Likutei Shoshanim, Anthology in Memory of Shoshana Lasker, ed. Dr. Yossi Green, 5760 [2000])

 

     Of the two theories on the nature of moral needs, the Freudian view has had the undeniably greater impact on the modern psyche.  But undeniable as well is the fact that the second view is the one rooted in the outlook of Chazal.  It is difficult to conceive the world of traditional Jewish ethics in any other way.  The Rabbis expounded in the Midrash Rabba on Kohelet (4:13), "A miserable but wise child is better than a old, foolish king:"

 

"A miserable but wise child" - that is the yetzer tov (the good inclination).  Why is he (i.e. the yetzer tov) called a "child?" Because he doesn't meet up with a man until the age of thirteen.  And why is he called "miserable?" Because most people don't listen to him.  And why is he called "wise?" Because he teaches people the straight path. 

"... is better than an old, foolish king" - that is the yetzer ha-ra (the evil inclination).  Why does Scripture call him a "king?" Because everyone listens to him.  And why does it call him "old?" Because he is with man from childhood through old age.  And why does it call him "foolish?" Because he teaches man the way of evil.

 

     Chazal were not psychologists in the modern sense, but they were sensitive educators with profound human understanding.  The held that the yezter tov, the INCLINATION to do good, is a fundamentally distinct stage of development, which can take hold only in adolescence.  It is a need which is totally independent of the primitive yetzer ha-ra, though conflicts there may be.  Chazal would certainly agree that the "evil" inclination can and must be sublimated (refer back to our past studies of "contractual" values).  On the other hand, they steadfastly affirmed that the inclination to do good is a separate psychological and spiritual faculty, which needs to function and to be cultivated in its own right. 

 

     But modern man, having convinced himself that he is dominated by primary, subterranean urges which cannot be escaped, dooms himself to the retarded moral development which is at the root of the baseness of the popular culture.  I hope that in our next shiur we will see more clearly why this is so.  Awareness of the harmful effects of this warped self-image will serve to underscore the necessity of overcoming it.

 

     To sum up: we noted two problems which make Mussar a more difficult assignment in the present age than previously.  The first is the perpetual bombardment of ideas, situations and information which devour our attention and emotional resources, impairing our capacity to grow.  The second - which we will continue to analyze next time - is the denial of the yetzer tov as an independent component in the human psyche.  In closing, I would add that although these two considerations truly make Mussar more difficult, on the other hand, they also make it more necessary.