Turning to the Other. Donovan D. Johnson

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СКАЧАТЬ target="_blank" rel="nofollow" href="#ulink_3639a2f5-cfe4-534c-b969-5e78c39abb9c">24. Schaeder, Hebrew Humanism, 300; Buber, “Autobiographical Fragments,” 34; Buber’s long preface to Der grosse Maggid was reprinted in part as “Spirit and Body of the Hasidic Movement,” 113–49.

      25. Buber, “My Way to Hasidism,” 59.

      26. Schaeder, Hebrew Humanism, 305.

      27. Schaeder, Hebrew Humanism, 305.

      28. Schaeder, Hebrew Humanism, 304.

      29. Schaeder, Hebrew Humanism, 306.

      30. Schaeder, Hebrew Humanism, 307.

      31. Schaeder, Hebrew Humanism, 303.

      32. Kohn, quoted in Schaeder, Hebrew Humanism, 306.

      33. Kaufmann, “Buber’s Religious Significance,” 683.

      34. Kepnes, Text as Thou, 19–78.

      Chapter 2

      Buber’s Spiritual Initiation

      1. The Concept of Spiritual Initiation

Buber’s spiritual initiation is the master key for understanding I and Thou.35 Initiation is particularly potent as a frame of reference for understanding Buber because it grounds the discourse of I and Thou in the concrete reality of Buber’s development in relation to the Hasidic tradition, rather than allowing it to simply float untethered as a nebulous set of philosophical generalizations. It grounds the discourse in the specificity of Buber’s humanity, his own inner struggle and development within his time, place, and circumstances. In I and Thou, Buber was not writing generalities to be reduced to platitudes; rather, he was presenting the process and outworking of his own hard-won spiritual development, his initiation into Hasidic spirituality in its white-hot immediacy.

The concept of initiation has been the subject of rich anthropological and psychological reflection for more than a century. Arnold Van Gennep’s Rites of Passage (1909) highlights a three-part pattern that applies to the modern understanding of initiation: according to this pattern, the initiate separates from society, undergoes a period of inner struggle leading to transformation, and then returns to be reincorporated back into society. Joseph Henderson developed this model by positing an archetype of initiation and seeing the work of analytical psychotherapy as a kind of initiation as it facilitates an individual’s move from one level of holistic self-understanding to another. In this work, the archetype of initiation gives the individual a framework, a reference point, and an impetus for the intentional work of self-development.36 Others, such as Arnold Toynbee and Henri Ellenberger, have written of this pattern of withdrawal, renewal, and return in terms that broaden our understanding of spiritual initiation and creative breakthrough, shedding further light on Buber’s own process.

Toynbee has described the pattern of withdrawal and return, of a turn inward for a period of deep grappling with one’s spiritual roots, followed by a shift back to the outer world and a sharing of the outcome of one’s inner work, to explain how creative innovation becomes a major force that shapes the course of history.37 Toynbee presents the “withdrawal-and-return” of creative individuals as a “non-social experience” that functions as “the very source and fountain-head of creation in social affairs.”38 He invokes a range of figures, including Moses and Confucius, even the hypothetical person who escapes from Plato’s allegorical cave, as examples of this pattern. Through this process of withdrawal and return, such creative personalities are able to cut through the cake of custom and, by confronting the mere imitation of past paradigms and practices, to advance a society to a new configuration of meaning in facing its emerging issues. With this sketch of what appears to be a global phenomenon, Toynbee seems to be conceptualizing at the archetypal level, outlining the process as a kind of transcultural hero’s journey.

Ellenberger brings the anthropological and the psychological discussions of initiation together in his historical study of the breakthroughs of Freud and Jung as the founders of depth psychology.39 Using language fitting for his clinical setting as a psychiatrist, Ellenberger developed this pattern of withdrawal, transformation, and return without reference to Van Gennep or Toynbee, calling it a “creative illness.” Such “creative illnesses,” according to Ellenberger’s analysis, echo the primal reality of shamanic initiation into the spiritual world.40 Where Toynbee emphasized the cultural-historical impact of the phenomenon, Ellenberger, focusing on the inner development of Freud and Jung in particular in the gestation of their theories, builds on its transformative impact for the creative individual. The concept of creative illness is Ellenberger’s answer to the question he poses: “Why could not illness disappear through a transformation into an idea?”41

      From the beginning, spiritual initiation has been practiced across the world’s great religious traditions. For example, initiation as practiced during the early centuries of Christianity has a largely forgotten history, yet it is still carried forward in attenuated form in the process of the catechumenate, culminating in baptism as the rite of entry into the community of faith. Spiritual initiation is also carried forward today as the process of entering into diverse spiritual communities, whether Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, or Buddhist.

      Spiritual initiation as a passing from one role in society to another begins with withdrawal from society, followed by a period of inner work and struggle on the part of the initiate that changes or transforms the initiate’s inner, as well as outer, identity. The means of transformation may include an ordeal, a trial of the character of the initiate, as well as a shift within the person often characterized by the symbols of death and rebirth. This shift may be seen as a letting go, surrender, renunciation, or sacrifice of the initiate’s self or self-understanding, and the entry into a new state of being. It is enacted in the transmission of spiritual power from the master to the initiate. Following the three-part pattern, the person who has undergone this transformation returns to society with a new sense of relation to the ultimate as well as a new sense of standing and vocation in the world.

      Essentially, spiritual initiation is the participation in spiritual reality that is directly transmitted from a master to an initiate. Traditionally this has been brought about as the culmination of a period set apart for teaching and learning, a process of working toward spiritual realization to which both master and initiate commit themselves. The rite that often marks the culmination of this process is the initiate’s entry into a new standing both in his inner life and in his relation to the spiritual community.

Mircea Eliade presents reading as a necessary modern mode of the initiatory process, because in this, as he puts it, “‘crepuscular age’ . . . we are condemned to learn about the life of the spirit and be awakened to it through books. Erudition is ‘baptism by intellect’.”42 Accordingly, “From the perspective of this new model of initiation, the transmission of secret doctrines no longer implies an unbroken chain of initiatory transmission; the sacred text may be forgotten over the centuries—all that is necessary is that it is rediscovered by a competent reader in order that its message becomes once again intelligible and present.”43

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