Mystery and the Human Being-Within-The-World, a Reading of the "Shima" Meditation

French Psychoanalist Jacque Lacan

"Shima Yisrael. Adonai Eloheinu. Adonai Echad." This is the famous "Shima" meditation said in Jewish services every Shabbat, and, traditionally, is the meditation to be said upon waking and upon going to sleep, the bookends of the day. In English it is translated as, "Hear, Oh Israel. Adonai is your G-d. Adonai is One." It is a jumping-off point so to speak to contemplate the one-ness of g-d, and, of course, can have more than one interpertation. Traditionally one covers one's eyes with one's hand when one says it, to put emphasis upon contemplation. I like this meditation because it is deep - it gets to that question of all questions - what is g-d, what is (to channel Anselm) "that which is greater than anything else?" And it gets to that perennial question of human thought via the route of one-ness - to answer the question, what is g-d, we must think about what we mean when we say "one". It does not start with a given interpertation of Adonai (Hebrew and perhaps also Akkadian term variously translated as "lord" or divine being). Rather it says, simply, "Adonai" (whatever one's interpertation of that may be) is your g-d, and, to give you a clue, Adonai is "one". What follows is my own interpertation.

Let's take the "g-d" word first to get it out of the way. (I spell it with a dash out of the Jewish tradition of not writing out the name of the divine being, so this is done out of tradition, not to make a deeper point other than perhaps just to indicate the profoundness of this topic.) Let's say "g-d" is (to again channel the middle ages thinker Anselm) "that beyond which there is nothing greater". By "greater" let us say that means nothing more important to the human experience. So "g-d" is "that which is of upmost importance to what it means to experience life as a human being." For the sake of discussion, let us say "Israel" to mean those who enjoy thinking about the big questions - after all, the word originally meant in the Torah "one who wrestles with g-d" - so let us say an "Israelite" for the purposes of this conversation is not referring to anything more particular than all people of whatever tradition who sincerely enjoy wrestling with the big questions of life. So now we have, "Listen up, oh people who enjoy wrestling with the big questions of life. Adonai is that which is of upmost importance to what it means to experience life as a human being. Adonai is One."

OK, well, so far so good. But we still have "Adonai" and "One" to define. "Adonai" is that which is of upmost relevance or importance to what it means to be a human being-in-the-world, and, we have the adjective "One" to describe this. So, let's take "One". Well, to channel Polonius in the play Hamlet, "I use no art", I want to keep this simple. Language, any language, is what gives us categories. We have - to use a language I am comfortable with, namely, math - integers, like, 1, 2, 3 and fractions, like 1/2, 1/3, etc. An integer is not the same thing as a fraction. You can have, say, half an apple pie, but you cannot be 1/2 pregnant. Integers and fractions are different categories, which are themselves used to categorize the world - you might have 5 cows, 3 sheep, 1/3 an ownership in the local barber shop, and 0 liabilities. You take the point. Numbers are the type of language we use to divide up the world and human experience. So, perhaps, the sentence "Adonai is One" is saying "Adonai" is somehow outside of human categories. Adonai is not a thing like a planet or a star, nor a fraction like (say) 10^-33 meters which is the so-called "Plank length", the smallest fraction of space where physics can make any sense - any smaller scale than that, and the laws break down. Adonai is somehow beyond any concept or category. Adonai is, in a word, beyond language.

Well, if something is "beyond language" what can one (using language) say about it, if anything? Well, by definition, we are talking about mystery. Not any one mystery, such as the child's poem I was fond of, "Who killed Cock Robin?" but the notion of mystery in general. Mystery, of course, lies at the heart of the human experience. We are thrown into the world, in a sense, "premature" (as said by the late French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, considered by some to have been Freud's pre-eminent successor). Premature in the sense that we do not have language when we are born. It takes time to acquire it, and, frankly, it is alienating. I won't get into a lengthy discussion on the (admittedly complex) theories of Lacan, but basically for Lacan language is "alienating" because as soon as we are old enough to start to learn, we are thrust into "systems" that we know (at first) nothing about, and certainly never asked for. Not to say these "systems" are "bad" but just that they come upon us "from the outside" - things like the nuclear family, school, the little league team, etc. are all "systems" we get "signed up for" growing up that have nothing to do with our biology. So, the disconnect between the systems we inhabit from birth to death and our innermost feelings, desires, instincts, etc. can create tension. The experience of mystery is when that which is our most fundamental system, namely, language itself, fails to account for a particular experience. This might be intellectual - we might not know (to use a hackneyed example) what that silver elliptical shaped object is that is silently hovering over our corn field at dusk. It might be something less intellectual, but just as potent - we may not (for instance) have the words to properly describe the feeling we have when we hear Beethoven's Emporer Sonada for the first time. This experience of mystery is what Lacan called "The Real", those experiences which fit uneasily if at all into those systems of language we are cast into upon commencement of life as beings-within-the-world.*

So we can now reframe the Shima meditation into something like, "Listen up, oh people who enjoy wrestling with the big questions of life. Adonai is that which is of upmost importance to what it means to be a human being-within-the-world. Adonai is outside language." We have identified that the experience of mystery, what Lacan called "The Real" is instrinsic and primal to what it means to be human. Note that "The Real" is not just "the absence of language" but rather the "gaps" in language. A non-human animal, such as, say, a monkey, however intelligent it may be with some exceptions in general does not experience "The Real" because it does not have language. Now of course there are exceptions such as say chimpanzees who can be taught sign language, etc., but generally speaking humans are the only animals with developed systems of language, and hence, are the only animals that can experience the failures or gaps in those systems of language. In a certain sense (with again some exceptions) only humans can really experience mystery. (This remark that only humans can experience mystery in the truest sense is not a knock against non-human types of animals - I love all animals and think they should be treated humanely - I just make this remark to clarify that I am referring to the experience of mystery in a particular sense here in the sense of the inadaquacies of systems of language.)

Now, recall earlier I mentioned that Lacan spoke of the alienation caused by language. That is, alienation from our innermost selves, our innermost emotions, caused by the failure of language to capture or distill our emotions, and, finally, the failure of even our most rarified sciences and mathematics to quite answer the question of what really is that shiny silver elliptical object silently watching (judging? loving?) us from above our cornfield at dusk. What to do about this alienation? Well, as someone in recovery I can say from personal experience that alcohol is at best a temporary reprieve from the intrinsic alienation of the Being-Within-The-World. Alienation cannot be suppressed or explained away. It can, however, be at least to an extent overcome, not by denying the experience of mystery, but, on the contrary, by embracing it, by, indeed, enjoying it. We may not finally be able to explain all that we should like to be able to explain, but we can sit quietly in awe at the beauty and grandeur of the world about us. We can, perhaps, just simply listen to Beethoven's Emporer Sonada, and not try to remark upon it. To refer to a well-known scene from the movie, It's a Wonderful Life, we can perhaps just kiss the girl we like with whom we are standing out in front of the hydranga bushes beneath the gibbous moon instead of talking her to death. We can simply listen to the mating calls of the seagulls swarming the beach at dawn rather than attempt to count them. We can, in a word, Enjoy the Mystery, not try to vanquish it.

So here is my own reading of the Shima meditation. "Listen up, oh people who enjoy wrestling with the big questions of life. The Enjoyment of Mystery is that which is of upmost importance to the human experience of being-within-the-world. The Enjoyment of Mystery is - always - outside language."

The rest is silence.

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*[Disclaimer inserted here upon editing: The phrase "being-within-the-world" I am appropriating here because I find it to be a useful way to talk about the universal experience of what it means to be born, grow up, live, and die as a human being on planet Earth, in the sense that the human being is "within the world" of language, a world that is always - in Lacan's sense - "outside" or "alienating" to subjective experience. Therefore the phrase "being-within-the-world" I am appropriating or reframing for my own use here because I like the phrase and find it of use to my discussion, and I will not dignify the absolute scoundrel (Not Lacan) who first used the phrase "being-within-the-world" by crediting or mentioning him other than to say I am reframing the phrase in a more Lacan-specific context. I only insert this disclaimer in case any should read this essay and be familiar with the term, "being-within-the-world," and conflate how I am using the term with how it was used by a particular quite banal - and mercifully now long dead - pseudo-philosopher whom I won't dignify with further remark.]