I spent my last hour in Ein Sof with Abraham. I had grown fond of the old patriarch. Of all my long departed blood relations, all of whom bore their own heavy cross, it was the despised, the long-suffering Abraham, Abraham the Stoic, Abraham whose voice and dignity had been usurped by lies and stilled by folklore that I understood and in ways not fully apprehended, I identified with.
“There isn’t much time, my boy, and so much to tell you. First things first. You’re smart, educated and well traveled. But your optic of the world is far too broad to see everything. It misses the details, the minutiae -- you might call them trivialities -- on which average people fixate. Your antipathy for he clan, for what it stands is obvious. But consider this: A clan is a kind of corporate entity. While it’s made up of individuals with distinctive personalities, tastes and proclivities, the clan also has a character, an instinct and a unique life force of its own. It is this essence, primal and unwavering, that compels it to guard against external threats. What Yossi so clumsily tried to put across is that a clan is in peril when any of its members commit, or allow to be committed, acts that could cause it to split up and collapse. In other words, the integrity of the clan can be maintained only by limiting the power and influence of its members.”
“But what Yossi expediently ignored,” I countered, “what he could never mention without admitting a fundamental flaw in this despotic ‘life force’ that limits free will, is that the best way to protect a clan is to lead by logic, not zeal, reason, not intolerance. The prophetic order the clan struggles to maintain is at war with freedom of thought. It faces the rest of the world with a mask of unyielding belligerence, feeling threatened in its very being by rational thought whose voice it doggedly tries to silence.”
Abraham put his hand on my shoulder. “There is no more free will in the physical world than there is in the world of dreams. The human condition is one of discord. Reason propels us toward higher spheres of being; but the pursuit of hedonism, from which self-perpetuation and the survival instinct derive, slam us back into the most brutish existence. So long as men surrender to the affairs that spring from their transient identity, they imagine themselves to be free. But men are mistaken. They are not free. Men crave structure. We cling to principles the way a man overboard clings to a life raft. Conform, or the gods will be angry. Submit or you will burn in hell. Defiance of the rule of law in the name of justice is no defense, however unjust the law may be.”
“Why does everybody give in to such tyranny?”
“For many reasons. Some don’t know better. What they see is what they get and it’s good enough for them. Others don’t dare to speak up. Others yet don’t care. So what if their lives are regulated by a symbolic bond, traditions and a few perfunctory rituals? Then there are those who know by intuition or premonition that they have run out of choices.”
“Self-deception makes the obvious tolerable.”
Abraham smiled. “It’s not self-deception. It’s deeper than that.”
“What do you mean?”
“Human beings have no memory of the future. They exist in the moment, untouched by the passage of time, impervious to the transformations that time sets in motion. They can only relate to their own life experience and they insulate themselves against anticipated depredations by surrendering to reflex. We are all doomed to do what we did before we came to Ein Sof, to engage in the ceaseless repetition of the activities that marked our lives. It makes time pass.”
“Or it kills it.”
“Suit yourself.”
“One last thing, Abraham. What are Dybbuks? Did I imagine them, was I hallucinating or did I really chance upon them in a moment of reckless self-abandon?”
“Dybbuks are human spirits, wandering souls condemned to roam restlessly, burdened by past sins, haunted by pointless dreams. They have always existed. They will never go away. They are our shadows. They are us inside out. We don’t acknowledge their existence because doing so would force us to confess our own imperfections. You might say we are all Dybbuks-in-training.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You came to us from Yesod -- Hebrew for foundation. You’re now in Ein Sof. Why do you think they call it that? Ein Sof means “no end,” infinity, perpetuity. Some even suggest that that Ein Sof is the least offensive definition of an indefinable God. Might as well get used to it. This will one day be your last port of call. You’ll submit like the rest of us. You’ll learn to subdue your passions.”
“Never.”
“Never?” Abraham lowered his head and peered at me over his glasses. “Just wait and see. Life is the dream of a future sleep. Waking up puts an end to the hallucination.”
“What will I do with all that time, what will I do,” I cried out, overcome with a sudden, crushing anguish.
“You’ll write, what else. You’ll write. I’ll dream in the company of Yahweh. And you’ll dream in his absence.”
He did not elaborate.
*
To dream, perchance to be. To be, perchance to cross vast dimensions that transcend psychoanalysis, popular myth and the witless and fraudulent interpretations of the spiritualist fringe. Dreams: winged abstractions that lead dreamers, thinkers, to question the validity of conventional canons. Dreams: channels of ideological disobedience. Dreams: the manifestation of folly or the spark that sets off intellectual heresy, whether endured in a lucid state or in the winding and surreal labyrinths that crisscross the psyche. Dreams: Echoes of the bewildering ugliness, cruelty, cupidity, trickery and injustice dreamers witness while awake and stirring. Dreams: a cure against ossified creeds. Dreams: a reminder that freedom is an arm’s length away. Dreams: nocturnal musings and daytime reveries that telegraph a host of emotions, buried memories, repressed cravings, a lust for inaccessible pinnacles and a fondness for preposterous hopes. Dreams: an array of uncommon ideas and bizarre perspectives. Crafted in the deepest recesses of the mind, staged against eerie backdrops, spoken in esoteric tongues, dreams challenge reality, defy the status quo and rise against doctrinaire beliefs. Dreaming, for an untold number of people, is an instrument of subliminal rebellion against enforced, often unbearable, reality. Dreams respond to frustration, discontent, anxiety, pain, anger, despair and hope by offering a few milliseconds of cathartic, escapism -- or hours of conscious but uncontrolled contemplation.
Limitless and everlasting, the world of dreams is a realm in which inhibitions and scruples are left at the door. It’s the flip side of an actuality vigilantly managed by often dissimilar but tactically congruent interests whose reciprocal objective is to restrain the errant ways of radicals and nonconformists.
*
“What did you just say,” I yelled as Abraham floated across the room and merged into the wall.
A disembodied voice responded, “Life is the dream of a future sleep.”
“What does that mean,” I cried out.
I blinked. Abraham was gone. I looked around me. Several of the people who had come to see me off as I readied to embark for Ein Sof were still gathered around as if frozen in time. The solemn, the sycophants, the snivelers, the kibitzers. They all soon stirred, regaining their voices and momentum like old clocks rewound.
“Go home,” I said. “Go home. False alarm. You’ll get your chance some other time.”
*
Dreams, however lyrical and therapeutic, are no match for reality. Pitiless and cunning, reality always triumphs in the end. It is in defeat that dreamers -- philosophers, poets, musicians, artists, writers and humble workers in the vineyard of negentropy -- find their greatest inspiration. It is in dreams that they seek comfort and hope. To them all I dedicate these musings from the brink where I transited for a time.