Aaron's Essay 1

Rabbi David A. Cooper says of ayin that “we can achieve the level of ayin through the contemplative practice of bittal ha-yesh, the path of selflessness… From the perspective of selflessness we realize that although we may be identified and associated with objective symbols, our essential souls are something else, something that transcends…common forms of identification” (Cooper 223). Put simply, Max is branded with a symbol of transcendent knowledge, called to a meditative state in which he will separate from the material aspects of his nature and achieve the fullest possible awareness of natural order.

It is not long after this that Max's role is revealed to him. Pursued by the Wall Street firm's thugs, he is intercepted and kidnapped by the Kabbalists. In their congregation, he is told that the 216 digit number, the key to universal order which he has searched for all his life, is the ancient unspeakable Name of God. In this scene, we see obvious Christian allusion as Max, a Jew himself, is chastised by the Jewish high priests for “blasphemy” as he claims he understands the divine knowledge linked to the Name of God. The rabbi accuses Max of his impurities, claiming he is only a vessel by which the knowledge was meant to be delivered. Max retorts, calling himself the “chosen one.” Having been chased by materialists who only want his “miracles” and the Jewish sect which sees him as a sort of prophet at best but do not see that he is the “savior” they have been waiting for, Max's story almost perfectly falls in line with Christ's. It is at this point that he first realizes the sacrifice he must make.

When he returns to his apartment, he is attacked again by one of his migraines, but this time refuses any medication; refuses man-made means of healing. In his frenzy, he destroys Euclid, another man-made object representing human means of attaining knowledge. It is at this point that he truly achieves the state of ayin. Like Christ, shortly after the revelation of his Passion, Max rips the curtains from his windows, lets the light in, and is enveloped in a blinding whiteness. As his body slowly fades and dissolves into the void, he becomes transfigured as Christ was in Luke 9:29: “While he was praying his face changed in appearance and his clothing became dazzling white.”

The transfiguration complete, the Divine Knowledge attained along with the realization that the misuse of his “powers” would only disrupt the order he is meant to uphold, Max enters his bathroom to complete his “crucifixion.” He retells the childhood story of staring into the sun as he fastens the drill bit to the tool and lifts it to his head, this final affirmation of his life-long purpose gives him the strength to pierce himself and sacrifice the knowledge he spent his life trying to grasp.

The final Christ allusion comes in Max's “resurrection.” In the final use of his Knowledge, Max's drilling does not kill him, but rather cures him of his illnesses. He is no longer concerned with finding the answers, but has transcended into the state of ayin almost completely. His mathematical gifts gone, the film closes with Max sitting in a park staring into the sky, into the sun once more, and for the first time in the film a peaceful smile crosses his face.

Joseph Campbell writes in his classic work The Hero with a Thousand Faces that when examining myths “it will be always the one, shape-shifting yet marvelously constant story that we find, together with a challengingly persistent suggestion of more remaining to be experienced than will ever be known or told” (Campbell 3). Although the allusions to the Christ story are obviously intended, to regard the film as simply a retelling or a “modernization” would be a great injustice to its truer purpose. By setting the classic story of a savior in a modern environment the twentieth century viewer, more aware of the economy, computers and scientific method than a first century world view, can relate to the story more easily. Further, π is more a revision of the story than a retelling. God becomes perfect order rather than a humanized deity. Morals previously meant to turn mankind away from the effects of the “fall,” act instead to aid them in embracing the order it set in motion, and by complying with that perfection come closer to “God's image.” In the vein of postmodernism, the film suggests that the key to divinity lies not in the answering of our mysteries, but in the search itself.

π. Written and directed by Darren Aronofsky. Perf. Sean Gullette, Mark Margolis, and Ben Shenkman. Artisan Entertainment, 1998.

Aronofsky, Darren. π: The Book of Ants. Dark Horse Comics, 1998.

Beckmann, Petr. A History of Pi. New York: Barnes & Noble, 1993.

Bollinger, John, CFA, CMT. “Capital Growth Topics #198: Chaos.” Online. Available http://www.moneymentor.com/Bollinger/cgt198.txt (11 December 1998).

Campbell, Joseph. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. New York: MJF Books, 1949.

Cooper, Rabbi David A. God is a Verb: Kabbalah and the Practice of Mystical Judaism. New York: Riverhead Books, 1997.

Holden, Stephen. “Math as a Secret Decoder of Markets and Mysticism.” Published in The New York Times, 3 April 1998. Online. Available http://www.nytimes.com/ library/film/040398pi-film-review.html (23 November 1998).

Holy Bible: New American Version. Wichita: Fireside Bible Publishers, 1996.

Matt, Daniel C. The Essential Kabbalah: The Heart of Jewish Mysticism. Edison: Castle Books, 1997.

Milton, John. Paradise Lost and Other Poems. New York: Mentor Books, 1981. 33-344.

Morgan, Robert. “π.” Poetry. January 1993. 204.

Taubin, Amy. “Head Games.” The Village Voice. 14 July 1998. 146.

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Chaos, Kabbalah, and the Creation of a Modern Savior in Darren Aronofsky's π.
	"π" The secret relationship of line and circle, progress and return, is always known, transcendental and yet a commonplace. And though the connection is written it cannot be written out in full, never perfect, but is exact and constant, is eternal and everyday as orbits of electrons, chemical rings, noted here in one brief sign as gateway to completed turns and the distance inside circles both compact and infinite. -Robert Morgan “Sean asked me what the film is about. My answer: ONE.” -from the diary of Darren Aronofsky, writer/director of π
“One: Mathematics is the language of nature” (π). Echoing a theory which dates back to Pythagoras, Max Cohen (played by Sean Gullette) begins to explain the philosophy which drives Darren Aronofsky's film π. In mathematical terms, π is defined as the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter. It has been calculated out to billions of digits, but in most situations rounding it down to 3.14 will suffice. When it was proven that the ratio was both irrational (unable to be represented by a terminating decimal figure) as well as infinite (continuing without pattern), the figure became an object of mystery and intrigue for mathematicians and philosophers alike. In a film combining number theory, Kabbalah, Chaos theory, Judeo-Christian symbolism and other philosophies, π's elements of transcendence make it the perfect starting point for a story which elevates its mathematically obsessed main character, Max, to a level of divine knowledge and ends in his self-sacrifice, resulting in his role as a new Christ for a age filled with philosophical, mathematical, and economic chaos. To understand the film's claim of Max's divinity, some elements of its argument must first be discussed. Max's beginning hypothesis, that even in a system as seemingly random as the stock market there exists a mathematical pattern which can be discovered and therefore predicted, stems directly from Chaos theory. First discovered by a meteorologist, Chaos theory is most simply the study of every-changing complex systems. The most common example given is known as the Butterfly Effect, which states that the slight flapping of a butterfly's wings in China could create atmospheric changes which would influence weather patterns in New York over a period of time. The theory maintains that although chaotic systems appear to be random, there are discernible patterns. As Max's theories involve the stock market, perhaps a more pertinent example of Chaos theory in action would be the recent economic situation in Hong Kong. John Bollinger writes in an independent study that “In the first pass, the decline in Hong Kong caused selling in Europe as the Europeans anticipated selling in the US. The US selling turned into more Hong Kong selling, which led to a rout in Europe and a mini-crash in the US” (Bollinger 1). This real-life example shows not only a more practical case of Chaos, but also proves that it is inescapable. No matter how far removed one may be from the stock market, he or she was surely affected in some way by the nation's economy. Max's role as savior comes as he attempts to find the key to understanding even the most complex orders of Chaos, and with this knowledge, attempting to save us from the resulting confusions. As the film progresses, Max is also introduced to the theories of Kabbalah by Hasidic Jew Lenny Meyer. The ancient form of Jewish mysticism becomes another crucial element to Max's role as savior. The word Kabbalah comes from the Hebrew root kbl which means “to receive” (Cooper 11). It is said to be transmitted in two ways. In the Theosophical School, mystical teachings are passed from teacher to student. In the School of Ecstatic Kabbalah, teachings are achieved through meditation, altered unconsciousness and insights from the Unknown and Unknowable (Cooper 11). The Kabbalah brings the ideas of chaos and religion back to mathematics. In order to achieve insights necessary in overcoming the “chaos” of the world, the Kabbalist studies the Jewish Holy Book, the Torah. The Hebrew language, the original language of the Torah, was designed to correspond with numbers, and entire vernacular is linked mathematically. The numeric equivalent for the words “mother” and “father” will combine to equal a sum equivalent to the word for “child” (π ). Lenny gives Max another example. The word for Garden of Eden, kadem, is spelled with the letters koof, which equals 100, daled, which equals four, and mem, which equals forty for a sum total of 144. The numeric equivalent for the Tree of Knowledge, translated Eitz Ha Chayim, equals 233. Max notices that these two numbers are part of the Fibonacci sequence (1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233, 337…). If one Fibonacci number is divided into another, Theta (Θ), the Greek symbol for the Golden Spiral is approached (Aronofsky 26). First discovered by Pythagoras, the Golden Spiral is found everywhere in nature; in nautilus shells, rams horns, fingerprints, and even the Milky Way galaxy. As a symbol for perfect order, the Golden Spiral comes to represent transcendence in its own right. Taken that the Garden of Eden and the Tree of Knowledge are infused numerically into this ratio through Kabbalah, the film makes its first major religious comment: that the progress from the Garden to Knowledge, or a “fall from grace,” was a necessary evil, another seemingly chaotic step which actually maintained the prescribed order of the universe rather than disrupted “God's plan.” Such a view was proposed also by Milton in Paradise Lost when he writes “Some natural tears they dropped, but wiped them soon; / The world was all before them… / They, hand in hand, with wandering steps and slow, / Through Eden took their solitary way” (Milton 343). To embrace this order, then, and follow its natural progress is to come closer to an understanding of our human nature as well as the divine. In this view, the modern savior must not come to reverse the effects of the “fall,” as is his purpose in the Judeo-Christian tradition, but instead must understand and preserve the order set in motion by the fall. Max begins to exhibit his “divinity” early in the film, maintaining many parallels to the story of Christ. In the first line of the film, Max states “When I was a little boy my mother told me not to stare into the sun…so once when I was six I did” ( π ). Amy Taubin writes in her review: “This single act of rebellion determines the course of his life. Though punished with massive migraine headaches, he's obsessed with regaining the ecstatic moment he experienced just before he lost his sight—when the order of all things seemed wondrous clear to him” (Taubin 146). This childhood experience recalls the story of Christ found in Luke 2:41-52 when he strayed from his parent's caravan to teach in the temple. He tells Mary, his mother, in Luke 2:49 “Did you not know that I must be in my Father's house?” Each child, in their “rebellion” against their mothers see a glimpse of their divine purpose: Christ to teach the people how to return to the grace lost in the “fall,” and Max to embrace and preserve the clarity of that moment staring into the sun. In both stories, little is told to us of their lives between that childhood experience and their adulthood when they come fully into their roles. Max struggles constantly with his human nature and the divine goal of knowledge he is pursuing. Every time he is about to press return on his computer (aptly named Euclid) and come up with new data, he is momentarily distracted by sounds, real or imagined, through his apartment wall of his neighbor having sex. In Aronofsky's graphic novel adaptation of the film, this distraction is illustrated even further as we glimpse Max's imagined courtship and sexual relationship with his neighbor, his distraction broken as his image of her becomes monstrous. The separation between human and divine natures must be overcome by Christ as well: in his mournful prayers in the garden before his death, in the temptations of the Satan, and surely in his everyday life as has been suggested by novels such as Nikos Kazantzakis' The Last Temptation of Christ in which Satan tempts him with the carnal pleasures of an affair with Mary Magdalene. Ultimately, both are able to overcome the temptations of their humanity and perform the sacrifices necessary to achieve their divine goals. This is not to suggest that human nature should be totally rejected. If that were the case the characters would cease to act as saviors, for who could truly be saved if we had to become divine to do so? Although human temptations must be overcome, the film also suggests that the duality is necessary. Max hears his neighbor having sex just before Euclid crashes, the “climax” of which is the emission of a 216 digit number that becomes the key to his divinity. The divine is, then, a climactic result obtainable only through the physical. The duality is suggested further throughout the film as Max is chased by representatives of both the material, in the form of the Wall Street thugs who hope his findings will help them become rich, and representatives of the transcendent, found in the Hasidic sect which believes the 216 digit number he has stumbled upon is the ancient and unspeakable Name of God. Because both of these groups would misuse the “Divine Knowledge,” creating economic and religious disorder, Max must sacrifice the Knowledge to maintain universal order. Although Max is still unaware of his role, he is given glimpses of the sacrifice he must make in two of his hallucinations. While in the subway, he sees a cloaked man standing across the tracks. Although the man is mostly covered, he turns just enough that the viewer can see his resemblance to Max himself. The man's hand is covered and dripping with blood, suggesting the stigmata; that Max will have to become a Christ-like sacrifice. In another case, Max sees a brain at rest on the subway stairs and attempts to poke at it with a pen. The brain, representing the Knowledge, foreshadows Max's sacrifice at the end of the film, during which he drills into his head at the same point he is prodding the brain on the stairs. The pen and the drill both become emblematic of the nails of the crucifixion. Since Max does not yet fully understand his findings, however, he cannot finish the sacrifice in his hallucination and is continually stopped by the sound of a train behind him, ultimately waking him from his dream. It is shortly after this that he discovers a mark on his head, roughly at the same position he was poking the brain. He shaves his head to examine it further. One theory regarding this mark was proposed by Stephen Holden in his New York Times review of the film. He suggested that Max “shaved his head in order to plug his computer into a specific area of his brain” (Holden 1). The mark does resemble slightly the type of socket into which a computer may plug into. This observation hints at a possible allusion to the Holy Trinity with Sol Robeson, Max's long-time mentor and friend as the Father, Max obviously filling the role of the Son, and his computer Euclid as the Holy Spirit, the source of divine wisdom. More interesting is the mark's resemblance to the Hebrew letter ayin (ע). In the Kabbalah, ayin means “nothingness,” but is the only way to achieve true insight. Daniel C. Matt writes in The Essential Kabbalah: “Think of yourself as Ayin and forget yourself totally. Then you can transcend time, rising to the world of thought, where all is equal: life and death, ocean and dry land. Such is not the case if you are attached to the material nature of this world. If you think of yourself as something, then God cannot clothe himself in you, and God is infinite. No vessel can contain God, unless you think of yourself as Ayin” (Daniel 71). Rabbi David A. Cooper says of ayin that “we can achieve the level of ayin through the contemplative practice of bittal ha-yesh, the path of selflessness… From the perspective of selflessness we realize that although we may be identified and associated with objective symbols, our essential souls are something else, something that transcends…common forms of identification” (Cooper 223). Put simply, Max is branded with a symbol of transcendent knowledge, called to a meditative state in which he will separate from the material aspects of his nature and achieve the fullest possible awareness of natural order. It is not long after this that Max's role is revealed to him. Pursued by the Wall Street firm's thugs, he is intercepted and kidnapped by the Kabbalists. In their congregation, he is told that the 216 digit number, the key to universal order which he has searched for all his life, is the ancient unspeakable Name of God. In this scene, we see obvious Christian allusion as Max, a Jew himself, is chastised by the Jewish high priests for “blasphemy” as he claims he understands the divine knowledge linked to the Name of God. The rabbi accuses Max of his impurities, claiming he is only a vessel by which the knowledge was meant to be delivered. Max retorts, calling himself the “chosen one.” Having been chased by materialists who only want his “miracles” and the Jewish sect which sees him as a sort of prophet at best but do not see that he is the “savior” they have been waiting for, Max's story almost perfectly falls in line with Christ's. It is at this point that he first realizes the sacrifice he must make. When he returns to his apartment, he is attacked again by one of his migraines, but this time refuses any medication; refuses man-made means of healing. In his frenzy, he destroys Euclid, another man-made object representing human means of attaining knowledge. It is at this point that he truly achieves the state of ayin. Like Christ, shortly after the revelation of his Passion, Max rips the curtains from his windows, lets the light in, and is enveloped in a blinding whiteness. As his body slowly fades and dissolves into the void, he becomes transfigured as Christ was in Luke 9:29: “While he was praying his face changed in appearance and his clothing became dazzling white.” The transfiguration complete, the Divine Knowledge attained along with the realization that the misuse of his “powers” would only disrupt the order he is meant to uphold, Max enters his bathroom to complete his “crucifixion.” He retells the childhood story of staring into the sun as he fastens the drill bit to the tool and lifts it to his head, this final affirmation of his life-long purpose gives him the strength to pierce himself and sacrifice the knowledge he spent his life trying to grasp. The final Christ allusion comes in Max's “resurrection.” In the final use of his Knowledge, Max's drilling does not kill him, but rather cures him of his illnesses. He is no longer concerned with finding the answers, but has transcended into the state of ayin almost completely. His mathematical gifts gone, the film closes with Max sitting in a park staring into the sky, into the sun once more, and for the first time in the film a peaceful smile crosses his face. Joseph Campbell writes in his classic work The Hero with a Thousand Faces that when examining myths “it will be always the one, shape-shifting yet marvelously constant story that we find, together with a challengingly persistent suggestion of more remaining to be experienced than will ever be known or told” (Campbell 3). Although the allusions to the Christ story are obviously intended, to regard the film as simply a retelling or a “modernization” would be a great injustice to its truer purpose. By setting the classic story of a savior in a modern environment the twentieth century viewer, more aware of the economy, computers and scientific method than a first century world view, can relate to the story more easily. Further, π is more a revision of the story than a retelling. God becomes perfect order rather than a humanized deity. Morals previously meant to turn mankind away from the effects of the “fall,” act instead to aid them in embracing the order it set in motion, and by complying with that perfection come closer to “God's image.” In the vein of postmodernism, the film suggests that the key to divinity lies not in the answering of our mysteries, but in the search itself. Works Cited π. Written and directed by Darren Aronofsky. Perf. Sean Gullette, Mark Margolis, and Ben Shenkman. Artisan Entertainment, 1998. Aronofsky, Darren. π: The Book of Ants. Dark Horse Comics, 1998. Beckmann, Petr. A History of Pi. New York: Barnes & Noble, 1993. Bollinger, John, CFA, CMT. “Capital Growth Topics #198: Chaos.” Online. Available http://www.moneymentor.com/Bollinger/cgt198.txt (11 December 1998). Campbell, Joseph. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. New York: MJF Books, 1949. Cooper, Rabbi David A. God is a Verb: Kabbalah and the Practice of Mystical Judaism. New York: Riverhead Books, 1997. Holden, Stephen. “Math as a Secret Decoder of Markets and Mysticism.” Published in The New York Times, 3 April 1998. Online. Available http://www.nytimes.com/ library/film/040398pi-film-review.html (23 November 1998). Holy Bible: New American Version. Wichita: Fireside Bible Publishers, 1996. Matt, Daniel C. The Essential Kabbalah: The Heart of Jewish Mysticism. Edison: Castle Books, 1997. Milton, John. Paradise Lost and Other Poems. New York: Mentor Books, 1981. 33-344. Morgan, Robert. “π.” Poetry. January 1993. 204. Taubin, Amy. “Head Games.” The Village Voice. 14 July 1998. 146.
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