The
Kabbalah is an ancient Jewish mystical tradition that explains how the universe
and life have come to be, as well as our purpose within the world. As mentioned
in my previous post,
the Kabbalah has a fascinating system of other worlds and realms of existence
above our own. What lies at the base of the Kabbalah is the interpenetration of
four different worlds and the Sephirotic tree of life that forms the basis of
them all. The quote today is:
From
Z’ev ben Shimon Halevi’s A Kabbalistic Universe (1977):
“As the image of God, man has the
greatest possibility of realizing the Immanence present in the Universe. The
World provides the conditions for man’s work towards perfection, and in return
man aids the World towards its completion, so that which has been separated
reunites.”
The
Sephirotic Tree of Life, as depicted in the various image below, is a map of
the universe, both the world at mediumand everything within it. Indeed, we can
think of each human being as a sephirotic tree with each sephirot (the circles)
corresponding to a different organ or system in the body. Likewise, the various
principles in our souls can be mapped onto a sephirotic tree, as well as the
planets in our solar system, the path of enlightenment, and the angelic hierarchies.
The Kabbalistic tree can also be mapped onto the different Indian chakras of
the body, the different hypostases in Neoplatonism, and the different worlds in
esoteric Buddhism, but I won’t go into these other traditions here. There are
many different interpretations of the Kabbalah, but I’m going to focus on what
I’ve learned from Z’ev ben
Shimon Halevi’s books as well as Manly P. Hall’s The Secret Teachings of All Ages.
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Each sephirot in the tree is labelled by a different
Hebrew words. They are often called ‘spheres,’ ‘sapphires,’ or ‘emanations.’ Keter
is the crown, and it is from here that the others emanate. Binah and Hokhmah
are the male and female principles, and Da’at corresponds to perfected knowledge.
There are many interpretations about what each sphere stands for, and they are
not mutually exclusive: they’re supposed to have many meanings. Each sphere,
from Malkhut (the lowest) to Keter (the highest) corresponds to a different
level of enlightenment/states of consciousness. During a spiritual seeker’s
development, they will progress up the sephiroth (plural of sephirot) from their
more impulsive animal nature to become a spiritual being. The sephiroth can all
be seen as different worlds, where everyone in a lower level of enlightenment
is in a lower world, unable to perceive the higher reality of existence around
them. Those above encompass more worlds since they are beings of a higher
spiritual dimension.
There are said to be 32 paths in the Kabbalah,
corresponding to the 10 sephiroth and 22 letters (Hebrew alphabet), which are
on the lines between the sephiroth. The sephiroth are unchanging principles
that, as has been said, are instantiated in many different realms of being. The
letters are variable, and there are many different ways to trace paths between
sephiroth. By the flow of energy through the sephiroth, there emerges various
processes as impulses flow from one sephirot to another. Indeed, the tree of
life itself is created with the emanation from Keter as the initial impulse,
giving rise to each letter and the subsequent sephiroth.
The sephiroth on the far left column comprise the
pillar of Form, those on the right,
the pillar of Force, and those in
the centre, the Will or
Consciousness, which unites force and form. Both of the two principles are
necessary for life and evolution: form provides the structure, and force the
energy to create it. Force corresponds to growth and expansion, and form to
decay and constriction. Force is also called the Pillar of Mercy, and Form the
Pillar of Severity. It is the task of our will to unite these two principles, keeping
them both in balance. Form and Force are the Yin and Yang of Taoism, the Boaz
and Jachin of Freemasonry: both are necessary, but one without the other will
lead to imbalance and strife.
The Kabbalistic tree pictured above is actually
one of four worlds. These worlds are called Azilut, Beriah, Yezirah, and
Asiyyah. They are all interlaced to create one enormous tree
of life with Azilut’s Keter at the top (see picture to the left). Azilut
is also called Emanation, in that it is the first realm of being beyond that of
absolute non-existence, which is the ultimate God. Each of the sephiroth in
Azilut correspond to different aspects of the Divine. All these sephiroth, as
well as the worlds beneath them, are produced by the emanation from the first
sephirot as it expands its power. It is impossible to have the lower sephiroth
without the higher ones above them, because they receive their existence from
them, just like you can’t have the branches and leaves of a tree without its
supporting trunk and roots. Indeed, the Kabbalah often uses the analogy of an inverted
tree with Keter at the base and Malkhut at the top.
Beriah,
the second world, also called Creation, emanates from the Tiferet of Azilut,
forming another tree of life interspersed with the first. This is where time begins “as Creation moves away
from the Eternal and Changeless Perfection of Azilut into expansion and
contraction that are the essence of the Beriatic World of Creation.” This
necessarily introduces imperfections, because with time, there is change, and even
if things begin perfectly, they will necessarily become less perfect as time
passes (because if they stayed perfect, they would not change, and time implies
some form of change). Beriah, however, is very close to perfection, and its
tree is often split into seven Heavens inhabited by Archangels that bring the
further worlds into being and instantiate certain principles depending on which
sephirot they correspond to. When these principles manifest in the lower worlds,
they will correspond to physical laws (gravity and the like), karma, and the
impetus behind cycles of growth and decay. Beriah also corresponds to Plato’s
world of Forms, containing the archetypes of, for example, celestial phenomena,
plants, and animals. There is no growth and decay in Beriah, but rather, it has
the potential for existence that
will actually come into being in the worlds below. These are the laws and the
templates for beings that will be subject to the laws, a blueprint rather than
a physical or spiritual substance. Indeed, Halevi says, “In the World of
Creation only essences can exist,” and “in Beriah, although the destiny of each
creature is determined, it cannot actually move through its stages, it cannot
grow and manifest the different stages of existence.”
Moving along to Yezirah, which is also called Formation, we have a further
emanation that creates the Yeziritic tree of life. In this world, things can
now change their form, though they are still spiritual rather than physical
beings. Allegorically, this is where the Garden of Eden lies, as well as the
realm of Angels. It is still connected to Beriah, with the Tiferet of Beriah
forming the Keter of Yezirah, and so the forms and laws of Beriah can be
manifested in this world. Similar to the Archangels, the Angels of Yezirah have
no will of their own, but operate according to the principles embodied by the
sephiroth, with each angel residing on either the pillar of Force, Form, or
Will. Complexity increases in the world of Yezirah, and although it still abides
by the laws of the worlds above it, it derives more specific laws of its own, effective
laws, one could say (e.g., like how Newton’s gravitational theory is an
“effective theory” of Einstein’s more complete theory of gravity in general
relativity).
The last world is Asiyyah,
the physical world. Arising from the Tiferet of Yezirah, its upper sephiroth are
still connected to the spiritual world of Yezirah. Here, physical particles, galaxies,
planets, and all forms of life reside. The “void,” or vacuum, from which
particles and energy emerge is the higher dimension (Yezirah) that provides the
spiritual essence of the physical world, which Halevi says “is of a
metaphysical nature, that is, it is concerned not with substance so much as
with laws.” So there is an emergence of something out of “nothing,” similar to
what physicists have observed, a principle that is manifested throughout the
entire interlacing tree of worlds.
A useful analogy for this series of emanations (in
all worlds) is that of white light dispersing through a prism. White light is
pure and colourless, but it has the potential to disperse into different
colours. When it passes through a prism and splits into various colours, it is
less “perfect” than it was originally because the many colours are each less
than the source that they came from. The white light, however, is undiminished
with the creation of many colours: it is the same before it enters the prism,
and the colours can return to white light if they are combined. This is an
analogy for the descent and eventual return to a higher state of being [to
think of this a bit more scientifically: each of the colours has a range of
wavelengths that is narrower than white light, since white light contains all visible
wavelengths (e.g., red light is ~ 622 – 780 nm, whereas all visible light is
~320 – 780 nm) so white light can be seen to be more “complete” than the
colours it comprises. Yet at the same time, if one were to combine the colours,
they would have white light, so there can be a return to perfection if the
multiple colours combine to become white again]. And likewise, since we cannot
“see” white light (we just see what it is illuminating) as we can see coloured
light, it appears that the coloured beams arise out of nothing, when in truth,
they come from a higher level of existence that we, in the lower world, cannot
perceive. Thus, it appears that particles can arise out of “nothing” simply because
we cannot perceive the Yeziritic world with our physical senses.
The
two pillars of force and form are also at work at the basis of the physical
world. We can describe matter as either waves (form) or particles (force), but
ultimately, matter takes on both characteristics. It may also be possible to
match up different elementary particles to the sephiroth on the tree, though I
won’t go into that except for saying, as regards the three pillars, protons,
neutrons, and electrons (the primary constituents of matter), would fit onto
the pillars of Force, Will, and Form respectively (as seen by their charges).
The
allegory of the fall of man represents the spirit of man descending from Yezirah
into the physical world of Asiyyah. However, in Asiyyah, evolution provides “a
gradual ascent of matter toward Spirit,” and so since we are beings from Yezirah
in essence (and really, if you trace the line of emanations upward, we are all
essentially from Azilut),
we can return to that state after the development in the physical world is
complete. The key to human existence is consciousness, because with it, we can
choose to return to the upper worlds. This is only possible because of the
interpenetration of the different worlds, and the fact that humans have a
complicated enough physical body to allow for a soul to incarnate within it (of
course, other animals do too, but this book considers humans primarily).
The
interlaced psychological and physical bodies of humans (corresponding to the Yeziritic
and Asiyyatic trees) create the different bodily systems and mental faculties
such as the Self and the Soul (read the book to see more details!). And as we
know, our minds and physical bodies are always related, and when there is a
disturbance in one, there is often a disturbance in the other.
As
has been seen in the descriptions of the worlds above, one of the main ideas of
the Kabbalah is the interpenetration
of different worlds. For example, the Keter of Asiyyah is the
Tiferet of Yezirah. Every sephirot emanates from the Keter at the top of the
corresponding tree, and are all contained within it (this is similar to
dimensions, but all these worlds aren’t physical). The higher worlds are
spiritual, and these can only be perceived by someone dwelling at that level of
enlightenment. There are be traces of these higher worlds in physical world and
within our own souls, but they are like projections of higher dimensions onto
lower ones: if we shone a light on a sphere, we would only see a circle upon a
screen because two dimensions can only show a projection of three dimensions
rather than its entire image. Although our souls from Yezirah are present in Asiyyah, we often don’t
notice the presence of higher worlds because of the constriction of matter in Asiyyah. And yet, since they
overlap, it means that it is possible to reach higher levels of being/states of
awareness because the potential is already inside of you.
~~*~~
Click here for more posts in my Quotes of Wisdom series.
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