This article discusses a "holy still" and as you may have seen from a previous post named John 17:6, I am curious about "stillness"... While listening to one of the Kabbalah Revealed videos today Tony Kosenic made referrence to "The Holy Stillness"... Quite easily I did a search and found the article below written by the great Kabbalist Micheal Laitman.
Kabbalah in Our Lives
During the 6,000 years of their existence, souls descend to our world in a certain order and clothe the physical bodies of our world, which is the lowest degree of Creation in the universe. There is a clear and accurate order of the descent of the souls, from the finest with the least amount of egoism, to the coarsest, most egoistic souls.
The first souls to descend are those with the least amount of egoism, whose mere existence in this world is enough to correct them, and they do not need any external influence to guide them. After that, souls begin to come with a need for a guidebook, which we know of as “the written Torah.”
Although we have received the four parts of the Torah with their entire spiritual scope, including the wisdom of Kabbalah, over the years it has been used in many ways. At the same time, varying circumstances were organized from Above to keep the Mitzvot. For example, the ruin of the temple eliminated the possibility of keeping many of the Mitzvot that are connected with the temple and the land.
Although the souls that come to our world grow coarser and need further correction, the number of practical Mitzvot decreases. That is because these souls cannot be corrected by merely performing Mitzvot. These souls need a special guide to the wisdom of Kabbalah, because this is their final correction. These are souls that were purer in the past, but have sunk deeper and deeper into egoism over the cycles.
Therefore, the last correction should result in an exit from this world into the spiritual world. This is only possible with the help of changing our internal properties from egoism to altruism, not by any mechanical acts.
It is said: “A Mitzva without an aim is like a body without a soul.” It is only the aim that determines the value of the action. A mere mechanical act, an aimless one, is also a lifeless one. It does not produce any spiritual influence and brings no result.
However, observing Mitzvot mechanically is still necessary for the (Jewish) collective because it preserves their identities from generation to generation, and prepares souls for their personal correction in one of the future cycles, for the realization of the aim Lishma (for Her name).
Keeping the Mitzvot in the physical body purifies the spiritual “still” of man. Man’s soul consists of four parts of Creation; these correlate to the name of the Creator: still, vegetative, animate, and speaking. A person who keeps Mitzvot physically is turned from an “ordinary still” into a “holy still.” We mustn’t underestimate the level of this spiritual degree. It is that which keeps the Jews a nation.
A person in that degree is in the first degree of correction, though unaware of it. This person does not feel the spiritual world, just as a stone cannot feel spirituality. Rabbi Zidichev wrote in his book about the verse in Psalms 34, 15: “Depart from evil, and do good.” This means that without understanding the wisdom of Kabbalah, man is like an animal, keeping the Mitzvot automatically, just like an animal eats its food. Even if he is proficient in every detail of the Mitzvot, he must still give some time to study the Kabbalah, the core of the Torah, for without it, one is no better than an animal.
Just as everything comes from the ground, so from this degree it is possible to attain higher degrees. That is why Kabbalists do not object to keeping Mitzvot in the physical body, but maintain that it must be accompanied by a spiritual intent, an aim that gives one the ticket to the spiritual world. However, it is only according to one’s altruistic aim that one can rise to higher degrees in the spiritual worlds.
Although we have received the entire Torah, its hidden part, the Zohar, which was written at the time of the Talmud, was only discovered in recent generations. The Talmud was necessary to keep Mitzvot and was therefore immediately publicized, whereas the Zohar, because it was not necessary to the public, was concealed by the Kabbalists until they decided it was time to disclose it.
Because souls of a different kind descend to our world in every generation, they also require a different kind of leader to correct their souls. The Creator sends a number of Kabbalists in every generation. By being simultaneously in this world and in the spiritual world, they can create the necessary conditions for the correction of the souls of that generation.
That is the reason for the coming of the soul of the Holy Ari, the great Kabbalist of the 16th century, to our world. He was the Kabbalist who wrote the contemporary interpretation of the Zohar, thus creating a solid foundation for a clear and understandable study of the Kabbalah for every person. Rabbi Yeshaiahu Halevy Ish-Horovitz (known as the Holy Shlah) said of the books of the Ari, that their appearance is tantamount to the giving of the Torah to the nation of Israel.
Rabbi Avraham Azulai writes in his book, Ohr Chaim (Light of Life), that “The concealment of the wisdom of Kabbalah from Above so that not everyone could practice it, was done for only a limited period of time, until the year 5330 (1570 by the Gregorian calendar). But since that year, the concealment has been lifted and it is permitted for everyone to study the Zohar.”
It also says that “only if the masses study the wisdom of Kabbalah will the Messiah come, and not as a result of anything else, as others think…”
The Zohar itself mentions more than once that only the lessened value that we ascribe to the study is the cause of all our anguish and that of the last generation. It also says that this is the reason for our spiritual exile. However, the truth is that the only reason we suffer is that we are not correcting ourselves through the wisdom of Kabbalah; that is why we are marching on the path of pain.
From Chapter 5 of, The Path of Kabbalah, by Rav. Michael Laitman
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
The Fall and the World of Atzilut
The doctrine of Sheviret HaKelim, or "Shattering of the Vessels"
Although he accepted the typically "neoplatonic" idea of a sequential emanation of sefirot and Worlds - which was a fundamental theme in most previous Kabbalah - Rabbi Luria's creative genius introduced a new and very important element. He introduced a complex process of precreation Fall and Restitution, showing striking similarities to certain schools of Hellenistic Gnosticism.
According to Lurianic Kabbalah, the sefirot were originally of the nature of pure unmanifest Light. They only aquired a "vessel", or manifest characteristics, in the lowest of the Adam Kadmonic worlds, the World of Speech, or the Bound World, so called because all its ten Lights resided in a single vessel. This was only a prelude to the "World of Chaos" (Olam ha-Tohu) or "World of Points" (Nekudot), the first World to be emanated from Adam Kadmon and thus have actual manifest existence. The word Tohu refers to the state of the original Sefirot, as unformed and unordered points. It comes from Genesis 1:2, "And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep." The "World of Points" was so called because at this time the sefirot did not relate to each other, but were in the form of unorganised (chaotic) atomistic separateness (hence the term World of Points). The Sefirot, apart from the first three, were not organised in three columns as they are in the present world of Atzilut, but in a single row, making it impossible for them to interrelate.
So when the pure Light of Adam Kadmon shone down into them, these atomistic sefirot could not take the strain, and they shatterred and fell (the socalled "breaking of the vessels"). The fallen vessels became the klippot or "husks" of evil, which held trapped the sparks of sefirotic light.
The Nekudot were also characterised by an excess of Din; a Kabbalistic term meaning Severity, Judgment, limitation, rigidity. In Lurianic Kabbalah, Din is not only the cause of the Fall, but the ultimate cause of all creation, including the Tzimtzum (as in Kashmir Shaivism, all creation and manifestation is seen as the limitation of an original unmanifest and unbounded Absolute).
This was a World characterised by an excess of Nefesh (Desire soul or lower passions) or Din (Severity). In addition, it is said that the lights of these Sefirotic vessels is "thick". Thus the Sefirot of this World were unable to tolerate the influx of Light from the higher Source. The result was the socalled "Breaking of the Vessels" or "the death of the kings"; the latter term being derived from a reference in the book of Genesis to the "seven kings of Edom who died"; and the origin of evil. This process is described as effecting the different Sefirot in different ways. As the eighteenth century Kabbalist Moses Luzzatto explains:
"...The effect on the first three Sefirot was only that of annulment, rather than debasement. Only the rear portion of the first three Sefirot "fell"; and even this rear portion did not descend any lower than the world of Emanation (Atzilut)...." [Moses Luzzatto, General Principles of the Kabbalah,]
So the vessels assigned to the upper three Sefirot (Keter, Hokhmah, and Binah), being closer to the Source and thus of a purer nature, managed to contain the great downpouring of light that flowed into them, but the six lower Sefirot from Hesed to Yesod were weaker, and thus unable to hold the light. So one after another these vessels broke, a process referred to as "The Breaking of the Vessels". The vessel of the last Sefirah, Malkut, also cracked but not to the same degree.
Through this supernal Crisis then, the lower worlds came into being:
"...In this fashion, the innermost part of each vessel descended into Creation (Beriah); the interior part descended into Formation (Yetzirah); and the exterior part descended into Action (Asiyah)...."
So the lower Worlds are here described as coming into being through the fall of the seven lower Sefirot of the World of Points, while the fragmented parts of the first three Sefirot; i.e. the rear portions of the Netzah, Hod, and Yesod of Keter (each Sefirot itself has a full complement of ten subsefirot), and the complete Netzah, Hod, and Yesod of Hokmah and Binah; became the rest of the world of Atzilut.
Some of the light that had been in the vessels managed to retrace its path to its source in the world of Atzilut, but the rest scattered and fell down with the vessels themselves, and from their shards the Klippot ("husks") or forces of evil (or sitra ahra, the "other side") took on form. These shards are also the source of gross matter; another classical Gnostic motif.
http://www.kheper.net/topics/Kabbalah/Atzilut-tohu.htm
Although he accepted the typically "neoplatonic" idea of a sequential emanation of sefirot and Worlds - which was a fundamental theme in most previous Kabbalah - Rabbi Luria's creative genius introduced a new and very important element. He introduced a complex process of precreation Fall and Restitution, showing striking similarities to certain schools of Hellenistic Gnosticism.
According to Lurianic Kabbalah, the sefirot were originally of the nature of pure unmanifest Light. They only aquired a "vessel", or manifest characteristics, in the lowest of the Adam Kadmonic worlds, the World of Speech, or the Bound World, so called because all its ten Lights resided in a single vessel. This was only a prelude to the "World of Chaos" (Olam ha-Tohu) or "World of Points" (Nekudot), the first World to be emanated from Adam Kadmon and thus have actual manifest existence. The word Tohu refers to the state of the original Sefirot, as unformed and unordered points. It comes from Genesis 1:2, "And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep." The "World of Points" was so called because at this time the sefirot did not relate to each other, but were in the form of unorganised (chaotic) atomistic separateness (hence the term World of Points). The Sefirot, apart from the first three, were not organised in three columns as they are in the present world of Atzilut, but in a single row, making it impossible for them to interrelate.
So when the pure Light of Adam Kadmon shone down into them, these atomistic sefirot could not take the strain, and they shatterred and fell (the socalled "breaking of the vessels"). The fallen vessels became the klippot or "husks" of evil, which held trapped the sparks of sefirotic light.
The Nekudot were also characterised by an excess of Din; a Kabbalistic term meaning Severity, Judgment, limitation, rigidity. In Lurianic Kabbalah, Din is not only the cause of the Fall, but the ultimate cause of all creation, including the Tzimtzum (as in Kashmir Shaivism, all creation and manifestation is seen as the limitation of an original unmanifest and unbounded Absolute).
This was a World characterised by an excess of Nefesh (Desire soul or lower passions) or Din (Severity). In addition, it is said that the lights of these Sefirotic vessels is "thick". Thus the Sefirot of this World were unable to tolerate the influx of Light from the higher Source. The result was the socalled "Breaking of the Vessels" or "the death of the kings"; the latter term being derived from a reference in the book of Genesis to the "seven kings of Edom who died"; and the origin of evil. This process is described as effecting the different Sefirot in different ways. As the eighteenth century Kabbalist Moses Luzzatto explains:
"...The effect on the first three Sefirot was only that of annulment, rather than debasement. Only the rear portion of the first three Sefirot "fell"; and even this rear portion did not descend any lower than the world of Emanation (Atzilut)...." [Moses Luzzatto, General Principles of the Kabbalah,]
So the vessels assigned to the upper three Sefirot (Keter, Hokhmah, and Binah), being closer to the Source and thus of a purer nature, managed to contain the great downpouring of light that flowed into them, but the six lower Sefirot from Hesed to Yesod were weaker, and thus unable to hold the light. So one after another these vessels broke, a process referred to as "The Breaking of the Vessels". The vessel of the last Sefirah, Malkut, also cracked but not to the same degree.
Through this supernal Crisis then, the lower worlds came into being:
"...In this fashion, the innermost part of each vessel descended into Creation (Beriah); the interior part descended into Formation (Yetzirah); and the exterior part descended into Action (Asiyah)...."
So the lower Worlds are here described as coming into being through the fall of the seven lower Sefirot of the World of Points, while the fragmented parts of the first three Sefirot; i.e. the rear portions of the Netzah, Hod, and Yesod of Keter (each Sefirot itself has a full complement of ten subsefirot), and the complete Netzah, Hod, and Yesod of Hokmah and Binah; became the rest of the world of Atzilut.
Some of the light that had been in the vessels managed to retrace its path to its source in the world of Atzilut, but the rest scattered and fell down with the vessels themselves, and from their shards the Klippot ("husks") or forces of evil (or sitra ahra, the "other side") took on form. These shards are also the source of gross matter; another classical Gnostic motif.
http://www.kheper.net/topics/Kabbalah/Atzilut-tohu.htm
Searching
For the record. I don't know what I'm doing and I don't know what I'm looking for. I have eyes that want to see. I have ears that want to hear.
KJV Proverbs 3:4-6
So thou shalt find favor and good understanding in the sight of God and man. Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.
NIV Luke 8:8
He who has ears to hear, let him hear.
A Lion
Gospel of Thomas verse 7,
"Blessed is the lion which becomes man when consumed by man; and cursed is the man whom lion consumes, and the lion becomes man."
KJV Numbers 23:24 Behold the people shall rise up as a great lion, and lift up himself as a young lion: he shall not lie down until he eat of prey, and drink the blood of the slain.
KJV Genesis 49: 9 Judah is a lion's whelp: from the prey, my son, thou art gone up: he stooped down, he couched as a lion, and as an old lion; who shall rouse him up?
CLV Genesis 49:9 The whelp of a lion is Judah. From the prey, my son, bow will he, recline as a lion. And as a parent lion, who will make him rise?
Literary Translations of KJV Genesis 49:9
"whelp" = goor = cub abiding (in the lair)
"prey" = tereph = torn flesh
"my son" = bane = son; builder
"thou art gone up" = aw law = ascend
"he stooped down" = kaw-rah = bend
"couched" = raw bats = crouch
"as a lion" = ar-ee, ar-yay = in the sense of violence; a lion
"and as an old lion" = law-bee' leb-ee-yaw' leb-aw-eem = to roar
"shall rouse him up" = koom = to rise
Monday, September 7, 2009
John 17:6
"I have manifested thy name [authority; character] unto the men which thou has given me out of the world: thine they were, and thou gavest them to me; and they have kept thy word." -KJV
"I manifest thy name [authority; character] to men whom thou givest me out of the world. Thine they were, and to Me Thou givest them, and Thy word they have kept." - CLV
"I have made your name [authority; character] known to mankind, the ones you gave me from the world. They were yours and you gave them to me and they honored your manifestation." - Peshitta
Literary Translations
"manifest" = phaneroo = render apparent
"name" = onoma = authority; character
"world" = kosmos = arrangement, decoration
"word" = logos = something said; something thought; topic; reasoning; motive; computation
A question that came to mind when reading John 17:16 is that in order to keep the word of God, as it is written the thought, topic, reasoning, motive and/or computation of God, one would have to be aware of this "word" or logos. And not only in the corporeal existence (as in reading a sentence on a page and understanding the meaning of the words) but in the spiritual existence (where something is not known or learned, but revealed) where understanding of spiritual reasoning keeps its foundation.
Quote by Teilhard de Chardin
Someday after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides, and gravity
We shall harness for God the energies of Love,
and then for a second time in the history of the World,
humanity will have discovered Fire.
This leads me to believe that in "harnessing Love" we will develop means of ascending to Love through mastering the same elements again, but in the spiritual realm.
Wind - the spirit is moved by outside forces in directions outside of its own control
Waves - the spirit ascends and descends levels over distances
Tides - the spirit is regularly distributed to and retracted from various distances
Gravity - the spirit receives a weight upon it from an unseen source that tethers it to another substance.
If one were to "Master" these activities in the spirit he or she would seem to then stand still. Stillness thought by many great Sages to be the highest level of existence, is one in which there is no time or space, but only completion or oneness.
My thoughts on Still...
The Hebrew word shabbos or shabbat means rest or cessation, and is considered by many to be a state of mind (or spirit) and not necessarily a physical status. It's achievement is thought to be a gift from God.
cessation: a temporary or complete stopping; discontinuance
1 Kings 19:12 calls God's voice a "still small voice".
Numbers 9:8 Moses says "stand still and I will hear", speaking to the Israelites.
1 Samuel 9:27 Samuel says to Saul, "stand thou still awhile that I may show thee the Word of God."
...the search continues...
Time to read Samuel.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)