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"Everyone
who has insight into the matter will understand clearly that everything
created and having being is as absolute naught with regard to the
Activating Force, which is in all created being. This force constitutes
it's reality and draws it forth from absolute nothingness to being.
The
fact that all ceated things seem to have existence and being in their
own right is because we can neither conceive nor see, with our physical
eyes, the Force of God which is in the created world. Were the eye
able to see and conceive the vitality and spirituality in each created
thing, which flows through it from it's divine source, then the physicality,
materiality, and substantiality of the created world would not be
seen at all; because apart from the spiritual dimension it is absolute
nothingness. There is really nothing in existence besides God."
(The
teachings of Rabbi Schneur Zalman)
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Ein-Sof
is the absolute perfection in which there are no distinctions and no
differentiations, and according to some even no volition. It does not
reveal itself in a way that makes knowledge of its nature possible,
and it is not accessible even to the innermost thought ... of the contemplative.
(p. 89)
More daring is the concept of the first step in the manifestation of
Ein-Sof as ayin or afisah ("nothing," "nothingness").
Essentially, this nothingness is the barrier confronting the human intellectual
faculty when it reaches the limts of its capacity. In other words, it
is a subjective statement affirming that there is a realm which no created
being can intellectually comprehend, and which, therefore, can only
be defined as "nothingness." (p. 94)
The God who manifests Himself in His Sefirot is the very same God of
traditional religious belief, and consequently, despite all the complexities
such an idea involves, the emanation of the Sefirot is a process within
God Himself. The hidden God in the aspect of Ein-Sof and the God manifested
in the emanation of the Sefirot are one and the same, viewed from two
different angles. (p. 98)
... God who expresses Himself in the emanation of the Sefirot is greater
than the totality of the Sefirot through which He works and by means
of which He passes from unity to plurality. (p. 102)
The Slavonic Book of Enoch (13:8):
"I have seen the measure of the height of the Lord, without dimension
and without shape, which has no end." (p. 17)
Nahmanides:
...the true meaning of the text (creatio ex nihilo) is the emergence
of all things from the absolute nothingness of God.
(p. 95)
Sarug in his book, Limmudei Azilut:
In the beginning Ein-Sof took pleasure in its own autarkic self-sufficiency,
and the "pleasure" produced a kind of "shaking"
(ni'anu'a) which was the movement of Ein-Sof within itself. Next the
movement "from itself to itself" aroused the root of Din
(i.e. "judgment"), which was still indistinguishably combined
with Rahamim (i.e. "overflowing mercy). As a result of this "shaking",
"primordial points" were engraved ... As light of Ein-Sof
outside this "engraving" acted upon the points within it,
the latter were activated from their potential state and the primordial
Torah, the ideal world woven in the substance of Ein-Sof itself, came
into being. (p. 132)
(From
the Kabbalah)
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The
Sefirot, both individually and collectively, subsume the archetype of
every created thing outside the world of emanation. Just as they are
contained within the Godhead, so they impregnate every being outside
it. (p. 105)
... every being has a secondary existence of its own apart from the
Godhead but this disappears before the penetrating gaze of the mystic
which uncovers the unity of essence behind it. (p. 147)
Moses de Leon in his book, Sefer ha-Rimmon:
... God's true essence is "above and below, in heaven and on earth,
and there is no existence besides Him." (p. 147)
At
opposite poles, both man and God encompass within their being the
entire cosmos. However, whereas God contains all by virtue of being
its Creator and Initiator in whom everything is rooted and all potency
is hidden, man's role is to complete this process by being the agent
through whom all the powers of creation are fully activated and made
manifest. What exists seminally in God unfolds and develops in man...
If the forces of the Sefirot are reflected in him, he is also the
"transformer" who through his own life and deeds amplifies
these forces to their highest level of manifestation and redirects
them to their original source. (p. 152)
The later strata of the Zohar (i.e. the Ra'aya Meheimna and the Tikkunim):
if God stands apart from the world He is also
within it ("He is outside as much as He is inside"), and
that He "fills all and causes all" without this immanence
precluding a personalistic and theistic view of Him. (p. 148)
Cordovero's book Elimah, 24d:
"God is all that exists, but not all that exists is God."
(p. 150)
(From
the Kabbalah)
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"Only
our concept of time makes it possible for us to speak of the Day of
Judgement by that name; in reality it is a summary court in perpetual
session." (Frank
Kafka) |
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"A
house testifies that there was a builder, a dress that there was a tailor;
so our World by it's existence proclaims it's Creator, God."
(Adapted
from Rabbi Akiba - Midrash Temura, ch 3)
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Site
created Sept 1997.
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