The Year of Jubilee
Chapter Six:
The Heavenly Yeshiva
The Holy Light, Rabbi Shimon ben Yochai, begins his discourse in the Heavenly Yeshiva at the point he left off in life. He had expired while interpreting Psalm 133, verse 3:
For there Adonai ordained the blessing: LIFE even unto the WORLDS.
Thus
spoke Rabbi Shimon to the members of the
“When the Angel of Death interrupted me, I had not finished uttering the word LIFE, and so I resume with the same word here in the World to Come (Olam HaBa). First, let us consider the particular form of the word LIFE that the Psalmist uses in this verse. It is the plural form Chayyim, having an implicit duality that encompasses both Life in the earthly world and Life in the heavenly WORLDS, as is written: LIFE even unto the WORLDS.
We encounter the same form of the word LIFE Chayyim in Genesis 2:7, when Adonai Elohim blows into the nostrils of Adam the ‘Soul’ Neshamah of LIFE. The same verse then speaks of Adam becoming a living ‘soul’ Nephesh, but here the word ‘life’ is in its feminine singular form Chayyah, signifying that the Nephesh has a strictly terrestrial existence. And so we see that the Torah distinguishes between the animal soul Nephesh, which is consigned to the lower world of the flesh, and the celestial Soul Neshamah, which inhabits all of the upper WORLDS as well.”
At this juncture, Doctor Germinator, a scientific member of the Academy, framed a question:
“You have spoken to the idea of the plurality of LIFE, which bears upon subjective experience and the realm of the Soul. But is not this subjective plurality of LIFE inseparably linked to the objective plurality of the WORLDS? In cosmology we have the notion of parallel universes, perhaps infinite in number, constituting a Multiverse. And quantum theory envisions the scenario of an endlessly branching reality of ‘many worlds’. How do these concepts relate to the WORLDS, the Olamim?”
Rabbi Shimon responded:
“We must distinguish between the WORLDS that are manifest and the WORLDS that are not. This is why the word for WORLD Olam has the connotation of something ‘hidden’. Due to the Fall of Adam, we are in a condition of Exile, which means we are outside the realm of our full and unabridged LIFE Chayyim. Being ‘on the outside looking in’, so to speak, we necessarily see things from an inverted perspective. Which is to say that the interior of things looks like the exterior and vice-versa. So the world of our experience and the many WORLDS of ultimate Reality have an inverse relationship to each other.”
Doctor Germinator interposed:
“String
theory talks about six hidden dimensions that are ‘curled up’ inside the four
dimensions we perceive as Space-Time. We
can think of these dimensions as an unperceived ‘core’ of our reality. Strings are thought to be the fundamental
building blocks of the universe. Their
physical properties are determined by their total energy, which comprises two
components: (1) the negative energy
associated with the string winding around the ‘core’ dimensions, and (2) the positive
energy of the string unwinding from the ‘core’.
Either the ‘winding’ or the ‘unwinding’ energy mode can be used to
measure the dimensions of Space-Time.
But the two different string energy modes define alternative Space-Times
that are reciprocals of one another. In
other words, our ‘positive energy’ universe, which we measure as 15 billion
light years across, is associated with an inverse ‘negative energy’ universe,
which we would measure (if we could) as 10-94 centimeter
across. That means that 10172
such universes would fit inside a single hydrogen atom. The reciprocal universe exists ‘inside’ every
point in Space and ‘within’ each moment in Time.”
This
prompted another member of the Academy, the metaphysician Elias, to join the
discussion:
“Let’s
consider the characteristics of an inverse Space-Time. As an object moves forward in mundane
Space-Time, its reciprocal ‘shadow’ moves backward. If we imagine the flight of an arrow, when it
is a distance R from the archer in mundane Space-Time, it is separated by 1/R
from the archer in inverse Space-Time.
So before the archer shoots the arrow, it is infinitely far away (1/0)
in reciprocal Space-Time. After he
shoots the arrow, it travels back toward him in inverse Space-Time, because as
R gets larger, 1/R gets smaller. It’s
like watching a film in reverse, which tells us that the ‘arrow of Time’ in the
reciprocal realm in reversed. Events
proceed backward from their final state to their initial state. Causality is also reversed, as the endpoint
of a process becomes its operative ‘Final Cause’.”
Doctor
Germinator agreed:
“Yes,
Time is reversed and energy is negative.
As positive energy is applied to an object in mundane Space-Time, its
velocity — distance traveled over time, or R/t — increases. But reciprocal velocity is t/R (1/R divided
by 1/t), which decreases as energy is added and increases as energy is
withdrawn. So energy in inverse Space-Time
is negative energy. Furthermore, since
the ‘arrow of Time’ is reversed, entropy decreases over reciprocal Time. Which means that things spontaneously become
more orderly and structured under the reciprocal regime: spilt milk goes back into the bottle and
broken eggs reconstitute themselves. The
reciprocal Multiverse proceeds toward greater and greater Symmetry. Inscrutable chaotic processes become
transparent.”
Rabbi
Shimon spoke again:
“The
LIFE of the WORLDS proceeds at once
toward complexity at ever higher levels of unification. This is why the Garden of Eden appears at the
Beginning, which is also the End of Time, the Final Cause. Within the great trunk of the Tree of LIFE, Eitz HaChayyim, all of the WORLDS coincide simultaneously. Each instant in Time is eternal and each point
in Space is infinite in the inverse Space-Time which you have scientifically
and metaphysically derived.
Before
Adam’s Fall, the Tree of LIFE was
within Man, and he was within it. But
the immediate effect of the Fall was to separate Man from the Tree of LIFE, so that, as is written in Genesis
3:22, he needed to ‘stretch out his hand’
to touch it. Mundane Space-Time was now
interposed between Adam and the WORLDS
of inverted Space-Time, which became external to Man. This externality was enforced by the fiery ‘ever-turning
sword’ Lahat HaCherev — that is, by
the very ‘winding’ energy Lahat that
sustains the reciprocal order. The
ever-turning sword Lahat HaCherev can
also be read as the ‘metaphysical drought’. To continue with this theme, I will now call
upon my friend Rav Hamnuna Sava, the Great Fish.”
Upon
saying this, Rabbi Shimon was transformed into the appearance of Rav Hamnuna,
who resumed the discourse:
“All
that we perceive emerges from the great Ocean of the Divine, which is embodied
in the Torah. Our reality floats on this
Ocean and is supported by it, just as balusters supported the roof of the
Tabernacle Mishkhan of the
Congregation of
As
Rav Hamnuna pronounced the word “sword”, his Son Yose ben Nuna entered the
Assembly:
“I
knew it was my Father who was speaking, just a Moses knew it was the Voice of
the LIVING GOD that he heard on the
Mount of the Sword. I inferred this because
the hall in which we sit is even now encompassed by a seemingly impassable wall
of fire.”
Rav
Hamnuna asked him:
“And
how did you penetrate this wall of fire, my Son?”
He
replied:
“With
my Sword, the Sword of Torah that was endowed upon Moses on
Rav
Hamnuna smiled:
“Truly,
the fire embodies Shekhinah, who
yields only to the honed edge of argument.
I am girding the Sword onto my loins as you speak. But be warned: This a combat to the Death.”
His
Son rejoined:
“But
Death is Mavet, which becomes Emet ‘Truth’ when we extract the letter Vav.”
Rav
Hamnuna parried:
“And,
being the sixth letter, Vav
represents the Sixth Day of Creation, the Day on which Elohim said, ‘Let us make
Man.’ ‘Let us’, because the Creation of Man involved both the Male and the
Female principles in conjunction — the conjunction signified by the letter Vav, which is shaped like a hook.”
Laughed
Yose ben Nuna:
“The
same hook on which I hope to catch you, the Great Fish.”
“Then
proceed with your exposition, my Son ,”
said Rav Hamnuna, “the Fish awaits your cast.”
Yose
ben Nuna began:
“Why
does the flaming Sword Cherev that
enforced the Exile of Adam appear again when his progeny are released from Exile
at
The
Great Fish interjected:
“They
saw no water, yet they were surrounded by a Sea, the same Sea in which I
swim. This Sea is called Malkhut, which is the Dominion of Shekhinah over the all the WORLDS.”
Whereupon
his Son resumed:
“As
it is written in Psalms 145:13: ‘Your Malkhut
is a Malkhut of all WORLDS (Olamim). Your Dominion encompasses the entirety of the
Cycles.’ The Cycles are the waves of the
endless and timeless Ocean. Their entire
scope extends beneath the waves and within them — waves within waves and Cycles
within Cycles endlessly into the depths Tehom,
from whence they support all that exists.
Thus the next verse of the Psalm says that even the apparently gigantic Nephilim (descendents of the Fallen
Angels) are supported by the minute
sub-texture of Reality.
The
Great Fish interrupted his son:
“But
why does this incident of Moses drawing water from the rock occur twice — the
first within days of crossing the Red Sea, as described in Exodus chapter 17,
and the second in the fortieth and final year of
Yose
ben Nuna explained:
“Let
us remember that water mayyim like LIFE Chayyim
is a dual plural noun. And so there are
the WATERS above, pertaining to all
the WORLDS, and the waters below,
circumscribed by this world. As
described in Exodus 17, Moses stood upon the rock and lowered his right arm to
strike it, and striking it only once, brought forth mundane water for the
people to drink. With the lowering of
his right arm, the WATERS ceased to
flow from above, and Shekhinah was no
longer protected from the Qlippot of
the Other Side, which seek to defile Her.
And so it was no accident that immediately thereafter the Congregation
of Israel was attacked by the army of Amelek.”
Rav
Hamnuna observed:
“Amalek
was the son of Esau, or
His
son resumed:
“Let
us follow the rule we agreed upon before.
Namely, let us extract Vav so
that Mavet Death may be transformed
into Emet Truth. And since Vav
is the sixth letter, we look to the sixth verse of Exodus chapter 17, which is
usually translated as:
Behold, I will be standing there before
you upon the rock in Choreb.
But
which can also be read as:
They will be standing facing Thee, the
NAME, upon the Rock with a Sword.
Because
‘there’ sham with different vowel
points (serei instead of qamatz) becomes ‘name’, referring to the
ineffable Name of YHVH, the
Tetragrammaton. ‘They’ signifies the Six
Sephirot that face toward the Name, Tiferet, in which ‘They’ are
reconciled. When they stand apart from
the Name, however, they demand harsh Judgment, represented by the Sword.”
The
Great Fish interposed:
“Now
that you have extracted the hook Vav,
you must cast it into the Sea Yam,
which was created on the Third Day.”
Taking
the cue, Yose continued:
“Yes,
for in the third verse of this chapter we find:
And the people thirsted there
for water …
Which
we should render instead as:
And the people thirsted the NAME into
the WATERS …
That
is, they thirsted for the NAME so as
to bring forth the flow of the WATERS
from the hidden dimensions Olamim of
Reality.”
Rav
Hamnuna interrupted again:
“All
of the Olamim enter the Kingdom Malkhut by unseen paths. The personification of the Kingdom is David,
who writes (Psalms 42:3):
My Nephesh thirsts for Elohim, the
LIVING GOD …
The
Psalmist asks himself continually, ‘Where Ayeh
is your Elohim?’, but his question
answers itself in its alternate rendering, ‘Ehyeh
is your Elohim.’ When Moses asks the Voice from the Burning
Bush for Its name, It replies Ehyeh. Ehyeh
signifies the most exalted and most inscrutable of the metaphysical Spheres, or
Sefirot. Since it is inscrutable, Ehyeh is also called Ayin,
signifying negation or nothingness. It
is the negative existence of the higher WORLDS
that invisibly sustains all LIFE. ”
His
Son continued:
“As
interpreted by the Holy Light Rabbi Shimon (Zohar 1:2a), Psalm 42 describes the
process of emanation from the supernal Mother Binah to Her Daughter Shekhinah. Since Binah
is the highest level of the Divine to which Thought can reach in its
questioning, She is called ‘Who’ Mi. In Her role as Creatrix, Binah emanates the seven lower Sefirot,
which are called ‘these’ elleh. Hence, the Psalmist (42:5) enjoins: ‘Let me
remember these elleh.’ The emanation of elleh (Aleph, Lamed, Heh) from
Mi (Mem, Yod) composes Elohim (Aleph, Lamed, Heh, Yod, Mem), the
garment that Binah bestows upon Her
Daughter Shekhinah.”
Noted
Rav Hamnuna:
“And
so the emanations of all of the Sefirot
flow from the highest level Ehyeh-Ayin
like rivers into the Sea which is Elohim. Which is why one can truly say, ‘Ehyeh is your Elohim.’ Elohim is the reservoir or pool Breikhah into which all blessing Barakhah empties from on High, through
the Name of YHVH.”
At
this point, Rav Hamnuna briefly morphed back into Rabbi Shimon ben Yochai for
just long enough to say:
“Excuse
me if I Breik-hah in here for a
moment. [Aside: Even very enlightened
sages can make bad jokes now and then.] I see now we have another interpretation of
the passage with which I began (Psalms 133:3):
… For there Adonai ordained the blessing: LIFE even unto the WORLDS.
Putting
this passage in context, a new reading is suggested. In the first verse, exhorting men to
brotherhood, the Psalmist exclaims ‘How good and how pleasant’ it
is for brothers to dwell together in Oneness.
Tradition teaches us that ‘how’ Mah
is a name for Shekhinah — whose title
itself derives from Shakhan
‘dwelling’. Shekhinah (aka Adonai) embodies
the Oneness of all human souls, the Neshamah. This passage then goes on to describe the
emanation of the Neshamah like an
anointing oil flowing from the head of the Sefirot
(Ehyeh-Ayin) down the beard of
Aaron. Aaron personifies the Sefirah of Hod, which is the Sphere of visionary experience. From Hod,
the divine chrism settles on
… like the dew of Hermon that falls
upon the mountains of
Inasmuch as the Name commissioned for
Adonai a Pool (Breikhah), LIFE extends into the WORLDS.
I
leave this as an exercise for my students:
What was this ‘Pool’ commissioned for Adonai?”
Not
waiting for Rabbi Shimon to transform back into his Father, Yose ben Nuna
responded:
“In
Solomon’s Temple on Mount Zion there was commissioned in Adonai’s honor an
indoor pool, a huge basin cast in bronze, about 15 meters in
circumference. Referred to as the ‘Sea’,
it was described (1Kings 7:23) as having been formed from a ‘mold’ yatsaq, as is an Archetype of the
Imagination, Yetser.”
Rav
Hamnuna rejoined the discussion:
“The
gematria of ‘Sea’ Yam is 50, thus
representing the 50 years of Jubilee Cycle Yobel
(‘in the Jubilee’ also has a gematria of 50), as well as the 50 Gates of
Understanding. Both of these pertain to
the Sefirah of Binah, the source from which emanates the WORLDS. The realm of the WORLDS extends from the First Gate,
which is Shekhinah, to the 50th
Gate, which is Yobel-Binah. The Hebrew word for ‘gate’ sha’ar with a different vowel point
under the Shin (qamatz instead of patach)
becomes ‘to imagine’ sha’ar. The vowel qamatz
signifies enclosing something in the hand, as one does with a key, while patach is the action of opening, as one
does a gate or door. So it’s like Rod
Serling says on the ‘Twilight Zone’:
‘You unlock this door with the key of Imagination’.”
Yose
was puzzled:
“I
have never heard of this Rav Serling.
Was he a great sage of Kabbalah?
Was he a Tanna?”
Rav
Hamnuna laughed:
“Yes,
a TV Tanna of mid-20th
Century Amerika. His parables were quite
entertaining as well as enlightening.”
His
son inquired:
“But
how did you learn of these parables, my Father?
You died many centuries before the time of this Rav Serling.”
The
Great Fish explained:
“But
in the Sea of negative existence, the current of events flows from Future to
Past, the reverse of ordinary time. Such
is the ‘dimension of Mind’ about which Rav Serling taught. We do not move into the Future, the Future
moves into us through the Breath of the universal Soul Neshamah. Mind draws images
of the Future through us as Sea water is drawn through the gills of a fish.”
Elias
the Metaphysician joined in:
“Remember
the Zen koan: ‘Not the flag, not the wind — Mind
is moving.’ The patterns of the Soul
Breath are recursive. They replicate
themselves infinitely and eternally on ever larger and smaller scales. That is why Time is represented as an hourglass. The cone of sand in the upper chamber of the
glass shrinks down into the aperture, from whence it inversely expands in the
same conical pattern into the lower chamber.
So the Circle of Time Gilgal
funnels down from the upper WORLDS Olamim, with the diameter of the Circle
shrinking until it reaches the Opening — the HERE&NOW Koh — from
which it unfolds into the realm of experience.”
Dr.
Germinator added his scientific perspective:
“The
hourglass is precisely the model physics uses to depict the structure of
four-dimensional Space-Time. It’s known
as the Minkowski ‘Light Cone’, and it looks like this:
The
point at which these two cones meet is also, I believe, the junction of physics
and metaphysics. Who can we call upon to
explain the mystery of this point, which my friend Elias has just referred to
as Koh?”
Rav
Hamnuna answered:
“This
matter involves the Gates of Light Sha’rei
Orah, on which subject Rabbi Gikatilla is our leading Tanna. I will yield my place
to him so that he may address this question.”
Momentarily,
Rav Hamnuna metamorphosed into Rabbi Joseph Gikatilla, who now spoke:
“Koh is a yet another name for Shekhinah. It refers to Her function as a entranceway to
all the higher Spheres. This attribute
is also known as Petach Einayim,
which means ‘the Opening of the Eyes’.
Recall that patach connotes
the action of opening, and the vowel by that name takes us through the Gate Sha’ar to the upper WORLDS by way of Imagination Sha’ar. The word Einayim
is the dual form of Ayin, which means
both ‘eye’ and ‘fountain’. So it can refer
to either a pair of eyes or a pair of fountains.”
Yose
ben Nuna asked:
“What
do eyes and fountains have to do with each other? It seems to me that an eye is passive,
absorbing light, while a fountain is active, emitting water.”
Rabbi
Gikatilla rejoined:
“Herein
lies a great mystery. In mankind’s
fallen condition, they consider the Eye to be a strictly passive sensory organ,
one that simply receives light from the external world and reacts to it. But we know that there are actually two kinds
of light — the mundane light they experience down below and the supernal Light we
enjoy here in the Olam HaBa World to
Come. This divine Light was the first
creation of the Elohim, who
immediately called it Tov
‘Good’. According to the Zohar, the Tov Light is the ‘Light of the Eye’,
which means it emanates from within the Eye.
By this Light, Adam was able to see all of Space and Time in one instant,
and Moses could view the entire Promised Land in one glance. This why there are two Eyes, because of this
dual character of Light. There is the
sublime Light that goes forth from the Eye, like the water that pours forth
from a fountain. This is the
quintessential Light that proceeds out of Mind to create all things and cause
all events. And then there is the
ordinary light that returns to the Eye, so that the Flesh may be able to orient
itself with respect to the things and events that the Mind has made.”
Dr.
Germinator interjected:
“Excuse
me, but I had to interrupt here because what Rabbi Gikatilla is describing is
incredibly similar to something in modern physics called the Wheeler-Feynman
emitter-absorber theory. For the sake of
brevity, I’ll refer to this as the ‘WF theory’.
That theory is based on the fact that there are two sets of solutions to
Maxwell’s equation for the propagation of electromagnetic waves. One solution describes a ‘retarded wave’,
which has positive energy and frequency and propagates into the Future. This is mundane light. But the other solution describes an ‘advanced
wave’ that has negative energy and frequency and propagates backward in Time. The latter seems to correspond to the supernal
Light that the Zohar talks about.
According
to the WF theory, the receptor that’s going to absorb a ray of light sends an ‘advanced
wave’ back in Time to the source that’s going to emit the light, and that
releases the source to emit a ‘retarded wave’ forward in Time to the receptor. When we look at something, the receptor is
our eye. So if the WF theory is right,
the eye sends out ‘advanced waves’ which go back in Time and trigger the
‘retarded waves’ of light that convey the things and events of our experience. All that we see is like an echo of the primal
Light, the Light of the Eye. If you look at the Minkowki ‘Light Cone’ diagram
that I displayed earlier, the Eye is positioned at the apex of the ‘Past Light
Cone’ — that is, at the Opening of the archetypal hourglass. It’s always at the Koh point, the infinite HERE
and the eternal NOW.”
Rabbi
Gikatilla noted:
“When
Moses approached the Burning Bush (Exodus 3:4), he experienced Elohim calling out his name twice:
‘Moses! Moses!’ He experienced it once
in the ‘advanced wave’ of divine Light, and once in the ‘retarded wave’ of
worldly light. Standing at the
crossroads of the Past and the Future, he became aware: ‘HERE
I AM.’ Thus began his Communion with Ehyeh — I AM. Ehyeh is
the ultimate I-Eye, positioned at the End of Time, such that everything is
encompassed by the ‘Past Light Cone’ of this I-Eye. The ancient Egyptian symbol of the all-seeing
Eye at the apex of the Great Pyramid is a rendering of this same universal
Archetype.
This
explains why each of us, by emitting ‘advanced waves’ from our Eye, do not
create our own isolated version of Reality — what would be, in effect, a
solipsistic universe. Instead, all Eyes
are attuned to the Vision of the ultimate I-Eye Ehyeh. The Vision of Ehyeh is transmitted by the sublime
Light backward from the End of Time into the Eye of each human. But the Vision is not the same for each
person. Rather, in passing through the WORLDS, the Light is refracted into its
multi-colored components, just as ordinary light becomes a rainbow in passing
through a cloud of mist. Each individual
is equipped to receive only one distinct ‘wavelength’ of the Light, and to each
is given his/her own unique Vision. But,
in totality, the individual Visions drawn from the distinct ‘wavelengths’ all
add up to One Vision — the Vision of Ehyeh.”
Yose
ben Nuna inquired:
“But
tell me, Rabbi Joseph, if all humanity shares the One Vision that emanates from
Ehyeh, why does Man experience Good
and Evil?”
Rabbi
Joseph responded:
“Because
the sin of Eve and Adam brought mankind into a type of perception that is blind
to the ‘advanced waves’ comprising the higher Light. The fallen Consciousness of the ego-self
experiences only one side of Reality — that which the Eye receives as ‘retarded
waves’. This appears as a Reality
imposed on Man from outside himself. But
this is because his ego-self does not include his higher Self, which is exiled
to the Un-Conscious. Only the so-called
Unconscious side experiences the ‘advanced waves’. Only the Unconscious is aware of how its
individual Vision communicates with the overall Vision of Ehyeh and creates the Reality echoed back to ego-perception in the
form of ‘retarded waves’.
But
the Unconscious knowledge is filtered out of fallen Consciousness by the
ego. When the Serpent seduced Eve to eat
from the Tree of Good and Evil, he promised her that its fruit would ‘open her
eyes’ and enable her to create her own worlds.
This was the false promise of a creative Vision unconnected to that of Ehyeh.
Eve and Adam’s belief in that false promise, however, caused them to
fall into the delusion of a separate, insular Vision — a delusion that made
them blind to the nexus between their Vision and Ehyeh’s.
What
is this splintered Consciousness like?
Think of a symphony orchestra, with the sounds of all of the instruments
blending to produce the musical Vision of the composer. Now consider what would happen if we divided
the orchestra in half and blocked out the sound from the right side. The symphony would now become uneven and
disjointed, sometimes sounding euphoniously ‘good’, but other times sounding
discordantly ‘bad’. This exemplifies the
unbalanced version of Reality that the ego-self perceives. It is like any unbalanced thing, lurching
back and forth from one side of the metaphysical plane to the other,
fluctuating between apparent ‘Good’ and apparent ‘Evil’.
By
the way, since I spoke of the Koh
point as the ‘crossroads’ of Past and Future, I should observe that the phrase
‘Opening of the Eyes’ Petach Einayim,
can also be translated as the ‘crossroads’.”
Upon
pronouncing the word “crossroads”, Rabbi Gikatilla was transformed into the
Holy Light, Rabbi Shimon ben Yochai, who now spoke again:
“We
are now prepared to enter the ‘crossroads’ of the Tree of LIFE — the paired Sefirot of
Netzach and Hod. These two are
personified by the two brothers Moses and Aaron, respectively. They also correspond to the two ‘Light Cones’
of Future and Past that our scientific colleague has so ably described. Hod
is Vision. It is the Eye’s emission of
quintessential Light — what WF theory calls ‘advanced waves’ — down the Past
Light Cone. Because this Light travels
backward in Time, it creates all Reality, as far back as the very dawn of Time
itself.
Therefore,
the Eye does not passively receive Reality, but rather Reality emanates from
the Eye. For example, I just now
perceived Elias standing up to stretch himself.
But as Elias stood, my Eye transmitted the Vision of ‘Elias stretching’ back
in Time. This Vision reached Elias at
the instant he began to stand, and as It unfolded in his Mind, his Body (which
is the physical extension of his Mind) stretched in response to the
stimulus. Ordinary light — the ‘retarded
waves’ — then carried his act of stretching back into my Eye, and I perceived
it as Reality. Because Elias and I are
within a couple of meters of one another, all of this was transacted within a
matter of moments in mundane time. But
in the mirror of inverse Time, the simple action of ‘Elias stretching’
stretches out over eons.”
Dr.
Germinator reflected:
“Since
the advanced wave propagates with negative energy and frequency, it must travel
through the realm of reciprocal Space-Time of which we spoke earlier. In this realm, each momentary, localized
phenomenon of ordinary Reality has a counterpart that is vast and
enduring. Since positive Reality
‘floats’ on this realm of negative existence and is sustained by it, the most
evanescent events truly form the underlying Foundation of all that we
perceive. Furthermore, it now occurs to
me that this Sea of negative energy is precisely the ocean of negative energy
that was predicted by physicist P.A.M. Dirac in 1928. When Dirac solved the relativistic Shrödinger
equation, he found there were two sets of solutions, one describing states of
positive energy and the other describing negative energy states. Since all things spontaneously seek their
lowest energy state, Dirac realized that the realm of positive energy could not
exist at all unless all of the negative energy states were already filled. Therefore, according to Dirac’s equation, the
world of perceived phenomena ‘floats’ on an immanent Sea of negative energy
states.
If
you’ll indulge me a little longer, it also occurs to me that Dirac’s Sea might
explain the observed periods of accelerated expansion of the physical
universe. Cosmologists have no clue as
to why this happens. They’ve tried to
fudge a solution by inserting an arbitrary ‘cosmological constant’ into
Einstein’s general relativity equations (as Einstein himself originally did in
the 1920s when he was trying to conform his equations to the then-accepted view
of a static universe). The best
explanation ascribes this acceleration to an unobserved form of energy called
‘dark energy’, which appears to account for 75% of the energy in the universe.
It
seems to me that this unobserved reservoir of ‘dark energy’ must be nothing
more than Dirac’s Sea of negative energy.
Negative energy implies superluminal velocity, which (per Einstein’s
equation for relativistic mass) implies an imaginary mass, which in turn
implies a repulsive gravitational force.
Thus, when Dirac’s Sea is filled, as it is now, it exerts a powerful
repulsive gravitational force that drives cosmic expansion. But expansion results in cooling of the
cosmic microwave background, and when the background temperature falls to
certain transition point (about 2.7º K), the Sea of negative energy congeals
into something called a ‘Bose-Einstein Condensate’ (BEC).
In
this state, the Sea no longer acts as if it’s ‘filled’, so positive energy
particles can no longer ‘float’ on it.
As these particles increasingly ‘sink’ into Dirac’s Sea, the amount of
negative energy increases as does the repulsive gravitational force it
generates. The latter causes the cosmic
expansion to accelerate. But particles
dropping down to negative energy states also release large quantities of
positive energy, which heats the microwave background until it rises above the BEC
transition point. Then the
“An
intriguing, though not altogether comprehensible tangent to our discussion,”
sighed Rabbi Shimon, who would have expressed exasperation were he capable of
such emotional foibles. “I suppose this
also explains how Rabbi Yeshua the Nazarene was able to walk upon the water of
the
Oblivious
to the subtle irony of Rabbi Shimon’s remark, Dr. Germinator responded: “Gee, I dunno, let me think about that, and
I’ll get back to you.”
“Fine,”
smiled Rabbi Shimon, “and while you’re thinking about that, let’s pick up where
we left off concerning the Eye’s capacity for Vision. Instead of watching my friend Elias stretch
himself, I am now looking up at the Andromeda Galaxy some 2.2 million
light-years away. That means that the
light I now see left that Galaxy over 2 million years ago, long before I or any
of my human ancestors were born, long before humans even existed as a
species. Yet the photon that my Eye now
perceives left Andromeda in response to my Vision of it, the advanced waves of
which travel down the Past Light Cone back in Time 2.2 million years while I
gaze upon it. In this example, therefore,
the interval in the ‘crossroads’ between Vision and perception has expanded
from the mere moments of Elias’ stretching to eons of starlight propagation.”
Elias
added:
“Yet
the counterpart of this perception in the WORLDS
of inverse Space-Time is a microscopic event transpiring in a fleeting
instant. The great expanses of Space-Time
which captivate unenlightened mankind in fact play almost no role in the actual
Foundation of Reality. Tragically,
however, fallen Man feels himself dwarfed by the imposing immensity of the
cosmos, never realizing that one strand of hair on his head contains much more
of Reality’s essence that all the stars in the heavens. The god of conventional religion — the idolaters’
god who muscularly flexes his supposed powers across the enormity of Space-Time
— is a non-entity ayin. He is a pitiful gnat magnified by the
distortions of fragmented Consciousness.
For
myself, as a metaphysician, the great challenge is to restore Consciousness to
wholeness. But we must recall, as the
poet Yeats wrote: ‘Nothing can be whole
or sole which has not been rent.’
Consciousness, albeit fragmented, retains the fractal structure of
self-similarity, so that each spark, each flint of fractured unity captures all
the information needed to restore the Whole.
Each one of us, if we could only recover our true and essential Selfhood,
would instantly restore the entire shredded fabric of Reality to seamless
integrity.”
Yose
ben Nuna chimed in:
“As
is written by the Psalmist (114:7-8):
Whirl thou Earth before the Face of
Adonai, before the Face of Jacob’s Eloah, who turned the Rock into a pool of
WATERS, the flint into a fountain of WATERS.
In
this passage, the word for fountain mayin
is a form of the word ayin, which
means both ‘fountain’ and ‘eye’. The
Hebrew for ‘flint’ challamiesh is
derived from the root chalam, which
signifies both ‘to bind’ and ‘to dream’.
Thus, the WATERS of visionary
experience are bound together in the fractal imagery of dreaming, in the symbolic
language of the so-called ‘Unconscious’ Mind.”
Dr.
Germinator roused himself from deep thought:
“There
is strong evidence that all of the possible outcomes of a quantum event — which
is to say, all of the alternate histories that make up the WORLDS Olamim — are
experienced by the Unconscious Mind. Consider
the concept of a ‘quantum computer’, which would perform calculations
simultaneously in each of the ‘many worlds’ that branch off from a quantum
event. Crude versions of such a ‘quantum
computer’ have already been made to factorize huge numbers that would take
centuries to factorize using conventional computers. And yet we have many reliable accounts of
‘idiot savants’ — mentally impaired people with very low levels of Conscious
intelligence — who are able to factorize these same numbers in their
heads! How else is this possible unless
their Unconscious Minds are able to access the Olamim and perform calculations simultaneously in the myriad WORLDS just as a quantum computer
does? Ironically, the idiot savant’s
lack of Conscious intelligence allows him/her to do this, because the Conscious
‘filter’ of Unconscious experience is inoperative.”
Elias
elaborated further on this thought:
“It
reminds me of the recurring mythical motif of the ‘blind prophet’. Tieresias in the Odyssey is one example, as is Homer himself. The prophetic poet John Milton is
another. As is true of the ‘idiot
savant’, their defect allows them to overcome the filtering effect of ego-consciousness. Deprived of the retarded waves of mundane
light as a means of orienting themselves in the world, they are compelled to
open their ‘other Eye’ to the advanced waves.”
Yose
wondered aloud:
“But
didn’t we say that advanced waves emanate from the Eye, while retarded waves
are received by It? How then does the
blind Eye perceive advanced waves?”
Elias
acknowledged:
“You
are right to call for some clarification on this point. We have two metaphysical Eyes just as we have
two physical eyes. We have spoken up to
now of the Eye of Vision, the Left Eye which actively creates Reality through
the medium of supernal Light. The
visionary rays of these advanced waves propagate down the Past Light Cone
backward in Time through the Sea of negative energy. But there is also the Eye of Prophecy, the
Right Eye that is turned upward toward the Future Light Cone and receives the advanced
waves emanated from the Left Eye of humans in the Time to come. Thus the prophet literally sees through the
Eyes of those who inhabit the Future Time by perceiving their visionary rays in
his Right Eye. While the person with
ordinary eyesight orients himself by looking backward at past events
transmitted by retarded waves, the blind prophet finds his way into the Future
by looking forward at the Light of advanced waves radiating from unborn
generations.”
Rabbi
Shimon’s face seemed to glow with satisfaction at the course the discussion was
taking:
“I
promised earlier that we would be entering the ‘crossroads’ of the Tree of LIFE, and now that promise has been
fulfilled. What my friend Elias has just
referred to as the Right Eye and the Left Eye correspond to the paired Sefirot Netzach and Hod —
Prophecy and Vision. The latter creates
Past Reality by radiating quintessential Light backward in Time, while the
former perceives Future Reality by receiving the visionary Light of the years
to come. Between these two Eyes, between
Netzach and Hod, between the Past Light Cone and the Future Light Cone, lie the
‘crossroads’ — the ‘Opening of the Eyes’ Petach
Einayim.
What
is Petach Einayim? It is the point at which the transcendent
Soul Neshamah enters the world. It is therefore the only point in Space-Time
inhabited by Self-Awareness. It is the
dimensionless point of HERE&NOW
or Koh — the point at which our
world-line crosses the path of Mind. It
is the only place in the physical universe where LIFE Chayyim is
present. Reflect on your thoughts as you
are listening to my words. Your thought
is present, YOU are present only in the instant of each sound from my
lips. Your experience of Awareness has
no duration; it does not extend into the Past or Future. The window of sentience has no width — no,
not even width enough for a single ray of light to pass through it. So then, what does pass through it? NOTHING
Ayin. Great waves from the Sea of
negative existence crash through this window, waves that are dimensionless in
mundane Space-Time, but infinite in the inverse realm of the Olamim.”
As
the Holy Light was enunciating the word ‘NOTHING’,
Yose ben Nuna began to morph into Eleazar, the son of Rabbi Shimon. It was he that spoke next:
“Accordingly,
when the Israelites thirsted for water at Rephidim,
where Moses struck the Rock, they cried out (Exodus 17:7):
Is the Name within us, or NOTHING Ayin?
The Name relates to the level of the Sefirah Tiferet — the condition of perfect Symmetry in which all division
is erased. Except for Moses, the
Israelites had not yet attained this level (as they would at
Eleazar’s
Father interjected:
“Well
said, my Son. Notice, however, that
while this verse does indeed say that the Israelites strove toward the Name,
the Name is not expressed simply as YHVH. Rather, it is written Et YHVH, which is the
union of Et with YHVH. So here’s my question
for you: ‘What is Et?’”
Rabbi
Eleazar responded:
“The
answer to your question is ‘yes’.”
Doctor
Germinator looked confused:
“I
don’t get it. Rabbi Shimon asked, ‘What
is Et?”, and the answer is ‘Yes’?
Rabbi
Shimon laughed:
“My
Son is right, the answer is ‘Yes’.
Remember earlier is our discussion, I said that Mah is one of the names assigned to Shekhinah. Mah means ‘how’ or ‘what’. Hence the statement, ‘What Mah is Et’ is correct, because Et
is yet another designation for Shekhinah. Shekhinah
embodies the Oral Tradition, the oral Torah, just as Her mate Tiferet represents the written
Torah. Accordingly, Shekhinah expresses the entire scope of divine Speech, from the
first letter Aleph to the final
letter Tav. And Aleph
Tav spells Et.”
Rabbi
Eleazar continued:
“It
follows, therefore, that the Israelites at Rephidim
were striving toward the unity of Et
and YHVH, the divine Wedding (or Hierosgamos) of Shekhinah and Tiferet. As is customary in a wedding, the bride takes
the name of her husband, so in the Hierosgamos,
Shekhinah takes the Name of YHVH.
She joins in the Name as the final letter Heh, thereby completing the Name and fulfilling its balance of Male
and Female. According to the prophet
Zechariah (14:6-9), upon the completion of the Name, solar/lunar light is
replaced by supernal Light. The prophet
sees the Consciousness of the Present moment Koh (represented by
In that
day, LIVING WATER shall flow from
And Adonai shall be King over all the
Earth; and in that Day YHVH shall be One and His Name shall be One.
Thus,
the divine Wedding signifies the end of the split between Consciousness and the
Unconscious — a split symbolized by the estrangement of Shekhinah from Tiferet when
She shared mankind’s Exile from
Rabbi
Shimon further observed:
“With
the Wedding of Shekhinah and Tiferet, oral and written Torah are also
joined together, as they were when Moses received the first set of Torah
tablets on
His
Son added:
“Since
Exodus chapter 17 locates the Rock that Moses struck ‘in Choreb’, this incident is clearly meant to foreshadow the divine
Wedding to come at the Mountain of the same name. The name Massah
— the locale of this event where
We
should further note that Massah can
be alternately read as Missah, which
signifies abundant flow, as from a melting block of ice. Moses waved away the illusion of a rigid
external reality, turning even the apparent solidity of Rock into a fountain of
water. He proved to the Israelites that
a Rock is not one inexorable thing, but rather many potential things. Like all things of this world, it has a
fractal structure of forms within forms, repeating endlessly. When we go inside that structure, its
apparent solidity melts away, and we encounter a vast interior space that dwarfs
the immensity of the cosmos.”
Sensing
an opportunity to insert one of his scientific analogies, Dr. Germinator
recalled a principle of geology he had learned as an undergraduate student:
“We
get water from rocks in a very literal sense ‘as well’. That’s a play on the word ‘well’, because a
well is usually nothing more than a pipe driven into a fracture in the
bedrock. So, in a very literal sense, a
well is something that extracts water from the fractal structure of rock.”
Whereupon
Rabbi Eleazar resumed:
“The
concept of flowing abundance expressed in the name Missah also echoes the theme of Zechariah’s prophecy, insofar as
the one-dimensional fissure of the HERE&NOW
is opened up to encompass both Past and Future.
Upon being struck by Moses’ rod, the narrow cleft in the Rock at Choreb broadens into a surging stream of
Consciousness flowing both forward and backward in Time. This explains why the incident of Moses
striking the Rock occurs twice — once (Exodus 17) before the Revelation on
In
this transformed metaphysical landscape, the ‘Opening of the Eyes’ Petach Einayim is now vastly
expanded: The Eyes can now view the
Sinai Revelation simultaneously from Past and Future vantage-points. Moreover, access to the quintessential Light,
aka ‘advanced waves’, enables the Left Eye to send visionary rays back through
Time to trigger events in the Past. The
stream of unified Consciousness released from its prison in the Rock of
‘objective Reality’ converges upon
Elias
followed up:
“The prefiguring of the Mount Sinai events is implicit in the very name Massah, which has a common derivation with Masseikah ‘molten’, the descriptive term applied to the Golden Calf (Exodus 32:4-8). Yet, ultimately, it’s the advanced waves from the Future scene that would have the final say, causation-wise. In a manner of speaking, the first Opening of Rock at Rephidim/Massah is nothing more than an ‘echo’ of the Final Cause (i.e.,