Opulence of the Soul (Introduction)
Monday, December 7, 2015
INTRODUCTION
There is an inner פְּנִימִי and
an outer side חִיצוֹנִי to
everything; and the quality of the superficial mind which causes it to fail in
the attainment of Truth is its willingness to rest content with the externality
of things only. So long as this is the case it is impossible for a man to grasp
the means and importance of his own relationship with all things, and it is
this relationship which constitutes all that is signified by the word “Truth.”
When a man fixes his attention only upon the superficial it is impossible for
him to make any progress in knowledge, for he blinds himself to reality by
failing to understand all that he sees as the outside of things can result only
from a germinal principle hidden deep within the inner-most-center of its
being.
What then is this “germinal
principle” which is at the inner-most-center of all things? It is Life. But not
life as we recognize it in particular forms of manifestation; it is something
more interior and concentrated than that. It is that “unity of the spirit” which
is unity simply because it has not passed into diversity. This unity is called yachad
יָחַד and designates oneness or aloneness and is
the root word from whence we derive the term yechidah יחידה which is the fifth level
and most interior aspect of our soul- the part of our essence which is most
united with the Infinite. At yechidah we are alone in the sense that we
are all-ness or Oneness wherein our soul is joined to the one soul-root from
whence the whole of humanity originates. It is the closest to the Singularity
of the Creator and in Kabbalah is associated with the Sefirah of Keter.
It is the conception of Life as the sum total of all its undistributed powers,
being as yet none of these in particular, but all of them in potentiality. It
is Pure Living Spirit – the Life of God.
This is a highly abstract
idea but it is essentially the center from which all growth takes place by
expansion in every direction. This is the last concept which defies all of our
powers of analysis. This is truly the “unknowable,” not in the sense of the
unthinkable but of the unanalyzable. It is not the subject of knowledge, if by
knowledge we mean that faculty which estimates the relations between things,
because here we have passed beyond any questions of relations, and are face to
face with the absolute.
This innermost of all is
absolute Spirit. It is Life as yet not differentiated into any specific mode;
it is the Universal Life which pervades all things and it is at the heart of
all appearances.
To come into the knowledge of
this is to come into the secret of power, and to enter into the secret place of
Living Spirit. Is it illogical first to call this the unknowable, and then to
speak of coming into the knowledge of it? Perhaps so; however the final result
of all searching into the heights and depths and lengths and breadths of the
inner side of things as being, to attain the knowledge of that Life which
surpasses understanding is an illogical process but the knowledge acquired is
beyond logic. Shall we speak of knowing the unknowable? We may, for this
knowledge is the root of all other knowledge.
The presence of this undifferentiated
universal life-power is the final fact to which all our analysis must ultimately
take us. On whatever plane we make our analysis it must always border upon per
essence, pure energy, pure being; that which knows itself and recognizes
itself, but which cannot dissect itself because it is not built up of parts,
but is ultimately integral: it is pure Unity. But analysis which does not lead
to synthesis is merely destructive: it is the child wantonly pulling the flower
to pieces, but building up in his mind from those carefully studied fragments a
vast synthesis of the constructive power of the Whole embracing the formation
of all flower-forms. The value of analysis is to lead us to the original starting-point
of that which we analyze, and so to teach us the laws by which its final form
springs from this center. Knowing the law of its construction, we turn our
analysis into a synthesis, and we thus gain a power of building up which must
always be beyond the reach of those who regard “the unknowable” as one with “not-being.”
This is all in accordance with the fundamental principle of the Rambam who
wrote in his Guide for the Perplexed that: “It is indisputable that HaShem
is identical with His attributes and His attributes with Him. He is the
knowledge, the knower, and the known…”
This idea of the unknowable
is the root of all materialism; and yet no scientific man, however
materialistic his inclinations, treats the unanalyzable as “not being” when he
meets it in his laboratory. Instead, he makes this final unanalyzable fact the
basis of his understanding. He finds it is energy of some kind, and he calls it
heat or motion or gravity, but he does not give up his pursuits because he
cannot analyze it further. He adopts the precisely opposite course. He bases
all his knowledge upon his knowledge of “the unknowable.” And rightly so, for
if he could analyze this energy into yet further factors, then the same problem
of “the unknowable” would meet him still. All our progress consist in
continually pushing the unknowable, in the sense of the unanalyzable, a step
further back; but to think there is no ultimate unanalyzable anywhere is an
inconceivable idea.
In thus realizing the
undifferentiated unity of Living Spirit as the central fact of any system, whether
the system of the entire universe or of a single organism, we are therefore
following a strictly scientific method. We pursue our analysis until it
necessarily leads us to this final fact, and then we accept this fact as the
basis of our synthesis. The Science of Spirit (Kabbalah) is thus not one bit
less scientific than the Science of Matter; and, moreover, it starts from that
same initial fact, the fact of a living energy which defies definition or
explanation wherever we find it; but it differs from the science of matter in
that it contemplates this energy under an aspect of responsive intelligence
which does not fall within the scope of physical science, as such. The Science
of Spirit and the Science of Matter are not in opposition. They are complimentary,
and neither is fully comprehensible without some knowledge of the other; and,
being really but two portions of one whole, they shade off into each other in a
border-land where no arbitrary line can be drawn between them. Science studied
in a truly scientific spirit, following out its own deductions to their
legitimate conclusions, will always reveal the two-fold aspect of things, the
inner and the outer; and it is only bias and prejudice science that refuses to
recognize both.
The study of the material
world is not Materialism, if it be allowed to progress to its legitimate issue.
Materialism is that limited view of the universe which will not admit the
existence of anything but mechanical effects of mechanical causes, and a system
which recognizes no greater power than the physical forces of nature must logically
result in having bias in all its conclusions. I speak, of course, of the
tendency of the system, not of the morality of individuals who are often very
far in advance of the systems they profess. But if we are to avoid the spread
of a form of thought whose effects history shows only too plainly leads to
individual depravity and war we should set ourselves to study that inner and
spiritual aspect of things which is the basis of a system whose logical results
are truth and love instead of treachery and violence.
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