Saturday, February 21, 2009

Song of the Soul

I had been reading that book for 6 months or more. I read it almost always only to my sleep, but almost every night, chapter by chapter. I read it in my mother tongue. This was eerie experience.I know, from my long discussions with Orthodox Jewish friend, that Kabbalah is out of reach to common people, is out of reach even to very religious people. And he was right. I must confess that I did not understand most of the book... But that was quite surprising experience, because this misunderstanding did not take me away from it. And I diligently was reading it, night by night. So what ? What is this strange experience?

I think that this book gives us some blurry view of the landscape of reality that is hidden from our eyes, until you spent life in Safed and study all these sacred books ...




But at no single sentence of this book I had impression of using Kabbalah to impress public, to try to use it the way people searching for superficial "religiosity" sometimes use it. No red strings, no "living kabbalah system", no celebrities, no DNA analogies ... All these deceitful things invented by people to get attention of naive people - are not in this book.

So - is it really true that I did not understand it at all ?
Well, there are some concepts that are very deep, but I feel I have far recognition of what they mean.

These concepts are related to the fundamental question: What is creation? How creation was possible? How infinite G-d, could create finite universe? These deep philosophical questions form a foundation of Kabbalistic thought. Kabbalah teaches that the Creation is revelation of G-d WILL to create the world. And to create the Universe G-d had to limit himself. The study of nature and the meaning of this "limitation" as something essential for infinity to create finite things is fundamental to Kabbalah.


Now, Kabbalah asks why the world was created imperfect? And, surprisingly, gives a simple answer - because it was created for us, people, so that we could use our free will to improve it, to complete what was lacking.


These simple thoughts have in fact very deep meaning, far deeper than we could expect....

I must admit, these few thoughts are almost all of concepts I could grasp....

Finally, I do not recommend to read this book.
But you can think of what I just said - as quite machiavellian suggestion....

The scanned book is available online at the author website.

1 comment:

  1. I can see why you would want to read this. Some things must be unknowable by finite man - I think - but we do not know which ones they are, so we seek ...no matter how difficult the questions.

    Thanks for this glimpse into the Kaballah, still mysterious and beyond reach!!

    ReplyDelete

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