Reflection for March 5, 2008: the unfolding of Ain

Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakes.

–CG Jung

“‘The process of creation takes place on two levels,’ says the Zohar, ‘one above and one below, and thus the Torah begins with the letter Bet, with a numerical value of two.’ The lower creation corresponds to the higher: one produced the world of the Sefirot, and the other produced the material world. But all creations, teaches the Zohar, occur simultaneously. To the Kabbalists, then, creation has a twofold character: it presents the cosmogony which is the internal creation that takes place in God, i.e. inside the realm of the Sefirot, and the cosmology which is the external creation that takes place in the material world, i.e. outside the realm of the Sefirot. But it also signifies a crisis in the hidden life of Ein-Sof, since the introspective God, who until now was hidden in the world of ‘nothingness,’ begins to externalize and ‘dress-up’ into the world of ‘everythingness.’ This is the most crucial shift in the hidden life of Ein-Sof: it involves the gradual unfolding of the hidden Ein-Sof into the world of the Sefirot through the act of emanation. At this point Ein-Sof shifts from being undifferentiated into being differentiated. Here He breaks from the One to the two and the many, and thus plurality emerges from singularity.

The transformation of God in the creation is an illustration of a chain whose links are revealed as unfolding levels of many different worlds. It is an illustration where ‘everything is linked with everything else down to the lowest ring on the chain, and the true essence of God is bove as well as below…..and nothing exists outside Him,’ as formulated in Sefer Ha-Rimmon by the great Kabbalist Moses de-Leon. This transformation is a godly act of expansion; it is God’s exit from His own infinity and His entrance into space and time. And at the same time it is a theory that establishes the Kabbalistic foundation of pantheism, for the expansion of God causes Him to be everywhere, pan-theos, i.e. to reside in all spiritual and material things, above and below.

The transformation of God in the creation, however, is first and foremost a godly mental conversion. It is the transposition of God’s Self from unconsciousness to consciousness, since during the process of the creation He undergoes a change of mind. The Kabbalists teach that the Hebrew word for ‘nothingness,’ Ayin (written in Hebrew aleph yud nun, AIN), has the same consonants as I (written in Hebrew aleph nun yud, ANI). God departs from His hidden ‘nothingness,’ AIN, and acquires His revealed I, ANI; although this is revealed only to Himself…..In the classic teachings of the Kabbalists of Spain, in the Kabbalah of the Zohar and in the Hebrew works of the master Kabbalist, Moses de-Leon, the transformation of God from the Ayin to the I is described by means of the symbol of the primordial point, nequdah. Nequdah is the pristine seed of emanation; it expands and grows by its motion, and it eventually creates the line and the surface until it is manifested into the ten Sefirot. Thus, the expansion of the Sefirot manifests the expansion of God’s mind; that is, through the godly act of expansion He becomes aware and conscious.”

- Shimon Shokek (Kabbalah and the Art of Being)

The infinite Logos of the eternal God is the most powerful and stable support of the totality of the world. It is This, which stretched from the center to the boundaries and extremities, assures everywhere the course of nature, rendering it invincible and uniting all parts in strict unity. For the Father who engendered this Logos made it the link (desmos) of the Universe, a link which nothing can break

–Philo