ILLUMINATION AND THE DAY

The Zohar says that although there are many grades or levels of closeness to God, they are all the same grade ultimately. This is because each of them is illuminated by the same light coming from the Infinite Source. Through extrapolation we can take that to mean that even an inveterate criminal carries the light of God in him to some degree, and if he could be open to see that light inside himself he could become as worthy as a saint. Surely only God knows why people do the wicked things they do, and if He knows all He can forgive all. If we could reach that level of understanding we too could forgive.

The Zohar says nothing about the reasons why people sin. It does say that they are consumed by vanity and greed and lust, but not even in its deeper explorations does it explain why this should be so. Yet there is a clue in the Ari’s interpretation of the vessels having broken because they could not hold the light, and the endless quest to repair the vessels. Each person has the same light of God within him however tiny that remaining fragment might be. In our journey to wholeness we can only trust that that light is there, since we are not strong enough to even look at it. Subliminally or unconsciously each person knows this, and this sets up a need or a yearning that must be met somehow. Because they do not know what they are looking for, people attempt to find fulfillment in power, wealth or sex. And because these never satisfy they go to greater and greater lengths to find satisfaction. When they do not find it, they become full of fear, and the fear causes them to act with cruelty to protect what they do have. But if they can only get the smallest glimpse of their own small light they can focus on a different kind of search for which the fulfillment can be instantaneous; there can be a sudden recognition that they always had within them what they had always sought.

Jacob’s well is a partial analogy of this. In the desert a well or a spring is the most precious thing there is. To know where to dig is the most precious knowledge that one can have under those circumstances. To be prepared to dig as deep as necessary for as long as it takes requires courage and persistence, and to dig the well on behalf of other people and also the animals one is responsible for shows service to God. One can map this image to the internal search, digging for the light that is always there if you know where to look for it, persisting in the face of thirst and sorrow and exhaustion, hoping to find the light so it can be shared with others — these are messages that the Zohar repeats over and over to us in different ways, and we will find the same lesson as we work through more of its explanations.

The light inside oneself can be examined by way of the Sefirot. Just as kabbalah has mapped the Sefirot onto the body, they can be mapped onto one’s life in a similar way, and they can help to divide the illumination into a rainbow of more easily comprehensible colors. This can be done on a daily basis by looking at whatever the critical problem of the day happens to be. For example, if the problem were a health or a financial or an emotional crisis, one could think about each of the qualities suggested by the Sefirot and decide which would be the most important at this time. To solve your problem would it be best to ask for strength? loving-kindness? understanding? wisdom? a firm foundation? The very exercise of examining the problem in this way may be enough to bring a solution to the fore. It will certainly give you a focus for prayer as you have a better idea of what you need. In the long term it will also happen that as you need each of the Sefirot/qualities in turn you will move from one to the next until you find that your life has been brought into balance in a way that you could not have anticipated. Moving back and forth in your needs and prayers from left to right, up and down, right to left again, you will eventually find yourself in the center — and you will have embodied all those qualities because you prayed for them and focused on them. Then they will truly be mapped onto your body and your spirit as the Tree of Life, and will always be that accessible part of God that lives inside you. This is how the light becomes rejoined and made whole, and how it can finally be seen as the illumination from God Himself. Then the vessel is truly restored.

Earlier I wrote that each of the six days of creation are said in the Zohar to correspond to one of the six Sefirot Chesed, Gvurah, Tiferet, Netzach, Hod and Yesod. Following the exercise above, it will be interesting to look at each of the six days together with its Sefirot and together with the quality prayed for in times of need, to see what new understandings arise.

Chesed. Day One: In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night.

Chesed is representative of loving-kindness or Mercy, and stands as a balance point to Gvurah, which is strict judgment. Some interpreters of kabbalah have also equated each of these six days and these six Sefirot with the great cosmic cycles, or shmittah. So in the first cycle, on the first day, this quality of loving-kindness is evinced as the predominant force of both creation and sustenance. To individualize this lesson is not very difficult. It describes how each person was and is created — through the will of God we are each created lovingly from light; this is the same light that is always available inside us and that always connects us to Him and provides endless sustenance. The is the light that orders and makes sense of the chaos in our lives, the light that began the cosmic cycles at a time when there was as yet no sin or error, the light that fills the fetus before it emerges into the light of this world. From the Koran (Sura XXIV): God is the Light of the heavens and the earth; the likeness of His Light is as a niche wherein is a lamp (the lamp in a glass, the glass as it were a glittering star) kindled from a Blessed Tree.

Gvurah. Day Two: And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven.

The firmament described here is not just the sky, as commonly thought, nor is it the vast blankness of space. It is among other things the life-giving atmosphere that enables breath for all the inhabitants of earth — the thing they need first the moment they are born, the precious air. God divided that which could not sustain mankind from that which could; in this way he prepared the world for the arrival of all living creatures. Within an individual person the preparation must also be made, providing ‘oxygen’ for the soul as it seeks to find God. It seems difficult to relate the creation of the atmosphere to Gvurah, or the harsh judgment of God. This is because it requires a slightly different interpretation. Gvurah is also power, the force required to overcome obstacles and to take the correct path. As each person begins his journey and falls away from the pure light that was available to him when he was pure spirit, he requires force and judgment to make his way. And this is also the cosmic cycle that we have been living through for a long time — the cycle that has moved mankind forward in so many ways but has been so devoid of the love and beauty that should have surrounded it, and that have surrounded it in past ages, and that will surround it again in the future. As each child moves from birth through self-discovery to the awareness and care of others, he goes through the same progression from Chesed to Gvurah to Tiferet, moving left and right toward the essential balance that mirrors the balance of the universe itself.

What else is the firmament? The waters that it divided are the emotive principle of creation, the force field that brings atoms and molecules together in a flow that keeps them together in meaningful patterns. The waters spoken of here participate in the quality of God’s creation insofar as they are the carriers of all things, the matrix within which all things keep their shape and momentum and direction. The waters above the firmament are strictly in the ideal set, i.e. they are mental and illusionary but generative of the waters below the firmament, which are the physical manifestation of the flow and creation. The firmament itself is that semi-permeable barrier that allows the movement from the upper mental state to the physical state on the third-dimensional plane. The power implied by the Sfirah Gvurah is markedly present in the division of these waters, and the creation of a force field that enables the movement from the heavens to the earth. And in that creation there is the foreknowledge of the beauty that will follow.

Tiferet. Day Three: And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so. And God called the dry land Earth: and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good. And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so. And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

Centered in the body, modifying and unifying judgment and mercy, Tiferet or Beauty represents the heart of the divine balance. On the third day of creation God provided the platform for man: the earth itself. Along with that came the first living things, the first things to exhibit growth. In any person there is the sea of spirit and the dry land that represents daily life; in the long shore between them there is the endless meeting, advancing and retreating, the tides carrying the spirit into daily life and then away again. It is growth that causes the change from day to day; without growth all movement would cease. This sounds much like the pulsing of the heart, without which the life of the body would cease altogether. Here in this cycle there is no preponderance of harsh judgment, nor is there strictly speaking mercy without judgment; there is the balance that makes earthly life what it is and that requires constant readjustment on the part of the person who swims, walks and grows in the sea and on the land. When you swim in the water there is perfect justice: if you know how to swim you live, and if you do not learn to swim you drown. When you walk on the land there is perfect justice: if you learn how to find sustenance you live, and if you do not you starve. In both there is the perfect mercy that we are shown how to swim and how to find sustenance; it is up to us to do what is required. And in more than one sense Malchut is the principle of growth. The world IS the principle of growth.

Netzach. Day Four: And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years: And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so. And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also. And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth, And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good.

There is an absolute mystery to be explored here, and that is how God could have created the light on the first day, and separated Night from Day on the first day, and yet not have created the sun until the fourth day. What did the Day consist of before the sun and the stars existed? The answer is that the Day was an abstract conception of the light itself. It meant that along with light, God created the great alternator or pendulum that brought all things round and round from season to season, year to year, back and forth, back and forth in a never-ending repetitive cycle of On and Off. The light switch can exist before the light bulb is placed into the socket. Netzach is Stability or Victory, and with Hod is one of the two legs or supports of the body, and one of the two columns that support everything. In kabbalah Netzach is said to vanquish Judgments, and what else but the rule of light could vanquish judgments? In the individual there is the light of the Spirit of God and the light of one’s own lower spirit, both of which rule over the personality and give it understanding and clarity.

Hod. Day Five: And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good. And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth.

Hod is Splendor or Majesty, and the other of the two legs of the body; both Netzach and Hod are referred to as Hosts (cf Haazinu), meaning legions or armies, the warriors of God. On this day God created all the creatures that swim in the water or fly in the air, those animals that represent splendor and majesty and that exhibit an easy adaptation to those media that man cannot live in; men cannot live underwater nor fly in the air. We aren’t told why God created these beings that could do what man can not, but apart from their obvious value as a food source they are also an example to man of things that live beyond man’s limitations, of other ways of being. In addition they also have the unlimited joy of moving freely in three dimensions, something which man can never do on his own. It’s as though God created these joyful unlimited creatures before he even began to create those creatures which were earthbound, and thus we see how Hod is manifested in this fifth day of creation. To pray for the qualities suggested by Hod would be most useful when one is feeling heavy, earthbound and joyless — even the momentary contemplation of eagles and dolphins takes one into a slightly different mind-space, a three-dimensional and freer mind-space than the one of a problem-filled ordinary day.

Yesod. Day Six: And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so. And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good. And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so. And God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.

Day six was governed by Yesod, which is Foundation. Curious that God didn’t make the land animals on the same day that he made the animals that swam and flew, but rather made all the other land animals on the same day that He created man; it seems as though the simple fact that they all lived on dry land must give them something in common. Perhaps the word ‘grounded’ has a deeper meaning here that we can’t quite get a grip on; certainly Foundation is the grounding principle. Yesod is also the procreative principle by which the seed is brought to the womb. On day five and on day six God commanded the beings to be fruitful and multiply, to create more life where He had created the first life. In this way He gave them a small piece of His own power, and at the same time He gave the power of dominion over all the other beings to mankind. It was as though He was releasing part of His hegemony to all living beings and a much greater part to man. When we seem to be in the midst of death, even if it is the death of our own hopes and dreams, we can meditate on Yesod and ask for the ability to create new life in ourselves and in others, and in doing so we will always be reminded of the God who gave first life to everything.