Kabbalah and Higher Levels Consciousness

In the foreword to The Essential Kabbalah: The Heart of Jewish Mysticism, Daniel C. Matt, one of the world’s leading Kabbalah scholars, and the author of a multi-volume English translation of The Zohar, the summa mystica of this ancient tradition, states: “Kabbalah, the Jewish mystical tradition, is precious and well hidden. Its symbolism, and multiple layers of meaning have attracted and confounded readers for centuries. Having studied Kabbalah for some twenty-five years, my attraction has not abated, my confoundedness has not been eliminated, but seasoned with wonder.�

What is Kabbalah, and what makes it so mysterious to the uninitiated, and constantly endearing to those who delve into its secrets for years?

In Hebrew, “kabbalah� means several things: “tradition� or “receiving� or “that which has been received,� and also “reception� as in the welcoming sign that greets the tourist arriving in Israel when entering hotels. The spiritual seeker will likely ignore this mundane meaning of the word, and train his eager thoughts instead on the mystical sites of the country where the sages of this tradition are buried, and where thousands of contemporary students of Kabbalah pilgrim yearly. For it is in the north of the country where two important mystical foci are located: Tzvat, one of the four holy cities of Israel most closely associated with Kabbalah, and Meron, the burial site of Shimon bar Yochai, the alleged author of the Zohar, attract tens of thousands of local and international spiritual seekers, making Israel one of the world’s top mystical destination.

Such a large following means one thing: the study and practice of Kabbalah are no longer restricted to the land that endangered it as a tradition. Presently, major American universities offer courses in Jewish mysticism, classes ranging from beginner’s level to advanced study of the original works in Aramaic and Biblical Hebrew open to students from various backgrounds and faiths. Similarly, European universities have recently expanded their curriculum to include such topics, and several advanced programs are being offered in highly respected programs throughout the world. Moreover, the Kabbalah Center in Los Angeles, and its national and international satellites are offering a plethora of lectures and programs, both on location and through its online Kabbalah University programs.

So, what did/does it mean to be a student of this ancient mystical system originating millennia ago in Israel and making headlines today as the spiritual practice of choice for major entertainment and business household names?

In the past, the study of the literary and mystical corpora that made the body of the Kabbalist teachings was restricted to married male Jews, over forty, with children and a considerable familiarity with the mitzvoth (rules/commandments) of the Jewish faith, as well as with the Torah (basically the first five books from the Old Testament), and the Talmud (a central text of mainstream Judaism, in the form of a record of rabbinic discussions pertaining to Jewish law, ethics, customs and history). This esoteric knowledge, delivered in highly metaphorical language, and explaining complex cosmological and psychological concepts in equally categorical terms was believed to be dangerous for the uninitiated, who could fail to rise to the high state of consciousness necessary to “receive� these teachings and greatly misinterpret and misconstrue them. However, when the most advanced Kabbalist teachings made their way into the hands of learned men like Isaac Newton, and Albert Einstein among many others, they allegedly helped push the boundaries of scientific inquiry and participated in the production of some of the world’s most revolutionary theories, including the laws of motion and gravitation, relativity laws, the zero point energy concept, and the wave-particle duality concept of energy. It is no surprise then that the recent import of the last two theories in particular prompted renewed interest in Kabbalist studies for scientists, mystics, and laymen alike.

For the latter, the most inclusive source of learning is the Kabbalah Center in Los Angeles. This school emphasizes the practical aspects and rewards of the Kabbalah system, which it highlights in courses and lectures open to all peoples, regardless of gender, age, marital status, or ethnic origin. Bilingual study guides, graduated courses, and lectures are available at the several national and international sites of the center, and on line through the Kabbalah University (www.ukabbalah.com). As with any other school of thought and practice, individual results are contiguous with personal effort and persistence, which are greatly encouraged by the readily available personal teachers of the center.

One of the most commonly recognized symbols of this practice is the red string worn on the left wrist. The applied Kabbalah student is wearing the red string around the left wrist for several reasons: because the left hand, arm and side of the body are most receptive to outside influences, to prevent his/her reactive judgments towards others, and to protect against any such towards himself/herself. Every morning and as many times throughout the day as possible, the student will tap into higher levels of consciousness by restricting immediate reactions and observing the Kabablistic precept of “cause and effect�: there is a cause for all effects/results in our life. Just because we cannot see, or failed to see this cause/causal seed does not mean that no such thing existed/exists beyond our realm of perception.

By way of explanation, imagine yourself in South America, felicitously (and safely) placed above the breathtaking canopy of the Amazonian forest. From your vantage point, you can see, in the heavy mist imbued with heady fragrance and myriad sounds, the tips of many branches and can guess from a distance, and witness the muffled undergoings of the life show below. As the sun rises and the mist evaporates, your eyes follow down those branch tips to the thicker arms of a majestic tree, and you realize that those spearing tips that in the veiled morn seemed to be far away and independent from each other, are actually part of the same arboreal system, with sturdy roots firmly planted in the ground. So, “somewhere in time,� a seed fulfilled its mission and produced the splendor now enchanting your eye. Moreover, the interconnectedness of something that appears to be separate and unrelated, i.e., the branch tips, are visible as intricate parts of the same unit, the tree, and everything that surrounds it.

As a Kabbalist you take this same concept of causality and effect and apply it to your every action, i.e.: plant some “good seeds.� So, how does this spiritual/horticultural activity manifest in our 21^st century daily lives?

The serious Kabbalist starts his day by reciting the Ana Bechoah, or the “prayer of the Kabbalist� (see diagram below). In itself, the prayer is a compilation of the “42 names of God� or letters believed to help human consciousness tune in with the pure energy of cosmic consciousness.

Line by line, consciousness is up-tuned to higher levels of understanding and appropriation: each line corresponds to various energy levels present in the body, and the manifestations/corrections they produce roughly mirror those resulting from uptuning the chakras in the Hindu and Buddhist spiritual practices. Here, the work is done at the sefirot level, i.e., the Kabbalist centers of energy placed as follows (diagram below):

Through daily, continuous practice, the student gradually brings his/her consciousness to ever-higher levels of functioning and balance. S/he then walks into the mundane carrying this knowledge and brings mindfulness into everything s/he does, says, or believes, as the individual self has been attuned to the perfect consciousness of the universe. Paramount is the idea that as earthlings, we are all, by cosmic design, drawn to finding answers to our existence, but that we are doing so, in different ways. Kabbalists and others pursuing spiritual enlightenment can help speed up this process by focusing on the bettering of the self and being mindful at all things and actions, at all times.

One way of maintaining this high level of consciousness is to always revisit the concept of “the big picture,� in our case, that epiphany moment above the Amazon forest. All is connected, everything that surrounds us is the manifested effect of a causal action we (all) did in the past. A seed, literal or metaphoric might rest comfortably on a shelf for years. With the right consciousness, in the right conditions, with proper care in the right soil, might create a fruitful tree with myriad other seeds, which through sharing, will feed, shelter, shade and multiply myriad times over, ad infinitum. All of this, from the same seed that could have lazed forever in dark shadows… The concept of the seed, is of course, in other forms, present in all spiritual traditions, most famously, as Jesus’ “parable of the talents� or in more contemporary takes, for those of us into Science Fiction, in Octavia Butler’s phenomenal “Parable of the Sower� novel.

Ultimately, what Kabbalah could provide for the avid seeker of spirituality is of course, subjective and proportional with the time invested in study and practice.

Personally, I cannot praise it enough!

Back in 2004, Anton Shamas, one of my professors at the time suggested that:

“I am a Kabbalist who doesn’t know it yet� and with this incendiary statement sent me “go and read!� So, I did: Barry W. Holtz’s Back to the Sources, Editor Lawrence Fine’s Essentials Papers on Kabbalah, Moshe Idel’s Absorbing Perfection: Kabbalah and Interpretation, Daniel Matt’s Zohar, the Bergs’ extensive collections on the applicability of Kabbalah to daily life, etc. I also took several amazing courses on Jewish Mysticism at University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, taught by professor Eliot Ginsburg (many other universities offer such courses these days). I wanted to learn Aramaic and Biblical Hebrew, so in the summer of 2006 went to Israel and did so…joined the Kabbalah Center (www.kabbalah.com) same year and been studying ever since, happily living a “fruit-full� Kabbalist life.

Here is to you, those who wonder about Kabbalah, and all of us who search: to being kind to others, to learning endlessly, to living life in Light, let’s go and read…

…

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About Author

Corina Kesler is currently pursuing a Phd in Comparative Literature at University of Michigan (since 2003). Her present utopian interests have been shaped by her growing up in a communist country self-declared “utopian,” and from spending extended time in a Romanian Orthodox monastery.

Her dissertation project’s premise is that the utopian impulse has disguised itself in late forming nations of the world and that in these cases, the utopian impulse took mystical, mythological and temporal form much more often than in the case of the canonical tradition that favors rational constructs, dialectical approaches and spatial forms. To test her hypothesis Corina has read extensively on various utopian traditions, participated actively in national and international utopian conferences, visited and volunteered at several international utopian projects in England, Romania and Israel.

www.corinakesler.com

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