Essay #1:  The Space-Time Matrix and the Impregnation of the Cosmic Womb

Here we address the matter of important implications from Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity and Kabbalah. In particular, we examine the famous equation, E=mc². In combination with Kabbalah, Einstein’s theory sheds light on some peculiar mysteries of the universe and enables us to look deeply into the structure of creation.

E=mc² expresses the relation between matter and energy. It tells us that they are different aspects of the same thing. Moreover, it reveals to us that everything in the universe bears a distinct, definite, and calculable relationship with light. Energy (E) is equal to mass (m) times the speed of light (c) squared. This widely known equation is thus extremely peculiar. Why should the equivalency between energy and matter be governed by the speed of light? Not only that, why should it be governed by the speed of light squared? These things have already been confirmed experimentally several times. But virtually no one has stopped to ask why this should be so. Kabbalah makes this clear. Moreover, Kabbalah provides the conceptual framework for Einstein’s theory without which the implications of the theory itself are very difficult to understand.

Einstein himself was something of a mystic. He moved with complete fluency between his blackboard and his bow, playing the violin as an accomplished amateur. The background of his thinking was a musical feeling for the universe. Kabbalah was implicit in that feeling. Einstein’s mathematics arose not from what he thought about the universe but from what he felt about it. By “feeling” here is meant divination. Einstein divined the truths about the universe he later described mathematically. Kabbalah is that sort of divination. The word “kabbalah” means to receive. It implies impregnation and fertilization. Hence, to say that Kabbalah provides the conceptual framework for Einstein’s theory means that it places the theory into the context of the conception of the universe. Together, the theory and Kabbalah both describe–directly or by implication–the impregnation of the cosmic womb. This is nothing less than the gesture by which God created the world. It is also the gesture by which God continually creates the world and preserves it in existence. Put another way, E=mc² draws forth from Kabbalah an illumination of particular universal truths including the nature of the space-time matrix.

Let us begin with the Universal Harmonic Coefficient, c. This is also known as a Universal Constant, the speed of light. It was discovered in the 17th century that the speed of light does not vary no matter what the speed of the receiver and the emitter. The great astronomer, Cassini, expected that the speed of light coming from certain celestial bodies would vary depending on whether those bodies were traveling toward or away from the earth. Anyone who has experienced the sound of a train whistle or a siren has heard the pitch of the sound rise or fall depending upon his own relationship to the movement of the train or source of sound. The pitch is higher if you are moving toward the train and lower if you are moving away from it. This is known as the Doppler Effect. In essence, if you are moving away from the train, the speed of separation effectively lengthens the time it takes for the sound waves to reach you, making for a lower pitch. If you are traveling toward the train, your speed shortens the time it takes for the waves to reach you, raising the pitch. Cassini thought it should be the same for light. A lesser rival, Roemer, did not and predicted the results of an experiment to confirm his realization. Observatories all over Europe verified Roemer’s prediction, but Cassini was politically powerful and suppressed Roemer’s realization quite effectively. This anecdote itself shows that it is less experimental evidence than internal realization that reveals the secrets of the universe. Cassini and his contemporaries were simply not ready to realize the truth Roemer had uncovered. Hence, the experimental evidence alone could not persuade them. It was only when Roemer’s realization spread more widely in the scientific community that the experimental results were credited with having uncovered the truth.

Once again, the truth was that light did not behave like sound. The speed of light was constant under all conditions of movement for a receiver and an emitter. The speed of light can and does vary depending on the density of the medium it is traveling through, but not in relation to the velocity of the bodies involved. This discovery is a stunning truth. Its implications are enormous, just in and of itself. It points not merely to a mathematical truth but to a principle of creation itself. Kabbalistically, it expresses two aspects or qualities of God at once: transcendence and immanence, Keter and Malchut, that is, the highest of highs, beyond high, unknowable, infinite, and the lowest of lows, the physical world, emanation, manifestation, creation, concretion, matter.

Here is why. That the speed of light is a constant irrespective of the motion of bodies can only be possible if God is simultaneously present everywhere to allow it. The comparison with sound is crucial here. Sound is shaped, formed, and affected by the speeds of the emitter and the receiver. Sound, quite simply, is a product of the physical world. It is immanent as a property of the physical world, which we detect with our hearing. It behaves as we expect physical things to behave. It is variable. It is elastic. It stretches and contracts along with space and time.

Light, on the other hand, maintains a constant speed independent of space and time. Therefore,–and this is stunning–light both is and is not part of the physical world. That its speed is constant reflects the independence of God’s intention from the world in which it manifests. Crudely put, that light’s speed is not governed by the velocity of bodies, by space or time, shows that God’s will is independent of the properties of the created universe, transcendent, independent of space and time. Light, then, is more than just a Universal Constant. Yes, it appears as such when we consider it purely as a phenomenon of the physical or created world. However, from God’s point of view–again, crudely–light is also a Universal Coefficient. That means light itself is a principle governing creation. In E=mc² we see that the speed of light governs the transformation of energy into matter. In other words, it governs the emanation of God himself onto the physical plane. After all, the equation is not E=m² or E=m^1,000,000 or any other such thing. The speed of light is built into the very structure of the universe and, as such, it defines the relationship of everything to everything else. Hence, it is not merely a coefficient, a creative or generative principle, it is also fundamentally harmonic. All that exists, exists as either a multiple or a fraction of that number, that constant. So it is both a harmonic constant and a harmonic coefficient. It is the Universal Harmonic Coefficient.

It is as if in light we see the flash of the sword or scepter which God is wielding in command of the universe. The speed of light is the rhythm at which he swings it. Because God’s swing is generated outside the created universe, of course its speed, its rhythm cannot be limited by anything in this world. However, once the light leaves the blade of the sword and becomes relatively more immanent in this world, its speed can be slowed by the medium through which it passes, as many experiments have confirmed.

In the Bible, creation begins with “Let there be Light.” Nowhere is it more clearly stated that light is the medium and the means of creation. Without light nothing could be and nothing could follow. Einstein’s equation says exactly the same thing in different terms. So here we see a direct and powerful intersection between what Einstein’s theory implies and Kabbalah reveals. And there is more.

We see in E=mc² that not only is the speed of light included, it is squared. That is, it is multiplied upon itself. Once again, why? Why should this be so? After all, the speed of light is already an enormous number. Nobody would have complained if the energy contained in matter equaled its mass times the speed of light once. But squared! That means the tiniest paltry bit of matter contains an almost unimaginable amount of energy in itself. However, that is but a side track from what the squaring really means in its deepest implication. Here again, the equation draws from Kabbalah one of its deepest truths. Not only did God create light, he used light to open up the very space-time matrix into which creation poured.

“And light shone upon the face of the deep,” expresses in Biblical code nothing less than the creation of the cosmic womb impregnated with God’s light. This is light which has emanated from the dimensionless light of the Godhead and opened up, become the very dimensions of our world. This is light which has been multiplied upon itself into dimensionality. This is light which has been “squared” –literally gone from the infinite singularity of a Oneness into the duality of “I am that I am.” Not a mere duality, “I am that I am” is a tautological duality, a oneness within a duality. It is God’s infinite presence being everywhere all at once throughout his creation. Light “squared” has–no is–dimensionality, and it is also the means by which dimensionality is revealed. Light shows us the dimensions of the universe and sight perceives them more than any other sense.

It is interesting to compare sound. Although embedded in the physical world, sound is relatively dimensionless. Surely, we can tell approximately where a sound came from, but not with nearly the same precision as we can tell, for example, where a flash of light came from. The thunder is much less localized than the lightning, to use a case in point. In a symphony hall we can see the musicians lighted up front, but the sound surrounds us. If we close our eyes we can easily forget where it is coming from. We can lose a sense of direction. One might say this is precisely why sound, especially music, reminds us so powerfully of the oneness, the transcendence, and the infinity of God. Music, though immanent in all creation, has been made to bear the stamp of the dimensionless, of the transcendent, of the timeless.

Of timelessness, in particular, there is more implied in this equation of E=mc² than we have yet said. Einstein realized that the space-time matrix itself was elastic. In Kabbalah it would be said that the cosmic womb expands and contracts. In much currency in our time have been theories of an expanding or a contracting universe. The speed of light itself is constant, the thread is taut, so to speak, but the tapestry of creation hangs from God like a tunic and waves and bends in the breeze of God’s own breath. Time and space are like grains in the fabric. They flow, they twist, they turn, they stretch here and shorten there. We are bewitched by the spaces between the numbers on our clocks. We see them as equal and conclude that time is regular and constant. This is not so.

If we reflect more deeply and less abstractly on our lives we know that we have experienced days when we seemed to have an abundance of time and managed to accomplish “a week’s worth” of tasks. Also, we have experienced weeks which seemed to pass like days when little got done despite whatever efforts we made. We tend to be mystified, the more so as we reflect that the same number of hours passed by each day. What we haven’t seen is that time is not the same in each case. Time is and is not measured by the numbers on our clocks and the sweep of the hands. Those hands may seem to move at the same rate each day, but it is the shape of what lies between the numbers that determines or is the time. If you have a flat surface between each of the numbers, then the distance between each of them is the same. Our mistake is precisely to assume the surface is always flat. But if the surface is curved, twisted, modeled, and folded in on itself, then the distance between numbers becomes highly variable and deceiving. This is where we experience “aberrations” of time; Einstein called them time “dilations.” He showed that increases in speed dependably produced time dilations. What he did not account for was that such time dilations can be produced not just by physical speed but by the vibratory speed of consciousness itself. This is what Kabbalah teaches us. That is, yogis, tzaddiks, and other adepts are actually able to accrue time to themselves by the quality of consciousness they bring to their lives. This is precisely why some individuals–often ones we call “enlightened”–are able to accomplish enormous amounts of work during the course of their lives. They are literally living much longer lives than you or me even though we seem to measure the length of our days by the same calendar.

On the other hand, there are individuals whose whole lives seem to pass in but a few days. They seem to be caught inside an impenetrable hour where nothing gets done. What is the vibratory quality of a consciousness for whom life passes like that? It is a very shallow vibration, close to the flat surface we are used to seeing between the numbers on the clock. There isn’t much room for light in a consciousness like that. The light bounces off finding nowhere to penetrate deeply. Dimensionality, creativity, cannot blossom in a person like that. Their womb is fallow and “taketh not the impregnation of God.” When it is written, “kin of their kind are made to pass away in a generation,” it means that time does not accrue to them so that it is as if the existence of their whole familial line upon the earth lasted but a generation.

It is really a very short stretch from here to the realization that time travel is also possible. Just as certain vibrations of consciousness can accrue time, others can traverse time forwards and backwards bringing into purview the past and the future. Einstein had this implication of his own theory pressed upon him by the great mathematician, Godel. Einstein himself was not prepared for the realization and rejected it. However, others since Godel have been able to solve Einstein’s own equations in ways that imply the possibility of time travel. From Kabbalah we understand that the impregnation of the cosmic womb carries inherently the possibility of time travel because the Source of the impregnation carries all time and eternity within himself. The traversal of space is possible as well, as can easily be understood from the foregoing. It remains only to remark that, space and time being products of divine light and not limiters upon it, existence in multiple places and multiple times at once is perfectly conceivable. Modern “String Theory” within quantum physics in fact posits and has even demonstrated the possibility. Electrons have been “shocked” into dual existence within cyclotrons. The same electron is known to be at opposite ends of the cyclotron simultaneously. This widely replicated experiment quietly proves once again a deep truth of Kabbalah: that God’s creation is subservient to his transcendent nature and begins to reflect that transcendence as soon as we have eyes to see it.

Now then, let us remark upon the subject of Black Holes. These are also known as singularities. They occur, according to quantum theory, when a star dies and its internal processes no longer support its enormous amount of matter. The matter collapses under the pull of its own gravitational field. It collapses towards a common center until it reaches infinite density and zero size. Any matter at all wandering near the hole also collapses into it and “disappears.” Of course the very concept of something of infinite density and no size is impossible to make sense of without a larger framework. Once again, that framework is Kabbalah. Simply put, the space-time matrix of dimensionality, the tunic of creation that God wears, has holes in it. This fabric, like any other fabric, has holes in it. These holes, however, lead directly out of the space-time continuum and into the “body” of God. As we might expect, that body is infinitely dense, but it has no size. As the ancients said, it is a fullness with no division in itself, a plenum, a oneness, a singularity, to use the modern term.

A star without light cannot remain in dimensionality because, as we have already said, light itself is that which gives dimensionality its dimension. It “holds open” the envelope of the world. It impregnates the womb of creation. The “event horizon” of a Black Hole is that edge beyond which dimensionality exists and creation occurs. Over the edge one “drops out” of dimensionality and enters into pure transcendence. The star without light to sustain it literally collapses out of existence in our dimension. That its matter does not count for nothing is expressed in the equation as infinite density. That it leaves this dimension is expressed as zero size.

When the universe was first created matter and anti-matter existed in roughly equal proportion, except there was a tiny amount more matter than anti-matter. Of course, “tiny” is a relative term, and, as it happens, this tiny amount is all the matter of our current universe. This is because all the rest of the original matter was annihilated when it met the anti-matter of the universe. Now the word “annihilated” must be taken apart. “Annihilate” means to bring to nothing. It comes from “ad”–to–and “nihil”–nothing. The original matter of the universe was brought to nothing by meeting with the anti-matter. In Kabbalistic terms, most of the matter and all of the original anti-matter was reabsorbed into ayin after creation. In other words, most of God’s creation was reabsorbed into himself. The matter that was left over is the matter of our created universe. It is in fact the “husks” of which Kabbalah speaks. The equation E=mc² reflects this directly, for it tells us precisely what amount of light or pure energy is trapped inside the husks, the matter. Moreover, it tells us, as we have already seen, that the emanation of light into the husks and its reemergence from them shape, compound, and compress the space-time continuum of our world. The dilation and compression of space and time are real phenomena that we can experience. Kabbalah teaches, in addition, that the emergence of light from the husks–one could just as well say the attunement of consciousness to a certain vibratory frequency–causes or is a bending of the space-time continuum in a way that permits time accrual, time travel, and the compaction of matter or space into and approaching infinite Oneness.

In other words, the original matter and anti-matter of the universe returned quickly to God. The matter that is left is forever trying to return to God. It does so either by collapsing upon itself as its light is released as in a dying star, or by speeding up and approaching the speed of light, the Universal Harmonic Coefficient. The Special Theory of Relativity shows that time slows down the closer to the speed of light something attains. Kabbalah knows that an approach to the vibratory frequency of the Universal Harmonic Coefficient is an approach to Eternity itself. Time stands still, according to both Relativity and Kabbalah, at the speed of light. One passes into the eternal moment where time is no more. Matter itself, no matter how small to start, gains infinite mass at the speed of light, a sheer impossibility in a dimensional universe, but no problem in a Oneness which has no size.

The main thing is that light, as it entered the husks, created a dimensional universe. As light leaves the husks it does the reverse: it creates holes in the universe where dimensionality collapses and the substance of creation is reabsorbed into God. Black Holes are black only on this side. They look black because no light (or very little) can escape them. But on the other side of a Black Hole is absolutely pure light. It is the body of God.

Now there are variations of Black Holes, which Einstein also postulated. They have come to be known as “worm holes.” Unlike Black Holes, these do not lead forever out of a dimensional universe. They are openings in the space-time matrix, the beginnings of holes but not quite fully formed passageways to the beyond. Hence, they are more like tubes. They open but then lead back into this world because they fail to completely collapse. In them time and space are heavily warped, to be sure, but they have not collapsed. These worm holes, therefore, lead one back into the world; however, the place and time that one reenters will likely be a very different place and time from where one left. If this seems to be a far-off possibility, as most discussions of worm holes suggest, be assured that it is not. The use of worm holes is an everyday occurrence in and out of our world. All we need to know is that worm holes come in amazing variety. Hence they account for all manner of experiences from deja vu to so-called “synchronicities” to apparitions of the future to visions of goings on in distant places. Everything imaginable as the result of the malleability of time and space is possible through the mechanism of worm holes.

Let us consider a number of the more important ways they manifest and affect our world and our lives. Needless to say, the divine influence is felt strongly through these worm holes because they represent a near-collapse into the Divine. Because of this, a whole range of psychological processes and meditations have come to harness them, although very rarely with an appreciable understanding of the actual mechanisms involved.

Take acupuncture as a case in point. It is a fact that there are holes on the body–hundreds of them–called in Chinese “men.” A men is described precisely as a declivity. It is a point of collapse on the physical body into which an acupuncture needle can be inserted. What exactly is this men? It is, in fact, a kind of worm hole on the body. It is a point at which the divine influence can be felt most keenly, particularly if the hole is deepened and made to collapse further. The Chinese were well aware of this divine influence; in fact, they described in precise terms the spirit present at each point. Wellness, they taught, was achieved when the spirits were restored to their proper places in each of the bodily organs or “officials.” The organs or officials are somewhat like thrones for the spirits. When the spirits are in place, seated on their “thrones,” the organs are happy and the person is well. The Renaissance physicians in Europe described wellness in exactly the same way, as “the pleasure of the organs.”

The acupuncture needle literally deepens and opens the hole so that the related spirit can come in, be activated, and its influence felt. Or one could say that the men is a place the patient brushes up against God, like a child who puts his hand in the pocket of his father’s robe and finds a hole there through which he touches his father’s hand. That touch cures him as does indeed the divine influence felt through an acupuncture point. One acupuncture patient said after a treatment, obviously very moved: “I felt like I went away somewhere.”

Indeed she did go away. Her own spirit approached the Beyond through the worm holes that were opened during the treatment. And she did not come back into the same place. The world was different for her. Space and time were different and have remained so. She has reemerged into a world where the place of her own spirit is clearer. Her calling is clearer, though not yet fully clarified. Just as the worm hole is an opening for the Divine to come in, it is also an opening for a person’s own light to emerge from the husks that contain it. Both the divine influence and the person’s own light coming through the worm holes naturally cause a change in the space-time continuum around her. The worm hole itself, it may be said, is change either waiting to happen or actually happening. It is both a mechanism for and itself a part of change in the space-time continuum which shows up in treatment–as in meditation also–as “coming back to a different place.”

On the subject of meditation, let us say this. Kabbalah teaches meditation as bitul hayesh, “the annihilation of all that is.” From the foregoing this should be less opaque than it would otherwise be. For we saw that “annihilation” is nothing less than the absorption back into God. Physicists have discovered that they can create small amounts of anti-matter in the cyclotron which then combine with matter and become annihilated. They have also been able to create minute amounts of what they call “exotic matter,” matter which has negative energy and can be used, in theory, to create and maintain worm holes. For Kabbalah this is not mere theory, it is reality, it is practical. It is what has been done for thousands of years by tzaddiks, and yogis, and meditators adept at subsuming the workings of their own minds and brains. Biological pharmacology knows the brain to be the world’s greatest pharmacological factory. Virtually every drug conceivable to man can be manufactured by the brain’s own chemistry and delivered to the part of the brain or body that needs it. What physicists are just beginning to find is that the brain is capable of even more. The brain can create not just chemical compounds. It is capable of creating various types of matter as well. “Exotic matter” is not something new to the brain, only new to scientists. Under the direction of an adept the brain can create this matter, and once created, it can enable the adept to perform feats which completely defy our ordinary understanding of what’s possible. For example, such an adept can appear and live in two entirely different places at once. Such an adept can resurrect a physical body for himself at will, go without food, draw food from the air, affect objects at a distance, perform “distance healing” and so forth.

Yet, let us not relegate such prowess to adepts alone. Ordinary people do these things, too, just not at such a level nor with such, shall we say, “panache.” When Quakers and others sit and “hold an other in the light,” they have the intention, perhaps not said this way, “to release light from the husks.” As we are seeing, the formation of worm holes is a natural part or phase of this process. So to hold someone in the light has the ability to create worm holes around them through which the divine influence, and healing, can be felt. If we think about the light itself and what it does, the intention to hold someone in the light is really to hold them in this dimension, in this world. For that is what light does: it holds open the envelope of dimensionality. We see the illness, the tumor, the misfortune as blackness and want to fill it with light. What we are really doing is sending light into the person’s life to fill it up from inside it, to keep it from collapsing, and hence to keep the person’s spirit from passing through to the next world. Of course, sometimes our prayers are for a smooth passage. Sometimes we know we cannot hold the person back. Then we pray for a smooth transition. We want the collapse to be peaceful and graceful. We are, in essence, seeking to help form a worm hole for that person which gently collapses or leads them into some other universe, we do not know. It can be helpful to remember that there is light on the other side, too, that Black Holes only look black from this side.

Oftentimes, it isn’t given to us to know whether to hold a sick person back or help them go, so we send our light as raw material to be used by the divine influence according to a higher wisdom, a higher knowing. What’s important is that light is the stuff that shapes the universe. By sending it we put wood on the fire of the person’s own destiny. Said differently, our brains create exotic matter which can unlock light from the husks, bend space and time, create worm holes, and bring this world closer to the next for ourselves and those we love. This is not merely the province of adepts. It is what we do everyday in our private lives and interacting with one another and what we can learn to do better and more efficiently.

So let us consider, at last, how we can improve. “You need a technique for that,” a well-known guru often used to say. The poet Rilke described our task, our responsibility, as “making the visible invisible.” The poet Rumi composed an offering similar in kind and in more detail:

        Love comes with a knife, not some shy question

        and not with fears for his reputation!…

        Love is a madman, working his wild schemes,

        tearing off his clothes, running through the

        mountains, drinking poison, and now quietly

        choosing annihilation…

        There are love stories, and there is obliteration

        into love.

Both of these are poetic expressions of bitul hayesh. By making the visible invisible we are penetrating to its Source. We are seeing it in its dimensionless depth, itself a contradiction in terms, but no other words are possible.

With Rumi we can trace a more detailed arc from creation to annihilation.

“Love comes with a knife.” God wields his sword and creation comes into being, starting with the light. He does not come asking a question. He is the Creator! Nor does he fear for his reputation. None has come before him and none will come after. Reputation is only something that can precede or follow; it does not apply to God.

To the world, God comes like a madman. The world has no reference for God’s schemes because it has been created by them. God’s schemes are wild in the way all that is new and unspoiled is wild, and creation is exactly that.

God “runs through the mountains.” His presence informs all of creation, especially all of Nature. In the mountains, “God drinks poison.” Poison is anything which works to take him back out of this world. It is another form of worm hole; yet it is up to us to see it that way. This is another way of saying that, on some level, we choose even the “bad” things in our life. We drink our own poison. If we get through the phase of seeing it only as poison, then we do also what God as love does: we come to quietly choose annihilation. We discover that the ultimate purpose of coming into this world is to return to God, that all of creation is a cosmic love affair, that the impregnation of the cosmic womb and the birthing of the universe are preludes to the return, to rebirth in God.

All of this, like most good poetry, is actually imminently practical and full of good advice. To “make the visible invisible” is first of all to sit with one’s eyes closed. Second, it is to draw up all that is visible, all that is physical, into one’s meditation, to draw it back up into the Source. We are so used to seeing the light and what it reveals that we forget: the Source of visible light is an Invisible Light of much greater grandeur. Though we cannot see this Light or perceive it directly, we can feel its presence as love in meditation. Our task is to dispose ourselves to the penetration of this love. And it is by our intention (kavannah), effort of will (ratzon), and surrender to God (m’asirah) that we do so. To this end, the Kabbalistic Trigram has been given:

To use this, we set a clear intention. Then we exert some effort. Finally, we surrender to the Divine and ask for a sign that he has heard our intention.

We could represent this another way to show that it is really not different from what has been discussed before. Kavannah is creative intent. Our ultimate intent is to return to God. For a while it is to bring God down to earth to support us, to love us. This intent was built in to the universe from the beginning. What we are here to learn is how to manifest it more fully and effectively in all the myriad facets of our lives. We are learning how to express and to be God more fully. This is just the same as the intention we have long been discussing of liberating the light from the husks.

Ratzon, now, is all the effort we put in to doing just that. All our plans, professions, schemes, are ultimately in the service of the same intention, the same end. Rumi tells us that God “tears off his clothes” as he works his schemes. Paradoxically, rather than piling on more clothing, God rends what he has on. If we were to say, “God tears holes in his clothing,” perhaps the meaning would come through clearer as well as the connection to what has gone before. All of our effort is aimed at doing nothing less than reshaping the space-time continuum in which we live in order to bring us closer to God. We want to literally open holes in the tunic of God’s creation, in his robe, so we can feel his body close to us like the children we are. It is in this context that we can attain to a full understanding of both the successes and the failures of our lives. Failures are only failures if we do not come to see and to use the power that lies hidden within them. Here the concept of the “wounded warrior” fits glowingly.

The wounded warrior comes to know his wound as a place where his very physicality is collapsing. Hence, it is a place where God is entering his life. Seen in that way it becomes a great strength which enables him to do and to understand things he would otherwise never be able to do or to understand. In fact, he reaches a point where failure and success do not look all that different, yet he knows he is profoundly changed. Greek literature is filled with heros standing at the crossroads of great battles and not knowing whether it would be better to win or to lose or if there is much difference between them.

In exerting effort, we strive to succeed, and we must allow ourselves to fail. This is the point along the base of the triangle where ratzon turns into its opposite, m’asirah. It is the tension between these opposites, as well as their necessary connection, which gives the base of the triangle its stability. If our effort contains no room for surrender, then our effort becomes a will to exclude God, to replace God, instead of to invite him into our lives. Even such misdirected effort may eventually bear fruit; however, it will require a “correction” from the universe. Instead, we can willingly surrender.

In meditation, for example, we can consciously feel the weight of our wounds, not hide from them any longer. We can let our body grow heavy with the feeling, become condensed, drawn down, malchut. We let matter be what it is. We don’t fight against it. At the same time, we allow and encourage the light to rise from it. We aspire to keter, to the divine crown. Here is where we put effort, as when we hold an other in the light. We may not know exactly what we are doing. We don’t have to know; our desire will lead us further. Ultimately, we are subsuming our minds, our souls, and the light therein to the divine vibration, to the Universal Harmonic Coefficient. This is not about thinking. It is about drawing in the Echad, the One, and one way to do this is with our breath. By focusing attention on the breath, we start an oscillation at the physical level, which travels up the levels unifying our being. The mind itself is like a swinging gate. It says, “This or that, one or the other, black or white.” Thoughts go this way or that depending on whether the gate is opening in or out. Meditation does not stop the gate from swinging directly. Meditation calms the mind “from below or behind,” like someone whispering a message to you that you have waited many years to hear.

You feel at once in meditation two things. First, the weight of space-time condensing in your own body often perceived as failures, limitations, shortfalls, unfulfilled desires, and destructive habits. This is the feeling of matter as husk. It is perceivable directly. It need not be only an obstacle. It can be realized as a whole host of divine qualities collectively grouped as m’asirah, surrender. These include humility, compassion, patience, mercy, reverence, appreciation, empathy, and simplicity.

The second thing felt in meditation is light. We feel some aspiration, something we aspire to that is already among us as inspiration. This inspiration awakens our effort. Inspiration and aspiration go together. Light inspires effort, and effort calls for more light. This feeling meets the feeling of physicality, of humanity, of the husks. There is tension of one feeling with the other feeling. If the mind comes into play here the meditation can be upset because the mind does not do well with contradictions. It wants to tip the cart one way or the other. It wants a quick fix of enlightenment or the alternative fix of its own failures, shortcomings, and depressions. We are made to have both, and both together create a stability that either alone cannot provide. This foundational stability then supports our original intention. The three points of the triangle come into equal alignment and thus the triangle is made ready to open. How and when it opens is by God’s grace, but the conditions have been made optimal. When the opening happens we know. We know as by a flash of insight. Something profound is illuminated for us, something unexpectedly wonderful happens, or both.

What’s really going on here on a physical level is that exotic matter is being produced in the brain and serves as a key to unlock some husks and let out their light. This is why the insights that come are usually quite specific, not general. Light from particular husks has been released. It is the same with acupuncture points: particular spiritual values attend to particular points. We can invoke these at the points; we can release them from the husks; ultimately these are much the same thing because in both cases it means bringing in divine influence. The interventions can be startlingly direct and specific. Einstein was right that “God does not play dice with the universe.” It is precisely God’s ability to be everywhere at once in both a physical and a temporal sense that allows him such unfailing precision.

At the same time, we must add that God’s precision is beyond our ability to know completely. That is why there is so often an element of the unexpected in what God reveals. We know it to be right, but we couldn’t have invented it ourselves. Hence, the term for insight or intuitive wisdom is chochmah. Chochmah comes from chokei mah, which means “waiting for what.” This quite appropriately has the ring of a koan. It isn’t “waiting for what we expected,” for it often comes in the most unpredictable ways and from totally unexpected persons and places. It is closer to “waiting for whatever God chooses to deliver,” except that there’s a rightness to it that defies all chance and randomness and fulfills our intention even though it may not mirror it as we might expect. “Waiting for what” brings in echoes of “I am that I am.” For a true chochmah comes in like an expression of one’s own destiny and purpose. It comes like something that has existed forever and is being given expression in this time and place. Love comes with a knife flashing, speaking in a lightning voice, remaking the universe before you to make way for your soul. Your very birth canal stretches from here and now to Eternity.

 

Essay #2:  Divine Love and the Cone of Excursion

The cone of excursion represents the penetration of divine love into the world. This penetration bears some resemblance to human sexual activity, which is a mirror of it on a grosser, physical level. Hence, we can extract some metaphors from human physical love, which can help us better understand God’s love for the world.

God’s cone of excursion penetrates this world, and its presence is felt as longing. It affects the dimensionality of this world so that the dimensions are drawn from its base toward its tip and would, if permitted, migrate inwards, effectively condensing at the tip into a singularity. Here we are speaking not only of the dimensions of space and time, but of all of the 10 major dimensions of the universe about which we will speak in other essays.

Sexual love mirrors the influence of the cone of excursion insofar as it seeks a kind of singularity in its consummation. It seeks the dissolution of all dimensions–spatial and temporal included. In process it offers experiences similar to time dilation, for example, in which a short duration subjectively experienced takes a much longer time when re-experienced in the space-time matrix outside the influence of love. The relativity of time thus experienced is fairly well-known and can be extrapolated to the relativity of all the other dimensions.

The consummation of sexual love is analogous to reabsorption into the Godhead, which is a dimensionless experience similarly devoid of all familiar reference points. However, just as reabsorption does not normally occur merely from being under the influence of a cone of excursion, neither does self-annihilation occur in the consummation of love. One could say that in both cases the tendency is for light to be released. Pure light being of God’s essence, it offers a foretaste of the Godhead in the reabsorption to come. In the case of sexual love, light takes the form of sensual pleasure, and hopefully also the form of intimacy, love, and oneness with one’s partner. In the case of a cone of excursion, its influence is to draw forth light from whatever is in the region of its penetration into the space-time matrix. Under the gravitational and magnetic influence of the cone, whatever is there seeks to rearrange itself into an order maximally reflective of the divine nature. The complete consummation of this rearrangement would indeed be that all the dimensions involved would “fall back on themselves” and literally pass out of existence as they were absorbed back into the Godhead. This is what all dimensions long to do under the influence of the cone. However, because God normally keeps himself sufficiently hidden from this world beyond the singularity of the cone, our world’s dimensions are kept from completely rearranging themselves into nothingness. Instead, they are able only to become more light-filled and more holy.

In the case of physical or romantic love, we have the analogy of the suitor who only wishes to consummate his love. Whether he is able to or not in the end matters much less in this comparison than the influence his love has on his demeanor, his behavior, and perhaps every other aspect of his life. We can easily imagine or recall from personal experience how such love becomes all-consuming and finds its way into every area of life. Difficulties that formerly seemed insurmountable appear manageable when seen as barriers to love. Behaviors that eluded our ability to master them fall into line around us like iron filings magnetized as by an electric coil charged within us. Space itself is foreshortened so that mountains appear like mole hills. And time seems to hold no hardship, as we remember Jacob working seven years for Leah and seven years again for his beloved Rachel.

Under the influence of a cone of excursion, we similarly find ourselves in a universe “rearranged” to meet our needs. Obstacles may fall away. Resources may issue from undreamt of sources and help arrive from unexpected directions. This is literally the play of God’s grace upon us in an act of love. God is claiming us as b’sheret–a phrase difficult to translate but something like “destined to be together,” or once again, “soul mates.”

Reflecting again on physical love, we know that no amount of physical stimulation or merely sexual artifice can do what two souls can do together, provided they are b’sheret. For we are not speaking here of the union of the physical only. If it is the destiny of two souls to be joined together under the favor of God, then these b’sheret are magnetized toward one another such that space and time themselves may be cleaved to bring them and keep them together. All manner of untimely and bizarre occurrences may serve to bring the b’sheret to one another. It seems as though nothing in the universe can keep them apart. In effect, their souls have been drawn into a cone of excursion whereby the divine influence exerts itself. Together they are funneled towards absolute union. Their unparalleled mutual attraction thus precisely mirrors the way they are magnetized towards God. The longing they maintain for each other is the same as their longing for God, whether or not they realize it as such. Hence, it has been said of these beloveds that “they are a window upon the Divine for one another.”¹

The taste and fragrance of God are kept forever fresh by the presence of the b’sheret. Through his very being one declares to the other: the fragrance of your soul bends space and time to stay before me always, and it is in fact so. One effect of the operation of the cone in holy union is indeed considerable dilation of time and space for the couple so blessed. As we noted above, what seems to them to be but a few minutes spent in holy pleasure passes in the world around them as many hours or, sometimes, days. And the space of their love chamber, however small, takes on the weight and feeling of a palace many times the size. However, for the b’sheret these anomalies can extend far beyond the sexual realm and manifest as something that could be called “couple power.” It is the ability of predestined couples to far exceed the abilities of the sum of two persons working independently in the world. Rather, working together, some b’sheret are able to accomplish things they would never have dreamt of achieving individually, or had they dreamt of them, they would have said that they were unattainable.

All this is once again because the cone of excursion which enfolds the couple draws all intention down toward a point. The density of all the dimensions approaches singularity as they move down the cone. Reality itself paradoxically becomes more malleable, because along with their increased density its dimensions become increasingly light-filled, more vibratory, more compact, more unified and selfsame, closer to the divine essence, which is love, and hence more easily penetrated and transformed by love. In their work, therefore, the couple encounter many divine influences and qualities, which come to their aid, such as timelessness, oneness, and boundless love.

In much the same way can any one of us be affected as God himself draws us to himself as his b’sheret. The influence of a cone of excursion upon us is, in a sense, what is represented by the Kabbalistic Trigram. The paradoxical combination of will (ratzon) and surrender (m’asirah) stabilize and activate the base of the cone. Then intention (kavannah) begins to funnel down the cone toward oneness, that is, toward Divine penetration. When, by God’s grace, it is allowed to penetrate the divine body, a ray of light emerges from the Divine in the form of a chochmah, the realization of the intention. We cannot actually know what it means that our intention “penetrates the divine body.” We cannot know God’s mind and why or when our intentions may be pleasing to him. This is why his will in these matters is concealed as well as revealed by grace. Its concealment allows us to continue to exist as human beings, as his creation. For were we to know God’s own mind the very substance of our intentions would provide a doorway through which we would reenter him. All our work would be lost to us.

Instead, God by grace conceals himself but also by grace reveals his response to us, as if in a mirror. This is why wisdom comes in its peculiar form as a “what we have been waiting for.” If our penetration into God is unfathomable and unknowable, so also his answering penetration into the space-time matrix of our world retains something of the unfathomable. It comes as a flash of light into the midst of our waiting, like the shining back of a serpent rising out of the waters of unknowing. It is neither deserved by us, nor earned, nor a product of any fathomable workings of God’s mind. It is rather disgorged by waves of unknowing onto the shore of our surrendered effort like an ancient artifact full of messages, meaning, and uncanny precision. What we give to God comes back like the gift adorned, magnified, and sweetened into something of a whole new kind from a lover bent on outdoing us. Such is the way that God takes hold of our intention and transforms it into something closer to his kingdom. That is exactly the influence of the cone of excursion wherever and whenever it appears. It quickens, magnifies, and crystallizes creation all around it so that the light that has become concealed reemerges and that which has fallen out of its rightful place is restored to it once again. This is all so that God’s kingdom may arise once again as the city uncloaked by the sea.

Having dwelt some on the peculiar workings of our intention, it is interesting also to take note of the peculiar interaction of will and surrender. We may observe the virtual interchangeability of the two. What we call will carried to a certain point is “transducted” into surrender. And what seems to be surrender suddenly gathers energy unto itself in a willful manner. One may consider what accrues to the body in meditation, for example, as a kind of will. The body’s many actions, efforts, struggles, and weight on the side of certain ends are, collectively, a manifestation or constitution of will. One sits in meditation and feels the heaviness of this will. This may be a feeling of stiffness, tightness, resistance, and so on. When it is allowed to “congeal,” and when it grows sufficiently dense, this willfulness is transducted into surrender. That is, its energy seems to “fall through the floor.” It is absorbed into the other pole of the paradox and becomes surrender.

Alternatively, one sometimes feels light in meditation. This vibration may appear as a counterfoil to the weight of willfulness. It may enter literally as a ray of light bringing some small relief from the burden and tension of physical effort. Hence, light may manifest as surrender. Experiencing its relief, one gains in aspiration. That is, one wants more of the same. Light begins to become active as a harmonic principle. It draws forth our energy as a multiplier. It draws forth our effort to ascend to its vibration with more and more of our being. Thus, light as surrender becomes light as will. One can witness in the actual meditation that as light becomes will, the body softens. Its obsessions collapse. Its willfulness turns into surrender. At a certain point, one cannot tell willfulness from surrender. When the space-time matrix is sufficiently suffused with light, dimensionality begins to collapse and to transition into eternal fulfillment. The poles of willing and surrender can only exist in a dimensional universe. In God, all will has already been fulfilled. Likewise, surrender to what is in God is also eternal; moreover, with none of the polarity introduced by space and time. That is why the chochma or divine insight that arises in the light-filled ether of surrendered effort bears the peculiar quality of already having been fulfilled although it may apply to a future event yet to occur. It seems effortless and akin more to a memory resurfacing than to a tenuous new idea needing to be worked out among all the tugging polarities to be found within space and time.

Taken all together then, as the feelings of will and surrender, of light and physicality, grow and come together in meditation, the transmutation that begins to occur between them gives us a very direct sense of the non-dimensional Beyond. We are drawn down the cone of excursion toward singularity.

The cone of excursion, we should emphasize, is not a physical cone, though it is mirrored in the physical world, as in its effects. It is essentially an archetype of divine love that transects multiple layers of existence at once. As such, it manifests physically, psychologically, spiritually, and emotionally. At once it represents our efforts to join with God and his efforts to bring us to him. Physics defines excursion as “a single movement outward from the mean position in an oscillating or alternating motion.” If we imagine that the return movement inward in the motion of oscillation is not different from the outward movement but the same, then we begin to get an understanding of the cone of excursion. Our aspiration towards God and God’s drawing us near are very much the same thing. Life here is an excursion. In another sense of that term, it is a journey wherein we are bound to return to the place we started from. For God, our life is an excursion already completed. For us, it is an excursion lived in time and space. The cone of excursion represents how timeless love bends space and time into vessels that lead out of this world. This being so, we may begin to enlarge our understanding of Black Holes, worm holes, and other cosmic phenomena heretofore chiefly considered as physical phenomena. In ways yet to be understood, these phenomena must also be manifestations of vast forces of love. Perhaps we are perceiving in them the interplay of colossal creatures engaged in cosmic acts of love. This would help to confirm the intuition of our forebears who saw all manner of creatures and a lively intercourse in the constellations.

Notes:

1. See, for example, Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet, Letter No.7:

     “Loving does not at first mean merging, surrendering, and uniting with another person (for what would a union be of two people who are unclarified, unfinished, and still incoherent?), it is a high inducement for the individual to ripen, to become something in himself, to become world, to become world in himself for the sake of another person; it is a great, demanding claim on him, something that chooses him and calls him to vast distances.”

For Rilke, “to become world for the sake of another person” is tantamount to clarifying and cultivating in oneself the realization of the world as God envisions it. It is not a merging of “still incoherent” souls but a calling forth from one to the other to rise to the fullest expression of divine qualities that one is capable of.  It is a witnessing of God in the other person “as through a window,” together with the inducement to rise up and become energized by the vision.  What we refer to as “couple power” is just such an inducement for lovers enfolded by a common cone of excursion.