Essay #5:  Dybbuks of Unaffiliated Energy

In Jewish folklore a dybbuk is the soul of a dead person that enters into the body of a living person and possesses it. In Kabbalah, a dybbuk is energy that is not under the influence of a cone of excursion. Or, one should say, it is relatively dimly influenced. In one way or another, everything that exists comes under the influence of a cone of excursion insofar as everything is under the divine influence. A dybbuk, though, falls outside of the fold of influence in a local region. It enters the region as stray energy, as a foreign force, and manifests as a taint.

One frequently does see a dybbuk appear in another person as an emotional tone that is quite out of tune with its environment. It may show as an obsession, a fetish, or a paranoia that won’t go away. It can appear as a preoccupation with events in the past and/or worries about the future. It feels untimely to others and also seems highly uncomfortable with the space it is in. It is literally out of sync with the space-time matrix around it. Musically, it is an enharmonic. It does not flow easily with the space-time terrain around it but comes in at an odd interval. It is like a piece of paper whose shape prevents it from fitting into an envelope. Awkwardness attends it, as well as a penchant for self-correction generated by awkwardness itself.

Folklore holds tales of spirits haunting the earth to finish some unfinished business. In Kabbalistic terms, they have not found their cone of excursion, their way back to the Divine. Hence, they stay longer on earth still trying to provoke the space-time continuum into the formation of a cone. “Provoke” points to the essence of the problem. The dybbuk’s provocative nature magnetizes it away from whatever cone exists in its region. We see something similar when we move a magnet toward another with like pole turned to like. The second magnet jerks away. Thus, a dybbuk is shunned by the instrument of divine connection. It is condemned to wander homeless and malcontent. And it stirs up aberrations and eddies in the force fields through which it passes.

The nature of a dybbuk can be understood more clearly from the Kabbalistic Trigram. The dybbuk is akin to ratzon (effort) that has become disconnected from m’asirah (surrender). It may actually be very well intentioned. A dybbuk is not necessarily of evil intent, contrary to popular understanding. Its kavannah may be quite noble. However, its manifestation is such that the will it exerts to realize that intention becomes unable to admit divine influence. The element of will becomes rigid, self-possessed, convinced of its own sufficiency. But will alone is never sufficient unto itself. It is but the pole of an oscillation that includes fluctuation in and out of the Divine.

The atomic nucleus that fluctuates in and out of existence, as postulated by quantum physics, illustrates the universal principle that nothing can exist apart from God. It exists in space and time and also not in space and time. When it leaves this dimensional world, where does it go? It returns to ayin, to Nothingness. But Nothingness is not a world in time or space. Hence, the nucleus cannot really pass into or out of it. Nor can the nucleus ever leave it. The division between the world of time and space and Nothingness does not really exist. What we perceive as a fluctuation in this world is Oneness in the next. A simple illustration may help to convey this.

In a cathode ray tube such as a television, rays of energy oscillate up and down the screen. We can actually observe this when the so-called “refresh rate” of the oscillation is slow. The screen seems to flicker, which can be disturbing to our eyes. Now imagine that we in this dimensional world live inside the television tube and perceive the oscillations as roughly individual motions in time and space. Also imagine that the world of Oneness is the image on the flat screen itself. When the refresh rate is high enough, the image does not appear to contain any oscillations at all but appears singular and stable. The light on the screen is the same as the energy inside the tube. However, on the screen the light is as a Oneness, whereas in the tube it manifests as duality, as an oscillation or fluctuation.

Helpful as this illustration is, it breaks down if we consider it too closely. This is because we are clever enough to know that oscillations still exist in the screen itself. At a certain refresh rate we are just unable to perceive them. In the Divine Body, however, there are no oscillations. Oneness there is not just a matter of perception but of reality. The foregoing illustration breaks down just when we let rise to the surface our hidden assumption that “what is perceived” is not the same as “what really is.” The key to getting beyond the limits of the illustration is surprisingly to challenge this assumption directly and to see it as something forced upon us by the limited view we have of things within the space-time matrix or the dimensionality of the world in which we live.

What is most important to grasp is that the oscillation of the atomic nucleus demonstrates the “both-at-onceness” of the universe, insofar as we are able to say this, from God’s point of view. The nucleus exists in space and time. It also exists in the Eternal Oneness. The oscillation we perceive is not an oscillation from the side of Oneness, for nothing can go in and out of Oneness. Hence, even from our side, we cannot really describe the nucleus’s oscillation as “in and out of ayin.” It’s as if the screen on our television really is a Oneness and just seems to vibrate under certain perceptual conditions. The nucleus seems to go in and out of existence. But that is not strictly true. Its fluctuation is not a property of itself but rather a property of how we perceive it.

The concept of nuclear fluctuation as a product of our perception is troublesome only as long as we continue to imagine that a nucleus is something separate from our ability to perceive it, from consciousness. However, once we realize that space and time themselves are but two dimensions in a ten-dimensional world, and that among these other dimensions are beauty and love, we come to understand that there is no such thing in our world as a being-in-itself. Every being is a being-for-consciousness, as Husserl correctly demonstrated in his Cartesian Meditations. Hence, our perception of the fluctuation of a nucleus is what a nucleus is. There are numerous ways of perceiving it so that its fluctuation varies, and it varies in fact with the vibratory frequency of the perception itself.

Here, again, the Universal Harmonic Coefficient, the speed of light, is fundamental. It represents a kind of refresh rate, if you will, at which the fluctuations or vibrations of a dimensional universe disappear. The closer anything approaches to the frequency of the speed of light, the slower and denser it becomes until, finally, its time literally stops and it no longer occupies any space. More precisely, there is no space in it. Consciousness itself, the closer it approaches this frequency, the more it perceives the Oneness of things and less their duality, their oscillation. What’s more, this perception of the Oneness is also a participation in that Oneness, a “being one with the Oneness.” We tend to think of perception as passive. However, the perception of Oneness by a consciousness vibrating at high frequency is not strictly passive. It is an active elevation of the object of perception to its Source. This is most easily felt in the presence of a tzaddik or guru who can bring you closer to God by simply looking at you.

When it is said, “Thou shalt not look upon the face of God and live,”–Kabbalistically this means that no one can be that close to the Divine and live in a dimensional world. To be so close to the Divine as to look upon his face is inconceivable because nothing could do that and not be absorbed into him. It is the same to reflect upon the gravitational pull of Black Holes. At a certain degree of density, matter collapses into a singularity from which nothing can escape. This perfectly mirrors and expresses the divine attraction of all unto himself. To look upon the face of God is analogous to crossing the “event horizon” of a Black Hole. Beyond that threshold there is no escape, no alternative to absorption. Theoretically, then, the consciousness or perception, then, whose vibration attains to that of light itself would be harmonized with the Divine to the extent that it would be reabsorbed into the Oneness. In such a case, there would be no separation at all between the Divine will and the human will, or speaking more precisely, the human will would no longer exist.

As we said above, however, the human will is the pole of an oscillation somewhat lower in frequency than the frequency of light, which pole keeps us separated from the Divine and relatively anchored in this world. From the previous illustrations from physics and the implications we elaborated, we can now grasp that the oscillation of human consciousness between will and surrender does not literally carry us in and out of the Divine. Rather it determines a perceptual distance–we could just as well say “a perceptual closeness”–to the Godhead. The higher the frequency of the oscillation that exists between human effort and human surrender, the more fully these two poles become like and resemble one another, and are “suffused” into one another. This means that they take on the characteristic of oneness much like the individual rays of energy flashing across a television screen come to look like one undivided image when their frequency or refresh rate is high enough.

The frequency of oscillation that humans can attain to on their own is not sufficient to produce spontaneous reabsorption into God. This would amount to the ability to determine the will of God, which we cannot. We are able at most–and it is no small challenge–to fully surrender the tiniest particle or wavelength of our own will to Him so that He can do with it what He will according to his perfect knowledge and his plan. Because we do dwell in the realm of space and time, however, our perception is subject to all manner of distortions, illusions, and temptations. Therefore, it is difficult indeed always to see how to surrender our will to Him, and we find oftentimes that we have become, so to speak, carried away with ourselves and lost in a willfulness that is somewhat disconnected from and out of vibration with surrender. Hence, the fundamental relationship shown along the base of the Kabbalistic Trigram between will and surrender is typically only imperfectly realized by human beings. This means, moreover, that the actualization by that relationship of the governing intention can also only be imperfectly realized, even if the intention is completely noble and clear. Under such circumstances, the intention fails to achieve “lift off”–unable, as it were, to elevate the human being and his project to the highest level of realization. The highest level of realization, of course, is that of divine realization, where all that is willed is immediately accomplished, or accomplished merely by “being spoken.” While some humans find their intentions realized far more than others, none can claim this level of realization.

In point of fact, however, defects of intention and not merely of will also hamper the triangle of relationships set forth in the trigram. For the refraction of discernment we are subject to in this world prevents us from always grasping or forming the right intention. Our intentions suffer from all manner of defects ranging from unclarity and abstraction to excessive narrowness and rigidity, not to mention wrongheadedness.

In the end, what we make of ourselves–ultimately and at most–are instruments for divine usage. Once again, by tuning the relationships depicted in the Kabbalistic Trigram as if they were strings of an instrument, we make ourselves playable by the divine will. While we are not and perhaps can never be perfectly attuned, we can at least become playable so that He may lift us up, send his breath across our strings, and by the power of his will inform us and transform us into more than we are–that is, into yet greater instruments and agents for the coming of his Kingdom.

The Kabbalistic Trigram is thus a representation in space and time of the qualities of a divine cone of excursion. From the point of view of Oneness, the excursion of the divine influence or cone manifests a perfect harmony of intention, will, and surrender. For since all creation by its very nature surrenders to God, there is no separation between his will and surrender, and since that is so, there is immediate manifestation of his every intention. On the side of the world of space and time, however, there exists refraction of divine intention so that it is not immediately apparent to us. To us it appears that Godly intention manifests sporadically, incompletely, and undependably, and especially to those of us whose consciousness or perception vibrates at a relatively slow rate so as so as to seem to perceive a very low “refresh rate” in divine intention. But to those whose consciousness vibrates more quickly–or we could say to them whose spirit is quickened, borrowing a Quaker phrase–less and less seems to be outside of divine influence. So-called “coincidences” disappear, replaced by the perception of divine artifice, and, in general, divine artifice is seen to be practically everywhere.

Such individuals are in fact “practicing” the cone of excursion from the side of time and space. They are seeking to keep effort and surrender in proper balance in order to energize and propel an intention. And they are at all times purifying their intention through study, experience, prayer, and whatever other means they have at their disposal. The great universal Law of Attraction–also known as the Principle of Analogy–then comes to their aid. The cone of excursion practiced from this side–albeit imperfectly–attracts its perfect likeness in a cone of excursion come from the other side. In the alignment of the two cones, as it were, there consists–to the extent that we can fathom it–the mechanism whereby a ray of light passes between them and divine illumination enters the human plane in the form of a chochmah.

Now insofar as virtually no human–or at least no human that is not also divine–manifests a cone that is a perfect exemplar of intention, will, and surrender, no human cone has in and of itself the power to bring a divine cone into alignment with itself. The limit of human power in this regard would be to attract a divine cone by affiliating with it, that is, emulating it, mirroring it, and becoming its analogy to the greatest extent possible. Even then, nothing compels the Divine to respond. There is no physical force or urgency impressed on the Divine. However,–and this recalls Essay #3–the Divine is moved to respond voluntarily by love because God has voluntarily made love a principle or dimension of creation. Love is a quality which suffuses all creation, which is the mutual desire for union and oneness shared between the created and its Source. Because God created us out of love and for his own pleasure, he decided long, long ago never to stop wanting us home. Therefore, he delights when we approach him even trivially and does his utmost to answer our call with a still greater call of his own. Our affiliation with his outreach or cone is never perfect, but he overlooks our flaws in order to have intercourse with us and to advance us on our homeward journey.

A dybbuk, by contrast, is an energy or being that is relatively unaffiliated with a cone of excursion. It is an energy that is “stuck” at a certain vibratory frequency. It is the same to say it is a perception that does not admit of enhancement. It sees things its own way, and wants others to see them that way, too. Its self-absorption–literally its monotonous or “single-noted” attunement–puts it at odds with its environment. For space-time, as a whole, resounds with the music of the spheres. God’s influence is felt as a universal melody sung by all the spheres. The dybbuk in all this is like a stuck musical key. It calls attention to itself unflatteringly. It interrupts the motion of a musical line, a creative line, a flowering aspiration. Aspiration fulfills iself through the increasing frequency of the oscillation between ratzon and m’asirah. Thus it condenses becoming a passageway for light. A dybbuk threatens to disrupt this vibration by its fixation on the pole of ratzon. Yet, as we said earlier, its kavannah may be noble and may even be the same as that in its general area or environment. It is actually by this coincidence in intention that dybbuks often rise to places of power. If their intention were as misaligned as their effort, they would be found out much more quickly and shunned with much more vigor. However, a likemindedness in kavannah is frequently hard to see beyond. It is, literally, bewitching. We want naturally to admit those into our circle whose goal and purpose seems to be the same as our own. What we learn, though, is that a dybbuk among us can fracture an intention by the force of its will sending the whole house around us coming down. To protect ourselves, we have to retain our ability to surrender and to remain mindful of the limits of our efforts. It is a great temptation to forget the law of the universe expressed along the base of the Kabbalistic Trigram, that the only stable base for an intention is the paradoxical tension between effort and surrender. To forget this is to end up as a dybbuk trapped in the dimensional universe and unable to realize its intention.

We have spoken of the dybbuk as a manifestation of ratzon unbridled. We could also speak of the dybbuk as m’asirah unchecked. Strangely, ratzon and m’asirah retain their interchangeability even when they are extracted from their interrelationship by the dybbuk. This is not nearly as obscure as it may seem at first glance. For we know that a bully can easily become a victim and that a victim can quickly change into a bully. Many times we see these different personalities flashing across the face of a single dybbuk. First he is trying to exert his influence, to persuade us. The next moment he is bemoaning how he has been taken advantage of for so long. Yes, both elements are in him. He has both ratzon and m’asirah. What’s missing is that he is unable to bring them together. He extracts one, then the other in a desperate attempt to make it king. Thus, the dybbuk, by negative example, illustrates quite clearly the principles given in the Kabbalistic Trigram, their consequences, and their operative outcomes.

We understand a dybbuk to be, in essence, energy whose vibration has become fixed, energy unaffiliated with a cone of excursion. Is its vibration fixed because it is unaffiliated with a cone, or is it unaffiliated with a cone because its vibration is fixed? In other words, has it withdrawn from the divine influence or has the divine influence withdrawn from it? To answer this question one would have to know the higher purpose of a dybbuk, a topic we will return to in a later chapter. The most we can say here is what we have already implied, that a dybbuk serves by negative example to teach us to adhere to the principles of the Kabbalistic Trigram and live a godly life.

 

Essay #6:  Distortions to the Cone of Excursion. Compensatory Corrections.  Tools for Restoring and Enhancing the Space-Time Fabric. 

Here we extend the discussion begun in Essay #5, Dybbuks of Unaffiliated Energy, to the topic of Distortions to the Cone of Excursion. Earlier we said that a dybbuk stirs up eddies and aberrations in every force field through which it passes.  We wish now to explain that further.  This discussion rounds out everything we have said before insofar as it brings it to an acutely practical level.

This world is literally filled with angels and dybbuks of every imaginable variety.  If for a moment our sight should behold these invisible creatures as they move among us we would be so dazzled and deranged from our usual frame of reference that a return to normal functioning would be questionable.  We are spared such derangement by the mercy of being confined mostly to our five senses.  This mercy allows us literally “to keep our senses.”  Those who do see angels and other “invisibles” are said, on the contrary, to be “out of their minds.”  The mind is that faculty in us which retains the customary and retraces for us the habitual pathways worn like ruts in space and time.  These are the ways we have gotten used to navigating our world.  In fact, we have become so used to them that, in some cases, we have elevated them to the level of Natural Laws. Physics, for example, is replete with such laws.  Physics also knows, however, that its so-called “laws” are really relative interpretations of the universe dependent entirely on the perception of the observer.  There is nothing independent “out there,” which is governed by these laws.  They are more expressions of the ways we interact with the universe than laws about the universe per se. Ultimately, all there is interaction. There is nothing apart.  All of creation is the interaction of God with the world, or, still more precisely, of God with himself.   Hence, new interactions, new encounters do literally reshape pathways through space and time.  Our old ruts are powerfully reshaped by our encounters with angels, for example.  Likewise, dybbuks can change space-time geography in a variety of ways as well as affect all the other dimensions of the world.

We need to be on the lookout for angels and dybbuks and to learn better how to handle our encounters with them in this life.  We may never come to see these creatures.  Rest assured, however, their presence may be felt and observed to some degree in the actions of others and ourselves.  By becoming attuned to it we can enhance our own ability to live well in the world.

We all know already what it is like to be under the influence of a dybbuk.  We have all had experiences when nothing seemed to go right.  All of our efforts seem soured by the same invisible hand.  “Misfortunes come in threes,” we say, as if reflecting the beat and rhythm of a hidden drummer.  We may understand this phenomenon well enough to know when it is time to back off, to let things lie.  We say we’ll come back later once our bad luck passes.  What we are experiencing is the entrance of a dybbuk into our region of time and space.  What we feel is the distortion wrought in the very fabric of space and time by its presence.  We experience distortions in time such that everything we do seems to take inordinately longer.  We experience distortions in space such that everything around us seems cramped, cluttered, and insufficient.

As a matter of fact, all ten dimensions may be distorted by the appearance of a dybbuk.  In general, what happens to a dimension when a dybbuk appears may be called a declivity. A declivity is a depression or distortion in the structure of a dimension which effectively slows it or constricts it as a passageway back to God.  A declivity slows our return.

Earlier we referred to “the higher purpose of a dybbuk,” and we can now draw enough from the mystery of the ten dimensions for that to make sense.  Here we may describe it more fully as God’s way of putting brakes on the speed of our return.  Scientists can now tell us fairly precisely the age of the universe.  This can be calculated from the moment of the “Big Bang” to the present.  Similarly, because the universe is contracting, they can calculate–at least in principle–how long the contraction will take, in other words, how long it will be before the whole universe collapse back into the singularity that it emerged from so many eons ago.

As we said before, because God created a universe in space and time, this is not a universe of either unlimited breadth or unlimited duration.  Space and time save us from being torn apart by the teeth of infinity.  That is, without space and time this universe would go on for ever and ever in breadth and duration and there would be no return to God.  Space and time prevent that by limiting creation and thus providing for a way of return.  That is why infinity is listed third in the order of universal dimensions.  We cannot know infinity directly.  We know it only by implication as a result of the delimiting performed by space and time.  Infinity is what would exist in a created world without space and time.  That is a strange concept, to be sure, and not something we will ever encounter directly.  On the contrary, our return to God will happen in a finite space and time. That is, God created a world finite in space and time, a world of a certain size and a definite duration.  As within any organism we can study in our world, there are certain checks and balances that maintain it on course.  In the organism of the universe–if we may call it that–angels and dybbuks are just such checks and balances.  They see to it that, on sum, the ten dimensions are not traversed either too slowly or too quickly.  They keep the return “on schedule” and thus in perfect accord with the nature God imparted to it.  Or we could say they keep it in accord with God’s own nature.  Angels and dybbuks are thus in partnership, seen at least from a lofty perspective.  They are both, in their own very different ways, agents of the Divine fulfilling himself.

This may be a radical concept in comparison to a certain popular understanding.¹Yet we are much less interested in how radical it is than in how well and practically it can serve us in our everyday lives.  For if we understand that both angels and dybbuks are sent to us for a reason, and we understand what that reason is, we can live in accordance with their appearance and make appropriate adjustments to our lives.  We can save ourselves and others untold suffering and actually speed up the rate of return.  This may seem contradictory to what was said before.  It is true that the total duration of the return is fixed.  However, the rate of return is not fixed.  As is known in the case of Black Holes, the rate of collapse increases together with the density of the matter.  The closer the matter approaches to the event horizon, the faster it moves toward singularity.  The same is true for the universe as a whole.  The closer it gets to singularity, the faster it will collapse.  Another way to say this is:  the more life evolves, the higher is the frequency of the consciousness in it.  And we know that the higher this frequency, the more light is released, and the closer all of life approaches to God.

The closer we come to the return, the more we will live in accordance with the divine purpose and the divine essence.  Angels will influence us more than dybbuks in the end because our rate of return is increasing all the time.  The angels have to work much harder than the dybbuks and there are many more of them doing their work.  Their job is to keep at us, to keep prodding, inspiring, and teaching us how to release more light.  Otherwise, the rate of return would not accelerate but remain the same or drop off.  However, God has not ordained it so and has empowered his angels to carry out his wishes in the world.

This being the case, there are still many instances in the world where progress is being made too quickly.  There are instances, for example, where enlightenment threatens to “overload the circuits” of those around it throwing all the local systems into chaos.  It is there that dybbuks show up to exert braking power, bring darkness, and have a corrective effect on the region. This much we can say, and we offer it as the role of dybbuks that can be grasped as a higher purpose against the greater divine plan for the universe.  However, something of mystery and even repugnancy will always pertain to the operation of dybbuks.  The worst of them cause such havoc–as history clearly attests–that we have trouble seeing in them any divine influence.  We prefer to assign them to a category of beings collectively called “apart from God” and to drum up some other influence for their actions.  We call them “evil,” and recoil from any suggestion that God could do such evil.

God is not evil simply because God cannot exist apart from God.  Evil means only one thing:  separation from God. In totality, God is not separate from himself and is thus not evil.  However, on a local level–in the world of excursion–God can become more or less separated from himself and, in this guise, God can become evil.  For example, when God exerts influence to slow down the return in a particular region of the world of excursion, that influence is evil.  Thus the dybbuk is the purveyor of God’s evil influence.  Lest this seem sacrilegious, we need only reflect on the numerous instances in the Bible where the wrath of God seems difficult to justify.  Consider, for example, how we would respond today if a nuclear bomb were dropped on a city judged to be “morally iniquitous.”  However, the Bible tells us that God destroyed not one but two such cities, Sodom and Gomorrah.  We excuse that action–if we can excuse it at all–on the basis of the totality of God’s wisdom.  On a local level, such acts always appear unspeakably heinous and difficult to explain.  Evil always retains an aspect of mystery to those most intimately affected.  “How could they possibly have done that?” we ask at once.  But on the level of the totality, evil may be necessary to correct the course of the return.  Although we may never penetrate the mystery of God’s rationale for permitting some particular instance of evil, we should know from his overall plan for our return that no evil shall stand in the end, that nothing shall separate him from himself.

Evil may also be considered to be the property of darkness of the husks themselves, of that in our world which conceals light.  Whatever conceals the light and slows the return is evil.  Viewed like this, evil is not so much something new introduced into the world to make a correction as it is the darkness that was here from the beginning moving and interacting with the light.  It may be likened to a scum floating on the surface of a lake and here and there eclipsing the light.  In its totality, the scum is becoming less and less.  The angels and most of us are skimming it away.  However, occasionally, patches of the scum join together to form broad occlusions and throw entire regions into periods of lightlessness.  We tend to let those periods define whole eras in which they occur.  We forget that overall the lake and the world are becoming clearer and brighter, that we and the angels are destined to win against the scum.  Moreover, there have been many instances where seemingly noxious creatures have been found by naturalists to have a special purpose in the ecosystems where they live.  Similarly, what we call “scum” or “dybbuks” may exert corrective influences upon their regions.

Even at times when it is unclear to us what excess of light a dybbuk comes to correct, the dybbuk himself remains to be enlightened.  That is, there is always light waiting to be released inside darkness.  The “correction” brought by a dybbuk can sometimes be for us to withdraw and concentrate our forces until such time as they have ripened sufficiently for us to be able to accomplish some bigger task at hand.  Whereas if we had run out those forces as we were doing before the dybbuk appeared, we may never have been able to do the bigger thing.  This example shows more clearly the partnership between angels and dybbuks.

What, then, are some of the particular distortions that a dybbuk can bring to the space-time matrix?    We already spoke of the shrinkage of time and space.  Among distortions affecting the other dimensions are anger, ugliness, jealousy, gloom, cruelty, and fear.  And there is the general effect of any distortion itself that it masks the nature of what it distorts.  To wit, the dybbuk generates a fascination with whatever distortion it brings.  It makes us forget the true structure of the dimension being distorted, in particular how we can use that dimension to return to God.  Such forgetting or amnesia thus increases or prolongs the distance from God.  Ignorance is made of this kind of forgetting and itself reflects distance from God.  The worst of it is atheism altogether. Atheism comes from the Greek a-theos which means “without God.”  Atheists are literally so ignorant that they go through life as if they were without God, that is, as if God did not exist.  God continues to exist through them, however, so that even atheists can accomplish good things.  Nevertheless, they remain particularly vulnerable to unwholesome influences because they are unlikely to engage in spiritual or godly practices which foster remembering how the very dimensions of the universe lead us home.

The property of forgetfulness or amnesia merits attention even prior to any of the particular distortions of the dimensions.  Because it attends all distortions and causes them to persist, amnesia itself is the first thing we need to address in restoring the dimensions to their true nature.

The spiritual practice that reverses amnesia and brings anamnesis is meditation.  We have seen how meditation brings forces into balance so that conditions for enlightenment become optimal.  Enlightenment is deep insight or perception into the very structure of the universe.  Meditation can remove local distortions in the space-time fabric by bringing to bear the influence of a cone of excursion.  Once again we witness how a revised perception of the universe works to change the contour of the universe itself.  This experience is difficult to talk about convincingly in words.  Yet it is readily accessible to anyone who meditates how the the world alters and aligns itself in precise and seamless accord with one’s changing perception.  For example, a world hostile and unpredictable becomes a world welcoming and full of possibilities under the influence of the kind of perception accessible through meditation.

Moreover, by bringing anamnesis, meditation functions to enhance all of the dimensions at once.  Whatever our gaze turns toward in meditation, it sees with greater clarity.  Not that meditation is an activity of the mind.  It is not thinking so much as a surrendering of thought.  The gaze that turns is not the eye of the human mind but the eye of God.  It is a gaze that turns on the axis of the breath, not on the axis of thoughts.  Hence the remembering that comes enters literally at the center of the body as a profoundly transformative feeling about oneself and the universe.   Remembering is a particularly good word here because the feeling is as though one’s missing members were restored to their rightful places.  The dimensions of beauty and courage, in particular, are profoundly awakened in meditation and carry God’s power out into the four limbs.

The forces that meditation aligns within and around one are the same forces at play in the world at large.  Therefore, meditation can provide direct insight into how to work with those forces on a larger scale.  As one becomes more and more adept at restoring and maintaining the Kabbalistic Trigram in oneself, one naturally becomes more effective in doing so in the world at large as well.  In becoming adept at working with ratzon and m’asirah one can become, in fact, something of an anti-dybbuk or angel.  One can walk through “the valley of the shadow of death,” which is Biblical code for a declivity, and “fear no evil:”

                 For thou art with me: thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.

“Rod” and “staff” are tantamount to effort and surrender insofar as a rod is something used in an assertive or aggressive way and a staff is that same thing used to lean on.

Becoming like an angel in the world amounts to keeping God’s rod and staff with one at all times and to seeing whether rod or staff are needed in the valley or region in which one lives.  Then one extends one’s rod or staff or both and uses them as tools to raise the valley, to scatter the shadow, and to bring in the light.  This is exactly how Isaiah describes the work of the Lord:

                    Every valley shall be raised up, and every mountain and hill shall be brought low;

                    and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain. 

It is the work of smoothing out the declivities in the fabric of the dimensions and using the dimensions to hasten the return to God.

A humble but true story illustrates how this can be as much our work as God’s.  There was an accomplished church singer who began to act like a special angel in a choir she sang in when the new young choir director showed up as a dybbuk.  Forgetting the true purpose of a church choir, he became fascinated with training and testing his singers to distraction.  The joy of summoning and surrendering to God’s spirit through song was replaced by a penchant for measurement and control. Ratzon displaced m’asirah making a dybbuk out of a choir master.

The singer of our story simply refused to go along.  She extended her rod and declined the training.  She refused the testing.  And when she was expelled from the choir, she surrendered and leaned on her staff for support.  Within two days she had received an invitation to join another church choir where she once again took up singing with others in joy.  In the meantime, she continued to use both rod and staff in the former church awaiting an appointment to take her case to the minister himself while being careful not to grow hard in her heart towards the choir master.  Through her the light was encouraged to grow in both choirs.  And the former choir master was summoned back into balance with m’asirah.

As this story illustrates, we need to act as skillfully as possible when we encounter a dybbuk.  Has the dybbuk appeared as a correction to some too rapid unearthing of the light?  How are others responding to our work?  Are there multiple signs that we are moving too fast, and is the dybbuk a further indication that we must slow our pace to include more souls?  Or has the dybbuk come as a particularly potent piece of darkness and an opportunity for us to help release its light?  These are not easy questions to answer in the abstract.  It can be helpful to consult one or two close friends when the implication of our actions begins to become unclear to us.  For we have noted that the appearance of a dybbuk distorts space and time in the region around us in such a way as to make us forget the path through them to God.  A friend who knows us well can help us steer clear of the influence of a dybbuk and adjust our actions appropriately in response to its appearance.  Once a dybbuk appears, our actions may provoke it further if they are not adjusted.

That this is serious business is attested to by the many examples history provides of bringers of light who were locked up, tortured, or killed.  Giordano Bruno, Galileo Galilee, Mahatma Gandhi, and Martin Luther King are examples of great souls who met such a fate.  Galileo alone withdrew himself just enough to remain alive.  The others stayed their course to the end, provoking violent reactions.  It is an open question whether they might have done more good in the long run if they had taken less extreme positions and remained alive.  Of course, just what it would have taken to remain alive is itself a highly speculative subject.  It is so speculative, in fact, as to be almost meaningless in the abstract, that is, on the outside looking in.  Only in a lived context do the questions of what is for the ultimate good and what is worth sacrificing one’s life for present themselves in a manageable way, and not always even then.

Perhaps the most we can say is that if we make of ourselves a finely wrought instrument, we become better able in the moment to awaken the music in all things before us and attune them to God.  Thus we work to support and maintain the influence of a cone of excursion in our region.  It is the same to say we work to keep the Kabbalistic Trigram in operation.  By keeping the rod and the staff balanced in ourselves, we remain open to chochmah, enlightenment, where it is given to us to know what to do.  We just “see” it or “feel” it.

Sometimes we have to “let things lie” for a while.  At other times we have to work extra hard.  We work with the cone much as a milliner works with hats, fixing up all sorts of shapes and attachments to achieve a desired effect.  Many times it is an unlikely assortment of influences, individuals, and personalities that is needed to release light just as an odd collection of fabrics and decorations may produce altogether a stunning hat.  Occasionally, the hat we know we must wear is the warrior’s hat and the dark fringe we accept is the shadow of our own death as it approaches.

In working with groups, we would do well to remember that every individual has a useful role to play.  Part of our work as a group leader is to learn how to elicit the unique contribution of each member as a way of eliciting and releasing his light.  Sometimes a one on one contact or message opens the door.  Other times the very structure or process employed by the group as a whole releases light in collective bursts.  Having a variety of tools at our disposal to, so to speak, “reshape the dimensions” helps us to provide effective leadership and keep everyone on track for the return.  When we are leading effectively we are, in essence, helping each person to do their own work of return.  Our tikkun olam (repair of the world) becomes their tikkun ha nefesh (repair of the soul), a sure sign of which is that they begin to welcome us with open arms.  They may resist us initially.  But once they taste the light coming into and out of their souls, their aspiration grows and they begin thanking us profusely for our help.

Another tool that can profoundly reshape the dimensions of a region is ritual. Ritual is a method and a skill of using the structure of one or more dimensions in support of an intention.  It is the act of presenting or invoking the intention through powerful means and drawing the dimensions into a structure which supports the intention.  The means itself may be the participation of an ancestor or other powerful entity.  It may be the vibrations of Nature harnessed and concentrated into a force.  It may be music, drumming, or chanting, themselves reflective of powerful forces in Nature.  Whatever the means, its effectiveness will be in direct proportion to its power.  This suggests that rituals are not random acts but procedures carefully scripted to invoke and concentrate some power.  It further suggests that serious rituals are only to be performed by those who know what they are doing.  Power of this intensity gone awry can cause serious damage by way of inflicting deep wounds in the soul.  The healing professions are replete with examples of patients coming to heal their souls from the scars of badly misused religious rituals, for example.  Insofar as rituals both reshape the dimensions and facilitate the passage of the soul through them, they are like medicine for space, time, and soul.  And just as the ingredients in medicine can be used for good or evil, ritual has its own uses and abuses.

Rituals often feature repetition. The reason for this is that repetition itself is a way to build up force.  It is a way of energizing the dimension involved to stimulate the release or entrance of light.  As we noted earlier, there are analogies in physical love for the emergence of divine light into the world, and repetition has its place there as well.  In general, repetition in ritual builds energy and arousal of the soul towards some event, ultimately some sort of heightened awareness of or union with the Divine.  It does this by its effect on the cone of excursion, or upon our perception of it, drawing it into sharper definition and closer affiliation with us, and preparing the dimension or dimensions being focused on as portals to and vessels for light.

The element of repetition found in ritual finds a lesser expression in the routines that inhabit our everyday lives.  Routines similarly strengthen the dimensions in which we live.  They trace our energy across them drawing them into stronger passageways for light and the return to God.  The dimensions themselves then serve as containers to help concentrate our energy and make us more effective in reshaping our “raw material” and releasing its light.  Adepts use routines effectively in building great power and skill.  We commonly observe athletes and performers of all kinds accomplishing great feats.  We sometimes miss seeing the routines that regiment their days, both those governing their particular kind of practice and those that extend to the farthest corner of their lives.

Meditation, ritual and routine, then, are effective tools to reshape the dimensions, maintain the cone of excursion, and help increase the rate of contraction toward the Divine Essence.  Two more such tools are Feng Shui and the imitation of animals.

Feng Shui is the art of space arranging, or the art of drawing space through to the manifestation of beauty.  It connects the first dimension of space through dimensions two, three, and four, to the fifth dimension, beauty.  In short, time is applied to space under the influence of love until space issues in beauty.  Infinity remains in the background as was explained earlier.  When space becomes beauty, it has reached its peak of potency as a container of the divine influence.  Needless to say, when we enter beautiful spaces we are moved and elevated.  The Divine feels much closer, as indeed he is.

The imitation of animals harkens back to Rilke’s Elegy, where we quoted:

                        and already the ingenious beasts are aware

                        that we are not reliably at home

                        in our interpreted world…

The beasts, by contrast, maintain an uncanny comfort with life and death as they find it. This is their particular brand of genius.  What beast worries a tenth as much as a man about where its next meal is coming from though it may spend ten times his share of time in pursuit of it?  If hunting is its thing, it hunts.  If sleeping is it, it sleeps.  Somehow the more beasts become like their masters the less at peace they seem.  Those, however, that remain inscrutable and, to some extent, indifferent to our influence seem to have some secret knowledge of the whole of things.  They seem never to doubt their place, and to the extent that they rest secure in their own skins, they reflect an awareness that all is as it should be and nothing could be out of place.

This awareness of animals does on the inside what Feng Shui does on the outside.  That is, it unifies interior spaces by the force of love and makes them beautiful.  Animals unabashedly love themselves.  Have you ever known an animal that didn’t like itself?  Self-loathing is almost entirely a human pitfall, whereas animals commonly have a quite wholesome self-image.²  When we catch sight of this love as a kind of innocence or purity, it can suddenly explode before us into a dimension of great beauty.  It is then that we feel we are in the presence of a master teacher.  We want to imitate this “tightness” of the dimensions in ourselves.  We want to let go of our narrow-minded complaints and access that faculty in ourselves which also knows the whole of things.  We feel compelled by the example of the animal before us to perceive Oneness everywhere and, to some extent, we already do.

We have thus far been considering meditation and other interior and exterior tools which function in general to repair the soul and the world, dispel or transform dybbuks, and align us with the angels in our efforts.  Earlier we listed an array of particular distortions in space, time, and the other dimensions.  For these and other particular distortions, special methods of repair are needed.  These are many and varied and their discussion carries us beyond the scope of these writings intended mainly as an introduction to the world of excursion.  Future essays will take up the way of return in much greater detail..  [These essays are part of the Middle Efforts 2010 – 2014.]

It remains only to be said here that our encounters with angels also behoove us to acquire certain skills.  For one thing, which we alluded to earlier, we must not lose sight of the whole of creation nor mistake any one angel for the fulfillment we are called to by living out our lives.  When Jacob encountered an angel he embraced it and would not let it go.  He could not let it go before the angel told him its name.  In effect, the angel’s name delimited it from the rest of creation.  It allowed Jacob to know it as a creature and not mistake it for the Goal.  The angel, in turn, left Jacob somewhat lame.  It acted rather like a dybbuk delivering a sort of darkness to slow Jacob’s course.  The message was clear: ye are of this world and by your body shall ye be tethered here.

At the same time, we must learn how to receive the light that angels bring into our lives.  We must learn to meet them without responding with an immobilizing death grip of our own.  While we must continue to sense our weight even though borne by them in flights of weightlessness, we must also learn to participate in our own transformation.  We must also feel ourselves becoming lighter by degrees, more “angel-like.”  For it is in becoming more and more luminous, beautiful, and joyful that we make our way back to God.