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Zohar: Bereshith to Lekh Lekha

By Nurho de Manhar

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Rabbi Simeons Reflections on the Supreme and Its Union with Human Souls

Said Rabbi Simeon, during prayer, I raise my hands on high as a token and expression of the gratitude of my will nature that goeth up to the almighty supreme Being whose essence is Will infinite and beyond all human comprehension. He is the great Beginning, the mystery of all mysteries. All created things in the universe are but emanations from Him who is the height of height that neither man nor angel can approach unto, nor hath ever seen or can see its origin and source. In vain the mind of man attempts to fly towards the omnipotent Will Being of which it is a fraction infinitesimal and infinitely small. Vain are all efforts to grasp and comprehend Thought Supreme and eternal, as we sink confounded, overwhelmed with feelings of awe ineffable. Yet though the height Divine remains eternally invisible to human vision, it manifests its presence and operates within the minutes and hours chiefly within the soul of man with whose natural light it blends whenever its aspirations and thoughts tend towards and are centered on the great source of all being and creation, the primal light that enlighteneth every man that cometh into the world. Between the enlightened human soul and the great Beginning are nine palaces or grades of evolutionary development two Kabbalah are designated Sephiroth whose culmination is Kether or The Crown. These grades, palaces or sephiroth call them as we may, are not entities but modes or stages of ascent towards union with the Divine Will and their respective lights are but the luminous reflection of the Divine Thought. Though nine in number, they are really one in this sense, they are derivations of the great Thought without which they could not exist and can never be but imperfect and obscure representations of the Divine Entity that must remain always unknown in its sublimity and transcendency beyond all human comprehension. Through these palaces the enlightened soul enters by continuous aspirations and thus they become the intermediaries to it between the known and unknown, between the comprehensible and the incomprehensible. Within them are hidden all the great spiritual mysteries and realities that to humanity as at present must remain objects of faith rather than of reason65a and intellectual perception. Only by the enlightened soul can they become cognised in its gradual ascension through them on its way to the great and transcendent Being termed The Eternal, The Everlasting One. But this cannot be effected only as it becomes receptive of and imbued with the light and splendor of the Sephiroth Binah (Doctrine Intelligence) by which it is brought into union with the Divine and enters into the enjoyment of the Beatific Vision. From these observations we are better able to understand and penetrate into the meaning and mysteries of sacrifices in general which as mere rites and ceremonies have no intrinsic efficacy. Only when they are the expression of the soul, gradually becoming purified and enlightened by and through its higher self are they a means of spiritual ascension in the divine life which is the true light of mankind assimilating and bringing it into closer relationship with the divine, Eternal I Am in whose presence there is fulness of joy and at whose right hand there are pleasures forevermore.