In the beginning..

Parashat Be-Reshit [“In the beginning” (Genesis I:1 – 6:8)]

(Pritzker edition of the Zohar, vol. 1 pages 107 -109)

The Zohar is not an easy book to do a study about, but for everything there is a beginning. In every spark of what seems to be an impenetrable darkness sits a ray of hope, an opportunity to know more about its mystery. After all, man is known to be a seeker of knowledge, of trying to learn more about that what he still doesn’t know and find answers to his questions, realizing that behind every answer will always lay another question till everything becomes known what is to be known to man. But before he can do just that and achieve the ultimate goal, he must seek and reveal. He has to be aware of his tremendous capabilities, talents wherewith he will acquire the ability to progress, to evolve, even beyond the point of what he in first instance seems to assess as a point he can’t cross, he can’t look behind it. Still, deep inside himself, he knows that he can because before he will ask himself the question, the answer will be available for him to be found, and this since the beginning of everything that became, seen from a human point of view that is, within our own galactic horizon, or horizon universalis so to speak. A Rabbi will teach, but will also learn by teaching others, while a student will learn and can become a tutor out of what s/he learnt as well as staying a student. Every generation that wants to progress/evolve can not push itself to stagnate with what it learnt, but has to learn new things from it, new answers, revelations of what it yet did not know or even didn’t knew about correctly or entirely right. It has to put its knowledge onto a bank account so that it will generate more income.

Of this, we can already take note of within the very first lines of this very Parashat where the Zohar talks about because just as the written Torah had to start somewhere, so does the Zohar has to have a mystical point of focus, of beginning (Reshit), but not Bereshit (In the beginning). The Zohar, let we not forget, is a mystical reading/explanation of the written Torah. And so it begins with what it calls Ein Sof (= Infinity) or also as the Sefirah named Keter. It tells us about the head of potency of the King (=Authority). But even when Ein Sof itself is full of potential, the same as we are as a human being created in His image, Keter is regarded as the Crown, Will, Ayin (nothingness). It reflects that before there was something, there was nothing, or not quite perhaps!? Yes, there was a thought, a spark, and a ray of hope. Thus, as Keter is seen as a coeternal element with Ein Sof, it can not be put on the same level as Ein Sof itself. When Keter is regarded as nothingness, then Ein Sof is just the complete opposite of it, namely fullness. The brilliance of emptiness, of an impenetrable darkness can only become a brilliance when it joins in a union with Ein Sof, or what we have come to call the unison of male and female.

At the beginning of the Pritzker Edition of the Zohar by Daniel C. Matt we are being shown the Ten Sefirot where the Sefirah of Malkhut stands at the bottom and the one of Keter at the top. Still, I would put something above Keter as well just as Malkhut is put below Yesod. But in difference to Malkhut, it can’t be called a Sefirah, nor being a part of the Sefirot as it is the Creator of them, the spark (Elohim = G-d) that caused it all to occur. Nevertheless, when we look at it from this kind of angle, we learn that there is truly something beyond the point whereof nothing is known. Because of this, it is called Reshit, Beginning. Anyhow, it’s not really a beginning as Ein Sof (Infinity) tells us that there will be no end. This means that as there is no end, there is also no beginning. And this on itself explains to us that there is something to be learnt about the point beyond nothingness. Yes, even as Keter is referred to as being nothingness, there is still Ein Sof beyond itself. Let we remember that, and above all not forget it as it’s the most important element of knowledge, the basis whereupon everything else became build and is even being build as we speak and/or write in our own world. You could also refer to it as being the eternal fuel, the eternal energy, energy in a vessel that does not need to be refilled at a gas station or through an electric socket as it constantly re-energises itself without interruption.

We can all this explain through our very own perception regarding the horizon seen from the point we do stand at a certain place on Earth. When man of before saw it on land, they were not afraid of going towards it; it even enticed them to go looking, to find out what lays behind it. Somehow they knew that they would not fall of it. Sill, some people were, due to certain religious worldly influences from ‘high’ above or rather below them, very strict in not doing so when sailing on the ocean. For them, the horizon was a point forbidden to cross as it meant death to them. They wrongly interpreted it as a point where nothing laid behind it, no water, no land, and no air, just nothing, an ocean of nothingness in a manner of speaking. Their perception was curtailed because a horizon is only what we can see with our sight, but, as these people too have come to learn, does not mean that there is nothing to be found behind it. In a certain way, it has no ending because the more we try to reach it, it will always keep the same distance away from us, whether we look to the north, south, west, or east, even upwards and downwards. We never can reach it, even when it reaches its hands constantly out towards us. This on its turn reveals that we must not fear to walk towards it; for it wants that we learn what lies behind it within our perception of sight. In a spiritual essence, it asks us to seek, learn and comprehend what we still can’t grasp the essence of it. So, if what we feel is something we are unable to know more about, which is that point of nothingness, then this point, this horizon on itself has something in and beyond it that can be of a great benefit to all of humankind, even all life. YHVH reaches His hands out to us! And YHVH is full of knowledge!

The Zohar tells us this as well when it says that it split and did not split its aura. It was concealed, was not known, till under the impact of splitting. Then it became known, a supernal point shone. What was not known became known and at the same time created a new horizon, a new point of focus. And beyond that point, nothing is known; nothing is known about what lays behind it. Therefore it became called Reshit, Beginning. Still, later on we will come to learn that there is also an alternative reading of the word Bereshit, meaning: In the beginning.., that is rephrased as: With the beginning.. . Thus, with the beginning of that spark, everything for our world began its existence, but it doesn’t mean that it is the beginning of everything beyond the point of our perception since our beginning. Keter is the point of nothingness, but not so for Ein Sof as it can be referred to as the circle that encompasses all the Ten Sefirot, or as the head of potency of the King, the Authority of emanation, an everlasting nuclear fusion that creates life without an end in sight, a horizon that can’t be reached, but still a point where we all can learn more about, even what lays behind it. It’s a splitting that we can regard as a fusion in nuclear terminology, a fusion (unison) of male and female, of the positive and negative side of a magnet, even meaning thus that male and male, and female and female is not possible as this would have to be rather seen as a nuclear explosion, or magnets that will never be joined together as such, the dead of life instead of the fusion that creates life, of poles that attract each other over and over again. It’s like when we would catch a lightning boll within a vessel. Its energy within that vessel will never cease, the womb of emanation, of life, male and female within one body, not two.