Wednesday, December 26, 2012
Letter from Reb ben Yisrael
Here is a letter written by a Russian rabbi in the early twentieth century. As the commentator notes, it could have been written by a Zen master or a Sufi Master. And for the word "God" as it is used here, other words could as well be used, such as Brahma, Source, Goddess, Creator, Ultimate, Absolute, Unnamable--and many others.
Reb Yerachmiel ben Yisrael
19 Tevet 5636
My Dear Aaron Hershel,
You ask me of God: to define the Nameless to place in your palm the ultimate secret. Do not imagine that this is hidden somewhere far from you. The ultimate secret is the most open one. Here it is: God is All.
I am tempted to stop with this-to close this letter, sign my name and leave you with this simple truth. Yet I fear you will not understand. Know from the first that all that follows is but an elaboration on the simple fact that God is All.
What does it mean to be All? God is Reality. God is the Source and Substance of all things and nothing. There is no thing or feeling or thought that is not God, even the idea that there is no God! For this is what it is to be All: God must embrace even God's own negation.
Listen again carefully: God is the Source and Substance of everything. There is nothing outside of God. Thus we read: “I am God and there is none else [am od]” (Isaiah 45:5). Read not simply “none else,” but rather “nothing else”-not that there is no other god but God, but that there is nothing else but God.
Let me illustrate. It rained heavily during the night, and the street is thick with mud. I walked to the Bet Midrash (House of Learning) this morning and stopped to watch a group of little children playing with the mud. Oblivious to the damp, they made dozens of mud figures: houses, animals, towers. From their talk, it was clear that they imagined an identity for each. They gave the figures names and told their stories. For a while, the mud figures took on an independent existence. But they were all just mud. Mud was their source and mud was their substance. From the perspective of the children, their mud creations had separate selves. From the mud's point of view, it is clear such independence was an illusion-the creations were all just mud.
It is the same with us and God: “Adonal alone is God in heaven above and on earth below, there is none else” (Deuteronomy 4:39). There is none else, meaning there is nothing else in heaven or on earth but God.
Can this be? When I look at the world, I do not see God. I see trees of various kinds, people of all types, houses, fields, lakes, cows, horses, chickens, and on and on. In this I am like the children at play, seeing real figures and not simply mud.
Where in all this is God? The question itself is misleading. God is not “in” this; God is this.
Think carefully about what I have said. It is the key to all the secrets of life.
B'Shalom
P. S. Those who have experienced major Kundalini awakening know that this perspective is true. The energies of Kundalini are indeed the ultimate reality/force of the universe, and we are but tiny atoms of its manifestations.
When the above article was published on one site, a respondent noted "Yes. Actually the mud metaphor is a duplicate of an old Vedic one which speaks of how various items of jewelry may appear different, but, at root, are all gold." (I found this article on NDhighlights).
