(Part II continues where Part I has just left off.)
...As for the concept of Gvul (the name is well familiar to every Israeli as a secular term in Hebrew, meaning border police, or the movement of conscientious objectors abstaining from the mandatory military service,--- but quite unfamiliar to most in its theosophical sense), it also refers to God’s contraction, but in a different sense. Whereas in the case of Tzimtzum God’s infinity withdraws to allow finite matter, in Gvul God shows his ability to squeeze a part of His infinity into a finite form.
I used to discuss this intriguing subject extensively with the Hasidic Rabbi Yisroel Rice, of the Chabad of Marin County, California, but, for some reason, it is extremely hard to find on the Internet (where I am often fishing to refresh my memory of various factual bits and pieces, or to get additional details on my subjects of interest), as if this concept were somehow being protected from an outside intrusion. Eventually, I found it on the website of the Israeli Freemasons (!), and here is how a certain Errol D. Feldman, 33°, talks about it, begging to be compared with my stimulating conversations with that remarkable Hasidic pillar of learning, Rabbi Rice, who has, perhaps without ever realizing it, taken up a permanent niche in the corridors of my consciousness.
“Atzilut (Emanation), Beriah (Creation), Yetzirah (Formation) and Asiyah (Action) are the four worlds that emerge out of Hashem’s infinite light, and culminate in our finite, physical, and material universe. Atzilut is the first, and highest, of the four worlds. The Ten Sefirot (Countings) of the World of Atzilut, and of the other worlds, are the fundament of the Kabbalah.
“All the worlds are created and conducted by means of the Sefirot. The Ten Sefirot demonstrate both G-d’s infinite power (Koah HaBliGvul) and His finite power (Koah HaGvul). For, as is pointed out by the author (Rabbi Meir ben Ezekiel ibn Gabbai) of Avodat HaKodesh (Tikkunei Zohar reproduced in Siddur Tehillat HaShem), just as Hashem has infinite power, so, too, does He have finite power. For, if you were to say that He possesses infinite power, but lacks finite power, then you minimize His completeness,--- and He is the most complete entity of all.
“It is within the Sefirot that infinity and the finite first coalesce, as it were, in order for worlds to be created and directed. For, the Sefirot are composed of both orot (lights) and kelim (vessels).”
Observe how effortlessly, although somewhat ambiguously, the question of the two hypostases, that is of the infinite and the finite coming to form a composite entity, is resolved here, which now brings me to the key point of this entry.
The concepts of Tzimtzum and Gvul are of great interest to me, as they are raising an intriguing question of how it may be technically achievable for the spirit to so-to-speak break the matter barrier. After Einstein’s profound breakthrough in the relativity theory, where his e=mc² formula establishes a relationship between energy and matter, without the need for anyone to engage in any kind of theosophical contemplation, such mental visualization and conceptualization of an actual contraction of the spirit as the causa prima and the creative impulse for the emergence of matter, ex nihilo (in the sense that John Scotus Erigena provides us, when he says that nothing--- that is, something which is not--- is not something entirely non-existent, but it is a substance that transcends everything that is!), that is, as a result of an activity of the universal spirit, the unknowable God, is thus by no means inconceivable, but is available to scrutiny well within the capacity of human comprehension.
By the same token, it is now comparably conceivable how the Spirit of God, in Its exercise of Its ability to move (not in the spatial sense of moving from place to place, which then turns it into matter, but in a very difficult, but not impossible to grasp, sense of contraction and expansion of itself, from the infinite to finite, and back) may not only cause matter to appear (that is, to be created), but may fill a material receptacle, or “vessel,” without any diminution of its own infinity (¥-X=¥), such as was, perhaps, the physical case with Jesus Christ, either at birth, or, more likely, during His epiphany at the river Jordan, when He was filled with the Holy Spirit.
The argument expounded in this entry serves, as a matter of fact, to strengthen the contra-filioque case of the Christian Orthodox Church, as the capacity for Gvul, to continue our recourse to the Jewish mysticism of the Kabbalah, is reserved for Ein Sof, God the Father, alone, rather than for any of His manifestations. On the other hand, it does not diminish the co-equality of the Trinity, once the two manifestations of God the Father (God the Son and The Holy Ghost) are seen as God’s Infinity filling them both, yet, once again, explained through the mathematical formulae of infinity, where even one tiny iota of infinity is still equal to the whole (¥/X=¥).
...As for the concept of Gvul (the name is well familiar to every Israeli as a secular term in Hebrew, meaning border police, or the movement of conscientious objectors abstaining from the mandatory military service,--- but quite unfamiliar to most in its theosophical sense), it also refers to God’s contraction, but in a different sense. Whereas in the case of Tzimtzum God’s infinity withdraws to allow finite matter, in Gvul God shows his ability to squeeze a part of His infinity into a finite form.
I used to discuss this intriguing subject extensively with the Hasidic Rabbi Yisroel Rice, of the Chabad of Marin County, California, but, for some reason, it is extremely hard to find on the Internet (where I am often fishing to refresh my memory of various factual bits and pieces, or to get additional details on my subjects of interest), as if this concept were somehow being protected from an outside intrusion. Eventually, I found it on the website of the Israeli Freemasons (!), and here is how a certain Errol D. Feldman, 33°, talks about it, begging to be compared with my stimulating conversations with that remarkable Hasidic pillar of learning, Rabbi Rice, who has, perhaps without ever realizing it, taken up a permanent niche in the corridors of my consciousness.
“Atzilut (Emanation), Beriah (Creation), Yetzirah (Formation) and Asiyah (Action) are the four worlds that emerge out of Hashem’s infinite light, and culminate in our finite, physical, and material universe. Atzilut is the first, and highest, of the four worlds. The Ten Sefirot (Countings) of the World of Atzilut, and of the other worlds, are the fundament of the Kabbalah.
“All the worlds are created and conducted by means of the Sefirot. The Ten Sefirot demonstrate both G-d’s infinite power (Koah HaBliGvul) and His finite power (Koah HaGvul). For, as is pointed out by the author (Rabbi Meir ben Ezekiel ibn Gabbai) of Avodat HaKodesh (Tikkunei Zohar reproduced in Siddur Tehillat HaShem), just as Hashem has infinite power, so, too, does He have finite power. For, if you were to say that He possesses infinite power, but lacks finite power, then you minimize His completeness,--- and He is the most complete entity of all.
“It is within the Sefirot that infinity and the finite first coalesce, as it were, in order for worlds to be created and directed. For, the Sefirot are composed of both orot (lights) and kelim (vessels).”
Observe how effortlessly, although somewhat ambiguously, the question of the two hypostases, that is of the infinite and the finite coming to form a composite entity, is resolved here, which now brings me to the key point of this entry.
The concepts of Tzimtzum and Gvul are of great interest to me, as they are raising an intriguing question of how it may be technically achievable for the spirit to so-to-speak break the matter barrier. After Einstein’s profound breakthrough in the relativity theory, where his e=mc² formula establishes a relationship between energy and matter, without the need for anyone to engage in any kind of theosophical contemplation, such mental visualization and conceptualization of an actual contraction of the spirit as the causa prima and the creative impulse for the emergence of matter, ex nihilo (in the sense that John Scotus Erigena provides us, when he says that nothing--- that is, something which is not--- is not something entirely non-existent, but it is a substance that transcends everything that is!), that is, as a result of an activity of the universal spirit, the unknowable God, is thus by no means inconceivable, but is available to scrutiny well within the capacity of human comprehension.
By the same token, it is now comparably conceivable how the Spirit of God, in Its exercise of Its ability to move (not in the spatial sense of moving from place to place, which then turns it into matter, but in a very difficult, but not impossible to grasp, sense of contraction and expansion of itself, from the infinite to finite, and back) may not only cause matter to appear (that is, to be created), but may fill a material receptacle, or “vessel,” without any diminution of its own infinity (¥-X=¥), such as was, perhaps, the physical case with Jesus Christ, either at birth, or, more likely, during His epiphany at the river Jordan, when He was filled with the Holy Spirit.
The argument expounded in this entry serves, as a matter of fact, to strengthen the contra-filioque case of the Christian Orthodox Church, as the capacity for Gvul, to continue our recourse to the Jewish mysticism of the Kabbalah, is reserved for Ein Sof, God the Father, alone, rather than for any of His manifestations. On the other hand, it does not diminish the co-equality of the Trinity, once the two manifestations of God the Father (God the Son and The Holy Ghost) are seen as God’s Infinity filling them both, yet, once again, explained through the mathematical formulae of infinity, where even one tiny iota of infinity is still equal to the whole (¥/X=¥).
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