I first encountered Kabbalah eighteen years ago, as a student at Columbia College. I had no idea that its obscure texts and abstruse concepts would one day become a central part of my life -- let alone Britney's, Madonna's, and Demi's.
Despite all the fame, or maybe because of it, it's often quite hard to get a clear answer to what Kabbalah actually is. It seems to depend on who you ask. A scholar will tell you it's a library of medieval texts. A contemporary teacher might tell you it's the secret to getting everything you want. Someone else might try to charge you to learn more.
Over the next few weeks, I'll try to give a thorough, objective, and uncompromising introduction to Kabbalah. I'll do so as a scholar (I'm currently finishing my Ph.D. in Jewish Thought at the Hebrew University, focusing on Kabbalah), a spiritual teacher, and a cultural critic (I've written and spoken about the Kabbalah Centre many times, and have much to say about it). My goal? To give people interested in Kabbalah, either personally or simply as spectators, an introduction to this strange system of thought that is often distorted, often vulgarized -- yet frequently quite beautiful.
Let's start with the word itself. What does "Kabbalah" mean? Here are four answers (fans of Kabbalah will already have noticed that I've used some significant spiritual numbers... all just part of the fun):
1. Literally, it means "receiving," as in a received tradition. Some Kabbalistic teachings go back thousands of years, and were passed from master to disciple. Others were invented yesterday. Kabbalah was an oral tradition, and even once books were written, they were often concealed from the general public. You had to "receive" Kabbalah from a teacher.
2. Figuratively, it also means "receiving," as in receiving the truth of what is happening right now. One core of that truth is that everything is God -- you are God reading about God on a screen which is God. Of course, most of us don't really "receive" that truth fully, because of how our mind, body, and heart works. The forms of Kabbalah can help you receive more of it.
3. Historically, "Kabbalah" refers to an ancient, fascinating, and complex system of Jewish mysticism and esoteric knowledge. Rich in symbols, myth, and literary merit, the Kabbalah "library" contains thousands of books written over many centuries. Scholars generally date the beginning of this written literature to the 12th century, with additional "waves" in the 16th and early 19th centuries.
4. Literarily, Kabbalah may be understood as a way of reading texts, and the world, on multiple levels of depth. Kabbalah is all about levels of reality, and balance among them. We strive not to move from "lower" to "higher" but to integrate them; not to favor one side of our lives over another, but to balance them. Reading and seeing deeply enables us to do that.
Now, Kabbalah is rooted in the Jewish tradition, which speaks of the One in terms of "God." Yet as you will see if you learn Kabbalah, that word does not mean what you think it means. The "God" of the Kabbalah does not exist -- it is Existence Itself. But it is also not the same as the Brahman or the Tao or the All: the God of the Kabbalists is also a mythic, sexual, anthropomorphic family of personalities; a dynamic structure of energies and potentials; and very, very unlike the Old Man in the Sky we know from Sunday School. In large part, Kabbalah is about the multiple levels of reality, from Oneness to Multiplicity and back, and about balancing the various energies of reality on all those different levels. So it includes both "all is one" and "all is many." More on this in a future post.
Scholars often define Kabbalah as "Jewish mysticism." Mysticism means a direct experience of Ultimate Reality -- which in Western religions means, a direct experience of God. Rather than reading about God in the Bible, or praying to a God we don't experience, a mystic meets God "face to face." That scholarly definition -- Jewish mysticism -- is about half right. Kabbalah does contain accounts of mystical experiences, and techniques for having them yourself. These techniques work, in my experience, and you can try them too. We'll get to some of them later. But Kabbalah is more than just accounts of, and guides to have, mystical experiences. It also contains what might be called "esotericism," or, deeper readings of texts and life. It contains folklore, magic, legend, myth, philosophy, guides to meditation, music.
Some of the questions Kabbalah has asked over the 800 years of its existence include: What is the world? Who are we? What is the significance of our lives and actions? What is God? How can we come to know ultimate reality in our own experience? How do the body, heart, mind, and spirit fit together? And what are the roles of myth, ritual, morality, eroticism, meditation, ecstasy, sacred text, and prayer on the spiritual path? There is no fixed canon of Kabbalah, and different texts give different answers to these questions. But they do tend to focus on these sorts of topics more than others.
So -- if this has struck your interest, there'll be more here next week. I look forward to your questions and feedback. Stay tuned!
Follow Jay Michaelson on Twitter: www.twitter.com/jaymichaelson
Rabbi Arthur Green: Kabbalah Centre: Marketing Superstition as Spirituality?
Rabbi Shais Taub: God and Gender: Missing the Divine for the Sign
Rabbi Adam Jacobs: Kabbalah and the 32 Types of Consciousness
David Shasha: Dangerous Mystic Motifs in Judaism
Look forward to getting to know you better,
Dr. Jennifer Howard
http://www.DrJenniferHoward.com
http://www.miptalk.com
It takes a lifetime and more to master Kabbalah, let alone a mini taste test intro from Jay. Thats the catch - its a journey and at the beginning you get to claim allot of prizes (as Jay suggests), but the game gets harder and the prizes far more elusive and the price tag higher. - and then you have to decide do I escape or stay?
There is a lot to be gained in self awareness - but best in self study. If you can manage it stay away from the center. If you do investigate -go in with your eyes open and your wallet securely shut.
But do I respect people who try to develop direct experience of reality.
In that sense, I find Sufi, Hassidism, Zen, Ch'an, Taoist, and other similar ( and rigorous) disciplines rather fascinating.
Unfortunately this kind of knowledge is not transferable.
That I can no longer call myself
a Christian, a Hindu, a Muslim, a Buddhist, a Jew.
The Truth has shared so much of Itself with me
That I can no longer call myself
a man, a woman, an angel, or even a pure soul.
Love has befriended Hafiz.
It has turned to ash and freed me
Of every concept and image my mind has ever known.
--Hafiz, 1320-1389
Would you say that the book, "The Secret" is Diet Kabbalah or rather Kabbalah Light?
Jill Bolte Taylor's speech about her experiences during a stroke were deeply moving to me (http://blog.ted.com/2008/03/jill_bolte_tayl.php). She got past all of my anti-religion filters by not using any loaded terms, but the experience she described was similar to what many people often talk about in terms of the "spiritual".
I did a thought experiment recently, while I was trying to get over creative block, in which I pretended to believe in there being a spirit larger than myself. I was surprised by immediately feeling much more relaxed, comforted, happy and infinitely more playful and creative. Of course, the analytical me insists that it was just a way to trick my brain into thinking in a new way and is otherwise without merit. However, it was such a wonderful feeling, that I don't care.
So having now experienced this joy briefly for myself, I'm looking for ways to explore this side of my brain/being, but I'm repelled by the dogma and rules of all organized religions. I look forward to following your posts to see if there is something in Kabbalah that will help me gain better access to this part of my self.
"A contemporary teacher might tell you it's the secret to getting everything you want."
What proof are you looking for? Whether or not a contemporary teacher might say that? Or if said teacher can prove Kaballah is in fact the secret to getting everything you want? If it's the latter, how does one go about proving whether or not Kabalistic methods do indeed get you everything you want? What if the secret is understanding that everything you ever could want is really within and has nothing to do with the material world?
The best way to find proof of anything (or lack thereof) is to embark on the journey to discover it for yourself. Why lay the burden of proof on others? Ultimately you're just taking someones else word for it just the same.
Shalom!
Unfortunately, opiates, real and metaphorical, have negative externalities as well.
A more sociological/ethnological approach to Kabbalah would be more interesting (to me) than its philosophical bases; which like all religions rely upon suspension of scientific methods and "reality" in favour of a "faith" based approach.
So: why the recent surge of interest in Kabbalah? Is this renewed interest part of a larger trend towards alternative faiths such as paganism, eastern philosophical religions, new age mysticism...? What relation with Judaism?
I'm sure this series will prove very interesting, and informative, whether one believes in it or not. I, for one, am interested in learning about the religious philosophies and beliefs that other people have. Thank you for writing something which will undoubtedly clarify a lot of misconceptions.