Daily Meditation: Wednesday, April 20, 2005

Creation - uninterrupted process of the condensation of light

04/20/2005

It is said that God created the world ‘ex nihilo’: out of nothing. But ‘nothing’ does not exist. ‘Nothing’ refers to this reality which the cabbalists call Ain Soph Aur: light without end. But even the word ‘light’ can mislead us, because for us light is not only something we see, but something that allows us to see. Ain Soph Aur as understood by the cabbalists, however, is a light which exists beyond the light, a light of such a nature that it can be mistaken for darkness. It is the Absolute, the Non-manifest, the apparent absence of all movement. In order to emerge from this apparent darkness and immobility, the Absolute imposed limits on itself. It circumscribed a space, and then, overflowing the limits of this space, it formed a first receptacle and filled it with its own emanations. This first receptacle is Kether, the first sephirah. And Kether, overflowing in turn, gave rise to Chokmah, which then gave rise to Binah, and so on, all the way to Malkuth, the earth. Each sephirah is an emanation of the preceding one. Thus, beginning with Kether, we can say that all of creation is nothing more than an ongoing, uninterrupted condensation of divine light.