Who is your writer, and what compells him to write about Kabbalism?
Science teaches us how to comprehend God’s creation and understand the Bible, which makes me a science heretic. “Mysteries of faith” are a theosophical cop-out, making me a Christian heretic. The journey, to this point, has been varied and somewhat torturous.
My first career was in industrial engineering and environmental monitoring. My second career has been in the teaching of high school math and sciences. All this time, one of my hobbies has been in keeping up with cutting edge science in all fields, for many years at the library but for the past 15 years through the internet. I believed that science is teaching us how God’s creation works. This makes me a scientific heretic. In parallel, I am a life-long seeker of spiritual understanding. I’ve practiced two Christian religious paths, as well as some Buddhism, Taoism, and Native American philosophy when I became frustrated with organized Christianity. I always kept coming back to the Judeo-Christian Bible, but coming back with questions. Especially questions surrounding the so-called "mysteries of faith". My entire life, I could not believe the Bible would be given to us by a perfect God in a way we would not be able to fully understand. I could not believe the words of ministers and priests trying to explain these mysteries by saying, quite equivocally, “It’s a mystery. The Lord works in strange ways.” It always sounded like a theosophical cop-out. The Bible is meant to be understood, without mystery. This makes me a Christian heretic.
During my studies for a Masters in Philosophy, I realized a personal weakness for the pre-enlightenment figures of England, the most famous being Isaac Newton and Robert Boyle. Many of their great ideas emerged suddenly, almost out of nowhere. Since no great mind ever works in a vacuum, I researched this historical era extensively hoping to find the sources of their inspirations. Routinely, my search led me to a 17th century Latin translation of Kabbalah by Knorr Von Rosenroth. There is no question Newton read it, and took considerable influence from it. And, he wasn’t alone. I had to know just what ideas Newton, and others, took from Kabbalah. Unfortunately, the Latin translation Kabbala Denudata was nowhere to be found. My problem was further exacerbated by not being able to read Hebrew or Aramaic, the only languages it seemed Kabbalah was written in.
In 2002, I found a book, God is a Verb by Rabbi David Cooper, which laid out what Kabbalism is, and what Kabbala is about, written in english. It sufficiently answered some of my long held questions about scripture and made me even more interested in reading Kabbalah itself. Near the end of 2008, several english translations of much of Kabbalah appeared on one of my favorite websites, Sacred-Texts. The first book of Kabbalah to have been written, Zohar, is there almost in its entirety.
Reading Zohar is not something to do casually. It takes time, and requires considerable use of the philosophical altered states of consciousness; contemplation, reflection, retrospection, introspection, and prayer. Over a period of two months, I discovered almost all of my scientifically deduced personal theories concerning the “mysteries” of scripture were contained in Zohar, and all of my deepest spiritual questions as well. I was flabbergasted at the conformance with many cutting edge scientific theories, since Zohar was first written more than 1800 years ago! At the point where I had read Zohar through its explanation of Adam and Eve, including a different, kinder alternative to the horrid traditional teaching of original sin, I experienced an epiphany. I may well have been a Kabbalist my whole life. Because I was raised Christian, and not an orthodox Jew, I had no idea that my thoughts and questions were not merely the whimsical machinations of an intelligent, creative, and unorthodox mind. Prior to reading Zohar, I found that modern Kabbalism allows the use of scientific information as a tool for interpreting scripture, something I had always felt was correct to do, but regularly met with considerable negativism from other Christians when I did. Zohar seems to say that use of what we learn about the world around us is perfectly acceptable, and should be used to expand and perfect our understanding of the Divine. This positively supported and heightened my personal revelation of being a life-long Kabbalist.
I am a Kabbalist. I have always been a Kabbalist. Through the words of Kabbalah, and the authoritative instructional teachings of Kabbalah to be found in any good spiritual bookstore, I have found an inner peace so profound it borders on the exhilarating. However, my life-long search for spiritual peace and fulfillment cannot possibly be singular. Nothing in our world happens once and only once. There must be many, many Christians in this world with spiritual questions that go unanswered, who also have the subtle but endless intuition that something is wrong with the way many critical stories of the Bible are traditionally taught, and that these incorrect teachings contaminate and obfuscate traditional Judeo-Christian theology, in total. Until now, Kabbalism has been primarily the domain of a relatively small number of orthodox Jewish mystics, who have diligently kept the tradition alive for roughly 4000 years. Until the modern era, bringing Kabbalist ideas out of their long-standing Jewish domain was literally dangerous to Christians. Relative to traditional Christian scriptural teachings, Kabbalism is abject heresy. Heresy is not atheism. Heretics are believers, deep believers, who question traditional methods of teaching theology. Now, this alternative to traditional Judeo-Christian teachings is possible, using the very same Bible all Judeo-Christians use. It is Kabbalah. It is time to open its wondrous and fulfilling methods and ideas to everyone. Kabbalah is not only for the Jewish mystics. Kabbalah is for the world to know and benefit from. It is time that it happens.
"Thus are the teachers and students of the secret doctrine (Kabbalism),
who by their intellectual and spiritual enlightenment and knowledge of esoteric science,
cause earth's ofttimes weary wandering and belated pilgrims
to find the true path of light that leads them to higher and diviner life.
Happy are they engaged in the work of guiding others into the right way" (Zohar; chapter I)
who by their intellectual and spiritual enlightenment and knowledge of esoteric science,
cause earth's ofttimes weary wandering and belated pilgrims
to find the true path of light that leads them to higher and diviner life.
Happy are they engaged in the work of guiding others into the right way" (Zohar; chapter I)
