H. Mystical Qabalah, Physics, and Astrophysics
A number of elements in the qabalistic teachings regarding the “Work
of the Chariot” (ma’aseh merkabah) and the “Work of
the Creation” (ma’aseh b’reshith) provide rich opportunities
for comparison with the ideas and models of modern physics and astrophysics.
For instance, it has been particularly popular in some recent books to compare
the Lurianic doctrine of the expansion of light in the envacuous, circular
Contraction (Tzimtzum) to the modern astrophysical model of the Big
Bang. In the Big Bang model, this universe originated in a quantum fluctuation
that generated an immense explosion of tremendous mass (1058, or in the
more technical parlance, 10E58 grams) contained in an infinitesimally small
space (10E-33 cm). As the universe expanded and cooled, clouds of plasma
accumulated through which gravity waves passed and ignited thermonuclear
fires that generated suns. The suns eventually consume a critical amount
of mass through the process of nuclear fission, whereby they either burn
out or assume new forms. The universe continues to expand in a four-dimensional
space-time continuum until it reaches a point where it starts to contract
and return to its original condition. The expansion of the “Everlasting
Arms” that connect the six Directional Sefiroth to one another around
the periphery of the double pyramid Tree of Life delineated in the Sefer
Yetzirah, and the movement of the Chayot in the Chariot of
the Book of Ezekiel allude to the same idea. In the Hindu holy books known
as the Vedas, we find another analogy to modern cosmology in the comparison
of the Creator to a spider that weaves a web and then retrieves it back
into its body.
The mentor in the Work of the Chariot Trust speculated further on the correlation
between Torah B’reshith 1:1-4 and modern scientific cosmology.
He based his exegesis upon a different breakdown of the letter sequence
of the first line of Torah B’reshith. This breakdown
includes an alternative rendering of the first word of the Torah
as “Bara-shith” i.e. “IT created Six,” reflecting
the six symmetry breaksA symmetry break is a phase transition, like water freezing
into ice if heat is removed from the water-ice system. of modern quantum physics. His detailed exegesis
is presented in an appendix in Qabalah: The
Mystical Heritage of the Children of Abraham. Some other authors,
such as Leonora LeetLeet, Leonora. The Secret Doctrine of the Kabbalah, Inner Traditions, Rochester, Vermont, 1999. The reader is particularly referred to Chapter Nine: "A Synthesis of Sacred Science and Quantum Physics.", have also speculated on the correlation between qabalistic
formulations and the components of particle physics.
Another core idea in modern cosmology that finds its counterpart in qabalistic
doctrine is that time is relative and subject to compression and expansion.
The first chapter of Torah B’reshith describes the “Seven
Days of Creation.” In Zohar B’reshith, it says that
the entire cycle of Creation is contained in the first verse of Torah
B’reshith. In this light, it can then be said that the Hebrew
calendar of seven thousand years spans the entire life of this universe
in matter, which is currently estimated to be twenty billion years. The
implication of this idea is that the sequence of events in Torah B’reshith,
all of which are assumed to occur in one plane of existence, actually manifest
as a nonlinear space-time sequence occurring in more than one plane. Time-space
is exponentially expansive in each successive plane of existence. Perhaps
the reader has had the experience of an elaborate dream that seemed to span
a long period of time, maybe years, only to wake up and find out that it
actually occurred in a manner of minutes. Consider also the oft-told story
of a person seeing their entire life “pass before their eyes”
in a near-death episode.
From the perspective of a multi-plane, time-space sequence of events, one
could conceive of the Great Flood described in the parable of Noah in Torah
B’reshith as an allusion to a great solar cycle spanning approximately
six billion years in matter. During that cycle, the Sun consumes its mass
and eventually expands into a Red Giant, enveloping the planets that it
had created, including the Earth. Then, the Sun (known as Elohim
in Hebrew and Brahma in Sanskrit) contracts its mass, reconstitutes
its core, and spins off a new planetary system in which life is created
and evolves. Within the qabalistic worldview, the forty days that Noah is
said to have spent in the Ark occurs two planes removed in the World of
B’riyah (Creation). The genetic information regarding Noah and his
wife and all fauna and flora thereby existed in a formless state as vibrational
signatures in the World of B’riyah (Creation). This information then
reemerged with the regeneration of life on the planetary mass in the World
of Asiyah (Activity in Matter). This extraordinary idea is also found in
ancient Sanskrit texts in the account of the incarnation of Vishnu
as Matsya the Fish, where the Flood is called Pralaya (“Dark
Night of Brahma”).
The next section of this site addresses the primary written sources of the Mystical Qabalah.
