We will learn much more about these as we continue our study.
CHAPTER 3 DIVISIONS OF OUR WHOLE BEING
As physical and earthly as we may feel, Kabbalah teaches that our true nature is not physical. We are beings of mind, soul, and spirit that are only temporarily using a physical body and living in a physical realm. And even while we are here, we live a good portion of our incarnate life beyond the body, as on average we sleep one-third of our incarnation. During sleep the nonphysical portion of our being may reach far beyond this plane of existence. Add to this that the death of the body is not the death of our nonphysical self. A major portion of our being survives death. We live on and may even return to incarnate in a new body—or not. According to Kabbalah and many other schools of thought, there is much activity on planes beyond this physical universe that we are so fully invested in.
Not only is a major portion of our being alive beyond sleep and death, it is amazingly active! We will cover more on this in chapter four.
Over the past many years, books have been published recounting hospital near-death testimonials that have contributed to our understanding of life while the body is dead. Of course, the testimonials come from those whose bodies were resuscitated, but the accounts are amazingly similar to one another. The patients each experienced existence outside their dead bodies and saw imagery of loved ones who had died previously as well as realms of light and activity. Then, when the chemistry, electricity, and physical manipulation were sufficient to revive their bodies, they felt themselves drawn back into their bodies and this world, as if traveling rapidly through a long tunnel. Bang! They awoke on the operating or emergency room table with bright lights glaring at them.
Can we imagine this nonphysical aspect of our being? Can we feel our being without a body? If so, then we are aware of our higher nature, and this is much of what Kabbalah is about.
Ancient and modern philosophies and religions acknowledge various components of our whole being; most common is the simple body, mind, and spirit or soul arrangement. The ancient Egyptians identified five distinguishable parts to us, as does Kabbalah, although most teachers focus on the three aspects that are most present with us now.
These divisions are delineations of a oneness for the benefit of understanding and awareness, not a fixed condition. Oneness is the true, eternal condition; division is a temporary measure for the purpose of assisting us. We are whole, but consciousness and energy may be more focused in certain areas at any given time. Certainly, in this realm, the physical is dominant for most people.
The ancient Bereishit Rabbah (“Great Genesis,” a midrash, or homiletic study, section 14:9, on Genesis) speaks of five levels, or qualities, of our being. A problem occurs in that the five Hebrew words for these divisions are all translated in English as the same word: soul. And it does not help that three of the Hebrew terms are similar in their meaning: breath, wind, and breathing. We simply must understand that the distinctions are subtle, because we are talking about a wholeness of being. Even so, the distinctions are helpful to our understanding.
In a wonderful metaphor and using some of the imagery in the Zohar, Kabbalists Shim’on Lavi (1492–1585, an old guy for those times, ninety-three, although Shim’on Lavi may have actually been a father-and-son team by the same name) and Moshe Cordovero (1522–1570) compared these parts of our being to a glassblower, one who creates a beautiful, projected object by blowing through a pipe with molten glass on the end until the glass object is formed and then cuts the object from the pipe so that it sits on its own. In this metaphor, the glassblower’s essence is our highest level of being, the glassblower is the next level, the breath of the glassblower is the third level, next is the expressed breath of the glassblower through the pipe that forms the glass and, finally, the breath inside the glass object is the last level of our being—it is as the breath inside our physical body, the glass object our physical body.
Let’s begin at the physical level which we know so well and then move to the highest level of our being. The first three parts are the only ones involved with the physical body. These are (1) the Living Being (Nefesh), (2) the Soul Mind (Ruach), and (3) the Soul Being (Neshamah). The higher two levels, (4) the Spirit Mind (Chayah) and (5) the Spirit Being (Yechidah) do not reside in the body. Yes, there is a portion of each of us that has not touched this world or our physical body.
The Living Being (Nefesh)
Translating the Kabbalah term Nefesh is easy, but understanding its meaning in this context is tricky. It means “breath,” but as the glass-blower metaphor indicates, it is the breath inside form, inside the glass object, which is the body. Kabbalah considers this portion to be the “Living Being,” in the sense of a “breathing creature” encased in form. Notice that the form is not the creature; rather, the creature is inside the form. This portion was the second Creation, which occurred in Genesis 2, not the first one, which occurred in Genesis 1, in the image of God. Here is the passage related to this Creation: “And the Lord God made man from the dust of the earth, breathing into him the breath of life, and man became a living soul.” (Genesis 2:7) The word man in this passage is actually the Hebrew word adam, with a lowercased a, not the name Adam that is later used but the Hebrew word that means “beings” or “persons.” The word adam has the connotation of being reddish in color, resulting from the reddish flush of life-giving blood in this being. What is most disappointing is that in the biblical book of Numbers (considered to be the fourth book of Moses), the term adam is always translated as “persons” (Numbers 31:28, 30, 35, 40, 46), while the Hebrew word ish is used to mean “male” or “man” (Numbers 1:4 and throughout). But, in Genesis, adam is translated as “man” instead of “persons,” leaving us with a misconception that the first being was masculine.
These beings were formed from the dust of the earth, and the breath of life was breathed into them. Here the translators use the masculine pronoun “him,” despite the fact that, at this point in the Creation (Genesis 2:7), the being contained both feminine and masculine qualities—it was androgynous! The separation of the gender qualities did not occur until later, in 2:21. The reason for the separation of the genders was that, in this new realm of duality (life and death, good and evil, night and day, yin and yang), where the heavenly oneness is now separated into individual bodies (one soul to a body), the beings were alone inside separate bodies, and they were lonely: “Then the Lord God said, ‘It is not good that the man [adam=beings] should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.’” (Genesis 2:18; RSV) But no helper that was fit for this level of being was found among all the creatures in this new dimension, so God took a portion from within the beings and made the companion.
The man [beings] gave names to all cattle and to the birds of the air and to every beast of the field; but the man [beings] had no one like himself as a help. And the Lord God cast a deep sleep upon the man [beings], and took a rib [tsela means a “side” of its whole nature, not just a rib] from him while he was sleeping, joining up the flesh again in its place. And from the rib [side] which the Lord God had taken from the man [beings] he made a woman [ishshah=female], and took her to the man [ish=male].
Genesis