DOKAN 6/Dokan 06.iso/Webs/128.120.24.39/nge/q15.txt

Text File | 1998-09-05 | 14KB | 228 lines

"For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes
shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil."


The  term  "The  Great Work" is not a term to  be  found  in  the
literature  of traditional Kabbalah,  but it is a term which  has
come to be associated with traditional Kabbalastic ideas. Two key
ideas underpinning the Great Work are:

the universe we live in is not as it should be. In some way it is
"damaged", and only a conscious and deliberate effort on the part
of the created will restore it to its intended state. Also, as a
consequence...

we live in ignorance of our true estate. We know not what we are.
In the words of the poet W.B. Yeats, "Consume my heart away; sick
with desire and fastened to a dying animal, It knows not what it
is..."

The Great Work is the attempt to undo the damage, and it consists
of two parts. The first part is the preservation of knowledge and
techniques  which  enable individual human beings to  awaken  and
recover  the knowledge of their true nature.  The second part  is
the  deliberate efforts undertaken by these awakened  individuals
to  restore  the  world to what it should  have  been.  There  is
nothing explicitly Kabbalistic about this idea of the Great  Work
- similar ideas have occurred at many times and places - but  the
idea that the creation is not what it should have been is one  of
the key elements of Kabbalistic speculation,  and the belief that
it is possible for individual human beings to help to repair  the
damage and restore the creation was and is one of the key motives
underlying Kabbalistic practice.
     The extent of Kabbalistic speculation has been so  extensive
that it is difficult to extract simple explanations for why human
beings do not understand their true nature,  or why the  creation
is flawed.  It is unreasonable to expect simple explanations  for
something   which  lies  outside  the  domain   of   intellectual
speculation,   and  perhaps  it  is  unreasonable  to  expect  an
explanation  of any kind,  agreeing with Wittgenstein  that  "the
sense  of  the world must lie outside the world";  those  who  go
beyond  the world cannot be expected to bring back answers  which
mean  anything to those who are in it.  Given  this  caveat,  the
following  discussion  on  the Great Work  is  based  on  several
traditional ideas,  but the synthesis is mine.  Those who wish to
delve  into  centuries of speculation within  a  strictly  Judaic
tradition are referred to Scholem [ ].
     A  great  deal of Kabbalistic speculation  begins  with  the
Biblical story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.  This story
is not to be taken literally;  it is usually taken as an allegory
to be interpreted within the context of general Kabbalistic ideas
concerning the Creation. The Garden represents the Creation as it
should  be,  the Creation as it was before the Fall.  Before  the
Fall, Adam and Eve were conscious, but not self-conscious -  they
did not know that they were naked. The sin of Adam and Eve was to
eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil,  and in doing so
they became self-conscious;  they understood what they had  done,
became afraid,  and hid themselves from God. As a consequence God
made coats of skin to clothe them and they were ejected from  the
Garden  to  become human beings - animals who  join  sexually  to
produce offspring,  animals who die.  The return to Eden and  the
Tree of Life was barred.
     In the Biblical story mentions two trees in the garden:  the
Tree  of Life,  and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and  Evil.  For
some  Kabbalists the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge  were
one tree until Adam and Eve picked the fruit,  causing the two to
separate;  the  Tree  of  Life became the  right  pillar  of  the
sephirothic Tree,  and the Tree of Knowledge became the left, and
the Tree of Life as we now see it is not the original Tree as  it
was before the fruit was picked.  The sin of Adam was the sin  of
separation,  the sin of creating a division between knowledge and
life.
     The Biblical story can also be interpreted as a story of the
growth of self consciousness.  There was a time when humans lived
unselfconsciously  among the animals,  a time when humans  *were*
animals,  and  that  state was shattered by the growth  of  self-
consciousness.  The  self-conscious creature,  terrified  by  the
naked  consciousness of the One,  and in danger of slipping  back
into the One, hid itself away from God; the Cherubim who wielded
fiery swords were servants of its own making.  The self-conscious
creature,  in  an  attempt to strengthen  its  fragile  identity,
anchored itself  to  the  left side of  the  Tree,  the  Tree  of
Knowledge,   and   set about  building  the   structures   and
abstractions  which  have resulted in our  complex  and  confused
society.
     There is a relative unanimity among Kabbalists that the left
side of the Tree is the source of evil.  To be fair,  it is  also
the  source of good,  as it is difficult to have one without  the
other,  but  the  problem of evil was  the  major  preoccupation.
Suppose  a rich man walks past a beggar in the street.  The  rich
man thinks:  "If I give to this person, then logically I ought to
give  to all equally poor people,  for all are equally  miserable
and equally deserving.  I do not have enough money to feed  every
poor  person,  and  my  poverty will not  solve  the  problem  of
poverty,  so  really there is no point in giving." This  kind  of
rational thinking belongs on the left side of the  Tree.  Suppose
the  wealthy man decides to give something.  How much  should  he
give? Everything he has? This unlikely. He will give a little and
hold  back the rest.  This "holding back" is the quality of  Din,
Judgement,  and many Kabbalists have seen God as the wealthy  man
who  gives a little and holds-back much.  In the Bahir  the  left
side  of the Tree was associated with gold,  and the  right  side
with  silver,  to make the point that God gave silver,  but  held
back  something more valuable.  The Creation could not stand  the
full  force of God's light,  and so it was held back,  and  as  a
consequence  each  one of us has inherited the ability  to  hold-
back.
     Let  us  continue  with the story of the rich  man  and  the
beggar.  Why  does the beggar have so little?  The beggar has  so
little  because there are laws of property.  Laws belong  on  the
left side (Hod).  The beggar cannot take what is not his  because
there are authorities to uphold the law,  and they also belong on
the  left side (Gevurah).  There are well-defined procedures  for
transferring property;  work is one of these.  These well defined
procedures also belong on the left side (Gevurah,  Hod).  If  the
beggar does not "fit-in", then he must take what comes by chance,
or live outside the law.
     In every case we see what we would regard as an  inequitable
situation as being created and sustained by qualities  associated
with the left side of the Tree.  Fortunately there are also  laws
(left  side) which provide some minimal provisions for the  poor,
which is evidence that good is not completely divorced from evil.
How did these laws come about?  I believe that in most people the
left and right pillars are not completely divorced;  they meet on
the middle pillar to produce Rachamim, compassion.
     In the previous example evil was a side effect of structure;
when  one puts a fly in a jar and seals the lid,  then sooner  or
later the fly will suffocate.  The effect of confining the fly is
that the fly dies. There is no evil in the jar, and if evil is to
be found anywhere it is in the hand that screws the lid tight, or
in the mind that conceives of ways of killing.  In the same  way,
the left side of the Tree provides the structure for evil,  it is
not in itself evil.  Structure provides the means for people such
as  you and me to create evil,  but there is no  suggestion  that
some kind of metaphysical evil is involved.  Some Kabbalists have
gone further and suggested just that.
     The suggestion that powers of evil exist is usually based on
the belief that the Creation involved or even required and excess
of  the  quality  of Din or Judgment.  In  the  Zohar  the  first
attempts  at  creation  were unbalanced,  and the  power  of  Din
overflowed and shattered the worlds;  the fragments fell into the
Abyss to become the realm of the Qlippoth,  powers which are  the
result  of  unbalanced  Din,  and hence evil in  the  sense  that
unbalanced Judgement and Severity are evil.  Isaac Luria  further
dramatised  these  events with  extraordinary  elaborations;  the
first three sephiroth were able to contain the light of God,  but
the  remaining  seven were shattered in an event  known  as  "the
breaking  of  the vessels",  and in the catastrophe some  of  the
light was carried into the Abyss and became trapped in the  realm
of  the Qlippoth.  The four worlds were  dislocated,  and  Assiah
slipped  into the realm of the Qlippoth.  In Luria's view we  are
immersed in a world where evil has a primordial origin.
     Other  Kabbalists  have stressed  that,  regardless  of  the
catastrophic origin of evil,  its continued existence is based on
an unbalanced flow of energy down the left side of the Tree,  and
it  is this steady drip of unbalanced force which  nourishes  the
Sitra Achara,  or Other Side. It is human evil which creates this
unbalance.  In a definition reminiscent of the classic definition
of dirt, Gikatilla defined evil as an entity which was not in its
rightful place - sand is fine on a beach, but not in engine oil -
and there are powers which have a rightful place in the world but
which  are evil in the wrong context.  Kabbalistic views of  evil
cover  the entire spectrum,  from the surprisingly  sophisticated
view of evil as a structural and necessary part of creation, to a
low superstitious belief in a hierarchy of evil demons.

The exact nature of the Great Work is no simpler to explain  than
the  problem  of  evil itself,  and if one takes  it  to  be  the
attempt to restore a defect in the creation, then its nature will
depend on what one believes that defect to be. There is no simple
view of the Great Work,  but there are a number of clear  threads
to follow.
     The  first thread is to re-unite what has  become  separate,
and the the place to begin is in one's own nature.  When one  re-
unites the elements of one's being,  then one becomes capable  of
transmitting,  of  acting as an agent between the higher and  the
lower.  This  is an important Kabbalistic idea.  The  purpose  of
Kabbalah  is not a personal quest for self-realisation;  it is  a
conscious  decision to play a part in uniting the higher and  the
lower,  not only in oneself,  but more importantly still,  in the
world. If it is part of the essential nature of God to give, then
someone who only receives and does not give cannot be like God or
understand  the  nature of God.  To know God one  must  not  only
receive, but give out in direct measure. Likewise, if "God wished
to  know God",  then one must fulfill the purpose of creation  by
making  this  possible.  There  is a tradition  that  Kether  and
Malkuth play a complementary role in sustaining the Tree of Life.
As  long  as Malkuth only takes from Kether,  and does  not  give
back,  it  is not like God.  Once Malkuth begins to give back  to
Kether,  a  continuous  loop of impulse and  reflection  will  be
created,  it will become like God,and "God will know God".  It is
our role,  as creatures of matter, to create this bridge and make
the creation self-conscious.
     In  Jewish  Kabbalah  this process  is  called  "tikkun"  or
reintegration,  and  is best known from complex  speculations  of
Isaac Luria. Scholem states:

"The object of this human activity, which is designed to complete
the world of tikkun,  is the restoration of the world of  Asiyyah
to its spritual place,  its complete separation from the world of
the kelippot,  and the achievement of a permanent, blissful state
of  communion between every creature and God which  the  kelippot
will be unable to disrupt or prevent."

This all sounds very grand.  It is an enterprise which appeals to
those    with   an   idealistic   and   crusading    temperament.
Unfortunately,  one cannot repair the design faults in machine by
giving  it a fresh coat of paint.  The Tree of Knowledge  is  not
going to be reunited with the Tree of Life unless it is re-united
in ourselves, and when one looks at conditions in the world today
one  sees an ever-accelerating dive into the knowledge of  Assiah
and a blissful disregard for the condition of the human soul.

This  section  on  the Great Work may seem  more  than  a  little
metaphysical,  and this is intentional.  People want to know what
life is about,  and latch onto anything which gives their life  a
greater  meaning.  For one person to supply to another  person  a
reason for living is the antithesis of the Great Work,  which  is
to understand it for oneself.  If each of us is a little piece of
God,  and "God wishes to know God", then the whole is to be found
in the sum of the parts,  and each part has its own role to play.
No-one has the authority to define the Great Work for another.