In his book, Imrei Shefer Words of Beauty, Abraham Abulafia describes the classes and symptoms of an extraordinary affliction. This affliction begins with a single, highly contagious and virulent idea, the idea of God. According to Abulafia, the early stage after the initial infection is critical. If, during this stage, God, as an idea, is objectified, then the afflicted are incurable. For God is not an idea that can be contained, quantified or qualified; and trying to do so neutralises His power and is antecedent to apostasy.
In Abulafia’s time, there were many who claimed absolute knowledge of God, and when he challenged doctrine by introducing a doubt into the traditional beliefs and offered an individualistic stance on acquiring knowledge of God, he was promptly excommunicated - a fate which nearly confronted Moses Maimonides a century earlier when he suggested the same idea.
The person who is able to peer through the veils of dogma and ceases to see God as a thing to be possessed, liberates his mind to the potential of real knowledge. This person is the philosopher-scientist. The concept of God is now open to theory and interpretation. This is where the likes of Moses Maimonides and Thomas Aquinas can draw on elements pointed out in scripture and extrapolate their logical consequences.
At this stage, however, there is still the potential to objectify God, and limit Him to a logical cause, as did Aristotle, or some other such idea. Even though Maimonides avoids this problem by postulating the theory of apophasis, i.e. knowledge of God through negative attributes, this can appear to be a form of agnosticism as there is the underlying acknowledgement that man can never really know God.
However enlightening apophasis certainly is, there is a fundamental problem with it, as there is with any sort of knowledge. What exactly is knowledge? Logic itself is a human interpretation of the universe that it observes. If one is to gain real knowledge of the universe one needs to have real knowledge of the tools one uses to know the universe. This is where the Kabbalah begins.
In Abulafia’s scheme, the Kabbalist falls into one of two categories, the psychonaut and the mystic. The psychonaut is one who explores the psyche in the hope of gaining greater awareness of its activities. Therefore the psychonaut-Kabbalist seeks clarification on the most human of ideas, counting and naming, as well as various unique modes of human consciousness: thought, wisdom, understanding, kindness, might, beauty, victory, majesty, righteousness and kingship.
The psychonaut-Kabbalist hopes that through understanding the mechanisms of thought he will be able to derive an understanding of God as reflected in these attributes. This again is a limitation and objectification of God. The true mystic realises the inherent danger in the unbridled personification of the Divine, though recognises the benefit of self-exploration if nothing but for the purposes of its transcendence.
These four categories identify a progressive sublimation of the knowing-being process, each stage more refined than the former, but ultimately they pose the same risk of false-enlightenment and its obvious ramifications.
Walking the Path to God
It should be noted that while the above paradigm is generally an acceptable model for the subtleties in the quest for the knowledge of God, it is by no means a layout of the path to be followed. Let it be noted that each phase in the model embodies a certain imperfection in varying degrees. However, the model does provide certain essential criteria for the aspirant to understand, and represents the autobiographical account of Abulafia’s own personal journey.
The first of the criteria of genuine enquiry is the idea of infinitude, which could be described as the Name of God. This is because God embodies the idea of limitless possibility. His Name acts as a beacon for the spiritual wayfarer; a guiding star to the beyond. It is a spur to goad the aspirant to ever sublime existential experiences and ensure that, so long as it is possible to question one’s station on the path, progress is ever maintained.
The path requires correct perception of external and internal phenomenon, which is the ability to see reality as it actually is. The Ecstatic Kabbalah makes a distinction in this manner between the Intellect and the Imagination. The imagination is that faculty which tricks the mind into wrong thinking, and the intellect is that faculty which dispels ignorance. The ideal situation is where one is able to employ the imagination as a servant to the intellect, and therefore aid in the search for the real.
Sincerity is the other essential element, encompassing various ideas. In order for one to have sincerity, there must be total honesty, there can be no pretending; and to be brutally honest with oneself is to be courageous, for this path seeks to destroy the one’s very identity. A feeble mind cannot contend with the forces of Divinity without being consumed; hence the true mystic is rightly described as the mythical hero.
Gnosis and Transcendence
Gnosis is not an addition, grafted onto the present condition; some new information that can be read in a book. Rather, it is an existential shift in the very being of the mystic; at once very personal, but at the same time universal. This is why successful traversing of the path is invariably described as the transformation of the mystic from a mere human to that of Divinity. The paradigm for this transformation is Enoch of Genesis.
In Jewish sources, he is described as a cobbler, no doubt a play on the Biblical description of his “walking with God”, who, through meditations on the Divine, was able to transcend the earthly realm and, as a result, was granted dominion over the heavens as well; he is the archangel Metatron. So to, every hero who can “contend with the Divine and triumph” (Genesis 32:29 Artscroll) as is written regarding Jacob, is transformed into a Divine entity.
Sources:
Imrei Shefer, Abraham Abulafia
Homo Mysticus, Jose Faur
28 Jewelled Crown, Daniel Gigi
Daniel Gigi - Daniel Gigi is a UK based psychotherapist, meditation teacher, and author. He began the practice of meditation at the age of 14, at which ...
Join the Conversation