The Tree of Life Exploded

I am trying to figure out how someone came about this kind of system. There must be some concrete examples from nature that were used as a model. If not, then to me, it’s just pure unattached fantasy.

(Dante’s inferno was also made up of nine levels)

And cats are believed to have nine lives. :smiley:

Im glad you respond to such a particular item in the series, Pilgrim. Yes, this unlimited potential is a very great asset of the Tree of Life philosophy. And what’s more, it is entirely logical.

There is infinite potential simply because there is nothing limiting the potential. There is no natural limit to potential-as-such. And the Tree of Life offers us one of the many ways humanity has to tap into that potential. It’s very powerful to just meditate on the ten spheres of the tree from Kether down to Malkuth, which I will try to make easier by producing a series of videos on each.

But even more powerful is starting with the veils of negative existence, Ein, Ein Soph, and Ein Soph Aur, before moving on to the fountainhead of Kether.

That is indeed remarkably similar, or identical, to the working of the supernal triad. Pythagoras was no stranger to this either, and of course it is simply a correct observation about the human mind, and its way of dividing single things in three attributes, such as in the simplest of terms, subject/object/action, past/present/future.

Its very good to encounter that phrase. It’s very true that this work re awakens wisdom and joy in me that had lain dormant.
Thinking about, and explaining the tree is always a process. You never know what direction the thoughts will take, you only decide where they will be ending up. The mind finds a new path each way, and it is always sensible.

In the lower Sephirot, this mixed with a lot of sensuous experience, scents, dreaming, animals, etc. In the higher sephirot, the greater philosophical principles and contradictions come to play.

Here’s the following episode, dealing with the first manifest and limited impulse - the birth of the will.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=em-hmbYgJeo[/youtube]

Jacob … inspirational comments … both here and in your video.

  1. Your words … “unborn potential” … my words “pregnant with enormous potential”.

  2. Your words … “weave your own basket”. For me, when people hear or read words like “unborn potential” … “pregnant with enormous potential” the mechanical … robotic … (un)thinking reaction is “fame, fortune,power”. The result being the doors and windows to Kether are slammed shut. The opportunity to “weave your own basket” has evaporated.

  3. You wrote … “Veils of negative existence” . I like the word ‘veil’ and all that it implies … still not convinced how these "veils’ are lifted … inclined to believe “openness” is the key … openness being a voluntary exile from our personal reservoir of consciousness. (our lifetime library of personal experiences).

  4. You wrote … “You never know what direction the thoughts will take, you only decide where they will be ending up. The mind finds a new path every way and is always sensible.”

For me, more echoes of Lao Tzu thought … a pillar of Lao Tzu thought is “spontaneity” reflected in his theory of Wu Wei. I’m not flogging Lao Tzu … simply expressing my excitment at the parallels between Kabbalah and Dao De Jing.

More emerging thoughts on the topic of “veil(s) of resistance”.

  1. A journey to Kether demands/commands an inward journey.

  2. An inward journey demands/commands a voluntary exile from our lifetime outward journey … a temporary separation from our reservoir of personal experiences.

  3. Like the notion of a ‘Beginner’s Mind’ …
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  1. I’m not talking about a memory wipe … yet … at least a temporary setting aside of all memory.

  2. An inward journey is intimidating … and rightfully so. The journey is fraught with peril … some imagined … some real. Likely explains why so many people who start the journey abandon the journey long before they reach the destination.

  3. Read this article a few hours ago … comments from a Catholic perspective that seem relevant. ronrolheiser.com/turning-inner-c … SBittIrLMy

  4. The journey to Kether is usually long and difficult … the visit with Kether very brief and the return journey to self very quick. We are told we should “chop wood” after the return journey. ergo: return to the daily humdrum of life … yet … one who has made the return journey never returns to his/her previous world view … previous life view.

:sunglasses: Reminds me of the first people to make the return journey to the Americas … the “New World”. These people created the foundation for the mass migration that followed. Seems logical the same pattern applies for the journey to Kether … those who successfully complete the journey become the ‘bridge’ for the subsequent mass migration of humanity.

Pilgrim,
I think it’s right to associate the veils of negative existence, which are the keys to the infinite potential (the keys to remove the arbitrary limits of this or that form) with the sort of empty speaces the article describes. It is certain that no one can come to any spiritual understanding or power from within a crowd, or a family, or any type of group. It must be attained in solitude with nature. By the way I am honestly honored you are getting something out of these videos.

As an aside, I personally think the idea of closing off temples from the outside air is insane, and a place like that can never actually help ascension. All modern religions tend to do it, where of course classical temples were built more from the idea that the Earth is home and the sky is the roof. I can never breathe in a church. When I do I need to vomit.

Pandora,
I have indeed not even mentioned the obvious, that the Tree is modeled after the human body. The logics are related to the endocrine system, of course, otherwise it would be unrelated to human nature. Its just that the endocrine system is in turn related to… necessity. It unfolds. Ive done quite some study on the hormone sequencing, the cardinal function of the pineal gland in producing basic materials for a hormonal chemistry - so one will normally, to name some examples, place the pineal gland in Kether and/or Chokmah, the pituitary in Binah and Daath, the adrenal glands in Netzach, the testis in Yesod, etc.

Being built from Euclidean and Pythagorean logics while embedded in the described Parmenidean positivism, the claim is that the tree can effectively represent a blueprint of the human being qua its potential for self-knowledge. Fanatics will claim that the human is modeled after the tree. they misunderstand: the claim is that the tree is modeled through the same logics that gave birth to all things in nature, and that it explodes these logics into human thresholds: what only ever interests me in a theory or model such as this tree is what it’s worth in term of its fruits. My philosophy certainly is facilitated by the cognitive-emotive methods disclosed by working through the Tree of Life.

Here’s the fourth video, third Sephira, Binah: Understanding, the head of the pillar of Form and Severity.
The sphere related to the Great Mother, Isis, Astarte, Maia, the great sea from which all life springs.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCKK5hlXTrc[/youtube]

As of now, I am more interested in the background context for this system. I think this is a rather bold (but also intriguing) statement you made, “Pineal gland and pituitary gland are processes of hormonal activity/vitality that precede the emergency of consciousness.” We now know that it is possible to survive without pituitary or pineal glands (some people have to have these glands removed because of tumors) but have to supplement with hormones after the surgeries. So, these glands (especially pituitary) do affect consciousness/thought/mood, among other things, but emergence of consciousness (consciousness itself) is not dependent on them.
But to me, that brings up another question as to how these connections were even made in the first place, and some interesting things did come up. In my research, most of the Kabballah system was developed in the Middle Ages during the Ottoman Rule. It is also known that many physicians/doctors (even employed in Ottoman empire as Sultan’s personal physicians) were Jewish, so there is a possibility that some of the anatomical knowledge and its working had to be mystified. Generally, in Middle Ages, open surgery was forbidden on a human body, so any kind of insight resulting from it could also be considered ‘mystical’ knowledge. (The movie The Physician is a good movie to watch to get an idea) Just imagine the things doctors had to do in order to gain a knowledge of the (live) workings of pineal and pituitary glands? shudders

The pineal gland starts the chain of hormonal production in the embryo. Like other glands such as the thyroid it often shrivels and/or dies off, this is precisely the problem of our time - many are cut off from the source. Even if this is only symbolically as the being is already become its own loop, Im convinced that these things arent supposed to dry out, just like the Earth isnt supposed to be deforested and like the oceans arent supposed to have the life in them die out as rapidly as it is happening - something is off, and that is precisely why a lot of us are reaching back to such tools as these, where the entire cosmos (order) of the human body is respected.

As for ancient brain surgery:

Note also that 99 percent of all pre-Christian texts in the West-Roman Empire were burned, and slightly less in the Byzantine realm. Most occult, Egypt-oriented studies (the Jews are in ways an Egyptian tribe) resurfaced in the East through accidentally surviving fragments. The Jews themselves haven’t exactly been reliable in showing the back of their tongue, and the Kabbalah is deferred to as the soul of the Torah, so I imagine secrecy is involved. After all, the things reason for existing is to convey power.

Do you believe in fate?
General question to everyone.

Aside from the linear progression through time, where we do things and things happen to us, we have the orthogonal, upward directions where we have insights and breakthroughs.
Such insights and breakthroughs are what you should imagine if you ask yourself what a Sephira is meant to represent. One needs to break into them by life altering visions. And so we ascend up the tree and alter our fate - not so much what happens to us, as how we responds to it and thus where we end up as a result.

Or from the experience enforced on us by other humans.

In the upward approach, I would attribute this to Hod, the Mercury sphere, following the emotive Moon sphere of Yesod.

Which would rely on a purified Yesod. The moon sphere of memory and the subconscious, the physiological, to which pertains “The Vision of the Machinery of the Universe”.

Yes, and I have personally have seen young men perish on such paths. None of them was proficient in the kabbalah though - they all took from all schools but trusted no system but what they hoped could become their own.
I was never under the impression that I had created my own body, so I had less problems with accepting some basic truths about it that I didnt invent, like that we have a left and a right brain hemisphere between which consciousness emerges.

As a human in Kether, we want to do little else than chop wood or clean dishes - nothing is so pleasant as hands on work when one is in the clean states of consciousness.
I ve never said or really explicitly thought this - now I see Kether as Malkuth -
I now see the source inside of my own personal bond with the Earth and its demands -
that this is truly the challenge once a certain insight has been reached - to place pure effort of the source into daily affairs
and this is indeed very zen, and very tao-like.
There are many tools, but the world never changes its nature.

What the kabbalah offers is a long, arduous and aggressively transformative path, it is in this sense different from Tao- more alike to Kriya- and Kundalini-Yoga.

That’s an interesting similarity, and though I am not excluding possible brain surgery practices by ancient Egyptians, I think when considering all possible origins, something like a Lanner (or Barbary) falcon is a better candidate for the origin of the representation for the Eye of Horus.
theflacks.co.za/wp-content/u … IS-ONE.jpg

I read this yesterday … part of a commentary on Scriptural readings:

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For me, the question that begs to be asked is … are these “insights” random or targeted to specific individuals. If targeted … how? I floated a suggestion in another OP that didn’t get any traction. Our DNA is a transmitter/receiver and our brain is the processor(CPU)

Almost every morning I chop cabbage for my wife’s birds … the best part of the day for me. :slight_smile:

Reminds me of my posts in another OP about the symbiotic relationship between a seed and the soil.

IMO Taoism is not sufficiently well known in the West … for example - the Taoist discovery of the human energy meridians … acupuncture and the Taoist discovery of how to harness and channel energy in Kung Fu and Tai Chi … particularly how to use your opponent’s energy against him/her. :slight_smile:

Maybe that’s the reason I’m in China … there are no churches here. :slight_smile: earth is home and the sky is the roof … and the food ain’t so great. :slight_smile:

For me, churches, mosques, temples and so on have their place … excluding as you said … a place to help ascension. Reminds me of what the local priest told me many years ago … we were discussing my ‘watershed moment’ … paraphrasing … if God is calling you … He will call you alone.

I listened to your video … took away the notions you mentioned … “form” and “force”. The Dao De Jing uses the terms “Being Within Form” and “Being Without Form” … do you ‘see’ any parallels?

The tree is a model of the human ability for consciousness. It’s a blueprint of relations, of different faculties of consciousness.

The number 10 was likely chosen for the same reasons that we ended up using it for our other calculations as well - it suits our mind.

It makes perfect sense to use the minds most natural inclinations when building tools to enhance it.

9 is however an entirely different number from 10.

Okay, for Kabballah system, I’ll go with ten fingers, then.

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aish.com/sp/k/Kabbala_4_Why_10.html

According the kabbalah, there can not be a pre existing plan to existence, as plans also must exist.

I urge you do do some serious, more than a few minutes long study about geometrical patterns in physics. I mean take a few weeks of a few hours each day. Its obvious to any intellectual that anything less is pointless on any subject, let alone a scientific one.

A little teaser as to the scenery you’ll be passing early on:
gnosticwarrior.com/wp-content/up … io-phi.png

In the mean time Ill commit to explaining some of geometrical necesities in the next episode, on the fifth sephira, Geburah.

The logic of the tree traces how something can be related to an undifferentiated field of possibility. Its not easy to grasp. As far from facile as things get.

Only for its gigantic challenge did I ever notice it as a 20 something explosive mind too strong even for Nietzsche.

The way I see it, our reasoning faculty itself is a sediment of spirits relentless dynamic. It does not itself act, it reacts, and it has its predictable mechanism of acting.

It is spirit which pushes a raw idea through its passive, honing-stone of reason, so as to elaborate the idea.

The idea of dyadic having logic at all is a result of a monadic principle encountering itself.
Thus, insights directly from the spirit tend to defy some of logics habit, but they always emerge of the same ground as that which logic shares and relies on.

Things always come to us through our primordial, living reason: our value system. Even logic is subservient to this. It determines the logical steps we are capable of accepting, surviving, in all our imperfections.

Spirit bypasses logic when logic is too weak and indirect and passive for our current state - all of us are stronger than dyadic logic, as all of us operate on the premise of being, entity, subject, which is monadic, and includes the dyadic as a dynamism of pulsating contradiction that keep arriving at higher levels of unity (yoga, lit: union)

That truly sounds like a great start of the day.

Im not fully aware of which tradition disclosed these meridians - I always figured it for rooted in India, perhaps tens of thousands of years ago -


In any case I withdraw my comments on the limits of Taoism, I am not sufficiently informed.

Never been to China, but its notions of philosophy and health are integral to my valuing. Eternal thanks be to Huangdi.

I absolutely agree with that statement - meaning that my experience is similar. Temples closed off to the world indeed do have their function, but it only has to do with the physical aspect of protection, “Mercy”. European Temples are also fortresses. That nature of hideout dominates, trumps, or eliminates the possibility for opening up to greater consciousness.

I do. In my Tai Chi and Chi Kung practice I am aware at every juncture how being without form comes to lock itself in being within form, to then liberate itself again into the Force…

Here’s my latest episode, on the god-sphere itself, Chesed.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdnMEShz5N0[/youtube]

I noticed that you’ve been referring to the Middle Pillar as the Pillar of Mildness, instead of say the Pillar of Equilibrium. I can understand why it can be called that, but the term “mildness” suggests an opposition to me that the term “equilibrium” does not. It seems to me to be more opposed to “severity” than to “mercy”, even though “mercy” here probably means an impetuous kind of mercy that is as forceful as the severity. (From something I read somewhere in the last few days, on the different pillars as different paths of initiation, I think the mercy and severity correspond to the impulse and the rules from the final prose section of Blake’s MHH, respectively.)

This issue may or may not be related to the in my view mistaken notion that there are actually, substantially, three pillars. The two outer pillars have traditionally been identified with Boaz and Jachin, the two bronze pillars at Solomon’s Temple. There is, then, no third pillar, but the Middle Pillar stands for the invisible but intelligible unity of the two. In this sense, there’s “really” only one pillar, this being the Tree of Life itself. This is the Lingam, the fire-pillar of Shiva, whose opposite ends Brahmā and Vishnu could not reach. The way this tripartite division is reflected vertically in the three Triangles–Middle, Right, Left–is, I think, of considerable interest.

I agree.

Yet the illusive and often cantankerous underpinnings of the word ‘spirit’ remain a mystery. Reminds me of St Augustine … who spent 10 years with Manichaeism … converting to Christianity … in large part after coming to believe … rightly or wrongly … that spirit is substance. Since our physical world is entirely substance … including spirit in that body of substance results in a certain level of mental comfort.

Many years ago I heard the analogy of a swarm of mosquitoes buzzing around our head. An analogy with some merit … the swarm of mosquitoes is always an annoyance … the mosquito that lands on our body is considered an immediate threat and we launch a counter attack. We swat away at the swarm in an attempt to chase the entire swarm away from us … never works. We put a screen mesh over our head to create a buffer zone between the mosquitoes and our head … analogous to atheism which attempts to install a buffer zone so as not to be harassed by the mysteries of spirit.

I’m not familiar with the terms ‘monadic’ and ‘dyadic’. After a cursory investigation I concluded … perhaps incorrectly:

Dao = Monad Yin Yang= Dyadic

God = Monad Adam & Eve = Dyadic

You may be right … certainly Yoga and Tai Chi seem to be fruit of the same tree.

Perhaps it’s analogous to the Newton/Leibniz discovery of calculus.

Even more profound … what was in the air about 2,500 years ago? … when the human giants visited the planet at almost the same time … Socrates/Plato … Lao Tzu … Confucius … Buddha … Isaiah :slight_smile:

This morning your comments seem to have given birth to a new thought concerning Churches, Mosques, Temples and so on. These buildings have always been perceived as a refuge … a safe haven … where the protection of the Sacred Divine is inviolable.

I’m thinking what if the opposite is true. These buildings were constructed as a prison or jail. This intention may well have been an unconscious intention. We agree that our presence in these buildings is an obstacle to ascension … perhaps installing this obstacle was intentional.

Reminds me of the Cathars … imagine humanity’s reaction if mass media existed at the time of the Cathar genocide … today’s terrorism pales into insignificance.

I look forward to watching your video and will share my reaction.

Jacob … just finished watching your video on the notion of Chesed … best one yet … your body language spoke louder than your words. :slight_smile:

I don’t know that I’ve interpreted all your body language correctly … doesn’t matter … the overall feeling was very positive. I applaud your courage in posting the video.

As usual I did catch a few words. :slight_smile:

You said Chesed is the god of this world … seems to fit the Biblical Lucifer story. :slight_smile:

Points stationed all along the spine or the body head-top to the fountain of excretion down lower, how to merge or connect these islands of distant majesty, seeing how the body is endowed with symmetrical altitudes from various ascending panels of spring leads to the willful creations of a life animated machinery, eradication of base temptations and finalized lineups proceeding from the crown of power held as mind-potential extract valuable empirical observational outer stratum pieces brought within greenery outputs flames of frolicking freedom.

So by liberating Frenzy, a crazy sketch of bodily proportions to rip the clearing paper of the present time, we can influence the course of action separated pillars of reason gravitate, unlock, restore, and push grandiose thoughts and bubbling perception to the forefront of future pinnacle traces of a well-ranked system of where we begin, where too much hunger based satisfaction with food, or thought for the particularly detached can yank yonder rapture for the supremely-ascended doorways floating as indomitable anchors way up in the most watery subsistence to drain health and promise happiness and prophetic reputation as the most high and elite archon of elite status and supreme commanding might to steer the storm and will the world.