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into sexes. The first human pair broke the first commandment, they sinned and were doomed to a
complete descent into matter; the Lord God made them "coats of skin," He gave them material
bodies, and with these came the need of food, and the passions required to bring forth a succession
of earthly bodies.
Yet man is still the copy of God on earth; his form is related to the Tetragrammaton of Jehovah
IHVH, for in a diagram, Yod is as the head, Heh the arms, Vau the body, and the final Heh the lower
limbs: (see Zohar ii. 42a). The first pair were tempted by Samael, the allegorical Personality of the
lower tendencies, which give the craving to experience earth life and take a part in its continuous
changes of force and form. They did what they knew would imperil their purely psychic existence,
they sank fully into material forms, they took on the grossness of Malkuth, and so were separated
from the Sephirotic Tree, from the Higher Potencies, which have no taint of matter. All matter is ever
changing its form, and so their bodies must be changed; their bodies died, and so must the bodies
of all incarnated Egos; at death the personality passes away to a rest, and then to a further
experience of life, or to a sphere of punishment, or to a realm of bliss.
In their earthly forms they brought forth bodies like their own, and God sent down other souls to
dwell in them, to experience earth life, its sins and sufferings; and to pass a probation by which they
also might fall, but yet may rise to regain a share of man's lost estate and finally to rise up through
the Sephiroth to a reunion with the Divine Essence.
Remember that the Sephirotic Crown was First, then came Chokmah, a masculine Potency, and
then Binah, a feminine one; from their union arose the created universe of angels, men and earth:
but 'as above so below,' so we have in Genesis a Man formed, then succeeds a Woman, and from
them all others.
In the " Commentary on the Creation of Genesis," still allegorical like Genesis itself, it is stated :--
"There is in Heaven a treasury called GUP, Guph, and all the Souls which were created in the
beginning, and hereafter to come into this world, The Holy One placed therein: out of this treasury
The Holy One furnishes children in the womb with Souls."
A further commentary in symbolic language narrates how The Holy One perceiving a child's body to
be in formation, sends for a suitable Ego to inhabit it.
"The Holy One, blessed be He, beckons to an Angel who is set over the disembodied souls, and
says to him, 'Bring me such a soul': and this is being always done since the world began; the soul
appears before the Holy One and worships in His presence, to whom the Eternal One says :--
'Betake thyself to this form.' Instantly the soul excuses himself, saying, 'Oh Governor of the World, I
am satisfied with the world in which I have been so long: if it please Thee, do not force me into this
foul body, for I am a Spirit.' The Holy One, blessed be He, answers: 'The world I am about to send
thee into is needed for thee, it is to pass down through it that I formed thee from myself.' And so the
soul is forced to incarnate and sink into the world where matter will imprison him, where he must
suffer, but where he may overcome and from whence he must rise again. The Zohar adds the
statement: "and whatever the man learns and displays on earth life, he knew before his
incarnation."
This is a parallel doctrine to the Buddhist scheme of Re-incarnation with Karma as God--eternal law,
relentlessly compelling the individual Ego to a new earth life.
Christian Ginsburg states that a "Transmigration of Souls" was the belief of the Pharisees in the
time of Josephus; and this dogma was held by many Jews up to the ninth century of our era. The
Caraite Jews have accepted it ever since the seventh century. St. Jerome says it was a doctrine of
the early Christian Church taught only to a select few believers, and Origen was of opinion that
without transmigration, the incidents of the struggle between Esau and Jacob before birth, Genesis
25, v. 22, and the reference to Jeremiah in the mother's womb could not be explained, Jer. i. 5.
The Kabalah then teaches that the Egos have come out from the Spirit Fountain, suffer incarnation
again and again until experience and perfection have been attained, and ultimately rejoin the Divine
Source: Zohar i. 145, 168; ii. 97.
Now what is it that dwells for a time in this 'Coat of Skin," as Genesis in chapter 3, v. 21, calls it, this
so-called material body? It is a Divine Spark, composed of several elements derived from the
symbolic Four Parts of Jehovah, and from Three Worlds, and these are seated in the Fourth World
of Effects, the Material Universe. Now it is no doubt true that in the several Kabalistic schools, the
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