Light Alive!

I can't imagine human consciousness evolving into spiritual enlightenment if we continue to think of light as a mere amalgam of seven colors. That's just the tail end of light, as it dips into physical reality. To think of light this way is sillier than for a microbe living in a shoe to think that a human being is a foot. 

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One’s Where One’s Mind Is At

When I was 17-18 years old, I spent about eight months attending lectures at what was then called, “The Research Centre of Kabbalah”. When it was time to leave and my journey took me to spend some of spring/summer of 1986 studying at Lubavitch Yeshiva at Morristown, NJ. 

On by first night in Morristown Yeshiva, I schmoozed with one of the Rabbis about my interest in meditation and using it as a technique for spiritual connection. He attempted to relate to my interest by responding with a story about a Rabbi who spent six hours lost in deep contemplation. Needless to say, I felt a disconnect. I was talking about meditation and it seemed to me that he was talking about academics. As a college student, I too had long periods of study where my mind was engaged in a topic for hours at a time. However, that is not what I meant by meditation. That was an academic effort, not a spiritual exercise. This left me with the impression that Lubavitchers do an academic exercise, which they confuse with meditation. However, I kept an open mind and over time encountered other Lubavitch spiritual teachings and which truly impressed me. As a result, I viewed Lubavitch as a very useful resource for mystical philosophy, but not for meditation. 

Instead, I turned for meditative instruction to Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan’s “Jewish Meditation - A Practical Guide”, a book which lays out a variety of traditional Jewish meditative practices. The one which spoke most to me was Rebbe Nachman’s technique, which is to have a daily conversation with God. What I loved about this particular technique was that it afforded me an opportunity to be intimate with God no matter what I was thinking and feeling at the moment, as any psychological state can become subject matter for conversation. Over time, I noticed that sometimes I was so deep into the meditation that it was difficult for me to move my lips. Continuing the conversation in my mind alone flowed smoother. 

In the summer of 1998, I met with Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburgh, a well known Lubavitch Kabbalist. He shared with me that the students of the first Lubavitcher Rebbe, the Alter Rebbe, were regulars at engaging in long conversations with God, just as Rebbe Nachman taught. The only difference was that they carried on the conversations in their minds alone and avoided oral expression. I was literally floored, wowed, that the Alter Rebbe’s followers practiced a meditative style which mirrored the style my meditations were growing into their own.

Shortly, afterwards it dawned on me that in instances where the conversation occurs mentally, there actually might be a very fine line between being in conversation with God and being in contemplation with God. If deep enough, it seemed to me that there’s actually no line at all and they’re the same. This was my eureka moment! I came full circle to appreciate the Lubavitch style of meditation. I realized that what the Rabbi that first night in Morristown Yeshiva was referring to was not simply a contemplation which can occur through any academic effort. Rather, it was a contemplation with God, the kind which was likely becoming my meditative norm. 

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While still at “The Research Centre of Kabbalah”, I learned that the Baal Shem Tov taught that “one is where one’s mind is at”. Based on this, it was explained that if one concentrates strongly on a location, one can mind travel there and possibly even see what’s occurring there. Of course, we encouraged to be careful not to abuse this technique to enjoy touring around; but rather, to reserve it for visiting holy sites to enhance our prayers and/or meditations. 

“One is where one’s mind is at” fits in beautifully with Rabbi Ashlag’s teachings about how space, closeness and distance, works between two spiritual entities. Entities which have a lot in common are close and those with less in common are more distance. Not surprising it’s a lot like psychological closeness and distance between people. Since the mind is a spiritual entity, it can move about, becoming close or distant, based on this very principle. By strongly focusing on a place the mind can form a “similarity bond” and be there. 

When I was at The Research Centre I knew of this closeness/distance principle, but I had not connected the dots. Only recently it dawned on me that mind travel could be logically traced to Ashlagian principles of closeness and distance. At the time, I just accepted the technique intuitively because it followed the pattern of many other spiritual techniques which require deep states of concentration to form spiritual connections.

In the past month, a few decades later, something just clicked. Maybe, recent study of Rabbi Ashlag’s work with an authentic teacher helped bring me to this awareness. If “one’s where one’s mind is at” then what is the difference if one deeply concentrates on a place or on an idea? If one contemplates philosophical notions of God’s Oneness hasn’t one brought his or her mind there and created a “similarity bond” with what’s deeply spiritual? Besides, the realm of ideas exists in a more spiritual state than physical locations do. This very recent realization has helped me appreciate the beauty of Lubavitch contemplative meditation on a whole new level.  

Of course, this leaves open the question of then what spiritually occurs when one studies academics? The answer is in Tanya. Since the mind is a spiritual entity, there is no such a thing as mental activity which is non-spiritual. The deeper one concentrates the mind on a topic the more one spiritually bonds with the realm it exists on. This is why Torah Law directs one to focus one’s secular studies towards one of the three goals: either to more deeply understand Torah concepts, to understand how to perform good deeds or to earn a livelihood. The idea is that in secular studies the mind will travel to less than holy spiritual realms. There’s no way around that. However, through Torah study, performing good deeds or earning a livelihood, one can re-attach the knowledge or at least its fruits to the realms of holiness, when whence it primordially originated, many [st]ages ago. 

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Compassionate and Full of Grace

I have wondered why our sages explained the Mitzvah "to cleave to God" as asking us to imitate specific divine attributes; namely, the ones emphasizing God’s love, kindness and giving. For example, just as He is compassionate, so too you be compassionate and just as He is filled with grace, so too you be filled with grace. 

The list of divine attributes which are available for imitation is actually much broader than the two recommended. For example, it could be said that as He is wealthy, so too should you be wealthy or as He metes out justice, so too you should mete out justice. So, why did our sages choose compassion and grace as the main attributes we are supposed to focus on imitating?

Rabbi Yehuda Leib Ashlag explained that since God created the world only because He wanted to "give", the creation of the whole world was really an act of love and kindness. Therefore, the attributes of compassion and grace express where He is coming from. They are His primary attributes.

Of course, whether divine or human,  any act of "giving" is a process. At times the journey between the heart of the giver and the hand of the recipient can be quite long. There can be many, many considerations and stages along the way. To aid with those considerations and stages, other  attributes also come into play; to act in secondary and supportive roles. 

However, our sages asked us to focus on being compassionate and filled with grace. This way we are imitating His primary attributes, as this is really the main way to imitate Him and thereby, draw ourselves closer to Him.

Every parent hopes his/her children will follow in his/her ways. There are ways which are core to a parent's identity and ways which are only present to support what's core. If the child primarily gravitates to and absorbs what is only secondary about the parent, the parent feels hurt. To one extent or another some level of dissonance has been introduced into their relationship. 

However, if the child primarily gravitates to and absorbs what is core to the parent's identity, their bond has been truly deepened. The parent and child share a deep resonance, so deep that words are too shallow to describe. When this happens, it almost doesn't matter too much if the child failed to pick up on what is secondary to the parent. 

Similarly, God is our Parent. He wants us to pick up on and absorb His primary attributes, what's core to His Identity. This is what He truly considers "imitating His ways". This is what draws us closest to Him! 

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Luz Bone

Our sages teach that there is a special bone called a "Luz bone" which is indestructible, for never having taken nourishment from the fruit of the "tree of knowledge". Accordingly, God will use it in the future as the means to spark off the resurrection of the body.

There are Torah sources which identify the elusive "luz bone" as the vertebrae at the bottom of the spine (see "Ta'amei HaMinhagim"). The Ari z"l is quoted as teaching the opposite, that it's located at the top of the spine. To me this reads like two end points or poles which define a line. In this case, it defines the line we know of as the spinal cord.

In "Tal Orot", Rabbi Ya'akov Meir Shpielman explains that both parents produce "seed" (reproductive cells) which are enlivened by sparks drawn from the lower edge of the parents' own souls. These sparks originally reside in the mind/brain, the seat of the soul. They then travel down the spine to give life to each parents' "seed". 

At fertilization, the two sparks, one from each parent, merge to form a "starter soul" for the zygote. As development progresses, the fetus' own soul descends and the "starter soul" remains as a garment around it. This is likely the garment referred to in Tanya I, chapter 2, whose spiritual quality can be affected by the thoughts of the parents during the reproductive act.

So by identifying the  "luz bone" as indestructible and as somehow part of the spine, our sages might really be referring to the reproductive sparks within the spine, as they are sufficiently spiritual to be out of physical reach. Though we bury bodies is ways contemplated to ease their resurrection, sadly there were holy martyrs whose bodies were likely physically destroyed. Yet, even about them we say that their "luz bone" remains. Possibly, this supports the notion that it's not in physical reach. Interestingly, in Spanish "luz" means light, which can also be extended to mean spiritual light.

The idea of a non-physical "luz bone" works nicely with the Ramchal's teaching that before Adam and Eve ate the fruit, they weren't physical as we know it. Rather, their version of physical is what we would consider spiritual (see "Da'at Tevunot"). Therefore, if there is a body part which wasn't nourished by the fruit, it's likely that it did not physicalize together with the rest of their bodies.  

If this understanding is correct, then in the future, the human body will be resurrected by its very own reproductive forces. Whether it will be from what's associated with the top of the spine or the bottom, might be a question of the person's own level of holiness. 

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