Ruach/Spirit Within = Paradise Without

The Talmud tells of the four companions who ascended up into paradise through a mystical practice known as the "workings of the divine chariot". The following is a translation of certain key parts of their story.

Four entered paradise: ben Azai, ben Zoma, Acher (alias for Elisha ben Abuya) and Rabbi Akiva.

[Before entering] Rabbi Akiva cautioned them, "When you approach the pure marble stones, do not say, 'Water, water'; as it states, '... those who speak falsehood cannot be established before my eyes.' (Psalms 101:7)

Ben Azai gazed and died. Concerning him it states, 'Precious in God's eyes is the death of His devout ones.' (Psalms 116:15) Ben Zoma gazed and went insane. Regarding him it states, 'You discovered honey. Eat moderately. Lest you over-satiate and vomit it up'. (Proverbs 25:16) Acher cut the plantings (i.e. become a heretic). Rabbi Akiva exited in peace...

What happened [to Acher]? He saw the Angel Metatron ... who was given permission to sit ...

Acher reflected, 'We have a tradition that [besides for God's revealed presence] there is no sitting in the higher realms ... Perhaps, [if another entity is also capable of sitting then] there are two authorities (i.e. a duality)?'

[To demonstrate to Acher that despite sitting, this angel is subordinate to God's higher authority,] they brought Metatron out [in Acher's presence] and lashed him with sixty pulses of fire ...

~ Chagigah 14B - 15A

Reviewing this story inspired the following question.

We are taught that a person can only perform sins and good deeds while in this physical world, while occupying a biological body. Once disembodied, the soul may do many things, go through many journeys, but it is no longer capable of sins or good deeds. The reason is because such behavior requires free choice. The gift of free choice is only given to a combined body and soul. Once the two separate, the gift vanishes. If so, how exactly did Elisha ben Abuya sin, while seemingly disembodied on a visit to the spiritual realms?

There are several answers which have been advanced to me. However, they all seemed to address what he did on earth either before or after his walk in paradise, not during. These answers left me feeling unsatisfied for several reasons:

A) The Talmud seems to indicate that he sinned while in paradise itself. Though certain prior life choices may have predisposed him to falter in the moment, they weren’t the sin itself. 

B) Somehow, while in paradise he had to have free choice. Otherwise, what occurred could not have been considered a sin. 

C) What he did afterwards wasn't the sin itself, but a new accumulation of sins - even if they were built upon the foundation of his discouragement over what happened in paradise.

Accordingly, I prayed in my heart for an answer to explain how he could have possibly sinned for entertaining the notion of a duality, while in the delightful environs of paradise itself. Then what dawned on me is that his entry into paradise might not have involved becoming disembodied at all. However, to understand this paradox in paradise, it’s important to first introduce a long cherished Kabbalistic concept which Rabbi Yehuda Ashlag had later on named “Hashva’at HaTzurah”, i.e. “similarity of form”.

Jewish mystical teachings often rely on the usage of spatial imagery. Though possibly convincing, such descriptions are not intended to be understood literally as referring to physical space. For greater accuracy, such images need to be divested from their physicality.

Our experience of space centers on notions such as closeness and distance. Accordingly, Kabbalah too often employs the terms of closeness and distance in its discussions of spiritual entities. One way to divest such descriptions from their physicality is to understand them as referring to the measure of how similar or dissimilar the entities are in relation to each other. Spiritually speaking, entities which share similarity are close and entities which are dissimilar are distant. Of course, between the extremes of absolutely similar or dissimilar there are many gradations along the spectrum, which allows for a very wide range of variation of distance or closeness.

Kabbalah’s notion of space is closer to what we relate to as “psychological space”. Psychologically speaking, people who share many similarities have the capacity to be very close even if they live at opposite ends of the globe. In contrast, those who are very dissimilar would be distant even if they lived right next door to one another. Clearly, spiritual space and physical space operate very differently. As psychology involves the human soul, it’s not at all surprising that it extends a taste of spiritual space to those enclosed in the bubble of physical space.

It’s logical that spiritual space bears an interesting implication. Imagine, two spiritual entities becoming progressively more and more similar to each other, drawing progressively closer and closer to each other. Then at the moment of complete similarity, they suddenly converge into a single point. Accordingly the notion of “being identically similar”, in spiritual space ends up meaning, “being identical”. There’s no such a thing as exact duplication, like the kind industrialists strive for during mass production. 

Based on this understanding, likely the four sages transported themselves on the principle of similarity. They moved into paradise by somehow increasing their personal resemblance to paradise. Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan teaches in his work “Meditation and Kabbalah”, that the mystics of that period first purified themselves with the still extant ashes of the red heifer. Upon separation from impurities, they then meditated over a series of divine names to enter into a deep state consciousness; i.e. to access a deep level of soul. 

It seems likely that their goal was to access their ruach level of soul. At the point of ruach consciousness, they would each experience themselves as a ruach, a spirit. All their sense perceptions would be filtered through ruach senses. With “ruach eyes”, everything they saw around them would be what a ruach normally sees, namely the Yetzirah level of paradise all around; more specifically “the chambers of Yetzirah”. To move around, they’d meditate bonds of similarity with whatever they sought to approach. They did not have to leave their bodies to do this. They would simply be present in paradise by virtue of the soul level they accessed.

Thus, Elisha ben Abuya was simultaneously in his body and walking about in paradise. Since the connection with his body was still intact, he had an earthly anchor and the free choice which came with it. That’s likely why he held responsible. (Also, being simultaneously embodied and not embodied, a dual experience, might have exposed him to the risk of perceiving a duality.) 

In absence of the ashes of the red heifer and the likely lack of spiritual masters initiated into such techniques, I would expect that such ascensions are impossible today. However, even without the experiential access, we can still be open to understand how some of this mystical process might have worked. Plus, it bears valuable lessons for us today. 

It's quoted from the Baal Shem Tov that a person is wherever his/her mind is; which means to whatever s/he connects to mentally. This statement is loaded with implications for what mental tools we can muster in directing our lives to fulfill our positive potentials. For example, it explains a basis for what some refer to as the “law of attraction” and why some engage in exercises of creative visualization. Most importantly, it’s a way to explain the value of each Mitzvah; as in some sense each Mitzvah forms a bond of similarity with God.

-------------------O-------------------