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DIVINE COLORS OF REALITY
B.S.D.
Rabbi David Aaron
Excerpt from "Seeing G-d"
Once I was at the home of a great Kabbalistic master who lives in the Old City of Jerusalem. Some young people who were studying at the local college were invited to drop by and I'll never forget one young woman who was more vocal than the rest. "What courses are you taking?" the great Kabbalist asked her. Not realizing who he was, she replied, "Kabbalah 101." "Kabbalah 101." he repeated. "And what in particular are you studying?" "Well, for this weekend," she answered, "we are supposed to read the Sefer Yetzira.
Now, the Sefer Yetzira, or the Book of Formation, is a deep Kabbalistic work that takes many years of study to even begin to fathom. So he didn't understand what she was talking about. "For this weekend?" he asked, perplexed. "We have a class in it on Sunday," she explained. "Aah," he murmured in astonishment. What was the world coming to-the Sefer Yetzira over the weekend made no sense to him at all.
With this memory in the forefront of my mind causing me some trepidation, I want to introduce you to the building blocks of the Kabbalistic system of reality, the sefirot. The sefirot represent an enormously complex mystical idea, but its basic understanding is an indispensable tool for seeing
Hashem.
There are many books about the Kabbalah and they will often show you a diagram of the sefirot that looks like some kind of spiritual plumbing. Unfortunately, it is rather like showing you a picture of Versailles, one of the most exquisite buildings in the world, and then showing you only an architect's blueprint. That's Versailles? Technically it is, but after you've looked at it, you still haven't seen Versailles. Imagine looking at sheet music for the first time. It looks so
technical, so abstract. Would you ever believe that all these lines and squiggles actually express beauty, passion, sadness, joy? Unless you are an accomplished musician, can you hear Beethoven's Ninth when you look at the musical notations for it? You might not even know what you are looking at. The problem is that people studying Kabbalah today are not "accomplished musicians." Basically, they are given sheet music that they can barely read, without a clue as to how to convert it into the experience of music.
What I am going to try to do is help you convert the "sheet music" of Kabbalah into the experience it is intended to represent. Describing the Indescribable.
It's in and through the sefirot that we see Hashem. It's in and through the sefirot that we encounter reality. But before we further explore the sefirot, let's first understand what they are
not and what is necessary for seeing them. The Sefer Yetzira says that the sefirot are "without anything." They are "no thing." Not nothing. On the contrary, they are very real, but they're "no thing." Rather, they are ethereal spiritual "qualities" through which Hashem can be seen in this
world. So, while we can describe them in words, the sefirot can't really be understood intellectually, only experientially. People buy books on the Kabbalah hoping to understand deep mystical concepts by reading about them. But you can't just read about the Kabbalah. Sure, you can absorb a lot of information, but in order to truly understand, you must translate what you read into experience.
The Kabbalah is referred to as the "secrets of life." After so much has been written and said about it, it seems odd that it should still be called a secret. But even after you have read and studied it, the Kabbalah still remains a secret, because you can only come to know the meaning of the Kabbalah experientially, not intellectually. In other words, someone can define chocolate for you. There is a definition for chocolate in the dictionary: "fermented, roasted, shelled, and ground cacao seeds, often combined with a sweetener or flavoring agent." But, if you've never tasted chocolate, do you know what it is by reading that definition? To understand the essence of chocolate, you have to taste it.
The Kabbalah is referred to as the secret not because no one is willing to tell you what's written there, but because its truth must be ultimately understood experientially. So this is key to the Kabbalah-you have to experience it. You have to let it take you somewhere. Same with the sefirot. Defining the various qualities of Hashem which make up the sefirot is rather like defining the
differences between chocolate and vanilla. Impossible to describe even if you are absolutely sure you know the difference. The most beautiful no-things in my life are unprovable, unexplainable,
yet very real. Love is a not a thing. But it's extremely real. In fact, it's more real than a lot of things I know. In just the same way, the sefirot are not something that you can know rationally.
Believing is Seeing
Psalm 34 reads, "Taste and see that Hashem is good." We taste and see Hashem through faith, or what in Hebrew we call emunah. Emunah is not blind faith, indeed it is just the opposite. Most people consider faith a blind, irrational acceptance of unknowable, unprovable religious dogmas.
But included in the definition of emunah is the fact that just because you can't explain a particular spiritual concept, it doesn't automatically mean that it is not real or unknowable. Indeed, emunah is true knowing and seeing. Emunah is superrational. Emunah is the level of knowing that transcends the intellectual, philosophical, rational faculty. That's why I cannot explain it in words; I just know. Emunah is a faculty of consciousness, a way of seeing that does not operate through the intellect, (although it can be supported by the intellect) Emunah is a direct kind of seeing through the eyes of soul. It's like knowing that red is red. I can't prove it, and I shouldn't try, because it's so incredibly obvious.
I don't know how I'm able to lift my hand. That doesn't mean I don't know how to lift my hand. I could never explain it to anyone, yet I know exactly how to do it. I know the difference between the Mona Lisa and a Peanuts cartoon. How do I know? I know. And I know the difference between vintage wine and cola. Even though they tell me it's the real thing, I know it's not. I know that the vintage wine is much better, much more valuable. I can't prove it, but I don't need to. Because
I know it.
That's why the Torah starts off with a self-evident story: Hashem created heaven and earth. Torah doesn't start out telling you about Hashem's existence, and giving you proofs, and then tell you that Hashem created the world. Torah starts out with the beginning of the world, without discussion, because Hashem is self-evident.
Of course, everyone knows there is Hashem. The problem is, people don't know that they know, and that they are being affected by this knowledge.
Colors and Flavors
The Kabbalah teaches that there are ten sefirot-ten qualities to reality-and that each one is like a different "color" in the spectrum of Divine light. They are not real colors; in fact, you could just as easily call them flavors. And you do not see them with your eyes or taste them with your mouth, but know them with your soul. Your soul sees, tastes and knows Hashem. Of course these ten qualities to reality, which are considered the ten attributes of Hashem, are from our human perspective. Indeed, everything we are discussing is relative to us, because that is the only way we know how to even approach describing the ultimate, endless reality. However, from Hashem's perspective there is only oneness. These ten attributes are, of course, the sefirot.
The Hebrew word sefirot is connected to the word safir, which means "sapphire," which suggests illumination. The word sefirot is also related to the word mispar, which means number, which suggests order, finitude, and is connected to the word misapair, which means to speak. It is through the sefirot that the endless light shines into the finite world. It's through the sefirot that the incomprehensible becomes comprehensible enough that we can speak of Hashem. The Divine
light shines through the sefirot. By means of the sefirot, the endless reality is expressed through the finite, the incomprehensible becomes comprehensible.
The job of a spiritual teacher is not to be a philosopher, but a gourmet cook. A gourmet cook has the ability to bring the taste out of every ordinary cabbage, every simple bean sprout. Once I went to someone's home to raise funds for my institute. I thought we would have about a ten minute discussion. Instead, we talked for five or six hours. I hadn't eaten all day, and I was starving. Finally I decided that instead of asking for a contribution, I would just ask for something to eat. So I said, "Could I just have an apple?" She replied, "Oh, you must be starving. I'm so sorry!"
My hostess ran to her kitchen and made me a Salad Niçoise. Now, I'm not a big salad eater, but that's what she chose to prepare for me. Well, I took one forkful, and I have to admit I had never tasted a salad like that in my life. Because this woman was able to bring out its true taste, suddenly I had a whole new appreciation for the vegetable kingdom. Once I tasted this woman's Salad Ni?oise, I could never be satisfied with lettuce and tomato alone. The job of a spiritual teacher is to reveal Hashem in this world for all to see and taste.
Do you remember ever tasting something new? I am addicted to hanging around juice bars. I usually go to one particular juice bar and always order carrot juice. One day, I was in a real conflict, because many people were coming into the juice bar and ordering very exotic, strange mixes. I was going to order my regular carrot juice, but when the fellow behind the counter looked at me and asked what I wanted, I took a leap of faith and said, "I want a third of apple, and a third of papaya, and a third of peach." The guy looked at me and said in astonishment, "Now that's good!" He started juicing the papaya, and I was thinking, "I'm going to hate this." I tasted it, and I couldn't believe it! I had never tasted anything like this in my life! Now, I can't go back to carrot juice. I'm hooked on my exotic concoction.
There are so many tastes in this world that we haven't tasted because we keep ordering the same stuff on the menu. We've adjusted to the menu. If people want to taste and see Hashem, they've got to become maladjusted to the menu. And be open to tasting something new which is actually ancient-
the timeless no-thing.
In addition to being a gourmet cook, a spiritual teacher has to be an optometrist. Most human beings are born with perfect vision, but after a certain number of years, most people's eyes
commonly develop problems in seeing. So you go to the optometrist, and you sit in a special seat, and the optometrist puts lenses of various strengths in front of you, trying different ones until you can see the chart clearly. All he's trying to do is to help you see what's there. By giving you the right lenses, the optometrist enables you to see what is. One of the lenses is the lens of wonder. When you put on the lens of wonder, suddenly you can see Hashem, Who was there all along. So my job as a spiritual teacher is to put some wonder into your way of seeing. It should not surprise us therefore that the Kabbalah also refers to the ten sefirot as different-colored lenses. Through these lenses we are able to see the many colors of the one and only ultimate reality. So let's have a look and start to see Hashem through the colored lenses-the sefirot.
The Qualities of Reality
Once I was giving a seminar, and I asked everyone to look around the room and point to beauty. The first interesting result was that everyone pointed to something different. One man pointed to his wife. Another man pointed to a flower. A woman named Bea pointed to a glass menorah (a Hanukkah candelabra) that was sitting on a windowsill. I asked Bea how she saw beauty in that menorah. Did she see beauty with her physical eyes? "Well," she answered, "the glass is translucent and its delicacy has an ethereal quality. The shape is pleasing to the eye and because it is glass you can see the blue sky through it." But that was only her intellect giving meaning to the raw data of what she was seeing. Really, her physical eyes could only see glass molded into a nine-pronged shape. It was her soul that saw beauty, and knew that it was beauty. Another man, named Herb, pointed to a ray of sunlight shining on the white stone floor. "You think that's beauty?" I
asked Herb. "That's just photons bouncing off minerals. What made you see beauty?" Beauty is a Divine quality, one of the sefirot. We see it with the eyes of the soul. Beauty is one of the ten Divine colored lenses through which we can see Hashem. The incomprehensible is manifest in the comprehensible experience of beauty. The endless light shines through the quality of beauty expressed in that finite light ray bouncing off that finite stone floor. Then I asked the seminar participants to point to the quality of power. Jackie pointed to a painting hanging in the room.
We all acknowledged that it was a powerful picture. But how did we know that? It was just canvas with lines and forms painted on it. The eyes of the soul see power. Sometimes we meet a powerful person. We know this person is powerful, because our soul perceives the manifestation of intrinsic power, another one of the sefirot, even if the person is just sitting drinking a cup of tea. Once I was having lunch with Kirk Douglas, who at the time had grown a beard for a movie and was not so easily identifiable by his trade-mark dimpled chin. Yet heads turned when he walked through the room. The other diners might not have known who he was but they knew for sure he was somebody famous.
If you want to have an instant glimpse of how easy it is to identify the sefirot, take a minute to close your eyes and try to picture life. What do you see? A baby? A field of flowers? A forest full of birds and animals? Whatever it is you are envisioning, you know it is life. You know it not with your analytical brain, but with your soul. Your soul has the capacity to see the Divine quality called life. Now close your eyes and picture love. What do you see? Perhaps you picture a mother kissing her baby. Again, what part of you recognizes that as love? Your physical eyes see only a big creature pressing moist lips on the cheek of a little creature. But your soul knows that that is love. When you see life, beauty, power, love, you are seeing Hashem. This is because Hashem is life, although we can't say that life is Hashem, because Hashem is not just life, He is also beauty, power, truth, wisdom, kindness, justice and all the other sefirot. And even if you added them all together, you could not say that Hashem is the sum total of these qualities because Hashem is so much more-above and beyond all this. Now we have a better sense, through the eyes of experience, what the sefirot really are-qualities of reality.
Reality, the endless light of Hashem, shines through the qualities of love and life and beauty and kindness and power and truth. These qualities are no-thing. That's why they are eternally real. All things pass away, but these qualities are timeless. Kabbalah teaches that what really attracts us, what really confers value, is precisely this no-thing quality. Once an artist friend asked me to bring a very valuable painting to the United States. I asked him how much I should declare it for when I got to customs. The artist replied that the picture had cost him only fifty dollars-the price of canvas and paints. But in fact, the picture was worth a fortune, because a connoisseur could see Hashem's beauty pouring through this piece of canvas smeared with acrylic paints.
The only thing about a painting that gives it its value and attracts us is the quality of Hashem that is manifesting through it. My soul is attracted to Hashem's beauty in the painting. The artist didn't create beauty; beauty already existed; but he created a vessel for its expression. The artist knows the right combination of lines, colors and contrasts that allows Hashem's beauty to flow into this world. That's why it has value.
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