The Kabbalistic Theory of Emanation of Worlds

 

graphic image from School of Kabbalistic Healing page

Like the Neoplatonists, the Kabbalists held a strongly emanationist position. Thus they teach that the En Sof ("the Infinite"; i.e. the Absolute or Godhead) emanates the first sefirah, Keter, which in turn emanates the next one, Hokmah, and so on, down to the lowest sefirah, Malkhut.

In the Lurianic Tzimtzum scheme each successive sefirah is contained within the preceeding - like layers in an onion, except in reverse (grows from the outside in - (see diagram above).

An alternative version has the emanation of worlds rather than sefirot. So the En Sof emanates the World of Atzilut, Atzilut emanates Beriah, and thus through to the lowest world, Asiyah.

In Kabbalah therefore there is no "creation out of nothing" in the conventional Judeo-Christian sense. Moreover, each of the sefirt and worlds stands in a precise relationship to the adjacent worlds.. To quote Rabbi Levi I. Krakovsky, a contemporary Kabbalistic writer:

"...Ain Sof is considered as Spirit to Adam Kadmon and Adam Kadmon is the vessel for that Spirit, symbolising matter....Adam Kadmon in relation to Atzilut is Spirit, and Azilut is matter against Adam Kadmon. Bria is matter to Atzilut and Atzilut is spirit to Bria. Bria is spirit to Yetzira and Yetzira is matter to Bria. Yetzirah is spirit to Assia and Assia is matter to Yetzira."

[Rabbi Levi I. Krakovsky, Kabbalah - The Light of Redemption, Research Centre of Kabbalah, 1970, p.19

Other connections between the successive worlds can be made. Elsewhere in the same work Krakovsky writes:

"...the world of Emanation [Atzilut] is the root to the world of Creation [Beriah], its branch. The world of Creation is in turn the root to the world of Formation [Yetzirah], its branch, and so on..."

Ibid, p.86

Almost exactly the same metaphor - root and offshoot - in the ancient Indian Chandogya Upanishad (Seventh Century B.C.E.).

And because each lower world contains the same sefirotic configoration as the one which preceeded it, each lower level is a lower image of the preceeding World. The ten Sefirot, the ten archetypal attributes of God, are thus repeated in each World or plane of existence, thus producing a fractal cosmology wherin each part mirrors the whole.

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Huston Smith and the Primordial Tradition

 

Four Levels of Reality

The Great Chain of Being begins with the Source and proceeds through emanationist through various stages of manifestation, down to matter and non-being. Thus Reality is described in terms of a specific structure. The accounts of different traditional and pre-modern esoteric and exoteric cosmologies are similar enough for it to be possible to present a single account embracing all of them

Such a unified account has already been presented, at least on a basic level, by one contemporary scholar of comparative religion Professor Huston Smith (formerly of Syracuse University, N.Y.), who (in his books Forgotten Truth and Beyond the Post-Modern Mind) refers to four levels, which pertain to bioth the microcosm (the individual) and the macrocosm (the universe and reality as a whole):

Spirit/Infinite - God unmanifest: Godhead or the Infinite. Soul/Celestial - God manifest: the celestial plane. Mind/Intermediate - The world in all its invisible aspects: mind and the vital principle; the intermediate plane. Body/Terrestrial - The world as visible: space, time and matter; the terrestrial plane. [ Beyond the Post-Modern Mind, p.41]

Here we have a basic spiritual cosmology consisting of physical reality; intermediate or psychic reality; spiritual and Divine reality; and Absolute Reality or Godhead or Source. (see also the Three Tier Model, which is identical to the above except that it does not include Spirit/Infinite as a sperate hypostasis)

As Professor Smith points out, each of these levels of reality can be studied separately:

"The marvels of the terrestrial plane are being unveiled at an astonishing rate by the physical sciences. The intermediate realm adds life and consciousness: biology helps to understand the former, and for light on the latter we turn to the durable findings of phenomenology, depth psychology, and parapsychology, as well as aspects of shamanism and folk religion. The theologies of the great traditions describe God's knowable nature (the celestial plane) from a variety of cultural angles, and the literature of mysticism carries the mind as far as it can journey into God's absolute and infinite depths"

[ Beyond the Post-Modern Mind, p.45].

In this all-embracing gradational metaphysic, we have a way of looking at the world totally different to the conventional Materialistic or Dualistic stance. Borrowing a popular Theosophical term, I use the word "Esoteric" to indicate this alternative way of perceiving things

It would be possible to add many more correspondences here. The following is a more elaborate diagram of the four levels described by Professor Smith:

Diagram by Brad Reynolds, from Ken Wilber, A Brief History of Everything, (Shambhala: Boston), 1996.

Here, the top half of the diagram refers to levels of reality ("the macrocosm") and the bottom half to levels of self ("the microcosm"). Note: There are a few errors here - the bottom half under Judaism has sefirot when it should hav ethe equivalent levels of soul - nefesh, ruah, neshamah - while at the top the world of Emanation (Atzilut) corresponds to "God" not the Absolute or Godhead, but these are minor points, and on the whole this is a very good diagram.

Links

Interview with Huston Smith

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by Alan Kazlev 2009