"Observe the wonders as they occur around you. Don’t claim them. Feel the artistry moving through, and be silent" - The Essential Rumi

The Essential Rumi

"Observe the wonders as they occur around you. Don’t claim them. Feel the artistry moving through, and be silent." - Rumi

"All day I think about it, then at night I say it. Where did I come from, and what am I supposed to be doing? I have no idea. My soul is from elsewhere, I’m sure of that, and I intend to end up there."- Rumi

"Let the waters settle & you will see stars & moon mirrored in your being" - Rumi

There is One living Spirit ..... Origin of Species 150th Anniversary Edition

There is One living spirit, prevalent over this world, (subject to certain contingencies of organic matter chiefly heat), which assumes a multitude of forms according to subordinate laws. — Charles Darwin

"As man advances in civilization, and small tribes are united into larger communities, the simplest reason would tell each individual that he ought to extend his social instincts and sympathies to all the members of the same nation, though personally unknown to him. This point being once reached, there is only an artificial barrier to prevent his sympathies extending to the men of all nations and races." - Charles Darwin

"This virtue, one of the noblest with which man is endowed, seems to arise incidentally from our sympathies becoming more tender and more widely diffused, until they are extended to all sentient beings. As soon as this virtue is honored and practiced by some few men, it spreads through instruction and example to the young, and eventually becomes incorporated in public opinion." - Charles Darwin

There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into One; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved. - Charles Darwin

The classic that exploded into public controversy, revolutionized the course of science, and continues to transform our views of the world.

''It is clear that here is one of the most important contributions ever made to philosophic science; and it is at least behooving on scientists, in the light of the accumulation of evidence which the author has summoned in support of his theory, to reconsider the grounds on which their present doctrine of the origin of species is based.'' --New York Times

''Amazingly, 150 years after the publication of The Origin of Species, Darwin's seminal work on the theory of evolution remains the authoritative tract on the subject.'' --Library Journal

About the Author CHARLES DARWIN (1809-1882) was the first evolutionary biologist, best known for his controversial and groundbreaking The Origin of Species. He introduced the concept of natural selection, marking a new epoch in the scientific world. Origin of Species 150th Anniversary Edition

The story of creation told in 18 minutes ...

Wisdom and Understanding in the Sefer Yetzirah / Right and Left Side of your brain.

According to the Sefer Yetzirah(The Book of Formation) the Right side of your brain is called Chakhmah-Wisdom and the Left side of your brain is called Binah- Understanding.

Understanding (Binah) involves verbal thought, while Wisdom (Chahkmah) is pure nonverbal thought. Understanding consists of the normal reverie, where the person thinks out things so as to understand and organize the thoughts. Wisdom, on the other hand, is pure thought. (P 39 Sefer Yetzirah)

The undifferentiated Light of the Infinite which existed before the Constriction (Creation) is on the level of Wisdom (Chakhmah) which is pure undelineated Mind. (p.14 Sefer Yetzirah)

It is only on levels below Wisdom that people are separated into different individuals. Only on lower levels does the division between good and evil exist.

The Talmud likewise states, "Who is wise ? He who perceives the future." This is because Wisdom is the pure mind force that transcends time. On the Level of Wisdom, past, present and future have not yet been separated. Hence, on this level, one can see the future just like the past and present.

The antithesis of Wisdom is Understanding. The Hebrew word for Understanding is Binah, which comes from the root Beyn meaning "between"

Understanding (Left side of brain) is the level immediately below Wisdom. (Right side) It is on the level of Understanding that ideas exist separately, where they can be scrutinized and comprehended. While Wisdom is pure undifferentiated Mind, Understanding is the level where division exists, and where things are delineated and defined as separated objects.

On the level of Wisdom-Chakhmah (Right Side of Brain), all men are included in a single world Soul. Understanding-Binah (Left side of brain) is the level of Neshamah, where the Soul of each individual assumes a distinct identity, and each one is seen as a separate entity. (p 12 Sefer Yetzirah)

Wisdom and Understanding are seen as being male and female respectively. In the Kabbalah, Wisdom is seen as the Father (Abba), while Understanding is the Mother (Imma). (p. 13 Sefer Yetzirah)

Maybe now when we read the final line in the Gospel of Thomas (Sayings of Jesus) we can understand what is being said.... Simon Peter said to him, "Let Mary leave us, for women are not worthy of life." Jesus said, "I myself shall lead her in order to make her male (Wisdom), so that she too may become a living spirit resembling the male (Wisdom-Right). For every woman (Understanding-Left) who will make herself male (Wisdom-Right) will enter the kingdom of heaven." - Gospel of Thomas 114

" Jesus said to them, "When you make the two One, and when you make the Inside like the Outside and the outside like the inside, and the above like the below, and when you make the male (Wisdom) and the female (Understanding) One and the same, so that the male not be male nor the female female; and when you fashion eyes in the place of an eye, and a hand in place of a hand, and a foot in place of a foot, and a likeness in place of a likeness; then will you enter the kingdom." - Gospel of Thomas 22

The Trinity in Jewish Tradition. The Sefer Y'TziRaH, The Book of Formation.

"The Three are One, and that One stands above." - Chapter IV, Section 3

"In thirty-two wonderful Paths of Wisdom did Yah, YHVH, the God of Israel, the Elohim of the living, the King of ages, the merciful and gracious God, the exalted One, the Dweller in eternity, most high and holy - engrave his name by the three Sepharim - Numbers, Letters, and Sounds." - Chapter I, Section 1

From The Sefer, Yetzirah

What's the Secret of Pi ? 3.14 ... Genesis 3:14 and John 3:14

Do you like Pi ( 3.14 ) ..... Read Genesis 3:14 .... then read Galations 3:13 and then read John 3:14

Genesis 3:14. And the Lord God said to the serpent (nachash), "Because you have done this, cursed be you more than all the cattle and more than all the beasts of the field; you shall walk on your belly, and you shall eat dust all the days of your life.

יד. וַיֹּאמֶר יְהֹוָה אֱלֹהִים | אֶל הַנָּחָשׁ כִּי עָשִׂיתָ זֹּאת אָרוּר אַתָּה מִכָּל הַבְּהֵמָה וּמִכֹּל חַיַּת הַשָּׂדֶה עַל גְּחֹנְךָ תֵלֵךְ וְעָפָר תֹּאכַל כָּל יְמֵי חַיֶּיךָ:

Aramaic Bible - Galations 3:13 But The Messiah has redeemed us from the curse of The Written Law, and he became a curse in our place, for it is written: “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree”.

Aramaic Bible - John 3:14 And just as Moses lifted up the serpent (nachash) in the wilderness, thus The Son of Man is going to be lifted up,

Numbers (Bamidbar) 21:6-9 The Lord sent against the people the venomous snakes, and they bit the people, and many people of Israel died. The people came to Moses and said, "We have sinned, for we have spoken against the Lord and against you. Pray to the Lord that He remove the snakes from us." So Moses prayed on behalf of the people. The Lord said to Moses, "Make yourself a serpent and put it on a pole, and let whoever is bitten look at it and live. Moses made a copper snake and put it on a pole, and whenever a snake bit a man, he would gaze upon the copper snake and live.

ח. וַיֹּאמֶר יְהֹוָה אֶל משֶׁה עֲשֵׂה לְךָ שָׂרָף וְשִׂים אֹתוֹ עַל נֵס וְהָיָה כָּל הַנָּשׁוּךְ וְרָאָה אֹתוֹ וָחָי:

Did Jesus teach Kabbalah, Jewish Mysticism to his 12 disciples ?

(Woodcut reproduced in François Secret: Les Kabbalistes Chrétiens de la Renaissance. The wooduct bears two inscriptions:

1. In principio erat verbum [In the beginning was the Word]
2. Qui expansis in cruce manibus, traxisti omnia ad te saecula. [Lord, you who have stretched out your hands on the cross, and have drawn the whole world to you]. The reference is to John 12:32 “And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all [men] unto me.” For other information on Christian Kabbalah see Joseph Leon Blau: The Christian Interpretation of the Cabala in the Renaissance; Chaim Wirszubski: Pico della Mirandola’s Encounter with Jewish mysticism.

Kabbalah emphasizes the importance of collecting the divine sparks in the world. It also has the idea of Tikkun, the restoration of the world. For Jung and the alchemists, the world the ego are necessary and beneficial. Both God and humankind must pass through the world and redeem it in order to realize their full essence. Drob refers to Segal: far from being the superfluous, harmful and lamentable conditions envisioned by the Gnostics, are actually necessary, beneficial and laudable.

Lurianic Kabbalah emphasizes the same idea in how it views God. According to Scholem, Luria adopted the earlier Kabbalistic term Ein-sof to designate the primal, all-encompassing "Infinite God". This God, according to the Kabbalists, was both the totality of being and the abyss of complete “nothingness.” This totality is also the union of opposites. Even the idea that God encompasses both good and evil is not specifically Gnostic, but can be found in Kabbalah’s idea of the left and right side of God. Quispel says that the idea that the godhead encompasses both good and evil is not Gnostic at all.

In short, by providing a "this-worldly" interpretation of Gnosticism, and a spiritual-psychological interpretation of alchemy, Jung arrived at a view which was in many ways Kabbalistic in spirit. Indeed, Jung, in his interpretation of alchemy, succeeded remarkably in extracting the Kabbalistic gold which lay buried in the alchemists’ texts and methods (to use an alchemical metaphor). His work can then be profitably understood as falling in the tradition of those thinkers such as Pico della Mirandola, Johannnes Reuchlin (1983), and Knorr von Rosenroth who created a distinctively Christian Kabbalah (Scholem, 1974, [pp. 196-201])

Carl Jung refers to how Lurianic Kabbalah seeks to restore the world:
"The Jew has the advantage of having long since anticipated the development of consciousness in his own spiritual history. By this I mean the Lurianic stage of the Kabbalah, the breaking of the vessels and man's help in restoring them. Here the thought emerges for the first time that man must help God to repair the damage wrought by creation. For the first time man's cosmic responsibility is acknowledged."

Jung had a vision that he described as the most tremendous and "individuating" experience of his life. He found himself in the “garden of pomegranates.” This is an allusion to a Kabbalistic work of that name by Moses Cordovero. In the vision, Jung identified himself with the union of Tifereth and Malchuth as it is described in the Kabbalah. Jung describes these visions as occurring in a state of wakeful ecstasy, "as though I were floating in space, as though I were safe in the womb of the universe." He further describes his experience as one of indescribable "eternal bliss." He reports:

"Everything around me seemed enchanted. At this hour of the night the nurse brought me some food she had warmed... For a time it seemed to me that she was an old Jewish woman, much older than she actually was, and that she was preparing ritual kosher dishes for me. When I looked at her, she seemed to have a blue halo around her head. I myself was, so it seemed, in the Pardes Rimmonim, the garden of pomegranates, and the wedding of Tifereth with Malchuth was taking place. Or else I was Rabbi Simon ben Jochai, whose wedding in the afterlife was being celebrated. It was the mystic marriage as it appears in the Cabbalistic tradition. I cannot tell you how wonderful it was. I could only think continually, "Now this is the garden of pomegranates! Now this is the marriage of Malchuth with Tifereth!" I do not know exactly what part I played in it. At bottom it was I myself: I was the marriage. And my beatitude was that of a blissful wedding." (Memories, Dreams, Reflections, 294)- From : Theosophy and Gnosticism: Jung and Franz von Baader by Dr. J. Glenn Friesen

Jesus and the 10 Sephiroth of Kabbalah. The symbols of the Crucifixion and the Passion of Christ.

At the top of this image of the 10 Sephiroth is Keter-Crown, below that are Chokhmah-Wisdom (Father) and Binah-Understanding (Mother) In the center is Tiferet-Beauty (The Son)... at the bottom of the Sephiroth is Malkuth-Kingship and represents the Feminine Divine Dwelling on earth - The Shekhinah. So we have the following Trinities: Father, Mother, Son, and Our Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

The Crucifixion with the Virgin Mary and St John , 1100 Painting by Artist : Alberto Sotio

Crucifixion with Mary at foot of cross. Christ crucified, painted by Giotto, circa 1310.

Sketch of the Crucifixion with God the Father (Aba) as both Keter (Crown) and Chokhma (Wisdom) above the Son. Marythe Mother(Imma), a symbol of Malkuth and Shekhinah at the base of the Cross.

Sketch that shows the 10 Sephiroth with Keter-Crown at top, Chokhmah-Wisdom (Father) and Binah-Understanding (Mother). Jesus is shown as Tiferet, Beauty, The Son, and the Prince of Peace.