Entry

In previous blogs I have shared an interest or a spark that has ignited from perceiving a 'living language of life or light' that is able to be transmitted through the use of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. Now I am opening to that same radiance that is being conveyed through the Hebrew alphabet and the language of the Kabbalah. I am not a scholar and so I am entering into territory with somewhat clumsy feet but with a sense of awe and passionate enquiry. 

As is usual in these glimpses, information appears scattered and unclear at first, but I am able to sense resonance with other fields of enquiry and a clearer or more coherent impression begins to emerge. I cannot validate this process, but am sensing that it is recognition of patterns that is to say fractals which abound throughout this space-time. It is our ability to recognise patterns of information which enables us to make sense of our reality and is the lens by which we shape our impression of how we fit into the world.

So in turning to look at the Hebrew alphabet, I find that Alef (silent) is the first letter of that alphabet, Beit is the second letter and that the Hebrew alphabet is often called the “alefbet” because of its first two letters. I begin to see how the modern English alphabet of which I have been instructed and become familiar with all my life, with its progression of phonetic values and its abstract abbreviation of information, had an origin in a complexity of knowledge and wisdom being conveyed through pictogram.

I am saddened because I am able to see at once how in such a turn of hand, a sense of wholeness and an immense value of communication that is capable of being imbued through the spoken word and language is diminished; one consequence of this is to change the perception of reality and with that, an integrity of relationship and direction. We are literally eating scraps of food that are being thrown from pre-packaged containers and fast food outlets and wondering why it should be that we have so many problems in the world and we know so little!

So how are we to retrieve a ‘language of angels’ or to be in communion with the Elohim?

To begin again at the Beginning..?

Genesis 1 New American Standard Bible

The Creation

¹ In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. ² The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of god was moving over the surface of the waters. ³ Then God said “Let there be light”; and there was light. ⁴ God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. ⁵ God called the light day, and the darkness He called night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day.

And to revisit what I had written in a previous blog: 

With regards to the fulfilment of our evolutionary potential as a species, the writer and activist Duane Elgin has shared that: "I believe “that our core evolutionary potential as a species lies largely unnoticed in the scientific name that we have given to ourselves. It is well understood in the scientific literature that our name is not simply Homo sapiens or "wise humans". Rather, we are Homo sapiens sapiens or "doubly wise humans". Where animals have the capacity "to know", we humans have the capacity "to know that we know" and the ability to bring a reflective consciousness into our lives." 

Continuing to look into the Hebrew alphabet I find that the letter of Aleph is derived from an Egyptian hieroglyph depicting an ox’s head. I remember reading about the ancient Egyptian worship of cow goddesses and an infusion of vitality or fertility. Also that the human soul was believed to be made up of 5 parts, one of which was the Ka, the spark and concept of vital essence. I have an impression that Aleph, as the silence, is that which is perceived as timeless, eternal, ineffable or cosmic energy and which permeates through all matter. 

The second letter, Beit, is representative of a tent or dwelling. Interestingly, the Wikipedia website has informed me that a beit (pronounced literally as ‘house’) is a metrical unit of Arabic, Iranian Urdu and Sindhi poetry; there is a suggestion that the beit originated with the Bedouins or Arabs of the desert as in one foot being called ‘a tent-pole’, another ‘tent-peg’ and another component of verse as referring to the folds or leaves of the double door of the tent or house. This reference towards a tent or a dwelling place as well as an incorporation of the divine ratio or golden mean (as is present in the structure of the human body) is reminding me of the sacred geometry which is present in the architecture of the Gothic cathedrals, as well as is embedded in many paintings of the Renaissance period.  

So I am learning that the first two characters of the Hebrew alphabet and language concern an infusion of the cosmic energy and a dwelling place. It strikes me again that the knowledge that is being directly transmitted through such a language is radically different from an abstract comprehension of knowledge as it remains today. 

I am contemplating what is being meant by a ‘dwelling place of the divine’. What are the teachings from the religious and sacred texts which point towards or speak of the nature of any work which goes into the construction of or an actualisation of a ‘worthy’ human being? Certainly, there are mentions of various virtues (the preparation of the field), of revelation, gnosis and illumination which is a glimpse of the divine.  

What is and perhaps cannot be conveyed through any language is the actual working of the ‘potter’s hand’ on the vessel, because the human mind cannot perceive the nature of such craftsmanship directly. Whilst we can experience and be witness to the beauty and majesty of nature and can discern the mathematical correlations of the golden section as representative through the artistry of form, we seem unable to communicate a map of that territory. 

The closest we can come to a ‘language of light’ as it exists today seems to be through the use of symbols and metaphor, poetry, prose, music, art, movement – in other words, a language of feeling – of knowing, empathy and intuition that is coherent with an intelligence of the human heart and the right hemisphere of the brain. But - there has always been beauty and human expression through the arts and so I am intuiting that an ancient language of light would have done more than to ignite or maintain an impression of enchantment. It would have conveyed information in such a way that an experience of the divine contained clarity and meaning, so that we are able, as Duane Elgin pointed out in regards to our evolutionary potential – ‘to know that we know’.

I am sensing that one of the ways that such a language would have conveyed this wisdom is to bring attention to the relationship between mind and body. It could be that this is what the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs were conveying, with an emphasis of Egyptian spirituality as reaching towards the gods and of preparing the body for this union. 

As well as the Ka, the spark or vital essence of the divine, the ancient Egyptians identified the Ba, as referring to everything which makes an individual unique, akin to a notion of the personality. The priests would conduct ceremonies after a person died, including the ‘opening of the mouth’, which was intended not only to restore a person’s physical abilities in death, but to release the Ba’s attachment to the body. 

I can see a similarity between many ancient religions and modern day philosophies, in that there is a concept of an ‘ideal’ or a ‘perfect world’ which isn’t present at the moment and has to be brought into being, literally birthed, through effort. The effort part is particularly important to this notion, because it creates a space for a hero, a sacred warrior, a champion of the divine. It renders the unknowable as powerless in the material world other than through the will and adoration of the human being and of any actions that that human being takes. 

An impression of the transcendent, idealist or ‘skyward looking’ human is that the form of the world isn’t good enough (or else the ideal or divine would be apparent in the world and as the human being can’t perceive that it is, clearly the world is not ready as it is). The dissociation of the mind and the body has brought about a confusion of how to relate to the feminine. The concept of beauty as relating to the feminine ideal has been raised to a mostly unattainable height or it has been trampled into the ground from where it is believed that it originates and the human psyche has been placed into the bondage of time.

I am sensing that the spirituality being communicated through the Egyptian hieroglyphs, particularly with their inclusion of the attributes of nature - and from what I have an impression from of the Hebrew alphabet and the Kabbalah - restores the feminine polarity or expression of the sacred to its rightful place as one with reality and not separate from it. This is what is meant by the comprehension of a living language of light – fundamentally, it is immanence - a restoration of order and an awakening into reality. 

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, a guru of nondualism is quoted as saying:

“Establish yourself firmly in the awareness of ‘I AM’. This is the beginning and also the end of all endeavour.” And also “When I look inside and see that I am nothing, that is wisdom. When I look outside and see that I am everything, that is love. And between these two, my life turns.”

How similar this wisdom is to that contained in the Gospel of Thomas whereby:

18. The disciples said to Jesus, "Tell us, how will our end come?" 
Jesus said, "Have you found the beginning, then, that you are looking for the end? 
You see, the end will be where the beginning is.”

In his book ‘The Way of the Explorer’ Dr Edgar Mitchell wrote “… I was beginning to be quite sure that at this demarcation of mind and matter both the classical scientific paradigm and theological thought break down. They each have something entirely different to say about how mind and body interact.” And, “I wanted to become intimate with the velvety blackness that I’d felt so connected with on the way home from the moon. So I studied both the physical and the mystical simultaneously. But I recognised that the mystical cannot be experienced intellectually any more than one can learn to swim on dry land.”

Can it be true that the mystical and the intellectual are two separate realms of the human psyche – that they are the opposing ends of a spectrum? Can consciousness contain such a paradox? Are we in the midst of a ‘tug of war’ within our own being, as to whether we aspire towards an ideal or whether we grow weary of the mundane? Isn’t it in such a place that creativity is born - and if this should be so, why do we assume that what we regard as new actually is new, perhaps we are simply repackaging or reinventing a wheel?

“Very few beings really seek knowledge in this world. Mortal or immortal, few really ask. On the contrary, they try to wring from the unknown the answers they have already shaped in their own minds – justifications, confirmations, forms of consolation without which they can’t go on. To really ask is to open the door to the whirlwind. The answer may annihilate the question and the questioner.” Anne Rice, The Vampire Lestat