SOULFOREST

Sephiroth On Unifying Links
(with thanks to Zoe Matoff)

This month's column is a little different. In anticipation of my forthcoming book THE KABBALAH TREE (to be published in June by Llewellyn books) I have decided to offer a small excerpt from the book. The book concerns the famous Kabbalistic image of the Tree of Life, ten sephiroth, or "emanations," said to describe the pattern of the universe. But the very image of a Tree of Life comes from the Bible, in particular the famous story of Genesis and the Garden of Eden, and so the book looks very closely at just what the story actually tells us, what happens, and what it means, as well as how the Kabbalist masters used the image to develop their later ideas about the Tree.


In the Genesis description the Creator tells Adam and Eve that they may eat from every tree but a tree called Da'ath, a word which means Knowledge, but also carries sexual connotations. This is the word that we find in the famous expression "He knew his wife." But we also find this word on the Kabbalah Tree, as a hidden, or secret, sephirah that lies in an "Abyss" between three higher (called "supernal") sephiroth ("Kether," or Crown, "Hokhmah," or Wisdom, and "Binah," or Understanding), and seven lower ones, ending in "Malkuth," or Kingdom.


As we all know, the serpent tricks Eve into eating the fruit of Knowledge, and she persuades Adam. At that point, something curious occurs. God seemingly speaks to some unknown group and says that now that humans have eaten from Knowledge "We" must stop them from eating from Life as well, for if they do that they "will become as one of us." Most people think that God banished Adam and Eve from Paradise as a punishment, but this is not what Genesis actually says. Instead, we learn that the seraphim, with their flaming swords, barred Adam and Eve to prevent them from eating from the Tree of Life in their state of tainted knowledge.


The passage below comes in chapter two, a very close look at just what this story might mean, and what it says about the relationship between Knowledge and Life. As well as references to the Tree and the sephiroth, it also uses a concept of interpretation based on the four letters of the Hebrew word for Paradise, PaRDeS, or PRDS. These levels are Peshat, meaning the literal level of the story, Remez, an intellectual understanding, Drash, a wider awareness, and Sod, a secret, or mystical meaning inaccessible by ordinary analysis.


Why does God tell the anonymous "we" that they need to stop Adam and Eve from reaching out to the Tree of Life now that they have eaten from the Tree of Knowledge? We can make an assumption here, based on the descriptions of Adam and Eve's shame. The "knowledge" they gain does not in fact reveal to them their true state, but separates them from it. Before they eat from Da'ath, they live in a kind of unconscious harmony with their garden world. To leave that world puts them at the heart of a long journey, that all humans must take. This is the journey of consciousness, that may take many lifetimes to fulfill. We can look at the Kabbalist Tree as a map for that journey. If we do it, we do not return to innocence, but instead come to something greater, a full awareness of our own perfect being.


Only-we cannot do it all at once. We cannot suddenly leap from Malkuth directly to Kether, for how could we sustain such power? And so we must leave our innocent Paradise and enter the world of struggle, with the Tree, and other sacred teachings, to remind us that struggle alone does not define existence.


Adam and Eve eat from Knowledge (Da'ath) without Understanding and Wisdom (Binah and Hokhmah). We can think of analogues in our ordinary world. If Da'ath indeed means sexuality, think of the people who express their sexuality with great power, and knowledge of techniques and seduction and control, but without understanding of what it means, or wisdom to direct this wonderful life energy.

On a larger scale we can think of the destructive sides of technology, especially nuclear and other "highly advanced" weapons systems designed to kill vast numbers of people. The use of science to create such things gives us a perfect example of knowledge without understanding and wisdom. In an odd reflection of Da'ath's suggestion of sexual knowledge, the engineers and scientists who worked on some of the complicated missile systems often described their work as "sexy." When the Manhattan Project exploded the first atomic bomb at Los Alamos the scientists there passed around cigars with a band that read "It's a boy."


Finally, what of "religious" people who know right from wrong-that is, a set of fixed rules-but do not understand the real message of those rules, and lack the wisdom to apply them to actual life? In Ursula Le Guin's rendition of Lao Tzu, "Obedience to law is the dry husk of loyalty and good faith." (chap. 38) And, "In the degradation of the great way comes benevolence and righteousness." (chap. 18)


And yet, the Way, the Tree, remains. It continues to describe reality, to map the path through our struggles. Da'ath, the sephirah of knowledge, hides, for it lies in the Abyss between the upper and lower worlds, the supreme principles of being (the top three sephiroth), and the seven sephiroth below.


Did Adam and Eve eat from the Tree of Life before their fateful grab at Knowledge? Some people say they ate unknowingly, without any sense of themselves as special, or apart from the rest of the garden. If they had done as the Creator asked, and left Knowledge-separation-alone, they would have lived forever. The warning that if they eat from Da'ath "on that day" they will die becomes true in a subtle way, for they begin at that moment to die, even if it takes them some nine hundred years to get there.

There is another view of why God does not worry about Adam and Even and the Tree of Life until after they have eaten from Knowledge. This interpretation, or drash, of the story (peshat) suggests that the problem did not come up before because they literally could not see the Tree of Life until they ate the fruit of Knowledge and "their eyes were opened." The Tree of Life grew inside the Tree of Knowledge. Life is embedded in knowledge.
I confess I find this idea very appealing. It seems to epitomize the notion of an "esoteric" truth, for esoteric means what lies hidden inside the outer form of a teaching, the life that lies hidden in knowledge. I think of it as drash, the third level, rather than remez, the second, because it goes beyond the intellectual to a much wider view, and because it indeed seems to point to sod, the mystical wisdom hidden inside the story. Divine life lies inside knowledge, embedded in it, the way the four levels of PRDS lie embedded in each other. If we can reach true knowledge, knowledge joined to understanding and wisdom, not separated from them, then indeed the full Tree of Life will stand revealed before us, with no barrier, or abyss, to separate the higher and lower principles.


Adam and Eve were not historical figures. They represent a state of being, in which we grab at partial knowledge and end up separating ourselves from the very things we desire. We find we know enough to be ashamed, and self-conscious, but not enough to be able to use our knowledge in a way that brings us closer to our deepest possibilities. We become exiled from our true selves and no longer remember who we really are.


But what will bring us back? On the Tree, Da'ath, knowledge, becomes a hidden sephirah, concealed in the Abyss. In other words, Knowledge becomes embedded inside the Tree of Life. This is the opposite of Eden. There, Life was embedded in Knowledge; here, in the existence that we think of as the real world, Knowledge is embedded in Life. What does this mean?


For one thing, it reminds us that as we live our lives, go about our business, struggle through sickness, and go through the joys and pains of love and family, every moment and action contain "secret" knowledge. The knowledge is secret, esoteric, because we usually cannot see the inner truth of what happens. Most of the time, we do not even fully recognize our own motives and purposes. We act from conditioning, and fear, and cultural biases. And yet, at every instant, if we could just see the hidden meanings of things, the wonders of our true state would stand revealed. No vengeful God bars us from this knowledge. If we suddenly saw the complete truth it would overwhelm us. And so we go about our lives in ignorance.
The Kabbalah Tree by Rachel Pollack © 2004. Llewellyn Worldwide, Ltd. PO Box 64383, St. Paul, MN 55164. All rights reserved.