Indeed, the mystical and the human, the spiritual and the physical, present themselves to us at first as two different and distinct modes of being. Opposites.
The Kabbalah teaches, that this is the deeper meaning of the single act that G-d did on the second day of creation—“And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament.”
He emanated from Himself two types of waters, two modes of existence, two planes of reality. Mysticism and Humanities.
“But I'm a bad priest, you see. I know--from experience--how much beauty Satan carried down with him when he fell. Nobody ever said the fallen angels were the ugly ones. Oh, no, they were just as quick and light . . .”
― Graham Greene, The Power and the Glory
Our task is to unite the waters again. To search for the Divine in the human, and to revel and take more joy in humanism by exploring the spiritual.
The final completion of this is the Messianic promise that Isaiah saw when he said, “For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.”(11:9) A total uniting of the two waters once more. The True Unity of G-d. Mystical Humanities.
That is the completion. But the beginning in each of our lives to this fusion, the way to feel true spirituality and true humanity which are only experienced fully when they’re lived simultaneously—the doorway to this is the sense of the ineffable. That roaring shine of wonder that at times uplifts me completely out of my regular frame of reference. That sense of being drawn out of my everyday view by a sudden consciousness that leaves me unable to explain what I have just experienced. When at those points of life, I can feel that there’s more; a realm of being that transcends me; that there must be even more; there’s something beyond-and it calls to me; that to truly live, I must not remain in the confines of empirical reality.
To be overwhelmed suddenly by the perfection of a scene of nature; to be overcome with emotion from the ageless smile of a child; to feel the preciousness of life by achieving serenity and peace while wrapped in an embrace. These experiences that no words can convey. And to feel G-d calling from within them. The sense of the ineffable. The bridge.
As the Sages of the Talmud taught (Tamid 32a), “One who wishes to truly live, should kill himself.” Remove one’s self from the regular life I usually, naturally live. Become receptive to the realization that ultimate truth, beauty, and profundity lie beyond my regular perception. The sense of the ineffable.
But I must reach it through my humanity. Tap in to the mystic plane that hovers by sensing the ineffable beyond within the beauty that can be found within the human condition. And then live that bedazzled state as a humanist.
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately….and
not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived…I wanted to live deep
and suck out all the marrow of life...if it were sublime, to know it by
experience, and be able to give a true account of it.
Come. Let’s go out into the woods together. Let’s kill ourselves and live. Let’s search for the Divine in Mysticism and the Humanities. Let’s hold on to the sense of the ineffable, and treasure it and cultivate it.
Scarcely had I passed them
when I found the one my heart loves.
I held him and would not let him go
till I had brought him to my mother’s house,
to the room of the one who conceived me.
when I found the one my heart loves.
I held him and would not let him go
till I had brought him to my mother’s house,
to the room of the one who conceived me.
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