Genesis: Radical/Traditional Interpretations[1]
Designing the Cosmos, according to the Kabbalah
Making the free-willed actions of humans truly independent of the will of their designer-and-creator involves a sacrifice of the sovereignty of the Creator’s Will, a withdrawal and narrowing of its exclusivity. This parallels G-d’s tsimtsum (contraction) before Creation, as described by the Kabbala.
In order for the Creator to bring an additional independent consciousness into existence, the pre-existent unity had to be shattered. This parallels the traditional mystical concept of shvirat ha’kelim, the breaking of the vessels. [2]
So that it will be morally responsible for its actions, the created being is given a share of the Creator’s free will—the attribute that underlies Creation itself [10] . In biblical terms, humans were created “in the image of G-d” with some infusion of the Divine during the Creation process: “And G-d breathed into man the spirit of life”. [12].
[In this sense the traditional understanding of the metaphysical/spiritual aspects of the creation process may be seen (ex post facto) as following from the traditional conception of its purpose, i.e., the creation of free-willed moral beings.]
Humanity: Created "From the Dust of the Earth" but "In the Image of God" !
Genesis can be read as describing God’s infusion of a soul—and perhaps a mind as well—into a humanoid emerging from “the dust of the earth,” as detailed by evolutionary theory, in a universe which developed from a big bang created by G-d.
In order for the created entities to become “moral beings”, ie to be morally responsible for their actions, they must possess a certain order of intelligence, an intrinsically free-willed consciousness, and a moral sense.
Charles Darwin wrote in “The Descent of Man”:
“I fully subscribe to the judgment of those writers who maintain that of all the differences between men and the lower animals, the moral sense or conscience is the most important.”
Free-willed consciousness and the moral sense distinguish humanity from the animals. In this sense humans were created in the image of God.
Is Life Fair?
It is not fair to create an entity burdened by existence unless that existence was in fact not a burden but rather unadulterated pleasure; the Bible present this idea by teeling us that God created the first being in an idyllic environment – “the Garden of Eden” - and so gained its retroactive agreement to having been created.
It is similarly unfair to impose the obligation of moral responsibility on a being that did not choose it; in fact one could reject moral responsibility for one’s actions on the basis that even if one had chosen to exist, one had not chosen to be faced with moral dilemmas; the being would therefore be moraly obligate donly if iy had itself chosen to bear the burden of moral responsibility.
This is what the Bible alludes to in Genesis. God desired that Adam/Eve eat from the Tree of Knowledge, in order that they become capable of free-willed moral choice, facing challenges and observing a moral code. This is the path of growth rather than the stagnation of a priori spiritual perfection. But this could not be forced. A situation was therefore arranged whereby the being itself chose whether or not to bear the burden of moral responsibility. The Creator forbade the assumption of this burden, so that the responsibility of the choice became that of the chooser alone.
Of course the fact that one pair of humans made these choices does not obligate their descendants. The Bible alludes to this in Genesis. In the Eden account, the being who chooses to acquire a moral sense, thereby accepting moral responsibility for his actions, is named "Adam". However, rather than simply being a proper name, Adam' is the Hebrew term for 'Mankind'. Thus, the Eden account relates not merely to an individual named Adam, but rather to the entire human race. From the Biblical perspective, in some metaphysical sense all mankind chose to accept moral responsibility. From this perspective, no human can claim that they were not consulted as to whether or not they wanted a moral sense and its concomitant moral responsibility, that the burden of moral action is unfair, that they are exempt.
In the terms of the creation and Eden accounts, we are all descendants of Adam and Eve, and we are all obligated by their choice, or alternatively our situation is determined as a consequence of their choice. But at a deeper level Genesis is meant to teach us that in the most fundamental sense, that which is the essence of each one of us - namely our souls – individually made the choice to exist, and to accept moral responsibility.
Fragmentation and Reintegration
At first there is only God. Then God creates the universe, but there is no independently existent consciousness. All is UNITY.
Then comes the creation of mankind, and the infusion into man of 'the soul of life', so that there is an independent consciousness 'other than God’, but which is nevertheless part of the divine unit. Since the creation of humanity and its independent consciousness involve the perception of ‘otherness’ than God, the wording used is plural: "let us make Man in our image".
As the Eden account relates, first there was a unitary being (‘Adam’), then a split into two. The process of fragmentation continues with the emergence into moral awareness so that there is now not only a physical universe 'other than' God, but an independent consciousness, then two independent consciousnesses, and then an independent will.
Following this is the creation of the perception of a duality of good and evil, and the introduction of pain, suffering, and mortality, and then of the struggle between the independent free-willed consciousnesses among themselves, and between them and the divine law.
Nevertheless, the path to the tree of life still exists, being guarded for its eventual use at some future time, when all consciousness will return to its original unity, and all free-will will be directed to the divine law, becoming thereby reintegrated into a unity, raising the physical universe and all consciousness to a purely spiritual level, reinacting in reverse the process of creation itself.
The Problem of Evil
The source of human consciousness is God’s unified consciousness. The multiplicity of consciousness as seen from the human perspective is therefore illusion. Seen as an element of this ‘fragmented’ aspect of the divine personality, then human interaction and moral struggle are actually the reintegration process of the divine fragments, as seen from the perspective of the (alleged) fragments themselves.
Rather than seeing human beings as exterior creations of God who must suffer the consequences of God's decision to create them, not even having been consulted about whether to have been created at all, one can then see humanity as simply an aspect of God. Human suffering is then not inflicted by God on man, but rather it is part of the struggle which God has voluntarily undergone in order to grow; the fragmentation which was a necessary prerequisite for struggle and therefore growth also necessarily resulted in the creation of limited consciousnesses, unaware of their true unitary nature, and the illusory perception by these fragments of the divine consciousness that they are separate beings. Only after complete reintegration can all the components understand that all they had undergone was the result of their own undertaking.
The allegory above addresses the kabbalistic question of how there can exist that anything other than God, by claiming that all consciousness is part of God rather than 'other than' God. The mind-body problem falls away, since all is spiritual, in analogy to the idealist position which postulates that all is mind. And, the problem of evil is dissipated, since no being is inflicting pain on any other being - rather all are in their fundamental essence part of one being, and all is occurring according to the will of that being.
An Allegory (From File: “The Problem of Evil”)
Eyes clouded with pain I can see only the gaping chasm beneath me. Bleeding fingers drip their essence into the hungry rock crevace, and for the last time I wonder who is the evil being who placed me here, to struggle with my last spark of life to overcome the pull of gravity on my body. I give up - my body has betrayed me - and I plunge into the abyss, hating the selfishness of another which sentenced me to this fate - by what right had they inflicted this on me, this suffering with no purpose.
And then awake.
And realize that the evil being was I myself, and that the motive was of pure good, that it was I myself who inflicted this suffering, and for good reason.
To prepare myself for the life-and-death struggle ahead, I had hypnoized myself to believe that the exercize machine I find myself gripping was the face of a cliff, that the supreme efforts of my muscles were exerted as a training mechanism to prepare me in the only way which would allow success. With relief and satisfaction I know that I have succeeded, achieved my purpose, redeemed all the suffering that was involved in reaching this point. ....
Our essence is our consciousness and that is of God. There is only God, nothing else. We are of God, there is no “we” independent of God. God’s consciousness in one, but from within this self-hallucination it seems that we are independent entities. And, within this veil we feel as though we are being victimized by another. Only after reuniting our individual consciousnesses can we understand that we were never anything other than a unity, that everything which occurred was a result of our careful pre-planning, that if anything was afflicted, it was deliberately self-inflicted, for there is no other, no us and God, only God, that is, only us, or rather only the unity.
What about God: What Gender is She?
The Torah tells us that in creating Humanity “God said, 'Let us make man”
Question: If God is ONE then why the plural?
Of course this is the source of the royal “we”. However, why is this used in the Torah?
Answer: As is well known, God is neither male nor female, but is referred to using the feminine and masculine in the Torah. God created humanity in the divine image, and so perhaps one could say that in human terms this requires that there be aspects of feminine and masculine in humanity.
The full phrase in the passage is ”God said, 'Let us make man with our image and likeness.” The likeness of God is perhaps this aspect which in human terms translates as male/female; although God is ONE, and this aspect is ONE in God, in order to create this aspect in humanity perhaps it is necessary to create two creatures, and so it would be fitting that when referring to this aspect of God which is being created in humanity the plural is used.
This then would also be the reason for the odd switching of the singular and plural (us/our/His, him/them) in the passage: ''Let us make man with our image and likeness…God [thus] created man with His image. In the image of God, He created him, male and female He created them.”
Bonding of Male/Female is a Recapturing of the Unity of God (l’shem yichud’)
Man and woman are enjoined to become “as one flesh”, to regain the unity of the original Human, to better reflect the unity of their creator, and specifically of the aspect of God which was translated into a duality of male/female.
.
.............
How Old Is the Universe?
Only after assembling a complete picture of a moral being and an appropriate universe could there begin the design of the big bang and laws of nature leading to their emergence.
Creation began not with the big bang but rather with the prior idea to create a being with moral responsibility, and a mental conception of this moral being and of the universe it would inhabit. Prior to physical creation it would be necessary to mentally assemble the desired main ingredients of the universe until everything necessary to produce a moral being has been obtained. The blueprint of the universe is created one stage at a time. A new stage is initiated after the previous stage is seen to fit into the whole—“G-d saw … that it was good”—until the end product is reached. A being is created in the Divine image and is integrated into the rest of the Creation—“G-d saw … that all … was very good.”
Without free willed moral activity, everything is automatic (determined/random), and therefore not purposive to God. From this perspective Creation is completed not with the emergence of the big bang but rather fifteen billion years later when the first moral being emerges, accepting the burden of moral responsibility for its actions. In the Bible this event is what is refered to by the Garden of Eden account of Adam and Eve, which by its juxtaposition of the creation account ties the existence of humans as free-willed entities to the design and construction of the universe, and relates the timing of the emergence of free-willed moral consciousness to the emergence into existence of the universe itself.
..........................
[1] These ideas are speculative, and so no sources are provided. Section I is an excerpt from my article available at: http://www.borhatorah.org/home/article1/article1.html
[2] According to tradition, the creation and Eden accounts refer to the same essential process. Humanity was created on the sixth day, and the Eden account tells of the events which occurred on that day, so that the eating of the tree of knowledge and its aftermath took place prior to the conclusion of the creation process at the end of the sixth day, when the universe became a self-consistent physical entity operating according to 'natural law'. Thus the reference to "Adam" is to the essence of humanity at a point prior to the end of creation and the institution of natural physical law.
Since the essence of a human being is the soul ("and God breathed into man the spirit of life”), the pre-natural law "Adam" or mankind refers to the collective soul of humanity, so that in the present context the Eden account tells us that prior to the creation of the physical universe and the laws of nature, the collective soul of mankind accepted upon itself the burden of moral obligation. (This is similar to the traditional belief that all the souls of the Jewish people ever to be born were present at Sinai and accepted the Torah, making it binding on all future generations.) The Eden account is then an allegorical reference to this event.
[3] Excerpts from my manuscript: “The Retroactive universe”. See also Part IV below.