Questions About Kabbalah Terminology And Religion
Question: Time and time again I hear you correcting false perceptions of your students during lessons, and I also hear how in my local group the inner meaning of the terms “Creator,” “faith,” “prayer,” and so on gets revealed as opposed to their idolatrous meaning. I understand that Kabbalists hid this wisdom in this language for a reason centuries ago, but why must we continue in this way now?
We have all spent years being shaped by our religions and society to the point that these terms have become inextricably linked to false images. If we are behind in our work towards the public, and the speed of our correction is essential, wouldn’t it be better if we finally dropped this double-speak and only talked with people using the right language? It seems that we are wasting precious time with the confusion and misunderstanding.
Answer: You are right, and lately our language is changing, especially because of the need to talk about the crisis and its causes to people who are not interested in Kabbalah. I hope that we will switch to a more understandable language and get away from the confusion in definitions.
Question: I work in the religious sector. It is difficult because people with whom I work every day do not want to develop by studying the wisdom of Kabbalah. They believe that it is forbidden. How can I influence them?
Answer: Keep quiet about your studies!
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But in accordance with, I believe, Introduction to the Book of Zohar, Vol. 2, wasn’t the reason for the Kabbalist’s use of this language more than merely masking the Wisdom? Wasn’t it the fact that in our relationship with the Wisdom, as we are human, its appearance to us is as though a relationship with a “higher human,” so-to-speak? Wasn’t this necessary, as it were to measure how close we come to the Above — like seeing our growing image in a mirror tells us that we are approaching the mirror — else we wouldn’t even see it?
In the same manner, in playing a video game, one can — and by psychological necessity and simplification — need to — speak of characters as walking on screen — even off screen — as if to real places and into real depth, and doing real actions, and then returning. This, although in reality it all merely the variation in the game consol’s computer chips states with equivalent projections onto a consol screen.
Perhaps are the Rav’s word above to be taken as that, vis-a-vis the 99% who are not ready to use such anthropomorphism in this way yet, things must be explained more blandly — speaking to the machine code, so-to-speak, rather than useful ways that one may use patterns perceived in this code?