Etz Chaim

I'm going to quote, paraphrase the great mystic, Rabbi Isaac Luria, 16th century mystic, lived in Sfat for a short period, but revealed revolutionary ideas.

And in the beginning of his classic work called Etz Chaim, Tree of Life, He describes the cosmic process of creation.

Some actually compare it to the Big Bang and say the original idea comes from there.

Mark Rothko, the famous artist, used concepts of Darizal to try to deconstruct existence, to get it down to its basic elements.

They asked him, so what does he do if he finds out, he comes up to heaven, that there is a God? So his answer, which is a giveaway that he's Jewish, was that he will ask God, why did you conceal yourself so well? basically, which really echoes what the Arizal, the holy Arizal, who revealed, or some say it was Mechadish, he innovated, what was called the secret of the Tzimtzum doctrine.

Tzimtzum is a Hebrew word, and in the book, the classic work, Eitz Chaim, the Arizal didn't write most of his work, almost none of his work, it was written by his student, Rabbi Chaim Vital, So Eitz Chaim, one of the classics right in the beginning, and Eitz Chaim and Amov Asharim and some of his fundamental works he develops and something which is already alluded to in the Zohar and even in the Bible itself, the Great Tzimtzum, which means the Great Concealment.

which of course answers many philosophical and theological quandaries and questions of, and above all, if God is omnipresent, how come no one feels God's presence? And it's so easy to live an agnostic life and deny God.

And the answer that he gives, among other answers, is that God himself has the power to conceal himself.

And since this is the reward that He was waiting for, this is called His reward.

To understand the above, we should look in the general preface to the Tree of Life.

where it is written, the root of the darkness is the screen in the vessel of Malchut, and the root of the reward is rooted in a reflected light that comes out through a coupling by striking.

There he offers the root to what we see in this world.

We know in the Kabbalah there was a school of Isaac Luria where he talked about God emanating himself in a unique way.

In the Sefer Eitz Chaim, which is Chaim Vital giving the notes, the transcript of the discussions of Isaac Luria, he says, know that before the emanation were emanated and the creation were created, there was a supernatural light that filled all of existence.

And he goes, and then what happened is, behold, God contracted himself, may he be blessed, in the middle point, precisely at the point where his light was in its most absolute stage.

So getting back to this concept of nothing, instead of emanating out, God was able to contract in and give space for something.

That Ak is extended from one end to the other, from the top end to the bottom end, throughout the above space of Atzilut.

All the worlds are contained in that Adam, as it's written in the Tree of Life, but we have no permission whatsoever to speak and to engage in the internality and self of that Adam.

Little item four hundred in Inner Light relates to that Ak.

We should not wonder at the use of the name Adam that is used here.