 | Kabbalah, Science and Creation -part I, |
Kabbalah, Science and Creation -part I By Nathan AviezerJewish Action Fall 5765/2004 posted to http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HaTsafon/ In recent years, many religious scientists, I among them, have written at length about the emerging harmony between the discoveries of modern science and the Torah account of Creation (1). In particular, big bang theory of cosmology provides a scientific explanation (2,3) for every word and phrase that appears in the first five verses of Bereishit - the First Day of Creation. In view of these remarkable correlations between Torah and science, it is tempting to explore the other traditional source that discusses the creation of the universe, namely, kabbalah. Kabbalah presents a description of Creation that is very different from the description that appears in the first chapter of Bereishit. This does not imply any contradiction between these two accounts of the same event. Rather, the two versions emphasize different features. The Torah description deals with the actual sequence of events (First Day, Second Day, et cetera), whereas kabbalah stresses the role of God in the process of Creation and His interactions with the universe. Is it possible that the account of creation given by kabbalah can be correlated with the findings of modern science? One might object to this question on the grounds that kabbalah deals with the spiritual realm, whereas science is restricted to the physical realm. Nevertheless, one of the principles of kabbalah is that the spiritual realm of the world above descends, suitably garbed, to create a physical counterpart in the world below. Therefore, it is indeed in place to ask: Can one find features of the physical world that appear related to kabbalah? As we shall see, the answer to this question is "yes." In the past few decades, the physical universe has been revealed to be a far richer, stranger and more wonderful place than anyone could have imagined. It is precisely this subtlety and intricacy of the physical world that provide the framework for the various correlations with the spiritual world of kabbalah. Kabbalah There are learned scholars who have spent their entire lives studying the mysteries of kabbalah. It is therefore obvious that this essay will not contain a comprehensive account of the subject. For our purposes, it is sufficient to concentrate on a few basic principles. It should be noted that there are different traditions in kabbalah. Our presentation will follow the ideas of the Ari (Rav Isaac Luria, sixteenth century), whose approach to kabbalah was foreshadowed in the writings of earlier mukubalim (kabbalists). The views of the Ari were written down by his most important disciple, Rav Chaim Vital (4). One of the basic concepts in kabbalah is the sefirot. The origin of the term has been understood in various ways: it is either sefirot, that is, "spheres," or sapirim, relating to God's "radiating and sparkling," or mesaprim, alluding to the Divine cosmos "relating" the glory of God. The essence of God cannot be known; we know of God only through His manifestations. Central to His manifestations are the ten sefirot, which represent Divine emanations or dimensions. The idea of exploring the ten sefirot is discussed in Sefer Yetzirah 1:4: Ten sefirot from nothingness. Ten and not nine; ten and not eleven. Understand with wisdom; be wise with understanding. Probe with them and explore with them. Establish a thing in its essence. And return the Creator to His rightful place. The Kabbalistic Account of Creation Kabbalah characterizes God as the Ein-Sof ("without end"), a limitless and unknowlable infinite realm. The ten sefirot are configurations of Divine powers within the Godhead, containing the principles whereby God manifests Himself to us, and constituting the vehicle through which God interacts with the universe. In the beginning, the universe did not exist. The existence of an entity in addition to the Ein-Sof would have been impossible, because this would constitute a limitation on His infinity. To enable the universe to exist required an act of tzimtzum on the part of God. The literal meaning of tzimtzum is "contraction," which the Ari understood as "withdrawal." Although the Midrash also speaks of the presence of God undergoing tzimtzum, the idea there is that His presence contracts and concentrates into a point. The Ari understood tzimtzum to mean a contraction and withdrawing away from a point. This Divine withdrawal made possible the creative processes leading to an entity - the universe - that could exist in parallel with the Ein-Sof (5). God's withdrawal provided a space into which flowed a ray (kav) of Divine light. The nature and development of this light is dealt with in kabbalah literature. What is relevant to our discussion is the effect of the light on the sefirot or, more accurately, on the vessels (kelim) associated with each of the ten sefirot. The vessels of the first three sefirot managed to contain the ray of light that flowed into them. However, as the light struct the following seven sefirot, it was too powerful to be held by their vessels, which cracked and shattered, one after another. This kabbalistic concept is known as "the breaking of the vessels" (shevirat haKelim). In the future, through human fulfillment of Torah and mitzvot, the seven broken sefirot may regain their perfection, a process known as tikkun. However, until the era of tikkun, the universe will consist of three intact and seven broken sefirot. The Scientific Account of Creation The branch of science that deals with the origin of the universe is known as cosmology. In every age and in every culture, people would look up at the sky and wonder: What was the origin of the heavenly bodies - the sun, the moon and the stars? The concept of Creation was considered an impossibility, because science asserted that something cannot come from nothing. Therefore, scientists viewed the universe as eternal, thus neatly avoiding its origins. The Bereishit statement that the universe was created became an arena of conflict between science and Torah. That is how matters stood for many years. But this situation has now changed. The twentieth century has witnessed an unprecedented explosion of scientific knowledge that was nowhere more dramatic than in cosmology. Astronomers had been studying the heavenly bodies for thousands of years, but their studies dealt almost exclusively with charting the paths of the stars, planets and comets, and determining their composition, spectrum and other properties. The origin of the heavenly bodies remained a complete mystery. Important advances in cosmology during the past few decades have, for the first time, permitted scientists to construct a coherent history of the origin of the universe. Today, an overwhelming body of scientific evidence supports the big bang theory of cosmology (6). The current scientif status of the big bang theory was summarized as follows: "The big bang theory works better than ever." (7) Similar views were expressed in 1999 by cosmology Brian Greene of Columbia University: "The modern theory of cosmic origins [asserts] that the universe erupted from an enormously energetic event . the big bang theory of creation is referred to as the standard model of cosmology." (8) The most important assertion of the big bang theory is that the universe was literally created. It is instructive to quote some of the world's foremost authorities. Nobel laureate Paul Dirac, a major architect of twentieth-century physics, writes: "It seems certain that there was a definite time of creation." (9) Leading cosmologist Stephen Hawking writes: "The creation lies outside the scope of the presently known laws of physics." (10) When cosmologists use the term "creation," to what are they referring? Precisely what object was created? Scientists have discovered that the universe began with the sudden appearance of an enormous ball of light, called the "primeval light-ball." This "explosion of light" was dubbed the "big bang" by the British astrophysicist, Fred Hoyle. (11) The remnant of this primeval light-ball was first detected in 1965 by two American physicists, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson, who were awarded the Nobel prize for physics for their discovery. Comparing Kabbalah with Science Let us summarize the three features of the kabbalah account of Creation: 1. The universe began through an act of creation; 2. Divine light played a central role in the creation and 3. There exist three intact sefirot and seven broken sefirot. Our task is to relate these features of the kabbalah account of Creation to the scientific theory of the creation of the universe. The first feature of the kabbalah account deals with an event - the Creation. Correspondingly, the big bang theory of cosmology asserts that the universe was indeed created. Today, it is hardly possible to carry on a meaningful discussion of cosmology without the creation of the universe assuming a central role. The second and third features of the kabbalah account deal with entities - the Divine light and the ten sefirot. According to kabbalah, as stated previously, every entity of the spiritual world above descends, suitably garbed, into the physical realm of the world below. Therefore, the physical counterparts to the Divine light and the ten sefirot are to be sought in the world below. The physical counterpart of the Divine light of kabbalah is the primeval light of the big bang. The standard theory of cosmology asserts that the entity that was created at the beginning of time was an enormous ball of light, popularly known as the big bang and hence, the name of the theory. With appropriate instrumentation, one can still observe the remnant of this primeval light that dates back to the very origins of time. The difficulty resides in the third feature of the kabbalah account of Creation. What might be the physical counterpart of the ten sefirot? Since the sefirot are often described as the "dimensions of God," we propose that the physical counterpart of the sefirot in the world below are the spatial dimensions of the universe. According to this proposal, the three intact sefirot correspond to the three familiar dimensions of space: east-west, north-south, up-down. This brings us to the crux of the problem: The total number of sefirot is ten. Is there any sense in which one can speak of a ten-dimensional universe? And what is meant by the broken sefirot? Is there such a thing as a broken dimension? These questions are answered by string theory, (12) the modern scientific description of the universe. String theory asserts that the universe consists of ten spatial dimensions. This discovery has generated a great deal of excitement. On the cover of a recent scientific journal, the following words appeared: "String Theory and Space-Time with Eleven Dimensions." (13, 14) The eleven dimensions of space-time posited by string theory consist of one time dimension and ten spatial dimensions. Of the ten spatial dimensions, three are the usual dimensions previously mentioned (up-down, east-west, north-south), while the other seven dimensions have become "compacted" (in the language of string theory) and, as a result, are not directly accessible to our senses. This is why it was previously thought that we inhabit a universe of only three dimensions. The importance of these amazing scientific statements lies in the fact that they imply a correspondence between science (string theory) and kabbalah. One may identify the physical counterpart of the seven broken sefirot of kabbalah with the seven compacted dimensions asserted by string theory. |
Sunday, November 13, 2005
OrTorah: Kabbalah, Science and Creation -part I,
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