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Monday, July 09, 2007




MORE QUOTES FROM STEINSALTZ

The Godly soul of the Jew is "a part of God above," a spark of the divine essence" (Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz, OPENING THE TANYA, p. 80)

In its primordial origins, the Godly soul of the Jew is not just a creation generated by the divine will but an integral part of the divine manifestation itself. This is the level of the soul that is called yechidah ("singularity"), the point at which all souls of Israel constitute a single unit. On this level of being, the soul has no individual identity: its essence as a "part of God above" is manifest, so all individual souls coalesce and self-abnegate in face of the revealed divine unity.

Hasidic teaching has a concept called
d'veikut ("attachment"). D'veikut is the process by which a person retraces the phases of his own creation until he reaches the point at which he ceases to be a separate entity. This is the state that the Zohar refers to as "being drawn into the body of the King": to be "sucked in" and nullified within the divine essence. (p. 77)


That would appear to be a process of becoming God reminiscent of New Age beliefs.



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