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Ayin and Ein Sof?

DanielR

Active Member
Could someone help me understand the concept of Ayin and Ein Sof, I tried learning from wiki, but I'm not sure, if I understood it correctly.

So Ayin is No-thingness, and out of this Ayin Ein Sof is created, Ayin = 0, EinSof = 1, now how did this no-thingness create EinSof?

EinSof contracts itself in Tzimtzum and the Ohr Ein Sof pours into the first vessel the Keter, why is Keter referred to as Ayin as well??

I thought Ayin was prior to EinSof, is it because EinSof contracts and some 'void' remains for creation to happen??

Is Ayin the highest goal in Kabbalah?

Does it basically go like this?

0 Ayin
1 EinSof
2 Tzimtzum
3 Keter

??

Would really appreciate your help! Thanks a lot!
 

TheKnight

Guardian of Life
Such concepts are concepts deeply ingrained within a particular context. Without that context the concepts become obscure and meaningless.

There are those who say that from Ayin was Ein Sof created. Ayin being nothingness, Ein Sof being unified infinity. Needless to say, the utility of the concept is within a behavioral context wherein those who are like nothing become something and in so doing attach themselves to the Infinite becoming Infinite, so to speak, themselves.
 

Levite

Higher and Higher
Could someone help me understand the concept of Ayin and Ein Sof, I tried learning from wiki, but I'm not sure, if I understood it correctly.

So Ayin is No-thingness, and out of this Ayin Ein Sof is created, Ayin = 0, EinSof = 1, now how did this no-thingness create EinSof?

EinSof contracts itself in Tzimtzum and the Ohr Ein Sof pours into the first vessel the Keter, why is Keter referred to as Ayin as well??

I thought Ayin was prior to EinSof, is it because EinSof contracts and some 'void' remains for creation to happen??

Is Ayin the highest goal in Kabbalah?

Does it basically go like this?

0 Ayin
1 EinSof
2 Tzimtzum
3 Keter

??

Would really appreciate your help! Thanks a lot!


A lot of this depends on which particular school of Kabbalistic thought you're working from-- these concepts vary from school of thought to school of thought, and not all of them are shared in all schools of thought-- tzimtzum, for example, is really only a Lurianic concept, and is not manifest in pre-Lurianic Zoharic or pre-Zoharic Kabbalah.

As for Ayin, there are two ways to understand it, usually: one is as a synonym for Ein Sof; one is as a state of consciousness akin to devekut (cleaving close to God), usually thought of as a numinous state of awareness that pushes past organized thought and verbal processes into a deep awareness of being, of existence. It would not be dissimilar, I suppose, to Buber's concept of an I-Thou experience with God. If there is such a thing as a "highest goal" in Kabbalah, it is devekut as a regular experience (i.e., a state of consciousness one is able to achieve at will and frequently)-- something virtually no one is able to do. Some might equate this experience with Ayin consciousness.

In terms of theology, though, Ein Sof is the most transcendant, most ultimately ineffable aspect of God: conceived of as like the deep heart of God's nature. All other aspects of God's nature are manifest out of Ein Sof, in descending levels of transcendance and ascending levels of immanence-- these aspects being what are known as the Sefirot, the highest (most transcendant, least immanent) of these being Keter. There is disagreement, even within schools of Kabbalistic thought, about whether Keter is removed from Ein Sof, or whether it is merely the most immanent part of Ein Sof, or whether it is liminal-- essentially the doorway between Ein Sof and the rest of the Sefirot. The Sefirot themselves are not only aspects of God's nature, they are pathways by which shefa (divine energy) flows into the created universe according to its various kinds (something perhaps analogous to different wavelengths or frequencies of physical energies).

If one subscribes to the notion of tzimtzum, the basic idea is that God had to contract His infiniteness in order to make room for Creation. While early Lurianic Kabbalah essentially presents this as God contracting in such a way as to create a void in which Creation may exist, later iterations and variations of Lurianic thought frame it as less the creation of an absence of God, and more the diminution or diffusion of divine presence to create a porous medium in which Creation can exist. In other words, rather than having a suddenly God-free void into which Creation is inserted, at the utmost fringes of God's infinity, He contracts the energy of His being so as to make His infinite energy there less dense (analogous to ice becoming liquid water), and Creation exists within the medium of the diffuse divine energy (to continue the analogy, the universe and all in it exist within the divine medium like fish and sea plants live in the ocean water).

These are all just thumbnail, two-cent sketches of some of the most complex and difficult concepts in Kabbalah, which is itself the most complex and difficult aspect of Jewish Thought. If you want to know more about them, you'll need to read actual books, not online articles. In the parallel thread just begun about books on Kabbalah, I will make some suggestions as to reading material. But even then, those are the merest surface of the tip of the iceberg: real mastery of Kabbalistic concepts comes only with years of intensive study, after mastering pretty much the rest of the corpus of Jewish Thought.
 

Octavia156

OTO/EGC
Ayin is the Hebrew letter O . It also means "eye" and the number 70. It looks like this:
ayin.gif



On the Tree of Life there are 3 veils of "Nothing":

0 - Ain - nothing
00 - Ain Soph - Limitless Nothing
000 Ain Soph Aur - Limitless Light

1 - Kether
2 - Chokma
3 - Binah

Its simple to think of it like this:
Kether - (1 - a point in the Light) had the Wisdom (2) to observe "that which was not It" - i.e That.
From this realisation came (3) The Understanding that there is an It and a That - i.e. duality.

In the Qabala I study the ultimate goal is Kether... (Kether in Malkuth, Malkuth in Kether)

Hope that is useful
 
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DanielR

Active Member
thanks yes it is :)

since I've opened this thread, I've found something useful, a great metaphor in my opinion

The Nature of the Creative Process


We are now in a position to understand how the Lurianic theosophy is both a theory of human as well as divine creativity. I will later argue, after presenting some more material from the history of Jewish mystical thought, that one can understand the basic metaphors of the Lurianic Kabbalah as outlining the essential form of linguistic creativity and exchange, and, more specifically, providing a model for the significance of each and every linguistic proposition and act. However, I will first examine how the Lurianic system as a whole, in its progression from Ayin (Nothing), to Ein-sof (the Infinite), tzimtzum (Contraction), Sefirot (Archetypes/Values), shevirah (Breakage), Kellipot (Encapsulating “Shells”), Birur (extraction) and tikkun (Restoration) can be understood as a metaphor for the structure of all creativity, thought and inquiry.

To begin with just as Ayin, nothingness, expresses the character of Ein-sof prior to creation, nothingness characterizes the human subject in the initial moment of creativity. In this moment, the creating or inquiring intellect is Ayin, empty or ignorant, experiencing a lack prior to its initiating a creative work or inquiry. In the initial moment when one seeks to create or inquire, one stands before infinite plenum of possibility, which at the same time is an emptiness, lack or void, one that is analogous to, if not identical with the nothingness, Ayin which the Kabbalists equate with Ein-sof, the infinite God. We should here note that the Zohar equates Ayin not only with Ein-sof, but also with the highest Sefirah, Keter, which it also refers to as desire or will. Prior to creating, one experiences a lack (an Ayin or void) and a desire which engenders a will to generate or fulfill.

Paradoxically, however, the first act in the creative (or investigative process) is to restrict one’s field, i.e. to limit one’s creative aspiration or range of inquiry, to narrow the possibilities, and focus on a limited area, in much the same way that, in creating and revealing itself to a world, Ein-sof performs an act of tzimtzum, contraction, limitation and concealment of its own infinite potential. Having constricted one’s field in a human act of tzimtzum, one has an initial flash of insight (analogous to the Or Ein-sof—the infinite light—bursting forth from the Primordial Man) and selects the values or tools for one’s inquiry. In expressing one’s initial insight and then creating a “draft” or positing an initial assumption or hypothesis to contain it, one enters a positive moment in the creative process, just as Ein-sof enters a positive moment in creation by emanating the value archetypes or Sefirot. The Sefirot, which are initially rather fragile and disjoint serve as the vessels for containing the divine light, and serve as the elements of creation, which must, however, go through a processes of rupture and emendation before they can fulfill their role. Like these Sefirot, which are unable to contain the full emanation of divine energy, one’s initial assumptions, insights or ideas are inevitably inadequate to comprehend, express or contain the subject matter of one’s creation or inquiry. There is thus a shattering of one’s hypothesis, idea, or creation, in much the same manner as the original Sefirot were shattered with the “Breaking of the Vessels” (Shevirat ha-Kelim). The result of this shattering is that the energy or notions produced by one’s initial efforts are partially obscured and lost to one’s endeavor or inquiry, in a manner analogous to the entrapment of the sparks (netzotzim) by the shards of the broken vessels which form the “husks” or Kellipot that obscure the divine creative light.

Just as the Kabbalists held that humanity is enjoined to extract (Birur) sparks of divine light from their “husks,” the individual faced with the failure of his initial efforts must proceed to both recover what remains of his initial creative insight and reorganize his work or inquiry in a manner that is more suitable to the subject at hand. This latter process is perfectly analogous to the Lurianic act of tikkun, in which the lights recovered from the husks are emended and reorganized as the restored Sefirot and Partzufim (divine visages) of the World of Tikkun, and the process of creation is finally perfected and brought to a close. In Kabbalistic terms, the completed work becomes one piece in the overall re-creation and restoration of the world. However, there is no real end, as the entire process repeats itself ad infinitum. Along the way there is a dialectical progression in which an initial lack or creative urge (Ayin) surveys a field of infinite possibility (Ein-sof), constricts and focuses itself (tzimtzum), posits an initial hypothesis or creative effort (Sefirot), which proves inadequate to its subject matter and breaks apart (shevirah), only to be recovered and revised (tikkun). In the process ideas that are initially clearly defined, are torn asunder, and come to include what was originally thought to contradict them or lie outside their scope, thus becoming open to that which they were initially meant to exclude.

from Kabbalah of Isaac Luria and the Psychological Structures of Language and Creativity
 

Octavia156

OTO/EGC
I wrote this as a mini article for for SORATH (Shemesh Lodge Journal 2009) - Jewish people are not the only ones out there who use Qabala and the Tree of Life :D ("there is no god where I am")

[FONT=&quot]The Creation of the World in a Nutshell[/FONT][FONT=&quot] - [/FONT][FONT=&quot]A concise explanation of how (1) becomes (10) [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]
(1) [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot] KETHER is the Sphere of the [/FONT][FONT=&quot]Idea of Being[/FONT][FONT=&quot]. [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot](2)[/FONT][FONT=&quot] This flows into CHOKMA, the Sphere of the [/FONT][FONT=&quot]Idea of Force[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot](3) [/FONT][FONT=&quot] And also into BINAH, the Sphere of the [/FONT][FONT=&quot]Idea of Form[/FONT][FONT=&quot].[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]KETHER is [/FONT][FONT=&quot]Pure Spiritual Energy.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]CHOKMA is [/FONT][FONT=&quot]Pure-Masculine-Force.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]BINAH is [/FONT][FONT=&quot]Pure-Feminine-Form.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]The [/FONT][FONT=&quot]Idea of Force[/FONT][FONT=&quot] and the [/FONT][FONT=&quot]Idea of Form[/FONT][FONT=&quot] unite with the [/FONT][FONT=&quot]Idea of Being[/FONT][FONT=&quot]. [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]This is the [/FONT][FONT=&quot]Idea of Creation[/FONT][FONT=&quot].[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]
(4)[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot] CHOKMA flows into CHESED, the Masculine Sphere of [/FONT][FONT=&quot]Expansion.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot](5)[/FONT][FONT=&quot] BINAH flows into GEBURAH, the Feminine Sphere of [/FONT][FONT=&quot]Restriction[/FONT][FONT=&quot]. [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot](6)[/FONT][FONT=&quot] The [/FONT][FONT=&quot]Mascualine Expansion of Force[/FONT][FONT=&quot] and the [/FONT][FONT=&quot]Feminine Restriction of Form [/FONT][FONT=&quot]unite with [/FONT][FONT=&quot]Pure Spiritual Energy[/FONT][FONT=&quot] in TIPHARETH [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]TIPHARETH is the [/FONT][FONT=&quot]Creation of the Self ; [/FONT]

[FONT=&quot](7) [/FONT][FONT=&quot]The [/FONT][FONT=&quot]Consciousness[/FONT][FONT=&quot] of TIPHARETH flows into NETZACH, the Sphere of [/FONT][FONT=&quot]Emotion, Love and Art[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot](8)[/FONT][FONT=&quot] And also into HOD, the Sphere of [/FONT][FONT=&quot]Rationality, Intellect and Thought[/FONT][FONT=&quot].[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot](9)[/FONT][FONT=&quot]Intelligence[/FONT][FONT=&quot] and [/FONT][FONT=&quot]Art [/FONT][FONT=&quot]unite the [/FONT][FONT=&quot]Self[/FONT][FONT=&quot]i[/FONT][FONT=&quot]n[/FONT][FONT=&quot]Creative Order[/FONT][FONT=&quot] in YESOD.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]YESOD is the Sphere of [/FONT][FONT=&quot]Ideas and Thought-Forms.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Into YESOD flows [/FONT][FONT=&quot]Beauty[/FONT][FONT=&quot] from TIPHARETH, pure [/FONT][FONT=&quot]Creative Art[/FONT][FONT=&quot] from NETZACH and [/FONT][FONT=&quot]Intelligent Order[/FONT][FONT=&quot] from HOD. [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]
(10) [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot] The [/FONT][FONT=&quot]Ideas [/FONT][FONT=&quot]of YESOD flow into MALKUTH, The Sphere of [/FONT][FONT=&quot]Manifestation.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Into MALKUTH flows the the [/FONT][FONT=&quot]Pure Spiritual Energy[/FONT][FONT=&quot] of KETHER refracted through the [/FONT][FONT=&quot]Ideas of Consciousness[/FONT][FONT=&quot]. Uniting the [/FONT][FONT=&quot]Creative Force of Expansion[/FONT][FONT=&quot] with the [/FONT][FONT=&quot]Intelligent Restriction of Form[/FONT][FONT=&quot]; [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]In MALKUTH the [/FONT][FONT=&quot]World is Manifest.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]Abrahadabra! [/FONT]
 
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Levite

Higher and Higher
It is important to clarify that the above two posts represent non-Jewish mystical traditions that have syncretized Jewish concepts or words, but use them in ways unlike traditional Jewish Kabbalah.

There is nothing wrong with this: obviously, people are entitled to syncretize what they please and use ideas in whatever way suits them. But the results should not be confused with actual Jewish mysticism.

This is one reason that I-- like many other interested in both traditional Kabbalah and comparative mysticism-- will tend to differentiate by spelling: Kabbalah is traditional Jewish mysticism; Cabala is a kind of Christian mysticism; Qabala is "Western mysticism" or neo-mysticism of agglomerative non-Jewish schools of thought. I am not making a judgment about anyone's mysticism, just seeking to clarify that non-Jewish mysticisms may be authentic traditions in and of themselves, but only traditional Kabbalah is authentic Jewish mysticism, and should be represented as such.
 

DanielR

Active Member
Oh you are right, I just realized that I posted something from 'New Kabbalah' which is obviously not traditional Jewish Kabbalah, sorry :(
 

Caladan

Agnostic Pantheist
Ayin is the Hebrew letter O . It also means "eye" and the number 70. It looks like this:
ayin.gif
]
Ah. While the Semitic letter Ayin gave rise to the Greek 'O' or Omicron and the Latin 'O', it has no parallel in English. There is no sound in the English language that is similar to the Hebrew letter Ayin. In addition it seems you are confusing Ayin the letter with Ayin the word discussed in this thread which actually begins with the Hebrew letter Aleph א and not the Hebrew letter Ayin ע.
In other words Ayin (nothingness) is spelled אין.
 

Levite

Higher and Higher
Ah. While the Semitic letter Ayin gave rise to the Greek 'O' or Omicron and the Latin 'O', it has no parallel in English. There is no sound in the English language that is similar to the Hebrew letter Ayin. In addition it seems you are confusing Ayin the letter with Ayin the word discussed in this thread which actually begins with the Hebrew letter Aleph א and not the Hebrew letter Ayin ע.
In other words Ayin (nothingness) is spelled אין.

And yes, that is also 100% the case. But of course, if one is studying actual Jewish Kabbalah, in the Hebrew and Aramaic in which they were written, this type of basic mistake does not occur, which goes back to my point above. But yeah, it's probably worth pointing out the mix-up for the clarity of all readers. Thank you for thinking of it.
 

ndh

New Member
Could someone help me understand the concept of Ayin and Ein Sof, I tried learning from wiki, but I'm not sure, if I understood it correctly.

So Ayin is No-thingness, and out of this Ayin Ein Sof is created, Ayin = 0, EinSof = 1, now how did this no-thingness create EinSof?

EinSof contracts itself in Tzimtzum and the Ohr Ein Sof pours into the first vessel the Keter, why is Keter referred to as Ayin as well??

I thought Ayin was prior to EinSof, is it because EinSof contracts and some 'void' remains for creation to happen??

Is Ayin the highest goal in Kabbalah?

Does it basically go like this?

0 Ayin
1 EinSof
2 Tzimtzum
3 Keter

??

Would really appreciate your help! Thanks a lot!
Ain sof and ain go togther. Infinity and nothingness. Keter is in the middle column which includes a combination of right and left. The right of the middle is infinity ain sof. The left of the middle is ain nothingness. They go hand in hand. Above them is the unknown because God is truely unkown, and infinity and nothingness are not fully acurate since we do not grasp them.
 
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