You're aren't going to come to any conclusion about belief in any god because such a belief could never mean anything. What is the value of attaching exterior significance to a theoretical fact; i.e. some intelligence ordered the universe, some heavy lifter raised the cosmos etc...What information does that supply?
Torah posits no belief whatsoever. It strives for knowledge. What kind of knowledge? The knowledge of Being. If we find existence (universe being), then their must be an Existence wiich subsumes and emanates what is in Existence continuously. There is no other way for anything to Be. What people unfortunately call God, is the source and ground of all Being. In Torah, HaShem, the name, is the Name of Being Itself. Study Maimonides Hilchot Yesodei HaTorah. What passes nowadays for God-talk and belief is nonsense and has no origin whatsoever in the authentic Torah. Cheers.
נשלח ב-12/10/2005 06:01
Forget, or rather erase everything you think you know about God.
Study, not flip, through Hilchot Teshuva (in hebrew) and you'll discover Being in the same way that you know your own Being.
All this God talk comes from the west, and most of it is nonsense. No theoretical fact actually makes a difference to anyone. There is no teleological 'proof' to HaShem. Its much deeper than that and requires mature and serious searching. There is no mitzvah to believe in anything and there never was - these are foreign concepts that filtered there way in to Torah through the generations. There is a path to searching that really does make a difference.
QUESTION:
So what do you think about the idea of a judging god and a command-giving god? Is that not part of Torah-true Judaism? -
ANSWER:
Of course there are Mitzvot that are the organs of connection to the Source.
The judgement issue is more complex and requires more focus. Rest assured, its much deeper and meaningful than the way it is portrayed on the street. And be more assured no one is out to get you.
נשלח ב-12/10/2005 06:02
Maimonides doesn't mention at all any type of creation by any god. What he opens his book with is that you must know that there is a complete and total Existence that gives existence and existentiates (not a word, I know) all other things in existence. This Existence is the only true existence and is what we call generically God etc... We don't know anything about this Existence other than that it is true and that everything is an expression of it. That is principal number 1 and it is radically different than what passes for theology or religion on the street.
Regrading judgement and Din, I could recommend a fascinating book called Patterns in Time Rosh Hashana by R. Matis Weinberg
נשלח ב-12/10/2005 06:05
Ben Melech,
I just want to say that I happen to agree with what you write.
Let me also add another point, I'm curious if we will be in agreement on this too.
It's common knowledge that man is the sum total of his consciousness. An example to prove this point is by asking ourselves what if there is another man with all the experiences, and i mean "all" the experiences as myself, right up to this present moment, then he will actually be me, there will be no distinction at all. Now if that's the case then we agree that there is no "self in itself" there is ONLY a sum of consciousness. But the word consciousness implies the concept of there being an 'entity' that "has" consciousness, yet we have just seen that there is 'nothing' other than these collective consciousness. So we will have to use the word 'existences' and say that there is here a sum of certain existences that we call 'self'.
Through a process of logic we have annihilated the concept of an 'entity' that 'has' consciousness. We have realized that it's a contradiction in terms. For on the one hand we understand that there is nothing more to consciousness than the fact of being conscious yet on the other hand it implies a 'thing' that is conscious, as if there is something out there even before it is conscious.
So if we will eliminate the word conciousness from our dictionary we will have to do the same when we talk about God. There is no Entity out there which we shall call God that 'has' consciousness for that is a contradiction in terms as above (Hu Ve'yedioso Chad). We can only call It Existence. And we really need no proof that Existence Exists.
נשלח ב-12/10/2005 06:06
If I, who am a limited and contingent form of Existence contain and express consciousness and will and love, than surely those 'qualities' are evident in Complete-Existence Itself. Anything we find in the universe must be an expression of Existence Itself, including the supra-persona that I am.
Truth is: when you know yourself, you know HaShem, quite literally. One of the kabbalistic names of Hashem is Ani, I. And the way you know yourself is the way you know Being Itself. There is no other way.
In my opinion, Maimonides goes way beyond Kant and Hegel and the German scholastics. And if you study the prophets carefully, you see that there always was a conception of HaShem as Existence itself.
Brachot are exactly what the word means. Breicha - pool. It is tracing the particular expression that your are experiencing to its Source in Being itself. It is not thank-you or gratitude, though it sure contains that. Bracha touches on the concept of Yichud Hashem, the Oneness or Singularity of Being that encompasses and contains all plurality and complexity.
Prayer also is a misnomer.
The Hebrew concept of Tefilah is quite unique, it kind of falls in between the Eastern manta and the Western supplication. The root of the word Tefilah is Palal, wonderous connection. It is a meditation and it also is a direct communication to the Source.
נשלח ב-12/10/2005 06:08
Prince,
According to Kabbalah, 'self' is an illusion. I think I have explained above why that is so.
Real Dviekus is when we understand completely that we have no "I" at all. As above, with some thought we can see that it truly is the case that we have no self.
Now in relation to God,
We are projecting a concept on God, namely consciousness, yet that concept is an illusion. That is why Kabbalists when talking of God would use terms like "Ein Sof" etc. terms that do not connote consciousness.
When I'm saying that consciousness is an illusion I mean the aspect of there being some Entity that 'has' consciousness, I think that if we peel away this misconception we will stay only with the word existence we won't find any use for the word consciousness.
To put it in another way, if we will call ourselves conscious beings although we know that we are nothing more than certain forms of existence doing their thing then go ahead and feel free to use it on God but don't add to it anything more, Say that God is conscious but say that it's Existence doing its thing.
נשלח ב-12/10/2005 06:09
Actually. in Kabbalistic thought Self is the opposite of illusion - take a pun - its an allusion to true Selfhood.
Real Devikut is actually the polar opposite of annihilation of "I", its the conjoining of the deepest part of I with the Ultimate Selfhood that dreamt up the universe.
"Make your will, His will, etc..."
Abraham's calling (Lech Lecha) was a call for Selfhood. 'Go for your own good, for your own pleasure' (see Rashi - Lech Lecha). Interestingly, Lech (go) and Lecha (to you) are the same word.
If you are referring to Ein Sof in Kabbalistic terms, than you must also relate to the Sefirot because we have absolutely no way of relating to True Existence as it is. Its an impossibility, true Existence would preclude us being here to discuss it!. The only way we know True Existence is in the expression of Existence into Becoming. And that becoming contains consciousness thats why it is proper to say that Existence is not unconscious.
Your last paragraph isn't clear to me. What do you mean?
And your forgetting Love which is the point of the whole thing and only comes from consciousness and is the pinnacle of Brit-relationship.
נשלח ב-12/10/2005 06:35
]"its the conjoining of the deepest part of I with the Ultimate Selfhood "
Doesn't this annihilate the 'I' right here?
Conjoining with the whole being, you and me and everything is all one, doesn't that make for loss of individuality?
Above I have tried to explain why I think there is no "I" without even using any esoteric kabbalistic terms please help me see where I'm wrong there.
Your bring up a great point.
I think this is where postmodern philosophy goes off. When we gaze at existence and try to understand what is in it, we have no problem granting that there are discreet particles and individuals in existence. But the subjective human experiences, the epiphenomena that cannot be reduced once they emerge to the substrata that they emerge from : things like love, consciousness, beauty. Those things are as much part of existence as quarks and neurons. The only difference is that quarks can be 'objectively' (no really, though) investigated, and love and thought cannot. So it is very importatnt not to describe an individual as an existent being that has consciousnesss as a quality. Man is consciousness itself that has emerged out of the biological and nuerological process of life. That is a fundamentala element of Brit in Torah - to go beyond biology. Consciousness, by definition, redefines what led to it.
נשלח ב-12/10/2005 06:39
Conjoining with the whole being, you and me and everything is all one, doesn't that make for loss of individuality?"
Actually, poetically, and ironically, no. The same with love. When you are sharing love do you lose yourself in your lover? Or is their a new you built, a meta-personality that subsumes both partners. To connect with Reality is to join in the mutuality of sharing Creation. From the dream to the reality. To be cut off from that dream and be self-involved (idolatry) is not to be at all. There can be no authentic selfhood outside the domain of relationship. It has taken the world ages to realize this, no?
נשלח ב-12/10/2005 06:40
"I think this is where postmodern philosophy goes off. When we gaze at existence and try to understand what is in it, we have no problem granting that there are discreet particles and individuals in existence. But the subjective human experiences, the epiphenomena that cannot be reduced once they emerge to the substrata that they emerge from : things like love, consciousness, beauty. Those things are as much part of existence as quarks and neurons."
I'm fine with love and beauty being the same as quarks and neurons, but consciousness is a different story. Love, beauty and quarks are all forms of consciousness. I assume that you agree that quarks are a form of consciousness. Every type of existence is all about sensation and perception which is consciousness. My point here is that consciousness is not a form of existence; it's not yet another kind of existent, it's the name we gave the whole of existence (a wrong name in my opinion) and my argument is don't call ''existence'' consciousness and you'll all of a sudden find the whole consciousness meaningless.
When interpreting existence as consciousness we are not explaining anything anyway for consciousness is just here period and so is existence. But we are misleading ourselves by thinking that there is an entity that ''has'' consciousness; we are creating something out of whole cloth.
Not so with love, and quarks we are just living with the facts of existence.
נשלח ב-12/10/2005 06:41
I'm still not too sure hat you mean by not calling Existence conscious. Is consciousness not a fact too?
נשלח ב-12/10/2005 08:26
ב"מ וע"פ
בעניין ידיעה ומציאות, אם יש "מכיר" ו"ניכר" כב' מהויות.
לא שייך לראות "מכיר" כנפרד מהניכר אלא א"כ יש משמעות ל"ניכר" לעצמו, ואז מתווסף לניכר גם מכיר.
[אני מתחיל בלשון טעות לצורך ההבנה]
המשמעות של מציאות זה "מצוי בדעת" [וזה אינו מדויק, אך לצורך ההבנה אני נוקט לשון זה]. וא"כ כל משמעות המציאות זה "מצוי בדעת" וא"כ אין הניכר נפרד מהמכיר אלא הם דבר אחד - "הכרה".
עתה נקח את המונח "מצוי בדעת", ושוב גם כאן זה לא יתכן. אם משמעות מצוי הוא בדעת ומשמעות ידיעה זה "מציאות" [כי הרי כאמור שה משמעות ההכרה] הרי שאין "מצוי" ואין "דעת", יש כאן עניין אחד בלבד. מעתה נוכל לבחור את אחד מהשניים, או שנקרא למציאות "דעת" או שנקרא לו מציאות", אך לא יתכן קיום לשניהם כאמור.
ומעתה, אם משמעות הידיעה זו המציאות, והרי אין ידיעה בפני עצמה, ואין לה משמעות כלל ללא מציאות, הרי שאין כאן אלא "מצוי" או לא "מצוי". ומכאן גם שמונח "ההכרה" ו"המכיר" אינו נכון.
מה א"כ המשמעות שאנו משתמשים לצורכה במילה "הכרה" או "מכיר"? להלן -
תוקן על ידי - יהוסף - 12/10/2005 8:29:11
נשלח ב-12/10/2005 08:52
ועתה לעניין משמעות "הכרה".
נעשה נא את הניסיון הבא -
נניח והאדם לא היה יודע אלא תמונת מציאות אחת קבועה ובלתי משתנית, האם היינו יכולים לייחס את "המשמעות" של "ניכר"?
[שבינתיים לא הוגדר מהי בדיוק, אך כאינטואיציה ננסה לחשוב אם היינו מייחסים מילת הכרה למציאות כזאת]
אין הכרה אלא כלפי מה שלא היה קיים ונהיה קיים. הכרה מתייחס א"כ לשינוי בקיום. כלומר ההכרה מתייחס לדברים ש"לא נודעו" ועתה "נודעו". אך לנ"ל הנכון להגדירו לא היה קיים ועתה קיים.
לדברים אלו אנו מתייחסים [בינתיים נאמר "משום מה"] כמי ש"הוכרו" - ולזה מתייחס משמעות ההכרה, לקיום חדש.
א"כ מדוע אנו מתייחסים לזה כאילו היה קיים קודם, ועתה רק "נתגלה" ולא כ"קיום חדש"?
כאן נכנס עניין הזמן לעומת הקיום, שאינו תלוי בזמן, ולצורך זה יש להגדיר היחס [ה"קיומי"] בין קיום הזמן לקיום העצם.
כאשר יש קיום, הוא אינו תלוי בזמן. אין צריך בכל רגע התקיימות מחודשת, הקיום אינו תלוי בקיומים המשתנים - יסוד הזמן.
מכאן שהקיום הנודע בנקודת זמן 3 מתקיים גם כלפי נקודת הקיום בזמן של 2 ושל 1.
[אם נרצה להשתמש בלשון זמן, נגדירו "מכאן ולהבא נהיה למפרע", אך לאמתו כיוון שקיום אינו עניין לזמן אין כאן לא מכאן ולא להבא ולא למפרע]
לכן, אנו מתייחסים לזה "כאילו" היה קיים בזמן 1, ורק שנתגלה ונהיה "ניכר" בנקודה של 3. וזה משום האמת שבנקודה 3 נהיה קיום נוסף, השייך גם לנקודה 1, וזה מחמת שאין הקיום והזמן נתלים, וכיוון שאנו מערבים את הזמן עם הקיום, אנו אומרים כך -
זה "היה" קיים
ועכשיו "נודע" ונהיה מוכר.
אך האמת, שאם נפריד את הקיום והזמן, נוכל לומר כך -
הקיום הוא קיום [0-3]
והוא מסודר בקטגוריה 3, כלומר, הוא קיים מעולם בנקודת זמן 3.
ולטובת הדיון כדאי להפריד המושגים ולפרטם אחד אחד, וקודם לעסוק בנושא הודעה קמא.
תוקן על ידי - יהוסף - 12/10/2005 8:55:00
נשלח ב-15/10/2005 00:03
The difference between love and consciousness seems to be that love is an elemental existent whereas consciousness is the name we call a certain combination of many elemental existents. We have to be cautious not to add to a complex existent more than the sum of its parts.
The above has some illustrious backers namely Hume
נשלח ב-20/10/2005 19:39
עני_בפתח,
It looks to me that Prince is talking about Judaism, what GOD means according to the torah, according to the rambam GOD is a separate entity הוא יחיד ואין יחידות כמוהו what does the rambam mean by these words if not to proclaim GOD as separate entity the ultimate self.
From the way creation is portrayed in genesis it's obvious that God was viewed as a separate entity the creator of the world.
Kabala uses the concept of netzitzin that each person is part of GOD and the concept of חלק אלוהי ממעל but all of that is said in the context of the soul before it enters the human body, this doctrine was also taught by the Hellenistic sages, you could claim that the soul is existence, if that's the case you could have something according to Judaism that matches your form of existence.
