Michael Sternbach

Let's take a look at Aleister Crowley's union of Daoism and Kabbalah. The Dao is identified with ein soph, but finds its expression as Dao-de in Kether. Then follows the separation into Yin and Yang, or Binah and Chockmah (the Mother and the Father on the Tree of Life). Tui (Lake) on Chesed, Chen (Thunder) on Geburah, Sun (Wind) on Netzach and Ken (Mountain) on Hod, are seen as equivalents to the four elements of the Western tradition. Crowley uses this system to interpret the Court Cards of his famous Tarot deck. Thus, the Knight of Wands (Fire of Fire) is quite aptly identified with the hexagram Chen etc. Moreover, in the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn (as evidenced in the Middle Pillar exercise), Kether represents the Quintessence, Daath Air, Tiphareth Fire, Yesod Water, and Malkuth Earth; these sephiroth are attributed here with Dao-de, Chien (Heaven), Li (Fire), Kan (Water) and K'un (Earth). A nice match. The patterns of the Bagua form various kinds of symmetries here. I don't suggest this scheme as some kind of ultimate truth, but I do find it an interesting take on the topic.

It looks like there is some ambiguity here. On the one hand, Adam Kadmon seems to have been created after the Tzimtzum, on the other hand, he is understood to be essentially one with ein soph - as you say, the source of the energy received by Kether. From http://www.newkabbalah.com/adam.html: I am not sure if in the Daoist understanding there is something comparable to the breaking of the vessels or sephiroth, although the eight trigrams are being arranged in two different orders: - The Primordial (先天八卦), "Earlier Heaven", and "Fu Xi" bagua (伏羲八卦); - the Manifested(後天八卦), "Later Heaven," or "King Wen" bagua.

Well, I would say that the idea of Limitless Light is quite as intangible as the Dao concept. The trinity of infinite space, time and light perhaps? Agreed. There are many examples for that. I call it the 3+1 law. Yes, it will take the integration of knowledge both old (and neglected), and new.

First there was the Limitless Light (or ein soph). God contracted the Limitless Light (tzimtzum), in order to allow for "vacant space" (khalal hapanui) to be filled with creative light and eventually with finite things. That's the Lurianic Concept in a nutshell. Again, I can't help being astonished by the parallels to aforesaid CCC: At the final stage of a Universe (such as the one that supposedly existed previous to ours), there is infinite light. However, there is no space! (For such a concept is meaningless in the absence of matter). So there is some kind of "contraction": The creation of a Singularity. (This is not to be confused with the Big Bounce theory which is an entirely different concept!) The Singularity goes bang, that's the creation of finite space as we know it, filled with matter and energy (light). Now, the Kabbalistic concept includes the creation of spiritual worlds which have no space (LOL) in the Penrose theory as is. So I am not suggesting that those two stories of Creation are the same - they may be partially the same, while supplementing each other in other regards. One particular problem I have with CCC is that it doesn't allow for infinite space except at the end/before the beginning of the Universe. Whereas metaphysical systems (as well as Projective Geometry) teach that Infinity is always present. However, essentially the same paradox was already recognized by the Kabbalists of yore. Rabbi Nachman of Breslav wrote in Likkutei Moharan I, 64:1 (emphasis mine): Then again, from one perspective, infinite space could exist simultaneously with the finite Universe as our perception of time is "mistaken".

Yes, it is possible that stuff cleansed out of but not fully released from the psyche/subtle body takes the form of "attacking demons" and the like.

I most certainly agree that a reconciliation of the mystical and the scientific approach won't be initiated by any existing religion, and nowhere did I suggest it. Rather, it would be the result of a new, syncretistic and integrated view that embraces Kabbalah, Hinduism, Daoism and other such systems, and that in fact has a model in the (neo-)Platonic and Hermetic tradition.

"Green florescence" sounds like verdigris to me.

It is quite remarkable that, according to a revised version of the Big Bang theory called Conformal Cyclic Cosmology (CCC), all of the matter in the Universe will have turned into electromagnetic energy (light) one day in the far, far, very far future. In such a Universe, any kind of metric scale is meaningless, thus space and time both become infinite for all intents and purposes. So we can literally talk of the Limitless Light here! But paradoxically, this at once describes a state of Zero spacetime, therefore a Singularity that gives birth to a new Universe, reminiscent of Kether as the first emanation. I spontaneously expressed these associations on a physics congress where Roger Penrose (by the way, one of the co-founders of the original Big Bang theory) presented his CCC, but he and his colleagues (not surprisingly) refrained from making any such metaphysical associations. Nevertheless, the parallels to Kabbalah and also Hinduism are not to be overlooked. It is my firm belief that the split that has occurred in mankind's consciousness needs to be cured by bridging the gap between the scientific and the religious view.

This looks interesting (although I must say that I just found it and didn't have the opportunity to give it much thought yet). http://www.workofthechariot.com/TextFiles/Trees-TrigramTree.html

Yes, there are several parallels. For example, the Hebrew name of God Yod Heh Vau Heh (Jehovah) refers to the four Aristotelian elements that form the foundation of Creation. Whereas according to the I Ching, the original Nothingness (Wu chi) splits up not simply into Yin and Yang, but into Greater Yin, Greater Yang, Lesser Yin and Lesser Yang, as shown in the famous "double fish" symbol (Tai chi). In both cases, from the Zero emanate the Four.

In one of my fairly infrequent lucid dream experiences, I found myself in a place covered by some kind of luminous fog. The fog was also inside me, especially gathering in the Lower Dan-tian. I could not only see it but also feel it there, which was a most blissful experience. I then saw David Carradine in my dream (he was still physically alive at the time) demonstrating Taiji to me. Whenever he extended his arm for a punch or another technique, a small luminous cloud was emitted from his laogong or hand chakra. While I had been involved with Daoism, Zen and various martial arts already for a number of years, I felt that the dream suggested to me to take up Taji, which became my primary practice meanwhile.

Hi Rara, Since I have been practising Zazen for some time, including with a Swiss Zen monk and a Japanese Zen master, I hope that I can offer you some advice regarding your questions. First off, when learning Zazen from a book, it is a common misunderstanding that you had to somehow force your flickering and watery eyes to remain half open. The story is, if you look down on the floor a little ahead of you, your eyes will naturally and effortlessly be half closed as any observer would confirm! Secondly, counting breaths is a beginner's practice to keep the mind focussed, and many instructors don't even teach it in the first place. Of course, you do want to make sure that you are breathing in the lower Dan-tien (Tanden, in Japanese) and that your body is relaxed, yet upright - "connecting Heaven and Earth". Other than that, you simply let whatever is there in your mind pass through it without either suppressing or clinging to it. With sufficient practice, you will be able to enter the state of "no mind" or mushin, yet remain fully aware of your surroundings. Zazen is an excellent exercise, especially for a martial artist. Practising it will enhance your grounding and balance, both internally and externally, as well as your intuition. But I suggest that you build up gradually and don't do it to the extent that your legs start dying off. Hope this helps. Michael

I hope you will find this interesting... I'm sure, I do! 7. Zen's Understanding of Time and Space Given Zen's seeing as articulated above, one may entertain a natural question: how does Zen understand time and space? Are they significantly different from time and space as conceived by many other theories of time and space? In what follows, we will briefly provide how Zen understands “here and now,” “zero time and zero space,” and “an integrated time and space.” 7.1 Here and Now In spite of, or rather because of the above-mentioned experiential dimension of Zen-seeing, Zen insists that the Zen practitioner plant his or her feet in the everydayness of “here and now.” In this respect, Zen philosophically advocates a position of “not one.” Otherwise, it fears that if the practitioner remains in the stillness of meditation, while suspending judgment for action, it falls into one-sidedness, a source of prejudice and misunderstanding of reality. How then does Zen understand “here and now”? In this connection, one may reasonably ask: “how far and wide is ‘here’ and how long is ‘now,’” when Zen speaks of “here and now.” Are they each limited by a present perceptual experience? In the case of “now,” for example, is it an internal phenomenon of consciousness that allows the practitioner to experience time sometimes as a “memory” (or retention) and some other times as “anticipation” (or “protention”) in the ever flowing stream of “present” (e.g., St. Augustine, Husserl and Merleau-Ponty)? And in the case of “here,” is it delimited by the practitioner's spatial range of perception within the sensory field, situating the Zen practitioner as the point of reference? (There is in both cases a suggestion of involvement of the autonomous activity of the unconscious, of which Zen demands we must stand outside.) Zen's response to both of these questions is a resounding “Yes!” and “No!” however contradictory it may sound. “Yes,” because the practitioner, while living, cannot depart from the “here and now,” because he or she is incarnate, in which case time and space is always experienced as “here and now.” “No,” insofar as the perceptual model implies an ego-logical “human, all too human” stance (Nietzsche) with its attendant limitations, even though Zen does not exclude this model as long as it is not delimited by the dualistic, either-or ego-logical perspective. In the everyday human world that is “here and now,” Zen maintains that “riddhi and [its] wondrous activity all shoulder water and carry firewood” where “riddhi” refers to a power that naturally becomes available to the practitioner through the practice of meditation. 7.2 Zero Time and Zero Space Yet Zen thinks that the preceding is still a partial understanding of “here and now.” To fully understand it, it is helpful to examine the following often-quoted phrase, as it is particularly illustrative. Zen demands the practitioner “to show one's original face before one's parents were born.” This demand points to an experiential dimension prior to the bifurcation between the subject and the object—and hence “not two”—where “prior” means negation of the spatial-temporal ordering principles such as in Kant's understanding of time and space as a priori forms of intuition. It points to a non-dualistic experiential dimension that is zero time and zero space, by which Zen means that neither time nor space is a delimiting condition for Zen-seeing. In zero time there is no distinction between past, present, and future, or between “before” and “after,”; in zero space there is no distinction between the whole and its parts. One can also say that both time and space, experienced from the point-of-view of the everyday standpoint, is relativized when zero time temporizes and zero space spatializes, where zero time and zero space characterize the bottomless ground. Accordingly, Zen contends that zero time and zero space are the natural and primordial being of all things including human beings, for they are all grounded in it. Taking these points together, the Zen enlightenment experience suggests a leap from a causal temporal series. Consequently, Zen contends that “here and now” is enfolded in both zero time and zero space. This means that one time contains all times and one part contains the whole, as in the case of a holographic dry plate in which a part contains the whole. Seen in this manner, “now” for the Zen person is a temporalization of zero time, while “here” is equally a spatialization of zero space, even though he or she may be anchored in the perceptual field of “here and now” as understood above. In other words, for the Zen person both “now” and “here” are experienced as an expression of thing-events in their suchness, because, as mentioned in the foregoing, Zen takes zero time and zero space to be the original abode of thing-events. Caution must be exercised here, however. Zen's zero time should not be confounded with the idea of eternity standing outside a temporal series (e.g., Thomas Aquinas, Newton's “absolute time”) by means of a logical or intellectual transcendence, nor the zero space to be identified with “absolute space” (e.g., Newton) wherein there is no content of experience. In other words, Zen does not understand time and space by imposing a formal category on them, by presupposing in advance a form-matter distinction, which indicates an operation of the discursive mode of reasoning by appealing to the either-or, dualistic, and ego-logical epistemological structure. 7.3 An Integrated Time and Space Zen makes another equally important contention through this abstention, namely that time and space are lived as integrated space-time in the interfusion of a concrete temporalization and spatialization. For example, Dōgen speaks of it as “being-time” (u-ji) to indicate their inseparability; being cannot be apart from time, and time cannot be apart from being, where a being spatializes through the process of temporalization, and where it temporalizes through the process of spatialization. This is a concrete spatialization-temporalization that is lived without any intellectual abstraction, reflecting the Buddhist position that everything, excluding no-thing, is impermanent. Zen abhors an intellectual abstraction that merely thinks time and space. This is because the Zen person rides on the rhythm of living nature. That is, “here and now” is one experience (and hence “not two”), and for this reason they should be designated as “here-now.” In living this integrated, living space-time, Zen does not understand time to be a quantifiable and homogeneously punctuated unit (i.e., the clock time of natural science), nor does it conceive of it as a linear progression from past to future through the present, although it does not exclude them insofar as they are useful for everyday life. The negation of the linear idea of time also includes the negation of the idea of time as symmetrical as well as reversible, because in the Zen experience of space-time, a teleological intentionality, an “in order that,” is absent. Yet, Zen does not accept, time as a “fleeing image of eternity” (i.e., Plato). Zen takes time to be living. According to Zen, theories of time built through conceptual abstraction, are distanced and separate from the immediacy of “here-now.” Space, too, is neither a container (i.e., Newtown's “absolute space”) nor an a priori limiting condition (i.e., Kant), nor the place of displacement for the volume of an extended thing (i.e., Aristotle). Rather it is a living space. Dōgen for example captures this sense of space as “the bird flies the sky and the sky flies the bird.” In this statement an independence of both the sky and the bird is recognized, but it also recognizes that the sky and the bird each become themselves only through their interdependence. In other words, what makes this space a living space is the dynamic, interdependent, bilateral play of both bird and sky, from which the living space-time as the continuum of “here-now” emerges as an ambience, where each of the terms entering the relationship through the activity is granted a full recognition of their being. This is because the Zen person lives the dynamic activity of non-dualistic “coming-together” of “the two,” whether this “two” happens to involve the “betweenness” of two individuals, individual and nature, or individual and trans-individual. 7.4 The Structure of Things Appearing Given Zen's mode of seeing, which is non-dualistic in nature, occurring in zero time and zero space, one may be curious to raise a question as to how things appear to the Zen mind under these condtitions. We can interpret Zen's nondualistic experience epistemologically as that experience which arises from a nondiscriminatory state of meditational awareness. To be more specific, the nondiscriminatory awareness means that it is the foundational background, as articulated in the foregoing, that is bottomless or is nothing, and as such it does not participate in the discriminatory activity. However, when a thing appears, a discrimination occurs on this foundational, though, bottomless, background. Because it occurs on this foundation, it does not distort the shape of things to appear along with its force. We designated its activity as discernment vis-à-vis nondiscrimination in the foregoing. Or, it may also be characterized as nondiscriminatory discrimination, in order to capture a sense of how things appear in meditational awareness. In this nondiscriminatory discriminatory awareness, no ego is posited either as an active or a passive agent in constituting things of experience as this awareness renders useless the active-passive scheme as an explanatory model. This awareness lets a thing announce itself as a thing. It is a rejection of the idealist position, e.g., Husserl's intentionality thesis in which a meaning-bestowing activity is assigned to the act of consciousness. It is also a rejection of the British empiricist's stance in which the epistemological subject is considered a passive being of tabula rasa upon which attributes are impressed. These implications are suggested because Zen's nondiscriminatory discriminatory awareness arises out of the state of no-ego in which no projection from the unconscious and no superimposition of intellectual ideas occur in the field of meditative awareness. Moreoever, because things are experientially “constituted” in this manner, we can interpret the epistemological structure of appearing to be such that things appear in the field of meditative awareness without presupposing the Gestalt psychology's distinction between foreground and background. This is because the ego is turned into nothing in the state of nondiscriminatory discriminatory awareness, and hence no-ego, where this nothing is paradoxically a background that is not the background at all, because it is a bottomless background. To use Nishida's terminology again, the nondiscriminatory discriminatory awareness is an act of “seeing without being a seer.” Or, to use the terminology of Phenomenology, the bottomless background or the background of nothing is the stance in which the noetic act is rendered nothing. Accordingly, the noematic object is allowed to announce iteself without an intentional constitution by the latter. This is the meaning of “no projection” and “no superimposition” mentioned above. It consequently opens up a bottomless horizon, on which a noematic object announces itself in toto as a phenomenon. This opening up simultaneously accompanies, as mentioned in the foregoing, a de-substantialization and de-ontologization of things of experience, because there is no act of the ego that substantializes and ontologizes them; substantialization and ontologization both arise as a consequene of an anthropomorphic activity that is intricately tied to the discursive mode of reasoning. Consequently, we are led to conclude that things of experience announce themselves in toto without concealing anything behind them. This is because there is nothing in the bottomless background to determine or delimit how things appear. Zen uses such terms as “suchness” or “thusness” to designate it. For example, Dōgen captures it by stating in “the Buddha Nature” fascicle that “nothing is concealed in the universe.” In order to see how the above mentioned structure of appearing operates under the conditions of zero time and zero space, we must capture a sense of a temporal-spatial awareness reflective of the nondualistic experience. In the foregoing, we discussed zero time temporalizing and zero space spatializing in which temporalization is spatialization and spatialization is temporalization, e.g., Dōgens theory of “being-time,” wherein there is no formal separation between temporalization and spatialization. Hence, neither time nor space is conceived to be a container. Rather, they are expressions of things “thinging” the primordial mode of their being. This thinging of things springs from zero time and zero space. One must stand in ground zero to see the “thinging” of things where there is no temporalization and no spatialization of things. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/japanese-zen/#ZenUndTimSpa

Greetings back to Long Island! Two things I like about your place: Long Island Ice Tea Nikola Tesla's one-time oversized transmitter, the so-called Wardenclyffe Tower Talking about the latter, a friend of mine is involved with turning what's left of it into a museum, but the project is stagnating, mostly due to lacks of funds. Cheers, Michael

Thought forms projected without real intent are not that strong. And people do have their own protection. In fact, there are all kinds of balancing balancing mechanisms at work. Your energy projection to me on my request was quite uplifting. You do have strong chi, and it may be more beneficial to others than you are aware of. Centering yourself will help you to exert more control over your power.

Even with homeopathic remedies you want to be a little careful. Unless skillfully chosen, they can be detrimental, to some degree. Applied wisely, they will help to cleanse your system from the toxicity that has already been accumulated in it, on both the physical and the psychological level. Doing THAT (regardless of the method chosen) will really make you stronger. As far as homeopathy, it's best to see an experienced practitioner.

I would advise against it. It is true that resistance to detrimental substances can be increased that way but chances are that, over time, you will do damage to your organs, leading or contributing to chronical health problems.

What you seem to be getting at are the paranatelonta - stars or constellations that are co-rising with a part of the zodiac. Teucer the Babylonian (once again!) already mentioned that "together with Aries rises Andromeda and half of Cetus". Which obviously ties in with your citation above: "Queen of Wands She rules the heavens from above the last Decan of Pisces to above the 20 Degree of Aries: including thus a part of Andromeda." I don't have a complete list of the paranatelonta at hand right now, but I have ordered James Holden's Rhetorius, the Egyptian which contains one.

Great, Songtsan! I will PM you...

In light of your attitude, I am confident they will! Very cool. I also find conventional psychotherapy - although helpful in certain instances - to be lacking depth. It has been quite a while that I was closely collaborating with a psychiatrist and other professionals using Tarot and some other alternative methods, but much like you, I currently prepare to resume counselling on a grander scale again, and I am intrigued to see what the insights I gained meanwhile would contribute to it. Well said. There is a real gap between what even somewhat esoterically inclined historians and traditional occultists believe about Tarot's history. In the case of the former, Tarot was nothing but a deck of playing cards illustrated with popular motives originally, and The Hanged Man an ordinary thief. However, based on my knowledge of esoteric symbolism, alchemy, numerology etc, personally, I don't have the shadow of a doubt that occult teachings were part of Tarot right from the start, and there is in fact some scattered but intriguing historical research meanwhile strongly suggesting this. Talking about a historical connection to Celtic mythology, there again is no hard evidence for it, but I see plenty of parallels in symbolism, not least in regard of the legends around the Holy Grail. Notwithstanding that, due to the universal nature of the collective unconscious, identical archetypes also show up in historically, for all we know, unrelated systems. Talking about The Hanged Man, in Eiji Yoshikawa's famous novel Musashi, the hero, an extraordinary but rowdy samurai, is suspended head down on a tree for some time by the Zen priest Takuan Soho for educational purposes.

Nikolai, Tarot teaches, perhaps more than anything else that I know of, to see life as an great game. It transcends the dualism of "good" and "bad". - If a deck had only "good" cards, it would be pretty much useless. But let's talk a little about The Hanged Man. So, you will likely find yourself stuck somehow. (Based on what you said earlier, it will probably have to do with your return to England.) But what is the deeper message of this card? It is telling you that some of the old ways peter out, and you will need to find new ones. Your ego insisting on things being a certain way and no other - that attitude won't get you far. Stop pushing, ease off! Be patient and entrust yourself to the current of your life; it will take you where you belong, eventually. Learn to look at a problem from that other angle - the one which you have denied so far. And follow your intuition. It will lead you to the insights you need now to get further on your path. Much like Odin dangling on the world tree Yggdrasil nine days and nights, before he spotted the Runes...

Sounds more than the Lust card then which, on its advanced level of expression, clearly relates to Tantra and "spiritual sexuality", respectively.

0 is indeed just another way of saying the infinitely small. What is exactly in the middle between the infinitely small and the infinitely big is the number 1. Demonstration: 0 ... 1/6 1/5 1/4 1/3 1/2 1 2 3 4 5 6 ... Infinity At 1, manifestation occurs, due to the interaction of the infinitely small with the infinitely big. The latter two are called Sulfur and Mercury in the alchemical terminology, with Salt as the third (central) principle (or 1, or manifestation).

The story of Creation in a nutshell: 0 = (+1) + (-1) = 0