Daily Excerpt: A Guide to Bliss (Tubali): [Mind] Expansion and Creation of the World

 

Excerpt from A Guide to Bliss

Expansion and the Creation of the World

Let us now “expand” the context in which the principle of expansion is activated. In the teachings of Ha’Ari (Isaac Luria, 1534-1572), which to this day are considered the prime interpretations of the Kabala, the process of creation is presented as a process of contraction. The infinite divine light contracted itself, more and more, into structures, and this is, in fact, the created world as we know it: a denser, or more contracted, divine light. Matter is, in effect, a condensed or contracted spirit. 

From this astounding point of view, we can perceive the entire universe as narrow channels through which divine energy flows, as formations containing a condensed divine light. Each form and every structure are nothing but an “entrapped” light, a light that was limited so as to create and make visible the form or the structure. Hence, contraction was a necessity in the original divine creation. Without it, creation could not have existed at all.

Since the process of creation is an ever-increasing contraction, the human consciousness pays quite a price for it: somewhere in the far end of the chain of contraction, man encounters his frightening smallness and the numerous limitations of his consciousness, psyche, and body. Trapped in the narrow body and the countless trivial details of daily life, he experiences a fundamental suffering, which is primarily unconscious. This suffering is the nagging and troubling knowledge that, deep inside, he is nothing but an “entrapped” divine light. The nature of this light is unlimited and infinite space, just as it was before the contracting process of the creation of the universe. The implication is that only when a human directly contacts this unlimited nature will he succeed in experiencing an essential happiness while still residing in the contracted structure of the body-mind complex.

One could say that this is the most profound motivation for man’s yearning for freedom: the urge to break through the structure in which he is trapped since, unlike other biological creatures on this planet, he recognizes through his awareness his own fullest potential, his own ability to break free from the structure. But how can man, being placed in such a contracted structure, be as wide as the illuminated infinity? 

Throughout the ages, different techniques have appeared, aiming to provide the human being with the liberating experience of the expanded state: meditation, mantras, prayer, and more. Each technique has actually been an unconscious form of expansion—unconscious since man has not referred to it this way and has not necessarily known the one and only purpose of his practices. Due to this lack of awareness, too often his mind has been distracted and shifted to a more limited kind of spirituality, focusing on symbols, ideas, beliefs, and objects of worship. Man has not realized that the one thing he has attempted to achieve through all of these practices is the expansion of his consciousness. 

In actuality, genuine spirituality is an expansion of our consciousness. One can certainly go as far as to claim that this expansion the opposite of contraction, of divine creation: if, before, the divine light had contracted more and more until it manifested, at the end of this process we began to expand our tiny and limited brain toward infinity. In this context, the meaning and purpose of life is to expand out of the limited until the limited becomes the unlimited. The purpose is not to return to the source, as some teachings suggest. It is not about contracting back into the state of pre-creation; the intention is the very opposite: to evolve, to outgrow the structures, and to burst out of them so that the universe itself becomes divine. In other words, the journey is from expansion to contraction and from contraction to expansion. The new expansion is the continuation of creation through humans. The purpose of this journey of life is not to go back, but it is also not exactly about moving forward. Development means expansion: spreading out from the center, from the core, just like the continuously unfolding cosmos. 

Through the extremely simple process of expansion, we can finally directly do what the human being indirectly attempted to do for ages. Now, we can be an expanded consciousness from within the body without any need for religious custom and convention. An expanded consciousness, which is our natural measure, knows what is right for itself and so is capable of being an authority unto itself and creating through its own power. 

Moreover, an expanded consciousness is capable of performing the magic of alchemy: through the act of expansion, it can transform any matter into spirit, extricating the broadest, fullest, and optimal potential of each and every element in this universe. It is capable of unleashing the trapped divine light and then expanding it to its most complete realization

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