THE POWERS OF GENESIS

by Jean Houston

[The following is the text of a mystery school talk.]


The Power of Projective Language

Let us begin by considering a people in the distant future who are entirely tone deaf and without music suddenly discovering musical notation. They could analyze it, interpret it as a variation on ordinary speech, but they could not hear it, and would have no comprehension of the concept of music. If one of their number then took enormous pains to rediscover music by determining that these notations are really signs for sounds of different tones, and then re-trained his brain and nervous system out of being tone deaf so that eventually he could actually hear different tones and then chords and then musical phrases, eventually he would be able to hear musical themes and then symphonies. He then understands the need for instruments to express these tones and reinvents musical instruments. He becomes a musician in a tone deaf world, a world that has no conception of what it cannot conceive, and no notion of instruments for music. What happens if he performs for an intelligent audience on these instruments. Most would shuffle their feet uncomfortably at this strange noise. Quite a few would walk out deeply offended by this esoteric claptrap. Others would try to analyze the variations in this speech pattern--thinking it an especially interesting version of glossolalia, while a very few would have stirrings of memory from the time that music could be heard. It is thought that "it has been kept alive in them because it happens that the interpretation of the musical notation as ordinary speech is so devised that the symphonic themes appear as a kind of echo under the guise of poetry" (Cipher of Genesis, p. 3). The exposure calls to a repressed but still available potential within them; they could still wake up to music and even the possibility of becoming musicians. Music, like mathematics, is a projective language. A good musicians reads a score and hears it: it is projected as energy transforms inside his being. The same is true of a fine mathematician who reads mathematical symbols and internally performs the pattern of mathematical operations of which the symbols are the projection.

Now there are a few ancient languages that are also, at certain levels, projective languages. Discuss why this tends to be so only [for] ancient languages. Among them are Sanskrit, high Javanese, and most fully realized--Old Hebrew. The sounds and portraits of their alphabetic characters perform multiple musics on several levels of understanding. In Sanskrit the fundamental syllables, called "bija" syllables like "Om", "Ram", "yam", are thought to be the primary codings of the energies of the Universe and of Creation. . .

With regard to Hebrew an ages-old traveling and hiding mystery school has been developed around the implicit content of the projective dimensions that are there to be received in Hebrew. The name of this mystery school is the Qabala. The word Qabala means: that which is received. And what Qabala says is that the twenty-two glyphs which are used as letters in the Hebrew alphabet are in fact and in essence twenty-two proper names originally used to designate different states or structures of the one cosmic energy, which is the essence of semblance of all that is. However, although these letters correspond to numbers, symbols and ideas, they exceed all classifications. The letters themselves, Aleph, Bayt, Ghimel, etc., are projections, codings of biolically structured energies in different states of organization. And it would seem that primary languages provided ontological linkages with the essence of the objects specified. We would ask, why is the left hemisphere of the neo-cortex--what we may refer to as the speech center or even the logos--laser so large? Because it is meant to be the transducing vehicle for the cosmic languages and codings.

What a modern Qabalistic scholar like Carlos Suares suggests is that there is extraordinary substance in the Biblical account of the archetypal myths and quasi-historical episodes recorded in Genesis which is not there to the surface eye. Most of us, even good scholars among us, read Genesis from a tone-deaf perspective, not with the eye and the ear that is attuned to Qabala to the receiving of the incredibly complex cosmic history which is codified within the projective resonance of the Hebrew letters. Read with the musician's or Qabalistic ear, a Biblical account is not only the record of the wanderings of a Semitic tribe and their patriarchs, it is, he says, " a concealed record of the actual events of the projection of the Cosmic Drama into the biosphere" (p.26). Suares also feels that "the names and the quasi-historical events recorded in the Bible are, regarded from the point of view that only 'ordinary' history occurs, fixed in time and space to definite individuals and periods. This is probably indeed the case, judging from the results of contemporary Biblical research." (Discuss Biblical archeology and what we learn of Abraham's wanderings and Joseph in Egypt.) "But if there is also a sacred history, it escapes from time and space save for those tremendous historical moments, the kairoi, such as the time of Christ, when the two histories coalesce into one. The "time of Abraham" may have been also such a time, or it may not have been. It may be that the sacred history has become, for convenience, grafted onto the account of secular history given in the Bible."
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A Few Notes and Brief Excursion on the History of Qabala
Before I go any further, I'd like to offer a few words on what the Qabala is. Rabbi Philip Berg, the director of a kabbalistic institute and press in New York, and one of the world's leading Kabbalistic scholars, says, "Into this mysterious universe we are born, with no apparent set of instructions, no maps or equations, no signs or guideposts, nothing but our equally unfathomable instincts, intuitions, and reasoning abilities to tell us where we came from, why we are here, and what we are supposed to do. What we do possess--perhaps it is the key to our survival as a species--is an almost unquenchable need to know. A human being comes into this world with a passionate sense of wonder and inquisitiveness and an equally powerful need for self expression. yet, somehow these seemingly indelible primal imperatives become eroded, as a rule, after only a few years' exposure to modern reality and contemporary educational methods." Berg strongly suggests that his way, the way of Qabalah with its symbols and tools, is a major key to finding the answers. In fact, in his book The Kabbalah Connection, he actually says, "The alef-bet is a cable representing the missing link between the sending of a message from the physical to the metaphysical level." In 1983, Berg who was then the much esteemed director of the Institute for Kabbalah in Jerusalem, delivered a paper entitled "Extra-Terrestrial Life in Outer Space: Forces Behind the Future." He spoke of Hebrew as very likely being a kind of cosmic computer code for programming our "walking bio-computers," and said that the great kabbalistic book, the Zohar, linked with certain Biblical chapters, especially Genesis, provided an excellent system for contacting extraterrestrial intelligence. In other words, in qabala are to be found the ways and means of reprogramming our body-minds into higher vibratory forms that make of us a kind of meta-computer able to contact universal codes and intelligences. Indeed, there are esoteric kabbalists who believe that Genesis is a kind of code book written by some ultra-terrestrial intelligence for those spiritual hackers who can figure it out.

We will be operating in our exploration of the book of Genesis on the supposition that the historical character of the Bible is really twofold, just as the Hebrew language is twofold. The Hebrew language can be used as ordinary speech or it can be, as you will soon see, used as a projective experience. The historical aspect of Genesis conveys not only ordinary history (that there were wandering tribes coming out of Ur of the Chaldees some 4000 years ago--with all their sheep and cows and chattel) but, hidden within that, a sacred history concerned with the stages and working out on earth of this cosmic drama. This may be why the Hebraic text was preserved so very accurately over thousands of years. Thus, the finding of the Dead Sea Scrolls and with it the text of Isaiah from the first century--which is virtually the same, letter for letter, as our previously earliest known text from a thousand years later.
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The Nine Archetypal Letters
To begin to understand the qabalistic interpretation of the deeper meaning of Genesis and why it is not just a collection of folk tales, we have first to explore the interior meanings of the nine archetypal letters. The ancient texts are preserved so rigorously because every letter and the pronunciation of every word is taken as significant. The Qabala tells us what the Hebrew letters are made of and shows us how each letter is not simply an initial but is a word complex: an equation. When we say "a", we mean "a"; in Hebrew you would say ALEPH. ALEPH is made up of ALEPH, LAMMED, PHAY, and LAMMED and PHAY are made up of many other living characters, each of which is filled with meaning as you can see and which branches and re-branches like a tree, a living organism or a most elaborate chemical compound. This is a form of hieroglyphic thought rendered in alphabetic characters in such a way that the Hebrew characters introduce us to a language capable of conveying depth of meaning and complexity virtually without limit, yet remaining within the limited bounds of our capacity for thought. When studied, it activates in us, as music did for the tone deaf with residual memory, an uncoding of tremendous knowledges which have been forgotten or perhaps which are so deeply coded in us that we have been unaware of their existence. In fact, I would go so far as to suggest that what it uncodes in us is our future possibility, the culture that we are painfully moving towards, the culture no longer just homo faber, the tool maker, but of homo mondo faber--the world maker.

As Suares says, "It is a code which uses these equations and not ordinary words as we are accustomed to use them. It trains the mind to hold together, all at once, a complex structure, each part of which is relevant to every other part." (Discuss why the Jews, as the holder of so many of the structures of existence, have been able to survive in spite of the entropy of antagonistic cultures that have tried to suppress them.) The reading of Genesis then becomes the reading and the experience of a living code of creation and transformation; the keys to the transforming of culture and society, and even of world making. This is obviously a subject which could take many, many lives of inquiry. Within one weekend, albeit within the subjective and eternal time of a mystery school, we can only dip into a fragment of a fragment, but let us just do that briefly now so as to set up a few musical cadenzas in your mind for your experience of the cosmic drama of creation which is implicit in the musical notation called Genesis.
Take the first letter, ALEPH.

In the depth understanding of the Qabala, the symbol ALEPH is used to project a concept of an unthinkably immense energy, hyperspatial and hypertemporal, transcending time and space, without which nothing could exist, operating within the structure of everything as that by which it is able to be. ALEPH projects into us a constant awareness of the mystery of existence. Although it is not thinkable, we participate in it on many levels that it thinks its way through us. Perhaps it is correspondent to the Chinese Tao. Alone among all Hebrew letters, ALEPH has no pronunciation of its own and according to where it is placed in a configuration of letters it can be sounded as any of the vowels, so ALEPH transcends all logical use in language just as a concept it transcends all understanding. For the Qabala to be sacred means to partake of this mystery of ALEPH. Everything that exists is sacred because it is inhabited by ALEPH. ( Discuss the ALEPH point and read from the Borges story about the ALEPH in the Possible Human.) Relate Aleph to Bohm's notion of the Implicate and the Superimplicate orders. > The first archetype letter is ALEPH, naturally. The second is BAYT.

BAYT means house or physical support or container, any kind of dwelling. It is the complement of, and polarity, if you will, of ALEPH. It is the container, whereas Aleph is the immeasurable energy. BAYT may be seen as that which allows for the implicate to become explicate in time and space.

The third principle is GHIMEL.

GHIMEL has the meaning of change and transformation of energy. If there is ALEPH and BAYT together, there must occur a transformation of energy, for how is ALEPH going to flood into BAYT and how is BAYT going to contain any ALEPH at all without some fundamental change going on. GHIMEL gives us some clues to this mystery. GHIMEL which is also related to camel, which stores and converts water, is the mystery of conversion of the energies of the life force.

The fourth projected archetype is the letter DALLET.

DALLET means resistance to disruptive forces. It is the principle of homeostasis and of restoration of that which is being disturbed. In atomic nuclei it is the role of the binding energy. It is the archetypal principle of challenge and response. If you have the flowing of energy in ALEPH, the attempted containment of this energy in BAYT, the conversion of this energy in GHIMEL, than you are certainly going to need the energy of DALLET to respond to all these challenges and bind it all together.

The fifth principle is the letter HAY.

HAY is the principle of life in itself and the tasks which life performs--that is transmitting impulses, maintaining balance, knowing the appropriate timing to release more life and conserve life, to adjunct to the requirements of the external and internal environment. It is the principle, ultimately, of keeping the ecology of energies going. If you are going to have the overwhelmingness of ALEPH flooding into the containment of BAYT with the help of the conversion of these energies by GHIMEL and the binding of all of these energies together in DALLET, then you have to have the sensitivity of the life of HAY to keep all of these principles functioning equitably and ecologically.

The sixth principle is VAV.

VAV is the archetype of fertility projected into living organisms as the function of reproduction. It is the power of perpetuation connecting the old with the new and assuring existence in time. If you have the cosmic energies of ALEPH into the containment of BAYT being changed and converted into the energies of GHIMEL, bound together by DALLET, and equalized by the life Expression of HAY, then, if you want all of this to continue, you've got to have the reproductive function of VAV.

The seventh principle is the letter ZAYN.

This means archetypally structured movement towards indeterminate potentialities. It is motion towards an entelechy that is calling. If you have the immensities of ALEPH, attempting to indwell in BAYT, undergoing the energy conversion of GHIMEL, held together by DALLET, within the life form of HAY, and reproduced in VAV, then it has to be called forward to its next unfolding in a motion of ZAYN.

The eighth archetypal principle is the letter HHAYT.

This is the concept of the storehouse of potentialities, the pool of patterns and genes, if you will, that are there to be accessed and which can be used to give form and creative innovation to structures in this world. If you have the cosmic energies of ALEPH contained in the house of BAYT converted to the energies of life of GHIMEL held together by the binding energy of DALLET within the life form of HAY, reproduced by VAV, set into motion towards indeterminate potentialities by ZAYN, then all of this is going to find the new patterns for the next stages of the coding in HHAYT.

The ninth archetypal principle is the letter TAYT.

TAYT is the womb place of gestation, of bringing all these archetypal energies into new genesis for the new creation in time of the cosmic drama that was begun by ALEPH--the immensity of cosmic energy, projected into the container of BAYT, transformed into the living energies of GHIMEL, held together by the binding forces of DALLET, within the ecological life principle of HAY, reproduced by VAV, and set into motion towards new learning by ZAYN, found in the storehouse of potentials of HHAY, and all of these together re-gestated in the place of new genesis to TAYT. This is the multi-dimensional thinking implicit in the sacred reading of Hebrew as found in Genesis.

According to Qabala, when ALEPH is projected into existence-in-time, it becomes YOD. YOD symbolizes the assertion of existence. The Hebrew symbol is a hand. By this it becomes limited and within the framework of time sequences. It also is coded in the notion of the hand of God reaching out to start existence as in Michelangelo's painting on the ceiling of the Sistine chapel. This implies a sacrifice on the part of ALEPH of its own unique character. It compromises its nature when it becomes YOD and is thereby involved in contradiction. The war with time enters all existence and becomes a conflict between time and eternity, ALEPH and YOD. This is the great Cosmic Game, the Cosmic Drama-- the tension between ALEPH and YOD. If we search for the outcome of this cosmic game and why it is at all, we are asking for the meaning of QOF, which is the symbol for 100, and higher reconciliation. ALEPH (I) finds its limited time existence in YOD (10) and its fulfillment in QOF (100). In QOF the division is reconciled. Number symbolism is critical in Qabalistic thought. For example, the symbolic age of 100 reached by Abraham when his son Isaac was to be born (previously his name, Abram, had been changed by the addition of HAY, meaning lease of new life. Previously Abram--whose original name means top Daddy or exalted Pop, is changed by God by an addition of HAY, meaning lease of new life (father of multitudes, exceedingly fruitful). His wife, Sarai, has her name, originally meaning Queenie, similarly enhanced by the addition of the HAY and her name, Sarah, means mother of all nations. (By the way, the original name in Egyptian, Ab-ram means "he who is father of the sun", or "he who possesses the sun". In Tibetan, Ram means the basis of the world. In Sanskrit, Ram is God, as in Rama. In the Celtic languages, Ram equates to universal essence. In Qabala, Ram means cosmic dwelling.)

There is also a further coincidence that may have immense cross cultural significance; it is this: ABRAHAM with the order of letters very slightly changed, looks like BRAHMA. (A place in which it occurs is the oldest scripture of India dating actually from around the time of Abraham.) The coincidence signifies, according to the Qabala, that the traditional revelations of Abraham and Brahma are essentially one and the same in source. The fact that the Aleph is the first letter of the one, the last of the other, points to a single revelation which is split in two. Could it be that at some actual moment of history, ordinary and sacred history merged and a new dispensation spread over the earth both east and west?

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Genesis 1 & 2 as a Training Course in God School

I am going to suggest to you now a very unique and somewhat whimsical hypothesis which, if not actually true, can be considered to be mythically and archetypally true: that in the opening chapters of Genesis, understood in the ways in which I have been calling attention to, we have an account of the training received in God School and that the first chapters of Genesis are the practicum of the course (Genesis 101 and 102). (The lab time is evidently seven days.) That is the mythic archetypal level of my statement (the sacred history, as it were, behind Genesis). The historical existential history is that it provides at the same time a loaded coding for you and me and whatever other willing people in space and time choose to learn the high and holy and very scientific nature of true creativity. Regarding Genesis then from this twofold premise, let us look at what is going on in the course.

The text of the course develops from the first word, the mistranslated, "In the beginning". The word in Hebrew is BERESHYT. It does not mean "in the beginning". It probably means something like "the principle". But within this notion of principle is contained cabalistically in the letters of Bereshyt that which means - the Great Archetypal patterns, the ultimate containers of existences, the upspringing of life, the Biggest Bang of all, Becoming Itself! Rabbi Berg devotes an entire course just to the word BERESHYT alone.

The second word in Hebrew is BARA. In Qabalistic depth understanding it means "ways of creation". Look at the word Bara--it is actually Bar-Aleph--that is, child of Aleph! Or if you will, the ways in which the immense potentials of the Aleph are born into time and space, how the high creative becomes immanent and actualized. In other words, birthing in a big way. So the text has as its true meaning, "Principles Of Creation: How To Do It." Or like I said, Genesis 101 and 102.

The next word is the one that tells the tale for the word is ELOHIM, translated in English as God. ELOHIM is both a masculine and a feminine word and is plural. But it means much more than that. Using some of the principles of projective language which we have just explored, let's look at the nature of that word, ELOHIM.

The spelling is ALEPH - LAMMED - HAY - YOD - MEM. and the only letters that we have not looked at is the one MEM, which signifies fruitfulness in the highest degree, that is, the creation of the biosphere. LAMMED means the channeling through which energy changes can happen, thus ELOHIM means the immensities of energy and power (ALEPH) and channeled or transmitted through the organic movement (LAMMED) of life (HAY) playing out the Cosmic Game with its own projection YOD in existence in the biosphere, MEM. The cosmic game is indicated in code in ELOHIM by the presence of ALEPH and YOD together. Life, or HAY, is in the middle, maintaining the balance. With ALEPH-LAMMED the spirit of creative energy on the one side, and YOD-MEM of the physical supports on the other. This is the nature of an evolutionary process. In fact, that is the subtitle of this course. So what you have in the first three words is a catalogue listing at the God-Training University or, if you will, God University, or if you really will, GU (GO GU!) GO GU is quite literally true if you look at the history of the early stages of the world and what is implied in the name ELOHIM. For the juxtaposition of the putting together of the letters ALEPH-LAMMED signifies that the energy of ALEPH acquires the power to project changes in existence. Without this Lammed or channeling transformational force, Aleph is not able to become organically alive in HAY, life. So Aleph, without these other characters or helpers, is a loaded, locked up nucleus, having an explosive potency not yet released.

On the other side of the HAY lies the density of existing things, mattering matter. On the earth, YOD-MEM existing without the HAY would be locked into conflict with the ALEPH LAMMED, tremendous energies of Aleph endowed with the potency to bring about tremendous changes. Without the HAY, you would have a tremendous and cataclysmic upheaval succeeded by comparative quiet of time off from the game and then a rallying as the game shifted from one court into the other. In the history of the earth this is seen with whole continents, seas and mountain ranges, appearing and disappearing again and again as the earth writhes between the furious attack of the two-fold energies of the explosive ones of ALEPH-LAMMED and the compressive ones of YOD- MEM. This situation of the GU game persisted for two billion years of geological time before the biosphere emerged because of the principle of HAY, life rising in the center of the conflict to reconcile the adversaries. Life is therefore the balancing factor in the cosmic game. The seven days constitutes cycles of the transmission of life, as we shall soon see in good geological and biogenetic fashion.

So we learn that in the beginning ELOHIM created the heavens and the earth, which really means Catalogue listing--new semester God U. PRINCIPLES OF CREATION: A Course in Creation Through Evolution. This conceptual and experiential course will have the student learn how to use and reconcile the dynamic energies and materials of the creative process, and to do so initially by working with the conceptual activating materials of (heavens) and the raw natural materials of earth. (This course is also known by the students of GU under the shorter title of "Learning Creativity Through Making A World.")

The heavens, as we know in the Hebrew (Shamaim), refers to the realm of ideas and of creative patterns to be accessed (Sheen mem yod mem--that is, the breath of god or the spirit acting upon the mass of energy to activate a new reality), and the earth (eretz) represents the raw material to be worked with. The mem (waters) that guard the yod can be considered the buffer zone that sets up the resistance to the spirit entering into time. We might consider this the entropy principle, or the principle of homeostasis. In human terms, it is the waters of the unconscious that keeps us protected from the overwhelming beingness of spirit. Always here is portrayed the extraordinary tensions between the immensity of the desire of the elohim of the Aleph to imbue the raw material of time and space and density with its higher vibration that will cause it to make evolutionary progress. Now let us discusss what this tells us, Gods in training, about our own forms of creative unfoldment. (Discuss.)

The second part, Verse Two, begins the course itself. The lines are "And the earth was without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the spirit of ELOHIM moved upon the face of the waters." Without going into a long kabbalistic analysis of the Hebrew (WHICH WOULD TAKE US AT LEAST 40 YEARS) I will suggest to you that what is really being said here is that the earth was totally disorganized an entity and darkness covered its convulsing surface--the sun could not get through. This refers to the early stages of earth's convulsions before creative intention really went to work on it. The words "without form" are from the Hebrew word which also means superficial, referring also to the superficiality of our existence before our creative spirit really begins to YOD, that is, take us in hand. The word that is translated as "spirit" also means breath, NEPHESH or the activating ideas. According to the text, they move, or in Hebrew they hover or concentrate over. The "Face Of" in Hebrew means awareness. "Waters" denotes the place of vision or of the imaginative process. It is also the place of unexpressed capacities and potentials.

So a depth-level translation of this would be the activating creative forces within us can, even when our existence is meaningless and superficial, evoke and vitalize the deep creative forces within us through brooding or hovering over our deeps; It is the solitary brooding in the darkness that is able to call forth the light. This can also be seen as the concentration of awareness and determination to form new ideas or creative expressions upon the vast raw potential of our being. Applying this to ourselves, you have the bases of primal stuff that is filled with incredible patterns and potencies that require your activating intelligence to work upon it. You are after all, Adam, Aleph in the blood. If, then, you could play elohimically upon your own raw but utter availability of potent substance--if you would truly brood or hover over it, you would know that not only could you help create a world, but you could radically re-work yourself. The Qabalistic thinkers are always saying that if you can maintain this kind of doubled vision, then almost anything is possible on earth as it is in heaven. As Yod-Mem, you contain the protein bio-computer and sufficient senses and circuits to give you a fine working material matrix. But you need to also channel or allow Aleph-Lammed, the imaginative potentiating creative ideas into your substance. Thus, the need for a truly radical reframing and reconceptualization of how we think, reconceptualize and then work upon ourselves as living continents of possibilities that are as yet seeds asking to be called into full life. Think of yourself as the seeded land, and you begin to get the idea, the seeded land, Aleph in the blood.

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The First Day of Creation

Now the course turns to an exploration of the sequences of the creative process. You will note the very private, solitary character of the text. God, as the Elohim, is talking to himself. There are no listeners, no bystanders, no teller of the narrative, only his own commentary on his work. This is a true telling of the inward aspect of the creative process. And so the third line in the text is, "And ELOHIM said, let there be light, and there was light." "Said" in Hebrew means desire or determination. It is an uttering that requires an outering. It is the creative will determined to effect a change and selecting what it wished to have changed. In most pre-literate societies there was great magic in utterance, for it was thought that declarative speech set up a kind of vibration that called things into being. When you are in your "let there be" modes, are you determined enough and are you selective enough to make things happen? God school is very specific about the use of creative intention. The text does not read "And God shot the breeze with some of his cronies and said Hey, good buddy, what about light? Hey there, far out, too much, too much trouble, forget it, okay, sorry I mentioned it, how about... (This is the way of most of our putting out of our creative ideas.) This word "light" is all important in the Course on Genesis. In Hebrew it is pronounced AWR. It is made up of three consonants, ALEPH-WAW (which is a form of VAV) and RAYSH. Now RAYSH expresses the notion of the whole blooming universe. It is the immense physical support of everything that exists, that which contains everything, like a vast receptacle. AWR therefore means that ALEPH is connected or fertilizing RAYSH and impregnating it with the character of ALEPH itself in some way reproducing its own nature in everything that exists in time-perpetual. AWR therefore expresses the impregnation of the ALL by the ONE.

Now as we've just seen, AWR in Hebrew is the word for light, but clearly it means much more than the local concept of light. Perhaps the discoveries by Einstein and the quantum physicists in this century of the properties of light helps to illumine the depth meaning of the Biblical statement. Only light itself can ever reach the speed of light. An infinite quantity of energy would be required to make any existing object travel at the speed of light, thus nothing that exists ever can. According to Einstein, if a clock could travel at the speed of light, it no longer would show the passage of time. It would exist timelessly, thus only light exists timelessly. Not moving in time, it is at rest in time. Only in space does it move in time. Evidently it carries messages and impulses and information from one end of the universe, the RAYSH, the great receptacle, to the other. It fertilizes the universe by its initials. It illuminates everything upon which it falls, thus bringing intelligence or understanding. Because we are also made up of light particles, light is carrying us ubiquitously throughout the universe. Thus AWR is the God self being sent out everywhere so that every creation you make, every thought you have, is not just part of the local universe. It passes as light to the trillions of stars and planets. Your calling card is everywhere, so you'd better take care in what you are sending out. Similarly, we catch the light of others, all others, even those from the past, or maybe the future. That is why most information is available, and why Qabalists like Philip Berg say that we have access to ultra terrestrial personages and information. What this means for us is that in our involutional preparation for creation or evolution, we declare for light or illumination. This calls the light to us RAYSH-ettes as it were, senders and receivers of knowledge and feeling. (EXERCISE: PROCESS IN BECOMING LIGHT. )

We next learn that ELOHIM saw that it was good. That means, hot dog, it works! The word given is "tov", like in Mazel tov. It also means that all that emanates from the divine creative principle is good and will always work. We next learn, "And ELOHIM divided the light from the darkness and ELOHIM called the light day and the darkness night." Day represents the state of mind of creative expressive intelligence. Night represents the depth world in Hebrew, the unconscious forces that do not get illumined by the creative spirit but are there resting and waiting for their fertilization. The text then reads, "And the evening and the morning were the first day." This is important because at the end of each day, Genesis says, "And the evening and the morning were the - day. " As we grow in awarenss, first we don't comprehend, we are unconscious, that is the state of evening, then we do understand, that is the state of morning. Day, in Hebrew is therefore referring to a stage in a process and not a definite period of time. We are given the evening to brood upon what we did during the day and to deepen that day. If you do not have the time of knowing, followed by brooding or unknowing, followed by knowing, you don't create much of anything. (Discuss brooding and its cycles, or cycles of knowing and unknowing.)

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The Second Day of Creation

Genesis 1:6-8 then reads, "And ELOHIM said, let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. And ELOHIM called the firmament heaven. And there was evening and there was morning the second day." Now firmament means to find a firm point of distinction. Waters denotes latent capacities which need to be visualized or imagined in order to be expressed. There must be a firm starting point or firmament, or faith in the possibilities that are lurking there so as to determine what actions to take. The next lines are fascinating because they talk about the waters above and the waters which are below. This speaks to the unexpressed capacities or potentials of the human unconscious world, and the paradigmatic archetypal capacities in the ALEPH world. The problem is to get the unexpressed to relate to the UNEXPRESSED through the vehicle of HAY or life. With this, another stage of unfoldment has occurred. Let us summarize here that even in these few opening lines read and understood in the manner we are giving we begin to get a sense of the cosmology of world-making as revealed through this kind of projective understanding of the ancient Hebrew texts. When we think mythically and projectively, when we think musically, we are able to accelerate the understanding of how we exist in the universe and the extraordinary promise that each of us holds, When we re-frame and re-train our brain/mind systems in God school, we access a whole new way of being. We become the upspringing of Aleph in the blood. Our consciousness can be trained to serve as the bridge between the potentials that we contain in our given existence in space and time and body and brain and the depth potentials of the Aleph or archetypal world. How this happens is given in the next few verses.

Genesis 1:9-13. "And the ELOHIM said, Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so. And ELOHIM called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and ELOHIM saw that it was good. And ELOHIM said, let the earth put forth grass, herbs, yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit after their kind, wherein the seed thereof upon the earth: and it was so. And the earth brought forth grass, herbs yielding seed after their kind, and trees bearing fruit, wherein it is the seed thereof, after their kind: and ELOHIM saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, a third day."

The third step in creation, according to God school, is the beginning of the formative activity of the mind called imagination. This gathers the depth capacities which are yet unexpressed, that is, the waters to gather into one place so that the dry land of substantive creation can appear. Then the imagination begins a great creative unfolding into time and space of different forms and shapes in the mind. The emphasis on this verse on seeds is at once referenced to the coded entelechy that already exists when one is ready to bring a thought into action--thus, the book that you plan to write is already there in its seed form as is the project that you plan to express, but it must be planted into the earth of fertile consciousness. (Talk about what I see in the gifting -- all the little seeds, like little eggs, saying, "I'm ready, I'm ready.... Hey, tell her about me! She thinks that all she wants is a husband or to be without anxiety, but I'm here too!") Since the forms of creation on this stage of creative development are solely grass and herbs, we are looking for the greening of mind and spirit that will re-fertilize the soil. (A line that is lost is "Let there be plenty of manure to nurture this soil.")

So we see the First Day of Creation reveals the light for inspiration of spirit. The Second Day establishes faith in our possibilities to access the patterns of both our own internal creativity joined to the archetypal creative patterns and to bring forth what had hitherto been invisible in both depth worlds. The Third Day is the day of imaginative work. The nature of imagination.

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The Fourth Day of Creation

Genesis 1:14-19 "And ELOHIM said, Let there be lights in the firmament of heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years: And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so. And ELOHIM made two great lights, the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also. And ELOHIM set them in the firmament of heaven to give light upon the earth, And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and ELOHIM saw that it was good. And the evening and the morning were the fourth day."

The greater light, which is the solar light, is understanding. It rules the day, that is, the realm of consciousness which has been illumined by spirit. The lesser light, the moon of ourselves, rules the night ,which is the will which has no illumination but whose job it is to carry out the requirements of understanding. The will does not reason, but is the natural muscular agent of the inspirational spirit. The will carries out the agenda of the solar spirit. The stars are the deep interior proprioceptors, that is, the imaginal qualities for being able to richly perceive internally the realm of ideas. They are the eyes and ears and all the perceptive faculties of the inner life--the ecology of inner space. (Quote Rumi about the interior gardens.) This passage is about the practice and use of creative imagination, both physically and metaphysically. The way in through your dominant sense...then the rule of three. (Discuss its applications.)

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The Fifth Day of Creation

Genesis 1:20-23: "And ELOHIM said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. And ELOHIM created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and ELOHIM saw that it was good. And ELOHIM blessed them, saying, Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth. And the evening and the morning were the fifth day."

The discussion of the fifth day is pretty darn good evolution, concerning as it does the creation of the fishes and sea monsters and even birds in early times. In the depth understanding of the Hebrew language, it offers us a rich vocabulary of creative process. The swarms of creatures are the swarms of budding thoughts. The birds of the heavens are those thoughts that have risen and are now liberated. We are still in the world of the unexpressed for these are the creatures of the waters and of the heavens. All of these creatures express, however, the emotional impetus that has to be added if our creative will is to flourish. Dealing also as it does with the budding creative ideas of our own deeps and the soaring ideas of the archetypal or heavenly world, this passage tells us in no uncertain terms that our local creative imagination is beginning its expressive forms as is archetypal creative imagination. The creative forms are now truly launched although they have not unfolded yet on earth. That is the task for the Sixth Day.

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The Sixth Day of Creation

Genesis 1: 24-31 - "And ELOHIM said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so. And ELOHIM made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and ELOHIM saw that it was good. And ELOHIM said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. And so ELOHIM created man in his own image, in the image of ELOHIM created he him; male and female created he them. And ELOHIM blessed them, and ELOHIM said unto them, Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. And ELOHIM said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so. And ELOHIM saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day."

In this magnificent passage, we are told about the bringing forth of ideas after their kind. "After their kind" in Hebrew really refers to "according to a great archetypal pattern." Herein, the earthly creative imagination has come into very close conjunction with the heavenly imagination of archetypal ideas, and higher forms of creativity are flourishing. These higher forms, cattle, and beasts and creeping things are, as it were, preparations in the lab experiment part of this course for the master work, the doctoral thesis, which is about to be created--the human being. Here the course requires that one create something in which one is totally reflected -- it is the total giving out of what one is into creative materialization. How do we know that? Because in Hebrew, Adam is described as the living image of ELOHIM. Adam recapitulates and improves upon all the biological stages that have gone before. The name is spelled ALEPH-DALLET-MEM. Now DALLET signifies the entire structure of animal and vegetable life which must respond to the challenge of the ALEPH, driving it further towards the next stage of fulfillment in MEM--MEM being complete and total creative fruitfulness, that is, a being that is capable of doing what the ELOHIM can do. In other words, at this point, in God school, we learn how to produce a creative double of ourselves. But projective Hebrew is filled with greater complexities, for the DALLET-MEM of Adam is the word for blood, hence the name signifies ALEPH in our blood--literally, the incarnation of ALEPH. And as the "living Image" of ELOHIM, Adam is made flesh.

This is the sacred concept in Genesis. For what is being said here is not that Adam occurred at one time, but, rather, life has evolved to the point in which Adam or ALEPH in the blood can arise to become the projection of ELOHIM, thus all men and women have within them the potency for the transformation of their Adamic nature from a life of ordinary people which terminates with the life of the blood--that is, that lives out its life by its hereditary, instinctive and genetic patterns, that is a life that repeats its own achievements again and again in the image of ELOHIM .

What Qabala teaches us at this point is that Adam is there as Adam Kadman which means the archetypal Adam of God-University entering into a co-creative life with ALEPH in the world - Second Genesis such as we have already discussed. Since the reference here is also to the creation by the ELOHIM, which is both masculine and feminine and not to the creation by Jehovah (that does not occur until the next chapter, in another account which is written by someone else). In this account, we learn that the creation of the Adam in the living image is rendered more precise by the terms of this androgyny - "In the image of ELOHIM created he him ; male and female created he them". Thus we learn that the creative one, that is you and me in our creative phases, has to reconcile or bring into union the male and female aspects of our natures. And, by the way, according to the passage they are vegetarians.

The phenomenology of the nature of male and female is fascinating in the sacred Hebrew. IYSH AND ISHA are the words for man and woman in Hebrew. They are spelled ALEPH-YOD-SHAYN and ALEPH-SHAYN-HAY. SHAYN means high transformation or the fullest drawing out of potential. Man or IYSH has the YOD of existence. ISHA has the HAY of life. Thus man exists but has no life whereas woman has life but does not exist--a very modern interpretation, it seems to me, in the present problems of the sexes. The union of both, within ourselves, creates the full being who can create the world. It is very important here to note that the woman is not called Eve. Eve comes later in the story. She is called ISHA and what the text says is that ISHA was alive and that is why she could gain the knowledge of knowing the difference between good and evil which then gave her the possibility of becoming as God. The idea in this passage of the Sixth Day is of gaining dominion over all the seas. The full creative one knows how to sow the seeds of world- making into the substance of creative mind and thus grow real food on which the world and the self can be nourished. The sixth step in creation is the concentration in the balanced psychically-androgynous human of all the ideas of the divine or archetypal realm. The human at this point is allowed authority and dominion over world-making. He and she are the image, the outering of Elohim. At this point, this extended human is given a new name and one is gradually out of the course with the name; the name that he is given is JAHWEH which means, "I am that I am". "I am" is the image and likeness of ELOHIM as spiritual man which is placed in the nest of formative man called Adam.

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The Seventh Day of Creation

We are told that on the seventh day, ELOHIM rested. And sanctified the time of rest. The actual Hebraic expression is, "And ELOHIM blessed the seventh day and sanctified it because in it rested all the work which ELOHIM created to be made." What this suggests is that Genesis 101 is about to be graduated into Genesis 102, the second term in the course of Creation. Course 1, coded for those who cease to be tone deaf in the music of Genesis Chapter 1 tells how the creative act takes place in the spiritual realm. How the ideas are in-gathered and worked with imaginatively, emotionally, intellectually and spiritually, but the formation has not yet taken place. This is the stage of involution or of creative gestation. Genesis 102, also known as Genesis, Chapter 2, is about evolution. How JAHWEH, the graduate student, goes about forming in evolution what has been created by ELOHIM, universal mind, in involution.

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Psychological Archetypes of Genesis



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