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Amidst the rich panoply of Jewish Kabbalah, Abraham Abulafia (1240-c.1291) resonates the most with modern, philosophically minded seekers of direct mystical experience.
In this Jewish handbook for meditation, Abulafia creatively combines ideas from Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed (Moreh Nevuchim), the ancient Book of Creation (Sefer Yetzira) and Eleazar of Worms’ Book of the Name (Sefer Ha-Shem) into an integrated method of concentrating on the Divine Name that opens the path to fulfilling the soul’s deepest spiritual longings. Intense practice of Abulafia’s methods of meditation propels the attentive soul into a state of awakened receptivity where the active divine influence can reach down to meet and illuminate the human intellect.
Some thoughts from Light of Intellect:
-The utter difference between Divine and human speech - even the closest one to it - is the understanding and knowledge of the heart, for the one receives and the other provides. Furthermore, the receiving of the one depends on its thinking by means of letters, while the other provides His affluence without letters - i.e. without thinking in letters what it provides. The hearts for Him are as tablets, and the Nefashot are as ink. And with the influence of the light of the intellect on the brain, heart, kidneys and the rest of the places where the light of the intellect dwells, the spirit, being pure and understanding the power of the light of the intellect, grasps with its power its reality and absence.
-And I will aim in this book to benefit the beginners in the study of the Tetragrammaton (Shem Ha-Meforash) and will teach them the way to its knowledge, till the value of this treatise to the knowledge of God in the way of the Prophetic Kabbalah will be as the value of the wisdom of the Account of Creation is to the Account of the Chariot. And I know that this treatise will be of great benefit to them, and those like them who are keepers of the commandments of this book till what I write brings them to comprehend the Active Intellect, whose grasping also brings the reception of Speech from His mouth. And even if an obstacle prevents them from attaining this divine degree, God forbid, they will still benefit from this treatise by the intellectual influx with which they will become wise and grasp the secrets of the Torah and the reasons for the commandments in general.
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