Nissim Levy's Blog
June 18, 2016
Thoughts on Writing
When I first envisioned writing a book, my goal was to communicate my scientific ideas using a non Fiction format. My ideas had not yet evolved into a hybrid of the scientific and spiritual. Writing for me was, at that time, just a means to an end. My scientific ideas were inspired by Quantum Mechanics and other aspects of modern Physics and consequently involved the interaction between mind and matter, thoughts and energy, our inner world and our outer world. However, I considered writing to be simply an inert medium of information transfer. My writing style under this Spartan regime did not mirror nor contribute to the message of my writing. My writing style, unlike my ideas, did not involve the interplay between the objective and subjective, or between the message and the medium. The message would influence the writing but the writing would not influence, nor mirror the message. I envisioned writing a great work of non Fiction that would educate and even enlighten the readers' minds but it would be immaterial whether I communicate my ideas via the written word, mathematical equations or smoke signals.
During the following few years my scientific ideas evolved and matured and this had a marked effect on my writing style and objectives. While I initially championed the non-mechanistic ideas of modern physics, I did not extend this philosophy to my writing. After my ideas evolved and matured, I now welcomed my writing style into this fold. I accepted long before that the universe was not the mechanistic, clockwork universe imagined by Isaac Newton and his acolytes, but now I also yearned for a richer, more interactive and less mechanistic literary style. In Quantum Mechanics the observer influences the observed. There is no external objective reality that can be expressed independently of the observer. Similarly, my writing would now influence the message, just as the message dictates the writing. My writing would no longer be expressed in an austere and detached medium.
I had now resolved to express my scientific, and what were now also spiritual ideas, not as a non Fiction treatise, but instead as a rich literary narrative. My program was ambitious. I aimed to express my ideas on multiple levels. The first level would simply be the message itself expressed locally and immediately. However, there would be another way that I would express my message - the structure of the plot itself. This would be a way of expressing my message which is not rooted in the local or immediate content of my words, but instead in the global structure of my plot. This is what I mean by a non mechanistic medium where the message is the medium. The fundamental message of Shards Of Divinities is that God is a recursive phenomenon, a self referencing reality. The observant reader will notice that the structure of my plot follows this paradigm. Additionally, I aimed to capture the grandeur of my ideas not just by expressing them in a stark fashion but also by using poetic prose. I hoped my prose would penetrate and revitalize the reader's soul as hot soup penetrates and revitalizes your body on a cold and drizzly winter's day.
Here is an excerpt from Shards Of Divinities that exemplifies my penchant for poetic prose:
While I'm on the topic of Poetic prose I'd like to briefly discuss the thorny issue of Purple prose. This is prose that is deemed too flowery and verbose. Amongst the literary inclined very few topics trigger more heated disagreements. There is a literary school whose luminaries include Ernest Hemingway, which holds that flowery prose is anathema to respectable writing of Fiction. I do not subscribe to this austere world-view. Is the excerpt I included above considered Purple prose? What is the relationship between Poetic prose and Purple prose? Is it merely a matter of over indulgence? The proponents of Ernest Hemingway's terse and Spartan literary style have an expression they love to throw around with great relish: Murder your little darlings, they advise. The little darlings to which they refer are the presumably overly flowery and verbose passages of narrative. They advise writers to fleetingly admire their little darlings and to then ruthlessly cut them down like overgrown weeds. Is the excerpt I included above deserving of such a fate? Is it an overgrown weed ready for my literary shears? I certainly don't think so. What a boring literary tapestry we would all weave if we banished all such little darlings.
I first began writing over six years ago and I discovered to my great joy that I had a talent for expressing my ideas in a fluid, poetic style. I fell deeply in love not just with pursuing my scientific and spiritual ideas but also with the craft of Fiction writing. I felt my spirit soar with indescribable joy when writing. I felt a trance-like communion with divinity. I always wished I could sing and touch people's hearts in that way but I don't have the voice for it. When I write I feel that I found my voice. I've put my heart and soul into writing my novel Shards Of Divinities and I am happy with the outcome. My initially purely scientific ideas have assumed a spiritual flavor.
May you all find your literary voice.
Nissim Levy,
Author of Shards Of Divinities http://amzn.to/269xP2Q
During the following few years my scientific ideas evolved and matured and this had a marked effect on my writing style and objectives. While I initially championed the non-mechanistic ideas of modern physics, I did not extend this philosophy to my writing. After my ideas evolved and matured, I now welcomed my writing style into this fold. I accepted long before that the universe was not the mechanistic, clockwork universe imagined by Isaac Newton and his acolytes, but now I also yearned for a richer, more interactive and less mechanistic literary style. In Quantum Mechanics the observer influences the observed. There is no external objective reality that can be expressed independently of the observer. Similarly, my writing would now influence the message, just as the message dictates the writing. My writing would no longer be expressed in an austere and detached medium.
I had now resolved to express my scientific, and what were now also spiritual ideas, not as a non Fiction treatise, but instead as a rich literary narrative. My program was ambitious. I aimed to express my ideas on multiple levels. The first level would simply be the message itself expressed locally and immediately. However, there would be another way that I would express my message - the structure of the plot itself. This would be a way of expressing my message which is not rooted in the local or immediate content of my words, but instead in the global structure of my plot. This is what I mean by a non mechanistic medium where the message is the medium. The fundamental message of Shards Of Divinities is that God is a recursive phenomenon, a self referencing reality. The observant reader will notice that the structure of my plot follows this paradigm. Additionally, I aimed to capture the grandeur of my ideas not just by expressing them in a stark fashion but also by using poetic prose. I hoped my prose would penetrate and revitalize the reader's soul as hot soup penetrates and revitalizes your body on a cold and drizzly winter's day.
Here is an excerpt from Shards Of Divinities that exemplifies my penchant for poetic prose:
To be perfectly honest and as one is to expect, my relationship with the idols in my father's shop had evolved over the years. As a small child they fascinated me not strictly due to their theological connotations but also due to a small child’s propensity to experience awe for such things as a rainbow, the clap of distant thunder or the dew embracing the ground during a crisp early spring morning. A young child often cannot distinguish between the genuine truth and beauty of creation and the lie of that which is made by man’s hand. The ability to marvel at the beauty of creation is an affectation of childhood that is often lost with the onset of intellectual maturity. As I matured I understood more deeply the purpose of these idols and my innocent awe was replaced with a deep and misguided religiosity. A poor man is easy prey to those who are crafty as a fox and are inclined to entice him with fool’s gold. A man denied a woman’s sexual love will succumb to those who do not honor humanity’s soul and instead are merchants of its flesh. Likewise, a man hungry for God is susceptible to the charms of idolatry as is a snake to the enticing melody that seeps freely from the charmer’s flute.
While I'm on the topic of Poetic prose I'd like to briefly discuss the thorny issue of Purple prose. This is prose that is deemed too flowery and verbose. Amongst the literary inclined very few topics trigger more heated disagreements. There is a literary school whose luminaries include Ernest Hemingway, which holds that flowery prose is anathema to respectable writing of Fiction. I do not subscribe to this austere world-view. Is the excerpt I included above considered Purple prose? What is the relationship between Poetic prose and Purple prose? Is it merely a matter of over indulgence? The proponents of Ernest Hemingway's terse and Spartan literary style have an expression they love to throw around with great relish: Murder your little darlings, they advise. The little darlings to which they refer are the presumably overly flowery and verbose passages of narrative. They advise writers to fleetingly admire their little darlings and to then ruthlessly cut them down like overgrown weeds. Is the excerpt I included above deserving of such a fate? Is it an overgrown weed ready for my literary shears? I certainly don't think so. What a boring literary tapestry we would all weave if we banished all such little darlings.
I first began writing over six years ago and I discovered to my great joy that I had a talent for expressing my ideas in a fluid, poetic style. I fell deeply in love not just with pursuing my scientific and spiritual ideas but also with the craft of Fiction writing. I felt my spirit soar with indescribable joy when writing. I felt a trance-like communion with divinity. I always wished I could sing and touch people's hearts in that way but I don't have the voice for it. When I write I feel that I found my voice. I've put my heart and soul into writing my novel Shards Of Divinities and I am happy with the outcome. My initially purely scientific ideas have assumed a spiritual flavor.
May you all find your literary voice.
Nissim Levy,
Author of Shards Of Divinities http://amzn.to/269xP2Q
July 25, 2014
The Fabric Of Reality
The Hebrew bible opens with the following passage in the book of Genesis:
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the waters.
In the original Hebrew in which this passage was written, the phrase 'without form and void' is expressed by the word Tohu-wa-bohu. If you look up this term in Wikipedia you will see the following:
Tohu wa bohu (תֹ֙הוּ֙ וָבֹ֔הוּ) is a Biblical Hebrew term found in the Book of Genesis 1:2. Numerous interpretations of this phrase were made by various theological sources, though it is usually translated as "waste and void," "formless and empty," or "chaos and desolation."
Tohu wa bohu is also a part of idiomatic modern Hebrew, spoken day to day by Israelis and denotes a state of disorder. Israelis (I grew up in Israel until the age of nine) pronounce it Tohu va vohu. As a side note, there are other biblical expressions that to non Hebrew speakers have specific divine connotations but to a native Israeli have more mundane meanings. For example, to a Christian the term Son Of Man (Ben Adam in Hebrew) denotes the divinity of Jesus but to an Israeli it is an expression used day to day that simply means a human being – a son of Adam. I am not sure in what context Jews used this expression during the time of Jesus.
That the word Tohu-wa-bohu can be translated as both a void/emptiness and chaos/disorder warrants further analysis. On the surface, the concept of a void or formlessness appears opposite to the notion of chaos or disorder. Why then does Tohu-wa-bohu capture both meanings?
First, I will offer a scientific perspective.
Chaos can be thought of in terms of entropy, which is a measure of the disorder of a system. The higher the disorder, the higher the entropy. Entropy, in turn, can be thought of as the information content of a system. The higher the entropy, the less information is carried by the system.
Another feature of entropy is that it is at a maximum when the system is perfectly homogeneous.
For example, imagine a box containing sand in which you write a message with your finger. The box of sand is in a low entropy state because it contains information. Now, suppose you shut the lid on the box and shake the box so thoroughly that the grains of sand have been thoroughly mixed. The grains of sand are now homogenized. There are no longer any pockets of structure in the sand but only a formless collection of sand grains.
Clearly, a state of perfect homogeneity or formlessness can carry no information and therefore has maximum entropy. Because chaos can be defined as high entropy then we see that homogeneity or formlessness is equivalent to chaos.
If having some Thing (be it atoms, electrons, radio waves or any other Thing) entails some structure then a state of complete homogeneity or formlessness is equivalent to no Thing.
In summary, maximum chaos is equivalent to maximum entropy which is equivalent to formlessness which is equivalent to nothingness. Maximum chaos is a void. Maximum chaos is nothingness.
You can legitimately claim that my analysis above involves some degree of “hand waving” but due to the limited scope of this article I will not introduce more rigor. However, the ideas I outlined do have a rigorous foundation.
I hope I have piqued your interest in these ideas enough to compel you to pursue further reading and research on your own.
In the beginning God created the universe from Tohu-wa-bohu/formlessness/nothingness. That makes a lot of scientific sense in light of my analysis above. I propose that the universe is created ex nihilo (from nothing).
The Big Bang is said by Physicists/Cosmologists to have originated from a state of maximum temperature and entropy. The analysis above equates maximum entropy to nothingness. We see that there are shades of the Genesis creation account in Big Bang cosmology.
The next question I will address is how something can come from nothing. I will analyze this topic from two perspectives:
1) The existence of something within nothing. An existence within non existence.
2) The emergence of complexity/order from simplicity/disorder.
In Information Theory there is a principle called Zero-Sum Game. If you look up this term in Wikipedia you will see the following:
In game theory and economic theory, a zero-sum game is a mathematical representation of a situation in which a participant's gain (or loss) of utility is exactly balanced by the losses (or gains) of the utility of the other participant(s). If the total gains of the participants are added up, and the total losses are subtracted, they will sum to zero.
An interesting way of wording this is that in a Zero-Sum system something exists within nothing. In such a system, the answer to the question of why there is something rather than nothing would be that there is still nothing. There is complete positive/negative symmetry between the components of such a system.
This is reminiscent of the principle of Yin/Yang or Alpha/Omega. In a Zero-Sum system it is impossible for this symmetry to be broken and for there to be a net something. Another way of expressing this is that in a Zero-Sum system all 'things' are embedded in nothingness.
So to the question of how in a universe emanating from nothing there can be something, the answer is that the universe is a Zero-Sum Game and there is still nothing. All aspects of Creation are symmetrically embedded within the nothingness. For every up there is a down. For every gain there is a loss. For every action there is a reaction.
Indeed, the conservation laws of physics (momentum, mass/energy etc.) are just expressions of the overarching law of the conservation of nothingness. In this kind of universe, which is our universe, God can be defined as the nothingness from which Creation emanates and in which Creation is embedded.
The conservation of nothingness in our universe is the greatest ode to God. Every rock, every living creature, every creation in the heavens and on the earth sings its praises to God in this way. In this way the signature of God is etched into every aspect of Creation.
I will now discuss the second perspective I listed above, the emergence of complexity/order from simplicity/disorder. Another way to think of something from nothing is of complexity emanating from simplicity or of order emanating from disorder. Complexity is synonymous with order and simplicity is synonymous with disorder based on the principles I discussed earlier in this article.
An important stipulation is that the complexity/order that emanates from a less complex/ordered system (the source) must do so without any influence external to the source. The complexity must be due to an intrinsic aspect of the simplicity from which it arises. Otherwise, the complexity would not be emanating from a simpler state but instead from another (external) complex system.
Systems exhibiting this behavior are said to be self-organizing. I will list some examples of self-organizing systems:
Synchronization of the blinking light from thousands of fireflies in Southeast Asia.
Crystallization.
Recognition of complex patterns in Neural Networks.
Synchronization of heartbeats by biological pacemakers.
In nature, as well as in mathematics or formalized logic, there is a way for complexity to emanate from simplicity in this intrinsic manner. If you look up self-organization in Wikipedia you will see the following:
Self-organization is a process where some form of global order or coordination arises out of the local interactions between the components of an initially disordered system. This process is spontaneous: it is not directed or controlled by any agent or subsystem inside or outside of the system; however, the laws followed by the process and its initial conditions may have been chosen or caused by an agent. It is often triggered by random fluctuations that are amplified by positive feedback.
The last sentence in this definition says that systems can self-organize by using a feedback loop mechanism. This is also called a self referencing mechanism. In mathematics, the fascinating Incompleteness Theorems of Kurt Godel are based on the self referencing nature of logic. Another foundational field based on self reference is Chaos Theory.
I hope the reader can now appreciate how self-organizing systems which produce spontaneous order from disorder are relevant to the question of how something can come from nothing.
Nothingness is the zero complexity state (maximum entropy, minimum order) from which states of higher complexity (low entropy, high order) emanate. This is all accomplished via a feedback loop. The nothingness (God) feeds back unto itself and Creation emanates. The Big Bang is a self-organizing system. It is God looping back on God and Creation emanates.
The perceptive reader will ask why does nothingness feed back upon itself? I will answer this question towards the end of this article.
I will now discuss something which seems unrelated to the analysis above. I will discuss God's holiest name in the Hebrew bible.
God's holiest name is known as the Tetragrammaton. It is composed of four Hebrew letters represented by the Latin letters YHVH. There has been much speculation about the meaning of the Tetragrammaton. The following is my interpretation of its meaning and in so doing I will leverage the concepts that I have developed in this article.
In Hebrew, the letters of the alphabet have their conventional use for forming words, but each letter also has a spiritual or abstract meaning. The following are the abstract meanings of the three distinct letters in the Tetragrammaton:
1) Yud (Y) denotes an initial point of creation.
2) Hey (H) denotes the innermost essence of God.
3) Vav (V) has no abstract meaning on its own. It just connects the meaning of two letters.
The above meanings of the letters in the Tetragrammaton are the accepted meanings and not my interpretation.
Let's interpret YHVH in light of this.
The Tetragrammaton is simply a terse way to state the concepts I have put forward in this article. It says that Creation is a result of the innermost essence of God, the Tohu-wa-bohu, looping back unto itself.
This is a breakthrough, in my opinion, in understanding the Tetragrammaton in the context of the scientific and mathematical concepts I have discussed in this article. The Tetragrammaton is simply a self-organizing phenomenon. But this particular self-organizing phenomenon is the grand daddy of them all. It is the primordial source of all Creation. It is the Big Bang itself emanating from the core of God.
The book of Genesis is truly inspired by God. It is written by people (or the person of Moses depending on your beliefs) who listened to the semantic spaces within their soul and God radiated from those spaces and spoke to them from a place of silence and darkness that is louder and brighter than sound and light – the void from which Creation emanates.
God has also inspired other nations and other peoples. One of the peoples that he inspired are the writers of the Bhagavad Gitta, which is a collection of 700 verses that are a part of the Hindu epic Mahabharata. It is a sacred text of the Hindus. In the Bhagavad Gitta we find the following interesting passage:
Curving Back on Myself, I Create Again and Again.
Do you see the similarity with my interpretation of YHVH?
I will end this article by delivering on a promise I made earlier. Why does the nothingness execute a feedback loop? Why does it curve back on itself? My answer will seem to some like only a word game of no relevance, but remember that in the beginning was the Word. The reason that nothingness references itself is the following:
What does nothing reference? The answer is that nothing references nothing. But it IS nothing. Therefore, nothing references itself. There is no cause and effect in answering why the Big Bang happened. It is a tautological marvel. It is in the very definition of nothingness that nothingness must reference itself.
------------------------------------------------
I am a software developer and a writer. My novel Shards Of Divinites is available on Amazon as an eBook as well as a paperback. It addresses in more detail the questions I tackle in this blog post. My novel is available at:
http://amzn.to/1Y9Mp7F
Please visit my twitter account @nissim_levy
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the waters.
In the original Hebrew in which this passage was written, the phrase 'without form and void' is expressed by the word Tohu-wa-bohu. If you look up this term in Wikipedia you will see the following:
Tohu wa bohu (תֹ֙הוּ֙ וָבֹ֔הוּ) is a Biblical Hebrew term found in the Book of Genesis 1:2. Numerous interpretations of this phrase were made by various theological sources, though it is usually translated as "waste and void," "formless and empty," or "chaos and desolation."
Tohu wa bohu is also a part of idiomatic modern Hebrew, spoken day to day by Israelis and denotes a state of disorder. Israelis (I grew up in Israel until the age of nine) pronounce it Tohu va vohu. As a side note, there are other biblical expressions that to non Hebrew speakers have specific divine connotations but to a native Israeli have more mundane meanings. For example, to a Christian the term Son Of Man (Ben Adam in Hebrew) denotes the divinity of Jesus but to an Israeli it is an expression used day to day that simply means a human being – a son of Adam. I am not sure in what context Jews used this expression during the time of Jesus.
That the word Tohu-wa-bohu can be translated as both a void/emptiness and chaos/disorder warrants further analysis. On the surface, the concept of a void or formlessness appears opposite to the notion of chaos or disorder. Why then does Tohu-wa-bohu capture both meanings?
First, I will offer a scientific perspective.
Chaos can be thought of in terms of entropy, which is a measure of the disorder of a system. The higher the disorder, the higher the entropy. Entropy, in turn, can be thought of as the information content of a system. The higher the entropy, the less information is carried by the system.
Another feature of entropy is that it is at a maximum when the system is perfectly homogeneous.
For example, imagine a box containing sand in which you write a message with your finger. The box of sand is in a low entropy state because it contains information. Now, suppose you shut the lid on the box and shake the box so thoroughly that the grains of sand have been thoroughly mixed. The grains of sand are now homogenized. There are no longer any pockets of structure in the sand but only a formless collection of sand grains.
Clearly, a state of perfect homogeneity or formlessness can carry no information and therefore has maximum entropy. Because chaos can be defined as high entropy then we see that homogeneity or formlessness is equivalent to chaos.
If having some Thing (be it atoms, electrons, radio waves or any other Thing) entails some structure then a state of complete homogeneity or formlessness is equivalent to no Thing.
In summary, maximum chaos is equivalent to maximum entropy which is equivalent to formlessness which is equivalent to nothingness. Maximum chaos is a void. Maximum chaos is nothingness.
You can legitimately claim that my analysis above involves some degree of “hand waving” but due to the limited scope of this article I will not introduce more rigor. However, the ideas I outlined do have a rigorous foundation.
I hope I have piqued your interest in these ideas enough to compel you to pursue further reading and research on your own.
In the beginning God created the universe from Tohu-wa-bohu/formlessness/nothingness. That makes a lot of scientific sense in light of my analysis above. I propose that the universe is created ex nihilo (from nothing).
The Big Bang is said by Physicists/Cosmologists to have originated from a state of maximum temperature and entropy. The analysis above equates maximum entropy to nothingness. We see that there are shades of the Genesis creation account in Big Bang cosmology.
The next question I will address is how something can come from nothing. I will analyze this topic from two perspectives:
1) The existence of something within nothing. An existence within non existence.
2) The emergence of complexity/order from simplicity/disorder.
In Information Theory there is a principle called Zero-Sum Game. If you look up this term in Wikipedia you will see the following:
In game theory and economic theory, a zero-sum game is a mathematical representation of a situation in which a participant's gain (or loss) of utility is exactly balanced by the losses (or gains) of the utility of the other participant(s). If the total gains of the participants are added up, and the total losses are subtracted, they will sum to zero.
An interesting way of wording this is that in a Zero-Sum system something exists within nothing. In such a system, the answer to the question of why there is something rather than nothing would be that there is still nothing. There is complete positive/negative symmetry between the components of such a system.
This is reminiscent of the principle of Yin/Yang or Alpha/Omega. In a Zero-Sum system it is impossible for this symmetry to be broken and for there to be a net something. Another way of expressing this is that in a Zero-Sum system all 'things' are embedded in nothingness.
So to the question of how in a universe emanating from nothing there can be something, the answer is that the universe is a Zero-Sum Game and there is still nothing. All aspects of Creation are symmetrically embedded within the nothingness. For every up there is a down. For every gain there is a loss. For every action there is a reaction.
Indeed, the conservation laws of physics (momentum, mass/energy etc.) are just expressions of the overarching law of the conservation of nothingness. In this kind of universe, which is our universe, God can be defined as the nothingness from which Creation emanates and in which Creation is embedded.
The conservation of nothingness in our universe is the greatest ode to God. Every rock, every living creature, every creation in the heavens and on the earth sings its praises to God in this way. In this way the signature of God is etched into every aspect of Creation.
I will now discuss the second perspective I listed above, the emergence of complexity/order from simplicity/disorder. Another way to think of something from nothing is of complexity emanating from simplicity or of order emanating from disorder. Complexity is synonymous with order and simplicity is synonymous with disorder based on the principles I discussed earlier in this article.
An important stipulation is that the complexity/order that emanates from a less complex/ordered system (the source) must do so without any influence external to the source. The complexity must be due to an intrinsic aspect of the simplicity from which it arises. Otherwise, the complexity would not be emanating from a simpler state but instead from another (external) complex system.
Systems exhibiting this behavior are said to be self-organizing. I will list some examples of self-organizing systems:
Synchronization of the blinking light from thousands of fireflies in Southeast Asia.
Crystallization.
Recognition of complex patterns in Neural Networks.
Synchronization of heartbeats by biological pacemakers.
In nature, as well as in mathematics or formalized logic, there is a way for complexity to emanate from simplicity in this intrinsic manner. If you look up self-organization in Wikipedia you will see the following:
Self-organization is a process where some form of global order or coordination arises out of the local interactions between the components of an initially disordered system. This process is spontaneous: it is not directed or controlled by any agent or subsystem inside or outside of the system; however, the laws followed by the process and its initial conditions may have been chosen or caused by an agent. It is often triggered by random fluctuations that are amplified by positive feedback.
The last sentence in this definition says that systems can self-organize by using a feedback loop mechanism. This is also called a self referencing mechanism. In mathematics, the fascinating Incompleteness Theorems of Kurt Godel are based on the self referencing nature of logic. Another foundational field based on self reference is Chaos Theory.
I hope the reader can now appreciate how self-organizing systems which produce spontaneous order from disorder are relevant to the question of how something can come from nothing.
Nothingness is the zero complexity state (maximum entropy, minimum order) from which states of higher complexity (low entropy, high order) emanate. This is all accomplished via a feedback loop. The nothingness (God) feeds back unto itself and Creation emanates. The Big Bang is a self-organizing system. It is God looping back on God and Creation emanates.
The perceptive reader will ask why does nothingness feed back upon itself? I will answer this question towards the end of this article.
I will now discuss something which seems unrelated to the analysis above. I will discuss God's holiest name in the Hebrew bible.
God's holiest name is known as the Tetragrammaton. It is composed of four Hebrew letters represented by the Latin letters YHVH. There has been much speculation about the meaning of the Tetragrammaton. The following is my interpretation of its meaning and in so doing I will leverage the concepts that I have developed in this article.
In Hebrew, the letters of the alphabet have their conventional use for forming words, but each letter also has a spiritual or abstract meaning. The following are the abstract meanings of the three distinct letters in the Tetragrammaton:
1) Yud (Y) denotes an initial point of creation.
2) Hey (H) denotes the innermost essence of God.
3) Vav (V) has no abstract meaning on its own. It just connects the meaning of two letters.
The above meanings of the letters in the Tetragrammaton are the accepted meanings and not my interpretation.
Let's interpret YHVH in light of this.
The Tetragrammaton is simply a terse way to state the concepts I have put forward in this article. It says that Creation is a result of the innermost essence of God, the Tohu-wa-bohu, looping back unto itself.
This is a breakthrough, in my opinion, in understanding the Tetragrammaton in the context of the scientific and mathematical concepts I have discussed in this article. The Tetragrammaton is simply a self-organizing phenomenon. But this particular self-organizing phenomenon is the grand daddy of them all. It is the primordial source of all Creation. It is the Big Bang itself emanating from the core of God.
The book of Genesis is truly inspired by God. It is written by people (or the person of Moses depending on your beliefs) who listened to the semantic spaces within their soul and God radiated from those spaces and spoke to them from a place of silence and darkness that is louder and brighter than sound and light – the void from which Creation emanates.
God has also inspired other nations and other peoples. One of the peoples that he inspired are the writers of the Bhagavad Gitta, which is a collection of 700 verses that are a part of the Hindu epic Mahabharata. It is a sacred text of the Hindus. In the Bhagavad Gitta we find the following interesting passage:
Curving Back on Myself, I Create Again and Again.
Do you see the similarity with my interpretation of YHVH?
I will end this article by delivering on a promise I made earlier. Why does the nothingness execute a feedback loop? Why does it curve back on itself? My answer will seem to some like only a word game of no relevance, but remember that in the beginning was the Word. The reason that nothingness references itself is the following:
What does nothing reference? The answer is that nothing references nothing. But it IS nothing. Therefore, nothing references itself. There is no cause and effect in answering why the Big Bang happened. It is a tautological marvel. It is in the very definition of nothingness that nothingness must reference itself.
------------------------------------------------
I am a software developer and a writer. My novel Shards Of Divinites is available on Amazon as an eBook as well as a paperback. It addresses in more detail the questions I tackle in this blog post. My novel is available at:
http://amzn.to/1Y9Mp7F
Please visit my twitter account @nissim_levy
October 5, 2013
The Kabbalah
I see a correspondence between the Kabbahlistic tree of the ten seffirot and the origin of Reality. This by itself is no great revelation as the very intent of the Kabbahlistic tree is to describe in mystical terms the origin of God's creations. However, I aim to add more meaning and formalism to the Kabbahlistic tree than is in current fashion.
Notice first how the number of seffirot is simply the sum of the numbers one through four.
10 = 1 + 2 + 3 + 4
Is there any significance to this or is it merely a mathematical decomposition of no relevance to the current context?
I propse a model of Reality described by four abstract levels. Each of these levels is described by its Degrees Of Freedom (DOF). A level's DOF is the minimum number of mutually independent parameters that are needed to fully describe all possibilities (entities) of that level. For example, in a two dimensional world we need two numbers (DOF = 2) to describe every point's location. The idea of DOF is more general than spatial dimensions; DOF can descibe any mutually independent set of concepts that are used to fully capture all the possibilities within an abstract space. In my example of a two dimensional spatial world, the DOF are the concepts of Width and Height and the abstract space is the two dimesional space of a flat plane.
The concept of DOF is equivalent to the Kabbahlistic concept of Kelim. The ten DOF distributed in the four levels of Reality are really Kelim. In my model each of the ten sefirot is one of the Kelim.
The following is a description of the DOF (kelim/sefirot) of each of the four levels.
Level 1
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This is the level with one DOF which is the fundamental, veiled nature of God, also known as the En Sof. This is the level of oneness.
Level 2
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This level is created when the oneness of En Sof is shattered and from within the veil emerges two DOF. These two DOF represent the idea of mutual polarities. This is the idea that everything has an opposite. This is the binary level of True and False, of Yin and Yang. At this level of Reality only a two DOF world exists. There is no space, there is no time, there is no mass or energy. Every entity at this level is composed of the abstract notion of polarities.
Level 3
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This is the level described by Quantum Mechanics before the observation happens. This is the level in which Schroedinger's cat exists before the lid is lifted and we see (measure) if it is dead or alive. If you are not familiar with Schrodinger's cat then go to this link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schr%C3%...
I am still forming my thoughts on this level of Reality and I can't yet describe what are its three DOF.
Level 4
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This is the level of Physical Reality, the level of space and time, energy and mass. This level has four DOF and they are the three dimensions of space and the one dimension of time. I propose that every entity at this level of Reality is composed of these four DOF. This implies that matter and energy are really forms of space/time.
So there you have it. In my model of Reality the Big Bang is really the Seffirotic tree and the Physical Universe is just the tip of the iceberg.
Nissim Levy (author of Shards Of Divinites available on Amazon.com as an eBook).
Notice first how the number of seffirot is simply the sum of the numbers one through four.
10 = 1 + 2 + 3 + 4
Is there any significance to this or is it merely a mathematical decomposition of no relevance to the current context?
I propse a model of Reality described by four abstract levels. Each of these levels is described by its Degrees Of Freedom (DOF). A level's DOF is the minimum number of mutually independent parameters that are needed to fully describe all possibilities (entities) of that level. For example, in a two dimensional world we need two numbers (DOF = 2) to describe every point's location. The idea of DOF is more general than spatial dimensions; DOF can descibe any mutually independent set of concepts that are used to fully capture all the possibilities within an abstract space. In my example of a two dimensional spatial world, the DOF are the concepts of Width and Height and the abstract space is the two dimesional space of a flat plane.
The concept of DOF is equivalent to the Kabbahlistic concept of Kelim. The ten DOF distributed in the four levels of Reality are really Kelim. In my model each of the ten sefirot is one of the Kelim.
The following is a description of the DOF (kelim/sefirot) of each of the four levels.
Level 1
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This is the level with one DOF which is the fundamental, veiled nature of God, also known as the En Sof. This is the level of oneness.
Level 2
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This level is created when the oneness of En Sof is shattered and from within the veil emerges two DOF. These two DOF represent the idea of mutual polarities. This is the idea that everything has an opposite. This is the binary level of True and False, of Yin and Yang. At this level of Reality only a two DOF world exists. There is no space, there is no time, there is no mass or energy. Every entity at this level is composed of the abstract notion of polarities.
Level 3
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This is the level described by Quantum Mechanics before the observation happens. This is the level in which Schroedinger's cat exists before the lid is lifted and we see (measure) if it is dead or alive. If you are not familiar with Schrodinger's cat then go to this link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schr%C3%...
I am still forming my thoughts on this level of Reality and I can't yet describe what are its three DOF.
Level 4
-------
This is the level of Physical Reality, the level of space and time, energy and mass. This level has four DOF and they are the three dimensions of space and the one dimension of time. I propose that every entity at this level of Reality is composed of these four DOF. This implies that matter and energy are really forms of space/time.
So there you have it. In my model of Reality the Big Bang is really the Seffirotic tree and the Physical Universe is just the tip of the iceberg.
Nissim Levy (author of Shards Of Divinites available on Amazon.com as an eBook).
