Consciousness and the Cosmos

by Rav Berg

The presidential doom factor, however, lies less in the final digit of the election year than in the

planetary conjunction that occurred at the time of the preside...

It really all began when William Henry Harrison was elected in 1840. He died of pneumonia in 1841. Twenty years later, in 1860, Abraham Lincoln was elected. He was assassinated in 1865. James A. Garfield was elected in 1880, 20 years after Lincoln won his first term; Garfield was assassinated in 1901. Warren Harding was elected in 1920 and died in office in 1923. In 1940, Franklin D. Roosevelt won his third term and died in office in 1945 during his fourth term. Then came John F. Kennedy, elected in 1960, only to be assassinated in 1963. In each ...

The successors, of both Lincoln and Kennedy, were Southerners named Johnson, and both Johnsons had served

in the U.S. Senate. Andrew Johnson, Lincoln’s successor, was born in 1808 and Lyndon Johnson, who took the mantle from Kennedy, was born in 1908. Lincoln’s assassin was born in 1839 and Kennedy’s in 1939. Both assassins were murdered before they could be brought to trial.

Both Lincoln and Kennedy lost children while in the White House. John Wilkes Booth, Lincoln’s assassin, shot his victim in a theater and fled to a warehouse. Lee Harvey Oswald sho...

The full names of both assassins contain 15 letters, while the names of the succeeding vice pre...

Both Lincoln and Kennedy were in their early 30s when they married, each to a beautiful 24-year-old brunette, both of whom spoke French fluently. Lincoln had a secretary named Kennedy who advised him not to attend the theater where he was assassinated. Kennedy had a secretary named Lincoln who urged him not to go to Dallas where he died. L...

Both presidents were deeply involved with civil rights for Blacks, both were shot in the back of the head in the presence of their wives, and both died on Friday.

Kennedy and Lincoln, with a reincarnate link between them, were effectively handed the same program cassette and with little choice beyond some minor restructuring, had to live it out.

Correlation, not random chance, alone can be responsible for such a thing.

Once a contract has been made, that contract continues to influence, whether it is a legal document, a manifestation of metaphysics, or a scientific axiom.

It provided the most impressive scientific evidence yet that consciousness plays an essential, if not a deciding role in the nature of physical reality.

There never can be a better world until there are better people in it.

Self-pity, on the other hand, offers no advantage.

The Zohar here is revealing the secret doctrine that these 14 times will move man with cosmic energy in the direction that man himself has chosen. If man’s action is positive, he can direct the positive aspect at the very same time. If he moves in a negative direction, he then initiates what we might consider the button that activates the negative column.

Coincidently, the numerical value of Shevat is 311, corresponding to the Hebrew word for ish (man).

Consequently, the kabbalistic interpretation of a comet is regarded as an omen of freedom and balance, rather than as an omen of disaster. The comet’s tail represents the energy-intelligence of the Vav of the Tetragrammaton—Yud, Hei, Vav, and Hei—Holy Name of God.

The problem of the origin of the cosmos is truly baffling. One can imagine analyzing the seed of a tree, then upon seeing the tree itself, know that the secrets of a tree lie hidden within another, similar seed. The universe itself, however, does not furnish us with the seed or blueprint of our observable universe, so we must imagine some bootstrap process that began essentially with nothing. The Sefer Yetzirah (Book of Formation), along with its commentaries, does just that. We no longer have to content ourselves with a sense of wonder and awe of the Heavens. They provide us with answers as to the origin of cosmic life.

“Sof ma’aseh bemachshava tehila” (“The final act first becomes manifest as thought”), declares famed Kabbalist Rav Shlomo Alkabetz. (Lecha Dodi, Shabbat Song)

Man is not merely an observer who creates reality; he actually determines the ultimate results and thus has ultimate responsibility.

Seen in this light, no human soul would be so foolish as to antagonize this internal intelligent force (the spark of the God within each of us) or invite its wrath.

Believing is not a concept in the lexicon of Kabbalah. When we say, “I believe,” we are instantly declaring our disbelief.

Only when we say, “I know,” do we erase all doubt.

Koh indicates the Holy Name that was linked to him on the higher levels of consciousness. It is the gateway of prayer through which man obtains his requests.

It is well established that the changing of a name elevates the individual to a higher level of consciousness. Christian clerics who enter holy orders have followed this practice for years, frequently assuming a biblical name or a name sacred to their doctrine.

Contrary to the highest precept of democracy, all men are not created equal. Through reincarnation and the tikkun (correction) process, humanity is created with a multitude of handicaps, burdens, and travails, and overcoming these is another process entirely.

A commitment to self-knowledge and self-improvement is the first requirement of any individual who wishes to take control of his or her life and alter his or her destiny, but once that commitment is made, the results can be immediate and fulfilling.

Even

Information provides knowledge only if connection is made. The library is full of information, but it remains useless to a person who cannot read and therefore cannot make it manifest. Some people, on the other hand, are “book smart.” They know all the facts and figures by rote, but they cannot apply them. We must achieve an altered state of consciousness and pure awareness to make a connection. Joseph knew how. Judah did not.

Now, however, scientists have discovered another solar phenomenon called “coronal holes.” These are rips in the sun’s surface, which is a blanket of searing gas called the corona.

This blinding shroud usually is in character, but occasionally it fails to maintain its uniform equilibrium and a coronal hole develops, through which awesome gusts of solar wind in the form of charged particles come roaring out to disrupt the Earth’s magnetic field some 93 million miles away.

Newton discussed mass, but lacking knowledge of the atom, his discussion dealt with the external. Einstein, with what could be called a “complete” scientific system, took physics inside the atom itself, and it is no surprise to the kabbalist that the atom, consisting of the triad of protons, neutrons, and electrons, reflects the Three-Column System of Abraham. As Einstein was to do many millennia later, Abraham, in his Book of Formation, dealt with the internal aspects of cosmology, whereas Eastern systems, which ranged from China to Egypt, dealt with the externals of astral influences and celestial bodies.

The Sefer Yetzirah does not have to wait until tomorrow. It has been with us for a very long time, but to an individual like Aristotle, that sort of knowledge was concealed, just as Einsteinian physics was concealed from Newton.

It is within the spiritual path—the

aspect of the internal that Abraham shared with Isaac, not his other sons—where the heavy action really...

Kabbalah itself has been a jealously guarded secret but the time has come for it to reach the masses with its simplicity because in the final analysis, knowledge that is simple is true knowledge.

This book is for people who no longer wish to tolerate a state of ambiguity; it is for those who truly understand that change is necessary and are not afraid of handling simple, if not yet accepted ideas. These ideas will provide more answers than conventional information can ever bring.

Our technological performance over the past 20 years is really, in effect, the evolution of intelligence itself. When we speak of “knowing” as in the biblical phrase “Adam knew Eve,” (Genesis 4:1) we speak of connection. This is intelligence at that subtle stage known as cosmic consciousness. It reaches into the subatomic levels of energy, yet the average human cannot grasp more than five to eight percent of his inherent intellectual capacity and the average scientist does little to overcome that limitation.

Instead, he has relegated man to a position inferior to that modern golem, the computer.

We have come to believe that machine intelligence can solve most of our problems, and that with the computer we are augmenting our own intelligence. As we continue to advance the state-of-the-art in construction of computers, this sense of amplification will increase. One can predict with accuracy that the ultimate demise of all sciences will result in total acquiescence to the computer, at which time it finally will suffer ultimate breakdown. In the long run, however, the golem, a folk lore c...

Hopefully in the near future, we will come to understand that each subatomic particle in the universe is as intelligent as a human being because the internal activity of a particle is nothing more than an intelligence that directs the movement of that particle. These tiny intelligences eventually evolved into stars, planets, animals, and people. Ther...

The most widely used system, in the Western world at least, is the solar calendar, which defines a year as the time taken by the Earth to complete one orbit around the sun: 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, and 46 seconds.

The solar calendar originated with Julius Caesar in 46 B.C.E., but it was based on a solar year of 365 days and 6 hours. To take care of the discrepancy between the 5 hours, 48 minutes, and 46 seconds and the 6 hours, one day was added every four years (creating a leap year).

However, even with this adjustment, the calendar lost 11 minutes and 14 seconds each year when compar...

By the year 1582, the Julian calendar (as it ...

approximately 11 days behind the solar year. On October 4, 1582, Pope Gregory XIII adjusted the Julian calendar to actual solar time by proclaiming the following day to be October 15th and declared that century-years (years ending in a double zero) sho...

The second system is based on the revolution of the moon around the Earth. The time interval from one new moon to the next (called “lunation”) is 29 days, 12 hours, 44 minutes, and 2.8 seconds. A 12-month calendar—with each month having a value of 29.5 days—results in a year consisting of 354 days, which is 11 days short of the solar year. The Islamic calendar is completely lunar in nature. It is composed of 12 months of 29 or 30 days each.

intercalation.

As stated previously, the kabbalistic calendar adopted a 19-year cycle, with seven of these 19 years (the leap years) having 13 months each. The sum of the months contained in these seven 13-month years comes to 91 months. The figure 91, and the total number of intervening days between each season (which also add up to 91), has profound implications from a kabbalistic point of view. Translated into Hebrew, the number “91” emerges as Amen (Alef, Mem, Nun) the word that many faiths use to end a prayer. The word is a plea for atonement, or, as hyphenated here for the sake of understanding, “at-one-ment.” In short, it asks for the blessing of connection, which is what Kabbalah is all about.