Open Secrets. Rabbi Rami M. Shapiro
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They sat in the puddle, oblivious to the damp, and made dozens of mud figures: houses, animals, and towers. From their talk it was clear that they imagined an identity for each: a story that told the figure’s past and foretold its future. For a while the mud figures took on independence, a life separate and unique. But they are still just mud. Mud is their source, and mud is their substance. From the perspective of the children wrapped up in the play of separate figures their mud creations had separate selves. From the point of view of a casual observer it is clear that the separate self is an illusion, that in fact they are all just mud.
It is the same with us and God: “Adonai (the Lord) alone is God in heaven above and on earth below, there is none else” (Deuteronomy 4:39). Ayn od—there is none else—meaning that there is nothing else in heaven or on earth but God.
Can this be? When I look at the world I do not see God. I see trees of varying kinds, people of all types, houses, fields, lakes, cows, horses, chickens, and on and on. In this I am like the children at play seeing real figures and not simply mud.
Where in all this is God?
Some would argue that God is a divine spark inside each being, some would say only within human beings. Others would argue that God is above and outside creation. But I teach neither position. God is not inside or outside, God is the very thing itself! And when there is no thing, but only empty space? God is that as well.
I want you to remember two important words: Yesh and Ayn, form and emptiness. Yesh refers to the seeming separateness of things, each thing having its own form, its own boundary, its own separate existence. Ayn refers to the emptiness of things, to the fact that forms and boundaries are not real in and of themselves, but rather useful constructions of the mind. To feed myself I must be able to separate my mouth from your mouth. This ability creates the world of Yesh. But to love my neighbor as my self (Leviticus 19:18) I must be able to transcend that distinction and recognize a greater unity without form. This is Ayn.
And which is God, Yesh or Ayn? Both and neither!
Picture a bowl in your mind. Define the bowl. Is it just the clay that forms its walls? Or is it the empty space that fills with borscht? Without the space the bowl is useless. Without the walls the bowl is useless. So which is the bowl? The answer is both. To be a bowl it must have form and emptiness.
It is the same with God. For God to be God, for God to be All, God must manifest both as both form and emptiness. This teaching is called shlemut, the completeness of God. To be shlemut God must contain all opposites. God must be both Yesh and Ayn simultaneously.
I have recently found a wonderful analogy to explain this teaching of shlemut, God’s completeness. It has to do with magnets. I know little about them but this: A magnet has two poles, one positive and one negative. A magnet cannot be otherwise and still be a magnet. The two poles go together and only when they are together can there be a magnet. Even if you cut the magnet in half and in half again, it will always manifest these two poles. No matter how small you slice the magnet, its very nature necessitates the duality of positive and negative poles.
Now think of God. Yesh and Ayn are the poles of God. God cannot be God without them, and they cannot be themselves without each other and God. This is what is meant by God’s shlemut, God’s wholeness. All opposites are contained in and necessitated by God. We will return to this truth over and over again for it explains the deepest mysteries.
But enough for now. I have sought to clarify and may have only confused. You asked a difficult question, made all the more difficult because the answer is so simple: God is All.
B’Shalom
CREATION
My dearest Aaron Hershel,
How wonderful to find your letter waiting for me this morning. I had not expected to hear from you so soon. It is always a delight. And your question! Why did God create the world? What is the purpose of creation?
Could you have started with anything smaller? Definitions we have, reasons why—that is another matter altogether. But you ask and I answer. That is how it is with us, and I am blessed to have you as my student.
Why did God create the world?
Because it is God’s nature to manifest shlemut, divine wholeness and infinite possibility. Infinite possibility must include Yesh and Ayn, form and emptiness. You see, I told you that these words would return again and again. Everything can be understood through them.
Do not imagine God as a separate being apart from Creation who decides to create. God does not decide as we decide. God’s will is only to fulfill God’s nature. And God’s nature is to manifest Yesh and Ayn. This is God’s nature, this is what God is: The source and substance of all and nothing.
Recall my analogy of the magnets. Remember how the two poles, positive and negative, go together and only when they are together can there be a magnet? Can we say that the one pole precedes the other? Can we say that the one pole creates the other?
No. Each pole arises with the other. Its being depends upon the other. And vice versa. There is no first and second, there is no primacy of one over the other. There is only the two forever together. The magnet does not decide to make this happen; this is simply what the magnet is: two poles held in a greater unity. It is the nature of the magnet to hold these opposite poles in its greater unity; the magnet cannot be otherwise.
So, too, with God. Yesh and Ayn are the poles of God. God cannot be God without them, they cannot be themselves without each other and God. Thus all arise together. This is what is meant by God’s shlemut, God’s wholeness and completeness. The shlemut of God necessitates both Yesh and Ayn. The manifestation of Yesh and Ayn is what it means to be God.
Thus, those who tell you that our everyday world, the world we see from the perspective of Yesh, is illusory and without consequence are wrong. This world is of supreme value for it, no less than Ayn, is of God. Our world is fragile and impermanent, but it is the temporal and fleeting world of Yesh that is needed to reveal the timelessness of Ayn. And both are needed to express the completeness of God.
The sainted Aaron HaLevi Horowitz of Straosselje, (1776-1829) one of the early students of Hasidism and my teacher’s teacher, taught: “The main point of creation is to reveal God’s completeness from the opposite perspective.” Unity in the midst of diversity. Creation happens because God cannot but be God. And to be God, God must manifest that which appears to be separate from God, the temporal world we call Yesh.
The unawakened human mind recognizes things only in contrast to other things. We know I only in relation to Thou, good only in relation to evil, right only in relation to left, up only in relation to down. The human mind rarely sees beyond these opposites to the greater unity that necessitates them. But the mind can awaken to greater unity, and in this lies the purpose of creation and humankind. The purpose of creation is to manifest the infinite God in the finite world. The purpose of humanity is to know that creation is a manifestation of God.
Why, then, did God create the heavens and the earth? There is no why to creation. Creation is because God is. Is there value in creation ? Of course. For creation is the way God is God in time and space. Creation is holy in and of itself for in and of itself it is God. This is what God means when Torah says: “Be holy for I, the Source and Substance of All Form and Emptiness, am Holy” (Leviticus 19:2). Holiness is the natural state of reality. We are holy because God is holy, and we are God manifest in time and place. The Torah’s command is to be true to our divine nature and to honor the divine nature of all things.
When God created humankind what did God say? “Let us create adam (earthling, adam from adamah, earth) in our image” (Genesis 1:26). Who is this us? Some say God was speaking as a king who refers to himself in the third person plural: We decree this and we decree that. Others say God was conversing with the angels. In the book of Proverbs we read that Wisdom was with God at creation so maybe God was consulting her. I have a problem with all of these.
First, God does not speak in the kingly manner elsewhere in Torah, so why here? Second, there is no mention of the creation