Heaven and Earth - The relationship between the metaphysical and physical dimensions, and freewill.
Genesis 1:1
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
The first part of the verse states that God created the Beginning.
There is no beginning or any definition given to God Himself so to speak other than He is the Cause of all existence.
This is how Maimonides (from here on Rambam) begins his codification of Jewish law.
The foundation of all foundations and the pillar of wisdom is to know that there is a Primary Being who brought into being all existence. All the beings of the heavens, the earth, and what is between them came into existence only from the truth of His being.
So the first half of the verse establishes that God brought All into existence. Let us now focus on the second half of the verse, and try to appreciate the words shamayim (heavens) and adamah earth.
I once heard an explanation of the words “heavens” and “earth” in this verse, which is perhaps different than we normally think.
Earth in the verse refers not only to terra firma, but the entire physical cosmos as well, galaxies, black holes and all. While the word Heavens in the verse refers to all nonphysical (metaphysical) dimensions.
But let’s take something else in the verse into account, which is the obvious pairing of heaven and earth. This is the actual point of the second half of the verse, after the first half has stated unequivocally that God is the Primal Cause of existence. The Hebrew for “heavens” is shamayim. This is in actuality two words: Sham mayim, meaning “there is water there.”
Thus Genesis 1:6-7
God said, “There shall be a sky in the middle of the water, and it shall divide between water and water.” God [thus] made the sky, and it separated the water below the sky from the water above the sky. It remained that way.
The Torah tells us that God separates between the upper and lower waters, with the firmament in the middle. Imagine upper waters and lower waters, and we’re in middle-earth, so to speak. We live in the reflection between the upper and lower waters.
What this means is that there is a cyclical flow of "life-energy" (for lack of a better term) from the upper to the lower and back again, just as water flows from above to below and back, or below to above and back....
We are both the recepients of this power and as well we reflect it into our lower "waters" meaning both literally how we treat the sea (the hidden realm) and of course that is reflected back up into the "upper waters" or heaven, in an endless cycle of creation (and deconstruction) like the water cycle.
This is because, as the verse reflects, the physical and metaphysical reflect each other.
To get there (heaven) our job is to be fully here, now. Through the good choices we make here, in this world, we attune our bodies to our souls. We are not our bodies. Our bodies are our clothes, spiritually speaking, just as the "lower waters" are simply reflections of the "upper." How we literally clothe our bodies, the fashion we choose, reflects our awareness of that reality. Modesty isn’t simply about harnessing the libido. Modesty is about how we percieve the relationship between soul and body. But we will discuss that more later, when we meet the paragon of modesty and power, Sarah Emainu.
We often think of Heaven as being “up there.” This is for a reason. Heaven is a spiritually more refined world than this physical one, and our sense of it being concealed is related to it being a higher world as well. Just as in the light of day we cannot see past the blue canopy of our atmosphere, and yet we know from the night sky that there is an entire universe of life out there.
As the physical and metaphysical worlds are reflections of each other, therefore everything in our world is a physicalization of a metaphysical existence.
Thus we can summarise: To live in Heaven, live on earth.
But what about people who are here in our world, but who not only do not love their own lives, but who inflict their evil upon anyone they have power over? If everything in the physical world also exists in the metaphysical world, where are the wicked in Heaven?
The Talmud, after listing laws regarding the treatment of a corpse, tells the following story:
R. Hiyya and R. Jonathan were once walking about in a cemetery, and the blue fringe of R. Jonathan was trailing on the ground. Said R. Hiyya to him: Lift it up, so that they [the dead] should not say: Tomorrow they are coming to join us and now they are insulting us!
[R. Jonathan] said to him: Do they really know so much? Is it not written, But the dead know not anything? He replied to him: If you have read once, you have not repeated; if you have repeated, you have not gone over a third time; if you have gone over a third time, you have not had it explained to you. “For the living know that they shall die” these are the righteous who in their death are called living, as it says: “And Benaiah the son of Jehoiada, the son of a living man from Kabzeel, who had done mighty deeds, he smote the two altar-hearths of Moab; he went down and also slew a lion in the midst of a pit in the time of snow.”
“‘The son of a living man’” are all other people then the sons of dead men? Rather ‘the son of a living man’ means that even in his death he was called living….‘But the dead know nothing’: These are the wicked who in their lifetime are called dead….
What does the Talmud mean that the dead are alive and vice versa? If we think along the line we’re traveling it’s not difficult. Once we recognise that in the verse, “heaven” actually precedes “earth” in creation, we can understand that our real existence even here depends on a viable existence there. Our existence in the physical dimension is a result of a flow from the metaphysical. If a person God forbid cuts themselves off from their roots in heaven, like a cut flower they will fade into history and cease to matter. Only the good survive. And to take the above to its logical conclusion - those who are evil - do not even really exist here. Not for their own sake. They are but caricatures, props, personal and historical buttons for the Almighty to push in order to accomplish what He wants. The evidence for this is Pharaoh, who lost his free will somewhere along the line during his denial of the Plagues.
To Sum Up:
When we speak of heaven in Torah, let’s try to keep in mind that we’re not talking only about a future place (although that it undeniably also true) but rather a quality of attachment to this life right now. This is so because whether we are headed to the world to come or not must be discernible now to the human mind, or life is simply unfair - and there is a Talmudic principle "God does not play games with His creatures."
So Einstein plagiarised, so what, you wanna sue someone?
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
The first part of the verse states that God created the Beginning.
There is no beginning or any definition given to God Himself so to speak other than He is the Cause of all existence.
This is how Maimonides (from here on Rambam) begins his codification of Jewish law.
The foundation of all foundations and the pillar of wisdom is to know that there is a Primary Being who brought into being all existence. All the beings of the heavens, the earth, and what is between them came into existence only from the truth of His being.
So the first half of the verse establishes that God brought All into existence. Let us now focus on the second half of the verse, and try to appreciate the words shamayim (heavens) and adamah earth.
I once heard an explanation of the words “heavens” and “earth” in this verse, which is perhaps different than we normally think.
Earth in the verse refers not only to terra firma, but the entire physical cosmos as well, galaxies, black holes and all. While the word Heavens in the verse refers to all nonphysical (metaphysical) dimensions.
But let’s take something else in the verse into account, which is the obvious pairing of heaven and earth. This is the actual point of the second half of the verse, after the first half has stated unequivocally that God is the Primal Cause of existence. The Hebrew for “heavens” is shamayim. This is in actuality two words: Sham mayim, meaning “there is water there.”
Thus Genesis 1:6-7
God said, “There shall be a sky in the middle of the water, and it shall divide between water and water.” God [thus] made the sky, and it separated the water below the sky from the water above the sky. It remained that way.
The Torah tells us that God separates between the upper and lower waters, with the firmament in the middle. Imagine upper waters and lower waters, and we’re in middle-earth, so to speak. We live in the reflection between the upper and lower waters.
What this means is that there is a cyclical flow of "life-energy" (for lack of a better term) from the upper to the lower and back again, just as water flows from above to below and back, or below to above and back....
We are both the recepients of this power and as well we reflect it into our lower "waters" meaning both literally how we treat the sea (the hidden realm) and of course that is reflected back up into the "upper waters" or heaven, in an endless cycle of creation (and deconstruction) like the water cycle.
This is because, as the verse reflects, the physical and metaphysical reflect each other.
To get there (heaven) our job is to be fully here, now. Through the good choices we make here, in this world, we attune our bodies to our souls. We are not our bodies. Our bodies are our clothes, spiritually speaking, just as the "lower waters" are simply reflections of the "upper." How we literally clothe our bodies, the fashion we choose, reflects our awareness of that reality. Modesty isn’t simply about harnessing the libido. Modesty is about how we percieve the relationship between soul and body. But we will discuss that more later, when we meet the paragon of modesty and power, Sarah Emainu.
We often think of Heaven as being “up there.” This is for a reason. Heaven is a spiritually more refined world than this physical one, and our sense of it being concealed is related to it being a higher world as well. Just as in the light of day we cannot see past the blue canopy of our atmosphere, and yet we know from the night sky that there is an entire universe of life out there.
As the physical and metaphysical worlds are reflections of each other, therefore everything in our world is a physicalization of a metaphysical existence.
Thus we can summarise: To live in Heaven, live on earth.
But what about people who are here in our world, but who not only do not love their own lives, but who inflict their evil upon anyone they have power over? If everything in the physical world also exists in the metaphysical world, where are the wicked in Heaven?
The Talmud, after listing laws regarding the treatment of a corpse, tells the following story:
R. Hiyya and R. Jonathan were once walking about in a cemetery, and the blue fringe of R. Jonathan was trailing on the ground. Said R. Hiyya to him: Lift it up, so that they [the dead] should not say: Tomorrow they are coming to join us and now they are insulting us!
[R. Jonathan] said to him: Do they really know so much? Is it not written, But the dead know not anything? He replied to him: If you have read once, you have not repeated; if you have repeated, you have not gone over a third time; if you have gone over a third time, you have not had it explained to you. “For the living know that they shall die” these are the righteous who in their death are called living, as it says: “And Benaiah the son of Jehoiada, the son of a living man from Kabzeel, who had done mighty deeds, he smote the two altar-hearths of Moab; he went down and also slew a lion in the midst of a pit in the time of snow.”
“‘The son of a living man’” are all other people then the sons of dead men? Rather ‘the son of a living man’ means that even in his death he was called living….‘But the dead know nothing’: These are the wicked who in their lifetime are called dead….
What does the Talmud mean that the dead are alive and vice versa? If we think along the line we’re traveling it’s not difficult. Once we recognise that in the verse, “heaven” actually precedes “earth” in creation, we can understand that our real existence even here depends on a viable existence there. Our existence in the physical dimension is a result of a flow from the metaphysical. If a person God forbid cuts themselves off from their roots in heaven, like a cut flower they will fade into history and cease to matter. Only the good survive. And to take the above to its logical conclusion - those who are evil - do not even really exist here. Not for their own sake. They are but caricatures, props, personal and historical buttons for the Almighty to push in order to accomplish what He wants. The evidence for this is Pharaoh, who lost his free will somewhere along the line during his denial of the Plagues.
To Sum Up:
When we speak of heaven in Torah, let’s try to keep in mind that we’re not talking only about a future place (although that it undeniably also true) but rather a quality of attachment to this life right now. This is so because whether we are headed to the world to come or not must be discernible now to the human mind, or life is simply unfair - and there is a Talmudic principle "God does not play games with His creatures."
So Einstein plagiarised, so what, you wanna sue someone?