Image: Courtesy of: NASA. Oldest Recorded Supernova. One of the many wonders of creation.
In principle, there is only one limit to what humans can and will create.
Let me explain.
Think about the advances we have made in the last 250 years in every aspect of our physical/material existence. The advances in medicine, technology, science, art, literature - everything.
When we reflect upon these things, we realise that before anything came into existence, it first started as a thought. Someone imagined something that eventually came into being. The only limit as to what humans can create is human imagination.
But before imagination, before a thought ‘materialised’, the potential for what was imagined existed. It was there waiting to be brought to mind, and then materialised - literally.
If it can be imagined, humans can create it and so far probably have or are close to doing so.
There is no limit to what can be ‘imagined’ but there is a limit to what the brain can imagine. There is not inconsiderable evidence that many of the most important advances in all areas of science and art have come about not from the brain thinking, but by ‘intuition’. Intuition is a word that points to an energy or source that is not derived from the brain. Actually and ironically, inspired or intuitive ‘thoughts’ came to mind at the point of ‘no thinking’.
Such intuition seems to come from nowhere - from nothing. But when we think about that, the intuition did not come from no–thing, it came from everything. It existed or had the ‘potential’ to exist from a source that contained all the other things that humans imagined.
This principle is true of the Universe - the visible and non-visible Universe.
The Universe was not created from nothing. The Universe was created from everything.
That ‘everything’ is what we call ‘God’.
‘Everything’ includes all dualities. Physical and Non-Physical. Time and No-Time. Matter and Anti-Matter. Manifestation and non-Manifestation. Positive and Negative. Light and Dark. Existence and Non-Existence. Soul and No Soul. Perception and non-Perception. Good and Bad. Desire and No Desire. Desire to receive for oneself alone. Desire to receive for only sharing. Up and Down. In and Out. And so on, ad infinitum.
The dualities include finite and infinite.
Kabbalists say that God lacks nothing since God is everything.
But before manifestation of Creation, God clearly lacked manifestation of Creation. God had the desire (non-physical) to share but God lacked the ability to physically share since there was ‘nothing’ material to share with. I use the word ‘lack’ in the straightforward sense of simply being without.
It should be remembered that what I am endeavouring to describe is at the non-physical/matter level. A ‘thought’ is at that level. ‘Thoughts’ exist but they are beyond material/energy. But even before thought, there is the potential for thought. One way of trying to grasp the idea is as follows. Try and be aware of the fact that you can think about your thoughts. Who is thinking about thinking? Notice if you can that thinking about thinking is a totally non-physical energy. It is real. It exists. But it is entirely non-physical.
It must also be remembered that what I am describing is limited by the confines of words and the limits of time, space and energy from a Human perspective. These words point to something that we can sense beyond the words, but cannot define with words.
Another way of grasping these ideas is to think about infinity. Simply try and imagine space in all directions and travelling without ever reaching an end. A similar exercise to think about time running backwards and forwards to infinity - without end. If you can do that, you are connecting with what is the source of Creation - the Creator.
Before the creation of the physical Universe, before ‘anything’, there simply ‘was’ and that included ‘was not’.
Before thought there simply was and was not. ‘Everything’ without limit of time or space.
An analogy might be an acorn. An acorn is not yet visible as a fully-grown tree – yet it is already a Tree since it contains everything within it that it is destined to materialise into - a Tree. The acorn carries within it all the potential to be a Tree. Everything. But before the acorn, there was only the ‘thought’ of an acorn. Before the thought of an acorn there ‘was’.
Before Creation, God had the desire to share and the desire to receive. That must be right since God is everything. God must also be or rather include ‘desire’ and of course ‘no-desire’.
But how could God actually share with himself?
To fulfil the desire to share and the desire to receive God had to bring about Creation. For there to be Creation, there had to also be a state of Non-Creation. That is the state of what I describe as ‘was’.
God created a vessel to receive Creation. Kabbalist say that the vessel is called the ‘Soul’. In Kabbalah, the ‘Soul’ is the desire to receive with a view to sharing.
At the point of Creation, the Soul (the Vessel), received everything that God had – which was everything. Thus, God could share and did share. He fulfilled the desire to share and for that which was created to be able to do the same.
Clearly at the point of sharing, the receiver (the Vessel), received everything including now, both the desire to share and the desire to receive.
The vessel lacked one thing. It could not be the original Creator. It could only ever be that which was created. But coming from the Creator it was still connected to and had at and as its essence, the Creator.
Thus, everything (and I mean everything without end) includes:
The Creator; and
That which is created to Create;
This is what is meant when in the Torah it is written:
“Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.” So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them”.
[Genesis 1:26-27]
If humans wish to continue to create things and especially a better world, then humans certainly have the ability to do so. But they must not rely on their brains or conscious thoughts alone. They must train themselves to stop thinking and allow the intuition to work its magic. This might be described in another way. We must train ourselves to understand the limits of conscious thought and allow the soul or unconscious thought (intuition) to become ever more prominent in the creative process.
As I explain in Jesus & Kabbalah: The Hidden reassure Part II, the soul is now a scientifically proven fact. The soul is our direct connection with the ultimate power and energy of everything.
What can be created by humans will then be limited by our ability to connect to the ultimate source of everything. If the Torah is correct, and the evidence seems to suggest that it is, then humans have been made in God’s image and that includes the ability to create without limit – not from nothing – but from everything.
Paul Kolberg
October 2017
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