THE UNIVERSAL KABBALAH
Although we have relied heavily upon the Vedic tradition in our description of the universal wisdom, this is only because the Vedic literature is by far the largest extent body of writing of the surviving ancient literatures—in fact, it is much larger than all of the other ancient literatures put together.
It therefore offers perhaps the clearest insight into the thinking of the ancient seers.Yet the Hebrew seers—more specifically, the proponents of kabbalah—also possessed this ancient wisdom. The word kabbalah (KBLH) means “that which was received.” According to traditional sources, the kabbalah was originally received by Adam, the proverbial first man, while he dwelled in the Garden of Eden. More specifically, the tradition holds that Adam received the wisdom from an elohim (universal lord) named Raziel, also known as the “keeper of secrets.”
Although the Garden of Eden may correspond to a physical and historical place on earth marked by the headwaters of four rivers (Tigris, Euphrates, Pischon, and Gihon), many believe it has a deeper cosmological interpretation in terms of the spiritual heavens. In this expanded cosmological interpretation, the Garden of Eden corresponds to the paradisal spiritual world represented by the highest heaven and realized on the scale of the twenty-eighth layer above the half measure. In this case, Adam and Eve represent archetypal souls inhabiting the highest heaven in the visible universe, and their Fall from the Garden of Eden corresponds to their subsequent incarnation on earth as mortal human beings, when they became clothed in animal skins.
In this case, the Garden of Eden corresponds to the highest heaven, which lies in immediate proximity to the cosmological red veil, hiding from all mortal eyes the higher mysteries of the universe. This interpretation is supported in the doctrine of kabbalah wherein the metaphysical layers are called the sephirotic emanations.
The tradition holds that each of these emanations has its own presiding deity or lord—the elohim, who are commonly compared to the archangels of God. The elohim called Raziel is listed as the lord of the twenty-ninth emanation (layer) in the ascending direction. In effect, Raziel is just another name for Varuna, the lord of the twenty-ninth layer, who also represents the keeper of the cosmic red veil, which is why Raziel was known as the “keeper of secrets.” Apparently, however, Raziel deigned to reveal those secrets to Adam so that he could teach them to human beings on earth in his subsequent incarnation. In this sense, Adam may be viewed as a divine incarnation, a messenger of God who became man on earth in accordance with divine will, in order to teach to his descendants the higher mysteries of the universe so that his progeny might become immortal.As we have seen, the term kabbalah itself is a mantra or a phonemic formula that encodes the first stage of human enlightenment, represented by the phoneme ka, and the subsequent stage of galactic enlightenment, represented by the phoneme ba. In this sense, the two Hebrew letters k and b (ka, ba) represent a form of galactic wisdom. We can now go further and discover that the three phonemes k, b, and l (ka, ba, and la) represent a form of universal wisdom, which pertains to the overall form of the visible universe extending up to the highest heaven. This interpretation is based upon the sequence of consonants in the Sanskrit alphabet, in which the first consonant is ka, the twenty-third consonant is ba, and the twenty-eighth consonant is la. As we have seen, in the Vedic tradition, the phoneme la was viewed as the seed formula of Indra, the king of the celestial gods, who was also known as the presiding deity of the highest heaven.
When the human soul first attains enlightenment on the scale of the first layer above the half measure, it becomes identified with the divine Ka. This marks the first major milestone on the path of immortality: the soul cognizes the first universal forms of light and sound to emerge at the beginning of creation.
When the soul subsequently ascends to the scale of the twenty-third layer, it arrives at the galactic heaven and becomes identified with the divine Ba. This marks the second major milestone on the path: the soul obtains galactic consciousness and cognizes the visible form of the galaxy within its awareness. When the soul then ascends to the scale of the twenty-eighth layer, it arrives at the highest universal heaven and becomes identified with the divine La, which marks the third major milestone on the path: The soul obtains universal consciousness and cognizes the visible form of the universe within its awareness.Therefore, the three phonemes k, b, and l (ka, ba, and la) represent the first three major milestones on the path of immortality: They correspond to the stages of human enlightenment, galactic enlightenment, and universal enlightenment. Oddly, though, this phonemic understanding of the Hebrew KBLH is rooted in a Vedic interpretation of the Sanskrit alphabet. Once again, this points to the notion that the ancient cultures shared a scientific language expressed in terms of phonemes, which transcended the grammatical differences of their spoken languages. Although this original phonematic language was lost for the most part, it appears that in certain important cases, such as the systematic organization of the Vedic alphabet and the phonemic formula KBLH, the original scientific language was preserved.
At this point, we have reached the boundary of the visible universe—but our journey does not end there. The ancient wisdom extended beyond the boundary of the visible universe to the boundary of the superuniverse, the cosmic egg as a whole. This leads us to the next chapter, in which we examine the superuniversal wisdom.