Re: Kabbalah and the Multiverse
Dear Marty and George, I answer you together since you had some questions about translation. Regarding your question, Marty, I think you should embrace whatever interpretation of Exodus 3,14 that is most meaningful to you. Maybe, as you suggest, God could identify with Frank Sinatra singing I faced all and I stood tall / and did it my way. Otherwise you can interpret it in many other ways. One, let's call it the philosophical mode, could be that God is just equal to itself and cannot be defined otherwise. (This ties nicely with the self-referentiality discussion). Another possibility is to interpret it in a dramatic sense: God is just about to reveal his true name to Moses -YHWY- and verse 14 is a way to increase and prolong the dramatic tension. Regarding your question, George, in Genesis 1,4 ki-tov I would not read it as if it was modern Hebrew (because it was good). In this case, ki refers to an object clause. I would therefore translate it as usual with the words And God saw the light, that it was good. You are entitled, of course, to make your own interpretations and midrashim. That's what the text is there for! Regarding your comment: Too much information is no information at all and a white sheet of paper carries just as much information as a black one. So overstimulating one's mind with a barrage of letters may achieve the same results as understimulating it. I think you are completely right. Abulafia's personal accounts point in this direction, too. That is also the message in Borges' The Library of Babel. In principle all possible books are contained in the library, but since they are mixed with an overwhelming majority of books filled with gibberish, the result is that the library is useless and contains no information at all. There is a tension between information and noise. Too much information becomes noise. The library is flooded with noise and the librarian that writes the story seems disheartened and pessimistic. The inability to make sense of the library is bringing humanity to extinction. On the other hand, Abulafia filled his mind with noise (overstimulation) and came out with an ecstatic experience, full of joy and bliss. Why is it so that we have two outcomes so opposed to each other? Yours truly, R. Rabbit -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Kabbalah and the Multiverse
Dear Bruno, I am learning something very valuable from this experience. I think that, coming from different backgrounds, if we want to have an exchange of ideas we need to create a common language. My lack of a common language with you prevents me to follow you through your argumentations. I sense that what you say is important and interesting, but we seem to speak in different languages. A way to move forward could be not to take for granted that the other is familiar with our concepts. If you explain a concept at a time it would be also very helpful for me. Yours truly, R. Rabbit On Jun 19, 9:26 pm, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 18 Jun 2010, at 17:03, Rabbi Rabbit wrote: Dear George, Thank you for your beautiful interpretation of B'reshit (Book of Genesis). By your description, I have the feeling that you think about Sefirotic Kabbalah. Briefly, Sefirotic Kabbalah believes that God emanated in 10 Sefirot (the meaning of the word is unclear, the root Seper is related to the words letter, number and speech). This 10 Sefirot are attributes of the divine that need to be in a harmonious relationship with each other in order to pour the divine influx over the world. This school of kabbalists believed that they could influence the Sefirot and in this way exert changes in the divine and human realms, basically making sure that the divine influx continued pouring and sustaining the world. For this reason Sefirotic Kabbalah is also described as Theurgical Kabbalah. The kabbalist I have been talking about, Abraham Abulafia, created a different school. Deeply influenced by Maimonides philosophy (who, in turn, adapted Jewish beliefs to harmonize with Aristotelian philosophy) Abulafia practiced a form of Kabbalah aimed at the union with the divine intellect. To put it in radical terms, his Kabbalah was not about influencing God's divine emanations but to become (part of) God. I think your insight into consciousness is very thought-provoking. From the whole Creation, nothing makes me feel greater wonder than consciousness. The union with the divine intellect (prophecy) could be probably described as a higher state of consciousness. What is surprising about Abulafia is that he did not reach this state by suppressing his conscious mind, as most mystics do by repetition of a single formula/mantra, but by overstimulating it with letter combinations accompanied by body motions. I haven't thought enough how the technique of letter combinations could be related to consciousness. Any ideas? Well that is exactly what the digital, or numerical, mechanist hypothesis provide. The choice between letter or number is not relevant. You can choose for the ontology the formal existential quantifier on any term taken from a first order specification of a universal, in Post, Church,Turing sense, system. It happens that any system with terms for numbers, that is 0 and its successors, together with the addition law and the multiplication law, provides a universal system, so I use it to fix the things. In that system I can enumerate all partial computable functions: phi_0, phi_1, phi_2, phi_3, ... A number u can be said universal if phi_u(x,y) = phi_x(y). This u is like the Golem. You write x on its forehead, and it compute phi_x on some input y. x,y is some number describing the program, x, and the data, y. This defined, or show to exist, sequence of causal relation like sequences, with fixed x and y, of terms: phi_x(y)_1, phi phi_x(y)_2, phi_x(y)_3, phi_x(y)_4, describing faithfully computations. Faithfully means that there are implemented in some genuine intensional sense, relatively to u. A tiny, yet universal, part of arithmetical truth describes (faithfully) all possible computational relations. Such universal machine cannot distinguish the infinitely many computations going through its computational states, so that its consciousness is distributed on the projection of infinitely many computations, and that ... leads to awfully complex mathematical problems. Yet, ideally correct machine (number) can reflect (proves, relatively asserts) that problem relatively to themselves, and extract the logic obeyed by such projection. Let us write Bp for the machine proves (asserts and justified if asked) p. Obviously Bp - p. Because we restrict ourself to correct machine. But the machine cannot always prove Bp - p. It would prove Bf - f (f = the constant false of propositional logic, or 0 = 1 from elementary arithmetic). But (elementary classical logic: Bf - f is equivalent with ~Bf, (~ = NOT), which asserts self-consistency, and correct classical machines can't do that (Gödel's second incompleteness theorem). Now machine can reflect that: they can prove their own second incompleteness theorem for example. They can prove: ~Bf - ~B(~Bf) = As far as I
Re: Kabbalah and the Multiverse
Dear Bruno, Let me answer a few of your remarks. Nobody knows logic. Marijuana illegality, and the whole prohibition politics are based on error in the most elementary part of logic. And formal logic, a branch of mathematics, is virtually known only by professional logicians. I think that a fair amount of people has a notion of Aristotelian logic, at least from high school. For me the most intriguing part was the concept of G*. I will look into your paper for more! A machine is self-referential if it asserts something about itself. Imagine a robot saying I have five legs. But that machine can be non self-referentially correct. Imagine that the machine has six legs. Since you were talking of a self-referential machine in relation to the divine intellect, and later on you elaborated on the idea of the introspective universal machine and the universal machine I didn't assume you were thinking of an external observer being able to determine if the assertions made by the machine are correct or not. Now that you have explained it to me, it makes much more sense, thank you. Tron is also the title of an early movie introducing the notion of virtual environment. A key notion in mechanist philosophy. I remember the movie. A forerunner to Matrix? I guess you mean the number 137. I am a but skeptical with the coincidences, theoretical statistics shows that they are more numerous that our intuition accounts for. You are completely right. The number is 137. My mind has been playing kabbalistic games with me, reshuffling the order. Yours truly, Rabbi Rabbit -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Kabbalah and the Multiverse
Dear John, In Kabbalah letters are numbers and vice versa. Regarding your question of what is the meaning of the Name of God, if you ask me, I think it is meaningless. It is pure, full presence. It is up to us to predicate something out of it and to turn it meaningful. Due to its claim of totality, the Name of God is also absurd. It is one thing and it's opposite at the same time. I am not sure how this relates to the multiverse. I think its infinite possibilities of predication and meaningfulness could be the linguistic expression of all possible universes. Someone more daring (Derrida?) would say that they ARE all possible universes. Is God a product of numbers, or are numbers product of God? What answer would you like the most? I guess it depends on what kind of God you believe in, if you believe in God at all. I -although very un-Jewish- do not believe in a personal God, though I clearly see the virtues of a personal relationship with God. I think there are ways to scape the either/or trap. God and numbers (and letters) could be one and the same thing: God - the Number of God - the Name of God. I don't have an answer, I just hope I can offer you more alternatives -and in this way escape the excruciating dilemma ;) How does my question relate to Kabbalah? I consider 'mysticism' a subchapter of our ignorance: once we learn the explanation it ceases to be mystical. Notwithstanding your definition, more and more I tend to think that breakthroughs in science are based on irrational intuitions proved by rational methods. Kabbalists and other mystics had the insights and their own set of tools to proof their point (their own experiences, for instance). They were similar to modern day physicists in the sense that they needed a creative spark to come to their hypothesis. Their ways depart when it comes to the method of proving these hypotheses correct. My question is if they meet again, somewhere, when it comes to reach conclusions. For me it is rather telling that kabbalistic ideas (probably from Sefer Yetzirah, maybe from Abulafia) influenced Borges and that through Borges they shaped ideas of the multiverse or the Library of Mendel, as described in Daniel Dennet's book Darwin's dangerous idea. With your help maybe we can bring this fruitful cooperation one step further! So is there a 'definition' below ( 22^22 ! ) letters long? There is a shorter definition, if you take only the 22 letters of the alphabet and consider each one of them a different Name of God. If you want even a shorter one, what about this: 0 and 1. Yours truly, R. Rabbit -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Kabbalah and the Multiverse
Dear George, Thank you for your beautiful interpretation of B'reshit (Book of Genesis). By your description, I have the feeling that you think about Sefirotic Kabbalah. Briefly, Sefirotic Kabbalah believes that God emanated in 10 Sefirot (the meaning of the word is unclear, the root Seper is related to the words letter, number and speech). This 10 Sefirot are attributes of the divine that need to be in a harmonious relationship with each other in order to pour the divine influx over the world. This school of kabbalists believed that they could influence the Sefirot and in this way exert changes in the divine and human realms, basically making sure that the divine influx continued pouring and sustaining the world. For this reason Sefirotic Kabbalah is also described as Theurgical Kabbalah. The kabbalist I have been talking about, Abraham Abulafia, created a different school. Deeply influenced by Maimonides philosophy (who, in turn, adapted Jewish beliefs to harmonize with Aristotelian philosophy) Abulafia practiced a form of Kabbalah aimed at the union with the divine intellect. To put it in radical terms, his Kabbalah was not about influencing God's divine emanations but to become (part of) God. I think your insight into consciousness is very thought-provoking. From the whole Creation, nothing makes me feel greater wonder than consciousness. The union with the divine intellect (prophecy) could be probably described as a higher state of consciousness. What is surprising about Abulafia is that he did not reach this state by suppressing his conscious mind, as most mystics do by repetition of a single formula/mantra, but by overstimulating it with letter combinations accompanied by body motions. I haven't thought enough how the technique of letter combinations could be related to consciousness. Any ideas? Shabbat Shalom, R. Rabbit -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Kabbalah and the Multiverse
Dear Jason, My assumption is that the Name of God, according to Abraham Abulafia, could be made of any possible combination of the 22 letters, as long as this name does not exceed 22 characters. This includes repetitions of letters and any combination between 1 and 22 characters. Thank you for your wise remark, it was indeed not clear enough as I formulated it previously. Yours truly, R. Rabbit -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Kabbalah and the Multiverse
Dear John, I feel most at home in a list about our ignorance! Thank you and Bruno for the warm welcome. Regarding your question, the wonderful thing is that we both are right. The Hebrew alphabet has 22 and 27 letters. There you are, an example of the multiverse! Not either-or, but both-and! The explanation is simple. The Hebrew alphabet is generally considered to have 22 letters, all of them consonants. The reference to the 27 letters is due to the fact that 5 out of the 22 letters (Kaf, Mem, Nun, Pey, Tzadi) are written differently when they find themselves at the end of a word. We don't have this phenomenon in the Latin alphabet, so for us it is rather unusual. Therefore, depending on how you prefer to count the letters, there might be 22 and/or 27. Now I am ashamed for my 'giving in' to young-time ignorance and count on your remarks to make me change my opinion (what I do with pleasure any time when I learn something new). I think that thanks to illustrious figures like Mrs. Maria Ciccone and the like, Kabbalah has drawn the attention of the public as one more weird cult in the new-age supermarket. Kabbalah is actually what we could call Jewish mysticism (otherwise called prophecy by Jewish sources) and as such it could be compared with Sufism in Islam. All being said, the scholarly research of Kabbalah had been neglected by scholars until relatively recent times but nowadays it is a thriving, though quite young, field in academia. If this appeals to you, I believe that the questions posed by the first hunters and gatherers and the modern physicians are not that different. Kabbalah appeared in medieval Spain and it owes its lexicon and cultural codes to its historic and geographic setting, but if you break through the shell of its circumstances I think -and this is why I am here- that Kabbalah has something relevant to say to fields apparently so distant such as literary criticism, physics and computer science. I want to make clear, though, that this is not a particular characteristic of Kabbalah. In the multiverse everything resonates. I just happened to enter it through this gate. Now let me go back to my thread of thought from my first post. Hopefully this will be interesting for Bruno, as well. I feel that when I try to understand the meaning of Abulafian letter combinations I am groping in the dark. Let me recall Bruno's sentence again: Most mystics, including the introspective universal machine, agree that God has simply no name at all. I think there are different ways to look at this, but I will limit myself to the three extreme possibilities. One of them is what Bruno says, there is no Name of God. On the other extreme we could have those who believe that God has one name, only one true name. The idea seems logically consistent: One God, One Name. [For many Jews, for instance, the disclosure of the Name of God -YHWH, the Tetragrammaton- in the Torah is the climax of divine revelation.] If Abulafia would think like this but discard YHWH as the true Name of God, hence believing that the true Name of God is still hidden, then his method could be understood as a way of cracking the Name of God through the application of an algorithm. If my maths are right, given that there are 22 Hebrew letters (I'll stay at 22 if you don't mind, John) that means that there would be possible combinations, an absurdly large number for a human intellect to combine (*). In this case, the search of Abulafia for the true Name of God would be hopeless, unless he would receive it by an act of grace (something tantamount to cheating). I think, though, that there is a third possibility much more interesting and promising than either “there is no name” or “there is one name”. The other possibly, the boldest one, is that the possible combinations, each and every one of them, is a Name of God. Now let's translate the “Name of God” to the language of our time. What is the Name of God? Using Gematria we know that the Name of God is a word but it is also a number. What we are looking for here is the key number that will unlock the secrets of the multiverse. Pauli thought it was 317. I think Pauli was right and so it is anyone who says any random number. This is the meaning of understanding the possible combinations as Names of God. The circle closes: In the multiverse everything resonates. I just happened to enter it through this gate. Yours truly, R. Rabbit (*) By the way, if you would put all these words in a book you would have the Dictionary of Abulafia, the most authorized dictionary in my opinion to check anything you would find in the Library of Babel. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at
Re: Kabbalah and the Multiverse
Oh, bad, bad computer. In my previous post where it is written please read 22 raised to the 22th power (base 22, exponent 22). No HTML posting here, I'll need to take it into account! -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Kabbalah and the Multiverse
Dear all, I entered to your discussion list from the back door. I am not a scientist or a philosopher, but a graduate student researching Kabbalah, popularly known as Jewish mysticism. As others here, I knew about this site through The Theory of Everything. I landed on the this book through Borges' short story The Library of Babel. As some of you might know, this story is packed with kabbalistic references. My research focuses now on Abraham Abulafia, a Sephardi kabbalist of the 13th century. The reason why I am telling you all of this is that Abulafia had a particular technique to achieve the mystical union (otherwise called prophecy in Jewish sources) with the divine intellect. To make it short, Abulafia's technique consisted in the mental combination of the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Abulafia envisioned this technique of letter combination as endless and only limited by human capacity. I claim that Abulafia's letter combination inspired Borges through the groundbreaking work of Gershom Scholem, the pioneer of modern Kabbalah scholarship. The Library of Babel is no other than the Library of Abulafia. Abulafia gave detailed descriptions of his techniques but the ultimate meaning of the letter combination remains elusive. In Abulafian Kabbalah the concept of the Name of God is paramount. I would argue that for him the Name of God was the total combination of the 22 letters. The Library of Babel would then spell the Name of God. If we translate this religious jargon from the 13th century to our language, Abulafia's letter combination is the verbal expression of all possible universes. What about this as a definition for a holy writ? But there has to be more to it. What do you think could be the meanings of unlimited letter combinations? What insights could quantum physics bring into kabbalistic interpretations? Let's tear down some discipline barriers! Yours truly, Rabbi Rabbit PD: And for those bluffed by the presence of a Kabbalah scholar here, I recommend you to take a look to the story of Wolfgang Pauli and Carl G. Jung as described in Deciphering the Cosmic Number. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
