Abraham Abulafia & Ecstatic Kabbalah

kabbalah has become something of a popular and cool thing today for example madonna very famously started practicing it a few decades ago and there's a general interest in kabbalah in from various places including from new age movements now kabbalah is usually described as jewish mysticism and it has been around for a very long time of course there have been forms of jewish mysticism that does not fall under the category of kabbalah and so to simply equate the two would be to oversimplify things but at the very least kabbalah is certainly a tradition within judaism that contains aspects that we would certainly call mystical now this is of course a vast and unreasonably complicated and complex tradition that takes years and years of practice to grasp let alone explain but certain aspects of kabbalah has become very famous around the world including the system of the ten spherot and the famous book called the zohar are aspects that come to mind for most people when they hear the word kabbalah if they've even heard about it at all but kabbalah like most things in the world is very complex it's multifaceted and diverse there isn't just one kabbalah but a multitude of different expressions the most famous form of kabbalah the kabbalah of the ten spirot and the zohar is often referred to as theosophical kabbalah by scholars today this is a heavily speculative philosophical and systematic form of the tradition what we'll talk about today is not this kind of kabbalah instead we'll be focusing on a man who lived at the same time that the famous zohar was most likely composed but who represents a very different approach to jewish mysticism he is considered the founder of a school of kabbalah known as ecstatic kabbalah or prophetic kabbalah and his name was abraham abulaffia [Laughter] [Applause] this video is a collaboration with dr justin sledge from the channel esoterica now he will be diving a bit deeper into certain aspects of abu lafa's thinking including his very interesting relationship between the his philosophical rational side and the more mystical aspect of his thought so don't forget to check out his channel it's it's wonderful wonderful youtube channel talking about esoteric subjects kabbalah alchemy hermeticism all of these very very interesting subjects so please go check out his channel check out his companion video to this one and say hello from me i would also like to thank all of my patrons as always for sponsoring this channel a couple of new ones include brian king kamal uttaj raid kolbas and mary carmen ordonez if anyone else would like to become a patron i will leave a link to all of that stuff in the description and in the comments section or you could also support the channel by leaving a one-time donation and all of that will also be available in the description below now on to the video abraham been samuel abbalafia was a jewish mystic and philosopher who is both greatly admired but also quite controversial as mystics tend to be he was born in saragosa in spain in the year 1240 but grew up for the most part in the city to dela this was a time and place of huge intellectual flourishing and political instability now in this series of videos we have talked about many of the mystics and philosophers of the islamic world at around the same time and it was indeed a time of intense activity both politically and intellectually and the jewish context that abuelavia was born into was one that was also experiencing a lot of activity and intellectual debate the great philosopher maimonides perhaps the greatest philosopher in jewish history had died only a few decades earlier and his works and ideas were at this time a point of great contention maimonides philosophy and thus also theology was one that was heavily rationalistic and grounded in aristotelian philosophy and his interpretation of core aspects of judaism in light of this learning had an enormous impact on the jewish world but it also had a lot of critics and by the time of abu lafaye's life this was a huge debate that was raging across the community and which represented large discussions regarding the legitimacy of using philosophical speculation to understand the bible or religion generally as one part of this debate we also see the appearance and flourishing of kabbalah at around this time perhaps best exemplified by the composition or at least compilation of the great work known as the zohar which was most likely written or again at least compiled by the figure moshe de leon during the late 13th century abulafia would take a clear side on the maimonides debate as we will see but also found a very interesting way to incorporate many of the currents of the time while introducing some unique things of his own the life or biography of abu lafa is not as much of a mystery to us as many other figures like him because in his writings he actually includes a lot of biographical information that gives us a good idea of what he did when he did it and why now of course because this is his own writings the information should be taken with a grain of salt but i think the general outline can be trusted to some degree while growing up in northern spain or catalonia abulafja studied the torah and talmud with his father and was given a formal education in the religious subjects it is told that in the year 1260 at the young age of 20 ab bulafia left his home region of catalonia and traveled to the holy land to find the mythical cembation river where the lost tribes of israel are thought to be located however his mission didn't succeed as the region was ravished by a great conflict at the time abelafia writes himself quite but i could not get further than acre because of the conflict between ishmael and esau indeed at the time the mamluks were in open war with the invading mongol armies which made the region not very safe so abalafa was forced to cancel his ambitious plans and instead went overseas to greece and italy where he had an intense period of study the following couple of years were probably some of the most formative of his entire life he had married on the way back to europe and it is here while staying in greece and italy that he for the first time became formally acquainted with philosophy in a general sense but also particularly with the writings and ideas of maimonides he studied maimonides greatest work the guide for the perplexed with a rabbi hillel and became a devoted student or follower of maimonides so much so that he would spend much of the rest of his life defending maimonides against his enemies and even wrote three separate commentaries on the guide to the perplexed which is more than any other major thinker in history after becoming thoroughly steeped in maimonidean philosophy abulaffia then returned to his home region of catalonia and settled in the city of barcelona this was the home of the leading jewish scholar of the time nahmanedis but also most significantly it was a major center for the developing tradition of kabbalah these two currents in judaism at the time which are sometimes portrayed as intellectual opposites philosophy and kabbalah would both become very significant parts of abu lafar's life and teaching as while living in barcelona he would dive head first into the kabbalistic tradition and the literature of jewish mysticism generally this included studying the so-called theosophical kabbalah of the ten spirot which was kind of the new hot thing in the neighborhood but it also included studying texts like the seifer raziel and the very mysterious safer yet syrah generally this region at the time was a melting pot of so many different ideas and traditions many works of sufism were translated from arabic into hebrew and it is thus very possible that abu lafar was familiar with the works of his fellow spaniard ibn arabi and also other sufis at the time other original works that abu lafar studied like bahib and pakudas book of the duties of the heart contains clear elements and influences from sufism and may thus have had an impact on the later teachings of abbalafar himself in the later writings and teachings of abu lafaye's ecstatic kabbalah this period becomes very central the arguably the two most important works for abu lafa and his teaching is on the one hand maimonides's guide for the perplexed and on the other hand the safer yet an ancient book of jewish mysticism that describes the creation of the world through the letters of the hebrew alphabet indeed so important is all of this to abulafja that he considers a firm grounding in both of these traditions both a grounding in philosophy but also in the more sort of theosophical kabbalah as prerequisites for even entering unto his own ecstatic ecstatic practices and ecstatic tradition in any case abu lafaye's life still has a lot of eventful periods even after this for example in the year 1270 he had a major spiritual vision which would become the starting point for a lot of his future endeavors this was indeed only one of a series of visions and experiences that would dictate his life from then on because from this point onwards abu lafla believed had been given a very exalted position his experiences were prophetic in nature and he was now convinced that he was a prophet not only did he view himself as a prophet but indeed as the very messiah who would eventually be revealed and end the dominion of christianity to reinstate the glory of the true religion and it is from the late 1270s onward that abulafa starts his major activity as a spiritual teacher he starts to travel again moving around constantly doing missionary activity he taught maimonides guide to the perplexed in places like italy and started to develop his own very unique form of kabbalah in his writings and the teachings that he presented to some of his students at the time he presents a version of kabbalah that is quite different from the theosophical version of the zohar abulaffia's main focus was on the divine names the letters of the hebrew alphabet and various meditative techniques that would help the practitioner reach an ecstatic mystical experience of union with the active intellect and ultimately with god himself he called his teaching the prophetic kabbalah and it is referred to either as this or as ecstatic kabbalah by scholars and people today his claim to be a prophet was of course rather controversial not only did mainstream judaism teach that prophecy had ended during biblical times but also that a prophet could only appear in the holy land and abu lafar did not meet any of these requirements but when abuelavia refers to himself as a prophet this doesn't necessarily mean what we usually mean when we talk about prophets he isn't an especially chosen messenger who relays the word of god in a direct sense very significantly abu lafa views the mystical experience of uniting with the active intellect or god as essentially a prophetic experience anyone who can reach and experience this state of consciousness can thus be considered a prophet and it was abhalafia's job to be a guide to help other people reach prophecy as well similar points can be made for his claim to be the messiah he didn't really understand this concept in the more traditional way he didn't see himself as establishing some earthly kingdom of god or a new jerusalem as such instead his messianic activity was an esoteric and internal one he was to bring about an inner spiritual transformation to the jews and the other peoples of the world by again revealing the secrets of the divine names and teaching people to through the use of these names reach prophetic ecstatic experience in the words of scholar eliot r wolfson quote on this score the messiah is not a literal historical figure the proverbial one who is coming in the future but instead a metaphorical denotation of the intellect or to be more exact the process of conjunction that unites the human and divine anyone who attains the state of unification can be considered to have achieved this status of the anointed one and it is in this sense that abualah identifies himself as the messiah that is he is the one to reveal the knowledge of the name that facilitates the ecstatic experience which renders every individual messianic but at the same time he did indeed see himself as a messiah that was to bring a kind of earthly change as well he seems to have predicted an apocalyptic event that was to take place in either 1290 or 1291 in which he would be revealed to the world as the messiah and after which the rule and dominion of christianity would be brought down with the help of his teachings these messianic pretensions can be seen by the fact that he traveled around a lot after this point doing various kinds of missionary activity he was a lot in sicily he was in in italy in the italian mainland he was in greece and maybe even all the way to france but no event can showcase this kind of messianic fervor more than an event that allegedly took place in the year 1280. in a vision that abuddhafia had a few years before he had been told that he was to travel to rome to meet the pope in order to convert him to judaism and this conversion of the pope would be the instigating event of the transformation that was to culminate 10 years later in 1291 and indeed he took this very seriously in 1280 abuelavia set off to meet pope nicholas iii at his summer residence in soriano the pope himself apparently found out about abelafa's plans and made sure to send a message to him saying that he was indeed welcome and that they had prepared a nice pile of wood on which abu lafa would be burned when he arrived but in spite of these threats the jewish mystic still went ahead with his plans to go to the castle and quite amazingly it is said that right before or as abulaffia was to arrive the pope suddenly died now this is actually a confirmed historical event that we can find in various archives like the vatican archives for example luckily for abalafa this probably saved his life as instead of being burned at the stake he was instead just imprisoned for a while and then released and abalaf of course saw this as a great win and as as a sign of his great prophetic or messianic identity and for the next ten years abulathy would continue to teach and travel around this region he especially spent a lot of time in italy and especially on the island of sicily but his very bold claims of prophecy of course didn't go unnoticed and he soon found himself under attack by other jewish authorities and scholars concern was raised about him and one of the leading scholars in barcelona at the time rabbi solomon bin abraham ibn adrit started an all-out war against abu lafaye in many letters and statements solomon eben addret gravely criticizes abuelafia as a trickster and a fraud among other things he wrote quote that trickster may the name of the wicked wrought abraham who set himself up as a prophet and messiah in sicily who seduced with his falsehood some of the children of israel and had i not slammed the door in his face by the mercy of god with his imaginary and false teachings he almost got going and would have annihilated the community very harsh words indeed and of course a condemnation from such a leading jewish scholar at the time left a huge black mark on abalafia's reputation he spent the last years of his life often responding to these accusations while also continuing to teach his ecstatic kabbalah due to this criticism he even had to hide for a while on the island of contino near sicily and it seems that his last years were indeed spent around this area probably in sicily itself the year 1291 which abu lafa had prophesized as being the apocalyptic turning point when he would be revealed as the messiah came and went without anything particularly spectacular happening but it is also this year that all information about abalafa stops there is no trace of him after this date which has led most scholars to conclude that he must have died at around this time others might speculate that the fact that this great event that he had been expecting never actually happens may have something to do with his sudden disappearance but even if habilaffias claims to be the messiah never really came to fruition that doesn't diminish the fact that he was still a brilliant thinker mystical teacher a kind of genius who introduced a new form of kabbalah one that implemented both maimonidean rationalistic philosophy but also the mysticism of the severiatsira and the ideas about the divine names and the letters of the hebrew alphabet and while solomon ibn adhrat's condemnation at the time did leave a black mark on his reputation in the immediate aftermath of his life to some degree balafi has very much been redeemed today and is often considered a great a great scholar and teacher and is very much admired today for example the great modern jewish mystic rabbi haim joseph david azulai wrote i say that in truth i see him as a great rabbi among the masters of secrets and his name is great in israel and none may alter his words for he is close to that book mentioned and his right hand shall save him in abulathya's ecstatic or prophetic kabbalah there is a huge emphasis on spiritual or mystical practices that is to elevate the soul to the world of intellect one of the most interesting aspects of abu lafa is that he straddles boundaries that we often conceive about religion or mysticism and philosophy and especially the relationship between these two at this time and in this particular context when we talk about medieval judaism it is often portrayed as a dialectic relationship consisting of maimonides rationalism on the one hand and the kabbalah or mysticism on the other being polar opposite understandings of judaism that were in constant conflict and while it is certainly true that this was a real debate at the time abulafi is a perfect example to show that things aren't so simple in fact abolafa is characterized by the fact that he is a strong and staunch supporter of maimonides and his rationalistic interpretation and understanding of religion but certainly he is also a follower of the tradition of kabbalah and definitely a mystic and neither are these aspects two different personalities or aspects within him that are in conflict in some way instead he harmonizes them and brings them together in a very interesting way that becomes the very unique and fascinating teachings that he is characterized by now this aspect of abu lafa and his relationship between his philosophical thinking and his very mystical side will be discussed at great length by dr justin sledge over on the channel esoterica this video is actually a collaboration with him and his video this his companion video to this one will be tackling that question in particular so don't forget to go watch that after this i also say that abu lafa was a cabalist but this too needs to be nuanced to some degree as we saw from his biography he did study the kabbalistic tradition in barcelona which was kind of the center of this tradition at the time and he also dove head first into earlier jewish mysticism including again the book of the seifer yet or book of formations but there seems to be some debate among scholars about abalafa's relationship to that other form of kabbalah the theosophical kabbalah again the theosophical kabbalah is the form most people are familiar with it is the kind that talks about god as ayn sorf or the infinite and of the emanations of the ten spirot best exemplified in the monumental work of the zohar some scholars argue and some of his own writings suggest that abalafa did to some degree at least belong to this tradition that he viewed the study of the theosophical kabbalah to be a prerequisite for entering upon his ecstatic or prophetic path this seems to imply that the mystical techniques and ideas that abuela presented was only an extension of the theosophical kabbalah a deeper form only meant for the most advanced students others including the great scholar moshe idel argue that abulafia was actually very critical of this other branch of thinkers making his form of kabbalah an independent and quite different school of thought this complex doctrine of divinity was alien to the spirit of abelafia who sees in it a danger of heresy he accuses certain capitalists apparently referring to ibn adrit among others of being even worse than christians while the latter believe in a triune god the spherotic catalyst believe in a system of ten distinct divine forces but regardless of his position regarding the other cabalists of his day we can all agree that he certainly emphasized different things in his teachings instead of complex speculation on different metaphysical forces apolaphia's mysticism is practical and at least depending on how you look at it simpler the core of abalafa's teachings is arguably the mystical experience because the ultimate goal for him and for those who followed his teachings is to attain prophecy or ecstasy in other words through various mystical practices which we'll get into abulatha tells us that the person can reach a complete union with the divine active intellect and ultimately probably even with god himself this cleaving to god or devkut in hebrew is a central idea for abulafja but it is one that can be quite elusive so what does any of this mean really uniting with god is a term that is used by many people in history but it can mean quite different things depending on who's talking and how is this experience reached we can start by exploring the philosophical or theological positions of abelafia he was jewish of course so his whole outlook is based on this fact this means for one thing that he is strictly monotheistic but as we have seen abu lafa was also a huge fan of maimonides who lived only a few decades prior and we can see this mirrored in many of his ideas he follows maimonides and thus also aristotle in identifying god essentially as pure intellect pure intelligible and act of intellection this makes a lot more sense to you if you have a background knowledge in philosophy but intellect is conceived of as a kind of mind or awareness so whereas the neo-platonists and thus many other jewish thinkers of his day would conceive of god as being beyond intellect and being hidden as the unfathomable one the hardcore aristotelians like maimonides and abulafia understood god as being intellect itself and this becomes very important for understanding his ideas of mystical union which we will see soon he also follows his philosophical guide and having a very rationalistic understanding of religion revelation and its teachings are understood through the filter of reason and logic so this is an important aspect to have in mind at first when talking about abulafa he is a maimonidean rationalist who understands his religion through this lens but at the same time he undeniably has some pretty wacky ideas too another one of the most important aspects of his teachings is the doctrine and practice involving the divine names and the letters of the hebrew alphabet so important is this aspect of his teachings that even uses it as a designation for his kind of kabbalah as compared to the primarily spanish theosophical group the latter he calls the kabbalah tasfirot the kabbalah of the spherot and contrasts this with his own kabbalah shemot the kabbalah of the divine names now this is one of those things that is very hard to explain in a short video like this but it is an aspect that is central in order to fully understand abulaffia he takes much of his ideas about this subject from the seifer yet the book of formations which is an ancient jewish mystical text that explores the creation of the universe by god through the twenty-two letters of the hebrew alphabet similar to developments in other mystical traditions at the time including sufism abulafia believed that language was a very powerful thing words and letters were not just arbitrary symbols representing various things based on social conventions as many of us hold today instead the connection between language and the actual realities of things in the world was seen as a lot more strong and direct there is a metaphysical connection between the word cow and the actual animal that is referred to language is eternal in that sense and not just based on social conventions to abulafja this is of course especially true for the hebrew language after all the language in which the torah is written and thus the most exalted being directly connected to divine revelation he thus belongs to that group of thinkers who felt that letters and words had a very important role to play not only in the ontological structure of the world but also in terms of mystical and spiritual practice to abelafia the divine names mentioned in the tanakh and torah and the letters of the hebrew alphabet have very strong powers that could be utilized in different ways to advance on the spiritual or mystical path their outer forms represent inner spiritual realities that connect them to the divine just like there is a direct connection between the word cow and an actual cow so there is a direct connection between a name of god and god himself and all of this becomes central aspects of the mystical practices that are at the core of abu lafa's ecstatic or prophetic kabbalah after all what is essential to abdi's teachings is spiritual practices we could talk all day about his theoretical philosophical ideas and maimonides and rationalistic philosophy and all of this but if we limit ourselves only to that we kind of miss the whole point the theosophical cabalists of the sverot were highly speculative whereas abulafja put most of his emphasis on the practical means of reaching prophecy techniques that helps the mystic leave behind the world of imagination and the material world both often identified with satan and to wake up to the divine world of intellect within a place where our true home and source is realized and where we can cleave or unite with the active intellect and even with god himself luckily for us we have a lot of writings by both abuelafi himself and some of his followers that gives instructions and accounts of many of these mystical practices in great detail the content of abu lafaye's ecstatic kabbalah consists of what we can in a very broad sense called different techniques of meditation and many of these techniques can sometimes be very elaborate first of all above it tells us that before going into any kind of such meditation one should be ritually pure and clean and also in seclusion quote be prepared for god or israelite make yourself ready to direct your heart to god alone cleanse the body and choose a lonely house where none shall hear your voice sit there in your closet and do not reveal your secret to any man if you can do it by day in the house but it is best if you complete it during the night in the hour when you prepare yourself to speak with a creator and you wish him to reveal his might to you then be careful to abstract all your thoughts from the vanities of the world what follows these preparations are very intricate techniques of concentration which usually involves the divine names abholavia teaches us to recite the names of god both internally but also vocally a practice that we of course recognize from many other religious traditions including sufism hinduism and the hesachasm of orthodox eastern christianity but what is so unique about abbalafi's technique is the way that implements the letters of the divine name so hebrew letters and combines them in various ways quote one must take the letters first as instructed in the written form which is an external thing to combine them and afterwards one takes them from the book with their combinations and transfers them to one's tongue and mouth and pronounces them until one knows them by heart afterwards he shall take them from his mouth already combined and transfer them to his heart and set his mind to understanding what is shown him in every language that he knows until nothing is left of them as this quote suggests abulatha's technique involves taking the letters of various divine names often those of the tetragrammaton yod here and combining them with one another as well as with letters of other divine names this is done first in written form on a piece of paper in front of oneself it is also then recited vocally until it is finally entirely internalized these recitations of letters involve various breathing techniques reminiscent of yogic practices as well as movements of the head and hands this recitation practice is as i've said quite reminiscent of other mystical practices but it is also quite unique in some ways whereas other meditative techniques will often focus on emptying the mind to be silent in order to reach some ecstatic experience or through different mantras that eventually become trans-inducing through there as a repetitive nature abulafa system of reciting the letters and names is one of cycles that are constantly evolving so it never becomes repetitive in the same way this keeps the mind concentrated and and focused at all times so it's not a way of emptying the mind to reach mystical experience it's to sort of over-occupy the mind to be so concentrated that this in itself leads to that transcendent experience and indeed as a result of these techniques at least according to ambalafa and his followers he eventually reaches intense mystical experiences that are often described by these writers in very intricate and often colorful ways the experience often begins as something very unpleasant and even fearful now i've read a lot of comments on my videos about various mystics that are critical saying you know you only believe this stuff because it sounds nice and comforting i don't know what kind of mysticism these people have been reading about maybe it's just the kind of new age or new religious movements kind of mysticism because the mystical experience or the teachings of many of these mystics be they jews or christians or muslims or whatever often present this kind of experience as something that is very challenging scary and even sometimes outright dangerous the initial stages of a mystical experience is explained by abu lafa as follows in the ozar eden ganous quote the hairs of your head will begin to stand up into the storm and your blood will begin to move out because of the living combination which speaks and all your body will begin to tremble and your limbs will begin to shake and you will fear a tremendous fear and the fear of god shall cover you this doesn't sound very comforting or pleasant to me and it is only after this initial stage according to abudhafya that the mystic then reaches a more kind of ecstatic and pleasant experience quote and you shall feel another spirit awakening within yourself and strengthening you and passing over your entire body and giving you pleasure and it will seem to you that balm has been poured over you from the crown of your head to your feet once or many times and you shall rejoice and feel from it a great pleasure with gladness and trembling what the contents of the further mystical experience is like is depicted in various ways many claim experiencing a light emitting from oneself others see divine names written before them and various other such visions but the culmination and the end goal of all these practices and the different stages is the transformative experience of devekut a hebrew word that is often translated as cleaving or often specifically as cleaving to god this is where in abelavia's terms prophecy is achieved and the soul and intellect of the person becomes united with the active intellect and most likely as we will see with god himself but to understand the way abu lafa talks about this we need to get a little theoretical again first as i've already talked about abu lafa adopts the philosophical tradition of aristotelianism and to some degree also neoplatonism by talking about this thing called intellect a philosophical term that can be very difficult to grasp but it can simply be explained as a mind or as pure thinking sometimes we can think of intellect as equivalent to something like consciousness or awareness but one that is also active and contains knowledge the intellect in philosophical terms is a higher level of reality than the material world to abu lafa and his predecessors this intellect is our more pure spiritual or well intellectual core that is often placed in contrast to things like matter so we want to focus on intellect and not on the material world because the intellect is where we have a kind of connection to the divine abulafja again identifies the intellect with the angel michael and often contrasts it both to the material world but also to something he calls imagination the latter two are often associated with satan while the intellect is exalted as being divine and when it comes to intellect abu lafa conceives of different levels of intellect there is the divine intellect or mind of god himself but then below that there is something he calls the active intellect a kind of universal intellect that is the source of all individual intellects and souls and then obviously there are the individual intellects and different human beings without getting into too much philosophy here when abu dhabi talks about his mystical experiences and practices he often formulates them in philosophical terms of intellect it is the intellect that we are seeking that is the intellect that we want to cultivate and to ultimately unite with in these different practices we leave the material world of our body behind and ideally enter into the realm of intellect and in all of this there is often talk about a unitive experience since all of our souls or individual intellects originally come from the active intellect the goal is to return to that original state of unity where our individuality becomes one with the active intellect and is annihilated in it quote the ultimate composite which is man who comprises all the spherot and whose intellect is the active intellect and when you will untie it not you will be united with it in a unique union another quote he prophesized according to the entity which causes him to pass from potentiality into the final and perfect actuality and he and he become one entity inseparable during the act from quotes like this it becomes clear that abu lafa considers the peak of the mystical experience and thus a prophecy to be a uniting of the soul to the active intellect very few would deny this but there are also other aspects of abalafa's writings that suggest that he goes even further than this in claiming that the soul can actually unite with god himself now this may not seem all that strange to some of you the idea of the mystical union with god is a language that is used by many different people throughout history but this is actually a kind of point of contention or at least has been if this kind of idea of the mystical union is present in judaism the famous scholar gershom sholem famously argued that the idea of a complete mystical union with god is not present at all or at least is very uncommon in jewish thoughts including in the kabbalah but many today including moshe edel who has written a lot about abalafa in particular argues that we can see clear indications of this kind of language in both abuelavia his followers and other strands of jewish mysticism and in the case of abuelafa the evidence is pretty convincing take for example this quote from the benefit of the knowledge of the name of god is its being the cause of man's attainment of the actual intellection of the active intellect and the benefit of the intellection of the active intellect is the ultimate aim of the life of the intellectual soul and it is the reason of the life of the next world this aim is the union of the soul by this intellection with god forever or another even more striking section when the mystic quote has felt the divine touch and perceived its nature it seems right and proper to me and to every perfected man that he should be called master because his name is like the name of his master beat only in one or in many or in all of his names for now he is no longer separated from his master and behold he is his master and his master is he for he is so intimately united with him that he cannot by any means be separated from him for he is he it seems pretty clear that the soul can experience a uniting with or a becoming one with the eternal god himself the idea of one's soul or intellect uniting with god isn't all that surprising however when we look a little deeper into his theoretical ideas now the parts of oneself that unites with god is of course not the body or any kind of any part of the material aspect of one's self but it's only the intellectual self the the it is the intellect that unites with god remember also that abulafa conceives of god as pure intellect intelligible and act of intellection god is intellect in the absolute sense so when he talks about various intellects including the active intellect or individual intellect it is not that these are separated but parts of a whole in moshe idell's words abulafia is professing a kind of limited pantheism or an intellectual pantheism quote it is worth remarking that abulafja's mysticism includes not only the transformational unitive component but also a limited pantheistic facet according to this cabalist the various intellectual parts of the existence are part of one continuum we should be careful about taking this too far and claiming that abu dhabi may be professed something similar to even arabic or the unity of being instead what is happening here is that abuela sees the intellectual world in particular as being a one continuum that starts and ends with god god is the intellect and all other intellects flow from this absolute so the human being insofar as the intellectual part of the soul is concerned is a kind of spark of the divine whereas his material body or the material world in general is the very opposite of this so since he has this idea of a kind of limited or intellectual pantheism where the world of the intellect is really one thing a kind of oneness this means that uniting with the active intellect is in a way really the same thing as uniting with god one of the followers of abu lafa although one who never actually met him personally isak of aker writes a quite compelling section about this topic quote i heard from the sage rabbi nathan an explanation of this name i.e the intellect you must know that when the divine intellect descends it reaches the active intellect and it's called active intellect and when the active intellect descends to the acquired intellect it is called acquired intellect and when the acquired intellect descends to the passive intellect it is called passive intellect and when the passive intellect descends to the soul which is in man it is called the soul we therefore find that the divine intellect which is in the human soul is called the soul and this is from above to below and if you shall deserve and cleave to the divine intellect happy are you because you have returned to your source and root which is called literally the divine intellect and this person is called the man of god that is to say a divine man creating worlds it is very interesting how abu lafia uses a very philosophical aristotelian and maimonidean language to explain his mystical experiences as i mentioned earlier this is one of the most interesting and fascinating aspects of abelafia how he uses both of these seemingly contradictory parts of a jewish intellectual heritage of the time and harmonizes them in this way the mystical experience which is ultimately something that is completely ineffable and beyond a description is made sense or abu lafa tries to explain it in a way through this language of aristotelian philosophy we can summarize by saying that abu lafa's ecstatic or prophetic kabbalah is one that is primarily concerned with the spiritual or meditative practices described earlier employing the divine names of god and letters of the hebrew alphabet to become unfettered from the world of matter and body and instead the actualization of the soul's intellectual aspect until one reaches the experience of devekut of cleaving to the active intellect and ultimately as we have seen to god himself until the two have become one and he is he you can see why he would be a somewhat controversial figure people who say things like this are usually somewhat controversial at least in some circles his condemnation by other leading cabalists or jewish thinkers at the time like ibn adrit did leave a black mark on his reputation but his influence did not die with him he had a group of devoted followers who would continue to spread his ideas and indeed as i also talked about in the beginning abbalafiya has been redeemed to some degree today and he is often considered a greatly respected and admired teacher and scholar his writings continue to spread and influence later thinkers while in the immediate aftermath of his death we don't see his ideas being all too popular or influential but only a few centuries later they would be picked up by some very significant and influential circles abalafa's ecstatic kabbalah had a big impact and influence on the great capitalists of svat in the 16th century including on isec luria one of the greatest and most impactful capitalists in history and even later still he would also influence the hasidic movement in whose teachings we can find many similarities with what abu lafa says as well as the so-called christian kabbalah and much of the kabbalah that we find today that is sometimes removed from its jewish roots many of these movements contain elements of abulafa's teachings so while al-balafi himself may not be the most famous figure today neither necessarily in judaism but definitely not in the world generally his profound ideas have had an impact on some of the major religious and intellectual traditions in our contemporary world regardless of your approach to this man it's impossible to look at his life or his ideas and not be endlessly fascinated and intrigued i'll see you next time [Music] you

Channel: Let's Talk Religion

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Keywords: Abulafia, Abraham Abulafia, Ecstatic Kabbalah, Prophetic Kabbalah, Kabbalah, Abulafia meditation, Kabbalah meditation, sefirot, sefiroth, Zohar, Kabbalah Zohar, Cabbala, Cabala, Kabbalah explained, Kabbalah documentary, Judaism, Jewish philosophy, Maimonides, Jewish mysticism, mysticism judaism, pantheism, What is Kabbalah?, Madonna Kabbalah, Religion history, occult, esotericism, Jewish esotericism, occult judaism, Hebrew letters, YHWH

Id: AbgC920OFbA

Length: 46min 28sec (2788 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 28 2021