For my first article here on this blog, I am going to swim right into the depths of Mysticism.
First, a quick introduction: My name is Jeff. I am an active Freemason, a Kabbalist, and a student of comparative religion, religious history, Biblical scholarship, textual criticism, and the Western Esoteric Tradition. When it comes to engaging in creativity and finding fulfillment in life, I embrace rational methods (logic and epistemology), as well as non-rational methods (emotions, dreams, art, music, etc.), but I do my best to avoid engaging in the irrational (in the sense of logic, not in the sense of Pi), and I reject the notion of supernatural beings, preferring to operate off of evidence-based conclusions.
Today, I’d like to illustrate some concepts I’ve learned from my studies in Jewish Mysticism that I find resonant with the spiritual ideas David Lynch presents when he speaks about Transcendental Meditation and the Unified Field. But, before we get to the pure light of the Unified Field, let’s shine it through a prism and take a look at some of its various pieces:
The Sefer Yetzirah, one of the most ancient books in the Jewish mystical tradition says that the world was created through 32 paths of Wisdom, which are enumerated as the 10 Sephirot and the 22 letters of the Hebrew Aleph-Bet. It further divides the Aleph-Bet into three categories: 3 Mother Letters, 7 Double Letters, and 12 Simple Letters.
The three mothers are the archetypal representatives of the three categories of sounds (aspirant, mute, and sibilant) as well as of the three primordial elements:
א Alef, the ancestor to our Latin letter “A”, represents air, wind, or spirit. Its most primitive form is the head of an ox or bull—a living, breathing creature. It represents aspirant (breathy) sounds.
מ Mem, the ancestor to our Latin letter “M”, represents water, and its form is a zig-zag shape, like our modern capital letter M. It represents muted (humming) sounds. Water is also representative of the womb and source of life.
ש Shin, the ancestor to our Latin letter “S”, represents fire, and the precise meaning of its ancient form is debated, but contenders are: A pair of front teeth, a compound bow, a pair of breasts. Its more modern form is tongues of flame, something like a campfire glyph. Whether chewing, hunting, feeding of young, or cooking food, all of these symbols have to do with devouring food or prey in order to sustain life. The letter Shin represents sibilant (hissing) sounds.
Of these three, Water and Fire are often expressed as opposites which are mediated between by the force of Air.
I already mentioned that we would be looking at these like light split by a prism, and indeed, colors are often associated with these, as well:
Alef is Green or Yellow, the color of plant life and vegetation. This is particularly appropriate as plants are essentially machines that take the light of the sun, and the water from the earth, and synthesize these to produce oxygen.
(Return to the Place: he Magic, Meditation, and Mystery of Sefer Yetzirah, by Rabbi Jill Hammer, is a recent book that elaborates on the symbolism of Sefer Yetzirah. I recommend the book for those who want to explore these concepts more in a meditative practice, but I also wanted to shows its cover here, because it features stylized versions of the letters Alef, Mem, and Shin, each made to represent their corresponding element and color.)
You’ll note that there are only three primordial elements specified here, as opposed to the four elements one would expect when comparing these ideas to Aristotle’s conception of matter. That is because the water we are speaking of is sea water, also known as brine or saltwater.
The Bahir, the first book describing Kabbalah, a further development of Jewish mysticism, provides a mystical commentary to certain passages from the Hebrew Bible.
Genesis 1:1-2 (NRSVUE) reads: “When God began to create the heavens and the earth, the earth was complete chaos, and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.”
The words translated “complete chaos” and “darkness” are actually extremely difficult to translate with certainty, and vary wildly between English translations, another translation rendering them “formless” and “void.”
These two Hebrew words are Tohu and Bohu. Paragraph two of the Bahir says:
Rabbi Berachiah said: It is written, “The earth was Chaos (Tohu) and Desolation (Bohu).” What is the meaning of the word “was” in this verse? This indicates that the Chaos existed previously [and already was]. What is Chaos (Tohu)? Something that confounds (Taha) people. What is Desolation (Bohu)? It is something that has substance. This is the reason that it is called Bohu, that is, Bo Hu - “it is in it.”
Waves in the sea, zig-zags, or perhaps noise, akin to television static are all symbols that could describe Tohu. Tohu is also etymologically related to Tehom (the sea, called “the deep” in the same verse), as well as to Tahamat, or Tiamat. The ancient Babylonians envisioned Tiamat as a ferocious water deity, or a Sea Serpent.
Reading Bohu as Bo - Hu is a word-play, because in Hebrew the syllable Be- or Bo- prefixing a word is a preposition meaning “in”, and Hu is the masculine or non-specific singular pronoun “He” or “it.” In other words, Bohu is what is “in the sea.” And, as Earth is the missing element, in verses 9 and 10 of Genesis 1, the Sea is gathered together to allow the Dry Land to appear, which is then called Earth. In other words, the brine can be separated, extracting the liquid water to leave behind dry mineral salt. Also of note, the word Bohu is the etymological root of the word Behemoth, the archetypal great living creature or beast of the land. (It is what was found in the Sea, brought upon the dry land, and animated by Air.)
I said earlier that water is usually associated with Blue, but primordial water—the water of the Sea of Chaos—can also be associated with the color Purple. Purple is in fact a unique type of color.
The visible light spectrum contains colors ranging from those with the lowest frequency (highest wave-length), red, through those with a medium frequency and wave-length, especially green, and continuing on to those with the highest frequency (and shortest wave-length), blue, indigo, and violet. Violet is barely detectable by the human eye. All of these mentioned colors have a specific frequency, and the human eye has three different types of cones that are attuned to detect three different frequency ranges. We call them red, green, and blue cones, respectively. But what is amazing, is that when the human eye receives a chaos, or one might say, a harmony, of two frequencies at once, our brain does the job of synthesizing an experience for this phenomenon. When we receive both low and high frequencies at the same time, in other words, when our red and blue cones are both stimulated, we see a color which does not exist anywhere on the frequency spectrum: Purple. The color purple is very visible to us, but rather than having a frequency of its own, it only exists as a result of the mixture of frequencies near opposite ends of the spectrum. Purple is consequently hard to photograph or reproduce accurately. Purple dyes are also among the hardest to match. You can pick out two fabrics that both look matching, but under different lighting conditions, one may reveal itself to be more red, while the other appears more blue.
What better color to represent what can only be seen by turning our awareness within than the color which is only existent within our minds.
Consider now, paragraphs 11 through 13 of the Bahir, however I am going to modify the English translation I have at hand to use the word “Turbulence” instead of “Evil”—
What is the meaning of the verse (Ecclesiastes 7:14), “Also one opposite the other was made by God.” He created Desolation (Bohu) and placed it in Peace, and He created Chaos (Tohu) and placed it in Turbulence. Desolation is in Peace, as it is written (Job 25:2), “He makes peace in His high places.” This teaches us that Michael, the prince to God’s right, is water and hail, while Gabriel, the prince to God’s left, is fire. The two are reconciled by the Prince of Peace. This is the meaning of the verse, “He makes peace in His high places.”
How do we know that Chaos is in Turbulence? It is written (Isaiah 45:7), “He makes peace and creates turbulence.” How does this come out? Turbulence is from Chaos, while Peace is from Desolation. He thus created Chaos and placed it in Turbulence, [as it is written “He makes peace and creates turbulence.” He created Desolation and placed it in Peace, as it is written, “He makes peace in His high places.”]
Rabbi Bun also sat and expounded: What is the meaning of the verse (Isaiah 45:7), “He forms light and creates darkness?” Light has substance. Therefore, the term “formation" is used with regard to it. Darkness has no substance, and therefore, with regard to it, the term “creation" is used. It is similarly written (Amos 4:12), He forms mountains and creates the wind.” Another explanation is this: Light was actually brought into existence, as it is written (Genesis 1:3), “And God said, let there be light.” Something cannot be brought into existence unless it is made. The term "formation" is therefore used. In the case of darkness, however, there was no making, only separation and setting aside. It is for this reason that the term “created” (Bara) is used. It has the same sense as in the expression, “That person became well (hi-Bria).”
Much meaning can be extracted from this. I will point out just a few key ideas here. Things are either made/formed/transformed — from an existing substance. Or they are without substance, and thus said to be “created.” Taking this for the sake of discussion to be an accurate description of events, God creates turbulence: His spiritual force, the wind, is created (an action, not a substance), and it blows upon the surface of the sea “creating” turbulence where it was not present before — still, the turbulence is a state of motion, and is not a substance. Yet he forms light, and forms mountains. (You could think of the word “forms” like “sculpts” or “draws out”) Both of these are separating out the substance from the more diverse mixed substance (ultimately deriving from the chaos of the deep, what David Lynch refers to as the Unified Field.) While this Unified Field or Great Sea contains within it the potential of infinite diversity, there is yet no distinction of “things” within it.
The Great Sea represents the womb, the birthplace of all, but the Earth which is contained in it in its primordial state, and which is separated out from it, is the elemental representative of the tomb, the place where all will return for their rest in the eternities.
To the Kabbalist, the great water, Mem, is like the Ein (without, void) or the Ein Sof (without end, infinite) and all other things are emanated from it through a process of veiling, by a process of contraction or withdrawal (Tzimtzum), creating a conceptual (but not actual) space or vacuum, so that the Ein Sof Aur (endless light) is hidden in darkness, allowing us to exist (and have our own independent sense of self identity) in a world of things, of distinctions.
Through meditation we can transcend beyond the illusion of our separateness and dip into the spiritual realms, ultimately coming closer to the supreme Unity. All things that are things emanated from this unity, and are truly one with it. It is where we come from, it is where all of our ideas come from.
You’ll notice that I’ve used the symbols and language of Jewish Kabbalah to explain these concepts, but they can also be explained through Mysticism rooted in Hinduism, such as Transcendental Meditation. In fact, Mysticism has universal qualities which themselves transcend beyond individual religions or cultural understanding. The recognition of and achievement of access to or insight into the Unified Field, the oneness of all things (or more accurately, beyond things, to a state of no-thing-ness) is an experience that various practitioners of all mystic traditions have attained. The words chosen to clothe the description of their experience are necessarily limited to the tradition they are working within, but it is often the case that mystics from two traditions rooted in cultures that would otherwise be at-odds with each other (for instance, a Christian Mystic, and a Muslim Mystic—a Sufi) can speak to each other with an understanding that results in a genuine understanding, friendship and peace.
The Zig-Zag floor of the Black Lodge might seem to be celebrating the contrast or distinction between opposites (a person and their shadow-self doppelgänger.) The Purple Sea contains these elements within it, yet it is a place of chaos, without distinction.
I hope this brief exploration of Kabbalah and the Mysticism of elements and colors has prepared your mind to begin to perceive Twin Peaks and the other creative expressions of David Lynch on a wavelength that you weren’t tuned into as clearly before.
Until next time, I hope we can all enjoy some beautiful blue skies and golden sunshine all along the way.
Great article!!
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