ATD | Kabbalah & Divine Light (HUGE SPOILER - only read if you finished!)

[Mark Kohut]

Bryan,
   
  Wonderful connections.......I agree with your feeling about "respect"......
  in a pub conversation, I would argue that TRP might believe: if the universe ain't like this,
  it could be and maybe Ought to be.....
   
  Ties in all of the "as bbove, so below" lines from M & D and ATD.?........
  there is something relevant to this in Vineland, I think, which I must find.
   
  And perhaps one might say TRP's deep disillusionment with life (as lived), with History as it has been is because we humans in the aggregate do not come close to living out
  a worthy Divine Light??....
   
  Thanks,
  MK
   
  

Bryan Snyder <wilsonistrey at gmail.com> wrote:
                I was reading about Kabbalah (cause of the GR allusions) and I found this section that really seems to tie into ATD, especially with regard to the end when Merle, Lew and 
 shoot I forget the third guy (book is not on me
 )um
 I totally forget the third person, who has a shop with Merle
 
   
  They put the crystal they obtained from the Balkans and shoot a photograph through it and the photograph shows the person’s life since the photo, and before and also
 alternative life-paths.
   
  Here’s what struck me as very relevant:
  “Moreover in Kabbalah, Divine Light is the carrier of consciousness.
  "The human soul is a part of the Creator [that is, Divine Light]. Therefore, there is no difference between Him and the soul. The difference is that He is the 'whole' and the soul is a 'part'. This resembles a stone carved from a rock. There is no difference between the stone and the rock except that the rock is a 'whole' and the stone is a 'part'". (Yhuda Ashlag, Introduction in Ha-Sulam.)
  Thus, a human's consciousness is a part of the Divine Consciousness, where the rest of the infinite Divine has been hidden from the human. This kabbalistic [sic] concept that consciousness is an aspect of Divine Light is similar to the protoscientific [sic] hypothesis that the electromagnetic field generated by the brain is the carrier of consciousness. In other words if the hypothesis is correct, consciousness would be an aspect of light (electromagnetic radiation) and not an aspect of the physical brain per se.”
  So I’m wondering if anyone has any idea, either suspicion or gleaned from some source somewhere, about TRP’s feelings about Kabbalah.  While reading GR, it seems like he parodies it entirely but he does it with 
 what I could only describe as some perverse respect
 while he seems to poke fun
 it seems like the fun an insider would poke.
   
  Take care and happy reading
 and re-reading
 and re-reading
 
  B
   



       
---------------------------------
Got a little couch potato? 
Check out fun summer activities for kids.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20070511/4ada875e/attachment.html>