In the Kabbalah tradition, the Tree of Life is the central core from which one can come to know God-consciousness.

In the Bible, the Tree of Life is mentioned in Genesis. After God created the Garden of Eden, He caused lots of trees to grow ... two of them were very special: the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge.

Nearly every Christian and Jew will know the story of how Adam and Eve were tempted to eat from the Tree of Knowledge by Satan:

And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever:

Therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken.

From this, we know then that eating the fruit from the Tree of Life confers immortality.

The Tree of Life has its origin in the Jewish philosophy known as the Qabalah, where it is seen as a snapshot picture of creation.

The three main Abrahamic religions - Judaism, Christianity and Islam - all have a concept of an absolute starting point ... the Creation of the Universe. This is in direct opposition to Eastern beliefs which assume that the birth and death of the Universe is endlessly cyclical.

Judaism handles this tricky idea by distinguishing between the "relative Universe" in which we live, and the "absolute" which lies beyond eternity, which is timeless and without form. Beyond our own Universe lie the "veils of negative existence":
- the first veil is "Ain Soph Aur", the Limitless Light which permeates everything in creation.
- The second veil is "Ain Soph", the Limitless or Endlessness.
- Beyond this lies "Ain", the Ultimate Void.

According to Jewish tradition, what we call the Universe condensed out of this void. Rabbi Moses ben Nahman (1194-1270), also known as Nahmanides or the "Ramban" for short, describes the creation of the Universe in his famous work Commentary on the Torah:

At the briefest instant following creation all the matter of the universe was concentrated in a very small place, no larger than a grain of mustard. The matter at this time was so thin, so intangible, that it did not have real substance. It did have, however, a potential to gain substance and form and to become tangible matter. From the initial concentration of this intangible substance in its minute location, the substance expanded, expanding the universe as it did so. As the expansion progressed, a change in the substance occurred. This initially thin noncorporeal substance took on the tangible aspects of matter as we know it. From this initial act of creation, from the ethereally thin pseudosubstance, everything that has existed, or will ever exist, was, is, and will be formed.

Although written over 700 years ago, this is astonishingly close to the current scientific consensus, which supports the "Big Bang" theory of the creation of the Universe. In this model, the Universe came into existence around 15 billion years ago as a "singularity" - a single tiny point (actually far, far smaller than a mustard seed!) of energy, which expanded rapidly. As the Universe expanded and cooled, matter "condensed" out of this energy to create all the galaxies, stars, planets, people, plants and everything that we see around us today.

The glyph of the Tree of Life represents ten spheres (called "sephirot"), or "emanations" by which God created the Universe. In Genesis, the phrase "Elohim said" (Elohim is the name - "im" is a plural ending in Hebrew, interestingly - used for God in the first chapter of Genesis) occurs ten times; these are supposed to correlate with the ten emanations.

Each sephira has a name, starting with "Kether" which means "the Crown", and culminating in "Malkuth" which means "the Kingdom" and represents the physical Earth. All sephira also have their Hebrew letters, numbers and other symbolic connotations. Thus the Tree of Life shows the "lightning flash of creation" which emanated from the void beyond Kether to manifest the physical Earth, passing through all the other sephirot on the way.

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Thanks for sharing this, I look forward to learning more about the Tree of Life from you. I have read some books and a friend of mine has studied it for 30 years, but still even with that help it seems complicated to me.

~Peace

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Let the beauty of what you love, be what you do ~Rumi

It can get *very* complicated at times, but once you grasp the basics you can easily see how you can use the Tree of Life and apply it to your life.

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The Supernal Triad

The Supernal Triad is the top three sephira of the Tree of Life. These three represent the world of spirit. They lie above "The Abyss" - below the Abyss, everything is duality; a balance of opposites. Above the Abyss, all opposites are reconciled.

They are 'Kether' (Crown), 'Chockmah' (wisdom) and 'Binah' (understanding). In Hebrew they are written thus, reading from top to bottom, right to left:


Kether (white) is associated with pure spirit, Chockmah (grey) is associated with spiritual will, and Binah (black) is associated with spiritual awareness.

Here is there position on the Tree of Life:


Here, the Supernal Triad represents the world of spirit - the single source from which we all came ... God. This concept of all belonging and eventually returning to the single source of all is a common across many different religions, philosophies and beliefs. It's also becoming a widely-held belief in the world of physics as well.

This extract comes from Timothy Ferris's book "The Whole Shebang - The State of the Universe(s) Report":

"Suppose that, as string theory implies, the universe began as a hyperdimensional bubble of space, all but four of the dimensions of which compacted to form what we today call subatomic particles. Those particles look to us like zillions of individual things, but that is merely their appearance in the four dimensions of spacetime. In hyperspace they could very well still be one thing - could, therefore, be not only connected but identical.

In that case, we live in a universe that presents two complementary aspects. One is large, old and expanding and in some sense mechanical. The other is built on forms of space and time unfamiliar to us, and is everywhere interconnected. We peer through the keyhole of quantum weirdness and see a little of this ancient, original side of the cosmos.

To assert that the universe is deeply interconnected is to echo what mystics have been saying for thousands of years. This can be a liability in the scientific community, which has heard more than enough of complacent, shallow-draft assertions to the effect that science amounts to little more than proving what Lao Tzu and Chief Seattle were saying all along. Yet some of the most important scientific and philosophical thinking in history has been impelled by mystical motives."

The Barefoot Doctor, in his book "Barefoot Doctor's Handbook for the Urban Warrior: A Spiritual Survival Guide" gives a rather interesting summary:

"If everyone in the entire universe, every woman, man, centipede, Martian, shark, dog, suicide bomber, saint, butterfly, hooker, bigot, reflexologist and cab-driver, were simultaneously to drop an advanced level, hardcore-heavyweight meditation, and all went deep enough inside, we'd all meet up, along with everyone who's ever lived, ever, in one absurdly mad, huge inner chamber, and to our utter astonishment (feigned of course), we'd, you'd, I'd discover that there'd only been one of us here all the time."

Of course, to actually experience the Supernal Triad is basically to become 'enlightened' and realise God-Consciousness, to become one with God and return back to the single source of creation - God. Most Jewish Mystics attempt this through Jewish meditation not dissimilar from Buddhist meditation.

If there's any questions, feel free to post.

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Daath or Da'at - the Hidden Sephira


In Hebrew, Da'at is "knowledge, perception, or learning." Knowledge without Understanding. It is not really a sephira; it is a "result" of it's location on the Tree of Life. It is situated in the area of the Tree called The Abyss. It is sometimes called "The False Head" - coming up from the bottom of the Tree, it can look like Kether; but looks are deceiving. Da'at is a "conjectured" sephirah that falls on the path of Gimel. Da'at is not the jewel that lies beyond the Abyss - it is IN the Abyss, and is also the gateway to the terrifying reverse side of the Tree, the zone of the Qlipoth - the demons and diseases that haunt our darker side.

It is midway on the longest path, and central in the upper hexagonal array. Binah and Chochma straddle the polarity between undefined knowledge and differentiation; Keter and Da'at straddle the polarity between cosmic consciousness and individual consciousness.

The joining opens a path for the Shekhina - a Hebrew word for the immanent aspect of the Creator, seen in Jewish philosophy as the female aspect of God. The "above" aspect of Shekhina is Binah, and the "below" aspect is Malchut.

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Sounds like the Yggdrasil tree of the Norse and Germanic tribes.

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Deutschland Das Nationalbewusstsein!

55th Stanza.
Wise in measure should each man be;
but let him not wax too wise;
seldom a heart will sing with joy
if the owner be all too wise.

Havamal~

Today we drink tomorrow we die.

Be weary of the machine so you don't become one yourself.

I believe there is a connection, but I've yet to study much of the Yggdrasil tree beyond the basics. Perhaps you'd like to expand on it?

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http://www.answers.com/topic/yggdrasil


The tree of life in Germanic or Norse lore.

It is the tree that holds all existence together.

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Deutschland Das Nationalbewusstsein!

55th Stanza.
Wise in measure should each man be;
but let him not wax too wise;
seldom a heart will sing with joy
if the owner be all too wise.

Havamal~

Today we drink tomorrow we die.

Be weary of the machine so you don't become one yourself.