Altruism without intuition of transcendence is sentimental idolatry.

An intuition of transcendence requires consciousness of being conceived, comprehended, enveloped, embraced by layer upon layer of interlapping, ever-magnifying magnanimity approaching one soul of infinite magnitude, at once both absolutely one and infinitely plural. Chokhmah and Binah proceed from the principle of immanence the possibility of One within an infinite absoluteness with nothing beside it to give number meaning.

Without two, one is meaningless. Lurianic Kabbalah solved the riddle of One without two, by positing a prenumeric duality of infinity and nothingness, which makes a miraculous duality out of nonquantity: Ztimtzum.

Poor, lucky humans! Thrown into a world peopled with numerable objects, we know nothing (literally) of the truer everted word from which we emerged — our omniscience everted to the purest ignorance!

So when we hear “infinity”, we cannot help but hear it as a quantity of limitless addition — more heaped upon more, across time, moment heaped upon moment. Infinity, however is a quality preceding quantity, which contains within itself one possibility, which for us, is our sole actuality: quantity.

And when we hear “nothing”, we cannot help but hear it as the absence of a quantity — zero. But nothingness is not an absence of something, it is only the divine innovation of relative absence of infinity — the possibility of finitude, manifested first as obliviousness. It is a patch of shade in infinite light in which all is pre-articulately infinite, and finitude is latent possibility. To understate this, almost-but-not-quite-infinitely (“myriadically”) it is as articulate a “thing” as a ripple across a spark of a flame in the heart of a zillion overlaid suns. (Indians have thousands of years head start on any of us, attempting to indicate qualitative infinity to finitely-bound human minds.)

With infinity and nothingness, we now have two. And from two the quantity one can be derived.

Qualitatively, we pre-count, Infinite, Void, Two, One, Zero and now the quantities one, two, three and onward to myriad (the indeterminately large, incorrectly called infinity by quantlocked minds), and backwards through negation, starting with zero, to negative one through negative myriad.

Zero is a shadow cast by a shadow. Zero is the shadow of nothingness, and nothingness is the shadow of infinity.

Our best access to nothingness is witnessing ex nihilo revelation, against which infinity is dimly intimated.

I was winding up to say something, but I cannot remember now…

…

Oh.

Altruism is the false transcendence of the quantlocked soul.

It knows something important is out there, but its faith can acknowledge only what its stubby mental fingers can grasp and cognize. We grab a garden by a berry, cram it in our pie hole, and strut around like little gods, like we created that garden by consuming it.

Its world is objects, comprising littler objects, composing larger ones. Itty-bitty subatomic objects heap up to make, vast, vast supergalactic objects.

Ah, sahib, it is objects all the way down and objects all the way up. Is the very tallest heap — taller even than the famous tower of Babel — is the megaultraobject named “God”. Do you believe or disbelieve in the megaultraobject? Such is the debate endlessly rehearsed by quantlocked theologians vs quantlocked atheists.

Ah sahib, until we learn to evert infinity and nothingness, and both together, and both apart, it is religious category mistakes all the way down and all the way up.

Altruism grasps Eden by the fruit and bestows upon it all kind of divine benevolence, without inhabiting the transcendent enveloping relationship that gives such benevolence meaning. The fig-leaf of moral vanity, the strutting about of “I am good, selfless person” gives it away. It is godless aping of divinity. Meaningless charade of ethic in vacuous ethos.

The only altruism that matter is magnanimity, the serving of ever greater scales of selfhoods, who are themselves ever greater scales of selfhoods, across whom is transmitted an unbearably bright trickle of divine light from the heart of Ein Sof.

This is my current intuition of Kabbalah — a spark of inspiration I have received as a gift via Am Yisrael, to whom every Westerner and anti-Westerner owes gratitude, whether or we acknowledge or refuse to acknowledge it.

And those who seek redemption from gratitude through murder — by cross, by sword, by theological contortion or atheological politicization — only compound their debt with criminality.

Rome’s murder — blamed on Jews, with despicable cowardice — was redemptive only in its own decaying collective imagination.

No convexity — whether statue, book, man, ghost or concept — is a permissible object of worship — by virtue of its form.

Neshamah – the dimension of self who abides in Beriah, the World of Creation – is the self who hears the still, quiet voice of revelation through the thunderous noise of objective spectacle.

Neshamah receives gifts of overwhelming meaning – both of creation and of revelation – ex nihilo.

Ex nihilo – from Nothing.

Nothingness is precisely the aperture through which incomprehensible meaning floods into the world from Beriah.

A gift of Beriah, once received, annihilates our naive misconception of nothingness.

Never again can we take nothingness at face value and confuse it with mere absence.

Never again can we experience nothingness without anticipation and hope.

Nothingness is Ayin, the divine naught who protects our eyes from the divine light of infinite intensity.

Ayin is the blessed blindness who shields us from what we are unprepared to witness.

We are oblivious to such realities, and to us they are nothing, until they become givens – gifts.

Meaning enters the world through Ayin.

Once we know this from the heart, in faith, we are exnihilists – we can no longer see nothingness without knowing how it conceals, and how it may, at any moment, reveal.

Shema, Neshamah Yisrael.

Yetzirah enworlds. Yetzirah is known only by its enworlding, and its enworlding is known only by its fruit: the givens of our “lived experience” and its consequent truth.

Empathy: Yetzeros.

Anything with graspable form, whether material thing, objective fact, or “subjective” phenomenon is of Assiyah.

Here “subjective” belong in quotes, because subject, properly understood, is entirely of Yetzirah. As a hand cannot grasp itself, as seeing is not itself visible, as hearing is not itself audible, the forming of Yetzirah is not itself a comprehensible form. (Comprehension cannot be comprehended, only existentially apprehended. But our apprehensions, reduced to events — if we are alert, receptive and diligent — can be understood in ways that open new possibilities of participatory knowing: Da’at d’Yetzirah.)

Beriah creates. Beriah does not form what is already here (or rather, more precisely, Beriah forms through/as Yetzirah.) Beriah creates finitude from its own infinity, which to us looks like something from nothing. Creation ex nihilo.

A profound event in Yetzirah rebirths us into a new world. We find ourselves reborn in a new rebirth of Malchut, a.k.a. Kingdom. This event allows Yetzirah to shine into the new life through Keter d’Assiyah, a.k.a. Crown, or if you prefer, Halo.

But multiple events of this kind demonstrates in the most undeniably immediate way that Yetzirah can enworld us myriad ways. What kind of reality is this that can bear forth entire worlds, each with its own shocking ontological novelties?

Shocking ontological novelty — inconceivable prior to its revelation, masked by oblivion — but thereafter impossible to re-obliviate — bringing forth new realities, new distinctions, new understandings that instantly recrystallize All in new brilliant clarity — from the depths of apparent Nothing! From Ayin.

Now — and only now — can we catch “sight” of Keter d’Yetzirah which opens the gates to the Kingdom of Malchut d’Beriah, from whom the brilliant halo of Keter d’Yetzirah, implodes forth. This is the ineclipsible light of exnihilism.