Great stuff! Abulafia has always fascinated me and yet, as you say, there hasn't been much written about him in the english language until recently. Hope this will change!
Hey Philip, thanks for popping over. Yah, he's definitely a character worth exploring. Moshe Idel and Eliott Wolfson have written a decent amount of good work on him, but I'm afraid their stuff is quite inaccessible to the public/to people without a fair amount of prior knowledge in the field. We need some bridging work to be done between academia and the average reader.
@@SeekersofUnity I have two of Idel's books - "The Mystical Experience in Abraham Abulafia" & "Studies in Ecstatic Kabbalah". Is there any other book/literature you would recommend in particular? I've checked your list of sources, but do you have a favorite? :)
Thanks for this very comprehensive overview! I am an Abulafia enthusiast and have personally practiced a few of his techniques. As a linguist myself I absolutely click with the “language as a larger object to wrap the mind around” that you bring up. Also, the attention it requires to do some of his vocalizations is something quite satisfying for the ego to engage in, meanwhile liberating the soul to ascend to higher realms of consciousness.
Thank you Mariana. I'm so glad you enjoyed it and found it comprehensive. That's really epic to be approaching this from a linguistics background. I'd love to hear more about what this means for you. Love, Zevi
I resonate with Abulafia, even though being muslim. The man was v.original and a deep thinker, using his experiences to fuel his understanding of Gods wisdom. Ty to philip where i first learned about him.
The music aspect is of the most interest to me. Also these expanded experiences reflect the Kundalini awakening. This of course must be approached with caution.
Hey, Zevi...! Love 💘 yer Midrash style & contents... This one is of Particular interest. Good thing that Pope died on the eve of meeting this guy.. both for the Pope & for him. A, he shouldn't have been burned for his burning 🔥 insights, and B, the Pope couldn't have handled them, nor the confluences of mystical reality inherent...
Great commentary. Although Karen de Loen-Jones in her Giordano Bruno and the Kabbalah can't for certain connect Bruno and Abulafia , I believe that Arielle Saiber's book "Bruno and the Geometry of Language " is conclusive of that connection. Not to also mention Joyce's connection with Bruno. One of the few differences is that both thinkers were so excited they felt compelled to present their methods to the Pope. Abulafia avoided a barbecuing in 1278 , because the Pope had a sudden heart attack , Bruno wasn't so lucky and got burned in 1600. Metempsychosis? Like a scene out of Ground Hog Day.
I don't know how to communicate on here with rabbis however l had a retrocognitive vision after a study our temple had done about Rambam and the Babylonian Talmud
Very interesting. I would like to learn more about Abulafia's practices involving Hebrew letters, and see if there might be a way to come up with a version based on some of the fundamentals of mathematical logic which I find to be more universal than something like Hebrew (or any specific human language)
You might find the works of Alfred Korzybski interesting. He echoes the very idea you express here, that mathematics is the fundamental language of Reality-or God, said poetically. His school of General Semantics has lead me into Jewish Mysticism, and I don’t think this is a coincidence. Especially when viewed from a theosophical perspective: that all religions reveal the singular truth.
45:24 I was struck by your comment about Finnegans Wake. I've been studying the book and I was watching this video because I expected to find connections to it in the thought of Abulafia. Thanks for these videos, great stuff!
Just found your channel on Spotify. Drifted over here. I found the Ari, Abulafia, and Sarug in Psalms 32:9. You did a great job covering a very complex person. I’ve added you to my Spotify list as well. Keep the אמת flowing.
An amazing, amazing video! I lack those famous words to express how much this touched me!!! Wow............ Thank you.... Todah rabbah... A sheynem dank!!!!!!!!!!!!
This is incredible information! Would you be willing to go more in-depth with Abulafia's teachings? To my understanding they have not been translated to English and the information is someone scattered.
I think i had a mystical experience similar to this many years ago when heavily immersed in mysticism & magick. I had been practicing purification & meditation much like the methods described here, while studying kabbalah, tarot & magick etc. One day while in the depths of mediation i saw 3 hebrew letters formed from clouds in the sky outside my window. I mediated on them for some time trying to interpret their meaning...the first letter was aleph ( the other 2 i will have to go back and look at my journals, as this was abt 30 years ago...) this vision stayed with me for a while and i felt that it had a profound meaning, some sort of blessing. I did go through similar stages of fear & trembling, followed by bouts of elation--almost akin to a sort of mild psychosis, which stayed with me for some time. of course this was quite a long time ago...& i no longer feel it haunts me. I have since taken the shahada, which alhamdulilah heals all psychic wounds.
So good! I got some new insights to Abulafia's systems from your talk. I personally believe some of what he is describing is the baptism of the Holy Spirit (immersion in Ruach ha qodesh) and speaking with tongues. In that case the Spirit bursts forth in joy from our mouths with many many word combinations we do not usually use. When we write them down we are writing words we do not know, but what is interesting with Abulafia is he says we can give the meaning we choose to those words (I've been wondering what to do with them since 1996). For tongues we just need to yield our mouths to praise. In my case I was thanking our Jewish Messiah, Jesus Christ (Mashiach Yeshua) when suddenly my mouth was taken over by fluent words in other languages (in one case I was blown on by the wind, carried out into a sink, washed in running water and received a new tongue). Years later I read Aryeh Kaplan's statement that the circumcision (covenant?) of the tongue was the speaking of the secrets of the Torah. In our tradition, it is the speaking of the mysteries of the age to come. In the book Sefer Ha Ot, Abulafia speaks of the two masters battling things out to release Israel from Egypt. He mentions "HU and I are fighting him, to save you from his hand". Do you think this HU is "he" or Vav heh, the last two letters of the Name? The last thought I have here is would you describe the process of transformation through words as the renewing of the mind to be in line with the mind of mashiach?
First off I wanted to thank you for putting out such amazing, informative content. I've learned so much, to the point where I'm actually citing one of your videos for my thesis paper. Is it possible for you to tell me your first and last name so i can properly cite? If you're not comfortable with that, is there a pseudonym which I can use in place of your name? Thanks again for sharing this information in such a wonder, digestible fashion. Keep up the great work!
Hey CC. Thank you so much for that beautiful message. I’m so chuffed that you’re finding the material to be informative and interesting. I don’t know if I’m a citable source 🙈 but I’d you’d like to it would be a pleasure. My name is Zevi Slavin. Thank you again for the kind and encouraging message. Much love, Zevi (Join us for our live Q&A in about 3hrs if you’re available 😘)
Thank you for that enlightening lecture. I have read Arya Kaplan's writings of Abulafia and he states that Abulafia did Gematria in other languages besides Hebrew. I started researching into English Gematria soon after 9/11 and my first book is on that event. I have now written 26 books and more are on the way. I can say for sure that English is no ad hoc evolved language but a very precise language mathematically. To give a few examples using the Placement Values (PV) which is used in Hebrew Gematria we take A = 1 B = 2 to Z = 26 and add the values of the letters. A few examples are LEONARDO = 84 = MONA LISA. DANIEL CRAIG = 83 = JAMES BOND = COWBOY. ALEXANDER = 84 = THE GREAT. SNOW WHITE = 136 = SEVEN DWARFS and many hundreds of more examples. I have discovered that English and Hebrew are connected using Gematria. You can go to my channel by clicking on my logo and watch over 40 lectures and over 50 slide shows. This is the English Kabbalah. It is hinted to in the book of Daniel where Daniel, in the very last verse, is told to go to his end and he will return at the end of days to his lot. If you go to the end of Daniel in Hebrew and read it backwards the English direction to the Nun then it reads LAYON and then you read it forward to the Nun it reads DEN. LION DEN. This is an illusion to LoNDoN. A den is where the Lions sleep. In Hebrew LON means to stay over night. GEMATRIA = 74 = ENERGY as Gematria reveal the inner energy of matter.The Quanta of energy. QUANTA = 74.
well, you technically cannot "erase" the words since you need to use them. /when i used to hang out in the coffee house (back in the day when everything like bookstores and independent coffee houses existed) my jewish friends who studied kabbalah used to do this for fun and i had no idea that they may have been basing it off of jewish mysticism~ :) i used to cut out the word with scissors and then glue them in a new rearrangement./ we would try to make poems.//But as for now- i only did one page of "I AM" statements and it wasn't enough because so many words were like; "hopeless miserable utterly miserable.." hmmm. I feel a lot of power in doing this, though! Too many negative words but maybe if i used the letters broken up!!????? {A practice like this , or this very thing- attracts me because my mind just likes this kind of thing. Usually i would be too lazy to actually go through with it, but i am in a desperate situation where i am in a state of mourning, and i am not progressing beyond a state of pain. And it occured to me while trying to do this exercize that instead of "letting go", i want to transmute my relationship to what i have lost- instead of the pain i want to honor the lost person with grace and have it be life-giving. Our culture tells us to let it go and erase it but that's not right at all--- but how to transmute it. Maybe using a practice like this!? I think that with music...it could be done as well- and i want to learn more of what he thought for music. } THANKS! I'll get some of the Moshe Idel books.... i saw some digital copy of Abulafia online ... I don't know Hebrew but it is very cool to look at his circles of letters and words~ What source are you using for his exercizes? miser-able. i am able!! not miser able. / hehe. akkay.
You're most welcome. Thanks for watching. Yea, Kaplan is amazing and really responsible for bringing R' Abulafia to the modern English speaking Jewish world.
We may be able to reduce or even quiet the mind. A more persistent stumbling block for many is emotion. So much of what the mystics and scholars have said about purging and purification has to do with the mind, but one's feelings influence the direction and impetus of thought and imagination. We have different thoughts based on how we feel, regardless of the quality or the content of the thoughts. If we could develop an emotional science which aims at healing the heart, then the mind would be so much easier to control, in my opinion.
I understand that but ultimately the mind is the rudder or the source. For example a child is not afraid of a tiger because his MIND does not know what a tiger is, so he will happily walk right up to it. But if the child was hurt by a dog, then the child’s mind will use the emotion of fear to keep the child away from ANY dogs not just “dangerous” one. I am MUCH more serene now that I am convinced in my mind that everything…E V E R Y T H I N G…that I encounter is a necessary part of my development. So I do not fear “mistakes” and “problems” nor regret the past. I don’t understand what part most moments play in the puzzle that is my life, but my MIND keeps me from getting up set at things I would not choose to experience.
@@elskid206 It has been a year since I posted what I wrote and read your response, and I have found that quieting and controlling the mind isn't effective for everyone, and even for those for whom reducing the aberrations or errant activities of the mind is effective and is the main practice, there are still many times in which learning to control, modulate, calm, and purify the emotions would be more effective at achieving peace. Unprovoked by thought, imagination, or anything mental for that matter, many people still report being disturbed or upset, emotionally. There are many people whose discipline and control over the mind is excellent, and yet they still suffer from some type of repressed, negative emotional effect or pattern of some kind, which exists apart from a mental cause. There are also many instances where a person's mind doesn't know what something is, (the example you gave of that here is of a child's mind not knowing what a tiger is) yet the mind's not knowing what something is that leads to the severe shock and emotional pain that we might define as trauma, because the ignorance of that mind in question was what led to the extreme shock and pain that is responsible for spawning that trauma. Also, to the example you gave, a child's not knowing what a tiger is in his/her mind, as the implied cause of the absence of fear in that child's soul, can be completely disproven or offset by the guttural and visceral terror that a predator and dangerous entity can emit to any sentient being which has been endowed with perception of any kind, regardless the absence of fearful thoughts or mental foreknowledge of the nature of what is being perceived. Even a fellow human can transmit vibes to an ignorant child in a way that bypasses the shield against fear that is supposedly provided by the ignorant or spotless mind, and subsequently cause fear or even hurt, pain and affliction. A tiger most certainly can do the same. Many child cry at something they've never seen or thought about before, because of the innate nature of a danger that is perceived by the heart and soul of even an ignorant infant. There are a great many spiritual practitioners who are still deeply disturbed or triggered by things on an emotional level, despite their honed ability to control their mental state, their thoughts, and their perspectives and opinions. When the religious community, the esoteric community, and the religious teachers of the world begin to admit that the clearing, calming and healing of the heart and the emotions are just as essential, if not more important, than clearing and purifying the mind, then the spiritual health of the world will be more greatly benefited. A stout heart and a strong heart at peace will remain undisturbed by anything that the mind or the external world may present to that soul's perception. But a person with a strong and clear mind whose heart can be disoriented; that person barely benefits from his/her mental training. Moses asked G-d to open his 'heart' to G-d's light before he confronted the Pharaoh. He didn't ask The Almighty to help his mind. A person whose mind is not prejudiced or bigoted but whose heart definitely is, is a person whose heart does not attain the truth what is in his/her mind. How often does the heart not respond to what the mind knows, and if only it could, the soul would be in a much more pristine condition, and more able to receive and implement divine guidance? One's BEING must reflect the truth of Right Mind. I've thought about it a lot over the past year and have experienced much more life with tons of tribulations and hardships, as well as many excellent and magnificent things, and I say through experience and observation that it's certainly not enough to tend to the mind alone. Where is the science of the heart in rabbinical and Torah study? What will loads mental and intellectual abstractions do for the next generation of young students of the Jewish path, both mystical and exoteric, if they are not adept in handling the immanent world of feeling and the deep-seated and seemingly immovable blockages of emotion and the heart, which stand in the way of purification?
The hardest part for me (I am slightly prophetic) is that because I know that things will happen to me but I do not the exact time it will happen that I get grumpy because I know things will happen but i do not know when it will happen so I get impatient
I found this very much aligned with some of Owen Barfield's thought. In acknowledging Imagination as a truth bearing faculty we begin to open up to the co-creative capacity within the human being. On my channel we have been going through Emil Bock's Apocalypse of John and he views the 144,000 as representing that portion of humanity that has, to put in in Barfield's terms, entered into Final Participation. They are thing able to sing a New Song, which co creates the New Earth. Continuing to enjoy your content and to see numerous points of intersection with the things I have been engaged with.
Thank you friend. You seem a whole lot better read than i, but i'm glad you're finding fruitful points of intersection and hopefully cross-pollination. Love, Zevi
This is very inline with ancient chinese medical canon which posits that there are notes played in heaven and as they are 'transduced' here on earth, they become the 10,000 phenomena
Was abulafia a pantheist? Certainly in matters of the progression from active intellect to divine intellect, but did he wish to escape the mundane world? I've seen in Idel's MEinAA that he saw the world as a world of dirt and pain. Was his mysticism a turning away from the world like the gnostics? Or (this is probably a misunderstanding) was the idea of the union of the knowledge, knower and known of RamBam(Pantheism?) important to him in that sort of classical Jewish way about the world being the breath of God, and nothing existing outside of God. Was his mysticism of letters, if the world is created with words and breath and all of this a sort of pantheism, or was his pantheism limited to the world of the intellect. Essentially do you know whether or not he affirmed the world in that pantheistic, mystical way as the theosophical kabbalists did. Sorry if that doesnt make sense but these things are thought of frequently by me. Thank you for your great work.
Zevi... Since you brought up Music.. Do you think that Mahler's music is influenced by Hasidism, ecstatic & so forth, and if so, how...? I'll put on my Gustav Mahler T-shirt, & await yer reply
This is pretty remarkable stuff Brother. Can we not draw an analogy between the idea of expanding the mind via contemplation and meditation on language and the dissolving of the qliphoth and unleashing the Divine sparks through channelling the Divine light? Re: the language of creation: is it not said that Adam [pbuh] gave the names to all creations in the Garden? Just another sense in which Hebrew is constructive and a connection between the Divine endowment [Man in G-d's Image or the Aristotelian/Rambam[ian] idea of the endless [over]flow of Being ] and an inherent prophetic capacity within language.
Hey brother. Thank you. Yes absolutely, that's an incredible analogy, there's definitely good basic to make that paralel between what takes place in the human mind and the analogy/effect on the cosmic/divine level. Yes that's a great point re. the language of creation. Absolutely. I think ultimately it is through languge that we are each individually, with our divine capacity, creating our own reality. And once we wake up to the realization of that reality, the posibilites for creating lived states of paradise, heaven, love, compassion and unity with the One who is All, is endless. Inshallah.
I’m looking for the roots of introspection in Medieval Latin thinkers; specifically Eckhart, but also Roger Bacon, to a certain extent. I’m wondering if it’s in Maimonides. Will you, Filip, or Dr Sledge be doing Maimonides any time soon?
The Pope story is classic. Scary Kabbalists scare the Pope to death. The wrath of Yahweh gets one on the HRE. Now we are pacifists and blow chuffers instead of cannons. Love me some Z-Man
I'm a year late but isn't Abulafia's notion of being able to change reality via language what psychologists and new agers call limited beliefs? P.s. just realized you mentioned narrative therapy!
