Ein-Sof or Brahman is perfectly reflected in the human soul

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Ein-Sof or Brahman is perfectly reflected in the human soul

 

" In their notion of Ein-Sof the Kabbalists developed a concept of an

infinite Godhead which in many ways parallels ancient Indian ideas.

Both the Kabbalist's Ein-Sof and the Indian Brahman refer to an

underlying reality that is the substance and energy of all life and

mind. Like Ein-Sof, the principle called Brahman (or in its creative

mode: Atman), is in effect, beyond any God who can be addressed,

worshipped, or described. It is beyond all qualities and

distinctions: it is infinite, boundless, pure and totally real, and

like Ein-Sof it transcends all oppositions in coincidentia

oppositorum. In the Indian (as in Kabbalistic) cosmology, this

infinite spiritual principle is identified with " nothingness, " a " no-

thingness " which mystically coincides with the " life energy " (prana)

of the cosmos. Each of the Hindu gods and goddesses, are understood,

to be just another aspect or manifestation of this single unitary

principle in Brahman, much as, for the Kabbalists the Sefirot and

Partzufim are understood as aspects of Ein-Sof.

 

Kabbalah, also shares with Indian thought the notion of a Primordial

Man who embodies the very essence of the created universe. The

divine, either Ein-Sof or Brahman, is according to these traditions

perfectly reflected in the human soul, and both the Kabbalah and

Indian philosophy frequently reinterpret divine, cosmological, events

in terms of stages in the development of human consciousness. Both

the Kabbalistic and Indian traditions hold that the religious

adherent must integrate into his or her psyche an aspect of himself

(Atman in Indian thought, the Tzelem or divine Spark in the Kabbalah)

that normally remains hidden. The two traditions even share specific

meditational techniques designed to support this integration.

 

Both mystical traditions share in the idea that the world as it is

experienced by man is a function of divine ignorance and

forgetfulness, what is described in the Kabbalah as God's self-

concealment in Tzimtzum. Like the Kabbalah, several schools within

the Hindu-Brahman tradition hold the world to be an illusion created

through a limitation in the infinite " All. " The non-dualistic

Vedanta, for example, particularly as it is expressed by its leading

advocate, Sankara (c.788-820) views the world as a total illusion.

The world's existence, according to this tradition, is completely a

function of divine forgetfulness and ignorance. A similar acosmic

view is evident in the Chabad Hasidic interpretation of the Lurianic

theosophy. "

 

www.newkabbalah.com/Indian.html