My own view of the Ruach is profoundly negative. Our culture
develops this single aspect of consciousness to such an absurd
degree that the Ruach is incapable of forming a sensible notion
concerning either the Nephesh or Neshamah, and turning its face
away from both the lower and higher worlds, becomes obsessed with
its own creations. The Ruach has a tendency to reduce the body to
an object and often lives a life completely at odds with the
needs of the Nephesh. Where there is a spiritual aspiration, the
Ruach produces a monstrous and bloated reflection, "itself-made-
perfect", and aspires towards this caricature of itself. The
Ruach is a patchwork monster, a grotesque reflection of its
creator, and it lurches about the world trying to make sense of
what is happening, sometimes playing like a child, sometimes
leaving a trail of destruction. It is the king that needs to be
slain, the god that must be sacrificed.
The Neshamah is the Breath of God. In the Bible it states "And
the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed
into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living
soul". The "breath of life" is the Neshamah, and unlike the
Nephesh and the Ruach it is a gift from God, and the source of
our ability to intuit the realm of the divine.
It is difficult to write about the Neshamah. The Ruach tends
to idealise the Neshamah, and in the absence of a genuine contact
projects a distorted reflection of itself. An attempt to describe
the Neshamah encourages the creation of such reflections.
A characteristic of the World of Briah, to which the Neshamah is
attributed, is that it is beyond space and time, and from the
point of view of those living in space and time the Neshamah has
an eternal quality of being...just being. It is the hub around
which the wheel of personality turns. As we live our lives, we
change, but something at the centre of our being does not change.
The magician Aleister Crowley wrote about "True Will", and while
this concept is no easier to grasp than the Neshamah, both refer
to a part of us that exists outside of the ebb and flow of life
in the mundane world. Writing about the three souls, Crowley
comments:
"The Neschamah is that aspiration which in most men is no more
than a void and a voiceless longing. It becomes articulate only
when it compels the Ruach to interpret it. The Nephesch, or
animal soul, is not the body itself; the body is excremental, of
the Qlippoth or shells. The Nephesch is that coherent brute
which animates it, from the reflexes to the highest forms of
conscious activity. These again are only cognizable when they
translate themselves to the Ruach. The Ruach lastly is the
machine of the mind converging on a central consciousness, which
appears to be the ego. The true ego, is however, above Neschamah,
whose occasional messages to the Ruach warn the human ego of the
existence of his superior. Such communications may be welcomed or
resented, encouraged or stifled."
The relationship between the Neshamah and the Holy Guardian Angel
is unclear. What can be said is that in many cases people
approach Neshamah through the medium of an entity which acts as
an intermediary between the Ruach and the Neshamah. There is no
doubt that in many cases the HGA is the Ruach's own idealised
projection, but that does not invalidate the notion that it is
capable of linking the two levels of consciousness. The HGA is
associated with the sephira Tiphereth, the point on the Pillar
of Consciousness where Briah overlaps with Yetzirah.
A discussion of souls carries with it, far more so than any of
the Kabbalalistic framework discussed so far, the temptation to
indulge in metaphysical speculation. Traditional Kabbalah is
filled with this, and there is much speculation on the origin of
souls, the nature of souls, the fate of the soul, reincarnation,
and so on. This traditional material is adequately presented
elsewhere: I feel public speculation on such topics is
counterproductive as it simply provides more material for the
never-ceasing elaborations of the Ruach.
In Kabbalah there is a view that if there is a defect in the
creation, it is a result of separating that which should have
been united. I have made my views on the Ruach clear, that here
is a level of consciousness which has turned inwards and no
longer carries out its task of mediating between higher and
lower. A trace of this attitude can be found in the quotation
from Crowley above, where one can detect a negative attitude
towards both the body and the Nephesh. In the main, Kabbalah has
a very positive attitude towards living in the world; the world,
far from being the "dead matter" of the Neoplatonists, was
infused with the Shekhinah, the indwelling presence of God. In
some traditions one sees people turning away from the world and
mundane life and seeking a "world of the spirit". In Kabbalah the
world and God are two poles of the same thing, and the purpose of
the Kabbalist is to bring God into the world, and take the world
back to God. I say this to emphasise an important point: the
Neshamah is not higher than the Nephesh, the body is not
something divorced from spirit. These are ideas which create the
separation the Kabbalist tries to overcome. The world, the souls,
and god are links in a chain, and there is no higher or lower,
spiritual or mundane - they are all parts of the same thing.
Plotinus, "The Enneads", Penguin Books 1991
Source: http://digital-brilliance.com/kab/nok/index.htm
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