Kabbalah As a Basis For a Synthesis of Sciences

The complexity of research

Until recently Kabbalah was a subject for historians, philosophers, and individual researchers. Study of this science is complex due to the specifics of its development and its unique language.

Let us examine each aspect of the complexity in more detail.

The specifics of development

Philosopher and physicist F. Capra has importantly stated that the roots of Western science go back to the mystical philosophy of the ancient Greeks. As Greek philosophy developed, it chose the path of rationalism, and thus grew significantly distant from its mystical sources. It eventually led to a worldview that sharply contradicts the worldview of the Eastern peoples.

"The father of modern science is Galileo. He was the first to connect mathematics and the experiment. Modern science was preceded by the 17th century view that matter and spirit are completely separate. Rene Descartes had greatly contributed to the emergence of this worldview. His works envisioned a fundamental divide of nature into two independent realms: the realm of consciousness and the realm of matter."

This mechanical division of the universe into the realm of consciousness and the realm of matter was later adopted by Isaac Newton. Based on this conception he built his mechanics, which was to be the foundation for modern science.

The history of modern science shows that the above conception of the world dominated in physics, chemistry, biology, medicine, psychology and all other disciplines. This worldview was favorable for the development of classical mechanics and technology, but in many respects it negatively influenced our civilization. Its use entailed systematic suppression and distorted interpretation of data when the data did not agree with the dominant scientific establishment.

"Modern Western society emerged as a single whole, and one of its pillars was a new type of knowledge, attainment and thought-science. Science was one of the hypostases of this society, since it 'permeated' all its pores."

The Kabbalistic school developed independently and fruitfully, far away from this scientific establishment. Due to the specifics of this method, where the researcher is deeply immersed in reality, this tendency did not and could not touch it.

The specifics of the language used in Kabbalistic texts

Scientists' main difficulty in penetrating into the world of Eastern teachings is their lack of scientific language. "Eastern mysticisms insist that the Upper Reality cannot be an object of reflection or transferable knowledge. It cannot be adequately described by words, since it lies beyond the realm of feelings and the intellect, the sources of our words and notions."

An interesting aspect of Kabbalah, one that differentiates it from other teachings and proves its scientific character, is the fact that it found such a language. Kabbalists have established that every object of our world provides a precise name which points to the object's upper root, despite the fact that the root itself cannot be named by any word or sound because it exists above all imagination. The presence of the roots' visible branches allows for verbal expression of the upper roots.

However, this language can be understood only by one who understands how the roots correlate to the branches. It is impossible to attain the "root-branch" connection from below upwards. That is, looking at the lower branches does not enable one to find any analogy to the upper roots or to imagine them with the help of fantasy. One must first attain the upper roots, and after that one can look at the branches that are perceived in our world and fully understand the entire quantity and quality of the correlations between each branch and its root in the Upper World.