Five isolated traditions describe one refusal-then-reception shift in consciousness

“that is rebuffed upward is called the returning light. When it enclothes the supernal light, it becomes a vessel that serves as a receptacle for the supernal light instead of the fourth level.14As explained above, the fourth level called Malkhut cannot receive the supernal light directly because they are opposites. The Malkhut has to be modified through the deployment of the partition, which represents Malkhut expressing its agency to choose not to receive the supernal light except on its own terms. This rejection transforms the act of receiving the light into a gift itself, as in the analogy of a person giving his friend the opportunity to do him a favor. The first part of that transforma”

“new world flow into him. Only a high grade of such selfless surrender enables a man to receive the higher spiritual facts that surround him on all sides. We can consciously develop this capacity in ourselves. We can try, for example, to refrain from any judgment on people around us. We should obliterate within ourselves the gauge of “attractive” and “repellent,” of “stupid” or “clever,” that we are accustomed to apply and try without this gauge to understand persons purely from and through themselves. The best exercises can be made with people for whom one has an aversion. We should suppress this aversion with all our power and allow everything that they do to affect us without bias. Or,”

“It is IN THEE. And if thou canst, my Son, for a while but cease from all thy OWN Thinking and Willing, then thou shalt hear the unspeakable Words of God. Disciple: How is it that I can hear Him speak, when I stand still from Thinking and Willing? Master: When thou standest still from the Thinking of SELF, and the Willing of SELF; when both thy Intellect and Will are quiet and passive to the Impressions of the Eternal Word and Spirit; when thy Soul is winged up, and above that which is temporal with the outward Senses and the Imagination being locked up by Holy Abstraction; then the Eternal Hearing, Seeing, and Speaking will be revealed IN THEE; and so God heareth and seeth through thee, bein”

“be passed, a corner turned within one. Something must give way, a native hardness must break down and liquefy; and this event (as we shall abundantly see hereafter) is frequently sudden and automatic, and leaves on the Subject an impression that he has been wrought on by an external power. Whatever its ultimate significance may prove to be, this is certainly one fundamental form of human experience. Some say that the capacity or incapacity for it is what divides the religious from the merely moralistic character. With those who undergo it in its fullness, no criticism avails to cast doubt on its reality. They _know_; for they have actually _felt_ the higher powers, in giving up the tens”

“are fully formed. When this happens, and the structure of sefirot are fully constructed, the returning light is said to cease, since it is now acting as vessels for the supernal light. The author of the Sulam will elaborate on these concepts extensively in the sections that follow. Chapter 15 Thus, new vessels were made in the holy partzufim, instead of the fourth level serving in that capacity, after the first constriction (tzimtzum). They were fashioned through the rebuffing of the returning light by means of the fusion through collision of the supernal light against the partition. It is necessary to understand this returning light, how it became a receiving vessel. Initially it was mer”

“receiving vessels for his friend’s meal are generated within him. We can now see how the force of his rejection became the central element of his receiving vessel with regard to the meal, and not hunger and appetite, even though in truth they are the usual receiving vessels. Chapter 16 From the aforementioned parable, which involves an interpersonal relationship, one can understand the aforementioned concept of fusion through collision and the returning light that rises by means of it, which becomes a new receiving vessel for the supernal light instead of the fourth level that was initially meant to serve as the receiving vessel. The collision of the supernal light against the partition and”

“Neither money nor worldly possessions, neither science nor authority, will bring to you the sweet rest of paradise, at which you can arrive only by the noble knowledge of self.”

“with.'] [233] St. John i, 13. [234] St. John iii, 5. [235] [Lit., wholly perfect and . . .'] CHAPTER VI Wherein is described how it is the three theological virtues that perfect the three faculties of the soul, and how the said virtues produce emptiness and darkness within them. Having now to endeavour to show how [236] the three faculties of the soul -- understanding, memory and will -- are brought into this spiritual night, which is the means to Divine union, it is necessary first of all to explain in this chapter how the three theological virtues -- faith, hope and charity -- which have respect to the three faculties aforesaid as their proper supernatural objects, and by means whereof the”

“life; but, in reality there is no idea of a world of sentient life from which to obtain deliverance. And why? Because, in the mind of an enlightened disciple, there have ceased to exist such arbitrary ideas of phenomena as an entity, a being, a living being, or a personality._” A similar process of reasoning appears to permeate the whole of _The Diamond Sutra_, and whether appertaining to a living being,[23] a virtue,[24] a condition of mind,[25] a Buddhist kingdom,[26] or a personal Buddha,[27] there is implied in each concept a spiritual essence, only imperfectly described, if not entirely overlooked, in the ordinary use of each particular name. Shakespeare enquired, “What’s in a nam”

“through their imprinted will to receive, emanates from the Creator’s essence yesh miyesh. It is not in any way a new creation that came into existence ex nihilo (yesh me’ayin) , since it is not truly new at all but emanates from the Creator’s eternal essence yesh miyesh. Chapter 2 As stated, the will to receive was necessarily encompassed in the Creator’s initial intent for the Creation, in all its various forms, together with the great shefa with which He thought to benefit them and to grant to them. Know that this is the mystical meaning of light and vessel that we discern in the higher worlds, because of necessity they come bound as one, and they devolve together from one level to the nex”

“great will to receive the shefa is related to the created being who receives it. Both of these are necessarily drawn from the Creator, only they must be distinguished in the aforementioned manner: The shefa is drawn from His essence, that is, its existence emanates from His essence yesh miyesh. The will to receive, which is incorporated there, in the shefa, is the root of all created beings, that is, it is the root of any new creation, which constitutes the emergence of existence ex nihilo (yesh me’ayin), since the Creator’s essence certainly does not contain any trace of the will to receive, God forbid.4Since the Creator’s essence does not contain any aspect related to receiving, as He need”

“We are born, physically, as pure beings of desire, seeking to fill our primal urges for nourishment, clothing, protection, and shelter; nature makes it so that the first instinct of a baby is to cry out to receive. This is imperative, because in order to survive, a baby needs to be 100% taken care of.”

“The identities of Jacob and his assailant have long presented an exegetical quandary for interpreters examining the encounter at the Jabbok. Characterizing Elohim/ish is particularly complex, as evidenced by the sheer number of possibilities offered by scholars—a river demon, a specter of Esau, Yahweh in disguise, and even Jacob's own psyche. Moreover, Jacob himself is plagued by his dual nomenclature and by an ambivalent relationship to the land he has been promised.”

“The Kabbalistic mechanism where refused light returns to form the receiving vessel matches a standing wave — an outgoing wave meeting a boundary, reflecting, and the two together forming a fixed held pattern — more closely than it matches alternating current. AC needs an external driver setting a repeating frequency; the vessel-forming event has no frequency and happens once to establish a standing relationship, so the standing-wave picture fits where AC breaks down.”

“Baal HaSulam and Plotinus both describe a boundary where light meets a limit, but Kabbalah treats that refusing partition as the generative good (it lets a creature relate to the source without being erased), while Plotinus treats the same difference as the thing that must dissolve for union with the One. The mechanism matches; the goal is reversed.”

“Electric current is invisible in a bare wire and only becomes visible light when it meets the resistance of a bulb filament — energy made to manifest at the point of refusal. This is a tight match for the Kabbalistic screen (masach), where formless light only takes visible form by being refused, and the degree of resistance sets how much light is clothed into a vessel.”

“herself, then seeing only because she is the object that she sees, and, further, being one because she forms but one with this object, she imagines that what she sought has escaped, because she herself is not distinct from the object that she thinks. THE PATH OF SIMPLIFICATION TO UNITY. Nevertheless a philosophical study of unity will follow the following course. Since it is Unity that we seek, since it is the principle of all things, the Good, the First that we consider, those who will wish to reach it must not withdraw from that which is of primary rank to decline to what occupies the last, but they must withdraw their souls from sense-objects, which occupy the last degree in the scale of”

“previous lecture. Or the focus of excitement and heat, the point of view from which the aim is taken, may come to lie permanently within a certain system; and then, if the change be a religious one, we call it a _conversion_, especially if it be by crisis, or sudden. Let us hereafter, in speaking of the hot place in a man’s consciousness, the group of ideas to which he devotes himself, and from which he works, call it _the habitual centre of his personal energy_. It makes a great difference to a man whether one set of his ideas, or another, be the centre of his energy; and it makes a great difference, as regards any set of ideas which he may possess, whether they become central or remai”

“Through the process of “forgetting”, one cleanses the obscured mind, returns to the true nature of life, and aligns with the cosmos, merging with the transformations of the universe. Ultimately, this leads to the attainment of the “state of self-forgetting”, where the mind, in its emptiness and clarity, observes all things and reveals the harmonious, beautiful world of wholeness.”

“This note attempts to shed light on the great purifying value of “spiritual darkness” for growth in holiness by way of a summary of some of the insights of the Church’s greatest mystical theologian, Saint John of the Cross.”

“Recently, deep meditative states involving global dissolution of the sense of self have been suggested as a promising path for advancing such an investigation. To that end, we conducted a comprehensive phenomenological inquiry into meditative self-boundary alteration. The induced states were systematically characterized by changes in six experiential features including the sense of location, agency, first-person perspective, attention, body sensations, and affective valence, as well as their interaction with meditative technique and overall degree of dissolution. Notably, passive meditative gestures of “letting go”, which reduce attentional engagement and sense of agency, emerged as driving”

“Results indicate that meditation is associated with reduced activations in the default mode network relative to an active task in meditators compared to controls. Regions of the default mode showing a group by task interaction include the posterior cingulate/precuneus and anterior cingulate cortex. These findings replicate and extend prior work indicating that suppression of default mode processing may represent a central neural process in long-term meditation, and suggest that meditation leads to relatively reduced default mode processing beyond that observed during another active cognitive task.”

“to destruction, for these conditions are brought together into ONE. "Only the truly intelligent understand this principle of the identity of all things. They do not view things as apprehended by themselves, subjectively; but transfer themselves into the position of the things viewed. Avoiding the fallacious channels of the senses. And viewing them thus they are able to comprehend them, nay, to master them;--and he who can master them is near. So it is that to place oneself in subjective relation with externals, without consciousness of their objectivity,--this is TAO. But to wear out one's intellect in an obstinate adherence to the individuality of things, not recognising the fact that all t”

“and emptying the soul, and causing it to reject the natural jurisdiction and operations of the faculties, so that they may become capable of infusion and illumination from supernatural sources; for their capacity cannot attain to so lofty an experience, but will rather hinder it, if it be not disregarded. 3. And thus, if it be true, as it is, that the soul must proceed in its growing knowledge of God by learning that which He is not rather than that which He is, in order to come to Him, it must proceed by renouncing and rejecting, to the very uttermost, everything in its apprehensions that it is possible to renounce, whether this be natural or supernatural. We shall proceed with this end in”

“Self-reflection and introspection are essential for a fulling life. The danger is in navigating the fine line between reflection and rumination. Reflection can lead to deeper self-awareness, greater resilience and enhanced emotional intelligence.”

“The thesis to be presented is that as long as one understands the `logic of not' from a dualistic, either-or egological standpoint, it remains contradictory, but in order to properly understand it, one must effect a perspectival shift from the dualistic, egological stance to a non-dualistic, non-egological stance.”

“25 And Jacob was left alone; and there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day. 26 And when he saw that he prevailed not against him, he touched the hollow of his thigh; and the hollow of Jacob's thigh was strained, as he wrestled with him. 27 And he said: 'Let me go, for the day breaketh.' And he said: 'I will not let thee go, except thou bless me.' 28 And he said unto him: 'What is thy name?' And he said: 'Jacob.' 29 And he said: 'Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel; for thou hast striven with God and with men, and hast prevailed.' 30 And Jacob asked him, and said: 'Tell me, I pray thee, thy name.' And he said: 'Wherefore is it that thou dost ask after my name?”

“and emptying the soul, and causing it to reject the natural jurisdiction and operations of the faculties, so that they may become capable of infusion and illumination from supernatural sources; for their capacity cannot attain to so lofty an experience, but will rather hinder it, if it be not disregarded. 3. And thus, if it be true, as it is, that the soul must proceed in its growing knowledge of God by learning that which He is not rather than that which He is, in order to come to Him, it must proceed by renouncing and rejecting, to the very uttermost, everything in its apprehensions that it is possible to renounce, whether this be natural or supernatural. We shall proceed with this end in”

“other systems and other modes of thought, but by correspondence, by affiliation, by filtration, by causal identity, rather than by historic descent. We look upon the Zohar in particular as one of the most attractive curiosities of the human mind, full of great- 49° ^he Jtoctrine anb |Citerjiturc at the ness and littleness, of sublimity and folly. The interest which it aroused on its appearance has in some measure survived all criticism, and the work itself has lived down even the admiration of its believers. We hold that it can be accounted for naturally and historically as a genuine growth of its age and not either as an imposture or as the key of all esoteric knowledge. It contains few or”

“passages therefore as the one alluded to, (viz. 'let no man try to find out what speech is, let him know the speaker,') which, by setting aside all the differences due to limiting conditions, aim at directing the mind on the internal Self and thus showing that the p. 105 individual soul is one with Brahman, are by no means out of place. That the Self which is active in speaking and the like is Brahman appears from another scriptural passage also, viz. Ke. Up. I, 5, 'That which is not expressed by speech and by which speech is expressed that alone know as Brahman, not that which people here adore.' The remark that the statement about the difference of prâna and pragñâ (contained in the passag”

“Recently, deep meditative states involving global dissolution of the sense of self have been suggested as a promising path for advancing such an investigation. To that end, we conducted a comprehensive phenomenological inquiry into meditative self-boundary alteration. The induced states were systematically characterized by changes in six experiential features including the sense of location, agency, first-person perspective, attention, body sensations, and affective valence, as well as their interaction with meditative technique and overall degree of dissolution. Notably, passive meditative gestures of “letting go”, which reduce attentional engagement and sense of agency, emerged as driving”

“The effects of meditation on the brain can be broken up into two categories: state changes and trait changes, respectively alterations in brain activities during the act of meditating and changes that are the outcome of long-term practice.”

“appearance, might easily be translated into Christian language. For Christianity also teaches _inwardness_, and, in common with all idealism, resents the delimitation of human life and knowledge to "the things which are seen." In its opposition to a mere practical system like Confucianism, Taoism must have appealed to those deeper instincts of humanity to which Buddhism appealed some centuries later. In practice, Confucianism was limited to the finite. Action, effort, benevolence, unselfishness,--all these have a place in it, and their theatre is the world as we know it. Its last word is worldly wisdom; not selfishness, but an enlarged prudentialism. To the Taoist such a system savours”

“Beginning with the Desert Fathers of 3rd Century Egypt, continuing through the developed monasticism of the Middle Ages, and branching into various orders within both Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, the Christian Contemplative Tradition includes various forms of meditative or semi-meditative practice including Lectio Divina, Imaginative Prayer, the Examen, Psalmody, Repetitious Prayer”

“.. . . of all things. 2. Nay, we have it clearly and plainly to be seen in ourselves, and in all things, if we would not be so mad, blind, and self-conceited, and would not be 2 outward so drawn and led by a 2 school-boy,'' but did stick close to the schoolmaster himself, who is the master of all masters; for we see indeed that all things spring out of the eternal mother; and as she is in her own birth, so she hath generated this world, and so is every creature also generated. And as that [mother] is in her springing forth in multi- plication, where every fountain [or source] hath another centre in it from the genetrix, and a separation [or distinction], but undivided and not asunder, so als”

“body, what great calamity could come to me? Therefore he who would administer the kingdom, honouring it as he honours his own person, may be employed to govern it, and he who would administer it with the love which he bears to his own person may be entrusted with it. 14 We look at it, and we do not see it, and we name it 'the Equable.' We listen to it, and we do not hear it, and we name it 'the Inaudible.' We try to grasp it, and do not get hold of it, and we name it 'the Subtle.' With these three qualities, it cannot be made the subject of description; and hence we blend them together and obtain The One. Its upper part is not bright, and its lower part is not obscure. Ceaseless in its act”

“acknowledged; he who is self- conceited has no superiority allowed to him. Such conditions, viewed from the standpoint of the Tao, are like remnants of food, or a tumour on the body, which all dislike. Hence those who pursue (the course) of the Tao do not adopt and allow them. 25 There was something undefined and complete, coming into existence before Heaven and Earth. How still it was and formless, standing alone, and undergoing no change, reaching everywhere and in no danger (of being exhausted)! It may be regarded as the Mother of all things. I do not know its name, and I give it the designation of the Tao (the Way or Course). Making an effort (further) to give it a name I call it The”

“joyousness accompanied or immediately followed by an intellectual illumination impossible to describe. Among other things, I did not merely come to believe, but I saw that the universe is not composed of dead matter, but is, on the contrary, a living Presence; I became conscious in myself of eternal life. It was not a conviction that I would have eternal life, but a consciousness that I possessed eternal life then; I saw that all men are immortal; that the cosmic order is such that without any peradventure all things work together for the good of each and all; that the foundation principle of the world, of all the worlds, is what we call love, and that the happiness of each and all is”

“437 INDEX 455 ERRATA AND ADDENDA 466 _Introduction._ Chuang Tzŭ belongs to the third and fourth centuries before Christ. He lived in the feudal age, when China was split up into a number of States owning a nominal allegiance to the royal, and weakly, House of Chou. Pronounce _Chwongdza_. He is noticed by the historian Ssŭ-ma Ch'ien, who flourished at the close of the second century B.C., as follows:-- Chuang Tzŭ was a native of Mêng. His personal name was Chou. He held a petty official post at Ch'i-yüan in Mêng. He lived contemporaneously with Prince Hui of the Liang State and Prince Hsüan of the Ch'i State. His erudition was most varied; but his chief doctrines are based upon the sayi”

“the unconsciousness of which we speak? Why do we say so? The body is born, grows old and dies. This is the common lot. However skilful one may be in hiding it away, it is sure to disappear. Men know that the body is not easily got, but p. 282 they do not know that what might seem like man's body never comes to an end. Being hidden away in a place from which there is no escape for anything, it does not disappear. This takes place after birth and before death, and may be verified at the times of birth and death; but how much better it is to consider Heaven good, old age good, the beginning good and the end good, than vainly to think that the nourishing of knowledge is making the body good! The”

“is that this Ḥokhma of the left is not actual light of Ḥokhma, but rather a kind of reflection of the true, sealed Ḥokhma reflected through the higher (Abba and Imma) and lower (Yisrael Sabba and Tevuna) levels of Bina down to Ze'er Anpin and Nukba of Atzilut. Chapter 46 The Three Letters of Tzelem: Mem, Lamed, Tzaddi 46. The brains of maturity86This section discusses the structure resulting from the rectification of lines of the previous sections. As discussed above, in order for the rectification of lines to take place, the yearning from below (the ascent of “feminine waters“) triggers a flow from above the level of Arikh Anpin, a process which ultimately causes the descent of Malkhut fr”

“that is rebuffed upward is called the returning light. When it enclothes the supernal light, it becomes a vessel that serves as a receptacle for the supernal light instead of the fourth level.14As explained above, the fourth level called Malkhut cannot receive the supernal light directly because they are opposites. The Malkhut has to be modified through the deployment of the partition, which represents Malkhut expressing its agency to choose not to receive the supernal light except on its own terms. This rejection transforms the act of receiving the light into a gift itself, as in the analogy of a person giving his friend the opportunity to do him a favor. The first part of that transforma”

“up the richer state. Who is content Needs fear no shame. Who knows to stop Incurs no blame. From danger free Long live shall he. 45 Who thinks his great achievements poor Shall find his vigour long endure. Of greatest fulness, deemed a void, Exhaustion ne'er shall stem the tide. Do thou what's straight still crooked deem; Thy greatest art still stupid seem, And eloquence a stammering scream. Constant action overcomes cold; being still overcomes heat. Purity and stillness give the correct law to all under heaven. 46 When the Tao prevails in the world, they send back their swift horses to (draw) the dung-carts. When the Tao is disregarded in the world, the war-horses breed in the border la”

“If John of the Cross's order (understanding quiets first, then memory, then will) is universal, experienced practitioners across apophatic Christian, Buddhist, Taoist, and Kabbalistic paths should independently report the same subjective sequence. If the order varies by tradition (e.g., bhakti paths emptying will first), the five-tradition convergence still holds at the level of mechanism but the entry-order is tradition-specific. Either finding sharpens the convergence claim.”

“the First; but we have often pointed out their mutual differences. The only thing left is to examine if there might not be more than these three hypostatic substances; and in this case, what their nature might be. THE ARISTOTELIAN DISTINCTION OF POTENTIALITY AND ACTUALITY IS NOT APPLICABLE TO DIVINITY. The Principle of all things, such as we have described it, is the most simple and elevated possible. The (Gnostics) are wrong in distinguishing within that (supreme Principle) potentiality from actualization; for it would be ridiculous to seek to apply to principles that are immaterial and are actualizations, that (Aristotelian) distinction, and thus to increase the number (of the divine hypos”

“Tranquility and stillness of mind, as described in the Buddhist Nikāyas, are believed to reflect a natural settling of thoughts and emotions, in which there is stability of attention, sensory clarity, and equanimity of affect and behavior. This state is believed to develop through systematic mental training involving a combination of concentration, nonconceptual observation, and discernment.”

“The Diamond Sūtra (Sanskrit: Vajracchedikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra) is a Mahāyāna Buddhist sutra from the genre of Prajñāpāramitā ('perfection of wisdom') sutras. The title relies on the power of the vajra (diamond or thunderbolt, but also an abstract term for a powerful weapon) to cut things as a metaphor for the type of wisdom that cuts and shatters illusions to get to ultimate reality.”

“James D'Alwis in 'Buddhist Nirvâ n a,' p. 47. Comp. Jacobi, 'Jaina Sûtras,' II, 236, 339. 2. Sato sattassa. Insert the word sato in the text (as in §§ 17, 19, 41, 42). The Ka th a Upanishad I, 20 alludes to such belief.} {p. 47} and have experienced it. And since this soul, on the dissolution of the body, is cut off and destroyed, does not continue after death, then is it, Sir, that the soul is completely annihilated." Thus is it that some maintain the cutting off, the destruction, the annihilation of a living being. 12. 'To him another says: "There is, Sir, such a soul as you describe. That I do not deny. But the whole soul, Sir, is not then completely annihilated. For there is a furth”

“Contemplative practices include a set of activities that quiet the striving mind, cultivate awareness, develop conscious attention modulation capabilities, promote presence, connect the individual to something larger than their own life, and develop and sustain an experience of being known/seen, safe, soothed, and secure. In all three cohorts, we found statistically significant (p< 0.05) positive associations between CPB and well-being, both overall and with all of the constituent domains of well-being, comparable to or stronger than the relationship with physical activity across most well-being outcomes.”

“It is better to think of Christ's “emptying” of Himself as a laying aside of the privileges that were His in heaven. Rather than stay on His throne in heaven, Jesus “made himself nothing” (as the NIV translates Philippians 2:7). The kenosis was a self-renunciation, not an emptying Himself of deity.”

“this attempt. Who says “hypothesis” renounces the ambition to be coercive in his arguments. The most I can do is, accordingly, to offer something that may fit the facts so easily that your scientific logic will find no plausible pretext for vetoing your impulse to welcome it as true. ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ The “more,” as we called it, and the meaning of our “union” with it, form the nucleus of our inquiry. Into what definite description can these words be translated, and for what definite facts do they stand? It would never do for us to place ourselves offhand at the position of a particular theology, the Christian theology, for example, and proceed immediately to define”

“John of the Cross and Baal HaSulam both describe the end of the inner shift as motion coming to rest in a filled stillness, not as a discharge — so 'close the circuit' and 'stop seeking' are not opposites here. They diverge on the root appetite: Baal HaSulam's finished vessel keeps its hunger and turns receiving into giving, while John's finished soul has its yearnings put to rest.”

“in “schools.” It is carved out from a much larger mass; and if we take the larger mass as seriously as religious mysticism has historically taken itself, we find that the supposed unanimity largely disappears. To begin with, even religious mysticism itself, the kind that accumulates traditions and makes schools, is much less unanimous than I have allowed. It has been both ascetic and antinomianly self‐indulgent within the Christian church.(281) It is dualistic in Sankhya, and monistic in Vedanta philosophy. I called it pantheistic; but the great Spanish mystics are anything but pantheists. They are with few exceptions non‐metaphysical minds, for whom “the category of personality” is abs”

“The effects of meditation on the brain can be broken up into two categories: state changes and trait changes, respectively alterations in brain activities during the act of meditating and changes that are the outcome of long-term practice.”

“It is best known for being active when a person is not focused on the outside world and the brain is at wakeful rest, such as during daydreaming and mind-wandering. It can also be active during detailed thoughts related to external task performance. Other times that the DMN is active include when the individual is thinking about others, thinking about themselves, remembering the past, and planning for the future. The DMN creates a coherent "internal narrative" central to the construction of a sense of self.”

“the gestation phase, as stated above, since the fusion through collision was in the place of the forehead, which is the vessel of Keter.268As explained previously, the “forehead” is the part of the head of the upper partzuf that corresponds to the level of Keter, representing the level of gulgalta. However, after the drawing of the illumination in the phase of infancy, which pushed the fourth level269This refers to the aspect of Malkhut, the “fourth level” described in the previous section as having ascended to the nekudot aspect of Sag in the second constriction and bestowing opacity on the partitions below it. from its location at the forehead to the place of the first level, which is cal”

“she withdraws from unity and ceases being entirely one; for science implies discursive reason and discursive reason implies manifoldness. (To attain Unity) we must therefore rise above science, and never withdraw from what is essentially One; we must therefore renounce science, the objects of science, and every other right (except that of the One); even to that of beauty; for beauty is posterior to unity, and is derived therefrom, as the day-light comes from the sun. That is why Plato[193] says of (Unity) that it is unspeakable and undescribable. Nevertheless we speak of it, we write about it, but only to excite our souls by our discussions, and to direct them towards this divine specta”

“literally, stilled.'] [78] [Lit., and it in them.' This it' means the soul; the preceding it,' the house.] [79] I.e., in the Argument.' CHAPTER II Explains the nature of this dark night through which the soul says that it has passed on the road to union. On A Dark Night We may say that there are three reasons for which this journey [80] made by the soul to union with God is called night. The first has to do with the point from which the soul goes forth, for it has gradually to deprive itself of desire for all the worldly things which it possessed, by denying them to itself; [81] the which denial and deprivation are, as it were, night to all the senses of man. The second reason has to do with”

“Experiences of spiritual awakening, whether gradual or sudden, intentionally induced or spontaneous, typically evoke an ineffable sense of deep inner knowing, understanding, "remembering," or "unveiling" of one's true nature, as well as experiences of peace and equanimity, bliss, ecstasy and aliveness, feelings of awe, sacredness, gratitude and reverence, and of abundant, unconditional love”

“Mark Twain, in his travel novel Innocents Abroad (1839), records a characteristically ironic description of the "tomb of Adam" in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.”

““but Israel shall be your name” (Genesis 35:10) – Israel will be primary and Jacob secondary. Rabbi Zechariah in the name of Rabbi Aḥa: In any case: Your name is Jacob… “but Israel shall be your name” (Genesis 35:10) – Jacob is primary, and Israel is in addition to it. “For you have striven with God and with men, and you have prevailed” – you have wrestled with the heavenly and prevailed over them, and with the earthly and prevailed over them. With the heavenly – this is the angel. Rabbi Ḥama bar Ḥanina said: He was Esau’s ministering angel. This is what he said to him: “For therefore, I have seen your face, as the sight of the face of angels [penei elohim]” (Genesis 33:10). Just as pene”

“Taking his lead from his reading of Plato, Plotinus developed a complex spiritual cosmology involving three foundational elements: the One, the Intelligence, and the Soul. It is from the productive unity of these three Beings that all existence emanates, according to Plotinus. The principal of emanation is not simply causal, but also contemplative.”

“Tranquility and stillness of mind, as described in the Buddhist Nikāyas, are believed to reflect a natural settling of thoughts and emotions, in which there is stability of attention, sensory clarity, and equanimity of affect and behavior. This state is believed to develop through systematic mental training involving a combination of concentration, nonconceptual observation, and discernment.”

“general_ without the least trace of distinction between the me and the not-me." Dr. Shoemaker of Philadelphia describes during the deepest conscious stage of ether-intoxication a vision of "two endless parallel lines in swift longitudinal motion ... on a uniform misty background ... together with a constant sound or whirr, not loud but distinct ... which seemed to be connected with the parallel lines.... These phenomena occupied the whole field. There were present no dreams or visions in any way connected with human affairs, no ideas or impressions akin to anything in past experience, no emotions, of course no idea of personality. There was no conception as to what being it was that was”

“Rumination involves repetitive thinking or dwelling on negative feelings and distress and their causes and consequences. The repetitive, negative aspect of rumination can contribute to the development of depression or anxiety and can worsen existing conditions.”