the bridge of life

Posts on Living From Your Soul with Neale Donald Walsh © Dr. Michael E. Brandt, All Rights Reserved, 2014

Posts

About Me .............................................................................................2

Welcome to My Wallrd ;-)......................................................................3

Remembering Robin … Again One for Eternity....................................3

Possibilities, Parallel Realities and Chess............................................4

Possibilities, Parallel Realities and Chess (Cont'd) ............................6

About God, Life and Kabbalah – an Introduction..................................6

God, Life and Kabbalah (cont'd)............................................................8

On Order and Intelligence.....................................................................9

The Eternal Soul, Mind and Body and The Conservation of

Information, Energy and Matter...........................................................10

The Eternal Soul, Mind and Body (cont'd)...........................................11

Seek ye first the Kingdom of Heaven ….............................................12

Becoming God-like..............................................................................13

Becoming God-like (cont'd).................................................................15

Names of God.....................................................................................15

Names of God (cont'd)........................................................................17

On The Really Big C … Consciousness.............................................18

On The Really Big C … Consciousness (cont'd)................................20

Kabbalah and Torah - A Primer...........................................................21

Kabbalah and Torah - A Primer (cont'd)..............................................22

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About Me ...

I grew up in Brooklyn, New York fascinated with the workings of the mind and heart from a young age. I played hide and go seek with Spirit by running after Her whispers and trying to capture nature through my artwork. I attended college in Brooklyn obtaining my Bachelors in physics - the mother science. I immersed myself in Newtonian and quantum physics, relativity, nuclear engineering, mathematics, cosmology and psychology.

Next, I embarked on a career as a technical writer-editor, working for the prestigious R&D organization The Bell Telephone Laboratories. I was privileged to work on landmark technologies such as the Bell System's first single-chip microprocessor, the Unix operating system and cell phone networks. I was also privileged to interview Dr. Robert Wilson, winner of the Nobel Prize in physics with colleague Arno Penzias for their discovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation – the remnant of the Big Bang.

I moved to Houston where I was a partner in an Apple II software development startup company. I also pursued and obtained my master's and doctoral degrees in the then nascent field of biomedical engineering (specifically in cognitive psychophysiology and brainwave analyses – the body-mind-brain connection). I was then employed as a health sciences professor and biomedical researcher for 20 years and was one of the few engineers awarded academic tenure from the medical school where I was a faculty member.

I have authored or co-authored over 100 peer-reviewed academic journal articles, book chapters and conference papers in my several areas of research, including biomedical engineering, analysis of brain waves and images, cardiology, immunology and studies of the dynamical and nonlinear nature of biological processes. I was involved in the development of a new interdisciplinary science field referred to as computational biomedicine.

After “hearing the call” in around 1992, I became a dedicated student (and later a teacher) of Kabbalah – the core spirituality of the Abrahamic faiths. I became a practitioner/facilitator of kabbalistic healing in 2001 combining my science-engineering background with the perennial spiritual understandings of life and health.

I am currently writing a book titled The Bridge of Life: How the Integration of Science and Spirituality Transforms Everything. I have given many presentations over the years on the materials in this book to both scientific and spiritual groups. I was an invited

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speaker five times since 2003 to the Midsummer New Energy Conference, the annual meeting of the Crimson Circle (crimsoncircle.com) where I spoke at length about the science<-->Spirit bridge. You can listen to some of my recent guest spots on Awakeningzone.com internet radio … just go to the archives and search on “Brandt.”

I am very happy to be participating in this course and community.

Please see my full profile on LinkedIn and connect with me!

Blessings and Light,

Michael

At 2:43pm on August 12, 2014, Michael E. Brandt, Ph.D. said…

Welcome to My Wallrd ;-)

Thank you for dropping by. I will be presenting information here from time to time related to the course content from my perspective as a scientist-engineer and student/teacher of Kabbalah and other spiritual traditions. My intent is to take us (perhaps) a little deeper into certain topics about the soul and Spirit and how they relate to "the world"–specifically STHEM--science, technology, health, engineering and mathematics and as augmentation for the course and our process.

I am aware of my tendency to be overly technical in my writing given my background (profile above). So I will make extra efforts to define terms I use in non-techno-speak and try to keep the discourse at a high school graduate level or thereabouts. Nevertheless, this may not be your particular cup of tea and if not I thank you for dropping by and wish you well as we all journey forth together.

I am working on my book The Bridge of Life - as I do, I too am exploring, researching, seeking answers and asking questions of life. I welcome your feedback, questions, ideas and sharing. Thank you for visiting my page.

At 1:24am on August 13, 2014, Michael E. Brandt, Ph.D. said…

Remembering Robin … Again One for Eternity

For those of us baby boomers and later generations we marvel at the talent of the late Robin Williams. Truly legendary comedian and actor whose genius is unparalleled in the entertainment business. After watching and reading about

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https://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=182707650&authType=name&authToken=PV6S&locale=en_US&pvs=pp&trk=ppro_viewmore

http://livingfromyoursoulcommunity.com/profile/MichaelEBrandtPhD


https://www.linkedin.com/inviteFromProfile?key=182707650&lastName=Brandt%2C+Ph.D.&from=profile&firstName=Michael+E.


this man's life for the last few days since his death it is so apparent that he lived from his soul. His sensitivity, gentility, joy, compassion, selflessness and humble nature are his hallmarks, now his legacy and gift to the world.

In an interview with Barbara Walters early in his career, she asked him if he had three wishes what would they be? The first was for a million more wishes, which he acknowledged kind of broke the rules. His second wish was that there be peace on earth for all of eternity. His third wish was “I would like it that everything I say be funny for all time.” I can't see how that third wish cannot possibly be fulfilled. May it be so!

This video of Robin and an interesting friend from 2001 says volumes about this “totality” of a human being as Neale might describe him https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9I_QvEXDv0.

Robin Williams: A gift to all humanity who is not gone, and thankfully, will be with us forever. Thank you Robin for sharing the love of your soul with all of us.

At 2:29pm on August 13, 2014, Michael E. Brandt, Ph.D. Said…

Possibilities, Parallel Realities and Chess

Neale was speaking to Gina at the beginning of the coaching call last night. During their interaction he raised a topic with her that has its basis in science (physics) and in probability theory. I would like to elaborate further on the topic here …

The idea is a simple one: there exist multiple realities at once. The number of these realities, which we may view as life possibilities, could be as many as endless. And each of these can be considered as just as “real” as the human life arc we are living. There is support for this idea in the mother science of physics–specifically in the branch of physics known as quantum theory or quantum mechanics (the workings of the atomic realm of matter and energy).

Among many other things, quantum mechanics holds that physical matter and energy have a dual nature. Both are point particles and simultaneously waves. This is paradoxical right off the bat because a point particle is found at a particular location in space at a particular time while a wave is extended through space in time. These two “natures” held simultaneously are logically contradictory on the level of our everyday experience. Yet when we “zoom down” to the world of atoms this is what is observed experimentally.

Complicating matters further (no pun intended), the wave nature of atomic matter is also not the usual kind of physical wave such as for light and sound.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9I_QvEXDv0.


This kind of wave is actually a mathematical function that tells us the most probable location in space of the atom understood as a particle! In other words, the atom is actually located in many discrete places in the now (it is distributed across space) with the probability of the particle being at a particular location in space finite.

For example “hydrogen atom #56 as a particle is located at point address 279 with a probability of 42%, while at the same time #56 is located at point address 122 with a probability of 31%.” This means that the atom is in fact located at all points along the probability wave function spread out.

Of course the implications of this are profound and this view of reality represents a fundamental shift away from the everyday world we experience via our sense perceptions. One possible implication, which Neale addressed, is that if the atom is nonlocalized to one space point then we have a myriad of possibilities of “world lines”–other realities or sometimes the expression “parallel realities” or “parallel universes” is used.

Under the above scenario, there are many such lines (hence the concept in physics is referred to as the “many worlds hypothesis” discovered by the physicist Hugh Everett). So we might conclude that all possible outcomes of our individual paths in life occur in these other realities.

Neale also used a chess analogy to explain this idea. This is slightly different and perhaps a more useful or general consideration. In a chess match there are practically infinite possibilities of moves that can be made with vastly different potential outcomes. Just one single move by one player can lead to a completely different final outcome–even using the same piece and vs. a nearby move.

The outcome of a chess match by nature is highly sensitive to very small differences in single moves along the way, and this seems to be similar to how the natural world we live in works. For example, you do not make it onto your airplane in time – and that plane happens to crash. This happened as recently as the two Malaysian air flights this summer. This is related to the so-called Butterfly Effect of Chaos (which I will discuss in more detail another time, but for now, the Butterfly Effect says for example that “a butterfly flapping its wings in Nicaragua causes a hurricane in the Pacific.”).

But in the chess example (and the point Neale made) all these possibilities lead to many, many potential outcomes. In a way of viewing them altogether as one set–these all exist in parallel from that perspective …

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Possibilities, Parallel Realities and Chess (Cont'd) ...

How might we use this understanding in our lives? This is important and possibly could be helpful in addressing the mental condition of depression for example.

Depression is characterized by a sense of entrapment, feeling like one is in a hole from which there are few if any possibilities of escape. If it is the case that the “quantum possibilities” of the myriad paths of reality and parallel universes are truth, then the hole must of necessity dissolve! And if the hole is no longer present, then depression may (should at least) reduce.

If we cognitively and consciously adopt/incorporate these scientifically sound ideas within … well it's one thing we might at least try in order to cope with a potentially devastating and all-too-prevalent malady that deeply impacts body, mind and spirit–the totality of who we are.


About God, Life and Kabbalah – an Introduction

During the coaching call for Session 1 Jackie called in to express her (presumably longstanding) resistance to the word God. She wanted to know if this was a problem for the course. Neale said “a rose by any other name ...” - and that this was surely not a problem. I've seen on the forums that many fellow travelers have a similar resistance/aversion to the word God, mainly as a result of their formative religious experiences. Neale said that millions if not billions of people on this earth experience a “pushback” when they hear the word God due to the conditioning or brainwashing that took place growing up.

I think if we get right down to it this pushback is mainly related to the assumptive view that God is an other (not another) who may judge us, punish us, even reward us, similar to how we might imagine a “superparent” to be. This view has been foisted upon us wittingly or un- by clergy and/or religion in general. But it also has occurred over many centuries as a result of a “mishearing”, misinterpretation, misreading, misunderstanding and/or deliberate obfuscation of the deeper truths within both the Hebrew and Christian Bibles (more about this is a later post).

Neale went on to say that for those people who have difficulty with the word God, they may substitute the word “life.” Neale “was advised” that the two words refer to precisely the same thing - as he stated, both terms refer to “the essential energy, the essential essence of all that is.”

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Please note that if we start out with a conception or implication that God is an other (in turn implying that God is a thing, an object or material entity–like a human being or a chair–some “thing” that is not us or part of us) and then substitute life, we have made a fundamental shift in the way we perceive/view both God and life (assuming we accept that we are alive).

If God and life are synonymous, then God is not an other since we humans (presumably) have the attribute of life. And if God and life are synonymous then it stands to reason that God is (at least) a part of, or within each one of us, and therefore not an other or distinct from ourselves.

But does this mean that we humans ARE God? We are not the totality of God. Perhaps the analogy of a drop of ocean water to the entire ocean is close to describing our relationship with God. Within us resides a connection with divinity. That connection is with the totality of our being simply because God IS existence or beingness itself. And what is interesting about this bi-directional connection (relationship or bond) is that once it has been established, there is an irreversible mixing that occurs.

Just like baking a cake, when one combines all the wet and dry ingredients together and mixes up the batter, the once-separate/distinct ingredients are now inseparable and, for all intents and purposes, indistinguishable from the new mixture they now form as one whole.

And so it must be that if life is synonymous with God and we humans are endowed with life (which by the way scientists as yet do not even know what is or constitutes biological life!) then God is an inseparable part of who we are and definitely not “other.”

In this context life is synonymous with the word animus – that invisible, intangible … something ... that endows ALL things (not just biological entities) with motion, evolution and dynamic change. And I believe that this is not anything you or I did not know before at a deep level.

There is however, one problem with the “God synonymous with life” substitution: God is unfathomably far beyond whatever it is we believe or conceive of life to be! At least that is the understanding of the ancient spiritual-science referred to as the (holy) Kabbalah - a Hebrew word that may be translated as "received tradition." I introduce this topic next as I continue to discuss God and life...

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God, Life and Kabbalah (cont'd)

Much of the information that Neale has shared with us through the years is highly related to the body of wisdom, understanding and knowledge collectively referred to as Kabbalah. Kabbalah is all about divinity and the workings (“mechanics”) of the system in creation of divinity. In other words, Kabbalah represents the how, why, what, where and who regarding all that is, including God and ourselves. It is not religion in and of itself. Yet it forms the core of spirituality of the Abrahamic faiths–Judaism, Christianity and Islam. This is, in my view, also highly related to the content of this course.

Kabbalah is not a belief system nor a dogma of any kind. It is more akin to a science than anything else, although it is much more than any human-conceived science. The word itself comes from the root Hebrew verb kabel – meaning “to receive.” Kabbalah may also be understood as a code word or a signal to arouse us from our slumber–to awaken to the truth of who we are, why we are here in human form, where we are to go from here and how to get there in the “best” or optimal manner. Those considerations are almost the same ones for this course in my view.

As is the materials in this course, Kabbalah is very rich and deep and it overlaps also with the major spiritual traditions of the world; east, west and native cultures. The word itself only came into wide use in the 12th century although the content is perennial–beyond time (for example it addresses what happened before creation or the big bang–a topic that is an active area of current cosmology research!).

I don't plan to inform a lot about Kabbalah here due to limitations of space and time. But I hope to give a flavor or the consciousness of it and its generality. It is an important portion of my book “The Bridge of Life” which I am working on.

One example of why I bring in Kabbalah here has to do with Neale's response to Jackie discussed in the above post. Many different names have been “assigned” to God by us throughout history. In particular, many are used in the Hebrew Bible (see Wikipedia for an informative article about these names/descriptors of God). Some of the names are related to “life” such as “Source of Life” and “Giver of Life” and of course "Life itself" as Neale brought forth.

I mention again, that in the context of modern life-sciences, we still do not know what constitutes life and we are even still confused about how and when we transition to death–specifically what is death and when does it occur? Interestingly, Kabbalah is more clear than science about both life and death in many respects.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_God_in_Judaism#Less_common_or_esoteric_names



The thesis of my book The Bridge of Life (could easily be The Bridge of God then ;-)) is that there is a link or strong connection between “earth” and “heaven.” That link represents essentially a new realm. Neale refered to it in Session 2 as the unified realm. It is not earth and not spirit and it is both and neither! It represents the realm of oneness where all that is is endowed with Life <--> God-divinity-Source of all that is.

The second chapter of the biblical Book of Genesis tells us that God fashioned Adam from the dust of the earth. But Adam was not “born” into life until God breathed into his nostrils His holy breathe–His Spirit. With this act God implanted Spirit within Adam gifting him his soul and Life–and by extension, implanting life in all of humanity.

At 2:05am on August 17, 2014, Michael E. Brandt, Ph.D. Said…

On Order and Intelligence

How can we distinguish between random-occurring events and ordered or causal events? Events occur in both time (in one or possibly more dimensions) and space (three or more dimensions). When individual events as a stream or sequence bear no relationship to one another they are considered occurring at random with respect to each other. When events are related in some way, perhaps one event leads to the occurrence of the next (they are causally related) then the events are considered ordered or they are said to form some sort of pattern. In the latter case, there likely is some underlying process that causes the ordering. This process is considered a deterministic one. Mathematicians and scientists do not know even today if there exists true randomness in nature!

It is also possible for a deterministic process to cause or produce sequences of random events–ones that pass all statistical tests for being unrelated. Scientists refer to such a process with the formal term chaos (as opposed to the colloquial use of chaos meaning unpredictable and haphazard behavior of a system). But when we experience “accidents” in life – events that seem to be random, even haphazard (and we barely understand why they occurred) it very well could be that there is an underlying “method to the madness” (a deterministic system) that is causing the events. Sometimes it is very hard to “prove” the existence of this underlying intelligence.

As soon as we become aware of the presence of order, then the mathematical sciences such as geometry and arithmetic are born because order implies sequence and sequences have events that can be assigned counts.

It could be that there is a hard-to-detect intelligence or order that not only produces these events but gives rise to all of creation/reality as we humans experience it. Of course many of us realize that the name “God” is often used

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as a label for this presumed intelligence. If this is truth, then perhaps it is not so far-fetched to know that creation is not only imbued with this intelligence at a fundamental level, but also with beauty - sometimes mysterious, sometimes seemingly hidden, even alluring. It is this beauty of the universe that whispers to artists, musicians, poets and scientists. According to Kabbalah, beauty-the esthetic quality of balance-resides at the very heart of life!

According to Kabbalah, God is all there is and God is infinitely more than all creation while all creation is within Her. There is only God and because of that, divinity is within every particle of creation. As I attempted to make clear in my posts just above, God is life and God lives within and at every possible level of creation. Therefore every particle of creation is alive too, not just creatures! And all of it is gathered together as one without compromising individual uniqueness and distinctness.

You are divine and I am divine and because of that we are one two .. er, too. ;-)


The Eternal Soul, Mind and Body and The Conservation of Information, Energy and Matter

Janice called in also in Session 1 and told Neale “I never thought of my body as being eternal.” Neale went into an explanation of this … if I may, I would like to embellish on this from multiple standpoints, including scientific.

Our bodies are made up of matter and they hold additional energy and one other thing that Neale did not mention explicitly – information. From physics (specifically Einsteinian physics), matter can be considered as a form of energy. And what is energy? Neale mentioned it is vibration which implies that energy is dynamic, moving. Formally (from physics), energy is (defined as) the capacity of a system to perform work. And work is performed when a force is applied to an object through a distance. For example to lift a box of books off the ground I must apply a force against the earth's opposing gravitational field through a distance (of a few feet perhaps). When I do so, I am really working!

Energy may take on many different forms – mechanical, electrical, chemical, nuclear and more. Here is a key though: there is a hard rule (“law”) in physics referred to as the Conservation of Mass-Energy. It says that in a closed system, such as the universe (presumably but it may be open!), neither matter nor energy can be created or destroyed. How ever much energy there happens to be in the entire cosmos is constant and fixed. Einstein's famous equation E = mc2 tells us that matter of mass m (multiplied by the speed of

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light "c" squared) is equivalent to an amount of energy symbolized by E. In other words, it's energy that matters most, not matter (huh? ;-)).

So since physics holds that energy, and not matter, is primary, and as the law of conservation of mass-energy tells us that the total amount of universal energy is constant, we know that neither energy nor matter “go away” and therefore they may only “transmogrify” as Neale stated – that is, both can only change their form. This is serious recycling on a grand scale! It should also tell us that the physical content of our own bodies are just recycled materials that are very very old–we are, as some say, made of star stuff–literally.

There is something else too that enmeshes physical matter and energy even more so. This has to do with what is referred to as quantum physics–the physics of the very small. It turns out that particulate matter such as atoms and subatomic particles seem to have an inherently dualistic nature. They both behave like particles of matter (like how billiard balls collide on a pool table) and as waves of pure energy. These two things are seemingly mutually exclusive. A particle is located at a fixed location in space while a wave is extended in or across space (discussed further in a previous post above).Because you and I are made up of “star particles” - each one an energy wave too–each of us is like a symphony playing our “music” that is our unique expression of divinity …


The Eternal Soul, Mind and Body (cont'd)

What about information? What is information? Information is data that has significance and meaning to/for us. It can be stored and recalled as well. Let's take those waves of energy for example. They are characterized by certain features such as their shape (triangular, circular-sinusoidal, square ...), amplitude (how big?), wavelength (and its inverse, frequency), type (electromagnetic-transverse, sound-longitudinal), relative phase angle (where in the wave cycle does it begin?), and more. Given this data about a wave (its “specifications”) it's possible for us to reproduce the wave itself from its information alone. For example using a sound or light generator such as a light emitting diode (LED).

Because all the energy (and therefore matter) of creation essentially contains or encodes information, how do we know whether or not all of it is primarily information rather than physical energy-matter? How do we know whether or not creation is similar to (or actually is) a kind of computer program that is itself a form of information and manipulates or “operates upon” other information? Actually, we don't. In fact a group of physicists-cosmologists actually assert that the entire cosmos IS in fact information arranged in

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meaningful or ordered patterns that “cooperate” systematically.

The great physicist John Archibald Wheeler referred to this idea as “it from bit” meaning that the matter-energy of the universe is really just a bunch of (itsy bitsy) bits – ones and zeros (bit is an acronym meaning “binary digit.” The binary digits are 1 and 0) stored on a kind of giant cosmic hard disk drive. They represent the dualistic concept of on-off and also the concept of primary distinction or maximal contrast/difference between two things. This recent scientific notion that “all is info” was intuitively understood by the masters of Kabbalah centuries ago. More about that in a later post.

I did mention above that the Law of Conservation of Mass-Energy states that energy and mass can neither be created nor destroyed in a closed system such as the universe. However, if the universe happens to not be closed (again, physicists don't have an answer, nor do they know for sure whether or not there exist multiple universes) then perhaps new energy is indeed “created” or “input” into our universe and maybe even some is “output.” But even if the universe is open–perhaps to other parallel ones–then taking into consideration these others, mass-energy can still not ultimately be dissipated or destroyed.

Because the “totality of our being”–body-mind-soul is matter-energy-information too, death as a final end is an illusion, yielding instead to the eternality of our divine self.


Seek ye first the Kingdom of Heaven …

“But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.” -Matthew 6:33.

When we become more aware that God is at least part of us at all times, inside of us–that truly we are God also while She is infinitely more than all Her creation (this view of God is known as panentheism vs. pantheism, the latter meaning God is no more and no less than Her creation. Kabbalah is considered a panentheistic system) then we begin to look at our lives and how we are conducting them differently. We begin to ask questions of ourselves and others, such as those Neale has discussed in the first two sessions.

Neale made the point that when we “seek first the kingdom of God … ” in our lives and make this the focus of them, then the rest of the acquisitive/material things of this earthly life will come to us more and more, rather than us having to shed blood, sweat and tears to attain those things. In addition, the spiritual aspects of life–love, joy, fulfillment, peace, great relationships–will find us as well. These things will naturally be attracted to us.

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In the Hebrew scriptures the word holy or holiness is used to describe the state of becoming increasingly more aware of our connection with the divine. Although the word holy implies a separation from something we might consider mundane, really what the biblical writers were talking about was for us to know that 1) we are one with The Source of Life, and 2) to understand that we have been given the ability to raise ourselves to a higher place. We can always elevate ourselves spiritually and by extension energetically.

Notice that the verse from te gospel of Matthew is not just about seeking God's kingdom but also about striving to do what is right for ourselves, for others, for our world and for all of creation. What is right is not always very clear of course, just as seeking God takes effort and intention. Yet we can always attempt to do the next “right” thing through our striving to reach our divinity within our heart of hearts.

The God part of us always invites us to rise up/above. So for example this means we do not have to allow our lives to become a day-by-day materialistic rat race. We can be better than that, we are better. It means, do not allow ourself to believe that it's all about “me” (as Neale said on the first coaching call). It means if all of humanity is not elevated/raised up then no matter how great all your deeds are, no matter how “high and mighty” we are, we haven't reached “the promised land” just yet.

If we focus on how we might individually and collectively raise the consciousness of humanity – that is, how we can be in service to this never-ending aspirational journey to always strive to be a standard bearer–then as Yeshua said “... all these things shall be added unto you.”

Since each of us possesses a soul which is our direct link to God, we can be equivalently as holy as God Herself. The amazing thing about this is God wants that for each of us and all of Her creation conspires to make that so if we allow ourselves to.


Becoming God-like

(Neale said that the meaning and purpose of life is to “become God-like on the Earth, according to our own definition of what it means to be Divine.” Do you agree or disagree with this and why?)

There is a prayer in the Jewish Sabbath service that begins (in transliterated Hebrew) “Mi cha mocha bah-eileem Hashem?” It means “Who is like You, Lord?” By the time I graduated from high school I had recited that prayer many many times.

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When I was 18 years old and a college sophomore registering for classes, my German professor asked me “do you know what the name Michael means?” Ashamedly, I confessed I did not. I felt a little embarrassed. Here I was attending an elite technical institute (the Polytechnic Institute of New York University), studying physics and mathematics, and I never before even questioned the origins of my name.

Adding further embarrassment was that I was raised a reform Jew (dad raised Catholic, attended church school; my maternal grandparents Orthodox Jews), had become a Bar Mitzvah (“Son of the Commandment”) at age 13, graduated from Hebrew high school in addition to public high school AND the name Michael is derived directly from biblical Hebrew!

My professor (who no doubt was a master of languages) told me that my name meant “Who is as God.” (El being one of the oldest Hebrew descriptors or labels of God) and he informed me about the link to “Mi cha mocha.”

Here I was 18 years old and I'm just figuring out what my name means! It struck me as ironic, a bit of a joke, embarrassing and some serious pressure too. I felt at once proud and at the same time not sure how I felt about my parents putting such a “heavy” name on me. I felt anything but God-like at 18 (a little more so 40 years later) and I thought “how am I ever going to live up to my name?” Then there's Archangel Michael – I thought "hope he doesn't find out I was named after him" (what does Woody Allen have to worry about? ;-)).

But over time and with increased learning and awareness (plus a good dose of therapy) I have come to see my name more and more as a blessing–especially if I take the responsibility to be that which I Am in the first place– Micha El. And you don't have to be named Michael to be more like God.

In the biblical Book of Leviticus – Moses gathers the whole community and channels God who explains what it means to “be holy as I AM holy.” What is remarkable to me is that God tells the people not so much “do as I say while I do whatever I choose regardless of what you humans think of my actions” as “Pleasse emulate me in every way possible for you.”

Another substitution for “God” could be “The Good.” Kabbalah reasons that God is essential goodness and the "meta"-Light emanates from Her (more about this in later posts).

God enjoins us to “be holy” (see above post for a secular understanding of what that means) and to do this through the intention of dedicating everything we do to relentlessly elevating ourselves toward divinity. That is, to fulfill our potential to be our truth–fashioned in the image and similitude with God.

In every act we do, we should be progressively aware of how the act might “raise up all boats.” That is, how it does not just benefit the self alone, but

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bring benefit to others, to family, to community, to all that is in service.

“You shall be holy unto Me, for I, God, am holy, and I have separated you from the nations to be Mine.” (Leviticus 20:26). Why has God separated the community of Israel from the nations? It's not because they are special, chosen, above anyone or any such. Actually, God placed a heavy responsibility on the Israelites to be/have as standards so that others would emulate them in this way. And this is not meant as any sort of imperative to separate themselves from others or from “real life.” Quite the contrary. …


Becoming God-like (cont'd)

The Israelites were being reminded of exactly what Neale said in his first coaching call. By aspiring as well as behaving as God-like as we can, all the blessings of life will magnetically come to us. We will actually experience life and its blessings in even “higher definition.” We will be more “in life” living fuller than if we were to separate ourselves by for example traveling to a mountain high up in the Himalayas and living in a monastery pretty much by our lonesome.

Being more God-like includes the full knowingness that all humans (and all life forms) are one with God and treating each with the respect, compassion and deep regard that is part and parcel of the wisdom that comes from its consequent understanding.


Names of God

Most of the names of God mentioned throughout biblical scripture are not proper names, rather they are labels or descriptors of aspects or attributes of God. But one name that was (and is still) used in a more personal way in the Hebrew scriptures to refer to God is the four (Hebrew) letter sacred Name sometimes called the Tetragrammaton. It is clearly the most important name of God in the Hebrew Bible and is written more than 6,000 times there (6,828 in one version).

This four letter sequence of consonants only (the letters are the yud, hey, vav, and hey written from right to left) was only uttered by one person on one day a year in just a single place–by the High Priest on the holiest day in the Jewish calendar (the Day of Atonement–Yom Kippur), in the inner sanctum sanctorum of the Second Temple, Jerusalem (destroyed by the Romans in the

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year 70 CE).

One reason this Name was not regularly spoken was a practical one: the four letters are not vowels, so it's not clear how to pronounce it. Another reason is that by speaking The Name our minds may unconsciously be placing a “fence” around that which It refers to. That would be restricting God in a way. As we have discussed above, God cannot be “fenced in.” From what Neale has taught us in the course we also now know that God is not a “thing” or an object of any kind, rather, God refers more to process or activity. God is Godding–"God is a verb" (the title of a book by Rabbi David Cooper).

We also recognize the power of words that are expressed through speech. According to Kabbalah and to the creation mythos in the Judeo-Christian traditions, creation is as a direct result of speaking words that reflect thought and intention–a concept that has strong support from modern research studies into the workings of the brain (neuroscience). From the viewpoint of Kabbalah, words, which reflect our thoughts, shape fields of energy and information that permeate all of creation and the cosmos. Think of a magnetic field and how it attracts metallic objects to it ...

Recall in a prior post above we discussed the correspondence between energy and physical matter–that matter is a form of energy, and energy is a repository as well as a carrier of information. So what information, what messages do the Tetragrammaton hold for us? Many, but let me start with the primary understanding.

This Name/letter sequence is a somewhat unusual conjugation of the Hebrew verb “to be” - hayah (Hebrew transliteration). Specifically The Name is an archaic third person singular imperfect of hayah (for example “S/He is”). It could as well be translated as “was, is, will be.” Thus we could also substitute “Existence Itself” for God.

Unfortunately, as a society we have become so confused believing that God is a type of super-ordinary person. After all, we often use a pronoun such as He or She to describe God. We tend to be further confused since God can converse with us just as people do.

This brings me to another descriptor/name/label for God. This one is very special to Kabbalists, and simple. It says that we can't really fathom with our limited minds who or what God is, rather we can only know what God is not—and that is “limited.” God simply put, is without limit or bound of any possible kind. In Hebrew, God is Ain Soph – Ain meaning “sans” (without) and Soph meaning boundary or limit. God is not finite in any sense—God is infinite!

A possible problem with these names is that they appear somewhat impersonal and a bit remote. However if we understand that human words are limited in their ability to describe certain feelings, sensations and experiences, then we might be able to admit that God is not only “beyond the beyond” (Her transcendence) yet also interacts with each one of us personally and

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intimately (Her immanence–here with us in this place atthis and every instant).


Names of God (cont'd)

Hebrew letters have associated with them a number equivalent, as there are no separate numerals in Hebrew. So, for example, the first ten letters of the basic Hebrew alephbet are assigned the numbers 1 through 10. The next 10 letters are assigned the values 20,30, 40, …, 100, and the remaining 3 letters are 200, 300 and 400. There are 5 additional Hebrew letters that only appear at the end of a word (phonetic repeats of 5 of the basic letters). These are assigned the values 500, 600, 700, 800 and 900 (for a total of 27 or 3 cubed letters). When the very first letter aleph is writ large it represents the value 1000.

When we put letters together to spell a word we can calculate its overall numeric value by summing together the values of the individual letters that make up the word. This practice is known by a fancy name: the method of gematria.

So let's calculate the value of the four letter sacred Name of God:

yud (10) + hey (5) + vav (6) + hey (5) = 10 + 5 + 6 + 5 = 26.

Interestingly, if we take the two digits of 26 and add them together (2 + 6) we get 8. Note that the number 8 is an “upright” infinity sign ∞. So the “Without Bound” is contained or encoded within the four letter Name!One of the rules of gematria states that if two letter sequences have the same numeric value, then the two sequences are related to each other in some manner in terms of their meaning and significance.

The word echad (the ch is gutteral) in Hebrew has the gematria value of 13. Echad means “One” as in “whole” or unity. The word ahavah has the same value—13. Ahavah means “Love.” If we put these two words together, either “One Love” or “Love One,” the gematria value of both phrases is 13 + 13 = 26, which also happens to be the gematria value of the four letter Name.Thus the gematrial rule of numeric equivalents tells us that God is (related to) “One Love” and “Love One”, two more substitutions we may use for the word God in addition to “Life”, “Existence Itself” and “Without Bound."

Kabbalists long ago liked to write the four letter Name vertically, top to bottom instead of the usual Hebrew convention of right to left. This is how it appeared:

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Note how The Name forms the figure of a human (caption below figure) demonstrating the closeness between divinity and humanity in the Kabbalah conception of God.


On The Really Big C … Consciousness

I hope that, so far, I've presented a small view of how the whole “story” of creation works. That is, a bit of the mechanics that begin to paint a picture of how the stuff of life is put together. There's a lot more to the story naturally. Please know that this is not Michael's (“my”) teaching. It is what my antenna has picked up (received - Kabbalah) from the aethers over the years and through that filter I offer up. My lens if you will is a combined Spirit<-->STHEM one.

I like to also point out that both art and music are stationed along “The Bridge of Life” and intimately connected with the “20,000 foot view” I'm speaking from (as I parachute down to earth … occasionally).

We've spoken above about the relationship among energy, physical matter and information. We talked about a new concept from the mother science of physics that this thing we call information may actually form the primary stuff of creation vs. energy (and recall that physics considers all of matter–whether

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it's “light” or “dark”--to be a form of energy. More than 96% of the “stuff” in our universe is considered “dark” and is so far, undetected!).

Looking at all this from a more spiritual perspective, we have been led to understand that creation is somewhat akin to a computer program running inside a computer. This cosmic program “executes” if you will, and operates upon data in the form of information. Recall that everything that ever was, still is and ever remains (see discussion of the Law of Conservation of Mass-Energy in a prior post above). Life is the never-ending story; death is like the period of this sentence. There is much more to follow!

In a way, the program and the data are conjoined as one, perhaps analogous to the way a so-called object-oriented program written in a computer language such as Java or C++ operates. We realize that computers have a certain level of intelligence. At least they have the ability to process information as well as to manipulate data using the rules of logic and mathematics. We are also developing computers and electronic hardware that can mimic to a certain degree the intelligent behaviors exhibited by living organisms such as most humans. This is often referred to as artificial intelligence (for example IBM's Watson computer).

We also mentioned in a previous post that information can be meaningfully represented as sequences or sets of base 2 numbers referred to as Binary digITs (“BIT”). Base 2 math uses only 2 digits: zeros (0) and ones (1). It is the fundamental “language” of digital electronics (the reason why is that electronic devices consist of transistors mainly, which are like on-off switches, 1 representing the on state, and 0 off).

Information can also be represented numerically using any other number base one likes, such as base 3 (ternary), base 8 (octal), base 16 (hexadecimal), base 60 (sexagesimal), etc. Let me give an example that I think is relevant to the discussions above. The 27 total letters of the Hebrew alephbet could simply by represented in a computer as the decimal counting numbers of 1 to 27 or 0 to 26. Equivalently, these numbers could be specified in base 3 form–ternary. This would be a convenient representation because the total number of them–27–happens to be a power of 3, specifically 3 cubed (33).

This tells us something interesting about Hebrew that may not merely be an “accident.” The fact that the number of Hebrew letters is 3 cubed is revealing-it may actually indicate that the alephbet is cubic itself. Simply stated, that the alephbet actually forms or models a geometric cube. If this is true, why the heck might it? What might it reveal to us?

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On The Really Big C … Consciousness (cont'd)

The alephbet does indeed have a cubic structure. This is most likely not random.*** From the creation stories in the biblical Book of Genesis, Kabbalah relates that God created everything through the invocation and expression of words reflecting Her thoughts, desires and intentions. Essentially God “spoke” all that is into existence. We point out that the native “tongue” of the Hebrew Bible is … ;-) (couldn't resist). Thus God brings all that is to existence via this code of Hebrew which consists of 27 total letters.

These letters must be much more than just the simple constituents of a human language used for everyday discourse, such as English. Indeed Kabbalah reasons that the letters–used by God to create all that is–are actually the building blocks of creation (this is also metaphoric).

Remember the Periodic Table of the Elements from chemistry? This table is an ordered list of all the elemental substances known by humanity, the constituents of all known matter that exists in the universe. Kabbalists understood the Hebrew alephbet as being a table of functional elements and the building blocks of all creation.

This all could be a lovely fairy tale. However, if we determine that there is something going on systematically rather than haphazardly we should be willing to admit that there is a “method to the madness” that life sometimes appears to be. If so, this naturally leads to the idea, discussed previously, that there is pattern, order and intelligence “lurking beneath” the surface of life as we humans experience it. And this implies the existence of an über Consciousness that permeates all creation.

This is the real (vs artificial) intelligence of life always at work at every level of reality, from the subatomic particles to the galaxies. Note that if the set of tools (the Hebrew alephbet) God used to create, forms a cube, then we can accept that the entire cosmos is at least related to “sacred” geometry. The Greeks understood this truth, as did the Hebrews and other peoples of the ancient Near East before them.

What's important for us to come to grips with here in my view, is that this Really Big C–that is as well a nearly infinite repository of information (and all together may be thought of as the Complete Story of All That Is. Some refer to this as the Akashic Record) is effectively who we are as ensouled entities. We are not merely our physical bodies or our minds or even our thoughts – we are all of that, yet much more. Our ultimate truth is we are one with the Consciousness, and therefore one with all creation and with God or whatever label or name you prefer.

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I point out here that the current state of brain (neuro) science says that the conscious awareness displayed by humans is “born of” the actual physical hardware of your brain, that your consciousness and sentience arises from the neurophysics-neurochemistry of the hundreds of billions of cells and trillions of synapses composing your brain.Kabbalah provides a much bigger picture of the story as does Conversations with God!

***A cube is 3 dimensional, has 6 faces/directions plus its center point (7), 12 unique corners and it requires 5 folds to transform a flat 4 x 3 “cross” into a 3D cube. 3 + 7 + 12 + 5 = 27.According to the ancient Book of Creation (Sefer Yetzirah – you can find this on Amazon) the alephbet is composed of 4 groups of letters. There are 3 so-called Mothers (Imot in Hebrew) representing the elemental substances of air, water and fire; there are 7 double letters (each of these has a soft and hard palate sound), there are 12 elementals and there are 5 finals. 3 + 7 + 12 + 5 = 27.

At 7:31am on September 3, 2014, Michael E. Brandt, Ph.D. said…

Kabbalah and Torah - A Primer

I want to lay a firmer foundation about Kabbalah for those unfamiliar with it. Kabbalah may be described as a perennial philosophical wisdom system. It is not a religion—yet many of the major historical figures of Kabbalah were Jewish rabbis and educators. According to the Holy Zohar—the bible of Kabbalah—this corpus of wisdom not only predates religion it predates the creation of our universe! Legends tell us that the archangel Raziel taught Adam Kabbalah in the Garden of Eden.

The main subject matter of Kabbalah is God, Her creation, Torah and humanity, in that order. The wisdom and knowledge embodied in Kabbalah has been passed down to us through the ages, first by word of mouth and then via various texts such as the aforementioned Zohar (penned in the thirteenth century, originally written in Aramaic in about 23 volumes, it is just now being translated to English. You can find several volumes by Professor Daniel Matt through Amazon). The word Zohar can be translated as brightness or illumination. It is referring to “Light.” This particular light is the original Light—the one that God “turned on” in the beginning of the creation of our universe. As it is written in the book of Genesis (1:3) “And God said, 'Let there be light,' and there was light.”

All are welcome to partake of the fruits of Kabbalah—anyone willing to may study it and “use it” (just as Neale said God wants to be used, same for Kabbalah) regardless of gender, religious affiliation (including agnostics and atheists), nationality, creed or any other characteristic. Kabbalah is a gift to all humanity to help us live more fulfilled, happy, healthy, love-filled lives, It is a universal philosophic system that offers many profound truths with real connections to almost every conceivable aspect of life as we know and experience it.

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I mentioned the Hebrew word Torah above. This word usually refers to the Hebrew bible–the so-called Five Books of Moses—Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. But the word has more general and symbolic meaning. One of the roots of Torah is the word yareh in Hebrew. This word is related to the sport of archery and means “to shoot an arrow to hit a target.” The metaphoric target refers to the truth of God and our relationship to Her.

There are two other related words. One is moreh—meaning teacher, and the other is horeh—meaning parent. So Torah is related to teaching—teaching of God's truth from parent to child. According to Judaism, the Torah was “given” to Moses when he ascended Mount Sinai. Moses received two forms of it: one was written and one was an oral “download.” The oral Torah was later codified (written) as what is known today as the Talmud.

In Judaism, the Torah is identified as well with “The Law.” These are considered the extensive rules and laws that God requires that the Jewish people live according to. In the Five Books of Moses there are a total of 613 of these—referred to as mitzvot. This word is usually translated as “commandment” as in the Ten Commandments (which are part of the total 613). However, another interesting translation of mitzvot is “connection” as in connection to divinity.

There are two groups of connections–the positive ones (perform an act, “do ...”) and the negative ones (abstain from an act, “do not ...”). Significantly, there are 365 negative connections—same as the number of days in a solar year, and 248 positive connections—same as the number of bones and main organs in the human body. Thus the Torah itself connects directly with cycles of time and the human “astronaut” who lives in time and space! …

At 7:37am on September 3, 2014, Michael E. Brandt, Ph.D. Said…

Kabbalah and Torah - A Primer (cont'd)

I should point out that a physical Torah—written in Hebrew—is scribed using specially prepared kosher ink on a kosher animal skins, and is placed on a (double) scroll. The Torah scribe is rigorously trained for many years and must follow exacting rules and standards to produce a physical Torah. This has been the case for at least two thousand years.

If the scribe makes a single mistake on one single letter of one sheave or section of the scroll, it has been rendered unusable and must be replaced. Because the Torah is considered a living being on a par with a human, the portion with the error must be ritually buried as a human would be.

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The oldest known Torah scrolls are the Dead Sea ones dating back to the time of Yeshua (Jesus). Scholars have compared those Torah scrolls with a modern one found in any synagogue in the world today. There are approximately 305,000 letters in the five books of the Torah. The letter level difference between the Dead Sea scrolls and a modern Torah is on the order of just a fraction of one percent! That is an amazing fact worth pondering.

We can safely assume that this preservation has taken place since the first Torah was scribed some 3,000 years ago. The Hebrews took their responsibility to transmit what they accepted as the words of God extremely seriously ever since. Also interesting is the similarity of the word Torah with two others–Torus and Tarot. This is no accident. A torus is a geometric form in the shape of a donut or a bagel (;-)). Not only is the Torah physically embodied on a cylindrical scroll, it is read every Saturday morning in the synagogue in a yearly cycle, year after year. One of the secrets of the tarot is that it is based on the Torah and on Hebrew itself.

Kabbalah understands the Torah in an extended sense—it is considered as God's revelation to all humanity for one, and as the blueprint or complete guide to all of creation/reality/existence as we know and experience it. In this sense it is the ultimate “software” code-program of All That Is. It is the entire database that I mentioned in a prior post–all the information content of all creation. And recall the current hypothesis of physics—that all the matter and energy and whatever substance there is in the cosmos is “born of” the information level that can be encoded numerically–and also happens to be symbolically as well within the Hebrew alephbet.

Whoa, that's heavy, man. ;-)

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the bridge of life

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