These young people who are after this are indeed enlightened people, because enlightened are not bound by religion. They speak spirituality in it purest form. I used to listen Mr.flip H, too who is 💎 of a man in every respect.With lots of love from a 74 yr old sufi student from India, May Allah give good health & long life these young men.
After the babylonian captivity judaism became decidedly babylonian. And still they are carrying on the traditions of men instead of cleaving to the father.
These young people who are after this are indeed enlightened people, because enlightened are not bound by religion. They speak spirituality in it purest form. I used to listen Mr.flip H, too who is 💎 of a man in every respect.With lots of love from a 74 yr old sufi student from India, May Allah give good health & long life these great young men of our time .
Part 2: From Philosophy to Mysticism. How Neoplatonism Influenced Early Kabbalah th-cam.com/video/9UK-PeQN73w/w-d-xo.html Check out the rest of our wonderful collaborators: Let's Talk Religion - What is Neoplatonism: th-cam.com/video/vZEUo_sHoBw/w-d-xo.html Esoterica - Neoplatonism vs Gnosticism: th-cam.com/video/ZV5ubPPzT7U/w-d-xo.html Angela's Symposium - Plotinus and Iamblichus on Theurgy and Magic: th-cam.com/video/lNqnNjsGExM/w-d-xo.html TheModernHermeticist - The Platonic Philosophers' Creed by Thomas Taylor: th-cam.com/video/Wzd98YSG6Hs/w-d-xo.html John Vervaeke - Neoplatonism & 4E Cognitive Science: th-cam.com/video/Lbk3lA6zCic/w-d-xo.html
Part 1: From Neoplatonism to Kabbalah: A Mystical Exploration 2022-12-30 th-cam.com/video/UmkZ383LcW8/w-d-xo.html Part 2: From Philosophy to Mysticism: How Neoplatonism Influenced Early Kabbalah 2023-01-05 th-cam.com/video/9UK-PeQN73w/w-d-xo.html Part 3: The Untold Story of Plato and Plato, Kabbalah and the Italian Renaissance 2023-01-13 th-cam.com/video/Fi3VDfkTELQ/w-d-xo.html Part 4: What is Neoplatonism? (Let's Talk Religion) 2022-12-30 th-cam.com/video/vZEUo_sHoBw/w-d-xo.html Part 5: The Ancient Neo-Platonist Attack on Gnosticism - Plotinus vs Gnosticism (@TheEsotericaChannel) 2022-12-30 th-cam.com/video/ZV5ubPPzT7U/w-d-xo.html Part 6: Plotinus and Iamblichus on Magic Theurgy (@drangelapuca - Angela's Symposium) 2022-12-30 th-cam.com/video/lNqnNjsGExM/w-d-xo.html Part 7: The Platonic Philosophers' Creed by Thomas Taylor (@TheModernHermeticist) 2022-12-30 th-cam.com/video/Wzd98YSG6Hs/w-d-xo.html Part 8: Levels of Intelligibility: Neoplatonism & 4E Cognitive Science (@johnvervaeke) 2022-12-30 th-cam.com/video/Lbk3lA6zCic/w-d-xo.html
Thank you so much for a wonderful presentation. This is the first video on your channel that I have watched, and I look forward to watching many more. I have liked and subscribed.
Your cadence, expertise and passion for the subject are fascinating. I grew up very cynical of my Jewish peers due to ideas coming from my Arab upbringing. But I’ve always felt a connection to Abraham, who we share connection with in his tent. Jewish mysticism and Kabbalah as well as Neoplatonism have felt like a warm home after being lost for some time. Thanks for being a lighthouse on the way back!
Zevi, this is a great introduction. Your introductory commentary warning is spot on. Appreciate your individual and collective effort on this. As a practicing mystic, I am in general hesitant about discursive philosophical thought, adhering to the maxim “Those that say don’t know; Those that know don’t say.” HOWEVER, your efforts at educating the interested public is admirable, helping to clear the overall morass. Appreciate your efforts. Keep it up!
Awesome work. Been extremely interested in the Kabbalah since learning of William Blake’s poetry. The fact that Ian McGilchrist is also interested in both just shows paramount all this actually is!
Beautiful work! Thank you so much for this, and for clarifying the record on the more complex and nuanced relationship between Neoplatonism and Kabbalah!
I’ve been on a journey of learning about it for two years now and it’s been endlessly enlightening. It’s a damn shame I wasn’t introduced to this earlier in life.
Great video! I eagerly await the the next installment. I am currently reading English translations of both Plotinus and The Guide For the Perplexed so this was great timing.
Finally back from dying from my cyclic vomitting that occurs every 3-4 months where I puke for 2-3 weeks straight, in and out of the ER 3-4 times. I'm glad I get to come back to this huge collaboration from all my favorite estoerica youtubers, especially because I just recently finished The Enneads, and Platos Theology because I knew you guys were doing this. Thanks brother as always, your channel really helps me during my intense sufferings that comes with cyclic vomitting, especially existentially as I promise you vomitting weeks straight is one of the most stressful things ever lmao.
at 19:45 the transcript reads "neo-acitalianism ." Sorry, but i'm new to some of this. i can find that nowhere. it is obviously an error. would someone be so kind as to help me out here?
Thank you seeker of unity, thank you for your great video! From the beginning of study of kabbalah, the kabbalah always gives me the impression that it's greek philosophie in the jewish form. In my own opnion, the kabbalah is not from one source by one way, but some sources and some ways in different periods. It's sure that jewish philosophers studied from greek, roman and arabic philosophers, but it's not complet in one time. As we know, the philosophers always critic their teachers' works and re-interprete the sources, and for the embryo of kabbalah it's the same. The appreance of kabbalah is in the period of academy of provence, but it's the result of the jobs during centeries. In another hand, we could find the similar gnostic things in talmud and early jewish mysticism textes as in phillip gospel and dead sea scroll, also in arabic and syrian mysticism textes, so i support the gnosticism is something semitic. In conclusion, I guess the truth may be the mixture of the studies of Gershom et Moshe Idel.
Hey hey! Another fantastic series from you Zev, and also excited about all the other channels covering the topic even if the Jewish angle is my favorite.
Great video very much appreciated I have been wondering about this for a little while now. What is that image he used to represent the Gnostics? That is an absolutely beautiful piece of art and I would love to see it in more detail.
2:35 Look Zevi, I can take the hit to the tmimus'dike faith of my youth. But the rounded luchos?! היתכן?! When a wise songwriter wrote 'wherever you may roam you can always...' I don't think he really considered that one could wander this far.
You're totally right. I felt like a shaygetz using it and knew that I would regret it. But I just so love Doré. I'm torn between two loves. What's a man to do?
@@SeekersofUnity A Chabadnik has got to go fishing in strange waters to indulge in beauty which isn't verbal or auditory. The strange can feel heretical/wrong simply by virtue of its absence from the mother's milk (דער מאמע איז תומכי תמימים). Salvador Dali suggested that Russia's conspicuous weakness in the visual arts was due to their eyes being damaged by too much תלג חיוור. I guess you're now on the תלתלים שחורות crusade. כאן בישיבה, כאן במלחמה (חגיגה יד ע''א)
I don't know the source of that quote. I remember it from a שיעור א מתיבתא farbrengen where a gentleman was shouting at us: לך לך... ומבית אביך. גיי אוועק פון טאטע און מאמא! דער רבי איז יעצט דער טאטע און תומכי תמימים איז דער מאמע. Gotta love that good ol' Russian revolutionary spirit.
Most of the texts which constitute what we call the Kabbalah emerged from Spain after the Moors had occupied Andalusia for 600 years. We know that these Moors were a mixed group of people. The Muslim Arabs “conquered” various lands in North Africa, from countries we now know as the Horn of Africa, Egypt, Libya, Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia and it is people from these countries which moved (they were welcomed) into Andalusia about 700 AD. It is clear from the ideas, sacred geometry, architecture, gematria, etc introduced in “Spain” that they had a mystical tradition. It is my opinion that Jewish mysticism is a mixed bag (Alexandrian Greco-Roman-Egyptian, Christian, Torah, other African mysteries - still practised today) of ideas which were reinterpreted and practised as what we call Kabbalah. This is why the Kabbalah is an in coherent, a difficult to under cobble of ideas, But at the heart of these ideas is the ancient cosmological worldview.
This is extremely interesting. I keep finding similarities up through the history of ideas, but it can be very challenging to know where they overlap and when they don't because they might be inspired by later traditions that build on the same sources. Your "diachronic view" is nothing short of fantastic :-)
So,Maimonides really brought the Kabbalists out of Hitbodedut to engage with him. That’s actually brilliant when you think about. Wouldn’t kabbalists be content to stay “hidden in plain sight” as it were? This is a great post. Special shout out to Dr. Justin Sledge and all the others. Thank you guys for getting this out here. 👏👏👏
Thanks friend. Glad you enjoyed. We discussed Idel's theory of Maimonides and the Kabbalists in the beginning of out Maimonides and Mysticism series. Check it out. Yours, Zevi
Just found this channel. I enjoy watching your videos and they're very informative. All the major religions including science have the same basic truth in their scriptures. Which is consciousness is the foundation of nature. This has been found in a great many societies independently of one. There are sects within every religion including science which doesn't believe what is clearly written in their "scriptures". What we should do about what is true seems to be an opinion for each person to make for themselves which I believe no two people would share exactly the same opinion but probably most are in the same ballpark like believing following the golden rule is important even though everyone everyone probably has a different opinion of what the golden rule is exactly. 🤔🙏
Very well said Zevi that many treated Gershom Scholem's books as gospel instead of remaining open to further research like Moshe Idel and others were and indeed reached different conclusions. I wish Justin Sledge @TheEsotericaChannel would likewise remain open minded about the origins of the Chumash instead of treating the Documentary Hypothesis as gospel. There are powerful arguments against it, but he acts like its fact
What was the difference between Judah and Israel? Two tribes, Judah and Benjamin, did not agree with the proposed king of Israel, Rehoboam. In result, they decided to forsake their inheritance. They became the southern Kingdom of Judah - also known as the House of Judah. The northern 10 tribes remained one people group and kept the name of Israel. Who was Yahweh originally? The oldest traditions in the Hebrew bible also describe Yahweh's "original habitat" as Edom or Seir. The current consensus is therefore that Yahweh was a "divine warrior from the southern region associated with Seir, Edom, Paran and Teman". Are El and Yahweh the same? El was the name of the god of Israel in the Bronze Age and Yahweh becomes the proper name of the god of the Israelites in the Iron Age. Yahwism (uncountable) (religion, historical): The polytheistic religion of Iron Age Israel, worshipping a pantheon of gods headed by Yahweh and Asherah, which eventually gave rise to Judaism (and, thereby, the rest of the Abrahamic religions). Is Yahweh in the Ugaritic texts? In 1 Kings 22:19-22 we read of Yahweh meeting with his heavenly council. This is the very description of heaven which one finds in the Ugaritic texts. For in those texts the sons of god are the sons of El. Other deities worshipped at Ugarit were El Shaddai, El Elyon, and El Berith. Who was God of Midianites? Yahweh. Jethro, priest-leader of the Midianite subtribe known as the Kenites, and his daughter Zipporah, a wife of Moses, influenced early Hebrew thought: it was Yahweh, the lord of the Midianites, who was revealed to Moses as the God of the Hebrews. Is Mount Sinai in Midian? Since Moses is described by the Bible as encountering Jethro, a Kenite who was a Midianite priest, shortly before encountering Sinai, this suggests that Sinai would be somewhere near their territory in Saudi Arabia; the Kenites and Midianites appear to have resided east of the Gulf of Aqaba.
Sh'koyach on the opening advice/disclaimer. So... it's noteworthy that you use the terms "diachronic" and "synchronic" to create a cleavage between approaches to the question. Not sure they're apt. Moments later, in your quest for appropriate language to communicate about these esoteric truths, you refer to the cosmos... again, all of time and space (that is, both "chronos" and "cosmos") are after the fact and therefore cannot be used to describe something greater than their limits.
Even though as a religious Jew I can appreciate the trigger warning at the beginning of the video, it still saddens me that a religious Jew wouldn't be able to switch temporarily his epistemic postulates in order to appreciate some intellectual exploration. I mean, many things depend on what value we give to "falsifiability". It need not to shake one's world.
You know what happened when they were told to not eat from the tree? Telling people not to watch, especially given the audience you are saying this too, is hardly going to make them stop watching. It is like when Rabbi Shalom Arush said for women not to read the men’s book ‘peace in the home’ or men read the women’s equivalent book, ‘women’s wisdom’ so each other can’t find what the other is supposed to be doing. Guess what actually happened? After listening to this and trying to get my head around every facet, my only conclusion would be the philosophers universally applicable version of God, as understood outside the limitations of religion/revelation is actually non-existent, despite the rather worrying and immense influence this non-god has had and still has within the Abrahamic faiths. The same God who reveals Himself/Makes Himself known to us, in finite creation, through humanity and through religious texts is the same God that exists outside of revelation. As opposed to the infinitely unknowable philosophers god of the blank space or vacuum. He, YHWH, is the only existence, near or far, infinite or finite, He changes not. The fact man has difficulty reconciling the spiritual revelation of unity he has temporarily experienced to the more common duality as perceived in physical reality, is because of the stage of evolution we are at, on a set time scale of rectification and revelation. Plus a lack of understanding as to just what we are being prepared to receive in terms of a revelation of the perfect infinite essence of God. We are being prepared to receive a revelation of His Oneness, this however is not a revelation that everything is One, it is a revelation that YHWH is the only power/authority, that only His Will is ultimately accomplished and that Will is only good, evil has no power to defeat His good Will, and everything works in a perfect way to accomplish His Will and only His Will. His Will is to bring humanity to a place where we can receive a revelation of His infinite perfect essence, because this is the ultimate good we could have been created to receive.He Will’s it, it will be done, we can even perceive it to a degree now, and that aspect or perfect Good we receive is a revelation of His ‘Oneness’ and not a revelation of how what appears as duality is really a singularity or that eventually everything must, as the philosophers suggest to fuse back into the singularity/source, we are already there. So in reality there is no empty space or vacuum involved in that only absolute Divine Presence and absolute Divine Providence and eventually absolute Divine awareness/Consciousness of His Oneness.
We really tried to get someone to do the Christian aspect, but no one was available at the moment. Hopefully there will be some late addition to the collab that will cover that topic!
@@LetsTalkReligion that's unfortunate. It would be interesting to see a collaboration like this on Hermeticism, covering Islamic Hermeticism, Renaissance Hermeticism, etc. Hermeticism is a pretty basic topic, but has various facets that would make it interesting.
Everyone knows Joshua was from Tribe of Ephraim so why does nobody read the Tribe of Ephraim's Book of Joshua? Also everyone agrees the House of Judah's Book of Joshua is NOT the "Jesus" from the New Testament...yet no one reads or cares about the other Book of Joshua... What is the difference between Hoshea and Joshua? The name Hoshea means “salvation,” the name Joshua means “YAHWEH is salvation.” In Jewish tradition it is believed that Moses is changing Hoshea's name to Joshua with an implied meaning of “May God save you from the conspiracy of the scouts.”
@@SeekersofUnity I think Moses and Joshua knew something was wrong but the Ugaritic Texts were missing for all this (until 1928 I think). Yahwism (Uncountable) is not from the Monotheistic pantheon of Bronze Age Israel. It's from the broader Levantine polytheism of Iron Age Israelites. The JEDP sources...the J and the P are Yaw and Lotan (Yahweh and Leviathan) from the Baal (Lord) Cycle. Jezebel vs Elijah: Jezebel represented the "Baals" (Lords) of Sidon and Tyre, not the good Baal (Lord) Hadad. Elijah represented Yahwism (Uncountable). So, both were bad news for Israel. Jacob struggled/wrestled with God and recieved the name Israel. Jacob = Yahweh (poly) Israel = El (mono)
Great video, but there is one thing I object to. At the beginning the presenter warns “religious” persons not to watch this video. Of course, he does qualify the term “religious” with other adjectives, but I object to him using the term “religious” at all. The implication is that “religious” persons are more rigid and fragile in their belief systems than “secular” persons. In my experience those entertaining a secular mindset can be just as rigid and fragile in their beliefs as religious persons.
Thank you for joining us and for the thoughtful objection. For what it’s worth I myself identify as a religious person and don’t see it as an indication of fragility or rigidity. Rather that I am “bound” to something, as the etymology of the word suggests. Yours, Zevi
@@SeekersofUnity Thanks for the reply, Zevi. I suspected that you were coming from a more religious than secular perspective. To be religious, to my mind, is to acknowledge the profound mystery of our lives and the universe as a whole, as well as to recognize the “claim” this mystery has upon us. Whether it is fair or not, what the term “secular” bring up in my mind is the foregone conclusion that if not now, eventually we humans will have everything figured out. It also conjures up a near necrophilic impulse to not only understand, but control things.
Plato's philosophy is a restatement of ancient Indian and Eastern thought. Plato is summarizing all that went before him for...us, the modern human. If Plato had not performed this task, most of this knowledge would have been lost forever to humanity. Plato, no doubt, had a premonition of the rationalist, materialist wave of thinking that was to come and he wanted to give us an antidote, or alternative, to it. His contribution cannot be overestimated. It was titanic. Plato's conception of the Universe is, therefore, many, many thousands of years old. It predates him far into the ancient past. Somewhere along the line, that ancient tradition shared a common stream with the oldest Jewish mysticism. So, they probably had, if we could go back far enough, the very same ancestor. When they met again in Europe during the Middle Ages, they recognized each other as related and this caused a joyful surge of optimism and common cause in fighting the rationalist, materialist thought that had become predominant in the world. This battle continues today, of course. IMBFO, Plato and Kabbalah...YES! Aristotle and Maimonides...NO.
Your intro is just not right. Kabala mysticism comes from Ancient Egypt. Moses spoke ancient Egyptian. Tell the truth. Thales and Plato studied for years in Ancient Egypt. They brought back to Greece Egyptian Wisdom theosophy. Plotinus was Egyptian and was a student of Ammonius Sacaas who was an Egyptian non-white man. Why is it you cannot stand to associate wisdom with black people in Africa?
Wow. No scholar looking at the role of Plato in Christian mysticism in your team of Seekers of Unity... What an omission. What Unity could you pretend to have regarding the influence of Hellenic mysticism without their influence in the Eastern Hellenic Roman Empire (so-called Byzantium) at least if not the rest of later Christian mystics? In fact you could devote an entire series to just that question: Christ himself as a Platonic mystic, and of course all the later early Christian Fathers and Mothers in particular, the suppression of Plato by the Vatican in Western Christiannity and its reasons, and then its resurgence in the 12th and 13th centuries during the Greek Renaissance, culminating with Gemistos Plethon and his school in particular, the origin in fact of the revival of Plato again in the West in Renaissance Italy first, and then the rest of the West. I believe you would undig some truly hidden and repressed dimensions of the origin and evolution of Kabbalah. In fact the rise of Kabbalah among Jewish communities around the same time corresponds closely to that revival.
The Truth (the one God and his hun), the Nous ( the prophets from Adam to Ibrahim, Moses, Isa the son of Maria till Mohammed VZMH.) they have bring us the Neoplatonism of the truth via hun. For the Muslims is the Kabbalah ( Qibla) the Kaa3ba with the Bekkah in Makkah of the neoplatonism truth. Neoplatonism is a Cubuus of knowledge. By the Muslims is Qibla (Kabbalah) where and how we can follow the truth of Neoplatonism (Cubuus). The Plato in letters ( the book of God) the first examplair is by prophet Mozes with (the letter of God, Plato) the Torah. After Dawud with Zaboer (neoplatotism), Jesus bring neoplatonism by the Gospel and as last Mohammed with the Koran (neoplatonism). Conclusion: Plato is a book of God with neoplatonism of knowledge!
Pride is the fixation of the exterior self on itself. Hell is the fall into one's own self. Salvation is the journey into the true self.The only happiness on this earth is to be free from the false self; that fabricated, exterior, transitory and illusory self, which is the Fall into the social self, born into existence and non existence at the one moment, into the fabricated matrix of history, culture and ego-sublated into pathological drives, conflicts and compulsions. ----------------------------------------------------- The Subject cannot know itself The Subject cannot know others The Subject cannot BECOME itself. THUS The Subject is self conscious. The Subject is conscious of others. The Subject maintains its identity over time. The Subject is nor what it is. Consciousness is the conscious of something other than itself. ( G Marcel) He who lives to the self shall die and he who dies to the self shall live.. You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free. "The tragedy of modern man is that his intelligence, his spirituality and his contemplative independence have been inoexorably throttled by his OWN superego which has sold itself without compromise to TECHNOLOGY. If the prophets, poets and priests foresake the vestiges of wisdom for the empty headed crowing of advertisers and engineers of opinion, then there is nothing left for mankind but total INSANITY" T Merton. Blessed are the merciful for the shall be shown mercy. Pray for your own discovery. Compunction Metanoia Kenosis Angus Dei qui tollis pecatta mundi
The only thing they should be talking about is the need for a savior & the need for grace. The jewish messiah already came and they are still persecuting him.
These people have no part in the Kingdom of God so they spend their energy trying to keep you out of it through highminded philosophy. The philosophers wore their hair in the style of the heathen pagan gods.
This is some of your best work, Zevi! And I'm not just saying that because I'm part of the larger project! A truly amazing video!
Thank you, Filip. It’s been such a pleasure to think and create alongside you. A true blessing. I’m glad you enjoyed the episode. Thank you.
These young people who are after this are indeed enlightened people, because enlightened are not bound by religion. They speak spirituality in it purest form.
I used to listen Mr.flip H, too who is 💎 of a man in every respect.With lots of love from a 74 yr old sufi student from India, May Allah give good health & long life these young men.
Both of you are great 👍
After the babylonian captivity judaism became decidedly babylonian. And still they are carrying on the traditions of men instead of cleaving to the father.
Fantastic video, Zevi! I'm so glad we have your educational work here on TH-cam!
Thank you Dr. Puca. It’s an honor and a pleasure to be creating and educating alongside you.
Your talmud will not save you only the messiah can do that. Oh wait he already did.
These young people who are after this are indeed enlightened people, because enlightened are not bound by religion. They speak spirituality in it purest form.
I used to listen Mr.flip H, too who is 💎 of a man in every respect.With lots of love from a 74 yr old sufi student from India, May Allah give good health & long life these great young men of our time .
Your style of posting vocabulary words is very useful. So many fancy words which describe simple concepts.
Glad it was helpful 🙏🏼
Part 2: From Philosophy to Mysticism. How Neoplatonism Influenced Early Kabbalah th-cam.com/video/9UK-PeQN73w/w-d-xo.html
Check out the rest of our wonderful collaborators:
Let's Talk Religion - What is Neoplatonism: th-cam.com/video/vZEUo_sHoBw/w-d-xo.html
Esoterica - Neoplatonism vs Gnosticism: th-cam.com/video/ZV5ubPPzT7U/w-d-xo.html
Angela's Symposium - Plotinus and Iamblichus on Theurgy and Magic: th-cam.com/video/lNqnNjsGExM/w-d-xo.html
TheModernHermeticist - The Platonic Philosophers' Creed by Thomas Taylor: th-cam.com/video/Wzd98YSG6Hs/w-d-xo.html
John Vervaeke - Neoplatonism & 4E Cognitive Science: th-cam.com/video/Lbk3lA6zCic/w-d-xo.html
knew something was going on..
Part 1: From Neoplatonism to Kabbalah: A Mystical Exploration 2022-12-30
th-cam.com/video/UmkZ383LcW8/w-d-xo.html
Part 2: From Philosophy to Mysticism: How Neoplatonism Influenced Early Kabbalah 2023-01-05
th-cam.com/video/9UK-PeQN73w/w-d-xo.html
Part 3: The Untold Story of Plato and Plato, Kabbalah and the Italian Renaissance 2023-01-13
th-cam.com/video/Fi3VDfkTELQ/w-d-xo.html
Part 4: What is Neoplatonism? (Let's Talk Religion) 2022-12-30
th-cam.com/video/vZEUo_sHoBw/w-d-xo.html
Part 5: The Ancient Neo-Platonist Attack on Gnosticism - Plotinus vs Gnosticism (@TheEsotericaChannel) 2022-12-30
th-cam.com/video/ZV5ubPPzT7U/w-d-xo.html
Part 6: Plotinus and Iamblichus on Magic Theurgy (@drangelapuca - Angela's Symposium) 2022-12-30
th-cam.com/video/lNqnNjsGExM/w-d-xo.html
Part 7: The Platonic Philosophers' Creed by Thomas Taylor (@TheModernHermeticist) 2022-12-30
th-cam.com/video/Wzd98YSG6Hs/w-d-xo.html
Part 8: Levels of Intelligibility: Neoplatonism & 4E Cognitive Science (@johnvervaeke) 2022-12-30
th-cam.com/video/Lbk3lA6zCic/w-d-xo.html
Incredible content, thank you
My pleasure. I’m glad you enjoyed it Ellis. Welcome.
This is bliss. A mass project by all my favorites.
As it was for us :)
Thank you so much for a wonderful presentation. This is the first video on your channel that I have watched, and I look forward to watching many more. I have liked and subscribed.
Your cadence, expertise and passion for the subject are fascinating. I grew up very cynical of my Jewish peers due to ideas coming from my Arab upbringing. But I’ve always felt a connection to Abraham, who we share connection with in his tent. Jewish mysticism and Kabbalah as well as Neoplatonism have felt like a warm home after being lost for some time. Thanks for being a lighthouse on the way back!
Thank you Leb. That means a lot to me. With love, Zevi
Thank you! I will surely check out the collaborators. Very interesting topic 👍🙏🏻✨
Please do. I hope you enjoy.
I been w you since you were a very small channel. Very happy to have your excellent work available, thank you
Thank you friend. Glad to have you here with us all along.
Love the background.
Zevi, this is a great introduction. Your introductory commentary warning is spot on.
Appreciate your individual and collective effort on this.
As a practicing mystic, I am in general hesitant about discursive philosophical thought, adhering to the maxim “Those that say don’t know; Those that know don’t say.” HOWEVER, your efforts at educating the interested public is admirable, helping to clear the overall morass. Appreciate your efforts. Keep it up!
Thank you friend. That means a lot to me coming from a fellow mystic.
Awesome work. Been extremely interested in the Kabbalah since learning of William Blake’s poetry. The fact that Ian McGilchrist is also interested in both just shows paramount all this actually is!
Thank you brother 🙏🏼
Looking forward to sinking my teeth into this. I drew some conclusions of this relationship implicitly I think. Sholem seems like a veritable titan.
Beautiful work! Thank you so much for this, and for clarifying the record on the more complex and nuanced relationship between Neoplatonism and Kabbalah!
You're very welcome. I’m glad you enjoyed it Seth. More to come soon.
Awesome. sitting here with a cup of tea. My two favourite subjects and one of my favourite channels. Many Thanks.
What a pleasure Steve. I hope you enjoyed it. We’re just getting started ;)
I have recently taken an interest in neo-Platonism. This has been a great way to learn more.
Glad to be of assistance, Talha. Welcome.
I’ve been on a journey of learning about it for two years now and it’s been endlessly enlightening.
It’s a damn shame I wasn’t introduced to this earlier in life.
Been waiting for this one for a long time!!! Thank you Zevi 🙏🏽
You’re most welcome. I hope you enjoyed it. More to come.
This collaboration is just wonderful!!!
I'm glad you enjoyed it.
I agree with Philip, this is some of your best work. Love you, brother, and happy new year!
Thank you friend. Much appreciated. Happy New Year 🥳
Thank you Zevi. Looking forward to your follow-up video on this topic!
You're most welcome. It's coming soon.
I love your channel! Dr JJS referred me. This series is well done!
Welcome aboard :) Glad your enjoying it.
Thank you! ❤️
Just learned of your channel from Esoterica! Great presentation and now sub'd. Thank you.
His series on Maimonides is FANTASTIC!
Welcome for the ride Marz. Good to have you.
I'm learning about you through the collaboration with Justin Sledge, Vervaeke, Angela's Symposium and others. It's great to learn about you.
Welcome Christina. Glad to have you join us.
I'm a big fan of Dr sludge over at esoterica and this series is phenomenal. Y'all must continue with more
Thank you friend. We are too ;)
This was fascinating.
Thank you Eric. Welcome.
Excellent presentation.
Great video! I eagerly await the the next installment. I am currently reading English translations of both Plotinus and The Guide For the Perplexed so this was great timing.
Thank you Rich. Looking forward to hearing your thoughts on part 2.
Merci pour cette quête spirituelle. ❤
Finally back from dying from my cyclic vomitting that occurs every 3-4 months where I puke for 2-3 weeks straight, in and out of the ER 3-4 times. I'm glad I get to come back to this huge collaboration from all my favorite estoerica youtubers, especially because I just recently finished The Enneads, and Platos Theology because I knew you guys were doing this. Thanks brother as always, your channel really helps me during my intense sufferings that comes with cyclic vomitting, especially existentially as I promise you vomitting weeks straight is one of the most stressful things ever lmao.
Glad to have back.
Pray for Jesus the Christ to heal you brother 🙏🏼❤
Bravo and thanks to all of you for your kind gift!
You’re most welcome Chris. It’s a pleasure.
What a wonderful collaboration.
Glad you enjoyed it :)
at 19:45 the transcript reads "neo-acitalianism ." Sorry, but i'm new to some of this. i can find that nowhere. it is obviously an error. would someone be so kind as to help me out here?
Sure. That would be Neo-Aristotelianism. Best of luck on your journey.
thank you ever so much@@SeekersofUnity
@brentweissert6524 🙏🏼
Thank you seeker of unity, thank you for your great video! From the beginning of study of kabbalah, the kabbalah always gives me the impression that it's greek philosophie in the jewish form.
In my own opnion, the kabbalah is not from one source by one way, but some sources and some ways in different periods. It's sure that jewish philosophers studied from greek, roman and arabic philosophers, but it's not complet in one time. As we know, the philosophers always critic their teachers' works and re-interprete the sources, and for the embryo of kabbalah it's the same. The appreance of kabbalah is in the period of academy of provence, but it's the result of the jobs during centeries. In another hand, we could find the similar gnostic things in talmud and early jewish mysticism textes as in phillip gospel and dead sea scroll, also in arabic and syrian mysticism textes, so i support the gnosticism is something semitic. In conclusion, I guess the truth may be the mixture of the studies of Gershom et Moshe Idel.
Hey hey! Another fantastic series from you Zev, and also excited about all the other channels covering the topic even if the Jewish angle is my favorite.
Welcome back friend. Good to see you. Excited for this one :)
thank you for once again a great video
You’re most welcome. Thank you Colin for joining us again.
Very excited for this. The disclaimer alone - new forbidden knowledge! OH Boy!
I’m glad. I hope you enjoyed it.
Great video. Now I undestand better.
Glad to be of service. Thank you Nick.
Great video very much appreciated I have been wondering about this for a little while now. What is that image he used to represent the Gnostics? That is an absolutely beautiful piece of art and I would love to see it in more detail.
I'm thrilled to see this is the topic! 🤗
Me too :)
mysticism leads to perrenialism
wonderful, thank you so much!
You’re most welcome. Thank you for joining us Miron 🙏🏼
We question everything ❤
2:35 Look Zevi, I can take the hit to the tmimus'dike faith of my youth. But the rounded luchos?! היתכן?!
When a wise songwriter wrote 'wherever you may roam you can always...' I don't think he really considered that one could wander this far.
You're totally right. I felt like a shaygetz using it and knew that I would regret it. But I just so love Doré. I'm torn between two loves. What's a man to do?
@@SeekersofUnity A Chabadnik has got to go fishing in strange waters to indulge in beauty which isn't verbal or auditory. The strange can feel heretical/wrong simply by virtue of its absence from the mother's milk (דער מאמע איז תומכי תמימים). Salvador Dali suggested that Russia's conspicuous weakness in the visual arts was due to their eyes being damaged by too much תלג חיוור. I guess you're now on the תלתלים שחורות crusade.
כאן בישיבה, כאן במלחמה (חגיגה יד ע''א)
I don't know the source of that quote. I remember it from a שיעור א מתיבתא farbrengen where a gentleman was shouting at us:
לך לך... ומבית אביך. גיי אוועק פון טאטע און מאמא! דער רבי איז יעצט דער טאטע און תומכי תמימים איז דער מאמע.
Gotta love that good ol' Russian revolutionary spirit.
Most of the texts which constitute what we call the Kabbalah emerged from Spain after the Moors had occupied Andalusia for 600 years. We know that these Moors were a mixed group of people. The Muslim Arabs “conquered” various lands in North Africa, from countries we now know as the Horn of Africa, Egypt, Libya, Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia and it is people from these countries which moved (they were welcomed) into Andalusia about 700 AD. It is clear from the ideas, sacred geometry, architecture, gematria, etc introduced in “Spain” that they had a mystical tradition. It is my opinion that Jewish mysticism is a mixed bag (Alexandrian Greco-Roman-Egyptian, Christian, Torah, other African mysteries - still practised today) of ideas which were reinterpreted and practised as what we call Kabbalah. This is why the Kabbalah is an in coherent, a difficult to under cobble of ideas, But at the heart of these ideas is the ancient cosmological worldview.
This is extremely interesting.
I keep finding similarities up through the history of ideas, but it can be very challenging to know where they overlap and when they don't because they might be inspired by later traditions that build on the same sources. Your "diachronic view" is nothing short of fantastic :-)
Thank you friend. I’m glad it was helpful.
All this wonderful stuff... :D who needs to finish a doctorate with ya'll around ;) :P
Glad to be of service :)
So,Maimonides really brought the Kabbalists out of Hitbodedut to engage with him. That’s actually brilliant when you think about. Wouldn’t kabbalists be content to stay “hidden in plain sight” as it were? This is a great post. Special shout out to Dr. Justin Sledge and all the others. Thank you guys for getting this out here. 👏👏👏
Thanks friend. Glad you enjoyed. We discussed Idel's theory of Maimonides and the Kabbalists in the beginning of out Maimonides and Mysticism series. Check it out. Yours,
Zevi
Just found this channel. I enjoy watching your videos and they're very informative.
All the major religions including science have the same basic truth in their scriptures. Which is consciousness is the foundation of nature. This has been found in a great many societies independently of one. There are sects within every religion including science which doesn't believe what is clearly written in their "scriptures". What we should do about what is true seems to be an opinion for each person to make for themselves which I believe no two people would share exactly the same opinion but probably most are in the same ballpark like believing following the golden rule is important even though everyone everyone probably has a different opinion of what the golden rule is exactly. 🤔🙏
Glad you’re enjoying it. Thanks for saying hi :)
Very well said Zevi that many treated Gershom Scholem's books as gospel instead of remaining open to further research like Moshe Idel and others were and indeed reached different conclusions. I wish Justin Sledge @TheEsotericaChannel would likewise remain open minded about the origins of the Chumash instead of treating the Documentary Hypothesis as gospel. There are powerful arguments against it, but he acts like its fact
Well done! It would be great to see you interview Daniel Abrams.
Thank you friend. That would be a pleasure and an honor.
Great video.
Thank you 🙏🏼
Very informative
Thank you brother 😘
What was the difference between Judah and Israel?
Two tribes, Judah and Benjamin, did not agree with the proposed king of Israel, Rehoboam. In result, they decided to forsake their inheritance.
They became the southern Kingdom of Judah - also known as the House of Judah. The northern 10 tribes remained one people group and kept the name of Israel.
Who was Yahweh originally?
The oldest traditions in the Hebrew bible also describe Yahweh's "original habitat" as Edom or Seir. The current consensus is therefore that Yahweh was a "divine warrior from the southern region associated with Seir, Edom, Paran and Teman".
Are El and Yahweh the same?
El was the name of the god of Israel in the Bronze Age and Yahweh becomes the proper name of the god of the Israelites in the Iron Age.
Yahwism (uncountable) (religion, historical): The polytheistic religion of Iron Age Israel, worshipping a pantheon of gods headed by Yahweh and Asherah, which eventually gave rise to Judaism (and, thereby, the rest of the Abrahamic religions).
Is Yahweh in the Ugaritic texts?
In 1 Kings 22:19-22 we read of Yahweh meeting with his heavenly council. This is the very description of heaven which one finds in the Ugaritic texts. For in those texts the sons of god are the sons of El. Other deities worshipped at Ugarit were El Shaddai, El Elyon, and El Berith.
Who was God of Midianites?
Yahweh.
Jethro, priest-leader of the Midianite subtribe known as the Kenites, and his daughter Zipporah, a wife of Moses, influenced early Hebrew thought: it was Yahweh, the lord of the Midianites, who was revealed to Moses as the God of the Hebrews.
Is Mount Sinai in Midian?
Since Moses is described by the Bible as encountering Jethro, a Kenite who was a Midianite priest, shortly before encountering Sinai, this suggests that Sinai would be somewhere near their territory in Saudi Arabia; the Kenites and Midianites appear to have resided east of the Gulf of Aqaba.
🙏🏼
Sh'koyach on the opening advice/disclaimer.
So... it's noteworthy that you use the terms "diachronic" and "synchronic" to create a cleavage between approaches to the question. Not sure they're apt. Moments later, in your quest for appropriate language to communicate about these esoteric truths, you refer to the cosmos... again, all of time and space (that is, both "chronos" and "cosmos") are after the fact and therefore cannot be used to describe something greater than their limits.
You’re most welcome. Thank for that note.
yo this is some og shit.
Thank you Ali. I hope you enjoyed it ;)
Even though as a religious Jew I can appreciate the trigger warning at the beginning of the video, it still saddens me that a religious Jew wouldn't be able to switch temporarily his epistemic postulates in order to appreciate some intellectual exploration. I mean, many things depend on what value we give to "falsifiability". It need not to shake one's world.
You know what happened when they were told to not eat from the tree?
Telling people not to watch, especially given the audience you are saying this too, is hardly going to make them stop watching.
It is like when Rabbi Shalom Arush said for women not to read the men’s book ‘peace in the home’ or men read the women’s equivalent book, ‘women’s wisdom’ so each other can’t find what the other is supposed to be doing. Guess what actually happened?
After listening to this and trying to get my head around every facet, my only conclusion would be the philosophers universally applicable version of God, as understood outside the limitations of religion/revelation is actually non-existent, despite the rather worrying and immense influence this non-god has had and still has within the Abrahamic faiths.
The same God who reveals Himself/Makes Himself known to us, in finite creation, through humanity and through religious texts is the same God that exists outside of revelation. As opposed to the infinitely unknowable philosophers god of the blank space or vacuum.
He, YHWH, is the only existence, near or far, infinite or finite, He changes not. The fact man has difficulty reconciling the spiritual revelation of unity he has temporarily experienced to the more common duality as perceived in physical reality, is because of the stage of evolution we are at, on a set time scale of rectification and revelation. Plus a lack of understanding as to just what we are being prepared to receive in terms of a revelation of the perfect infinite essence of God.
We are being prepared to receive a revelation of His Oneness, this however is not a revelation that everything is One, it is a revelation that YHWH is the only power/authority, that only His Will is ultimately accomplished and that Will is only good, evil has no power to defeat His good Will, and everything works in a perfect way to accomplish His Will and only His Will.
His Will is to bring humanity to a place where we can receive a revelation of His infinite perfect essence, because this is the ultimate good we could have been created to receive.He Will’s it, it will be done, we can even perceive it to a degree now, and that aspect or perfect Good we receive is a revelation of His ‘Oneness’ and not a revelation of how what appears as duality is really a singularity or that eventually everything must, as the philosophers suggest to fuse back into the singularity/source, we are already there. So in reality there is no empty space or vacuum involved in that only absolute Divine Presence and absolute Divine Providence and eventually absolute Divine awareness/Consciousness of His Oneness.
If only you added in one more person to make 7 (completiom) and add in Christian Neoplatonism. Good video nonetheless.
We really tried to get someone to do the Christian aspect, but no one was available at the moment. Hopefully there will be some late addition to the collab that will cover that topic!
@@LetsTalkReligion that's unfortunate. It would be interesting to see a collaboration like this on Hermeticism, covering Islamic Hermeticism, Renaissance Hermeticism, etc. Hermeticism is a pretty basic topic, but has various facets that would make it interesting.
Thanks, Zevi! Great video!
You’re most welcome. Thank you for joining us :)
Everyone knows Joshua was from Tribe of Ephraim so why does nobody read the Tribe of Ephraim's Book of Joshua?
Also everyone agrees the House of Judah's Book of Joshua is NOT the "Jesus" from the New Testament...yet no one reads or cares about the other Book of Joshua...
What is the difference between Hoshea and Joshua?
The name Hoshea means “salvation,” the name Joshua means “YAHWEH is salvation.”
In Jewish tradition it is believed that Moses is changing Hoshea's name to Joshua with an implied meaning of “May God save you from the conspiracy of the scouts.”
🙏🏼
@@SeekersofUnity
I think Moses and Joshua knew something was wrong but the Ugaritic Texts were missing for all this (until 1928 I think).
Yahwism (Uncountable) is not from the Monotheistic pantheon of Bronze Age Israel. It's from the broader Levantine polytheism of Iron Age Israelites.
The JEDP sources...the J and the P are Yaw and Lotan (Yahweh and Leviathan) from the Baal (Lord) Cycle.
Jezebel vs Elijah:
Jezebel represented the "Baals" (Lords) of Sidon and Tyre, not the good Baal (Lord) Hadad.
Elijah represented Yahwism (Uncountable).
So, both were bad news for Israel.
Jacob struggled/wrestled with God and recieved the name Israel.
Jacob = Yahweh (poly)
Israel = El (mono)
Was Socrates a mystic
Great video, but there is one thing I object to. At the beginning the presenter warns “religious” persons not to watch this video. Of course, he does qualify the term “religious” with other adjectives, but I object to him using the term “religious” at all. The implication is that “religious” persons are more rigid and fragile in their belief systems than “secular” persons. In my experience those entertaining a secular mindset can be just as rigid and fragile in their beliefs as religious persons.
Thank you for joining us and for the thoughtful objection. For what it’s worth I myself identify as a religious person and don’t see it as an indication of fragility or rigidity. Rather that I am “bound” to something, as the etymology of the word suggests.
Yours,
Zevi
@@SeekersofUnity Thanks for the reply, Zevi. I suspected that you were coming from a more religious than secular perspective. To be religious, to my mind, is to acknowledge the profound mystery of our lives and the universe as a whole, as well as to recognize the “claim” this mystery has upon us. Whether it is fair or not, what the term “secular” bring up in my mind is the foregone conclusion that if not now, eventually we humans will have everything figured out. It also conjures up a near necrophilic impulse to not only understand, but control things.
Kaballah , om nama Shivaya.
Plato's philosophy is a restatement of ancient Indian and Eastern thought. Plato is summarizing all that went before him for...us, the modern human. If Plato had not performed this task, most of this knowledge would have been lost forever to humanity. Plato, no doubt, had a premonition of the rationalist, materialist wave of thinking that was to come and he wanted to give us an antidote, or alternative, to it. His contribution cannot be overestimated. It was titanic. Plato's conception of the Universe is, therefore, many, many thousands of years old. It predates him far into the ancient past. Somewhere along the line, that ancient tradition shared a common stream with the oldest Jewish mysticism. So, they probably had, if we could go back far enough, the very same ancestor. When they met again in Europe during the Middle Ages, they recognized each other as related and this caused a joyful surge of optimism and common cause in fighting the rationalist, materialist thought that had become predominant in the world. This battle continues today, of course. IMBFO, Plato and Kabbalah...YES! Aristotle and Maimonides...NO.
You're a Wolf in sheep's clothing , you just don't know it yet but you will.
what do you mean?
The british science guy on PBS sounds exactly like this. Literally reading off a screen like a human teleprompter. The chatgpt girl is more human
Thanks for the feedback. Appreciate it.
Your intro is just not right. Kabala mysticism comes from Ancient Egypt. Moses spoke ancient Egyptian. Tell the truth. Thales and Plato studied for years in Ancient Egypt. They brought back to Greece Egyptian Wisdom theosophy. Plotinus was Egyptian and was a student of Ammonius Sacaas who was an Egyptian non-white man. Why is it you cannot stand to associate wisdom with black people in Africa?
Thank you. We’ll be discussing some of that in the next episode.
@@SeekersofUnity I really hope so without watering it down.
Wow. No scholar looking at the role of Plato in Christian mysticism in your team of Seekers of Unity... What an omission. What Unity could you pretend to have regarding the influence of Hellenic mysticism without their influence in the Eastern Hellenic Roman Empire (so-called Byzantium) at least if not the rest of later Christian mystics? In fact you could devote an entire series to just that question: Christ himself as a Platonic mystic, and of course all the later early Christian Fathers and Mothers in particular, the suppression of Plato by the Vatican in Western Christiannity and its reasons, and then its resurgence in the 12th and 13th centuries during the Greek Renaissance, culminating with Gemistos Plethon and his school in particular, the origin in fact of the revival of Plato again in the West in Renaissance Italy first, and then the rest of the West. I believe you would undig some truly hidden and repressed dimensions of the origin and evolution of Kabbalah. In fact the rise of Kabbalah among Jewish communities around the same time corresponds closely to that revival.
This is highminded philosophy and fornicating with the adversary. This is bondage, returning to Egypt instead of going forward to the promised land.
The Truth (the one God and his hun), the Nous ( the prophets from Adam to Ibrahim, Moses, Isa the son of Maria till Mohammed VZMH.) they have bring us the Neoplatonism of the truth via hun.
For the Muslims is the Kabbalah ( Qibla) the Kaa3ba with the Bekkah in Makkah of the neoplatonism truth. Neoplatonism is a Cubuus of knowledge. By the Muslims is Qibla (Kabbalah) where and how we can follow the truth of Neoplatonism (Cubuus). The Plato in letters ( the book of God) the first examplair is by prophet Mozes with (the letter of God, Plato) the Torah. After Dawud with Zaboer (neoplatotism), Jesus bring neoplatonism by the Gospel and as last Mohammed with the Koran (neoplatonism).
Conclusion: Plato is a book of God with neoplatonism of knowledge!
Pride is the fixation of the exterior self on itself.
Hell is the fall into one's own self.
Salvation is the journey into the true self.The only happiness on this earth is to be free from the false self; that fabricated, exterior, transitory and illusory self, which is the Fall into the social self, born into existence and non existence at the one moment, into the fabricated matrix of history, culture and ego-sublated into pathological drives, conflicts and compulsions.
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The Subject cannot know itself
The Subject cannot know others
The Subject cannot BECOME itself.
THUS
The Subject is self conscious.
The Subject is conscious of others.
The Subject maintains its identity over time.
The Subject is nor what it is.
Consciousness is the conscious of something other than itself. ( G Marcel)
He who lives to the self shall die and he who dies to the self shall live..
You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.
"The tragedy of modern man is that his intelligence, his spirituality and his contemplative independence have been inoexorably throttled by his OWN superego which has sold itself without compromise to TECHNOLOGY.
If the prophets, poets and priests foresake the vestiges of wisdom for the empty headed crowing of advertisers and engineers of opinion, then there is nothing left for mankind but total INSANITY"
T Merton.
Blessed are the merciful for the shall be shown mercy.
Pray for your own discovery.
Compunction
Metanoia
Kenosis
Angus Dei qui tollis pecatta mundi
The only thing they should be talking about is the need for a savior & the need for grace. The jewish messiah already came and they are still persecuting him.
These people have no part in the Kingdom of God so they spend their energy trying to keep you out of it through highminded philosophy. The philosophers wore their hair in the style of the heathen pagan gods.
@@SeekersofUnity Are you coming in the spirit of the accuser with yours? Peace begins inside us.
@@SeekersofUnity Politically correct devils have no power they have a form of godliness denying the power thereof.
Be more logical, less dramatic.
🙏🏼