The Most Astounding Fact - Neil deGrasse Tyson

The Non-Dual Teachings of Moses Cordovero

"Nothing is outside of God. This applies . . . to everything that exists, large and small - they exist solely through the divine energy that flows to them and clothes itself in them. If God's gaze were withdrawn for even a moment, all existence would be nullified . . . Contemplating this, you are humbled, your thoughts purified. - Moses Cordovero, Or Yaqar.


Do not say "This is a stone and not God." God forbid! 
Rather, all existence is God, and the stone is a thing pervaded by divinity. - Moses Cordovero



Before anything emanated, there was only Ein Sof. Ein Sof was all that existed. Similarly after it brought into being all that exists, there is nothing but it. You cannot find anything that exists apart from it . . . God is everything that exists, though everything that exists is not God. It is present in everything, and everything comes into being from it. Nothing is devoid of its divinity. Everything is within it; it is within everything and outside of everything. There is nothing but it.  - Moses Cordovero, Elimah Rabbati.

The essence of divinity is found in every single thing - nothing but it exists. Since it causes every thing to be, no thing can live by anything else. It enlivens them; its existence exists in each existent. Do not attribute duality to God. Let God be solely God. If you suppose that Ein Sof emanates until a certain point, and that from that point on is outside of it, you have dualized. God forbid! Realize, rather, that Ein Sof exists in each existent. Do not say "This is a stone and not God." God forbid! Rather, all existence is God, and the stone is a thing pervaded by divinity.  - Moses Cordovero, Shi'ur Qomah.

Everything is catenated in its mystery, caught in its oneness . . . The entire chain is One. Down to the last link, everything is linked with everything else, so divine essence is below as well as above, in heaven and earth. There is nothing else.  - Moses de Leon, Sefer ha-Rimmon.

Nothing is outside of God. This applies . . . to everything that exists, large and small - they exist solely through the divine energy that flows to them and clothes itself in them. If God's gaze were withdrawn for even a moment, all existence would be nullified . . . Contemplating this, you are humbled, your thoughts purified. - Moses Cordovero, Or Yaqar.

When powerful light is concealed and clothed in a garment, ir is revealed. Though concealed, the light is actually revealed, for were it not concealed, it could not be revealed. This is like wishing to gaze at the dazzling sunn. Its dazzle conceals it, for you cannot look at its overwhelming brilliance. Yet when you conceal it - looking at it through screens - you can see and not be harmed. So it is with emanation: by concealing and clothing itself, it reveals itself.  - Moses Cordovero, Pardes Rimmonim.

Ein Sof cannot be conceived, certainly not expressed, though it is  intimated in every thing, for there is nothing outside of it. No letter, no name, no writing, no thing can confine . . . Ein Sof has no will, no intention, no desire, no thought, no speech, no action - yet there is nothing outside of it.  - Azriel of Gerona, Commentary on the Ten Sefirot.


Ultimately all the sefirot and all the creation that emanates from them are one with Ein Sof. Moses Cordovero compares the process with water flowing through vessels of different colours - the water remains one and of one colour, though it appears to divide and to change colour. Everything is one, nothing exists but the one divine being. This position is very similar to that of the Sufi philosopher Ibn Al'arabi.

The Panentheism of Baal Shem Tov, Rabbi Yisroel (Israel) ben Eliezer

“All that I have achieved,” the Baal Shem Tov once remarked, “I have achieved not through study, but through prayer”. Prayer, however, is not merely petitioning God to grant a request, nor even necessarily speaking to God, but rather (“cleaving”, dvekut)— the glorious feeling of ’Oneness with God Almighty’, the state of the soul wherein a man or woman gives up their consciousness of separate existence, and join their own selves to the Eternal Being of God Supreme. Such a state produces indescribable bliss, which is the foremost fruit of the true worship of God.





All matter is a manifestation of God - Since God is immanent in all things, all things must possess something good in which God manifests Himself as the source of good. For this reason, the Besht taught, every man must be considered good, and his sins must be explained, not condemned. One of his favorite sayings was that no man has sunk too low to be able to raise himself to God. Naturally, then, it was his chief endeavor to convince sinners that God stood as near to them as to the righteous, and that their misdeeds were chiefly the consequences of their folly. 

Whoever does not believe that God resides in all things, but separates God and them in his thoughts, has not the right conception of God. It is equally fallacious to think of a creation in time: creation, that is, God’s activity, has no end. God is ever active in the changes of nature: in fact, it is in these changes that God’s continuous creativeness consists.

The foundation-stone of Hasidism as laid by Besht is a strongly marked panentheistic conception of God. He declared the whole universe, mind and matter, to be a manifestation of the Divine Being; that this manifestation is not an emanation from God, as is the conception of the Kabbalah by Mitnagdim, for nothing can be separated from God: all things are rather forms in which God reveals Himself.

Since every act in life is a manifestation of God, and must perforce be divine, it is man’s duty so to live that the things called “earthly” may also become noble and pure, that is, divine - Baal Shem Tov, Rabbi Yisroel (Israel) ben Eliezer