Zohar: Genesis: Chapter LXXXVII. Kabbalistic Philosophy o...

This is an excerpt from the Zohar, the foundational text of Jewish Kabbalah, presented as a teaching discourse by Rabbi Simeon (Shimon bar Yochai) to his disciples during a journey. Its central argument is that the human soul has three distinct components: the *nephesh* (lower self, tied to the physical body), the *ruach* (the waking active self), and the *neshama* (the divine higher self or spiritual ego), which together form a hierarchical triangle of being. Rabbi Simeon teaches that every night during sleep, the soul leaves the body — connected only by a "silver cord" — and ascends through realms of elemental spirits; pure souls reach divine light and commune with God, while souls stained by wrongdoing are trapped in false, pleasurable dreams and blocked from ascending. The text's most distinctive claim is that spiritual development follows a graduated path of initiation, illustrated through an allegorical reading of Abraham's journey: his entry into Canaan, descent into Egypt, and return south represent successive initiatory grades (nephesh, ruach, neshama), culminating in mystical union with the Divine. The flame-and-wick analogy — where the dark base of a flame corresponds to the body/nephesh, the bright flame to the ruach, and an invisible higher light to the neshama — captures the text's characteristic method of layering cosmological metaphor onto scripture. Readers interested in Kabbalistic anthropology, the soul's post-death or sleep-state journey, or esoteric readings of the Hebrew Bible will find this passage a concise and representative example of classical Zoharic teaching.

Zohar: Genesis: Chapter LXXXVII. Kabbalistic Philosophy o...

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