THREE

THE CLOUD OF OBLIVION

We now have to go back to the beginning.

Or rather to a beginning.

In chapter 1, I pointed out that the first word of Genesis is bereshith, “in the beginning.” Actually, this translation—the most common one in English versions of the Bible—is not quite accurate.

The b, as noted earlier, stands for the Hebrew letter בּ (bet). Used as a prefix to a word, it represents a preposition most often translated as in. Hence “in the beginning.” The first e in bereshith is a schwa, an indefinite vowel, equivalent to the a in another. This is important, because if the word really meant “in the beginning,” the vowel would be a long a like the a in father. This vowel would indicate that the definite article is to be read here. The fact that this long a is absent means that the first word of Genesis would be better translated as “in a beginning.”

The opening verse of the Gospel of John—usually translated as “In the beginning was the Word”—echoes the opening verse of Genesis, but it too is mistranslated, and in exactly the same way. The Greek words translated as “in the beginning” are en arkhē. En is “in,” and arkhē is “beginning.” But again the definite article is missing. The Greek equivalent for “in the beginning” would be en tē arkhē, which is not what the text has. The ancient Greek language has the definite article, but, unlike English, no indefinite article. Thus en arkhē should also be translated as “In a beginning.”¹

Many scholars who have discussed these verses have often overlooked this point. Yet it reveals that the “beginning” that the Bible speaks of is not the beginning, but a beginning—one of many possible beginnings, which would suggest that the Ain Sof, the Infinite, would be only a relative infinity.

This sounds nonsensical. For something to be relative, it has to be limited in some way, and infinity is, by definition, limitless. Isn’t it? Not necessarily. An analogy comes to mind from mathematics. In the nineteenth century Georg Cantor, creator of set theory, found that the infinity of real (i.e., both rational and irrational) numbers was larger than the infinity of rational numbers.² Thus there at least two infinities, one of which is twice as long as the other. Clearly not all infinities are the same.

I don’t want to push the mathematical analogy any further, but it suggests that we should not take the Ain Sof, as described above, as an absolute in a simplistic sense. So we may press on and inquire into the nature of this supposed absolute. It is a darkness. Why? Remember the passage from the Zohar that I quoted in chapter 1, which says that manifestation began when “a spark of impenetrable darkness flashed within the concealed of the concealed.” Other mystics also use the image of darkness: Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite speaks of “a ray of divine darkness”; Gregory of Nyssa, of the “luminous darkness.” The Iranian Sufis use the term “black light.”³

To speak of a dark, or black, light is to invoke paradox. Earlier I said that this is a darkness in which seeing becomes possible. But it is seeing of a very particular and restricted kind. It is our seeing of the physical universe, which constrains our thinking. It is almost impossible, for example, to think of anything that is not rooted in images of things we have already seen with our physical eyes. Some say that all visualization is based on memory, which is very likely the case, as you can discover from trying to imagine a color that you have never seen. (I am unable to do this.)

This is the seeing of the three-dimensional world—or, better, the five-dimensional world. Some physicists argue that matter ultimately consists of ten-dimensional strings. But these strings are not part of our experience, and we cannot even conceive of them, except as abstract, quasimathematical entities posited so that certain equations can work out. Moment by moment, we live in a five-dimensional world; we could not eat or breathe apart from it; and there seems to be no escape. Even the most brilliant physicist has to stand in line and park his car like the rest of us.

Why should this be a problem? The answer is, quite simply, that it is a problem. Man is the animal that believes something is wrong. This sense of something wrong pervades our entire existence. We may equate it with personal grievances and unmet needs or with global issues such as poverty or environmental deterioration. No matter: this sense of a problem is persistent and unending. As soon as one problem is solved, another rises up to take its place.

This sense of something wrong underlies the human sense of isolation and existential anxiety. And to all appearances it is unique to humans. Our species seems to be out of joint with the world in a way that other creatures are not.

Several years ago, my wife and I took our small sons to a petting farm. There was a black-and-white calf, only a few hours old. It was still unsteady on its legs, but it seemed to be content. It did not seem to mind where it was. Compare this to a human newborn, who writhes and bawls horribly, possibly because it is coming to a world that is not suited for it.

So this darkness, out of which everything appears to arise, is problematic for us. It seems to be keeping us from something, and it does this so well that we conceive of it as an absolute. But its real nature may be disclosed in a famous passage from the fourteenth-century work The Cloud of Unknowing. I will quote it in the original Middle English:

For when I sey derknes, I mene a lackyng of knowyng; as alle that thing that thou knowest not, or elles that thou hast forgetyn, it is derk to thee, for thou seest it not with thi goostly [mental] ighe. And for this skile it is not clepid a cloude of the eire, bot a cloude of unknowyng, that is bitwix thee and thi God.⁴

Here is a description from a slightly different angle, by the Sufi sheikh Lahiri:

I saw myself present in a world of light. Mountains and deserts were iridescent with lights of all colors: red, yellow, white, blue. I was experiencing a consuming nostalgia for them; I was as though stricken with madness and snatched out of myself by the violence of the intimate emotion and feeling of the presence. Suddenly I saw that the black light was invading the entire universe. Heaven and earth and everything that was there had wholly become black light, and, behold, I was totally absorbed in this light, losing consciousness. Then I came back to myself.⁵

The black light again. So this darkness is “unknowing,” a loss of consciousness. We might call it a cloud of oblivion. We go into this darkness at certain points—such as deep sleep—but we do not go past it.

Meditation, at least of certain types, may involve entering this cloud of oblivion, and, ideally, piercing through to what is beyond. This may be what much of Buddhist practice is attempting to do. After all, according to Buddhism, the main problem of man and the cosmos, the cause of dukkha or “suffering,” is avidya, “not knowing.” All relative, limited existence is rooted in it. Ending this cycle of suffering means piercing through this ignorance—or, as I prefer to put it, obliviousness.

These considerations bring to mind an idea in the Hindu tradition: that deep, dreamless sleep—the state that, above all others, is closest to oblivion—is, paradoxically, also the closest to illumination. Compare this verse from the Chāndogya Upanishad: “Now, when one is sound asleep, composed, serene, and knows no dream—that is the Self (Ātman). . . . That is the immortal, the fearless.”⁶

Yogis have a practice called yoga nidra that works with this idea. Here is a description from Swami Jnaneshvara Bharati:

It is a state of conscious Deep Sleep. In Meditation, you remain in the Waking state of consciousness, and gently focus the mind, while allowing thought patterns, emotions, sensations, and images to arise and go on. However, in Yoga Nidra, you leave the Waking state, go past the Dreaming state, and go to Deep Sleep, yet remain awake. While Yoga Nidra is a state that is very relaxing, it is also used by Yogis to purify the Samskaras, the deep impressions that are the driving force behind Karma.⁷

Yoga nidra, at an advanced level, would seem to be entering the state of deep sleep while retaining at least a degree of consciousness. Of course this is not easy.

The Cloud of Unknowing describes a different technique. It urges the use of a meditation word, such as God or love, as a means of focus: “With this worde thou schalt bete on this cloude and this derknes aboven thee. With this worde thou schalt smite doun al maner thought under the cloude of forgeting.”⁸

In this scheme, within the seeker’s consciousness, there is the level of “thought”; beyond that, “the cloude of forgeting” or “unknowing,” which the seeker should “bete on” and “smite doun.”

Brain-wave levels can illuminate the picture from a scientific point of view. At present, five levels of brain-wave activity have been defined:

Gamma: 40–100 hertz (Hz): associated with high arousal and cognitive activity

Beta: 12–40 Hz: more or less equivalent to the ordinary state of waking consciousness

Alpha: 8–12 Hz: relaxation, light reverie

Theta: 4–8 Hz: sleep

Delta: 0–4 Hz: extremely deep sleep

It is possible that the lower levels of brain-wave frequency are the ones closest to higher states of being. But precisely for this reason, they are hard to reach. We could thus understand meditation, as well as less familiar practices such as dream yoga and yoga nidra, as ways of gaining access to these levels while preserving some measure of consciousness. It is striking that the first verse of Patañjali’s Yoga Sutras is yoga citta vritti nirodha, which could be translated, “Yoga is the cessation of the oscillation of the mental substance.”

So very likely the closer you come to the flatline state—0 Hz of brain-wave activity—the closer you come to primordial states of being. Of course the flatline state is also associated with brain death. This would explain near-death experiences: those who have had them may have had very low levels of brain-wave activity—or even none—for a brief period before they returned to normal states. We also have new insight into why mystical initiations are sometimes described as “journeying to the gates of death,” and into the biblical verse in which the Lord says: “Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see me, and live” (Exodus 33:20). You can only flatline up to a certain point before you will not come back.

We only have a dim idea of what lies beyond these gates of death. Perhaps we could call it enlightenment. Perhaps we could call it God.