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Maps, Models and Metaphors for the Messianic Age
The Möbius Strip and Singular Duality Joel David Bakst ©1990,2002 All rights reserved A well known but difficult passage from the midrash (Pirke Rebbe Eliezer) states, "Before the world was created there was Him and His Name". This is apparently strange. Before the creation of anything we should have expected to find only the monotheistic Unity as what else could there have been sharing the omnipresence of God? Likewise, three times a day at the end the prayer service a verse from the prophet Zechariah is proclaimed referring to the final period of time when all creation ascends back to its source, " On that day God will be one and His name will be one". If God's Unity simply means one and not two why, in the perfected future when there will no longer be any existence apart from that singular Unity will there continue to be a state of God and His Name? Judaism is monotheistic, that is, God (theos) is one (mono) and not two. The belief of two opposing divine forces known is the ancient religious belief of Dualism (called shniut by the Sages) and was considered heresy.
A partial answer to this riddle (there are only partial answers to real riddles) lies in our misreading of the terms "God" and "His Name". As is known in the Kabbalah, the term God (YHVH) wherever it is used never refers to that singular and ineffable Ain Sof, but rather YHVH ("God") refers to the expansive and unifying aspect of Divinity (known as the Hasadim) within the Ain Sof relative to the corresponding contracting and diversifying Gevurot which in this instance is symbolized by "His Name".
Yet, what is the nature of the Oneness being proclaimed twice daily in the Shema? “Hear O Israel the Lord (YHVH) our God, the Lord (YHVH) is one”. It says "YHVH is One" and not "YHVH and His name are One"! However, in order to meditate properly upon the unity of God the halacha (Jewish law) requires the proclamation of the second verse together with the first. And the second six words, "Baruch shem kavod malchuto l'olam va'ed" Let there be increased (Baruch) awareness (shem) of the glory (kavod) of His multifarious kingdom (malchuto) throughout all space (L'Olam) and for all time (va'ed)" reinstates the very duality that was so strongly qualified and negated in the first six words. This is precisely so as the second verse is reflecting the diversifying nature of the divine Gevurot relative to the unifying nature of the Hasadim of the first verse. (Even if, after the fact, one did not utter the second verse the obligation of the Shema is fulfilled only because within the fine lines of that "Echad" (one) of the first verse is also contained - in miniature - the quality of the "Kingdom's" diversity. This should be expected as the second of the five axioms HuG teaches us that each aspect of HuG contain each other ad infinitum.
So far so good. However, we still haven't solved the real problem of divine duality. This is the conflicting experience between an absolute Unity coexisting with an apparent equally absolute duality. Up to now we've been speaking in words and the presentation does form a coherent logic, which may still elude our grasp. Yes, I can understand that essentially God's Unity is One, i.e. the Essence is One yet existentially, i.e. as experienced in existence, the very same Unity reveals Itself as dual, but how does one do this? Is it this or is it that?! It has to be one or the other. I can't be thinking about two different and opposing things at once!
We are now going to present a model that can be used to help alleviate this problem of unity versus duality. We should bear in mind that if we recognize the "problem" as a very deep riddle in consciousness itself our objective is not to solve but to explore ever deeper within. Putting it another way, all throughout our discussions of Kabbalah and the many difficulties that will necessarily be encountered we will not be as interested in the "answer" as we will be with what it was in our perception of the original assumption which originally generated the problem.
The Möbius strip was introduced by the German mathematician and astronomer Augustus Ferdinand Möbius (1790-1868). He described his remarkable paper surface as a strip, which has no "other side". This one-sided strip, hard to imagine but easy to construct, has other numerous unexpected properties as well. It is easily made from an ordinary strip of paper that is simply twisted over once before the ends are joined. (If it were not twisted it would just remain a short cylinder).
This Möbius strip exists in three dimensions but, astonishingly, has only one surface. If a line is traced on the surface of the strip without letting the pen leave the surface you will find that when you are half way round you will be writing on the back of the paper even though you are still on the same surface. If you continue you will end up where you started.
A portrayal of this geometric form was etched by the famous Dutch artist M.C. Escher and became popular in the 60’s. Today the Möbius Strip has entered the public domain and is even being used in advertising.
Kabbalah, like the sciences, has many diverging branches of study. One of its fields of exploration is analogous to that of cosmology. However, unlike modern science, which is concerned with the structure and shape of physical reality, Torah cosmology is involved with mapping out the structure and "shape" of the metaphysical relationship between human experience and divine consciousness. Here the Kabbalist asks, "Which geometry or topological surface best describes the man/G-d relationship?" The Möbius strip offers a simple yet very penetrating model of one of the fundamental "shapes" that molds this hidden landscape. From the perspective of a Möbius-shaped world Man and God are but two surfaces of one continuous "side". This paradoxical "One Side" is the more encompassing super- unity of what is known in the tradition as the Ain Sof - the "NO END"-ing source of all sources that continually transcends conceptualization as being a "this (side)" or a "that (side)". Using the model from this perspective we have helped alleviate the problem of something only being a "this (side of Oneness)" or a "that (side of duality)" because there now exists a third alternative - that which is not "this" nor ''that" but which includes both, as both surfaces (in this case unity and duality) are two aspects of a greater unity - the "dual-unity" of the Ain Sof".
This then is the sacred Torah principle that there truly exists only a Supreme Oneness and that alone. This is the esoteric meaning of the two Biblical verses, "Hear, O Israel, the Lord Our G-d, the Lord is One " and "There is no other." Yet, the "Oneness" is always revealing Itself from two "surfaces" -- the human and the divine, thus also paradoxically revealing the Torah principle of the eternal division between man and G-d.
Astrophysicists and cosmologists (who both deal with the origin and structure of the universe as a whole) make use of this unusual topological surface when trying to understand the actual possible "shape" of our physical cosmos. According to one model, the universe, like the Möbius strip, curves back on itself and thus has no outside, and having no outside neither does it have an inside, or, one can say that its inside is its outside: the physical universe as non-dual.
As it does for the Kabbalists, the Möbius strip model also graphically depicts the paradoxical nature that lies at the essence of many Chassidic teachings (18th-19th century) as well as that of classical non-Chassidic ethical-mystical literature (e.g. Rabbi Chayim Volozhin's [1741-1879] Nefesh HaChayim,.)
By using one's powers of visualization and continued meditation it is possible to use the Möbius strip model to enhance one's experience of life as well as to solve many age old philosophical and theological riddles about G-d and creation.
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