Layers Upon Layers

[From my spiritual journal]:

“I have undertaken the practice of reading the weekly Torah portion, accompanying Haftorah, and commentary from The Stone Edition and The Living Torah. While doing so one day recently, I had a flash of insight. It actually might not appear to be a new idea, but the depth of understanding of this insight was what was new for me. I had this realization that the words I was reading, the physical Torah and its written words, were nothing more than an elaborate book cover. There was something underneath it much more vast, powerful and meaningful than the Torah itself. The Torah itself was just a veneer, an external wrapping. The question was, what lay beneath the veneer, for that was the real Torah. The veneer, the wrapping, and all that it posed, was just a material entry portal. In the days that followed this flash of insight, the nature of this insight deepened further to a generalization about life and what we call the material world. I could see more clearly how the material world is just a crystallization, a congealing of energies meeting within a specific matrix, that there are other worlds and realities from which these energies come to congeal temporarily here, and there are other worlds and realities to which these energies are going after their expression through this particular matrix. Energies from other dimensions converge and intermingle to create this three-dimensional world. I saw the mathematical aspect to this, as this matrix of the material world is just like a three-dimensional Cartesian plane/cube. I could see how theoretical mathematics could analyze and describe this matrix, and inquire into the mechanics of the other worlds from which these energies come and to which they will be traveling.”

Soon after that, I had a dream. I get a lot of teachings through dreams. Sort of a sexy dream, but here it is, nonetheless. It’s sort of a follow up:

“I was visiting an art studio, and there was a painting by a particular female artist that caught my attention. [Female is interesting, because Torah is related to creation, and anything in creation is female, form]. It was of a reclining nude female, shown from the waist up. There was a certain seductiveness to it, but also a certain aloofness/indifference. It was as if to say, ‘I am here and available if you like, but if you don’t, I don’t really care.’ There was a light in the frame which appeared to be there just to illuminate the painting. I then noticed some type of image at the right side of the figure, and then images began appearing throughout the painting. At first I thought I had just missed seeing them at first blush, and that on closer inspection, I noticed them. But then I realized that the painting was transforming, that these other images were bleeding through, as if from a deeper layer that was coming through to the surface. Eventually, the painting transformed to a totally different scene, and then the same process began again, with images from yet a third layer/scene beginning to bleed through until again a totally new scene appeared. This process kept happening about ten times. I realized that this was a special technological process, and that the light at the top was part of the transforming technology. [Light – isn’t that interesting]. It was very fascinating and captivating.
“In contemplating this dream today, it became apparent to me that this was a depiction of the Torah. As I believe I have said in an earlier entry, I have begun the process of studying the weekly Torah portion. I first read the portion and comments from the Stone Edition, and then I read the same portion from The Living Torah by Aryeh Kaplan. I believe this process is having a deep effect upon me. I recall my last session with Panditji [my spiritual teacher from the yoga tradition] over New Years, in which he told me that there is an association between Mt. Kailash in Tibet and Mt. Sinai, as if Mt. Kailash manifested as Mt. Sinai. He also told me that there is an association between the word ‘Torah’ and the word ‘Tara’, which is one of the names of the Divine Mother. In the Torah section I read this weekend, the first detailed specifications for the Ark and Tabernacle are given. The cover for the Ark contains two Cherubim, one male and one female, and God told Moses that he would come and speak with Moses from between the two Cherubim. The commentary related this Divine Presence to be that of the Shekinah, which is generally depicted as the Female aspect of Divinity, similar to the Divine Mother or Kundalini.
“As I said in an earlier entry, it became clear to me that the written Torah was like an involved cover to a book, and that the book itself lay in layers within. There are layers upon layers to this revelation of Truth. It seemed like the depiction in the painting was the surface depiction of the Divine Mother/The Shekinah, which gave way to the inner layers that came forth as attention remained focused on the painting”.

--from Yoga and Judaism, by Steven J. Gold