Tikkun Olam is the phrase of Rabbi Isaac Luria, the renowned sixteenth century Kabbalist. It means repairing the world as part of the ongoing spiritualization of the cosmos.

“To contemplate and enter the process of tikkun olam, repairing or perfecting the world, we need to understand the concept of world. All the major religious traditions present a hierarchy of worlds or levels of being, from the one we ordinarily inhabit to the ultimate world of Divinity.

“In Kabbalah, for example, the worlds include Asiyah or Action, Yetzirah or Formation, Beriyah or Creation, and Atzilut or Emanation. Beyond and permeating all these is the Ein Sof, the One God, the Boundless and Unconditioned.

Each of the worlds corresponds to a progressively higher level of spiritual energy and will, and the related level of soul. The world of Action utilizes the sensitive energy, from which the nefesh soul forms. The world of Formation is built on the conscious energy, the basis of awareness, from which the ruach forms. The world of Creation and Light works with the creative energy, from which the neshama forms. The world of Emanation and Divine  Presence brings the high energy of love, from which the chaya forms. And corresponding to the ultimate Ein Sof, touching the yechida soul, we have the  transcendent energy.”

From  the site  The Inner Frontier by Joseph Naft, the son of Holocaust survivors.

My Comment

My understanding is that nephesh corresponds to the physical portion of the soul; ruach corresponds to the heart and emotions; and neshema corresponds to the mental world.

In the Hindu energetic system, that would roughly correspond to the muladhara chakra  (root center), the anahatha chakra  (heart center), and the ajna chakra (third-eye center).

The raising of the light would be equivalent to the raising of the serpent (the kundalini).

It’s interesting that in medieval texts the crucifixion is depicted as a serpent crucified, an image stemming from Kabbalistic correspondence: the Hebrew words NChSh, ‘serpent’, and MShICh,
‘Messiah’ having the same number value, 358.

The serpent was thus a short-cut to symbolize the redemptive act.

But I wonder if this is a medieval (and orthodox) gloss on the older tradition? The raised serpent, the spiritualizing of the cosmos, would be heretical, from an orthodox Christian view point.

On the other hand, maybe it’s just language that makes dialogue between these two visions of salvation as impossible as some say it is.

Can Lucifer (the serpent or the dragon) and St. Michael (the killer of the serpent) talk to each other?

Is Lucifer also sometimes St. Michael?

I wonder.

“The unwilling, led by the incompetent, to do the unnecessary, for the ungrateful”

[inscribed on a Vietnam-era coffin]

Some thoughts on republicanism in ancient India:

“Perhaps the most useful Greek account of India is Arrian’s Anabasis of Alexander, which describes the Macedonian conqueror’s campaigns in great detail.

The Anabasis, which is derived from the eyewitness accounts of Alexander’s companions, 18 portrays him as meeting “free and independent” Indian communities at every turn. What “free and independent” meant is illustrated from the case of Nysa, a city on the border of modern Afghanistan and Pakistan that was ruled by a president named Aculphis and a council of 300.

After surrendering to Alexander, Aculphis used the city’s supposed connection with the god Dionysus to seek lenient terms from the king:

“The Nysaeans beseech thee, O king out of respect for Dionysus, to allow them to remain free and independent; for when Dionysus had subjugated the nation of the Indians…he founded this city from the soldiers who had become unfit for military service …From that time we inhabit Nysa, a free city, and we ourselves are independent, conducting our government with constitutional order.” 19

Nysa was in Greek terms an oligarchy, as further discussion between Alexander and Aculphis reveals, and a single-city state. There were other Indian states that were both larger in area and wider in franchise. It is clear from Arrian that the Mallian republic consisted of a number of cities.20

Curtius Rufus and Diodorus Siculus in their histories of Alexander mention a people called the Sabarcae or Sambastai among whom “the form of government was democratic and not regal.” 21 The Sabarcae/Sambastai, like the Mallians, had a large state. Their army consisted of 60,000 foot, 6000 cavalry, and 500 chariots.22 Thus Indian republics of the late fourth century could be much larger than the contemporaneous Greek polis . And it seems that in the northwestern part of India, republicanism was the norm. Alexander’s historians mention a large number of republics, some named, some not, but only a handful of kings.23

The prevalence of republicanism and its democratic form is explicitly stated by Diodorus Siculus. After describing the mythical monarchs who succeeded the god Dionysus as rulers of India, he says:

At last, however, after many years had gone, most of the cities adopted the democratic form of government, though some retained the kingly until the invasion of the country by Alexander.24

What makes this statement particularly interesting is that it seems to derive from a first-hand description of India by a Greek traveler named Megasthenes.

Around 300 B.C., about two decades after Alexander’s invasion, Megasthenes served as ambassador of the Greek king Seleucus Nicator to the Indian emperor Chandragupta Maurya, and in the course of his duties crossed northern India to the eastern city of Patna, where he lived for a while.25 If this statement is drawn from Megasthenes, then the picture of a northwestern India dominated by republics must be extended to the entire northern half of the subcontinent.26If we turn to the Indian sources, we find that there is nothing far-fetched about this idea. The most useful sources for mapping north India are three: The Pali Canon, which shows us northeastern India between the Himalayas and the Ganges in the sixth and fifth centuries B.C.; the grammar of Panini, which discusses all of North India, with a focus on the northwest, during the fifth century; and Kautilya’s Arthasastra, which is a product of the fourth century, roughly contemporaneous with Megasthenes. All three sources enable us to identify numerous sanghas and ganas, some very minor, others large and powerful.27

What were these republican polities like? According to Panini, all the states and regions (janapadas ) of northern India during his time were based on the settlement or conquest of a given area by an identifiable warrior people who still dominated the political life of that area.

Some of these peoples (in Panini’s terms janapadins ) were subject to a king, who was at least in theory of their own blood and was perhaps dependent on their special support.28 Elsewhere, the janapadins ran their affairs in a republican manner. Thus in both kinds of state, the government was dominated by people classified as ksatriyas, or, as later ages would put it, members of the warrior caste.

But in many states, perhaps most, political participation was restricted to a subset of all the ksatriyas . One needed to be not just a warrior, but a member of a specific royal clan, the rajanya.29 Evidence from a number of sources shows that the enfranchised members of many republics, including the Buddha’s own Sakyas and the Licchavis with whom he was very familiar, considered themselves to be of royal descent, even brother-kings. The term raja, which in a monarchy certainly meant king, in a state with gana or sangha constitution could designate someone who held a share in sovereignty. In such places, it seems likely that political power was restricted to the heads of a restricted number of “royal families” (rajakulas) among the ruling clans. The heads of these families were consecrated as kings, and thereafter took part in deliberations of state.

Our Indian republics are beginning to sound extremely undemocratic by our modern standards, with real power concentrated in the hands of a few patriarchs representing the leading lineages of one privileged section of the warrior caste. A reader who has formed this impression is not entirely mistaken. No doubt the rulers of most republics thought of their gana as a closed club — as did the citizens of Athens, who also defined themselves as a hereditarily privileged group. But, as in ancient Athens, there are other factors which modify the picture, and make it an interesting one for students of democracy.

First, the closed nature of the ruling class is easy to exaggerate. Republics where only descendants of certain families held power were common; but there was another type in which power was shared by all ksatriya families.31

This may not sound like much of a difference, since the restriction to the warrior caste seems to remain. But this is an anachronistic view of the social conditions of the time. The varnas of pre-Christian-era India were not the castes of later periods, with their prohibitions on intermarriage and commensality with other groups.32 Rather, they were the constructs of theorists, much like the division of three orders (priests, warriors and workers) beloved by European writers of the Early Middle Ages.33 Such a classification was useful for debating purposes, but was not a fact of daily existence. Those republics that threw open the political process to all ksatriyas were not extending the franchise from one clearly defined group to another, albeit a larger one, but to all those who could claim, and justify the claim, to be capable of ruling and fighting…

From “Democracy in Ancient India,” Steve Muhlberger

………”Cold steel,”
The Master said, “can never solve a dispute.
Put up thy sword. Return it to its sheath.

“Were it His will, could not the Father send
A host of winged legions to my aid?
Not a hair upon my head would suffer.
My foes would all be scattered without trace.

“But in the Book of Life a page has turned,
More sacred and more precious than all else.
That which is written must now be accomplished.
Amen. So let it therefore come to pass.

“The progress of the ages, like a parable,
In mid course may suddenly take flame,
And faced by that dread grandeur, I’m prepared
To suffer and descend into the grave.

“And from the grave on the third day I’ll rise.
Then, like a fleet of barges down the stream,
The centuries will float forth from the night
And make their way before my judgment seat.”

Excerpted from “Gethsemane’s Garden,” Boris Pasternak

There’s a negative connotation to authority in modern thought. All forms of proper authority are derided as authoritarianism.

Well, they are not.

If the FBI does its job and goes after criminals and scamsters,  following duly constituted procedures, some people seem to think that’s “authoritarianism.” I think a previous post of mine on the FBI got that reaction.

I can’t think why.  Why is it libertarian to not want the police to do their jobs? And to let crime go unpunished?  The FBI failure is why we have this huge financial fraud that’s hurting millions of innocent people. No sympathy for those people?

No, wanting the FBI to do their job is just wanting authority to function as it should.

On the other hand, if  the military descends on civilians and abuses them, that’s authoritarianism and brutality.

If parents go on power trips with their children, bossing them around for the sake of bossing, that’s authoritarianism.

When they lay down rules that help the household function, give the children guidelines and discipline them accordingly, in good faith, that’s authority.

If a boss micro-manages, acts arbitrarily, plays favorites, sides with the powerful employees against the weak, throws his weight around and abuses his power, that’s authoritarianism.

If he sets rules, sees that they’re followed correctly, takes feedback and offers correction as it’s needed, and intervenes to prevent abuse – that’s authority.

 Some libertarians seem to have a hard time with that.  Some of them seem to think that  do what you want, whenever is libertarianism.  To me, this seems like a pretty dire mistake.  Liberty always included rules – the rules of ethics. If nothing more, do unto others, etc. And usually rules of order, as well. Rules about how to go about things (like rules about searches and seizures)

To me, confusion between the two is the reason for so many things being out of kilter.

The denial of the crucifixion – in a metaphoric sense – is behind our problems in a very central way.

One can deny Christianity as a dogma, all day long. It will not matter.

But one cannot deny the truths of Christianity – in so far as they are truths.

The truth of the crucifixion is the truth of justice or karma, the truth that not one tittle of the law can be done away with.

The law exists side by side with grace, which supplants it, in the New Testament.

But the law itself cannot be done away with.

The law (judgment, justice) forms one pillar of the divine. The other pillar is formed by mercy.

Neither exists by itself.

Our age has convinced itself that mercy can exist without judgment or justice. Indeed, we dislike judgment altogether and confuse it with judgmentalism.  But that is better termed condemnation.

This denial is part of what I see as a fundamental problem of economics today. The separation of risk and reward, of consequences (judgment) from actions.

Jesus Christ, however you conceive him, could not escape them – that is the truth of the crucifixion.

An uncomfortable truth for moderns.

This has nothing to do with dogma…or priests….or orthodox belief. This is a practical truth.
Judgment (cause and effect) and mercy (chance, the serendipitous, the whole-that-is-more-than-the-parts)
can be seen in quite non-religious terms.

But I, for one, have no quarrel with couching them in religious terms.
And on Good Friday, why not?
Why should I be so unseated from tradition?
My history and my tradition are as much a part of the ecology of my soul as the sky or ocean or rainwater is part of the ecology of the physical world.