Theos-Talk Archives (February 2001 Message tt00001)

How can there be a place where God is not when God is everywhere?

Valentin Tomberg explains this well in his Meditations on the Tarot: "the
idea of tsimtsum - the 'withdrawal of God' - of the Lurianic school of
Cabala.....the existence of the universe is rendered possible by the act of
contraction of God within himself. God made a 'place' for the world in
abandoning a region interior to himself."

"In other words, in order to create the world ex nihilo, God had first to
bring the void itself into existence. He had to withdraw within in order to
create a mystical space, a space without his presence - the void. And it is
in thinking this thought that we assist the birth of freedom."

If this was not so then we would have not been told to pray "Thy Will be
done, Thy Kingdom come."

If God's Will permeated the world in toto then the world would be perfect,
but also there would be no freedom and development. No death also.

-Bruce

http://www.egroups.com/group/spiritualscience