John Dunn

Valentin Tomberg

...fire meets with FIRE

The seeker of truth in being will lose himself in a state of depersonalisation. Coleridge and Buber, amongst others, have made this their central criticism of Spinoza. Tomberg argued that the same criticism could be made of the Bhagavan, the Buddha, the masters of yoga and the ancient philosophers who really lived out their philosophy, above all the Stoics. It is this depersonalisation which is the goal of Tikkun in the Lurianic Kabbalah, the reabsorption into the One, Ein Sof. It is the death of the self in Spinoza’s secularised Judaism, the dehumanising result of Spinozism rejected by Buber. It is epitomised by the amoral realm of money which is the basis of the Spinozist ‘Republick of Merchants’.

In contrast the seeker of truth in love is given new life, as anyone who has been in love knows. All the old certainties are shattered. There is turmoil and pain to be sure, but there is expanded vision too. Nothing is seen in the same way ever again by anyone who has stepped into the wall of fire. Tomberg knew this. Union with the Divine is not the absorption of being by Divine Being, far from it:

...fire meets with FIRE, Then nothing is extinguished in the human personality but, on the contrary, everything is set ablaze. This is the experience of ‘legitimate twofoldness’ or the union of two separate substances in one sole essence.

From Child of Encounter

© John Dunn.

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