Firmament, Water, and Light

The Zohar states that "God looked into [the letters of] the Torah and created the universe." The Divine act of Creation is referred to by the metaphor of speech, as we say in the beginning of our morning prayers: "Blessed is He who said… and the world came into being." The root אמר, "to say", is an acronym for the first three primary creations: light (אור), water (מים), firmament (רקיע). These represent the three stages in the materialization of the creative seed, as taught by the Arizal:

• the spiritual origin of the seed in the mind – light
• physical manifestation of seed – water
• the beginning of conception in the womb – firmament.

Light, water, and firmament correspond, in turn, to the three categories defined above: light, life (here viewed as concentrated light)- as in the phrase "living waters," and energy (here, as pregnant "light-life"). The firmament (רקיע), which derives from the root רקע, "to stretch", represents all states of positive tension- energy fields- in nature.

After each individual act of creation, God observed that which He had created and saw it to be good. At the end of the sixth day of Creation, "God observed all that He had made, and, behold, it was very good." Thus, "before" Creation God looks into the Torah; the act of Creation itself, in each and every "present moment, is by means of Divine word; "after" Creation God observes His reality to be good. As "there is no good other than Torah," seeing Creation to be good is actually relating created reality "back" to its ideal model- Torah. This act is called, in Kabbalah and Chassidut, the process of "clarification." In man's service of God, it corresponds to the positive critique of one's deeds, to assure that they remain in tune with and in the light of the teachings of Torah.

In Kabbalah, "before" Creation is the secret of the right eye and "after" Creation is the secret of the left eye.  They are the ultimate origins of light and life, respectively. The right eye gazes at the letters of the primordial, uncreated reality, as engraved in Torah – "reality", still "nothing" in the sea of Infinite Light. The left eye contemplates created reality in relation to its Torah-model, thereby enlivening it from "the source of living waters" of Torah. The Sages interpret God's seeing all to be "very good": " 'good' refers to the angel of life; 'very [good]' refers to the angel of death." Death is here understood to serve both as the "antithesis" necessary for the process of 'clarification' (whose purpose is to infuse reality with life), and even deeper, the necessary, intermediate stage between the initial state of temporal life and the final "resurrected" state of eternal life, to be realized on earth in "the future to come."

The mouth, the secret of creation in the "present" moment, whose "breath" represents the continual emanation of energy-matter, is between the two eyes, as the present is between the past and the future. Regarding the position of the head tefillin, the Torah instructs that their inscribed words be "a memory between your eyes, so that the Torah of God shall be in your mouth." The word "memory" (זכרון) itself, in Hebrew, means "a source of speech" (as in the phrase: בכל מקום אשר אזכיר את שמי אבא אליך וברכתיך, "in that place that I will allow you to speak My Name I will come to you and bless you").