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Question

I hope you can advise me.

I had an experience of white light, 20 years ago. I was at a personal development workshop and in sharing why I was there, I said with great longing: “I want my heart to open, open, open!” And it did immediately open in my mind’s eye, and through the hole, about 20 centimeters wide, I perceived this infinite white light, bright but not blinding, with no time or spatial boundaries; it was outside time and space and all was peace in it. It felt more real than reality, and I knew that if the rim had widened further, I might disappear and all of surrounding reality too. “Reality” seemed like a “skin” stretched over or on-the-edge-of or maybe emanating from this energy or light yet not obviously connected to it. The light seemed like the behind-the-scenes of our reality. It felt like pure energy. I felt no fear, and after I felt elated. It was a non dual experience. It was totally one.

I have asked myself what connection this light has to God. Is it an aspect or an emanation or a sefirah? Is it the light of God? What name is it given in Kabbalah and Chassidut?

Reply

Shalom!

In Kabbalah we learn that the experience of pure white light is that of the first (yet undifferentiated) moment of creation (a memory as it were of God's Infinite Light before creation, i.e., before the initial contraction, tzimtzum). Rashi and the Ibn Ezra both say that at that very first moment creation, the words “Let there be light” were said by the Creator.

This can be seen by meditating on the first verse of the Torah. Immediately following the first word of the Torah, "In the beginning” (בְּרֵאשִׁית) the next two words read "God created" (בָּרָא אֱ־לֹהִים). Their numerical value is 289 = 17² (where 17 = “good” (טוֹב) as is said in the continuation, “God saw the light to be good”), also the gematria of the words “white light” (אוֹר לָבָן). So the 2nd and 3rd words of creation allude to “white light” and to the goodness of the light that was the first thing created.

In fact, considering that the words "white light" (אוֹר לָבָן) have 6 letters, we find that taking every other letter (equidistant letter skipping) yields (אוֹר לָבָן) the word “created” (בָּרָא). Obviously then the value of the letters in the second skip (אוֹר לָבָן) is 86, the value of “Elokim” (אֱ־לֹהִים).

White light and love

Let us continue to explore the relationship between “white light” and the words “God created” (בָּרָא אֱ־לֹהִים). If we fill the letters of “white light” in Hebrew, we obtain: אלף וו ריש למד בית נון , whose value is 1225, a very special number because it is both a square and a triangular number. 1225 is the square of 35 and the triangle of 49 (i.e., it equals the sum of all the integers from 1 to 49).

In addition, the midpoint of 1225 is 613, which apart from being the number of commandments (prescriptive and prohibitive) in the Torah, is also the value of the word “light” (אוֹרוֹת), alluding to the fact that white light is a composite of all lights.

Interestingly, by filling the phrase “white light,” we have taken it from 17² (its normative value) to 35², i.e., from “good” to “Jew” (יְהוּדִי, whose value is 35). It follows then that filling the phrase has added 936 to it (the filling part of the phrase is thus, 936). But, 936 is the product of 13 and 72, where 13 is the gematria of “love” (אַהֲבָה) and 72 the gematria of “loving-kindness” (חֶסֶד), the sefirah that is many times pictured as being white, indicating that all is love and all is loving-kindness.

Now, let us take each of the two words “white” (לָבָן) and “light” (אוֹר ) and calculate the product of their letters. The product of the letters of “white” is 30 ∙ 2 ∙ 50 = 3000; the product of the letters of “light” is 1 ∙ 6 ∙ 200 = 1200. Their sum is 4200 (= 60 ∙ 70)¹ or 100 ∙ 42, where 42 is the secret of the Name of 42 letters with which God created the world. The 100 alludes to the 100 blessings that should be recited every day. But, the main point of this particular point is that if we add 4200 to the normative gematria of the phrase, the sum is 4489, which is 67²! So our analysis of the phrase “white light” has taken us from 17² to 35² and now to 67². The sum of 17, 35, and 67 is 119 or 7 ∙ 17. We have already seen that 17 is the value of “good” (טוֹב) and multiplying it by 7 alludes to the 7 times that the word “good” appears in the Genesis account of creation. Again alluding to how everything is white light.

White light and joy

Further exploring the nature of white light, let us quote from Rav Chaim Vital’s Sefer Hachezyonot (Book of Visions). He relates,

On the seventh day of Passover, after the prayers I departed the synagogue and there was a group of women walking ahead of me. One of them glanced backwards in order to see my face, and to my right she saw a pillar of white light shining many times brighter than the sun and filling the width of the road. It was twice my height and was absolutely luminous and shining like lightning that blinds the eyes. She could not see my face at all and because of the pain she entered the doorway of a courtyard in order to hide there. The name of the woman was Simchah (literally, Joy) the sister of Zabda, the wife of Kwinkash.

From this incident related by Rav Chaim Vital, the Arizal’s most important student, we can infer that seeing white light is dependent on being a person of joy. The more joyful the more white light a person can see. It also depends on wanting to see the face of the tzadik, the foundation of the world. As the Lubavitcher Rebbe stated many times, one has to but open ones eyes in order to see that indeed the Mashiach’s coming is imminent.

White light in the sefirot

Returning to white light and the sefirot, we find that white light is associated with the sefirah of crown, and also to all the sefirot along the right axis, namely wisdom, loving-kindness, and victory. Amazingly, “crown wisdom loving-kindness victory” (כֶּתֶר חָכְמָה חֶסֶד נֶצַח) is equal to “In the beginning” (בְּרֵאשִׁית), revealing the secret of this word being the first word in the Torah and the next two words, “God created,” which equal “white light.” More explicitly, we can say that the numerical equivalent of the first three words of the Torah is, “Crown, wisdom, loving-kindness, [and] victory [are] white light” (כֶּתֶר חָכְמָה חֶסֶד נֶצַח אוֹר לָבָן)

Moreover, the initials of the names of these four sefirot spell the words “the power of symmetry” (כֹּחַ חֵן), which also equals “Elokim” (אֱ־לֹהִים).

White light, Abraham, and loving-kindness

Continuing on, we find that a person who sees white light belongs to the soul root of Abraham our patriarch, which the Torah describes as “One was Abraham,” and “I have called him one.” Abraham was the first of all men of faith and was the man of loving-kindness and love for all mankind, dedicating his life, with absolute self-sacrifice to bring them all under the wings of the Divine Presence, which is the belief in One God. Indeed, his most famous call before his contemporaries is described in the verse, “There he [Abraham] declared the Name of Havayah, God-world” (וַיִּקְרָא שָׁם בְּשֵׁם י־הוה אֵ־ל עוֹלָם). But, the value of these words is exactly the same as, “In the beginning God created…” (בְּרֵאשִׁית בָּרָא אֱ־לֹהִים), meaning that it is the same as “Crown wisdom loving-kindness victory white light” (כֶּתֶר חָכְמָה חֶסֶד נֶצַח אוֹר לָבָן), as above! Indeed, the letters of God’s Name used in this verse “Kel” (אֵ־ל) are the initials of “white light” (אוֹר לָבָן).

Adding the value of “Abraham” (אַבְרָהָם) to “white light” (אוֹר לָבָן) gives “Emanation” (אֲצִילוּת ).

Balancing white light

Complementing Abraham, who as we have seen is white light, is Sarah who is compared to red light, the sefirah of might, the source of the construction of kingdom, the development of the feminine. Importantly, if we add “white light” (אוֹר לָבָן) to “red light” (אוֹר אָדוֹם) we get the value of the very central word describing Abraham and Sarah’s Divinely directed relationship, “listen to her voice” (שְׁמַע בְּקֹלָהּ). Abraham who yearns to see all parts of reality as a simple unity (אַחְדּוּת פְּשׁוּטָה), prays to God that “would it be that Ishma’el would serve You.” But, Sarah in her might, i.e. her ability to discern the negative and to distance herself from it, realized that Ishma’el, who did not share Abraham and his family’s true and inner recognition of God’s oneness, could not continue to influence them and therefore must be sent away. Abraham found it difficult to comply with his wife’s decision, at which point the Almighty Himself commanded him to “listen to her voice.”

If we now add “white light red light” to the gematria of Abraham (אַבְרָהָם) and Sarah (שָׂרָה) themselves, the sum becomes 1300, or 100 times 13, which equals either “love” (אַהֲבָה), or “one” (אֶחָד). The 100 alludes to Abraham’s age when Isaac was born. Isaac himself is considered the archetypal soul of might, which he inherited from Sarah.

1300 is also the product of 50 and 26, where 50 alludes to the 50 Gates of Understanding possessed by Sarah and 26 is the value of God’s essential Name, Havayah.

Finally 1300 is the sum of 1, 2, 3, and 4, each raised to the 5th power: 1300 = 15 ┴ 25 ┴ 35 ┴ 45.

Raising these first four integers to the 5th power represents the totality of all the sefirot (10 = 1 ┴ 2 ┴ 3 ┴ 4) and all 5 dimensions of reality (3 spatial, time, and soul).

With blessings…

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