Ki Tisa – Half Shekel Half Soul

It is explained that the gematria of “Shekel” is the same as “Nefesh”, hence Shekel symbolizes the soul of man:

The “atbash” of Shekel in gematria is 26, the gematria of YHVH, for the soul of man reflects God, as man was created in the image of God:

It follows that the half shekel represents the soul of man which is “incomplete” until it becomes one with God. The soul that is clothed in the physical body is in essence in exile and lost, therefore must be found and redeemed.

Half Soul

The lost soul that must be found is the same concept of the “lost sheep” צֹאן אֲבֵדָה, which in gematria is 153. This is the secret of the 153 fishes that were caught (John 21:11), as 153 is also the gematria of “sons of God”:

153 is the triangle number of 17, where 17 is the gematria of “tov” טוֹב, a word that denotes light at its first appearance in Torah, which is the secret of the soul of man, for the “atbash” of tov is exactly Nefesh, the soul of man:

Self Consciousness

What is the essence of self-consciousness?

Self is the memory of the soul experiencing life at the present moment.

Since memory is of the past, the self-consciousness is the totality of the past memory entering the future at the present moment.

The experience of the soul is expressed through one’s three garments, i.e. thought, emotion and action, corresponding to the three levels of soul known as Neshamah, Ruach and Nefesh, the totality of which experience is known as the memory.

Memory  זִכָּרוֹןand male  זָכָרare of the same root, so the memory is masculine which is of the past, future is feminine since female נְקֵבָה can also mean נִקְבָּה i.e. hole or tunnel, it follows that the secret of male entering female is the secret of past memory entering the time tunnel of the future.

This is the point where wisdom of the past joining understanding of the future at the moment of knowledge.

There are two voices that speak within man. When one desires to do something, one voice says: “I” want to do such and such. When the thing one desires to do is not proper, there is a still small voice speaking back to the first voice: Are “you” sure you want to do this?

The one saying “I want to…” is the lower self, and the one asking the tough question “are you sure…” is the higher self.

The lower self is the Yetzer Hara, the evil inclination, and the higher self is the Yetzer Hatov, the good inclination.

Five Levels of Soul

The lower self are the three lower levels of soul known as Neshamah, Ruach and Nefesh, or the intellectual, the emotional and the instinctual.

The parallel can be found in Freud’s model of Id, ego and super-ego. The Id parallels Nefesh in fulfilling one’s physical desires, the super-ego parallels Neshamah in countering the lower drives with rational mind, and ego is the intermediary reconciling the two opposites exactly as Ruach does at the emotional level.

Another parallel can be found in one’s palm, as there are three primary lines. The life line parallels Nefesh, the head line parallels the Neshamah, and the heart line parallels the Ruach, for “He seals the hand of every man, that all men may know his work” (Job 37:7).

The higher self is called Chayah, the 2^nd level of the soul under Yechidah.

It can be understood that the lower three levels of the soul represent one’s experience as the “self”, whereas the level of Chayah is the observer, or experiencer of the experience.

Eve in Hebrew חַוָּהChavah means “experience”, i.e. the three lower levels of soul experiencing life through the three garments. The name of Eve prior to the sin is called חַיָּה Chayah, which is the same name for the 2^nd level of soul, meaning life.

The gematria of Yetzer Hara and Yetzer Hatov is 903, which is the triangle number of 42, and astonishingly, 42 is exactly the sum of Chavah (Eve) and Chayah (life), or the sum of the lower self and the higher self, as follows:

It follows that Eve the lower self is the evil inclination and Chayah the higher self is the good inclination, when one’s good inclination reigns over one’s evil inclination, Eve is restored as Chayah.

The level of Yechidah in this context can be understood to parallel Adam, and Adam has two wives, similar to Jacob who has two wives. Since Jacob loves his lower wife Rachel more than he loves his higher wife Leah, it may be surmised that Adam loves his lower wife Eve more than his higher wife Chayah, as we all do, in that we would rather listen to the “I want” voice than our still small voice of “Are you sure”.

Adam, Eve and Chayah can also mean: Man experiences Life, the gematria is 87, which is exactly the same gematria of “I am YHVH”, as follows:

When Man experiences Life through thought, speech, and action, this is the experience of the self-consciousness, or Ani אֲנִי. Since the soul of man is in essence part of God in exile, the ultimate redemption of the soul is to be one with God, it follows that Ani YHVH (I am YVHV) represents the final redemption of the soul, as symbolized by the half shekel.

When “Man experiences life” is spelled out, the gematria is 1513:

1513 = 89 x 17, where 89 is the gematria of “body” גוּף, and 17 is the gematria of “good” טוֹב, which is the mirror image (atbash) of Nefesh, it follows that man experiencing life is the multiplication of soul in the body.

Astonishingly, 1513 is exactly the gematria of the five levels of soul plus the gematria of Or Ein Sof, the infinite light, which is God, the source of the soul of man:

Memory and Lost Memory

The three dimensions of reality are space, time and soul, and the experience of the soul is memory. Astonishingly, the gematria of memory is exactly the same as space and time:

The opposite of memory is that which is forgotten, and if memory is masculine, that which is forgotten is feminine, as symbolized by the lost object, or the lost sheep, or the lost soul, etc.

In Hebrew, memory and male is of the same root, and forget and woman is of the same root:

Why does woman symbolize the concept of being lost, this is because woman is the bride that must be found by man. As it is written:

Tov (good) is the Nefesh (atbash), as explained above, so at the deeper level, this is God who finds the lost soul, or the half shekel.

God created woman from the “rib” or “back” of Adam so it is ingrained in man’s consciousness to find his lost rib, or half.

Adam was created with an androgynous body, with male at the front and female at the back. The front side is consciousness and back side is un-consciousness, so male the memory is consciousness; and woman the lost memory is sub-consciousness that must be recovered.

Man always finds his soulmate at the well, Isaac (via his servant) finding Rebekah, Jacob finding Rachel, Moses finding Zipporah, and Yeshua finding the woman of Samaria, etc. Why?

This is because well symbolizes the sub-consciousness of man, the memory that was lost. The upward flow of water from the depth of the well symbolizes the “desire” of woman for man (Gen 3:16), or the lower water arousing to meet the higher water, through her mysterious time tunnel, as it were.

According to the rabbis, the angel taught all the secrets of Torah to man in the womb before all was forgotten at the time of the birth, and the mission of man is to continue with study all his life. The study is not to learn new knowledge, but to recover that which was lost, for one knows the truth because it was once part of him, it was then taken away only to be found, like one’s soulmate, his half shekel.