The Transcendent and the Immanent Messiah – I

The coming of the Transcended Messiah as the Immanent Messiah is of great importance for our time. His/Her Light will resolve many of the burning problems in the life of contemporary humankind, especially in the Middle East!

The essence of Messiah is connected with the Mystery of Human Beings and their salvation. This is why, in all mystical traditions, the concept of Messiah and messianic appearances in the Lower Worlds are the pinnacle of all mysteries, unparalleled in its sublimeness, inscrutability, and controversy. The Messiahs come as World Teachers when righteousness fades, and the message of the absolute unity of existence and the primacy of unconditional love, discrimination, and renunciation as a means to intimately know God becomes obscurated by the conditioned impressions of conventional religions. Such extraordinary beings remind us in a lively way of our innate divinity and of the spiritual awakening that is our birth right… (Source: WoC : The Work of the Chariot Trust)

The Transcendent and the Immanent Messiah is the theme of my new series of Posts. For this purpose, I would like to introduce, in the language of Kabbalah, the essence of Messiah and the Human Being, created in the image and likeness of God in much more detail. I started my Blog with three Posts discussing The Coming of the Messiah (20/10/2022), The Mystical, Historical and Current Messiah(s) (21/10/2022) and The Mission of the Current Messiah(s) (23/10/2022). Now, in the new series of Posts, I will continue this very important theme. Perhaps, I have to repeat some big excerpt from the quoted before great Kabbalists in order to prepare the ground for the new series of Posts. Naturally, the text will be quite complex and metaphysical, but this is reasonable because we are dealing with the most subtle questions about God, Creation and the Human Being, made in the image and likeness of God.

In Kabbalah, the Oral Tradition states that one such man exists on the earth at any given time although his presence is openly manifested to the World only when it is needed. To some he is known as the Messiah and to others the Axis of an Age. He has a place and name in every living Tradition. (Z’ev ben Shimon Halevi, The Way of Kabbalah, Kabbalah Society, 2007, p. 225).

When the presence of the Messiah is openly manifested to the World, we could say that the Transcendent Messiah (i.e. the hidden, invisible Messiah, living in the higher worlds), becomes the Immanent Messiah, the visible, known Messiah, appearing and acting openly in the world.

Leo Schaya, one of the great interpreters of Kabbalah in the XX century, introduced three degrees in the mystery of man: transcendent-divine, immanent-spiritual, and heavenly-earthly, or psychic-physical:

        Transcendent man, adam ilaa – also called adam kadmon (‘principle man’) – is God in his essence and his ontological emanation;

       Immanent man, metatron, is God’s whole spiritual manifestation;

       Earthly man, adam harishon (‘first man’) in his manifestation, at one and the same time above form (spirit), in subtle form (soul) and in coarse form (body), that is, his cosmic personification, which is identified both with the universal realm and – in the midst of it – with the individual state.

 Whereas adam ilaah, divine man, and metatron, his purely spiritual manifestation, represent invariable principles, the first man, in the historical sense, is already subject to the movement of existential and cyclical conditions; but it must be pointed out that this is so only as regards his individual aspects, ‘man below’, and to extend that he dissociates himself from his inner, universal and incorruptible being, metatron, and by that very fact from ‘man above’, who is one with God. This dissociation is the ‘original sin’ which caused the first man to lose his state of permanent union with God and led him into the movement of individual existence, unfolding through countless births and deaths. (Leo Schaya, The Universal Meaning of the Kabbalah, Mandala, Unwin, Hyman Ltd., 1989 p. 126)

These levels of human consciousness could be presented through the monumental scheme (Fig. 81– EVOLUTION) of Z’ev ben Shimon Halevi, in the last chapter The End of Days, from his book A Kabbalistic Universe, quoted in the Post The Mystical, Historical and Current Messiah(s) from 21/10/2022. It could also serve as a basis for introducing the levels of the Transcendent and Immanent Messiah.

The quoted Kabbalistic Scheme by Halevi depicts four interwoven Worlds: a) AZILUT, the World of Emanation, marked by ADAM KADMON: the ten Sefiroth connected with the World of Azilut are from I AM to MESSIAH; b) BERIAH, the World of Creation, marked by the Greater Mysteries: Schools of the Spirit: the ten Sefiroth marking the second World of Creation are from Metatron to Self; c) YEZIRAH, the World of Formation, marked by the Lesser Mysteries: Schools of the Soul: the ten Sefiroth marking the third World of Formation are from MESSIAH to Body; d) ASIYYAH, the World of Making, marked by the INCARNATE HUMANITY: the ten Sefiroth marking the fourth World of Making are from Self to I AM at the bottom.

If we associate the overlapping Worlds with the ten Sefiroth, then: I AM, at the top, is only KETER in the World of Emanation; Metatron is TIFERET in the World of Emanation and simultaneously KETER in the next World of Creation;  MESSIAH is TIFERET in the World of Creation, reaching MALKHUT of the World of Emanation and overlapping with KETER in the following World of Formation (from a Kabbalistic point of view, this is the place where the three higher worlds meet – Malkhut in the World of Emanation, Tiferet in the World of Creation and Keter in the World of Formation); Self is TIFERET in the World of Formation, reaching Malkhut of the World of Creation, and overlapping with KETER in the World of Making (i.e. this is the place where the three lower worlds meet – Malkhut of the World of Creation, Tiferet of the World of Formation and Keter of the World of Making).

As to the essence of the Transcendent and the Immanent Messiah, the logic is as follow: every level of consciousness is Immanent as Tiferet in his own world and transcendent from the point of view of the lower worlds. Obviously, I AM at the top of the Scheme, as KETER in the World of Emanation, is permanently transcendent because it is the Absolute All, the Infinite without End!

Comparing the typology of Leo Schaya above, with the Fig. 81– EVOLUTION by Z’ev Shimon Halevi, we can see the cosmic positions of Adam Kadmon, Metatron, the Current Messiah and the heavenly-earthly, or psychic-physical man, or Adam Harishon, passing through the states of Living Dead, Ego and Self. This extremely rich Scheme depicts the evolution of humankind as a whole and of the human being in particular, over thousands of years.

When the earthly Man, or Adam Harishon, loses his uninterrupted cosmic consciousness stretching throughout the whole of Creation, then the Messiah, the ‘celestial man’ and the ‘universal mediator’, has to come in order to restore the universal cosmic essence of Man. Thus, the Transcendent Messiah has to become the Immanent, visible, Messiah, acting in the world, showing the way to the Heavens in the World of Creation. In the next Posts I will develop the essence of the Immanent Messiah further.