Thursday, July 9, 2009

"The secret of the positive mitzvot"


"The secret of the positive mitzvot, the commandments to perform certain actions, lies, in a manner of speaking, in the activization of the limbs of the body, in certain movements and certain ways of doing things which are congruous with higher realities and higher relationships in other worlds.


In fact, every movement, every gesture, every habitual pattern and every isolated act that man does with his body has an effect in whole systems of essences in other dimensions with and against one another.

Clearly, an ordinary person does not know anything of this.

At best he is conscious only to a very small degree of the things he does and of their higher significance.

Even among those few who are able to unravel the riddle and know the meaning of these secrets, only select individuals reach that state of being where knowledge is automatically lived out and manifested.

It is a state where every act of a mitzvah or an impulsive movement or a dance, expresses, knowingly and unknowingly, the higher relationships--following on analogous parts of the body, in their separate as well as in their total effects."

--Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz


From "The Human Image"in The Thirteen Petalled Rose by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz