Think of it like this: the "Cause of all Causes" is above everything. I mean everything. There's no higher power, no celestial being pulling the strings of it. It's the ultimate origin, the uncaused cause. As Elliot Wolfson puts it, it is the "hidden source of all reality," so hidden, in fact, that it "cannot be conceived or imagined." This "Cause," we're told, "fills all the worlds and surrounds them from every side." It's omnipresent, all-encompassing, the very fabric of reality.
Now, here’s where it gets interesting. The "Cause of all Causes" isn't just some abstract philosophical concept. It's also another name for the Beginning, that pivotal moment when nothing became something. And… it's also a name of God.
But not the God we typically think of. Not the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, exactly. This is the unknowable part of God, the aspect that's beyond human comprehension. The Kabbalah, Jewish mysticism, calls this Ein Sof, "the Endless One." Ein Sof is so infinite, so boundless, that our minds simply can’t grasp it.
So, how did this unknowable, limitless Ein Sof bring about creation? Well, the "Cause of all Causes" is also described as the force in which the will arose to create the world. It’s the divine spark, the initial impulse that set everything in motion. Before the Big Bang, before light and darkness, there was only the potential for it all, held within the "Cause of all Causes."
The Zohar, a central text of Kabbalah, offers a beautiful image. In its reading of Genesis 1:1, it suggests that God allows Himself to be known through the sefirot (sefirot are emanations or attributes of the Godhead), these ten divine energies that flow into the world. Think of them as filters, ways for the infinite to express itself in finite terms. Through the sefirot, God becomes the source of differentiated being, the origin of all the diverse and wondrous things we see around us. The Tikkunim and Etz Hayim also delve into this idea of divine manifestation.
So, the "Cause of all Causes" is a paradox: unknowable yet the source of all knowing, limitless yet the origin of form, hidden yet present in every aspect of creation. It’s a concept that challenges us to stretch our minds beyond the boundaries of our everyday experience.
It makes you wonder, doesn’t it? If the "Cause of all Causes" is truly within everything, what does that say about our own potential? What creative force lies dormant within each of us, waiting for the moment to spark into being?