The Origins of Consciousness - Volume 1: A Study of the Ten Luminous Emanations

5 Star Review

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Editorial Book Review:

By Fabiana Barbery

Michael Berg began translating the entire 23-volume Zohar from ancient Aramaic into English at eighteen years old. It took him ten years. That single biographical fact tells you everything you need to know about the quality of attention he brings to The Origins of Consciousness, and why this volume stands apart from the crowded shelf of Kabbalah introductions that promise to make ancient wisdom accessible and rarely do.

The source material he is working with here is Rav Yehuda Ashlag's commentary on the Writings of the Ari, known as the Talmud Eser Sefirot, or the Study of the Ten Luminous Emanations. Within kabbalistic tradition, this is considered among the most difficult texts in existence. It addresses nothing less than the creation of this world and the underlying system that defines our existence, how the infinite Light contracted to create space for human consciousness, how the ten emanations shape every dimension of reality, and how understanding this system changes what it means to be alive inside it.

What Berg does in this volume is both a scholarly and a deeply personal act. He does not merely translate or summarize. He explains, with a simplicity that feels almost miraculous given the complexity of the territory, in a voice that makes the reader feel as if the insights are being offered directly rather than transmitted through centuries of accumulated scholarship. The image that recurs in descriptions of his teaching is the good eye, the capacity to see the Light of the Creator in every moment rather than through the distorting lens of ego and illusion. That is not a metaphor here. It is a practice, and Berg makes it feel like a practice anyone willing to do the work can undertake.

For serious students of Kabbalah, this volume is essential and long overdue in its accessibility. For readers new to the tradition who sense that the deepest questions about consciousness and creation have answers worth spending a lifetime seeking, this is the most honest and rigorous starting point currently available.

About the Author

Michael Berg

Michael Berg is the director of The Kabbalah Centre, as well as an author, scholar and teacher. Having been born into a kabbalistic tradition as the son of the Rav and Karen Berg, Michael steeped himself in the wisdom of the Zohar at a young age, and was the first person to translate the entire 23-volume Zohar and commentary from ancient Aramaic into English, beginning this monumental task when he was only 18 years old, and completing it ten years later. 

Adept at combing through ancient materials and distilling complex information into elegant language, Michael has become a best-selling author with a worldwide following. His books include Becoming Like God, Well of Life, The Secret, The Way. He also edited Rav Ashlag’s pillar works: The Wisdom of Truth, And You Shall Choose Life, On World Peace, The Thought of Creation, and The Light of Wisdom, as well as translated and edited Beloved of My Soul, Rav Brandwein’s written correspondence to Rav Berg, a book presenting rare teachings through which the mantle of leadership of the Centre was transferred.

Michael currently lives in New York with his wife Monica and children, David, Miriam, Joshua, and Abigail, and lectures all around the world.