Kether Qlifa | כתר קליפה
The spiritual experience is the vision of Oneness, the culmination or crown (Kether) of the whole mystical path. The vision of unity is not something external but intrinsically entails a unification, that is, an absorption into the divine unity, the Devekut, union with God, as it is called in Qabalah. And unity means that there is no trace of duality in it.
God manifests as Presence, an "I", the divine Self of all Manifestation. That is why the first commandment or divine word begins with "I am יהוה your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before my face" As if to say: I have delivered you from your inauthentic self and I invite you to be one with me. Know me; walk the path Tiferet-Kether; do not block it with other gods, for any "god" is a veil before my true face."
And who is God:, I (am), the one who is truly, Eheie Asher Eheie אהיה אשר אהיה, I am who I am. And a Qabalistic interpretation of why the repetition is that the meaning of the Name is: I will be wherever you are; be with me and I will be with you. Union with God is a union of I with me. It is in the deepest understanding of his own self that man becomes conscious of the Presence of God as the absolute Self.
The process of absorption into the Godhead, that is, into Unity, that is, into Totality, is never ending, it is limitless. The illusion of Kether is precisely that, the illusion of "having arrived. If there is no beginning, there is no end.
The virtue at the level of Kether is the recognition that we are living an ongoing process of moving forward into infinite energy, of moving forward on the path of knowing the unmanifested parts of Kether. We are limited structurally and we must recognize this in Kether, but in spite of this, we have the strength of our will that develops with the goal of trying to discover as much information as possible. We are in a process of infinite growth and, although we know that we will never reach the control of absolute divine truth, we will reach the meaning of our own life. To accept our limitations is to accept our own finitude and, therefore, the time limit to move forward. The Mida of Kether develops as a result of our awareness of our own mortality.
Another manifestation of the virtue of Kether is the understanding of the divine energetic unity. This is the highest understanding of monotheism. It is the true belief in God as infinite energy. In the intellectual area, Kether represents the first stage of divine contraction and, therefore, the closest to infinity by which man feels, also, all the possibilities of intellectual development. In Kether all paths to the infinite light are open.
The Qlifa on the level of Kether is to believe that one is already in Kether.
In order to enter Kether, man must become aware that he is in an infinite process and that he will never conquer even the smallest part of the unmanifested Kether. The consciousness that we must have in Kether is that we are in a permanent process of construction.
We can very poorly relate to them at the highest level we can attain. Many who enter the channel (path) leading from Chokmah to Kether have great difficulties. First of all, the Qlifa of Chokmah can lead us to generate a Qlifa in Kether as well. In reality, a Qlifa in Chokmah obstructs us from reaching Kether. The person who claims to be monotheistic but does not understand the essence of God, has a dark side in Kether. Believing in God by tradition, that is, one who believes in God but does not feel the infinite light, nor because he feels connected to the higher energy, but believes simply because his parents have believed in God, is what we can call the dark problems of Kether. One fails to grasp the light of God that is found in Kether. Intellectually, Kether can represent (positively, as we have seen) the appearance of all possibilities and infinite knowledge, yet it can also represent the loss of self. So great is the field of intellectual action that many who enter Kether are unable to move forward, or move forward in dead-end circles.
As we have seen, the negative aspect of Kether is to believe that one can do everything. In that moment of total impunity the infinite space of Kether mocks our finite forces and provokes our impotence. The Kabbalists say that those who have the Qlifa of Kether are lost in the intellectual wilderness. In order to correct this problem, we must be very clear about what our life project is, because otherwise, we waste important energies in circular journeys.
It is not fundamental how much energy is produced, but how that energy is concentrated in one point. We believe that results depend on our strength when, in reality, they depend on the clarity of our objectives. No matter how much strength we develop, we cannot enter Kether. If we do not focus our forces on a particular goal, we lose ourselves in Kether and can become insane. Kether can be the exile of the sage. The sage who comes from balancing Chokmah and arrives at Kether believing he has reached the infinite light, must know that his wisdom is of no use to him within Kether, for he now faces the consciousness of infinity. His wisdom is controllable from Chokmah into the lower dimensions of the Tree, but in Kether his wisdom is nothing, it is dust and ashes.
He who has a touch of pride can never enter the higher dimension of Kether, for there is nothing greater than God in real terms. The wise man is wise in relation to other human beings, but the wise man in relation to God is not wise, he is nothing. In Chokmah, the sage feels something; in Kether, if he feels something, he does not enter Kether, because to enter Kether he must feel that he is nothing.