Since Chapter 2, there have been references to the “enlightened” (הַמַּשְׂכִּילִים, ha-maskilim). The Pritzker edition explains (footnote 14, p. 109) that this term can refer to “philosophers and kabbalists” but is here used to refer to “the letters [consonants] and vowels, as well as to the sefirot.” In this metaphorical usage, then, as the concealed radiance of Ein Sof and Hokhmah moves into the lower sefirot it becomes revealed, “enlightening” the sefirot as a whole. Okay. But always a second meaning is implied: the kabbalists themselves or, more generally, the spiritual adepts–teachers and gurus of the highest order–”those who lead many to righteousness.” This sets up a three-way parallel between the event of creation itself (which, as we saw, is eternally renewing and recurrent); the movement of truth into the world, ultimately in the form of the “letters and vowels” that appear in Torah; and the teaching of Torah as its gurus “enlighten” their students. We might symbolize this as the truth itself; the written Torah; and the oral Torah. All parallel processes, all mutually interaffecting, all one and at the same time infinitely various and ever exquisitely attuned to the ceaselessly dynamic flux of the cosmos. Indeed, these intertwined processes constitute the flux of the universe.

In these opening lines, the Zohar seeks to answer the greatest mystery of all, the original mystery: how is it that there is something rather than nothing? This is the mystery of “in the beginning” (בראשית, be-reshit). But as the Zohar asks this question it already includes what Infinitists regard as an erroneous assumption (or if not erroneous at least suspect): that first there was nothing (the void) and then creation began. This way, the question is: how did something emerge from nothing? Preferably, on the other hand, we might instead assume that the ‘something’ is unbegun and eternal. There never was a time of nothing. Then the question becomes: why is there something rather than nothing? In answer, one might reply: why is this any more mysterious (i.e., in need of a theory or a story) than the notion that originally there was nothing? But ultimately the answer must be: we can never begin to understand this. The human mind was not designed (evolved) to grok such a thing. It will always be an impenetrable mystery.