He debated with himself like this for three whole days. He stayed at a decent, but not exorbitant, hotel. He toured the city with, and made love to, a blond Scandinavian backpacker he met on the street. She had a face so pretty it belonged on a dairy ad, thighs like silk, and a mouth sweet and tight, even if she was only nineteen, immature in her giggling eagerness. She and her friend camped out in his room and invited him to meet them in Munich. He said he might, knowing he wouldn’t. He walked them to the train station, and all the while, even as he kissed her good-bye, he was arguing with himself about the fragment.

But when the days had passed and he knew Schwartz’s letter had arrived, he found himself heading back to the shop, as if his feet knew full well what his brain didn’t. He would buy the copy just because he wanted it, had wanted it from the first moment he’d laid eyes on those scratchy markings under plastic in that half-lit inner sanctum, from the instant he’d seen those tweezers. His gut was just about his only compass in life, and it said that this was more than just a story; this might well be the story.

Had there ever been any real doubt?

Last time I discussed how physics, the physical laws of space and time, are not only hospitable to the mysteries of faith; they are exactly the same thing. A scientist is a blind man probing the face of G-d.

Did I already write that? Yes, that must have been the pages I gave to Georg Bruzek. The important thing is that all must be preserved. The gifts of knowledge the Lord has given to me… I don’t care so much for my own life, but to have this knowledge die with me is unacceptable.

One of the keys to deep wisdom is that there are only a few patterns in all of creation, and they are repeated over and over. The planets revolve around the sun just as the electrons in an atom revolve around the nucleus. The whorls of a seashell mirror those of galaxies. “As above, so below.” The Micro is a mirror image of the Macro.

…

The physical world is made up of dualities: male/female, hot/cold, day/night, birth/death. There is no “itness,” no “beingness,” which does not have an opposite. Science has proven this true at every level of life: there is no particle without a corresponding antiparticle, no force without a counterbalance.

Why is this so? Because to have physical space you must have a “here” and also an “other there.” Before creation, everything was the same and there was only one place. To create distance and volume and expanse, opposites were necessary: poles between which life itself could be stretched.

The importance and meaning of dualities is one of the greatest secrets of kabbalah.

All dualities are mere echoes of the four great dualities. They are the sephirot, the opposing arms of the kabbalistic Tree of Life: Binah/chochmah, gevorah/chesed, hod/nezach, and keter/malkhut. These four great opposites form the lower four dimensions of space and time.

Keter and malkhut are the highest duality. Keter is the spiritual realm and malkhut the physical. Keter is the “Heaven” to malkhut’s “earth.” It is “God” to malkhut’s “man.” Some believe only in what they can see, feel, and hear (malkhut). Others suspect there is a teeming pool of meaning and energy that resides beyond or outside or throughout the physical world. Keter is that fifth dimension.

The next great duality is binah and chochmah. Binah is our logical, rational mind. Chochmah is intuition, creativity. In the beginning, before the “big bang,” everything was one thing—that “oneness” is chochmah, a spiritual state that mystics and artists strive to recapture. Binah separates, categorizes, labels. It is the great sieve. In human psychology they call these traits left-brain and right-brain. In our physical world, binah is solid and rigid and chochmah is pure and flowing—they are land and sea, earth and water.

The third great duality is gevorah (judgment) and chesed (mercy). Gevorah’s language is black and white, good and evil, right and wrong. As the Greeks said, it is blind. Gevorah lays down rigid laws and does not care about an offender’s background, excuses, or motivations.

Chesed, loving-kindness or mercy, is the opposite of judgment. It is empathy, expansiveness, generosity of spirit, love. Of all the sephirot, chesed appears to be the most purely good. Could there ever be too much loving-kindness? Yes! Anything taken to its extremes creates evil. Think of a child or a society with no laws or restrictions—chaos results. Without boundaries there is no definition, no form.

The final great duality is hod and netzach. Hod is inward-turned, contemplative. Netzach is outward-facing, social. Hod is the introvert and netzach the extrovert instinct. At its best, netzach is the teacher, the benevolent leader, the mediator. At its extreme it is the bully, the manipulator—those who get a sense of self only by controlling others. Hod, in its most favorable light, is the scholar, the independent thinker. At its worst it is antisocial, cut off from the world.

There is a connection between these great elements. Binah, gevorah, and hod are “left-hand” traits. Binah (logic) separates “I” from “them.” When we separate our own identity from that of others it becomes easier to judge them (gevorah). Your judgments can become so rigid that no one else is deemed acceptable but you yourself. This is a hell of hod’s making.

Chochmah, chesed, and netzach are “right-hand” traits. Chochmah (intuition) says: “We are all one.” Chesed (mercy) responds with love and acceptance. Netzach, therefore, thrives in relation to other people.

The thing to remember about dualities is that they are not two dots on opposing horizons. They are continuums. You might be more merciful than judgmental or more judgmental than merciful. But it is very unlikely you are so merciful you contain not the tiniest drop of judgment or so judgmental you lack the merest wisp of mercy!

If you picture the great dualities like pegs between which you are stretched—gevorah and chesed at your head and feet, binah and chochmah at your left and right hands, hod and netzach at your chest and back, and time as the last force, malkhut and keter, pulling you between birth and death, Heaven and earth… This is really what the forces in our lives are like. How can you escape such torture?

By finding the middle. In each of these dualities there is an absolute perfect middle point. On the continuum between judgment and mercy there is a point of perfect balance: judgment tempered perfectly by mercy, loving-kindness with healthy boundaries. There is a similar perfect point between logic and intuition. It is the scientist-mystic, East-meets-West. The perfect balance between the internal and external exists also—a place where we can enjoy loving relationships but retain a strong sense of self.

All of these perfect points of balance meet where? The center of all these continuums is the same center. Where is this magical place? As you lie there, stretched between these poles, there is a place in the exact center of you—your heart, body, and mind—where all these points meet. If you find that place, tension and struggle disappear.

This is also the point where keter and malkhut meet. God and man. God-in-you.

…

I have not slept for four nights. My heart has been filled up with ground glass. I have tried to think of some way, any way, out of here. My mind has grasped something, though it may be madness.

Years ago, while listing correspondences between heavenly bodies and their earthly counterparts, I came across a curiosity. Schwartzschild’s “ergospheres” or “black holes” are massive stars that have been condensed down by gravity so completely they form dimensionless objects of infinite density. These black holes are literally holes in the fabric of space-time. And since my correspondence theory states that everything that exists in the heavens (macro) has an equivalent in the subatomic world (micro) then there would have to exist such