“Being willing to lose everything for truth… when we orient that way, the most profound revelations and depths occur.””Zvi Ish-Shalom

Zvi Ish-Shalom is a professor of Jewish mysticism, an author, an ordained rabbi, and the guiding light of Kedumah, a teaching out of time and space, whose primary calling is to translate wisdom from the primordial ground of being into a discernible wisdom stream.

In this remarkable conversation, Zvi describes how he found ways to map and interpret his own profound mystical experiences, how the teachings arise from the ground of being, about how they might become accessible to us all, regardless of religion or spiritual tradition, and how they are especially relevant for young people today, seeking to find a structure for their spiritual journey. His familiarity with the realm of mystical experience is extremely engaging—he tells of discovering the vow taken by our soul before we were born and dropping the barriers between us and God, surrendering to the divine.

Roger Walsh found Zvi’s book The Kedumah Experience “the most profound spiritual text he’s ever read in the Jewish tradition,” and listeners will almost certainly be excited to read Zvi’s latest book, published since the recording of this podcast, The Path of Primordial Light: Ancient Wisdom for the Here and Now.

Recorded at the Science & Nonduality Conference, October 2019, with Dr. Roger Walsh, John Dupuy, and Douglas Prater.

Recorded July 13, 2022.

Topics & Timestamps

• Roger’s discovery of Zvi Ish-Shalom’s book while touring Israel: the most profound spiritual text he’d ever read in the Jewish tradition (02:00)
• The gnostic intermediary: how Zvi revives the culture, infusing a fresh understanding of the Jewish mystical tradition (04:43)
• Zvi’s personal story, starting with deep states of connection praying in the synagogue in Brooklyn (07:40)
• How Zvi found ways to map and interpret his profound mystical experiences, establishing cause and effect (13:45)
• Remembering one’s life purpose, the vow taken by your soul before embodiment (17:47)
• Zvi’s Kedumah experience: the concept of primordial Torah, or the ground of our being, and how the teaching arises (19:57)
• How to transmit the Kedumah teachings to the secular world? (22:32)
• The radical experiential perspective in which the Kedumah is rooted is what makes it so timely for us today (28:17)
• Revivifying the Jewish lineage wisdom stream through the lens of Kedumah: bringing in living expressions of the mystery (31:26)
• The way in which a profound analytical study of the texts creates an opening and becomes a process of illumination, deepening, and distilling truth in an ever more discriminating way (37:35)
• What the new Kedumah paradigm offers young people who are searching for structure for their spiritual journey  (43:27)
• The practice of dialectical inquiry (havruta) to discover the truth of reality embedded inside the texts and how to reveal it (48:20)
• Comparing the Torah scroll to the human being: working to unpack the truth of the human experience (51:06)
• Greek philosophy was used as a practice to investigate human life, metaphysics, and open to the transcendent as well (53:15)
• Socrates and the fundamental wisdom of seeking truth for its own sake (56:37)
• How does Zvi teach contemplative prayer and meditation? Building the embodied capacity for integration and allowing ourselves to surrender to the divine (59:07)
• Zvi’s “journey of silence” (01:03:03)

Podcast produced by Vanessa Santos

About the Deep Transformation series

We are clearly in a new era, facing world-threatening challenges and graced with barely conceivable opportunities. In this mind-boggling new world, we all face two crucial questions:

• First, the ever-present conundrum of how to best live fully, deeply, wisely, and well.
  Second, the new question unique to our times, how to best understand and heal our endangered world.
• Wouldn’t it be wonderful to hear responses to these questions from some of the great consciousness pioneers—the outstanding thinkers, sages, scientists, and activists—of our time? These are the people and conversations that Deep Transformation offers.

Deep Transformation: Self-Society-Spirit draws on diverse ideas from around the world. It goes beyond traditional positions and polarities—beyond left and right, material and spiritual—to seek syntheses of deep wisdom and practical know-how that integrate the best of all positions.

Click here to learn more about Deep Transformation!