Parallels can be drawn between the symmetry breaking at the dawn of the Universe (the first few nano-seconds), when the unified force field gradually broke up into the four forces of nature, and the Kabbalistic doctrine about the Godhead (En sof) giving rise to the Emanations or Parzufs. The analogy does not quite hold: there are four forces and ten Parzufs (by some accounts). However, in the creation of other Universes, the Unified Field (En Sof) could have broken up in other ways, making up quite different forces and laws of nature. Our Universe is not necessarily unique; it may just be the only one (or one of a few) in which we humans can exist. So, by the anthropic principle, we need not be surprised at the fine-tuning to permit our existence. There is also the fact that string theory as a Theory of Everything (TOE) requires ten dimensions, 3 of space, 1 of time, and 6 curled up.

The cosmic symmetry-breaking was a series of sequential bifurcations, as the forces broke off one by one. (The term “bifurcation” is used later in Prigoginian theory and catastrophe theory). Gravitational force broke off first and more fundamentally; gravitation or general relativity theory haves not yet been reconciled with the unification theory for the other 3 forces, called GUT or Grand Unification Theory.

Therefore, I identify this bifurcation with En Sof’s creation of El Kether, the One symbolized by a hair from En Sof’s forelock – a poetic image only, but indicating the great distance between these two faces of deity. El Kether is more like the common conception of God (still genderless spirit, both Father and Mother), while En Sof is totally incomprehensible to the human intellect. I tend to think of En Sof as an ocean of light (again only a metaphor), the way the Prince of Darkness in the story “The Dark Land” by C.S. Moore (in the collection “The Venus Factor”) appears finally as an all-enveloping ocean of darkness, although It or He can also produce intelligible emanations of Itself. In the story it is described as a tremendous infinitely hot dark void, crushing and roaring – perhaps like the ylem of the Big Bang or the central singularity of a giant Black Hole. Perhaps it had come from light – the supersymmetric transformation of the Bose-Einstein condensate at the end of the universe. It was En Sof engaged in creation. From Omega to Alpha.

The next force to break off from what remained of the Unified Field was the strong nuclear force, which holds quarks together in the proton and neutron, and then holds protons and neutrons together in the atomic nucleus. I identify this with the first pair of Parzufs, Hokhma (Wisdom) and Binah (Active Intelligence). These are obviously the deities of cognitive functions, or of God’s omniscience (or a pale reflection of it. We also see here for the first time a splitting of genderless spirit into its male and female aspects. The male version of cosmic intelligence is more like pure or abstract reason; the female version is more like practical or concrete reason. The former is like pure science for its own sake, the latter is like applications guided by an ethical sense. The splitting of atoms certainly requires, in our experience, a high sense of ethical responsibility. This pair seems to embody Sophia, the Spirit of Wisdom, trying to both understand and guide the Universe.

The ethical sense is further elaborated in the next pair of Parzufs, Gevurah (Stern Justice) and Hesed (Loving Mercy), again a male-female part. However, instead of being complementary like the first pair, this second pair represents a contradiction: sometimes justice and mercy clash, as we see today in the contraposition of the International Criminal Court idea and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission as ways of dealing with the crimes of genocide. In Kabbalah doctrine, this clash is represented by “the breaking of the vessels”, the protective envelope which sheathed the emerging Divine Emanations. This was like the Fall of Original Sin, but much earlier in the story of creation, only reflected later in an “as above, so below” manner.

It also reminds me of the breaking of the mirror carried by angels in the beginning of the “Snowqueen” story by Hans Christian Andersen. A fragment of the broken mirror got in the boy Kay’s eye, and he lost his sense of good and evil as a result. His moral sense was restored only by the love of his girl-friend Gerda, and only then could he spell “Eternity” with ice-blocks in the cold realm of the Snowqueen, and return home. It is a gender-reversal of the familiar theme in fairy stories of the prince bringing his bewitched beloved (Sleeping Beauty or Snowwhite) back to life by a kiss.

Is the creation of this second pair of Parzufs and the breaking of the vessels a parallel of the separation of the electroweak force into the weak nuclear and the electro-magnetic force? The former is related to radioactivity and the latter to chemistry – so perhaps to death and life. But that may be too far-fetched.