Ein Sof — the Kabbalistic designation for the infinite, utterly unknowable ground of divinity, literally ‘without end’ — functions in the depth-psychology corpus less as a doctrinal category than as a structuring analogy for the problem of the unrepresentable absolute. The corpus positions Ein Sof at the intersection of several traditions: Karen Armstrong traces its genealogy from Neoplatonic and Gnostic distinctions between hidden essence and revealed deity, emphasizing its radical impersonality; Iain McGilchrist deploys it comparatively, reading the Lurianic doctrine of tzimtzum — the divine self-contraction that permits creation — as a structural homologue to Heidegger’s Nichts, Boehme’s Ungrund, the Taoist emptiness, and, crucially, Jung’s collective unconscious. McGilchrist’s most provocative move is to align Ein Sof, God, and the collective unconscious as functionally equivalent ‘fields of potential’ that draw the world toward self-realization without compelling it. Harvey and Baring, and Campbell, present Ein Sof as the luminous source within the Tree of Life cosmology, emphasizing its emanative role through the sefirot. The central tension across the corpus is between Ein Sof as absolute negation (the via negativa strand) and Ein Sof as the generative plenum from which the sefirot unfold — a tension that mirrors, and informs, depth-psychological debates about the relationship between the unconscious ground and its differentiated contents.
God himself is essentially unknowable, inconceivable and impersonal. They called the hidden God En Sof, (literally, ‘without end’). We know nothing whatever about En Sof: he is not even mentioned in either the Bible or the Talmud.
Armstrong establishes En Sof as the Kabbalistic name for the radically unknowable divine essence, wholly beyond scripture, revelation, and personal attributes.
, A History of God, 1993thesis
It is only with the restraint of gevurah, which is made evident in the phase of creation called tzimtzum (divine withdrawal), that finite creatures can subsist without being reabsorbed into Ein-Sof.
McGilchrist argues that Ein Sof’s creative act requires self-limitation (tzimtzum) so that finite beings can exist without dissolution back into the infinite ground.
, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021thesis
It is only with the restraint of gevurah, which is made evident in the phase of creation called tzimtzum (divine withdrawal), that finite creatures can subsist without being reabsorbed into Ein-Sof.
McGilchrist argues that Ein Sof’s creative act requires self-limitation (tzimtzum) so that finite beings can exist without dissolution back into the infinite ground.
, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021thesis
The form or field of potential – God, Ein-sof in the Kabbalah, the collective unconscious to Jung – draws something out of the world to meet itself.
McGilchrist explicitly equates Ein Sof, God, and Jung’s collective unconscious as variant expressions of a single attracting field of potential that draws the world toward self-realization.
, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021thesis
The form or field of potential – God, Ein-sof in the Kabbalah, the collective unconscious to Jung – draws something out of the world to meet itself.
McGilchrist explicitly equates Ein Sof, God, and Jung’s collective unconscious as variant expressions of a single attracting field of potential that draws the world toward self-realization.
, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021thesis
according to the Lurianic Kabbalah, the primal ground of Being (Ein-sof), brought about the created cosmos by an act of withdrawing, or self-abnegation, known as tzimtzum.
McGilchrist places Ein Sof’s tzimtzum within a comparative topology of creative negation alongside Eckhart’s negatio negationis, Boehme’s Ungrund, and Buddhist śūnyatā.
, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021thesis
according to the Lurianic Kabbalah, the primal ground of Being (Ein-sof), brought about the created cosmos by an act of withdrawing, or self-abnegation, known as tzimtzum.
McGilchrist places Ein Sof’s tzimtzum within a comparative topology of creative negation alongside Eckhart’s negatio negationis, Boehme’s Ungrund, and Buddhist śūnyatā.
, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021thesis
Luria confronted the question that had troubled monotheists for centuries: how could a perfect and infinite God have created a finite world riddled with evil? Where had evil come from? Luria found his answer by imagining what had happened before the emanation of the sefiroth, when En Sof had been turned in upon
Armstrong shows how Luria’s Kabbalistic system uses the pre-emanative state of En Sof to confront the problem of evil, making the infinite ground the site where theodicy is worked out.
, A History of God, 1993thesis
The Zohar shows the mysterious emanation of the ten sefiroth as a process whereby the impersonal En Sof becomes a personality. In the three highest sefiroth—Kether, Hokhmah and Binah—when, as it were, En Sof has only just ‘decided’ to express himself, the divine reality is called ‘he
Armstrong describes how the Zohar narrates a movement from the impersonal absolute (En Sof) toward a personal divine reality through the progressive emanation of the sefirot.
, A History of God, 1993supporting
Divine Spirit (Ain Soph or Ein Sof) beyond form or conception is the light at the center, the heart, and moves outward as creative sound (word), thought, and energy, bringing into being successive spheres, realms, veils, or dimensions
Harvey and Baring present Ein Sof as the luminous, formless source at the center of the Kabbalistic emanative cosmology, from which successive creative spheres proceed outward.
, The Divine Feminine: Exploring the Feminine Face of God Throughout the World, 1996supporting
Divine Spirit (Ain Soph or Ein Sof) beyond form or conception is the light at the center, the heart, and moves outward as creative sound (word), thought, and energy, bringing into being successive spheres, realms, veils, or dimensions
Campbell situates Ein Sof as the transcendent luminous ground of the Tree of Life cosmology, interpreting its emanative outpouring in the context of the divine feminine.
, Goddesses: Mysteries of the Feminine Divine, 2013supporting
Similarly in the Kabbalah, Ein-sof includes within itself, although distinct, the Sefirot, which are modes or attr
McGilchrist draws an analogy between Ein Sof’s inclusive relation to the sefirot and Whitehead’s process theology, in which God contains the world as distinct yet not separate.
, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting
Similarly in the Kabbalah, Ein-sof includes within itself, although distinct, the Sefirot, which are modes or attr
McGilchrist draws an analogy between Ein Sof’s inclusive relation to the sefirot and Whitehead’s process theology, in which God contains the world as distinct yet not separate.
, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting
of Ein-sof in creating the cosmos, there needs to be an emptying out, a receptive space so as to make a place for it to live: a primary act of negation.
McGilchrist connects the creative logic of Ein Sof — requiring an initial emptying — to the neurological principle of reciprocal inhibition and Heidegger’s ontology of Nothing.
, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting
In the Kabbalah, mankind has both an innate tendency to good (yetzer hatov) and an innate tendency to evil (yetzer hara).
McGilchrist invokes Kabbalistic anthropology to frame the coincidentia oppositorum of good and evil, connecting it to Jung’s enantiodromia in the context of theodicy.
, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021aside
In the Kabbalah, mankind has both an innate tendency to good (yetzer hatov) and an innate tendency to evil (yetzer hara).
McGilchrist invokes Kabbalistic anthropology to frame the coincidentia oppositorum of good and evil, connecting it to Jung’s enantiodromia in the context of theodicy.
, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021aside