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Jan 27, 2007 13:15

Moshe Katsav (Hebrew: משה קצב‎; born December 5, 1945) is the eighth and current President of Israel (since 2000). As of January 25, 2007, he is on a leave of absence from the presidency as he faces potential criminal charges for rape.

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Ambiguities of meaning

The mystic interprets the world through a different lens than is present in ordinary experience; this can prove to be a significant obstacle to those who research mystical teachings and paths. Much like poetry, the words of mystics are often idiosyncratic and esoteric, can seem confusing and opaque, simultaneously over-simplified and full of subtle meanings hidden from the unenlightened. To the mystic, however, they are pragmatic statements, without subtext or weight; simple obvious truths of experience. One of the more famous lines from the Tao Te Ching, for instance, reads:

My words are very easy to know, and very easy to practise;
but there is no one in the world who is able to know and able to practise them.
References to "the world" are common in mystical and religious traditions including admonitions to be separate and the call to detachment. One key to the enigmatic expressions lies in the perspective that "the world" of appearances reflects only learned beliefs - based on the limitations of time, culture and relationships - and that unquestioned faith in those misperceptions limits one's return to the divine state. The cloaking of such insights to the uninitiated is an age-old tradition; the malleableness of reality was thought to pose a significant danger to those harboring impurities.

Readers frequently encounter seemingly open-ended statements among studies of mysticism throughout its history. In his work, Kabbalah, Gershom Scholem, a prominent 20th century scholar of that field, stated: The Kabbalah is not a single system with basic principles which can be explained in a simple and straightforward fashion, but consists rather of a multiplicity of different approaches, widely separated from one another and sometimes completely contradictory
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