Marc Gafni Path Of Study
Marc Gafni’s Teachings
Marc Gafni’s path of study and teaching has unfolded in several stages.
In the first stage of his career, Marc Gafni was a progressive Orthodox rabbi, teaching Talmud, Kabbalah and Biblical Thought from within the Orthodox fundamentalist world in Israel and the United States. In the United States, Marc Gafni taught at Yeshiva University, serving congregations both as scholar in residence and rabbi. He founded a Jewish outreach movement in New York and Long Island public schools.
Eventually, Marc Gafni moved to Israel where he served as a rabbi and taught classical Hebrew wisdom through study of the Talmud, Kabbalah, and biblical psychology. At this stage, he wrote two Hebrew books. The first, A Certain Spirit, redefines the idea of faith, moving from the old notion of the “dogma is true” to the more radical and profound idea “I am true.” In his second book during this period, An Uncertain Spirit, Marc Gafni challenged the age-old idea that spirit could provide certainty or explain suffering, and taught the spiritual path of dancing with the uncertainty as a way of realizing the highest human potential.
At this stage, Marc Gafni began to read the Bible through the prism of what he called ‘biblical myth’ or ‘biblical archetypes.’ This work became the basis for the television shows that Marc Gafni created, wrote, and hosted for several years on National Israeli Television.
During the second stage of his study and teaching, Marc Gafni shifted much of his focus to the teaching of Hasidism, particularly an esoteric Kabbalistic teaching described by Gafni as ‘Unique Self.’ This idea has been incorporated into the Integral seminars of Ken Wilber, the Big Mind process of Genpo Roshi, and the teachings of many other spiritual teachers who were exposed to Marc Gafni’s teaching through the Integral Institute.
The idea of ‘Unique Self,’ which is the basis of his bestselling book Soul Prints, forms an important foil and paradoxical complement to the classic Buddhist teaching of No Self. Marc Gafni’s teaching seeks the integration of these two seemingly disparate moments of realization.
During this time, Marc Gafni also wrote a two-volume, 1200-page work on non-dual humanism and its expression as Unique Self. A small part of this work became his doctoral dissertation for Oxford University. These two volumes are now being prepared for publication as a project of the Idra Foundation.