Parasha Va'eira -- Stretching Your Pure Minds (Part 7)

[Rebbe]

Stretching Your Pure Minds!
The Rebbe shares his knowledge of Kabbalah.
[Part Seven]

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All Rights Reserved Worldwide

"The thing that you lack is in the indwelling Glory. For man is a part of God, and the want that is in the part is in the Whole, and the Whole suffers the want of the part. Therefore, let your prayers be directed to the want of the Whole...Pray continually for God's Glory that it may be redeemed from its exile" -- Rabbi Yisrael Ba'al Shem Tov.

Yisrael Ben Eliezer -- the Ba'al Shem Tov (Master of the Good Name) -- grasped that man suffers precisely because God suffers. God is the WHOLE and man is made in His image. Within this image of God, the LORD placed His entire creation. The further back we go in our study of human history and the early development of human philosophy, the deeper our grasp becomes of the awesome sense of the existence of UNIVERSAL UNITY that permeated the religions of all races at the Dawn of Time. One only has to peruse the sacred Scriptures of the ancients to discover their understanding of man (of humankind) as a microcosm ("little [or miniature] universe") of the very universe in which we find ourselves. We have already seen that the Talmud expresses this notion of man as microcosm.
 
"All that the Holy One, blessed be He, created in the world [universe] He created in man" (Aboth d'Rabbi Nathan xxxi).

In Ginzburg's The Legends of the Jews, he notes: "With ten Sayings [the Ten Sefirot] God created the world, although a single Saying would have sufficed...The world was made for man, though he was the last-comer among its creatures. This was by design. He was to find all things ready for him. God was the host who prepared dainty dishes, set the table, and then led His guest to his seat. At the same time man's late appearance on earth is to convey an admonition to humility: Let him beware of being proud, lest he invite the retort that the gnat is older than he.

"The superiority of man to the other creatures is apparent in the very manner of his creation, altogether different from theirs. He is the only one who was created by the hand of God: The rest sprang from the word of God. The body of man is a microcosm, the whole world in miniature, and the world in turn is a reflex of man. The hair upon his head corresponds to the woods of the earth, his tears to a river, his mouth to the ocean. Also, the world resembles the ball of his eye: the ocean that encircles the earth is like unto the white of the eye, the dry land is the iris, Jerusalem the pupil, and the Temple the image mirrored in the pupil of the eye."

Islam borrowed directly from both the Jewish sages and the theoretician Democritus of Abdera (d. circa B.C.E. 370) who also considered man as a reduced model of the universe, and the universe as an enlarged copy of man. (Remember that Islam is a comparatively recent religious expression.) In the Koran we read: "We shall show them Our signs in the horizons and in themselves, till it is clear to them that it is the truth" (Surah 41.53).

But descend further back into Jainism and we read, "One who knows the inner self knows the external world as well. One who knows the external world knows the inner self as well" (Acarangasutra 1.147).

It is a fundamental truth located in Buddhism: "The whole of existence arises in me, In me arises the threefold world, By me pervaded is this all, Of naught else does this world consist" (Hevajra Tantra 8.41). "The illimitable Void of the universe is capable of holding myriad's of things of various shape and form, such as the sun, the moon, stars, mountains, rivers, worlds, springs, rivulets, bushes, woods, good men, bad men, dharmas pertaining to goodness or badness, deva planes, hells, great oceans, and all the mountains of the Mahameru. Space takes in all these, and so does the voidness of our nature. We say that the Essence of Mind is great because it embraces all things, since all things are within our nature" (Sutra of Hui Neng 2).

Confucianism: "Man is the product of the attributes of Heaven and Earth, by the interaction of the dual forces of nature, the union of the animal and intelligent souls, and the finest subtle matter of the five elements.

Heaven exercises the control of the strong and light force, and hangs out the sun and stars. Earth exercises the control of the dark and weaker force, and gives vent to it in the hills and streams. The five elements are distributed through the four seasons, and it is by their harmonious action that the moon is produced, which therefore keeps waxing for fifteen days and waning for fifteen. The five elements in their movements alternately displace and exhaust one another. Each one of them, in the revolving course of the twelve months of the four seasons, comes to be in its turn the fundamental one for the time.

The five notes of harmony, with their six upper musical accords, and the twelve pitch-tubes, come each, in their revolutions among themselves, to be the first note of the scale.

The five flavors, with the six condiments, and the twelve articles of diet, come each one, in their revolutions in the course of the year, to give its character to the food.

The five colors, with the six elegant figures, which they form on the two robes, come each one, in their revolutions among themselves, to give the character of the dress that is worn.

Therefore Man is the heart and mind of Heaven and Earth, and the visible embodiment of the five elements. He lives in the enjoyment of all flavors, the discriminating of all notes of harmony, and the enrobing of all colors" (Book of Ritual 7.3.1-7).

Hinduism: "In the beginning the Self alone was here -- no other thing that blinks the eye at all. He thought, "What if I were to emanate worlds?"

He emanated these worlds, water, rays of light, death, the waters. Water is up there beyond the sky; the sky supports it. The rays of light are the atmosphere; death the earth; what is underneath, the waters.

He thought again, "Here now are these worlds. What if I were to emanate guardians?" He raised a Man (Purusha) up from the water and gave him a form.

He brooded over him; when he had finished brooding over him, a mouth broke open on him the likeness of an egg. From the mouth came speech and from speech Fire.

Nostrils broke open, from the nostrils came breath, from breath the Wind.

Eyes broke open, from the eyes came sight, from sight the Sun.

Ears broke open, from the ears came hearing, from hearing the Points of the Compass.

Skin broke out, from skin grew hairs, from the hairs plants and trees.

A heart broke out, from the heart came mind, from the mind the Moon.

A navel broke open, from the navel came the out-breath, from the out-breath Death.

A phallus broke forth, from the phallus came semen, from semen Water....

Those deities [the macrocosmic beings], Fire and the rest, after they had been sent forth, fell into the great ocean. Then he [the Self] besieged him [the Purusha] with hunger and thirst. The deities then spoke to him, "Allow us a place in which we may rest and take food."
 
He led a cow towards them. They said, "This is not enough." He led a horse towards them. They said, "This is not enough." He led man towards them. Then they said, "Well done, indeed." Therefore man is well done. He said to them, "Enter the man, each according to his place."
 
Then fire, having become speech, entered the mouth; the wind, having become breath, entered the nostrils; the sun, having become sight, entered the eyes; the regions, having become hearing, entered the ears; the plants and trees, having become hairs, entered the skin; the moon, having become mind, entered the heart; death, having become out-breathing, entered the navel; water, having become semen, entered the phallus....

The Self considered, "How could these guardians exist without me?"

Again he thought, "By what way shall I enter them?

"If, without me, speech is uttered, breath is drawn, eye sees, ear hears, skin feels, mind thinks, sex organs procreate, then what am I?"
 
He thought, "Let me enter the guardians." Whereupon, opening the center of their skulls, he entered. The door by which he entered is called the door of bliss" (Aitareya Upanishad 1.1-3.12).

In Hindu thought, the Purusha -- a Sanskrit term which is (among other things and depending on the particular Hindu system of thought) a synonym for atman; also the Supreme Soul; the Cosmic Man; one of two supreme beginningless realities; and "the quiescent unmanifest" -- was formed at the very beginning and as a result of the sudden creation of Divine Light. It is known as the Macrocosmic Person (whose parts are invested within humanity his reflection as the Microcosm). We are dealing unquestionably with the Logos/Mem'ra, who became Yeshua the Messiah.

Amerindian Worldview: "Many native Americans planned and constructed their dwellings as a microcosm of the universe, aligned their houses along the cardinal directions, used lodge poles as pathways linking the heavens to the earth and used domed roofs in the image of the bowl of the sky...Time is viewed as being circular or cyclical not unidirectional or linear. Time comes back onto itself. Time is revolving, like a revolving door" (Crossroads of Earth Resources and Society, Lecture 5, Native American Attitudes About Earth & Environment: Indian Worldviews. http://eps.berkeley.edu/~brimhall/EPS170AC_LNS170AC/L-5.pdf. )

That Man is a microcosm of the universe is the message of all ancient religious writings including the sacred Hebrew Scripture. Indeed, as a consequence of being a microcosm of the universe, man necessarily possesses the 10 Sefirot within. And what we are -- as Creators -- is reproduced in an external way. Man cannot help himself when it comes to reproduction. This includes his reproductive efforts in technology. The brain of man has even been successfully replicated as a computer. As man is made in God's Image, so man has reproduced himself (in a technological manner of speaking) in the form of another Image. The computer is living evidence of the brain's reflection. And, like the human brain its largely a matter of "garbage in, garbage out."
 
Man -- Ad'am -- as the Image and Reflection of God, FELL. Yes, he fell, but really (as I have said for decades) Adam was pushed. Not just pushed -- he was shoved. He lost his sense of stability, and footing. And when he did, he suddenly perceived that he was "beyond" God -- as he viewed his situation -- experiencing a finitude as alienation, and guilt as despair over which he had no control. Adam was caught in a web of a world of opposites: life and death, good and evil, light and darkness, the Self and the not-Self, the knower and the known, yin and yang, black and white, the organism and its environment, the solid and the space, the useful and the useless, love and hate, randomness and order, multiplicity and unity, freedom and determinism. He was fallen man with a knowledge of ultimate dualism.

He had forgotten his essential oneness -- UNITY -- with his God. He forgot who he was. He cluttered his divine intuition with overwhelming elements of dreaded anticipation, phobia, panic, trauma.
 
And yet, in that fall, he had become as a god (Gen 3.22 cf Jn 10.34).

This is God's own sacred Word! The LORD God admitted to the Wisdom of the Enchanter, "Now the man has become as one of us, [experientially] knowing good and evil" (Gen 3.22).

It was God's purpose and scheme that our first parents should fall.

Why?

It is only in man's fall that he can begin, through Messiah, the long inner journey toward spiritual fulfilment. There is no other way for man, except in the fall, for him to understand, comprehend and appreciate the nature of Divine Being.
 
Why is this so? Because at the Moment God created a MATERIAL universe out of Himself as pure SPIRIT -- God Himself FELL. That which was SPIRITUAL became PHYSICAL.

The plan of God has ever been a plan of salvation: salvation of man, and redemption of the entire universe (Eph 1.7-11; Col 1.19,20). God has no other plan for the human race.

The early Catholics understood this for one of their prayers stated: "O Felix Culpa!" O Blessed Fault [Adam's sin] -- without which I would not know grace."

Man was made in the Image and Likeness of God. I keep repeating this fact because it is a fact, unpopular though it well may be as a concept once you take the time to think it through.

Why do I say this?

Stop and think about the dictum, "As Above, So Below."

Man was created to FALL. In that fall, he became aware of duality. How does this tie in with Adam being made in God's Image and Likeness?

Over the past six lectures on my interpretation of the Kabbalah, I have stressed the doctrine of the Shattered Face of God. At the moment of the implosion of the Singularity, the Face of God shattered and the holy sparks of Divine Light issued forth creating direction as they went -- ultimately impregnating the holy sparks of Divinity within Man as God's supreme creation.

AT THE VERY MOMENT GOD'S FACE SHATTERED Yah was jettisoned from Weh. This is just another way of expressing THE FALL OF GOD. The personal Name of God -- Yahweh -- appears about 6828 times in the Hebrew Scriptures but the Name Yah appears just 49 times. Intriguingly, Jewish mythology and religion from ancient time has intimated on more than one occasion that God's Sh'khinah was trapped at the Moment of Creation in this material universe. The Sh'khinah has longed to return to God as His Bride (a form of the higher meaning of Shabbat -- and hence the famous Jewish rendition of Lechah Dodi, "Welcome Bride" or perhaps better, "Come, My Beloved"). And God also yearns for His Unity to again be One. Each and every Sabbath, the Sh'khinah nestles deep within Her people, and broods upon them, as they focus entirely on God and His movement in our hearts. In our repentance and reconciliation THROUGH THE KENOTIC SACRIFICIAL BLOOD of Yeshua the Messiah -- the Logos/Mem'ra in human form, the emanated attributes of Yahweh, the Archetypal Heavenly Man [the Ad'am Kad'mon] -- we are united to God the Father, and are in the process of healing the Shattered Face.

This is one of the primary reasons we get ill, and sometimes stay ill. God the Father oftentimes turns a deaf ear to our requests for Divine healing to take place. He wants ALL of us involved in upholding one another in love. That's sacrificial love, brethren. ALL of us must enter into the sufferings of one another to the point of where we feel their pain and sorrow. Do the writings of Paul on this subject of brotherhood and sisterhood in FAMILIAL BONDING now begin to make some more sense? Why do I seek healing? First and foremost I want to be healed of sicknesses and all that constitutes penury (of spirit as well as the physical) IN ORDER THAT GOD MAY HIMSELF FIND HEALING through my experience of the Self. If I seek freedom from suffering I must first liberate God from His. I want my Dearest Darling Daddy to feel OK again.

The Day is coming, as a result of the truth of this Gospel Message being accepted by the entire world, when God's NAME will again be ONE.

For it is written, "Behold, the day of the LORD comes...For I will gather all nations against Jerusalem to battle... Then shall the LORD go forth, and fight against those nations...And his feet shall stand in that day upon the mount of Olives, which is before Jerusalem on the east, and the mount of Olives shall split in the midst thereof... the LORD my God shall come, and all the saints with you. And it shall come to pass in that day, that the light shall not be clear, nor dark: But it shall be one day which shall be known to the LORD, not day, nor night: but it shall come to pass, that at evening time it shall be light. And it shall be in that day, that living waters shall go out from Jerusalem; half of them toward the former sea, and half of them toward the hinder sea: in summer and in winter shall it be. And the LORD shall be king over all the earth: in that day the LORD shall be One, AND HIS NAME ONE" (Zech 14.1-9 Heb).

Our next lecture will discuss the holy sparks of the Shattered Face of God and learn some spiritual lessons from a very surprising source.

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