My KosherTorah selections of Meditative
Instructions will be complete this week with
the conclusion of the Basic Meditation series.
Now I have a full selection of material that
can meet the needs of almost everyone at
almost any level of spiritual/psychological
development.
These selections are available in MP3 format
and ready for automatic downloading on to
your own computers and MP3 devices. I see
that this is the quickest and cheapest way to
make this material available world-wide. I
will be listing the courses here below, after
this essay, which I am now writing to explain
to you the importance of this material, for
you personally and for the world at large.
In my opinion, the greatest pursuit (mitzvah)
anyone can be involved with these days is the
active development of one's ability to tune
in to spiritual awareness. (The mitzvah of
Devekut).
The philosophical pursuits of many other
schools in the Torah world have blinded their
eyes from seeing what is real. They see the
theory but they do not see and thus cannot
perform the practice. This is why we are
experiencing such a spike in extremisms of
all types. Because they do not know the way,
they try all so many avenues of expression,
but none accomplish the desired goal of
connection with Heaven. So many are trying
to become so Heavenly-minded that they end up
becoming no earthly good.
We must remember that Elohim (G-d) created
the Heavens and the Earth. Elohim in Hebrew
is equal in numerical value (and thus in
significance) to the Hebrew word for "nature"
(HaTeva). In simple terms, G-d is found in
what is natural and normal. We lose contact
with this every time we allow ourselves to
get distracted and lost with our continual
"eating of the forbidden fruit from the Tree
of Knowledge, Good and Evil." I feel that I
must digress to discuss this point.
As we know, in the beginning, Eve and Adam
ate of the forbidden fruit in the Garden of
Eden. This story and everything attached to
it has for millennia been viewed as being
somewhat literal. Any such reading of this
and similar Biblical stories is a terrible
injustice. Fables and stories are
appropriate for children (and those adults
who never mature beyond thinking like
children). Yet, for those who seek to
discover truth and reality, like Rabbi Shimon
Bar Yohai says in the Zohar, we have to "peel
away the surface layers" in order to get to
the truly "nutritional fruit" underneath the
husk or shell.
We know from Kabbalah that, in the beginning,
Adam and Eve existed in "bodies of light,"
not ones of flesh and blood. Therefore they
had no physical mouths with which to eat and
no physical stomachs with which to digest.
The Garden of Eden also was no physical
place. Rather, it was a domain situated in a
dimensional reality completely different from
our own. By our standards there was nothing
physical to it at all. Any searches
therefore for a terrestrial Garden of Eden
are wasted endeavors pursuing myths, not reality.
The two "Trees" in the Garden were also not
trees of the kind that we know. Therefore
the fruit of the trees was not an apple, fig,
date or grape. Any reference to these by our
Sages is purely metaphorical with the intent
of teaching moral (musar) lessons in similar
fashion as did Aesop in ancient Greece.
Midrash and Agadah are not history lessons,
they are moral lessons. Historicity is
therefore irrelevant. When one begins with
the words, "once upon a time," one is trying
to get a across a point, not a factual
rendition of historical events. Therefore
when our Sages spoke about Eden and the like
to the masses, they spoke within a context
that the uneducated masses would understand.
Our Sages spoke with child-like simplicity
to those who had minds of child-like
simplicity. Those who are more educated
realize this and see through the fable-like
language and peer through to the real essence
of the story.
The Torah story relates to us how Adam and
Eve were brought to Eden with the purpose of
providing for it, to care for it. Eden
itself is a reference to that dimensional
plane that immediately oversees and provides
sustenance to our own. Our physical universe
is subject to this higher parallel
dimensional plane in that this "other" is the
source of all things here, both material and
energetic. Even modern science now
postulates that before the "Big Bang" which
gave rise to our universe, the "place" of our
universe existed as empty space. At some
"point" this other parallel dimension
"bumped" into our dimension and unleashed
into it everything that would eventually
become existence as we know it. The point of
this bump was the Big Bang. What was
unleashed into our then empty universe was
energy, which later congealed into form and
physical matter.
This other parallel universe has been known
to the masters of Torah since the beginning.
We have had visitations and encounters with
the entities of that domain since the
beginning. In our myths we call them angels.
What they call themselves is a matter best
left for another discussion.
The Garden in Eden existed as a vortex point
of union between these two parallel
dimensions. Adam and Eve emanated from that
other dimensional plane and their job was to
ensure a proper balance and alignment between
the two dimensions. This is what the Torah
means when it says that Adam's job was to
"take care of the Garden."
So, as the story goes Adam comes into the
Garden and the serpent is already there. The
serpent is clearly somewhat humanoid, in that
he stood erect, spoke and clearly had higher
intelligence. There is so much that we can
extrapolate from this in light of modern
"urban myth," but that would distract us from
our topic.
In this Garden, this vortex point of meeting
between two parallel dimensional worlds,
there are two metaphorical Trees. One is
called the Tree of Life, the other should be
called the Tree of Death, but it is not;
rather it is called the Tree of Knowledge,
Good and Evil. If one were to eat of its
fruit unprepared it would indeed bring death,
but the Tree itself is not a Tree of Death.
This is because its fruits in and of
themselves are not poisonous. Eating the
fruit of the Tree of Knowledge only becomes a
poison if one does not first eat of the fruit
of the Tree of Life. Adam and Eve were
commanded not to eat of the Tree of
Knowledge, but they were never forbidden to
have eaten from the Tree of Life.
If Adam and Eve were to have eaten from the
Tree of Life first, then they would have
"lived forever." In other words, they would
have properly anchored themselves to the
source of life that the higher dimensional
plane brings into this one. With such an
anchoring they could have eaten of the Tree
of Knowledge and it would have only been
good. However, they were by confused the
Serpent (nahash in Hebrew, same numerical
value as the word Mashiah), and deceived into
rearranging the proper order. Therefore,
instead of eating first from the Tree of
Life, they instead ate first from the Tree of
Knowledge, the rest of the story, we all know.
My KosherTorah selections of Meditative
Instructions will be complete this week with
the conclusion of the Basic Meditation series.
