|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
The Tower of Babel provides an example of the human ego that grows so big that it shuts our ears, making us unable to understand one another. Just as it plays out in that story, such a state can once again lead the world to the brink of war. “Half the world there fell by the sword,” states the Midrash. With all the powerful and sophisticated weaponry we have developed since then, who knows what might transpire today? What can save us from ourselves is the wisdom of connection, rooted at the heart of the people of Israel.
In the puzzle of humanity, every person and nation has their own role. The people of Israel, from the moment of their formation, carry a method of living in connection above differences and the rejection that surfaces between people. We realized this method at the foot of Mount Sinai, and it is the inner essence of the Torah. The word for “mountain” in Hebrew (“Har“) means thoughts (“Hirhurim“), and “Sinai” comes from the word for hatred (“Sinah“). “Torah” connects to two words, “Ohr” (light) and “Hora’ah” (instruction), i.e., it contains instruction from the light—the upper force of love, bestowal, and connection—a method of how to rise above differences and divisions, and to cover such qualities with love.
“Receive the Torah,” we were told, “or here will be your burial place.” In other words, either learn to positively connect by drawing the force of love and bestowal into your connections, or your ego will bury you. Our ancestors agreed to connect “as one man with one heart,” to be guarantors for one another, and accordingly they received a method of connection that they would have to implement in the situations that would later reveal themselves.
Among those situations is one that stands before us today, when we see humanity approaching a key decisive point: either learn how to positively connect or we all sink together. Therefore, our current era is ripe for the expansion of the method of connection to humanity. As humanity becomes more and more connected superficially, through technological and economic means, without upgrading our inner attitude to such connection, the more urgent our positive inner connection to each other becomes, especially with all the increasingly advanced weapons we continually develop.
When unfounded hatred took us over, ruin came. The Land of Israel spat us out and we went into exile among the nations of the world. 2,000 years later, we have been brought back here to the Land of Israel so that we would build a model society that would illuminate the world.
Therefore, until we provide an example of how to live in a harmonious connection, with love above all disagreements and the major rejection we feel from each other, we will not be allowed to live quietly here. The world will rise up against us with more and more ferocity, wanting to wipe us off the map. If we do recognize our original role and make use of the method of connection that long disappeared, then we can lead humanity to exist as one whole, like one family, like organs of one body. This is where the evolutionary forces are pushing, as the interconnected reality proves from one day to the next.
The wisdom of Kabbalah, which is the inner essence of the Torah, describes this process in detail. It was hidden for generations, passed down between a few chosen individuals, but today it is opening up to all, inviting literally any person who feels a desire to use it, i.e., to discover the meaning of life and a remedy to the egoistic forces that tear away at our lives.
The first to discover the wisdom of Kabbalah publicly was Abraham, a wise Babylonian researcher who sought to understand what was happening with human beings. In his era, the ego underwent a significant surge, which the story of the Tower of Babel hints at. People wanted to rise to the heavens, to rule over all of creation.
When friction, misunderstanding, and the sounds of war arose among them, Abraham tried to explain that this was an incorrect developmental path. Nature is one integral and unified mechanism, and we too must learn how to live in integration, unity, and complementarity. Most people dismissed Abraham and his teaching, but there were those who felt truth in his words. Abraham taught them a method to rise above human egoistic nature, to construct themselves as one unified system, and through such connection to discover the one, unique, and unified force of nature.
His community of students numbered in the thousands, and they were called “the people of Abraham’s household.” The people of Israel were later formed from them, as Maimonides describes in Sefer HaMada (The Book of Knowledge). Therefore, we are a nation unlike others. We possess no biological roots, but we share a common ideological foundation. Initially, we were a gathering of strangers from various nations and tribes who lived in Mesopotamia, the cradle of humanity in those times. We assembled as an ideological group, with the purpose of living according to the tenet, “love your neighbor as yourself,” to connect to the single force of nature, the quality of which is absolute love and bestowal.
In our current times, the circle is approaching its close. Humanity again finds itself as if confined to one place. Humanity’s ego is sky-high, preventing us from positively connecting to each other, i.e., from “understanding one another.” The single force that can prevent this planet’s destruction is that very hidden force of nature. On nature’s still, vegetative, and animate levels, this force operates automatically, balancing plus and minus, heat and cold, etc. in an instinctive and natural way. However, in human society, it needs to be awakened through action, scrutiny, awareness, and recognition. This is what differentiates humans from animals.
The method to do so is detailed in the wisdom of connection, i.e., the wisdom of Kabbalah, and the time has come to put it into practice. Israel, a country that is examined at every moment with a fine-toothed comb, is the place that needs to provide the example of life in full integration, in connection above the massive ego, in the force of love. From here it will spread quickly, and it will help humanity rise to its next degree of existence, one where we live in mutual support, encouragement, consideration, and love—a higher, enlightened, and wonderful world beyond our current narrow limits of perception.
So, there is hope, work, and a method. May we all succeed.
Based on “New Life 85 – A Talk On Emergency Situations, Part 2” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman, Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
Posted on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Medium, Quora, The Times of Israel, Twitter X, YouTube