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GOOD AND TRUE
B.S.D.
Rabbi David Aaron
Excerpt from "Seeing G-d"
 According to the Kabbalah, the first man and woman caused the Divine Presence to withdraw from this world. When they ate from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Bad, they blocked the light of Hashem. What was their mistake? They assumed that they could create their own reality and determine for themselves what truly is. You can't create your own reality or truth. But you can create your own perceptual world that blocks out the light of reality. The snake was really saying to Adam and Eve, "If you eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Bad, you too will be creators of worlds." And that's true. You can create your own world through the knowledge of good and bad. You can decide what is bad and decide what is good for yourself, but it might not be true. It might not represent what's real, what actually is. You can live in your own imaginative world but it might not reflect what's really going on. You can choose to live in a world of lies and put yourself out of touch with reality.
This is what the Kabbalah is talking about when it says that Adam and Eve separated the Tree of Knowledge from the Tree of Life. We tend to forget that there were two trees in the garden. The Tree of Life represented reality as it is. The Tree of Knowledge represented our perception and consciousness of reality. However, our understanding of reality doesn't create reality. It simply creates our image of reality, our perceptual world. The challenge of Adam and Eve, which we have inherited, is to see reality the way it is. To the extent that we clearly see reality, Hashem's truth can fill our world. The Kabbalah explains that Adam and Eve were supposed to eat of the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life together, thereby unifying their perception with reality. Their perception of what is had to be one with what truly is. So that what they understood to be good was also true. After their error, all human beings suffered from the illusion that perception in and of itself was reality, rather than only a vehicle for receiving reality. By separating consciousness from reality, the first man and woman created the possibility of a godless world. We began living in our imaginative world disconnected from reality and deluding ourselves that it is real. We
have been able to feel good about doing something or eating something that in truth is deadly. We could convince ourselves that if it feels good it must be all right, real and true, and that if
it feels bad, it couldn't be real and right-it must be wrong.
The Cornerstone
According to the Kabbalah, Abraham was an antidote to the error of Adam and Eve. He began repairing the broken vessel of consciousness and bridging the gap between perception and reality. And thereby he initiated the return of the presence of Hashem into our world.
Abraham is important not just because he was a saintly individual, but because he brought Hashem back into this world. He set the cornerstone for a new world consciousness. Abraham was the first person to acknowledge an ultimate, transcendent, all-inclusive reality. In other words, he was the first to see it like it is and invite Hashem back into the world. In contrast, the pagan world around him worshiped the disparate forces of nature and created a perceptual world of separate,
conflicting powers, personifying gods at war with each other. Because that's the way they saw reality, that's the world they lived in-their perception influenced their behavior accordingly.
To be in sync with a chaotic world of warring powers, one necessarily creates a society where everyone is ultimately separate from everyone else, where every fiefdom is perpetually fighting every other fiefdom, and where one person's gain means his neighbor's loss, a wild, chaotic life devoid of ultimate meaning. The pagan world was devoid of Hashem, devoid of an ultimate, unifying reality that made human beings accountable for their actions. The world they saw and the world they created through their behavior and relationships was totally different than Abraham's world.
In the pagan world, the rules were:
- Anything goes
- Might makes right
- The survival of the fittest is all that matters
- If I can get away with it, it's OK
- Anything is fair in love and war
To the people around him, Abraham was a guy from another planet. That's why they called him an ivri, from which the word "Hebrew" derives. Ivri means "someone from the other side."
Abraham was weird; he behaved strangely. He went out of his way to help other people, including strangers. He was compassionate, kind, concerned for the fate of even the wicked citizens of Sodom and Gomorrah. According to pagan values, he was crazy. In a fragmented world of conflicting forces, what would motivate someone to be unselfish? Abraham lived in a different world because he acknowledged reality as the one and indivisible living Hashem, Who loves and embraces all. Abraham's love and care for his fellow human beings flowed naturally from his worldview. Thus
he brought Hashem into the world through his thought, word and deed. The new world that Abraham created by his consciousness reflected Hashem's truth. Since Abraham was attuned to what is (actually Who is) he was open to hearing the word of Hashem, and indeed he did. Hashem said to Abraham, "I will make you into a great nation. I will bless you and make your name great. You will become a blessing." How can a person "become a blessing"? The Midrash explains that Hashem said to Abraham, "Until now the power of blessing was in My hands. Now I'm giving the power of blessing
to you." Taking the power of blessing into our own hands is like having control over the light. The Kabbalah says that you and I have the dimmer switch in our hands. We can either turn the light of Hashem up, creating a whole new, brilliant, radiant world, imbued with the presence of Hashem, or we can turn the dimmer down, creating a dark, gloomy, ugly, godless world. Our consciousness, which is nurtured by our thoughts, speech, and actions, becomes the vessel to receive the divine qualities and the vehicle to transmit those qualities into our perceptual world. Abraham was the master of blessing, but every one of us can "become a blessing." The Midrash relates a strange parable. A king is lost in a dark alley at night. He is groping and stumbling around in this alley. Suddenly a friend of the king looks out of his window and sees the king, lost in the alley. He lights a torch so that the king can see where he is going. The Midrash says that the friend was Abraham. Hashem said to Abraham: "Go before Me," meaning, light the path for Me. That's what Abraham did. He, so to speak, enabled Hashem to enter the world by "turning on a light," that is, by awakening a whole new awareness, a new consciousness. That new consciousness was malhus. The idolaters believed in many powers and forces, but not in one supreme all-embracing reality to whom all are accountable. Abraham came up with the first unified field theory. He insisted that reality was not merely a random host of fragmented forces. Abraham saw design, purpose, community. He saw a kingdom. He proclaimed publicly, wherever he went, "I'm part of the kingdom; you're part of the kingdom; we must be responsible for each other; we must love and care for one another." And that consciousness of kingdom opened the way for the Hashem's majestic presence back into the world.
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