VA’EIRA - EMANATIONS

January 18, 2002

“I have heard the groan of the Children of Israel whom Egypt enslaves, and I have remembered My Covenant.”  Exodus 6:5

Preface

At the Covenant Between the Parts, G-d promises Abraham that he will be the father of a great nation - later referred to as a “Kingdom of priests and a holy nation” - whose mission it will be to teach the world about holiness.   But G-d says that first this nation will be subjugated by another nation for 400 years, in what turns out to be bitter slavery in Egypt.  It seems that the holy mission was to be preceded by a brutal and lengthy slavery. The question is why?  In order to attempt an answer to this question, we will have to lay a foundation that covers other fundamental questions.

Some Fundamental Questions

From the time the scientific revolution began, mankind has discovered a great deal about how the world works.  We splice genes, miniaturize computers, and propel rockets into space.  However there are several fundamental questions that seem to resist scientific inquiry, such as these two questions:

• What is consciousness?
• Why was the world created?

It would increase our understanding of the world and ourselves if we could answer these seemingly mysterious questions.  Why should we imagine that there are limits to what our inquiring minds can discover?  A spirit of adventure and exploration should motivate us to seek answers to all questions that today seem beyond us.   

We will propose an answer to these questions by borrowing concepts from the field of theology.  Our suggested answer is based on these assumptions:

• There is a Supreme Being, what theologians call G-d, Who is perfect, complete, totally good, and all-knowing, embodying a ‘cosmic consciousness’.

• There are ‘emanations’ that come from and were created by G-d that embody a lower level of consciousness.  This may be analogized to the way beams of light emanate from a light bulb.  These ‘emanations’ share attributes – such as consciousness - with the ‘source’, but at a weaker and more ‘diffuse’ level.  These emanations exist in what is sometimes referred to as a ‘spiritual’, non-physical world.

• This ‘spiritual world’ is static, and the emanations don’t grow and change.  The Superme Being, in an act of ‘goodness’ created a physical world of time and space to serve as an environment in which these ‘emanations’ can have the opportunity to grow and change. 

The bulk of creation was a preamble to the creation of human beings, because each human being is a vehicle inhabited by one of these ‘emanations’.  Each emanation embodies a level of consciousness, and that is why we are conscious.  When an emanation enters a body, it occupies an environment in which it can grow and change.  When the body dies, the emanation – which we will also refer to as the ‘soul’, or the Hebrew word ‘neshama’ - returns to the static world from which it came, most likely in a state different than when it entered the body.  Life in the body gives it an opportunity to grow and change, and to achieve a different level. 

This scenario carries with it several important features:

• The purpose of life is to provide a soul with challenges, and the soul grows and changes by overcoming these challenges.  A static life that doesn’t test a soul doesn’t provide an arena for growth any more than the static world from which it came and to which it returns. 

• The Supreme Being must remain hidden in this world, and let the souls predominantly fend for themselves.  If He would reveal Himself, and show in this world the true relationship between the souls and the Supreme Being, then the tests would become much less of a challenge, and the opportunity for success and growth would be much less.  It would be like a teacher giving out the answers to the final exam, which would defeat the test’s purpose, which is letting the students show how much of the material they kinow. 

• The world must have ‘moral symmetry’.  For every possibility for success, there must be an equal and opposite opportunity for failure. Every opportunity to rise must be mirrored by an equal opportunity to fall.  If there was only the chance of success, then there would be no challenge, success would prove nothing, and there would be no opportunity for the soul to rise. (The Hebrew expression for this is ‘ze leumat ze’ – this ‘balances’ this)

• This means that every powerful force in the world must have an equal upside and downside potential.  We see that the most powerful forces – such as intelligence, physical power, money, relations between men and women, religion – have both great abilities to do good as well as bad.  The sharper the knife, the greater its ability to slice bread and to make a wound.  This ‘moral symmetry’ is required to provide a world in which souls can prove themselves and change.  If there is only upside potential, and everyone on the test gets 100, then the tests prove nothing, and then the potential benefit to the souls for improvement is negated.

• If people are intent on believing incorrect ideas and invalid philosophies, the Almighty must let people learn for themselves what is right and wrong.  He must stay in the ‘wings’ and keep overt Divine intervention to a minimum, because that would defeat the purpose of the world, which is to provide challenges that enable souls to grow.

• Since our consciousness is an emanation from the Supreme Consciousness, a common pitfall is to feel ‘god-like’ and powerful without the perspective of our true relationship with the Source of that consciousness.  This pitfall is especially easy to fall into because the Almighty is intent on hiding from us. 

• Though G-d is by definition unknowable, perhaps we could get an inkling of one of His attributes – His consciousness - by getting a better understanding of our own consciousness, though we are infinitely smaller. Up to now, however, the nature of our own consciousness remains inscrutable.

• A soul benefits the most when it maximizes its growth in discerning and choosing right over wrong, good over bad.  The Hebrew word for ‘world’ is ‘Olam’ which comes from the word that means ‘hidden’, because true growth comes in seeing these choices ever more clearly, and making the correct choices more often.  By overcoming these tests and challenges, seeing through the veil, and making better choices accordingly, the soul becomes increasingly elevated.

• When the soul returns to the static world it came from, it realizes the opportunity to change it had in this world, and will either be satisfied with how it did or become filled with regret that it fell, or didn’t sufficiently use its opportunity to rise.  A soul that falls experiences what we call ‘Hell’ (in Hebrew: ‘Gehenom’), and a soul that rises experiences what we call ‘Heaven.

• The Almighty gives us the freedom and free-will to choose and grow on our own, because that’s the purpose the world was created for.  But if we call out to the Almighty for assistance and request intervention, and say that we are using our free-will to ask for help, that gives the Almighty a greater opening in which to enter our lives.  That is the power of prayer.

• Another benefit of prayer is that it helps our soul feel its primal relationship with the Almighty, a feeling that is easy to forget in our hectic world.   It’s good to remind ourselves that our consciousness is an emanation from the Cosmic Consciousness.

• If a small or large group of people pray for assistance, that opens the door for the Almighty to help the entire group about what it needs and requests.  This is the extra power of praying in a group.

• Pleasure and pain, as with all powerful things, can be vehicles for both growth or regression, and both can lead a person up or down.  A person’s experience of pleasure can lead to appreciation and gratitude towards the Almighty, or he can choose hedonism and rejection of moral principles.  Likewise, pain can lead a person to rethink his assumptions and bring about positive change, or it can lead to anger and depression.  Pleasure and pain are both challenges.

• Moral symmetry applies to everything, meaning that there is no simple formula for success.  It is a mistake to see any mode of behavior as being a ‘simple solution’, because that would limit its ability to lead to challenge and growth.  Religion, for example, can be used as a vehicle for spiritual growth, or as a vehicle for remaining static, or even as an excuse for barbarism.  The greatest challenge of life is to use every opportunity for spiritual growth, so that we will experience ‘Heaven’ in the world to come. 

• The tendency within us to do good is offset by an equal and opposite tendency to do what is not good.  The Hebrew terms for this are the ‘yetzer tov’ (drive for good) and the ‘yetzer hara’ (drive for bad).  It’s the balance between these that enables us to have free will (in Hebrew: “bechirah”), and provides us with our tests and the opportunity to succeed during those tests and have our soul rise.  Our drive for good is rooted in our desire to return to our original ‘emanation-like’ relationship with the Almighty.  The Hebrew for this ‘returning’ is called ‘tschuva’. 

• One method of growth is to help provide an environment that is conducive for all souls to grow.   Contributing to making the world a ‘holier’ more ‘spiritual’ place is a particularly ennobling and uplifting activity for the soul in this world, and can be one of the best ways to help the soul to rise.

• Many people tell us of ‘near death’ experiences where they feel a great, loving light that greets them after life.  Many don’t want to leave that light and re-enter their bodies.  But the great advantage of this world is that it’s not static, we have so much opportunity, and we should use that opportunity.

• The Talmud says that before a person is born he knows the entire Torah - everything regarding right and wrong is perfectly clear - but that he’s made to forget it at birth.  Forgetting it enables us to have free-will.

• If we are able to rise to a new level – such as feeling more gratitude or less anger – that is an accomplishment that stays with us.  Physical pleasure on the other hand, as good and valuable as it can be, has a tendency to dissipate fairly rapidly.  How long does the taste of a delicious piece of chocolate cake last?  Spiritual benefits are longer lasting. We can carry a spiritual accomplishment not only throughout our lives, but also into the ‘next’ world.

• It is certainly foolish, therefore, to seek physical pleasure at the expense of spiritual decline.  This results in a long term liability, with only a short term benefit. This happens when we do things that are morally wrong for the sake of physical gratification, such as in the areas of honesty and sexual immorality.

• A common religious metaphor pictures G-d as a harsh, demanding King Who demands that we subjugate our will to His wishes.  The theory suggested here softens that image by suggesting that G-d wants to give to us, and is providing our otherwise ‘static’ souls with a world in which to grow and change.  I

• Another philosophical question is ‘Why do good people suffer, and why do bad people often seem to have it easy’?  This doesn’t is lessened if we see the world as a place for challenges and problems that enable us to grow to higher spiritual levels. To be challenged is a benefit. What may appear ‘bad’ may be useful tests tailor made for a person to grow from. 

• This also suggests why G-d seems to demand so much from us if He is already perfect and needs nothing.  The rules that G-d expects from us are aids guide us through the tests.  The rules help us see through the confusion what is right and wrong, so that we can make better decisions.  Before the revelation of these rules at Mount Sinai, it was harder for people to see how to make decisions to help their souls to rise.

• The ‘rules’ revealed at Mount Sinai comprise the truth about right and wrong.  It was an enormous gift to the world.  Anyone interested in having his soul rise would be foolish to ignore them.

• One reason G-d’s rules are expressed in such strong terms is that people need to be spoken to in strong terms.  Some children only respond if they are spoken to in strong terms. They are said in terms that people need to hear them.

• What can feel like hardship may be the Almighty giving us feedback concerning bad choices we make.  When a child feels pain when putting his hand in a fire, the pain ‘teaches’ him about his mistake, making him less likely to repeat the mistake.  Isn’t it better to derive lessons from painful feedback given by the Almighty, rather than finding out in the next world about all the blunders we made unknowingly?   

• Another question that science has struggled with is why we sleep and dream.  Perhaps sleep is a time for our soul to ‘disconnect’ from the body, and be reminded of the spiritual world that it originates from.  Maybe a person can’t be without sleep for three days because that’s too much for the soul to bear without ‘visiting’ the spiritual world when we sleep.  Perhaps our dreams reflect our conscious soul ‘reviewing’ the physical world from the vantage point of the spiritual world.   

• Arrogance and pride make us more susceptible to the wiles of the Yetzer Hara, telling us we can do whatever we want without concern for consequences.  Humility and modesty (tznius) help us pass the tests, while arrogance contributes to our failing tests. Solomon says in Proverbs (Misheley): “Pride comes before disaster, and arrogance before a fall”.

• Humility is a more appropriate assessment of our relationship to the Almighty. Arrogance and the feeling that we can do everything ourselves can be a separation from Him. Prayers often focus on our asking the Almighty for help in order to remind us of our dependence on Him.   

• Humility and pride can sometimes pose as their opposites.  “False-humility” and ‘righteous pride’ can be pitfalls.  Also a certain amount of self-confidence and prideful drive are necessary for passing the tests.  Doing well on a test can sometimes sow the seeds of overconfidence, overreaching, and failure.

• One of the attributes of the Almighty is to give (Hebrew: mayteev) in a way that we call ‘love’. Being emanations of the Almighty, our souls also want to love, give, protect, help, and care for others.  This is especially true towards family and friends.  The way the Almighty ‘hides’ from us in this world increases our need for love and affection from others.  To ensure free-will, and to provide a balance of good and bad, there must also be within us the feelings to control and be selfish.  A soul rises when it passes the tests in the battles between these opposite forces.

• We should periodically examine the state of our souls, to see in what ways we need to improve our souls.  In Hebrew this is called a “cheshbon hanefesh”, an accounting of our soul.  This is also something we should do while praying, but can occur anytime. 

• A clever trick of the Yetzer Hara is to fool a religious person into thinking the only ways to improve involves ritual and ‘religious’ matters.  We should improve our soul in all ways, including psychologically, emotionally, and socially.  It is important to develop interpersonal skills because they are useful so often with family, friends, and business. We should use whatever tools assist in this improvement, while being watchful that all tools can lead a person up or down.  

• As with all things, the viewpoint we are presenting can be used in positive or negative ways.  A soul just has to be vigilant and on its toes, to be watchful for the ‘sitra achra’, the ‘other side’.  But it’s not our ‘enemy’.  It’s the force that through battling that we can rise, and without which we couldn’t rise.

• The perspective we are presenting should not be necessarily labeled ‘religious’. It suggests a course of action during our stay on earth, to do what we can to help our soul to rise.  Religion is one of many tools that can be used for this purpose.  As with all tools, it also has pitfalls that have to be guarded against – such as mechanical observance and false humility. Using religion sincerely and wisely can be a ‘practical’ course of action.

• It is helpful to be in a social environment of other sincere and good people, who are also interested in improving their souls.  We are affected by our social environment, often in ways that we are not aware of. It’s important to avoid being with immoral people.  This can be an advantage of living in a religious community.

•  Every day we are confronted by tests involving honesty regarding money or speech.  It is helpful to be familiar with the rules of morality involving this area.  It’s easy to fool ourselves when self-interest is involved.  Failing a test makes it easier to fail the next test, and passing a test makes it easier to pass the next test.

• Though we should be ready and vigilant regarding tests that come our way, it is arrogant to seek and ask for tests.  Such arrogance is a pitfall. A humble attitude is to do out best when we’re presented with tests, but not to look for them 

These ideas can lead to the following perspective on the Bible:

• e Bible begins with the Almighty creating the world.  We have proposed a possibly reason why the world was created.

• On the sixth day, G-d says, “Let us make man in our own image”.  Who was G-d talking to?  Perhaps He was talking to the emanations that He had already created, for some of whom he was creating man.  This is similar to the ‘managerial we’, where the manager makes the workers feel more involved for activities they are only observing.  Or when the father says to his two-year-old child, “Let us build the swing-set”.  

• The first thing G-d did with man and woman is present them with a test, because the whole purpose of creating people was to provide them with tests.  They failed the test, showing the necessity for them to go out and take many more tests.  The Yetzer Hara, in the form of the snake, fooled them into failing the test. 

• Before the flood, “Man was evil because of his youth.”  People were morally immature, making immoral choices incessantly.  Perhaps G-d wiped out practically the entire generation because the souls in all those bodies were not benefiting from these tests - they were getting very low grades – and they were better off being freed from those bodies and getting make-up exams at a later date. 

• G-d spared Noah because he was one of the only people doing well on the tests, and because G-d wanted to spare mankind in order to give future generations additional chances to pass the tests.

• G-d saw that the odds seemed stacked up against mankind.  People needed coaching on the subject matter they were being tested in.  They needed a textbook they could study from. 

• Abraham - on his own - discovered the existence of the Almighty, and realized that G-d had created man for these moral tests.  Abraham tried to tell other people this astounding insight, and had some success.

• G-d gave Abraham ten major tests, and Abraham passed all of them.  This was a truly elevated soul, a model ‘student’ for the rest of the ‘class’.  One of the underpinnings of his success was understanding his proper relationship to G-d.  The Almighty should be listened to very carefully, even when it doesn’t  seem to make sense, such as when Abraham was asked to sacrifice his son Isaac.

• G-d said to Abraham, “You are a terrific student, getting all A’s, and you show a wonderful aptitude for coaching others to be good at taking these tests.  I’m going to form a covenant with you and your offspring to be teachers for the whole world, who will receive a rule-book and live it and teach it to mankind.”

• While making the covenant, G-d said that Abraham’s descendants would first have to go through a period of bondage.  Sure enough, his grandson Jacob’s family went into Egypt, and endured hundreds of years of bitter slavery.  Then they were freed in the midst of dramatic ‘fireworks’, and then given the rule-book at Mount Sinai.  They were told to be a ‘kingdom of priests and a holy nation’ – to be exemplars and teachers of the rule-book for the rest of humanity, from a ‘holy land’ designated for this purpose.

• It seems that the slavery was necessary.  Why?

• G-d wanted to supply the world with a rule-book (Torah) while preserving the world as a place that souls can have challenges in order to improve themselves. Revealing Himself too much would nullify free-will, but He wanted to reveal Himself enough to help souls do better in their tests.

• For G-d to enter a person’s life ‘uninvited’ is to interfere with free-will.  But if he asks G-d for help, then G-d has more opportunity to help without interfering with the person’s free-will, because it’s what he requested.

• G-d needed for a large amount of people to request fundamental intervention, for both physical and spiritual salvation. Experience shows that this rarely happens when times are good.  But it does happen when things are really bad.

• First: The solution was to put the Jews into Egypt, let them grow into a nation, and then let the Egyptians do what was natural for the Egyptians – to enslave them and act immorally.

• At one point, the suffering and degradation grew so intense that the Jews called out collectively to the Almighty for physical and spiritual salvation.  They were sinking physically because of the grinding slavery, and they were sinking spiritually because of the degraded and immoral Egyptian society. 

• When the Jews called out collectively for great assistance, that opened the door for G-d to help.  In the Bible, the redemption began when the Jews cried out in pain.

• Second: As we mentioned before, pride and desire for materialism serves as a separation between G-d and us.  The Almighty wanted to reduce this separation (Hebrew: chatzitza) to a minimum.  This is the second effect of the slavery.  The suffering reduced their pride and desire for materialism, which made them more receptive to the Torah. 

• This reduction of pride is symbolized by matzah, called the ‘poor bread’, as opposed to leavening, which represents pride.

• Third: To maintain moral symmetry, good and bad must be balanced.  Therefore the good of giving the Torah had to be balanced with something else.  It was balanced by the pain of the slavery. 

• Likewise, the good of giving the Torah had to be balanced by allowing the Yetzer Hara to be extremely strong at Mount Sinai.  The legend is that the Yetzer Hara told the Jews – who were waiting for Moses to come down from Mount Sinai - that Moses had died, and that they were left leaderless in the desert.  This led to a ‘giving up’ and abandon that led to their worshipping the golden calf.

• Fourth: In our daily struggles and tests, only very dramatic events get our attention.  The above conditions opened the door to allow G-d to provide an experience that created a lasting impression.   The ten plagues in Egypt, the splitting of the Red Sea, and the giving of the Torah left a lasting impression.

• G-d can’t make His presence known too often in history, otherwise it would interfere with our free will.  But He calculated that the world needed this ‘shot-in-the-arm’ to help with the tests that help us grow.

• The Torah is written somewhat cryptically in order to not interfere with our free-will too much.

• The proof that even this intervention by G-d didn’t totally alter mankind’s free will is that evil and terrible mistakes continued quite strong.