The History Of Humanity – The Development Of The Mutual Guarantee (Arvut) – Part 4

laitman_220Abraham’s Adventures

After Abraham attained all of this, he started working with people. He explained true welfare and how to live as one family again rather than the principle of “national insurance.” But Abraham discovered that only a small number of people understood him. People were stricken by the egoism that suddenly ignited inside them; they were unable to understand that this egoism wasn’t theirs at all, that it was actually an alien force inside man.

They started to perceive it as their own nature, the same way we do today. If I think that someone is bad, then he’s bad and I’m good; that’s it. I don’t feel like something is controlling me from inside, making me think badly about someone. I am unable to see myself from the outside and understand how this “alien” force moves me. I don’t have an objective point of view. I cannot detach myself from my thoughts and feelings, “step aside” and look at my behavior, my character, my nature, or myself from the outside.

People are unable to see themselves objectively from outside, like we do with others. A person must critically analyze himself, become his own judge. Abraham explained this “independent” approach to people: let’s step outside of ourselves and look at what’s happening to us. This evil inclination, which has become more apparent, is showing me that I’m separate from the others. So why don’t I separate from myself in the same way and reconnect with the others? Nowadays these techniques are adopted by modern psychology.

When he started teaching the Babylonians what is in essence materialistic, applied psychology, Abraham found only a few thousand people who were ready to listen to him. People did not see any harm in the ego developing inside them; they did not feel the evil yet. They only saw how they could use the ego to make money, succeed, and prosper by building a better society that was more successful and progressive, that would allow everyone to be successful, to have their own “Tower of Babel” to the heavens.

Then Abraham and his followers of like-minded people, who shared the idea of the mutual guarantee, took off and left. Josephus in the great Midrash mentions this. Maimonides (12th century) says that thousands of people left with Abraham. That’s how they came to Canaan, present-day Israel.

In his group, Abraham continued to build the mutual guarantee. And although their egoism continually grew, they made efforts to stay connected above it. They taught their children the mutual guarantee from an early age. This is how they supported unity between themselves and balance with nature.

It continued until the egoism grew inside them once again, and it was so sudden that they couldn’t avoid falling under its authority. This is called the descent into Egypt. They descended into Egypt because they couldn’t feed themselves in Canaan anymore: neither earth nor cattle gave them food because of their separation; without the mutual guarantee, they couldn’t reach the reciprocity that previously allowed society to flourish, and the hunger led them to Egypt.

In Egypt they experienced additional growth of the ego to the point where they nearly gave up their reciprocity. The more they detached from the mutual guarantee and moved away from each other, the more pressure they felt from the Egyptians and from within. Each person felt hatred towards everyone as well as misfortune since each one felt as a loner rather than part of the nation, and it was hard for everyone because instead of a loving environment, everyone found themselves surrounded by people who hated them. In addition to this separation between everyone in the nation, the Egyptians enslaved them, and filled their lives with bitterness. This caused them to feel a double slavery: their excruciating separation and their slavery to the Egyptians.

Finally, their suffering became so great that they were ready to pay any price just to get rid of it, to return to the mutual guarantee because this was the only way for them to feel like one family again. They knew that if they connected they would get enough power to leave Egypt. They made the decision to leave since their life there had become the Egyptian darkness.

Their leader was Moses. He was a man who had the quality of mercy, like Abraham, who taught them this quality. Once Moses carried a lost lamb on his shoulders to its herd on the other side of the desert and saved its life. This is exactly the quality that the leader of a nation should have.

Moses was raised at the Pharaoh’s palace until the age of 40, and then in the house of Jethro, priest of Midian until the age of 80. He did not have any religious or national reasons for become a leader; it was only due to his quality of mercy. We can see from this that the quality of mercy is enough to follow the right path and to lead people.

Moses took the nation to Mount Sinai, meaning “the mountain of hatred” to make an agreement, a mutual guarantee. They died because they were opposite to the laws of nature, which required them to be equal to it. They had to create an “umbrella” (screen), which they had at one point, in order to rise above the mutual hatred, only then can life continue.

Having signed the agreement, the nation started cultivating itself. They made a pledge to become like one man with one heart, to obey the rule of “Love thy neighbor as thyself” in mutual guarantee. In the meantime, their egoism continued to grow. During this time called “40 years of wandering,” they had to constantly work on their ego, to rise above it, “cover” it.

The evil inclination boiled in each person, disagreements broke out, but people mutually supported each other. In mutual guarantee, I must support you no matter what, so you don’t forget that we are both driven by our egos, and that we have to rise above it. And you care about me so I don’t forget. This is how we help each other, everyone makes an effort, but the main thing is the society; the environment that we’re constantly building needs to implant the fundamental idea of a mutual guarantee inside us, a concern for everyone, thoughts for everyone.

This is the umbrella that we open above us. This is our only free choice: to continue on the path above the ego or remain enslaved by it. And building an environment is the only thing that is required; this is the mutual guarantee.

Together we form a general force that affects everyone, not letting a person avoid this goal, this message, and this method. A person has to remain in unity with the others, like an organ in the body that functions in complete interaction with the others. In the meantime, the body grows, new parts and organs develop inside it, and each one has to include himself in the general system. The system must be concerned about each person, never allowing anyone to shirk or fall down.

Although the ego continues to boil under this umbrella, our human level, our self-awareness and understanding exists above it. This way we constantly stay above the level of the ego’s resistance, and this force is called “a screen (Masach).

At this stage, the essence of the method is not to harm each other and to preserve the unity despite our growing ego, “That which is hateful to you, do not do to your friend.” Don’t worry about doing good because you’re not capable of it yet, but at least you won’t harm anyone in a way that you would hate. This general correction is called “wandering in the desert for forty years.”

Now we’re getting closer to the land of Israel, the next stage in our history. We’re truly ready to become a nation. And that’s why we have to form a connection between us according to a new principle. The condition of not harming others has been achieved. Our entire ego has been corrected due to our mutual guarantee, interconnection, which holds us together. Without a doubt, we will not harm each other. Next we will reach the “land of Israel” and conquer it. To put it differently, we will begin to work with our ego, to turn it into good so that one can love his neighbor as himself.

We’ll build the “Temple,” the house of holiness, because the attainment of the quality of bestowal, mutual guarantee, grew thanks to this. “Holiness” is bestowal, mutual love. During a certain period in our history we truly achieved that state, we were connected with each other as one man, like one whole. In that state we felt ourselves connected with nature, its eternity and perfection.

But the program of nature is to bring all of humanity to unity and mutual guarantee, to one general community. Abraham could only look after several thousand Babylonians, but the other Babylonians, the whole of humanity, will be looked after by the nation that initially reached mutual guarantee.

But in order for this to happen, they need to be in the same conditions as Abraham was in Babylon. This means that they have to fall from their fully corrected degree to the previous degree, from “Love thy neighbor as thyself” to plain egoism. But even in this descent they keep their spark of the quality of mercy and mutual guarantee.

Thus, the nation went through the destruction of the First Temple, the exile, the fall from the degree of “Love thy neighbor as thyself” to the level of “That which is hateful to you, do not do to your friend,” and in this quality, they built the Second Temple within themselves.

Rabbi Akiva, the great sage of the period of the Second Temple, called the people to rise once again to the level of “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” But he knew that by doing this he was only hastening the destruction of the Second Temple, which was also necessary. The increased ego is what caused the destruction of the Second Temple; the nation fell into egoism and lost their connection. This is what’s called exile, not a geographical or a historical exile, but an internal one, the exile from mutual guarantee, from the quality that once connected the nation after Abraham built them into one whole.

And since then the nation was in exile. This exile was to be long and difficult because the whole world has to reach the same state as Abraham reached in Babylon. And now, in our generation, we’re exactly in the same state. We live in Israel, but we are not a nation yet. Now we must unite in order to reach the same quality as Abraham when he gathered a nation out of the Babylonians.

We have received all the necessary conditions to achieve mutual guarantee according to our root, to become a nation once again rather than strangers, become like one man with one heart, to love each other like ourselves, in mutual guarantee, which is the exact means for achieving love between us. Mutual guarantee means that we have to keep building the influence of the environment, so that it will hold each person above his or her ego. And then, by attaining this quality, we’ll be able to look after the other Babylonians who spread out around the world and didn’t join Abraham.

There is no doubt that we can do this because all the other people find themselves in a state of ruin and helplessness, not knowing what to do. Nowadays they are also starting to understand that the path of development hasn’t taken them away from Babylon. Nothing has changed, now it’s just manifesting itself in its true form, more distinctly and clearly.

Great devastation is quickly approaching us. Our egoism is literally killing us, and we must correct it. Otherwise, we’ll no longer exist because humanity is eating itself from the inside while nature is pushing us from the outside since we’re behaving like an organ that’s alien to its body. That’s why we continue to get more blows every day.

So there is no other way out; we must realize this mutual guarantee between us. We have the means, the energy, and the method that has been passed on to us from the time of Abraham. Let’s hope we’ll be able to fulfill the task, that the world will understand what our purpose is and why we’re different.

Although we are hated by the nations, it is only because so far we’ve been unable to pass the method of correction on to them. First, they have to become aware of the evil so then they’ll have the ability to agree with it, not having another choice. That’s why we had to wait until our time to reveal the method of mutual guarantee and understand how to realize it, how to bring all of humanity to harmony with its inner nature. By doing this, we’ll all rise above our general ego and will attain a higher degree than before because now all of humanity will be as one whole.

Like organs in one single body, we’ll reach the “human” level of existence, the level of “human” (Adam). We’ll understand nature’s goal, the whole process, and reach out beyond the horizon to the perfect state. After all, we are approaching a perfect life, a feeling of eternity inherent in nature itself. In front of us there is a beautiful goal allowing each person the opportunity to realize themselves perfectly, by investing in others, connecting with them, and by implementing all their natural qualities and abilities. There is no suppression or limitations, and there is only one condition: to give everything to others like a cell in a body, and then you’ll be rewarded with the life of the whole body.
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Related Material:
The History Of Humanity – The Development Of The Mutual Guarantee (Arvut) – Part 3
The History Of Humanity – The Development Of The Mutual Guarantee (Arvut) – Part 2
The History Of Humanity – The Development Of The Mutual Guarantee (Arvut) – Part 1

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