The Maccabees And The Greek Ideology, Part 2

laitman_276_02We should understand that the Jews didn’t enjoy the Greek culture, as contemporary authors try to portray. They simply don’t understand the inner essence of the Jewish people and what it meant to be a Jew in the land of Israel, the people of Israel in the country of Israel in those days.

The Greek and the Jewish ideologies are two basically opposite perspectives. All the other ideologies, such as the Greek ideology or other ideologies stemmed from man, who is a corporeal creature, an animal, an egoist. A person can only come up with an ideology that is aimed at his own corporeal, physical benefit.

The ancient Greeks, by the way, loved athletics and sports. They built stadiums, held Olympic games, and on the whole were inclined to hedonism. Basically anything that helps a person advance towards the goal of creation is good, but if I simply enjoy strength, agility, and stamina as long as the body is alive, I live for it.

This is also true with regard to other philosophical, esthetic concepts. They are all corporeal and they all stem from the five senses of our body and do not exceed their narrow perception.

The problem is that this limitation is evasive and cannot be noticed unless a person ascends above his five senses and says goodbye to his body and rises to a higher level, not after his death but rather here in this life.

The idea is to perceive reality above the five corporeal senses that are a desire to understand, to know, and to feel what is around us. All of a person’s senses perceive everything in an egoistic manner, internally, according to the principle of absorbing into one’s self. In such a state they cannot perceive more that what is dictated to them by the limitation of time, motion, and place as well as by the tolerance of each sense organ.

It is on the basis of this perception that the Greeks established their science and the realm of myths, which includes earthly fairytales regarding the relationships between their gods. This is how they imagined the laws of nature, in the form of an Olympic pantheon where the gods flirt with one another, get married, get divorced, live in peace or quarrel…

This is a very primitive picture, which of course is totally wrong. Therefore only children’s books remain of it for the next generations and I don’t recommend them because they establish a wrong conception of nature in a person.

Consequently only the basics of nature and scientific terminology are left of all of the ancient Greek culture.

As for the traditional Jewish perspective, it is actually inclined outward. In its framework we don’t need to absorb data from nature and to process it by our feelings and our mind, no. We need to exit ourselves and be incorporated in others outside ourselves. Thus we improve our tools of perception and make them unlimited and infinite.

After all, I exit myself, leaving my body, not wanting to remain in it. It only limits me and doesn’t allow me to understand things the way they really are. I cannot even really feel anything since I am imprisoned in the narrow limits of my senses.

What is more, when I perceive information through my five senses I process it by calculating my personal gain. It is inevitable because this is how my body operates due to its egoistic force. Therefore, out of the whole world that surrounds me, no matter what it may be, I only perceive what can enter my five egoistic senses, which is surely in my benefit or may bring me harm in the limits of a certain sense.

We don’t distinguish all the other phenomena around us. At the same time we can use instruments that do expand our boundaries a little, but we also perceive this information through the prism of our personal gain.

It turns out that if I want to be a real researcher I have to be independent of everything. Is that possible? After all, I was born an egoist, and by definition I only see what is good or bad for me, what is pleasant or unpleasant, beneficial or harmful.

I filter the flow of external data automatically and subconsciously, isolating only what my ego regards as worthwhile and ignore everything else. This is the reason that we all see the world and assess it differently.

At the same time, there is a different perception that is opposite from the natural Greek perception. According to that perception, I have to transcend what happens to me here on this planet, exit my ego, and ascend above myself with my self, if I want to be a true, independent, objective scientist, which cannot be found in the ordinary format of this world.

There is a method, which by a series of exercises and with the help of the environment and the friends, allows an ordinary person to perform such changes in him: to expand his natural perception and add a super natural perception to it, which means a perception that operates beyond a person’s natural ego.

Thus I can develop additional senses inside me that are not based on absorption internally but on bestowal, when I am ready to give, to love, to bestow, and am ready to be above myself. Love and bestowal are opposite from the perception of receiving, self-enjoyment, and hatred.

It is by such an approach that I begin to notice the reality that is beyond my egoistic vessels of perception. These vessels perceive merely two miserable percent of the whole spectrum and also distort the picture by presenting it to me in the form of this world to me.

Even physicists today say that they have reached a certain limit and that they cannot transcend it. Although there is undoubtedly something beyond that, they don’t know how to touch what is hidden on the other side…
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From KabTV’s “A New Life” 12/14/14

Related Material:
The Maccabees And The Greek Ideology, Part 1
Live According To The Mind Or According To Love
Chanukah Is In A Person

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