Comment: If we say that everything in the Torah is written allegorically, but at the same time we recognize that there were such a people, that the exodus from Egypt happened, that there is the Land of Israel and today we claim it, then it turns out that people call it “allegorical” when it suits them and when not then “it really happened.”
My Response: These people have nothing to do with Kabbalah, so I have nothing to talk about with them. What allegory? Kabbalah speaks about the laws of nature, about its true laws.
I look not at what historians write but at what is passed down to us from generation to generation. And this is always confirmed. I am not interested in university scholars disagreeing with this. Although I myself have obtained my doctorate in Kabbalah and to some extent I belong to them, I am not interested in their conclusions because they rely on what is beneficial for them in order to manipulate some facts, to say something new. I met with American, Russian, and Israeli scientists, and I see how they work.
Comment: Such things do happen, of course. But I am using simple facts as an example. It is written: “And God completed on the seventh day His work that He did, and He abstained on the seventh day from all His work that He did.” We understand that this cannot be. Or it is said that the serpent stood on two legs. It is clear that this is an allegory.
Answer: Absolutely.
Question: Explain when it is an allegory and when not? Are the ten Egyptian plagues laws of nature? It seems like some kind of incomprehensible mysticism. What was happening there?
Answer: The Torah only writes about what happens inside a person.
Comment: But based on all the historical facts, we claim the State of Israel. The whole history is built on the fact that there is such a nation.
My Response: Because these events actually took place here. This is proved by excavations and everything else.
Question: So what happened and what did not? What is allegory and what is not? What is inside a person and what is not? How can this be understood correctly?
Answer: The people of Israel lived in Egypt for some time, left, and founded their own state. It existed for over a thousand years and then scattered throughout the world.
Question: Indeed, we see that there was a Temple, its remains have survived, etc. So this is not an allegory, it existed?
Answer: Yes.
Question: So can we say that the Torah is a historical story?
Answer: No. The Torah does not write about history. It writes only about a forty-year period in the life of the people and about what happened before that. It ends at the entrance to the Land of Israel when Moses died. And the passage of the people of Israel across the river Jordan, the entrance to the Land of Israel and its development is no longer the Torah but the Prophets and the Scriptures.
They describe historical periods. These books must be believed despite the fact that perhaps they seem inaccurate or somehow unreal to us. At least their descriptions should be taken seriously and not explanations be made up for them.
The problem is different: people do not understand at all what is written in the Torah. They believe that it indicates how to fulfill the commandments in our world: slaughtering livestock, maintaining various conditions in the Temple, etc.
You need to understand why and for what it is written in this way. It writes only about the inner state of a person, about how he must correct himself in order to become a Temple so that all his still, vegetative, animate, and other “ingredients,” so to speak, mind and heart, thought and desire, come into the right state in order to connect with neighbors and achieve the state of absolute love.
Question: Are all the animals and plants described in the Torah are levels of desire?
Answer: Only that.
Question: Let’s say, making a sacrifice means taking some kind of animal egoistic desire of yours, sacrificing it, and raising it to the level of man. Is this how we should understand it?
Answer: Only that. It is very difficult to understand what the Torah is. If it says that “love your neighbor as yourself” is the most important law of the Torah and everything else, as Hillel said, is just its explanation, where do you see this being fulfilled?
Hence, we understand something else—we do not adhere to the Torah at all, we do not fulfill it, we do not understand its inner meaning—it is not in us.
Question: What does it mean “love your neighbor as yourself” if it is only about me?
Answer: That you have to bring yourself to such a state.
Question: Who is this neighbor in me?
Answer: All your inner states which, it seems to you, exist outside.
Question: Should I love my inner states?
Answer: Yes. And through them the Creator because from love for one’s neighbor, one must come to love for the Creator.
Question: And those people I see outside myself, should I also love them?
Answer: Also outside of yourself—it is a must! By correcting yourself, you must correct your view of the world so that it turns out that you love everyone.
[281926]
From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 6/3/19
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The path from a person of this world to the state that is equal to the Creator is divided into many degrees and states through which we need to ascend. That is, each person needs to correct his inner qualities until he turns from an ordinary person into one who is similar to the Creator. This entire path can be divided into stages, just as physical routes are divided into kilometers along the way. There are 613 commandments in the Torah, states that we need to go through. The commandments are also called advices, which must be fulfilled in order to become more and more similar to the Creator, with their help, up to complete adhesion with Him.
