Timur writes: I have listened carefully several times to your explanations of what the Torah is. I realize that the Torah is instruction for correction. I realize that the serpent is in me, and it is always egging me on. I even feel that I cannot stop and therefore I spoil the relationship with my wife and friends even though I do not want to do that. My first question is: How do I crush this serpent?
Question: He understands that it is his ego, his pride, that is spoiling his life. Can this serpent be crushed?
Answer: In general, a person himself can try to do this all his life and fail. Although a lot of people are doing this and want to be better, but it does not work out directly this way.
It will work only in one way; if we create an external environment, that is, a human society, that will put pressure on everyone, impose on everyone in the right way, in a good way, how to behave with each other, then it will work.
But so far, it has not worked anywhere. So, of course, everything is fine, but for some reason it always turns out very badly.
Comment: You just said this: it will not work individually if I just want to crush it in myself. You think this is doomed to fail. But if we want to sort this out, then you say that such an option is possible here.
My Response: “We” means the group, a society. Let’s try.
Question: Will it, this serpent, our egoism, be crushed? What will happen to it?
Answer: Such a “tapeworm” lives inside us.
Question: Will it keep living?
Answer: There is nothing we can do to it.
The only thing we can do is just agree among ourselves that we will all oppose it and thereby strangle it in ourselves.
Question: But not to death, you are saying?
Answer: No, it is impossible to strangle it to death. This is no longer our work. We just have to want it to quiet down so much that it kind of ceases to exist. So that it does not speak but huddles in a corner somewhere and stays there.
Question: Timur has a second question: “Is there something good about the serpent? After all, I know that in our world snake venom is used as medicine.”
Answer: There is a lot of good in the serpent and, in principle, there is nothing bad about it. Nothing! It is only to the extent that a person cannot fight his serpent that he discovers that the serpent is evil. But he detects this only in order to work with it correctly.
In general, the serpent is a creation of the Creator. It was created in order to correct a person and lead him to absolute goodness.
A person cannot fight the serpent; this is clear. But he can ask the Creator for this.
Question: How did humanity figure out that it is possible to use snake venom for medicine? This is some kind of reverse thought. Poison on one hand, on the other hand, medicine.
Answer: Any poison is a medicine. There is nothing bad or evil in the world. Nothing! Moreover, the venom of the snake, which seems at the first glance designed to kill everything, is precisely a great medicine.
Question: Timor’s third question is: “Is it possible to live in peace with the serpent?”
Answer: If we manage to control it, the serpent that is in us, that evil (envy, jealousy, hostility, and pride), then, of course, we will be able to use the whole serpent for good. It will be with us in an embrace, as with Adam and Eve.
Question: His fourth question is very interesting: “Why do we see the serpent in the Bible only at the beginning, in the Garden of Eden, and then nothing is said about it? After all, it exists. You said that it is in us until the very end.”
Answer: It is an eternal creature, an eternal being, an eternal nature, that will be with us all the time until we correct it at the end through our serious, long–term work.
Comment: But really, when reading the Torah (the Bible), we see that the word “serpent” ends there.
My Response: Yes, it is at the beginning, at the very beginning of the sin, at the foundation.
Question: But where is it later? Are all these, roughly speaking, evil heroes its personification?
Answer: Everything evil that happens in people and between people, all of this is the consequence of the serpent, called by other names, but this is it.
Question: Let’s finish about the serpent globally. The serpent, what is it?
Answer: It is not the serpent we imagine. It is what lives inside us and is our egoism that wants to exist only by itself, in spite of others, hates everyone and everything, and wants nothing but to rule over everyone.
This serpent is in us. There is no other serpent in principle. Its future lies in the fact that we will define it as the only evil inclination of the entire nature, which we must necessarily exterminate from ourselves.
Question: Exterminate, after all?
Answer: Yes. To exterminate it from ourselves means that we must understand where it is, in what form, and how we can deal with it. That is, the serpent is a purely spiritual substance.
Question: When you say “exterminate,” does it mean to conquer, put in a cage, or what?
Answer: Do whatever you want. Tie it into a knot and do not let it stick its head out of you.
Question: Recently you said that it is necessary to project warmth and love. When you say that we should approach each other with kindness and warmth, does it mean that we are going to conquer this serpent?
Answer: Yes.
Question: Will it at the same time become stronger?
Answer: After all, we must understand that the fight against the serpent is a work for all times until complete correction.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 10/18/23
Related Material:
The Upper Wisdom of the Torah
The Serpent Is An Assistant In Achieving The Great Goal
The Serpent—The Driving Force Of Nature
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