True Reason Brings Harmony and Redemption
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But that’s a whole other story and I don’t want to get political tonight. I want to stay with the spiritual message.
And because of that, I want to really get into what Self-attunement is, but I do want to refer to two books that I want to read a little bit from, that are, I think, representative of two wings of modern Judaism, which are the Mitnagdim and the Hasidim. We’ve studied the Hasidim before—they were more of the mystical Jews who made secondary the Halacha, the laws, the Dharma, and primarily it was about ecstasy. And it was out of being in a state of ecstatic prayer that then one lived a life that was true to the Will of God, but it was much more of an Avadhuta ideal than it was an ideal of following any rulebound mode of intellectuality. But that other side of it has, I think, a tremendous value—the development of the intellect of the Jews since the days of the ghetto and all of that—the focus on intellectual development, I think, is what is maybe responsible for why you see so many Jews—many more than their numbers in the population—as famous scientists and philosophers and beings who have succeeded in many different fields; including the fields of becoming great Buddhists and Hindus, and becoming parts of a religious movement that was not as exhausted and turned into a kind of vapid intellectuality when the reformed Jewish movement came in, and the loss of that power of soul that was at the core of the Chassidus, of the desire to become on fire, literally, with the Presence of God.
So the two books I want to read a little bit from, one of them is by Jacob Neusner, a Jewish scholar, and the title is The Glory of God is Intelligence, and I think that there is some value in having that understanding that we are here to increase our intelligence. And the reason why I think it’s important for Sat Yogis is this: the chit jada granthi, the knot that ties us to the lower chakra ego identity, is tied via the imaginary register only, OK? It’s only the imaginary register that keeps us trapped in false consciousness. The symbolic register—and I’m speaking here of the higher symbolic, not the imaginarized symbolic—in other words, everyone can speak, use language, and pretend that they are making sense, but that’s not the same as the real use of reason that appears at the level of chakra five—but that is our true nature. That Chit of symbolic intelligence is what is able to untie the knot to the imaginary register that keeps us identified as being bodies in the world, rather than pure Spirit. So once we understand that the symbolic is a path to the Real—a very direct path, and that’s what gyana has always been about—then we can see that it is and has always been a gyana yoga path.
So I don’t think I’m going to read too much from it, but I think some of this is interesting from someone who is in a very, let’s say, pragmatic mode of Judaism. He says, “Above all, Judaic thinking at its best rejects gullibility and credulity. It is indeed peculiarly modern in its systematic skepticism, its testing of each proposition, not to destroy, but to refine what people supposed to be so. The Talmud’s first question, for example, is not who said so, but why? What is the reason?”
OK, so I want to ask you a question: what is the reason we have been given reason? Have you ever thought about that? OK, it’s a very important point, but this is the core of the Jewish rabbis’ (in a classical sense) goal, is to refine his or her capacity for reason to such an extent that one is able to read the Mind of God. And the Talmud is essentially, it’s a legal system, a system of understanding how to resolve disputes, that was brought about through debate between the leading wise men of the Jewish tradition to help in the diaspora, the communities—not to require to go to the non-Jewish legal system to solve their problems, but to do it from within the principles of those original understandings of our relationship to God and to reality.
He says, “The fruit of insight is inquiry. The result of inquiry is insight, in endless progression. The only road closed is the road back to the unarticulated, the unconscious, and the un-self-conscious. For once consciousness is achieved, a reason spelled out, one cannot again pretend that there is no reason, and nothing has been articulated. For the Talmud, the alternatives are not faith or nihilism, but reflection, or dumb reflex, consciousness, or animal instinct. Man in God’s image has the capacity to reflect and to criticize, all an animal can do is act and react.”
So it is this capacity to refine our reason that is the essence of the sadhana of the religious Jew. But to do it, as he says, “The Talmud, for its part, endures as a monument to intellectualism focused upon the application of practical rationality to society.”
So its interest is in creating social harmony. It pays tribute on every page to the human potential to think morally, yet without sentimentality; to reflect about fundamentals and basic principles, yet, “For concrete purposes and with ordinary society in mind, the good, well-regulated society will nurture disciplined and strong character. The mighty man, the one who has overcome his impulses, will stand as a pillar of the good society.”
So this is the goal: using reason to overcome the lower chakra tendency towards jouissance. And, “The ultimate use of practical reason to become an expression of the transcendent, which is within, not separated.” And it is reason that then creates a union of your mind with the Mind of God, because once your mind overcomes narcissism and egocentricity, then it becomes theocentric, and an entirely different level of intelligence is downloaded.
So I do think there’s a tremendous value in that focus—however, let’s look at the Hasidic view in contrast to that.