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Spirituality -
Good Stuff
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If You Were A God?
By HaRav Ariel Bar Tzadok. Copyright (c) 2007 by Ariel Bar Tzadok. All rights reserved.
What would you do if you were a god? Our fantasy literature is full of them. They are in movies, television, video games and comic books. All around us super heroes abound; those who have powers far beyond those of mortal men. Can you imagine the pressure on such beings as Superman, Master Yoda and their like? All of these fantasy beings are endowed with abilities to influence and change the course of many lives. They can easily use their powers of mind and body for either good or evil. Can you imagine the temptation Superman must feel every time he has to face a complete stupid idiot that he ever so much wants to punch into outer space?
Thank G-d we will never have to address these real questions about our make-believe characters. But what would be the case if there ever really were what, by our definition, would be super beings? What would a real super being be like? What would be their temperament? How would they view us and more important how would they interact with us? Would they place themselves over us as gods and demand our servitude, or would they watch us from a distance and ever so subtly and undetectably guide us? Would they be malevolent or beneficent? Will we ever know? On the other hand, do we already know?
Consider this, if you were placed into a virtual reality computer game, knowing all the rules and cheats, and you were able to do whatever you wished, what would you do? How would you interact with the computer characters? Would you simply dismiss them as the digital fantasy that they are and use them and abuse them accordingly, or would you honor their sense of digital artificial intelligence and extend to them some kind of respect? Think about it, if you were given god- like powers in a world all your own, would you be a god or a devil?
Can you foresee where I am going with this? I am certainly not just talking about some hypothetical situation. I am most definitely talking about something very real. Only it is not us who are going to enter the virtual reality of the computer game world and be the controlling masters. We are already in it. We are the computerized characters and it is we who are being controlled by those who view our universe as their fantastical virtual reality. They are the gods of this universe, they are its demons, and they are very much real.
Throughout all of recorded history, in every culture around the world, there is record of human contact with the otherworldly. In ancient times, we called them angels and demons; in modern times, we call them benevolent or malevolent extraterrestrials. One is the ancient myth; the other is the modern myth. Myths are supposed to be fantastical stories, but the existence of these beings is anything but fantastical.
Whether or not one wishes to accept the matter that we are not alone on either our planet or in our universe is not of immediate consequence. If such beings really do exist, then our belief or disbelief in them will alter nothing of their behavior anymore than our denial of the existence of a foreign country would make that nation and its influences simply disappear. Too much has happened over millennia of recorded human history for us to be blind, yet we choose to remain blind. Again, I am not interested in healing the voluntarily blind. I only wish to ask some questions.
How would a highly advanced humanoid extraterrestrial interact with us primitive humans? How would we, modern secular, technologically advanced (in our own eyes) types interact with a primitive aboriginal society of people who have never seen the modern world, who have never before experienced plastic, glass, or anything we'd call advancement? How would we interact with these so- called backward primitive people? Would we immediately set about to civilize them, to change them, to wipe out countless centuries of their culture under the guise that we are educating them about the better and higher truths and that for their own good they should give up their primitive stupid ways?
This scenario has indeed happened and it has happened many times in our past. We are poor stewards for respecting others and honoring their radically different ways of life. The general rule has developed that when two cultures collide, a greater more powerful one and a smaller weaker one, the greater one usually totally absorbs the weaker one, leaving its people bereft of stability and content, leading them down a path of destruction. This is what has happened every time traveling Europeans conquered various parts of the world, from the North and South American continents to the inner recesses of Africa and Australia. Did the explorers and settlers act like assisting angels or more like conquering demons?
Human history has its set precedent. Yet, are traveling humans the only conquering force on our planet or in our universe? What if a greater more powerful race were to find us. Would they do to us what we do to one another? Many will say no, attributing to a higher civilization higher civility, but what makes you so sure that the two go together? Our society is highly civilized, yet our civility is highly primitive. In our advanced society, we act often more times like animals than we do human beings. We prey on one another; we rarely take into account the needs of another. If we are so advanced and yet at the same time so uncivilized, what makes you think that only we alone in the universe are like this?
Indeed, we are not alone. There are others who not only can look like us, but also act like us. Can you imagine what a race of real more advanced than we supermen who are malevolent would be like? What would be our collective human fate? The answer to this should be as clear as the nose on our faces. The proof does not need to be reviewed, discussed or argued. One merely has to open one's eyes and see what is happening and has been happening here on Earth since the beginning of recorded history.
Modern science knows very well that extraterrestrial life can be (and is expected to be) radically different from anything we expect or imagine. Think about it, maybe life has evolved (or manifested, created?) on the face of the sun, or in the gas clouds of Jupiter? Certainly intelligent entities existing in such radically different environments will not be defined as "living" by our present understanding of the term. Rabbinic sources have long ago known of such "life" and acknowledged the truth of their existence. As long ago as the 1790's, a Rabbi Pinchas Horowitz, one of the top disciples of the renowned Vilna rabbi, the Gaon Eliyahu, wrote a book entitled "Sefer HaBrit" in which he stated these ideas outright. He even states there that such extraterrestrial life will be masters of science and intelligence.
Long before Rabbi Horowitz, the famous Rabbi Maimonides wrote in his "Hilkhot Yesodei Torah" that planets and stars are themselves living entities that are sentient and self-conscious. Certainly defining an entire planet or star as an entity stretches our understanding of what is and is not a life form. We have all heard the term "Mother Earth" but usually have never taken it literally. Apparently, Maimonides does.
If the Earth is truly alive as Maimonides states, then we had better make a long and serious reevaluation of our relationship with nature. For maybe our abuse of the planet can lead to some form of response similar to revenge. If the Earth is alive, sentient and conscious, then like every other living being, it will act to defend itself when threatened. How do we act when our bodies are invaded by a dangerous bacteria or virus? We seek to kill it. If we were to endanger "Mother Earth" would not "she" act in like kind to eliminate our threat? Maybe this truth is what underlies freak forces of nature that cause human devastation.
For millennia, we have legends of the ancient gods, angels and demons. We have read about the serpent in the Garden of Eden, the fallen angels who waged a war in Heaven, the gods of Mt. Olympus and many more similar tales. All of them share one thing in common: they all speak of entities not of this Earth coming down to Earth and interacting with humanity in a way that causes humanity serious harm. So much for benevolent higher life forms.
An extraterritorial entity does not have to be corporeal by our standards of definition. In a way they could exist in their own realm and dimension and interact with us as we would interact with digital characters within a virtual reality computer game. These entities may or may not use some form of technology to slip or slide into our dimension being both here and simultaneously in their own world. They would be no more real in our world than we would be if we slipped into a computerized virtual reality. Maybe this explains why we say that angels appear and disappear in the blink of an eye, similar to how we could come and go into a computerized virtual reality.
In such a scenario, we could enter the computer reality, eat, drink, live or die, and then re-do or un-do any of those things. The natural laws of physicality would not apply to us in a computer reality. We could do whatever we wanted. If the computer-generated characters had any sense of artificial intelligence and recognition, then they would view us as gods, or some higher life form. Little would they be able to understand or comprehend the truth, especially the truth of the complete artificial nature of their entire universe.
Now, extrapolate this example onto our universe and you will have a pretty clear picture of the reality (or lack of it) that we truly live in. Our universe is the "computerized virtual reality." We all exist in this virtual reality entrapped in what we think is life. At the same time, our true selves exist in another place, in another form, in an entirely different reality. We are in essence, stuck in this virtual reality, unable to wake up or get out. This state is what the Bible refers to as the "fall of man."
Yes, as real as our universe appears to be, it is only a "holographic" image of a greater reality, one in which we exist, one in which we are at present unaware of and thus disconnected from. Yet, this state is not permanent, nor for that matter is it consistent.
Each one of us is born and each one of us dies. From where did we come before we were born; where to we go after we die? The answer is that we came from another place and that to that place we return. Just where is that place is not the proper question. For that place might not be a physical place, planet or star. It might be a place defined by totally different criteria of definitions, ones that today we cannot even possibly imagine. Yet, we are the children of this "other' place. We come from there and we return to there, much more often than we think.
It is an inherent part of human nature that we have a split mind. We all have consciousness and unconsciousness. Our conscious minds are what connect us to this reality. Our unconscious minds connects us to another type of reality altogether. Now, do not ask what the nature of this "other" reality is. We experience it only through our unconscious minds, in sleep, meditative trances and other states of alternate consciousness. We never experience it consciously. It never congeals itself into the parameters and dimensions of our physical world because this is not its nature. This "other" dimension is real. We live in it; we experience it daily, all the while that we are for the most part totally oblivious to it.
The other dimensional reality exists. We exist in it. We are here like in the generated virtual reality. We wake up from time to time, yet when we do so, we experience being awake and being asleep. When we go back to sleep in the real world we awaken here in this generated virtual reality world and continue to believe it to be real. What a reverse reality we embrace! We sleep but are awake, we awaken yet we sleep!
As we exist in the "other" alternate reality, so too are there others indigenous to that place. They exist and live out their lives as they do, so totally different from our understandings of life and death. Unlike us, they are not trapped in the virtual reality of this dimension. They can therefore don their version of virtual realty technology and pop into this dimension at will, and leave it just as quickly. We are the ones stuck here, they are not.
Now, here comes a stinging dose of reality. Just as here on this Earth we have both good and evil human beings who will either help or harm others, so too in that place are there entities of like morals. These entities can pop into our world unfettered by the physical parameters of our laws of nature that we find so definitively binding. They can come and cause harm or bring repair. Human history is replete with "other-worldly" interventions of both kinds.
We should not be surprised to discover that extraterrestrials while being very physically different from us might not be that much different in their essential nature. Just like us, there are good and bad; those who want to help and those who want to harm. We are no different from them in this respect. Woe to us because of this!
So, if we were placed in "their" shoes and we could intervene in a parallel dimension with trapped sentient beings, how would we act? Would we seek to repair the situation or would we take advantage of it, knowing full well that we could get away with whatever we wanted, because in the end, nothing is real, other than that which comes out from our very essence.
Therefore, if we were gods, what would we be, saviors or devils? Would we become like the fallen angels or would we be like those still faithful to the laws and parameters of their own dimension? Each one of us is much greater than we can possibly imagine. We are each connected to the "other side." What we choose to do with this connection is up to us. Most will continue to ignore it until it is too late. They will then be awakened, admonished for their slumber and afterwards sent back to accomplish and learn whatever it is that this virtual reality dimension of ours was designed to teach.
In the mean time, we are all here, in school, here to learn. Unless we connect with our source, we will have no teacher and no teaching. This is the meaning of being "cut off." We can create our own heavens or our own hells. We can become like gods, knowing good and evil, or we can become devils spreading havoc and harm. The metaphors of Torah are our guide and path. When we properly follow the path we shall arrive safely at our predestined destination.
Travel in our home dimension is no easy task. It is a very crowded place. The passageways are clearly marked for those who can see and travel is brisk. Everything operates within its own parameters; everything happens according to its laws. When we truly awaken to see the greater reality in which we live, then and only then shall we be considered truly alive.
We must awaken. Extraterrestrials, angels, demons, souls and spirits all belong to one and the same reality. We must seek truth to remove falsehood. We must delve within in order to reach out. Know well, you are being watched, by many different "others," the greatest being your own Higher Self.
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