Enlightenment

by Marc Gafni

The basic teaching that I was sharing in 2005 and 2006 was that Torah is an enlightenment teaching. Hebrew wisdom is an ENLIGHTENMENT teaching.

HEBREW WISDOM IS A LIBERATION TEACHING. Particularly I taught and teach and will teach that Hebrew wisdom teaching is not only about Enlightenment but also about what I have often called The DEMOCRATIZATION OF ENLIGHTENMENT.

When I would mention this in teachings, seekers who had spent years in India would come to me crying with enormous gratitude for this teaching.

In the teaching of lineage from whose well I drink, every person in Israel, which I understand to be every human being walking in the light, has the potential to achieved liberated consciousness. The word used to describe this stage of development in both the teaching of Izbica and his student Tzadok HaCohen is He’arah.

The best translation of He’arah is Enlightenment.

Being deeply drawn to this teaching and being myself, an unlikely cross between an ecstatic teacher of the ethical way love and a rigorous scholar who seeks truth, I found myself drawn into a several year study of Izbica understanding of enlightenment.

I was privileged and delighted to write some three scholarly volumes on the above at Oxford University, {which also earned me a doctorate making my Jewish mother very happy}. As part of that study I carefully collected and analyzed every single use of this term “He’arah” in Mei Ha-Shiloach, the only book of thought we have from Mordehcai Lainer, the originator of the Izbica lineage.

The following is one description of He’arah which appears in the writings of Mordechai Lainer.

At that precise moment {of enlightenment} each soul in Israel,
from the least to the greatest
will know what God requires at that very moment
In the {enlightened} understanding of their hearts
They will recognize at that particular moment
The innermost will and desire of God
And they will not act
according to the principles
of the conventional codes.

Enlightenment when it is true and authentic, does not take a person from the world. It is not about withdrawal to a mountaintop of far away cave where one sits in perfect meditative form and contemplates the mysteries from a place of enlightened consciousness.

Rather enlightenment occurs when the small self and the small will fall away and the radical ontic identity between the innermost will and desire of the GODSELF are experienced by the purified one as the innermost will and desire of HUMANSELF.

This creates in the human being a holy audacity and courage, which motivate the human being to act, in partnership with and as an expression of the divine, for the healing and transformation of all reality.

The goal of Hebrew wisdom teaching and practice is to create such a human being. But not just one. Rather the goal is to reach for the greatest depth with the greatest span. That is to say the deepest enlightenment for the widest possible audience.

It is for this reason that the foundational enlightenment experience of Hebrew wisdom takes place not with the I sitting under a tree but rather in radical WE space with millions of people tasting enlightenment together at the foot of a mountain.

In this section of the website we will, God willing, in the fullness of time adduce texts and practices which support our understanding of Hebrew Wisdom as an enlightenment teaching dedicated to the transmission of enlightenment to the largest possible number of people as the most direct and sure way to evolve the plant towards healing and transformation.

Available from Marc Gafni