From the Teacher to David: The Coat of Many Colors.

One day the Teacher spoke about Joseph in the Bible and the coat his father Jacob made for him. Jacob made the coat for Joseph because Jacob loved Joseph his youngest child so much. It was a special coat, a Coat of Many Colors.

"As you know", the Teacher said, "The salvation of man comes through two forces. One is called 'Savior the Son of Joseph' and the other is called 'Savior the Son of David.' Can anyone here tell me then, the significance of Joseph and the Coat of Many Colors?"

His deep blue eyes searched ours, meeting our gaze, one at a time. No one answered.

"I will tell you the hidden mystery of this thing." And then he looked at me, "You Rabbi David, have studied art in the world's universities. Tell me…what is color?"

"Is it when invisible light becomes visible to our eyes?" I asked.

"And when there is no light source?" he asked, smiling.

"Then there are no colors, only black or darkness…" I said hesitantly.

"Exactly!" he said, "And this is what the Coat of Many colors was. To the enlightened, it looked like the rainbow representing the light from all the various worlds, or levels of spirituality, to the others…darkness…it was black…a bitter joke, for they were blind to it.

"So Joseph put on the coat of many colors and went to his brothers in the field.They were jealous of the coat for two reasons. First, Joseph was given this gift by their father, which meant Joseph was above them on the spiritual plane. As they only saw a black garment, the brothers asked one another, "Who is this Joseph who claims to have a coat of many colors? He is a liar and a fraud!"

"The second reason the sons of Jacob were jealous was because their father loved Joseph more than he loved them. Their envy made them blind to the brilliance of the coat. Their envy also made them blind to the colors of Joseph's aura and the light of the Creator with which Joseph was encompassed.

"So the sons of Jacob cast their youngest brother Joseph into the pit (which represents an attempt at throwing him down from the spiritual heights represented by the coat) leaving him in total physical darkness while they decided his fate.

"Judah, the eldest and most spiritually aware, had indeed seen the light of the coatand pleaded with his brothers to release Joseph. But they were intent on killing him and extinguishing this light from the world of men. However, they sold him into slavery in Egypt instead which represents the lower realms of spiritual darkness. In this way, the brothers hoped that darkness would completely extinguish the light of Joseph and the light of his coat which was meant to be a spiritual sign for all the nations.

"Then the brothers took the coat, still just a black rag in their eyes, and soaked it in the blood of an animal, to show their father that Joseph had been killed. The light, if there had been a light, was now extinguished. Upon seeing the cloak their father refused to be consoled and went into prolonged morning. He mourned, not for his son alone, but for what Joseph represented. Joseph represented another chance at raising the world of mankind to the level of Messiah, another chance of repairing of the broken vessel. Had they accepted Joseph and the coat he wore, the world would have evolved into a higher world. The tikun or spiritual repair of the world would have been complete.

"But for every unjust action, there is always a reaction which brings a tikun. Just as Joseph was sold into slavery, so were the descendants of Jacob's sons, the Israelites. During a severe famine in Israel, the Israelites went down to Egypt. Enticed by a vision of plenty, they became slaves like Joseph. The first part of their tikun or restoration was the years of slavery that they had to endure. They endured this until Moses, another Savior Son of Joseph came to lead them back into the light.

"Blood was placed on the doorposts during the exodus from Egypt as a sign of Joseph's Coat of Many Colors soaked in an animal's blood. The tikun for this evil action was also given to Israel for Joseph's sake. By the sign of blood on doorposts, the angel of death did not take the firstborn of Israel as punishment for what had happened, and took instead the first born of Egypt.

"Each culture and every nation has in every generation a Savior Son of Joseph to lead them out of the darkness because this salvation is one of choice…one of free will.

"However, the final salvation, or the Savior Son of David, is not a matter of free choice, but a forced evolutionary change of the spirit. Happy are those who make the choice offered us by Joseph before that final and terrible day."

From the Teacher to David: God is Everything and Everything is in God

"Teacher" I said, "If God is everything and everything is in God, and, as we learn God is good…what then is evil? Where did it come from?"

"If I give you your hearts desire, you will call me "good"…and if I strike you, then you will call me "evil," he said patiently. "But here in this world you define good and evil by what affects you subjectively. The Wise have always said that God is not confined by our view of good and evil, and He cannot be defined by the limits of our mind."

"If so, Teacher," I said, "What then is evil and how did it come into the world? What then is Satan…what are angels, devils…?"

He held up his hand for me to be silent and continued, "The Torah says, "And God said, 'Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.' And later, 'So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.'

"The Hebrew, as you know, reads נעשה אדם בצלמנו, which comes from the source צלם or image, but the root of this word is צל , which means shadow or shade. This is what man is: not the image of God as we understand an image, or a copy…but a shadow or shade of God, not equal to God, but still capable of being God-like and capable of creating within the limitations of our collective being.

"We create "good" in this world and we also create "evil." We create devils but we can also create angels. Satin is simply the collective embodiment of man's failure to use the incredible unlimited energy of the Creator to fill the universe with light and we chose to keep this light or energy to ourselves. This perversion of the creative force granted to man is the cause for the "breaking of the vessel" which we talked about before. This inevitably leads to waste, ecological crises, famine, injustice, war, death, and destruction. These become the crippled children of our collective being.

"We were given the power to create, within the boundaries of this, our test-tube world, and the collective "we" chose ego and self gratification over everything else…the desire to receive for the sake of receiving…and thus we created what we now call "evil."

"Our salvation will come because our soul recognizes this creation of our as being out of harmony with the universe and just as we have created "evil" we can also strive to create "good." This also is the first step in "repairing of the vessel.". We do so by striving to fill our creation with empathy and love until this collective effort will channel the unlimited energy of the Creator into everything and everyone, and we return to the garden.

From the Teacher to David: Inducing Consciousness and the Messiah

One day our conversations concerned consciousness. We discussed the passages in the Zohar which explained that at one time, before the prior worlds were destroyed because of selfish desire to receive without contributing to the all, communication was possible between all created forms of matter; animal, vegetable, and minerals such as rocks.

I asked "Teacher, how is this possible?"

Once again, with infinite patience, the sage explained:

"Know that there were, and still are for those who are initiated, three levels of consciousness.-- the sub-conscious, the conscious, and what I like to call the super-conscious (for want of a better word).

"The sub-conscious, which all people share, is instinct and hidden memory. These direct our basic functions like heartbeat or primordial reactions to danger. The conscious level, which most people have to various degrees, is our ability to learn and reason within the physical environment in which we life. A baby learns to walk…falls…and then develops a protection mechanism like cushioning a fall with hands.

"This in turn sinks into the sub-conscious level and passes from conscious thought to unconscious thought. In this way, many of the things we learn as we grow start at the conscious level and sink to the unconscious level of instinct.

"The subconscious doesn't have the ability to communicate verbally, nor does it reason. Yet it is the rock foundation upon which we, as beings, are built.

"The conscious level is our decision making level; it includes verbal and non-verbal communication, writing, and culture. This level determines, to a great deal, the mythology of who and what we are and gives us the ability to choose our path.

"The super conscious level, on the other hand, is realized by only a few. It is the ultimate expression of empathy…giving and receiving energy from all that is around without taking or hording anything for oneself. It is the ultimate communication in which we can get a glimpse of the unity of all things.

"It cannot fully be attained by meditation, since meditation requires introspection which is division. Nor can it fully be attained by prayer, since prayer, either verbal or non-verbal, uses language. So even prayer is limited by a rational conceptual framework . No, the highest level is empathy with all things…losing the self in the all.

"This is the beginning of the next step in human evolution.At this stage all created forms of matter; animal, vegetable, and minerals such as rocks will once again be in deep communication. This stage is called "the revelation of the Messiah."

It is the stage of super-consciousness for all human beings.