Parshat Tzav / Commandment to Consciousness
Each of us has the potential for greatness, and the responsibility to access our inner priestly selves
But Parshat Tzav could well be one of the most important sections in the entire Torah.
The Zohar teaches that there is a priestly archetype in every person. A priest is not merely one who is technically descended from the house of Aaron but rather one who incarnates the core qualities of the priestly archetype.
Spiritual awareness
The most important quality of the priest is spiritual consciousness – the ability to live in complete awareness of one's own nature and the nature of reality. The image for spiritual consciousness in the biblical text is fire. The priest brings sacrifices through which "the Altar's fire can be ignited" (Lev. 6:3).
This fire on the altar, symbolized in our synagogues by the eternal light, "shall be a constant fire kept burning on the altar, without being extinguished" (Lev. 6:8). The fire on the altar which can never be allowed to extinguish, according to the Zohar, represents regular spiritual practice, which when done properly, awakens us to the inner nature of reality.
The Torah's assumption – shared by the all the great spiritual systems of spirit in the world – is that there are two fundamental types of consciousness. One is rooted in sanity; the other in insanity.
Simply put, to be sane means to "know reality." If I claim to be the King of England, readers of this column will know I am disconnected from reality. In other words, insane.
Knowing reality
The Zohar calls those who know reality "awake" or "enlightened." Those who live on the surface, accessing only in the superficial surface nature of reality are said to be asleep or even dead.
On the surface, reality seems to yield a picture of a cold, impersonal world that operates by purely physical laws in which the rule of nature is the survival of the fittest.
A deeper experience of the true nature of reality however reveals something else entirely.
To properly understand reality, we must understand that life is meaningful. It has purpose and direction. We must understand that the inner driving force of the universe is Divine love. We realize that all of reality is in profoundly interconnected.
In the language of Plato, we realize that all of reality "participates in God." In the language of the Zohar we realize that "there is no place empty of God."
Perceptions of inner nature
What is so stunning and powerful to realize, however, is that these truths are not truths of religious dogma. Rather, they are perceptions of the inner nature of reality available those who engage in regular spiritual practice.
Indeed, throughout history and in all cultures, virtually all people who engaged in regular spiritual practice came to the same conclusions about the nature of reality.
Thus, we begin to realize that this deeper level of consciousness is not the result of some deluded minds that refuse to come to terms with "reality". Rather it is the product of the deepest reflection, meditation and spiritual practice of the greatest men and women who have walked the planet from the beginning of time to the present.
Scientific religion
This makes them scientific, rather than religious, conclusions. The great philosopher of science John Rawls wrote that for a conclusion to be scientific it must meet three standards. First, there must be an experiment. A particular set of actions that yields particular results.
Second, when repeated under similar conditions by different groups, the experiment must consistently yield the same results.
Third, there must be a community of experts who can check the conclusions and discern the authentic nature of the results.
Understanding reality
This is precisely the nature of the understanding of reality achieved by mystical spiritual consciousness. Throughout history people have engaged in what Jewish sources call "hitbonenut," a process that includes many forms of meditation, study and deep prayer.
Throughout history all of these journeyers into the inner nature of reality- all living at different times and in different parts of the world, with no contact with each other at all, have reached the same conclusions.
In brief summation the following are seven conclusions reached by all the great spiritual practitioners in virtually all the great tradition of spirit:
• Spirit is real.
• Spirit is accessed by going inside.
• It is man's nature to forget to "fall away" from spirit.
• Falling away from Spirit is the source of all suffering in the world.
• Man can reclaim his connection to spirit through regular spiritual practice.
• This reclaiming of an unmediated experience of spirit is the beginning of the end of suffering.
• Genuine experience of unmediated spirit leads to a life lived in love and compassion for all beings.
Kingdom of priests
In the time of the temple it was the priest in the temple who held these truths to be self-evident through regular spiritual practice. This was the essential purpose of the temple. The priest then taught these truths to the people.
However, the goal of the Torah itself is for every person to create their own mini-sanctuary of the heart, for each man and woman to be a priest in his or her own temple.
The Torah tells us we should be a "kingdom of priests". Every man and woman is a priest. In days of old we relied on the priest to tell us the inner nature of reality. Only the priest actually achieved a level of consciousness which "knew God.
In the teaching of a major strain of Kabbalah, today, every person is commanded to access their own priest archetype. We are all citizens in the kingdom of priests. We no longer rely on the enlightened nature of the priest or an elite group of spiritual teachers.
This is the real call of the hour, the commandment to consciousness, to make ourselves priests, tending the fire on the altar of consciousness which can never be allowed to extinguish.
Rabbi Mordechai Gafni - Teacher and student of Torah; Leader of Bayit Chadash Spiritual Community and Movement; Chair of Integral Kabbalah at Integral Institute of Ken Wilber
The "Bayit Chadash" website: www.bayitchadash.org
