The Lithuanian Yeshiva world is asleep during a time it needs to be the most alert; the following blog will begin by tracing how the yeshiva world has been lulled into this stupor. The Sitra Achra Dark Side poison has devastatingly seeped into most of our yeshivot today.
In the mid to late 1960's, there were profound changes taking place in America - changes to our social, political, and spiritual institutions. The entire cultural landscape was in upheaval. All the old assumptions, i.e., the Western-rational, science-based understanding of the universe and our understanding of social relationships were challenged and discarded by the "elite." There was a concentrated assault on our moral base and on the concept of morality itself.
Relativism was the moral philosophy du jour. Consciousness was being expanded and "raised" by the use of hallucinogenic drugs and forays into the Occult and Eastern Mysticism. This attitude of experimentation was transferred into the yeshivas as many of the young came from the counterculture and brought with them many of the drug and Eastern mystic-induced "revelations" with them.
This was a time when all institutions and their foundational truths were challenged and if possible changed. The yeshiva leadership was profoundly influenced by the incursion of psychology and the occult with their claim to superior knowledge, while the groups from primarily the occult embraced and mentored these young radicals. The religious teachers found in the new infusion of radical, social, political and spiritual concepts of these young people a fertile field in which to plow their aberrant occult, and to produce a harvest of very strange fruit - fruit that was not Torah in its origin or in its outcome. They eventually came to fill the leading post in synagogues of many of the mainstream groups.
As our society had become more permissive and tolerant, so were these attitudes introduced into the yeshivot. Many in the movements had already experienced this permissiveness and tolerance of a "low-view" of Torah and tradition and had the obvious signs of heresy and lack of sound Torah teaching. The other more traditional denominations maintained a veneer of Torah. However, the inoculation against the truth had come in through the "Trojan Horse" of psychology, permitting every deviancy the counterculture had, challenging Torah and orthopraxy.
They did this in the name of science and with the blessing of virtually every yeshiva leader in America. The seeds of the lie were planted deep within the soil of the yeshivas, the satanic seed of deception, being watered and cared for by the very ones that were looked to as the leaders of God's flock. The false shepherds of the flock of God tended the garden of הסטרא אחרא the Dark Side in the full view of the people and were never challenged. As God has said in the נביאים ,Woe unto those shepherds... ".
With this change of paradigm from a Torah based understanding of man and his condition to a pseudo-scientific understanding (really nothing more than a rationalization which is all that psychology is), came the acceptance of every type of experience into the yeshivas. Because all sources of "truth" were being taught as equal, why not accept those that could only be found in the Occult and Eastern Mysticism as being as valid as any other source of truth?
