Consciousness traps exist everywhere

Consciousness traps exist everywhere. I looked at different cults for a long time trying to understand a little bit about my own attraction to destructive cults. I have had the strange kind of tendency to abandon good groups or a good social situation to join weird groups. So I have gone through a long process of self introspection and also trying to understand the attraction of cults,

I was writing about this a few years back. Mainly I was studying Hindu cults in the USA and also in India and also Scientology. I did not have the stomach to look at Jewish religious cults. But I am  familiar with Hasidim. I think Hasidic groups are very bad cults, It is just that many Hasidic groups are  consciousness traps that lure people into their private cult.

It is characteristic of cults is they target people that are already on a good track and try to derail them. They will go into  Lithuanian yeshiva where people are sitting and learning authentic Torah and try to lure them into something else. Often they will claim that these things do not contradict. They might also go to places where students are in fact on good life paths and try to lure them into their cult.

I wish I could learn Torah but I can't. Not only that but I also wish I could tell people about how great the Torah is and there also I find myself without words.

The reason is that when one is not worthy to learn Torah he is evicted. And the door to holiness is then shut behind him so he can't get back in. And then he is filled with illusions to run after that he thinks will give him happiness in this world or the next. The Satan then gives the power to do miracles to people that have their powers from the Dark Side. And he makes it seem that they are holy people. The glitter draws people that are not worthy of Torah.

This is the reason that when people become religious they lose the ability to discern between right and wrong. They become infatuated with some miracle worker from the Dark Side. And they think because that charismatic demon is religious with their kind of religion that therefore his powers must be from the Side of holiness.

Peace or war.

Aut pax aut bellum. 
If the Arabs in Israel had wanted peace I think that would have been clear. It seems to me that Israel needs someone like Joseph Stalin. Just imagine what he would do right now if he was head of the Israeli government. He would simply ship every last Arab off to Siberia or the Antarctic. 

Now  Arabs walking the street armed with nothing more than  kitchen knifes go around killing Jews. Somehow I doubt if a similar kind of situation had or would exist in Russia today that Stalin would have had much patience or tolerance for this kind of behavior. 

But you don't need to be a genius to know that the Israeli government will not take steps to stop this because they need that everyone should think they are nice. They don't understand that there are people that will never think they are nice no matter what they do.

The reason authentic yeshivas throw out people is because they found that Modus operandi is profitable--that is it makes the yeshiva successful. [Mode of operation]] The Rosh yeshiva does not consider every individual case separately. He just knows  that by throwing out anyone that does not exactly fit in is the only way that he can have a beit midrash where people are sitting and learning Talmud.
Whether you this this is nice is not so much the issue as much as the rosh yeshiva knows that without this rule, he will not have a yeshiva.
The fact is the rule is probably applied in wrong cases. It may very well result in the downfall of the institutions it is meant to uphold.
I suggest a modified version of this rule. Fitting in ought to be defined as learning Talmud. It should not be defined by social group or marriage status of whether the  fellow is a social outcast or not. That there should be only one condition--learning Torah.

The problem is the rule of throwing out people is always applied to the wrong people.

The deeper reason for this is in the LM circa Vol I chapter 157. There are people that are not fit for holiness. So they are thrown out. Then when they are thrown out the door closes so they should not come back in. But then after they wander off into the world of delusions the door opens again. But what happens if there are lots of people that need to be thrown out? There is fear that the door will stay closed after they are all thrown out. So at the door the place a person that fears God. When he is standing in the doorway the door can't close. And he throws out the people that are not fit to be inside.

So if the mashgiach throws you out, don't be discouraged. Be happy that at least you can still learn Torah somewhere else. If he would not be standing there to throw you out it might have happened that the door into holiness might get closed completely. That would mean that even somewhere else you would not be able to learn Torah.


For myself I consider that this happened to me in several situations. I mean to say that I was in situation that were very good but I had not reached those situations from my own merits or good heart. So the attraction of other glittery things attracted me. I was in my parents home which was a place of tremendous purity and wholesomeness. And I left that. Ditto with Israel and ditto with the Mir Yeshiva in NY. But as I mentioned sometimes it happens that when one is not worthy the door back into holiness closes. So you can't get back in even if you recognize your mistake.

Allen Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind

A fellow today  told me he thinks people have two levels of consciousness. That is maybe many more. But he wanted to discuss just two.
The lower level,  where his job determines who he is. Then the higher level which is more concerned with the meaning of life.




I tied that into Allen Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind in his treatment of the Self.

That is before the Enlightenment people's self identity was religious identity.
The Enlightenment was meant to knock the Kings and Priests off their thrones. Political power was taken from Kings and religious power from priests. Religious identity became obsolete. Now the self depends no longer on one's religious identity. Ask Freud and he will tell you the self is sex. Ask Nietzsche and he will say it is the will to power. Ask Locke he will say it is ones means of making a living. And this by default is the self identity of the Western man.

But the whole thesis of Allen Bloom is the Enlightenment has run into  a dead end. And he certainly has no solution of even a half baked attempt at a solution.

I myself have had a kind of development when it comes to personal identity. I felt at 11 years old I had a choice of what kind of character I wanted to be. Later at two great yeshivas in NY my self identity became tied to the idea of learning Torah. [One yeshiva was Shar Yashuv and the other was the Mir in NY.] To a large degree this self identity for me has stayed stable. But I admit this self identity for me has had its ups and downs. I am no Rosh Yeshiva and I also have seen enough things in the world of Litvak yeshivas to cause me some doubt about how effective learning Torah is to make people into better people. However despite that I still try to stick with Torah as best I can/





The fellow I was talking with had also been wondering what makes some of the creepy religious teachers the way they are? Do they just wake up one morning and look in the mirror and say, "I am the messiah?" Or something along those lines?
I have already dealt with that issue a long time ago. I studied many cults and I got an idea of the basic pattern. But I also tie it in to the fact that they use the Torah to make their money. That is what they do for a living. That is the one and only thing the Torah says you can't use to make money with. There is something about that sin that makes them insane.
The basic problem of cults fits in nicely with the Kant  School. 
So I have an easy explanation of cults and cult leaders. The archetype. At some point they lose their own identity and become absorbed in some Archetype.

A song for the glory of God

q51

Rav Shach rocks! If you want a date with me, finish the Avi Ezri.

I see there is what looks like a contradiction between the Rambam and the Tosephta and I thought I had an answer, but now I see I don't. I was looking at Rav Elazar Menachem Shach's essay on this subject and I had thought that my idea was what he was getting at but it clearly is not.

The idea is the Rambam says if one ate forbidden fat or remainders of sacrifices he brings a sin offering. But if he forgot which one he does not.

That is lets say someone has a piece of fat on the table and eats it.  Then someone walks in and asks "Where is the חלב forbidden fat I left on the table?" He brings a sin offering.
But let's  say the next day he forgets if it was חלב או נותר forbidden fat or remainders. Then he does not bring a sin offering.
But let's say the day after that he remembers again that it was חלב forbidden fat and then a second later he forgets again. Then he brings a sin offering. And that is where the Rambam stops. But at that point the Tosephta adds if he remembers again then he brings another sin offering.
The commentaries on the Rambam give half baked excuses to make sense of this.
I thought I had an answer but it is wrong.

What I had thought was the Rambam is talking about חלב or נותר, or else he did work either on Yom Kippur or Shabat. And to be frank and admit my fault I had thought the Tosephta was talking about קרבן טומאה. That is I thought the Tosephta was talking about a case in which he walked into the Temple in Jerusalem while unclean or ate from sacrifices while unclean.

What I was thinking was this: The Rambam brings from Rabbi Akiva that there is something special about a sin offering for uncleanliness. That is you need to have knowledge of the uncleanliness before he sinned. That is true.  But I had noted that after he sinned he needs to know what kind of uncleanliness he became unclean by. That also is true. But I had underestimated the need for this second condition. I had thought that in our original case of forgetting that it would be enough if he remembered that he was unclean but still did not know by which kind of uncleanliness. This is
I am sad to say a stupid mistake on my part. But one thing we gain from all this is that now we know why Rav Shach did not choose this path as an answer.

Appendix: The major point of this essay is this: The normal case of a sin offering for walking into the Temple while unclean is unusual. It is a case where one needs knowledge before the sin that he is unclean. That means he knew he was unclean. And then he forgot and in a state of forgetfulness he walked into the Temple. And then the next day he remembers he was unclean or someone reminds him. That still is not enough to be required to bring a sin offering. The last knowledge has to be together with knowledge of what kind of thing made him unclean. This is clearly what the Rambam says. So it would not work to put the case of the Tosephta as a case of uncleanliness.

That is day one he knew he was unclean. The next day he forgot and walked into the Temple. Then day after he remembers he walked into the temple or ate a sacrifice in a state of uncleanliness. He would not bring anything. The reason is this is not like forbidden fat or remainders of sacrifices. Here in our case he needs to know what kind of uncleanliness made him unclean.

That means I think we will have to settle for what Rav Shach says that the Rambam simply had a different version of that Tosephta. This is not a good answer but we can see that no other answer is possible here so we have to settle for an unsatisfactory solution.