סביב רשעים יתהלכון In Psalms there is a verse that states "around go the wicked" This is usually understood to mean wherever holiness is found, around that come the kelipot dark forces to wreak it up.
In Reb Nachman's thought this comes up in different ways. One is the idea he brings from the Zohar that when there is a lot of sin in the world, the opening towards holiness is almost shut. But in order that it should not be shut completely they place there a false teacher.
For me in particular this is relevant because my experiences with religious teachers has been universally negative in the extreme. I definitely can relate to what Reb Nachman is saying.
That is that religious teachers are actually placed there to keep people away from Torah and to give Torah and bad name. There is no question that there is a great deal of evidence to support Reb Nachman's thesis that Jewish religious teachers are home wreckers and their actual mission is to destroy families and all adherence to Torah.
What is relevant now about this is that keeping Torah depends on staying away from Jewish religious teachers as far as possible.
As ironic as it seems the best places with real authentic Torah are places that go by the Gra--and the more closely they follow the Gra the better.
[It seems to me that this ties in with another idea of Reb Nachman that the evil inclination is a continuous spectrum. That is--it starts at coarse physical desires but reaches up towards the spiritual evil inclination and even up to the fallen angel the Satan. That is similar to the idea of Reb Israel Salanter that there is a physical evil inclination and spiritual evil inclination. The spiritual one has nothing to do with physical desires but rather what ever is against the Law of God, the Law of Moses, it gives one a great desire to do. ]
It should be clear that the spiritual evil inclination is vastly more evil than the physical evil inclination. And this explains the reasons for the phenomenon that I discuses in the above essay.
In Reb Nachman's thought this comes up in different ways. One is the idea he brings from the Zohar that when there is a lot of sin in the world, the opening towards holiness is almost shut. But in order that it should not be shut completely they place there a false teacher.
For me in particular this is relevant because my experiences with religious teachers has been universally negative in the extreme. I definitely can relate to what Reb Nachman is saying.
That is that religious teachers are actually placed there to keep people away from Torah and to give Torah and bad name. There is no question that there is a great deal of evidence to support Reb Nachman's thesis that Jewish religious teachers are home wreckers and their actual mission is to destroy families and all adherence to Torah.
What is relevant now about this is that keeping Torah depends on staying away from Jewish religious teachers as far as possible.
As ironic as it seems the best places with real authentic Torah are places that go by the Gra--and the more closely they follow the Gra the better.
[It seems to me that this ties in with another idea of Reb Nachman that the evil inclination is a continuous spectrum. That is--it starts at coarse physical desires but reaches up towards the spiritual evil inclination and even up to the fallen angel the Satan. That is similar to the idea of Reb Israel Salanter that there is a physical evil inclination and spiritual evil inclination. The spiritual one has nothing to do with physical desires but rather what ever is against the Law of God, the Law of Moses, it gives one a great desire to do. ]
It should be clear that the spiritual evil inclination is vastly more evil than the physical evil inclination. And this explains the reasons for the phenomenon that I discuses in the above essay.
