Spirituality

What is a Diaspora?


On his numerous visits to the State of Israel and communications with the Jewish People The Dalai Lama, may his light shine, has turned to the Jewish people with the following questions: How does a people survive in a Diaspora? How do we keep our traditions alive generation after generation in a Diaspora? What is the secret of the continued existence of the Jewish people in a Diaspora of such long duration? The Dalai Lama has further stated that the Buddhists of Tibet would do well to learn this mystery from the Jews.

The answer is: Our Diaspora, like every Diaspora, is for the sake of both giving of our spiritual gifts to other peoples and, in turn, receiving and being fertilized spiritually by the Nations who have and continue to host us. This is the express reason why all Diasporas come about. It is the reason for the Tibetan Buddhist Diaspora, it is the reason for the African Diaspora, it is the reason that the Native Tribes in the Americas are unable to sit on their own land just to name a few of the many Diasporas that exist and have existed throughout all of history in the world. 

The word Diaspora suggests this: It is dia (GOD in the feminine, not the various unclear etymologies of this prefix as they appear in most dictionaries) and spora (spores).

The Hebrew language allows us to see deep levels of meaning when we take the numerical values of the letters into consideration and calculate as well as read the texts. We are told that Man is the dust of the earth and to the dust of the earth we will return. The word Man in Hebrew is Adam, written thus: '. The word for earth is adama written '. One can hear immediately that the words Adam and adama are very much alike. Actually, they are one and the same word, with the addition of a vowel sound. The addition of that vowel sound is one of the letters of one of God's names. We see, then, that Man is the result of God assuming the form of living earth. 

The dust of the earth with which a People are identified, from which they are born, from whose bounty they live, and into which they are buried when they die is one and the same with that People. It is one and the same with God as it manifests Itself as that People, in that Land and as that Land.

There are levels of understanding even deeper than this which the Hebrew language can reveal. The Hebrew word for dust is afar, written thus: '. The numerical value of the word afar is the same as another Hebrew word siphrei, written thus: ', which means the books of. From this linguistic-numerical connection that characterizes the Hebrew language, we learn that the dust of the earth are the books of something. The books of what? Well, the first time we encounter the Hebrew word for book, which is sepher, written ', is in the Book of Genesis (Chapter 5, Verse 1 ) where it is written: 'This is the Book of the generations of Man on the day that God created Man in the image of God was he created.' It is necessary to mention here that the word 'he' appears in the above passage as auto, written '. The very same letters rearranged give us the word for 'letter' in Hebrew which is aut, written: '. If some of these Hebrew words sound strangely Indo-European, you may congratulate yourself for having universal hearing. 

We begin to see connections that we don't ordinarily see. We see that God connects one of the letters of Its own name to the grains of dust and the earth becomes Man - the earth when enlivened with the name of God is Man. The dust of the earth are the letters of the Book. That Book is what the Jews call the Torah, the teaching. The word Torah, written thus: ' has a numerical value in 611. The words in Hebrew for 'with Myself' which are et atzmi, written: ' ', also have a numerical value of 611. Therefore, the Book which is Identical with God, Man, the Earth and the People of that Book is what God calls 'with Myself'. All these are One and the same. The letter-numbers of the Book are that which combine and permute to form every individual of the People and the stories of their lives are also be combinations and permutations of the letter-numbers of the Book. 

Let's go back to the suffix spora in the word Diaspora. The Hebrew root s-p-r or s-f-r written ', yields various meanings in Hebrew and in other languages. (In Hebrew the same letter ' is pronounced like 'f' in its soft pronunciation and like 'p' in its hard pronunciation). In Hebrew it is the word for Book as we have seen. The same root gives us the Hebrew word for number, mispar, written: '. We derive the word for story, which is sipur, written: ' from that root too. In the Greek-Latin languages and their derivatives we find this same root appearing as super, sphere, spore and spirit to mention just a few that are relevant to the subject at hand. We see now that God, Man, spirit, Book, Letter, Number, Land, Story, sphere and spore are one and the same. 

We saw above that in the word Diaspora, GOD appears in the feminine form ' dia. The word sperm is etymologically and biologically related to spores. Listen now to the word sperm. The Hebrew word for books in s'pharim, written: ''. The word Diaspora contains both the feminine and masculine elements of Godliness, the level of Godliness which allows fertilization. Where abslolute Oneness contemplates Itself and looks at itself face to face there the Godhead becomes masculine and feminine. This is also the interface of GOD and creation. The meeting of the Nations allows the manifold variety of creation to become possible.

We are approaching an understanding of what a Diaspora is. There are a few points yet to be mentioned.

If you could ask a spore or a sperm cell about its fate that you would receive a classical Diaspora story: a paroxysm of cataclysmic proportions resulting in the expulsion of vast numbers of individuals without their consent, being catapulted into a frenzied race for survival, culminating in the deaths of untold millions with only the very few surviving. This is not a glib description of human suffering, nor is it a justification, by analogy with nature, for the expulsion and exile of people, God forbid. It is a description of how fertilization occurs in nature. But Man is not intended to suffer because of natural forces beyond our control. We are intended to attain the self-awareness and self-control which brings the forces of nature under our control. The word suffer does not appear in this paragraph accidentally. We can hear and see that this word too derives from the same Hebrew root, s-p-r or s-f-r, as do the other words in the paragraph above. Suffering is the lowest level of the manifestations for this Hebrew root. Suffering is always the result of the refusal of the individual to recognize the Self in this world as God-in-Becoming. Suffering drives one on to become so weary of the seeming vagaries of life that the surrender of the personality into Supernal (there's that root again) Truth occurs. Other, higher, preferable and certainly more pleasant manifestations of the root s-p-r are the results of being in a state of Self-awareness and therefore being able to write the Book of ones' own life, of one's own People and therefore being in a SUPERnatural state. In this elevated state of consciousness Peoples carry out the very same spiritual self- and cross-fertilizations, but without the suffering. 

The secret, then, to the survival of a nation in Diaspora is the awareness that we actually never left our Land. We are sent as emissaries to other Peoples, who need us spiritually and who we need spiritually, by the Soul of our People and this is a consensus decision taken by all the individual souls contained the Soul of our People. We go out as emissaries to other peoples to learn and observe and, if we are worthy, to be examples of Godliness in human form in turn. Those Jews who were aware of this were masters of the Diaspora, they were able, using the combinations and permutations of the numerical values of the Hebrew letters (as described in the article 'The Letters of the Hebrew Alphabet Are Numerical Values as Well as Symbols' published here on June 22, 2000) to read and calculate infinite interpretations of the story of their Diaspora. Those who did not apply this method of interpretation to the of phenomena they encountered and the occurrences of their lives, experienced the lowest levels of the Hebrew root s-p-r: they suffered. 

The Diaspora of the Dalai Lama and the Buddhists of Tibet accomplished the release of two great wellsprings of energy that were frozen in China. First, the Dalai Lama was freed from the confines and isolation of Potala. Is not the attainment of Wisdom for the sake of sharing it with the world? This Dalai Lama had attained the level of wisdom that only an entire world could contain. Tibet alone could no longer serve as a large enough vessel for his wisdom. On its part, the western world was in so deep a spiritual quagmire that only a Dalai Lama could help it. A Diaspora was therefore inevitable. Try to imagine the Western world in these times without access to the Dalai Lama's wisdom, or even knowledge of his existence. The other wellspring of energy that is being freed is the Chinese's genius in research of all kinds. In other words, the soul of the Chinese people, even while the Communist regime imagined itself against all forms of religion, was arousing the Chinese people out of their ages-long slumber in order to give to the world of the greatest of their spiritual achievement, in the form of the Dalai Lama and Tibetan Buddhism. The inherent genius of the Chinese in the material world, which is now being allowed to flower in a richer, more egalitarian China, became able to express itself too. The method of bringing this about was fraught with suffering because the people of China were not aware of their own Godliness. Had they been aware of their Godliness, they would have accomplished the same purpose with compassion and with wisdom. This is our goal - to help people arrive at the level of consciousness at which it is clear that we are all God-in-Becoming on our way to arriving at the level of God-in-Being at this level of reality. Anyone at that level of consciousness, in the presence of another human being is so overcome by love and awe that cruelty is rendered impossible. Likewise, a person aware of their own Godliness acts only out of love, compassion and concern for the spiritual advancement of everything that springs into being. Try to imagine how a 'Diaspora' would be experienced like in a world like this. Know that at the highest levels of consciousness this is already the case.

The Bible tells the Jews in no uncertain terms that if we do not act in accordance with the precepts written there we will be scattered, helpless, among the nations. Yet the Bible itself is written in such a way that it is virtually impossible not to go against it. Therefore, the Book exists to be dispersed and the Jewish People sinned in order to be dispersed. This is why the State of Israel is in a moral shambles and this is the reason why most Jews do not come to live in the Land of Israel even though most of us are free to do so. We know in our hearts that our Diaspora is far from being over. We have not attained the ultimate levels of Self-as-God awareness and certainly not Other-as-God awareness. We need our contacts with other cultures in order to attain that level of consciousness. The Jewish People are fascinated with other Peoples because we know that only in experiencing the life stories of other Nations can we come to know everything that is written in Hebrew, i.e., know Ourselves. So, our self-imposed exile goes on. When we have sojourned amongst other Peoples, and in doing so have wrought every possible combination and permutation of the letter-numbers of the Hebrew alphabet, we can return to the dust from which we were formed and into which God blew the spirit of life. 

And so it is with the Buddhists of Tibet. Your Diaspora was brought about from the depths of the soul of the Chinese people. Is it desirable to return to Lhasa? Is it desirable that the wisdom of the Dalai Lama will be concealed in Potala? Do you not see that from the depths of your collective compassion for the world you brought your exile about? 

It is not that a Diaspora is undesirable, then. The point is to raise the consciousness of the people to the level where the Diaspora is not experienced as suffering, but as a giving of ones own Supreme Self in the phenomenal world. That will be experienced as exertion, yes, but not as suffering. In the end we will all come to rest in our Land as is promised. 

29-Jun-2000

More by :  Doreen Dotan

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