The Metaphor of Oil

all right so uh continuing now controversy we uh have covered the first five chapters and where we left off we were speaking about meshiach we wanted to understand mashiach better because understanding better would help us to understand see this better and that is the whole objective here is to understand see this hence the name contra signa a booklet about what is exodus and we uh well let's just jump into the text because the text explains uh why we were talking about okay chapter six carmilla as stated above me that through the reward for spreading accidents which is the coming of mashiach we can know the essence of siddhis and i want to reiterate that the term reward here is not like reward that we often think of where it's an arbitrary reward where it's an extrinsic motivation but rather a true cause and effect reward where it's an intrinsic motivation where the result of the work itself generates its its own reward in the true sense of skyrim it's ver mitzvah so after somalianis results in meshiach so therefore we said if we'll study meshiach better we'll understand siddhis better what is meshiach well if you'll if you'll be able to answer that you'll be able to answer a little bit better what is say this and um and we said that meshiach is all about yakida a lot of things are going to happen marvelous things are going to happen in the world when she comes but all of those are a trait saw a manifestation of the single idea of yehidah and uh without trying to define yehidah which is a very lofty concept let's just uh suffice it let it let it suffice to say at this point is a term which we are going to be speaking about over and over and over again at length in this uh in this uh discourse so for now we'll just without trying to translate it or define it we'll just say yukida okay so meshiach is about uh okay let's continue all of the innovations the cities brought about what are they namely in terms of torah hawas which one of the main innovations of of siddhis in terms in the realm of toyota is that it revealed the khelakasoid the kabbalistic or the esoteric it allowed it to be expressed it gave it a language and we remember we spoke about all these four aspects of siddhis back in chapter one in the very first chapter and i believe this was uh feature number four the innovation that siddhis brought to torah was that it gave the side of toyota a language to be revealed and and why is that uh why is that a an expression of yahida you know as i said is this idea that we're going to be returning to over and over and over again but maybe at this point let's just say yeshida means the most basic fundamental um i mean essence is the word that we're going to use essence but what something is what it is not what it does not the way it presents itself uh not the way that we experience it subjectively but what it is what it really is and uh when you get down to the essence when you get down to what something actually is what you find is that all of the external trappings that we use to define something they sort of fall away this is not a muscle that the rebbe uses here so i'm hesitant to use it but i just think it's a really good muscle and even if it's not a good muscle it's an opportunity to tell a really uh gesh makameisa a really uh cool story about the rabbit is that how you translate kismakamaisa in english in 2020 i think a cool story um when the rabbi had his heart attack uh uh on and on uh this is back in the 1970s just to set the the the the the historically when when this occurred so they flew in a uh a cardiologist an expert from chicago dr weiss dr ira weiss and the rabbi uh dr weiss was trying to explain to to the rabbit what had happened to his heart he said you know when there's that damage to the heart so it damages the elasticity of the of the muscle cells and he when dr weiss tells the story he looks back and says you know i was explaining it to the rabbit you know i knew that but was an intelligent person so i was i was explaining it the way i'd explain it to any intelligent person but like it says looking back at like i was explaining to him um like so he's explaining to that but well what happened is you know it damaged the the the the muscle cells in the heart now they lost their elasticity and the heart needs to pump so it needs elasticity so he says that ebba says to me um this is 1977 that ebb says well could you use stem cells so dr weiss who was an expert in his field which is precisely why he had been brought in he said i wasn't even really sure what that was talking about like well stem cells what are stem cells so basically i said i was so far ahead of the experts in their field dr weiss was an expert in his field and the debut was so far ahead in in experimental cutting-edge uh knowledge and that that ebb was asking well what about the stem cells can you use the stem cells so this is back in the 70s and the devil was already you know way way decades ahead of uh where medicine was at that point but what's the idea of stem cells so anyways that's the geshemakam myself the idea of a stem cell is that it's a cell that can become any cell so you know what is it well whatever it becomes so again this is just my muscle and i don't know if it's perfect probably isn't but you know maybe a crude metaphor for us for yahida for essence at least in the physical realm would be like a stem cell it can become any cell it is no cell and i mean it's not a particular cell so it's it's not any cell but it's every cell um so think about yakida or essence like that it is it isn't anything in particular but it's everything so think about it like this normally in toyota you have shot rem that would be like metaphorically you know you have muscle cells and you have maybe uh you know the cells of different you know organs or skin or bones then they're different types of cells so you have shot that's one type of toyota and you have remes is another type drush is another type site is another type but then you have the yakida of tyra which from the perspective of yahida it could become anything and it's it's nothing in particular it's not shot it's not the damage it's not rush it's not solid but it's all of that in other words the rule of side the definition of sight secret it's it's it's esoteric wisdom and it can't be revealed and if it can be revealed then it's not esoteric right isn't that sort of the definition of of esoteric um but from the perspective of yehidah those rules don't apply it can be esoteric and it can be revealed at the same time and so when siddhis which is synonymous with yechida reveals itself in torah what happens is the rules of categorization become defied and that which is by definition a secret can now be revealed and no longer a secret and yet there's no rule saying that it can't be that way because it's nothing and it's everything i don't know if that's it it's it's a deep paradox so normally the rules are side is side and that's what makes it solid and yet from a perspective of yukida when you hit the reveals itself through torah so so it could be cited but but it's not a side meaning it's not a secret you can take the secrets of the toyota and reveal them you know that that's what's you know funny about like how are these secrets of the toyota there you can go on the internet and and any any joe schmoe can now go learn benimus oto so how are they secrets you know a secret isn't just something true secret isn't just something people don't know true secret is something that's unknowable you know like uh you know i can go on uh i can go online and i can look up uh medical journals but doesn't mean i can understand them right but uh so they're not secret meaning the information's not being hidden from me but it's not accessible i don't know how to read it and yet sid is what does siddhis do especially style is he taking the secrets of the toyota not only you're making them available to people but you're explaining it in ways that they could understand it so it's not just like you have to be an expert that only a doctor could understand a medical journal but you know it's like webmd anybody can you know go to the site and they can read it and they can understand it so it's taking things that used to be secrets and making it not only available but actually accessible not just that you can find the information but you could find it and understand it so that's sort of like defying the very definition of soy all right but that's what happens when yahida is revealed in terror all right then the next thing let's continue in the text bhavaida saw them in terms of personal development let's translate it like that those were features two and three i believe respectively of the four the list of four that we had in the beginning of chapter one um and both of those are demonstrations of yahida as well because i mean think about it like this uh the first one going with nimisha din doing more than the letter of the law if you are following and even that means you're serving hashem for a reason for a motive your motives become holy but they're still your motives so therefore there's the payoff and why would you do something that has no payoff why would you do more than necessary only from the perspective of yakida which now i am no longer i because it's it's not that my nephesh my my rooh my nisham or even my my means oneness there's no me as distinct from hashem so there's no personal motive for doing these things so why am i doing whatever that i'm doing is it for a payoff it's not for a payoff anymore and then automatically i do more than the letter of the law i go beyond the letter of the law so too when you talk about changing the tava hamidis not just me the stevian like we spoke about but teva middays of not just changing natural character traits but changing the very nature of character traits what does that mean changing the very nature of character traits i spoke about it in in the very first class and actually i got an email somebody asked me if i explained it correctly and i believe that i did explain it correctly there may be other ways of explaining it as well but i believe based on a footnote here that that i did explain it correctly that what does it mean that not only you change natural character traits but you could change the nature of character traits the nature of character traits is that cassidus kassadin is changing the nature of character traits is that acid becomes voting what it becomes acid how is that possible that's again that's stem cells that stem cells that's from the perspective of yakida so anything can become anything else so it's not you're stuck with oh acidic acid and that's what it is that's what defines it that's what makes a constant it operates in a certain way and and it has its properties and that's what makes it and voda is it has different properties that make it good from the perspective of yukida no all this stuff is flexible it's in flux and and i can change my my nature just like that because you're going to the core you're going to the essence like like a stem cell that can become you know a heart muscle or anything else you want it to become okay and then the fourth effect to see this hat on the world let's go back into the text behind the effect on the world at large he said it is waking up from the faint and that was the actually number one that was the first of the four but here it's the fourth of the four why is this an expression of so it's very simple somebody who's conscious and somebody who's unconscious what's the difference between them the difference between them is totally external whether his soul is shining through his body so that you see him as an awakened person a conscious person that that's that's that's a superficial condition which is precisely why it changes a person can be conscious person can be unconscious those things can change but who he is his basic identity that doesn't change so that's why a person is who they are whether they're conscious or they're unconscious and that's also why they can be roused from their unconscious state back to consciousness because it's it's not there's nothing permanent about it to the contrary who they are has remained intact even during their unconsciousness so again that's that's the idea of all right but at any rate all these four things none of them are specific novelties on their own but rather see rather what's the explanation see this is a new vitality like we explained at the beginning which is a highest atsmith a revelation of yakida again that word [Applause] is [Applause] so whether it's the general teachings of citizenship and the magic or specifically the school of chabad which was innovated by the new soul that's all that had never been in a in an incarnation before and and he refers to him as the bala vahaguru because it's as we mentioned in the first class this is a untested kislev address you just kissed it was the anniversary of the redemption of the altar at any rate when this new light of yehida is revealed in the world what happens is everything takes on a new vitality an essential vitality of the melan therefore automatically consequentially many various different things emerge from that so the four things we spoke about before and we call them symptoms they're all they're all results of yakida they they're manifestations of yukida and we were saying before you know they're not the essence of this but they're a manifestation of the essence now we're getting closer to what is that essence that essence is yeshida okay chapter seven shall we now we're going to introduce a metaphor and this is a much much obviously uh incomparably better metaphor than what i said before about the stem cells uh and this is the metaphor that the rabbit chose and which has roots in tradition and which we're going to use repeatedly throughout this uh mimer the metaphor of oil shemin okay let's go to chapter seven game times later saxidis le chamin rosin de rosen for the same reason what we were just describing tyrosidis is likened to oil specifically uh olive oil usually shemin is shemin zayus but it could be really physically all oil behaves the same has the same properties at least for the purposes of this metaphor i don't think it makes a difference and oil is often likened to the level called rosin derozan secrets of secrets it speaks about it in in this in uh previous uh rebellion that wine is you know nicknas wine you're known as which is also uh 70. so the secrets of the toyota are compared to wine but then there's the secrets and the secrets of secrets so the secrets of toyota is is yain but the secrets of secrets is mysteries or secrets um the secrets of the secrets that is like oil and just like the oil floats even on wine so if the wine is one level the oil's even higher okay why but why i mean that's not the only reason and that's not just because it it's it's higher why is shemin the the the metaphor here shemin a sense shall call david oil is the distilled essence of something that when you crush it down you extract its essence what is it's the oil so whether it's the olive oil or you can take mineral oil or peanut oil or baby oil no i'm just joking that was a joke but when when you distill the essence of something that's the oil um from this we are forced to say that the oil is separate from everything because if it were specifically connected to one part or another it wouldn't be able to be extracted from the whole thing in other words you know like you look at a you look at an olive like where's the oil is it in that part of the olive is in that part of the no it's not like you know the pit where's the pits in the middle you know where's the meat of the olive or you know where's the pimento i think they put those in after the fact i'm not sure but uh where's the oil the oil's just thrown through it just it's it's everywhere so it's you can't pinpoint you can't locate it to a particular aspect of the oil allah it's the essence of the olive me and being the essence of behold over it's in the it's in the whole thing equally there he was because one of the axioms of an atomy is it is found within everything and and everywhere so it's not you can't pinpoint where is the oil in the olive it's throughout the entire olive just like you couldn't pinpoint you know where is the yakida that animates the universe which world is it in it's in all worlds equally or where's the of a person you know where does the kid express itself in a person you know like nephesh expresses itself through our actions and ruach through our emotions and nishama through our intellect right but where does yahida express itself nowhere everywhere right that's essence the now this concept like every concept that you find in citizen kabbalah what we call pneumonia you will find it also in negligent the legalistic um because it's one toyota ad in fact you will even find it in practical halacha i mean practical is about as simple and straightforward as you can get so where do we find this idea illustrated in practical halacha on one hand oil doesn't mix with other liquids where do you find that you find that in the laws of purity and impurity so homach lake is about the ritual purity of wine and there's oil floating on top of the wine so if somebody who is ritually impure touches the oil which is floating on the top does that affect the wine so one opinion in the mishna is that it only affects the oil because the oil doesn't mix with the wine and then another opinion which is rabbi kane bennuri says that no no it also contaminates the wine because they're connected but even according to his opinion they don't mix they touch but they don't they don't mix so on one hand oil doesn't mix with any other liquid on the other hand it permeates everything you ever seen the bottom of a pizza box you see when oil touches something it goes through and through and and you have this in conscious remember when i learned smirk we had to learn about what happens when like baseball hall of let's say when things touch well if you have fat involved which fat is oil then the permeation of the of the flavor is all the way through because when there's oil it goes all the way through through and through so on one hand it detaches and doesn't mix with anything else on the other hand it permeates all the way through and through a little bit paradoxical just the physical properties of oil velocain therefore we've chosen this as a metaphor nimshila there's accident we compare see this to oil has these two paradoxical properties on one hand because it's an atme it's an essence it doesn't mix with anything else it retains its essence its identity or another way of saying that is it is the essence of vitality of the world and not the flowing forth or the glowing or the spreading forth of the vitality we spoke about that last week it is what it is the essence of the vitality and it doesn't mix with anything else it is what it is it is pure on the other hand it permeates through and through everything so at the one and on one hand it's always what it is and it doesn't uh lose its identity like oil that remains separate on the other hand it permeates everything else and goes through and through it like like oil which which penetrates so we have this interesting paradox of an essence the essence which is both separate and permeating and just leave you with a with a thought uh the jewish people are often compared to oil for this reason as well not just because when you crush us you know like the olive so the good stuff comes out although the rabbit mentions that here in the footnotes here that after your test kiss live after the altered had been persecuted so then the good stuff came out but uh the jews are interesting on one hand you can't assimilate the jews it just doesn't work even when the jews themselves try to assimilate it never works so we're always separate on the other hand there's nothing that goes on in the world that the jews aren't part of which is what leads to some of the conspiracy theories about jews but it's really just the fact that jews are always involved in being movers and shakers and whatever's going on in the world for good or whatever you know jews are always you know have a hand in it so you know that's like oil that on one hand it's separate from everything and the other hand it's permeated and and and and uh penetrates everything okay that is uh the end of chapter seven hashem will continue next week good night