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Pray for the peace of Israel, world Jewry, the United States and us all.
We have now turned a corner in human history and have chosen a course towards destiny.
The path has been chosen, now we will all have to walk it.
May Heaven be with the righteous!
My dear readers, time is running out fast; the sleepers must awaken now!

 

The Psychology of a Homeland and the Aberrations Caused by Not Having One

By HaRav Ariel Bar Tzadok.  Copyright © 2008 by Ariel Bar Tzadok.  All rights reserved.

Modern social and political problems all exist because of preexisting psychological complexes operating in the minds of individuals.  Address the psychology of the individual and one can successfully address social and political issues.  Yet, the psychodynamics of every individual is not an island unto itself.  Every individual psyche exists in a greater ocean of consciousness and is influenced by many things.  One must be able to recognize the greater whole before one can address the individual parts.  In this respect, we are required to understand the spiritual/psychic component of the mind as an integral part of both individual and collective psychology.  We must also realize that all these components of the mind are also to connected to other elements, one important one is one’s homeland and culture.

For millennia peoples around the world have fought and died to protect and defend what for them is their homeland.  In order to understand the psychological/spiritual significance of real estate we must delve into aspects of reality known to many ancient indigenous peoples but almost unknown and ignored by those who lack any spiritual/psychic development. 

The Sage RaMBaM (Maimonides) wrote in his Mishneh Torah Law Code (Y.T.3:9) that planets themselves are actually living organisms that are conscious of themselves, the angelic order that operates physical matter and of G-d Himself.  Yes, Planet Earth is a sentient conscious personality not too unlike us.  Although it is a life form radically different from our own, it is still nonetheless a conscious, sentient independent life form.  Ultimately the Earth is alive, thinks and feels.

This fundamental knowledge has been the source of millennia of idol worship of those who worship the Earth and request from her directly her bounty.  This type of worship was well known in Biblical days (and prohibited by Torah).  This was the underlying concepts of planting the Ashera trees, which represented the power of growth in “Mother” Earth.

The Earth has always been metaphorically referred to as our “mother,” even as G-d has been referred to as our Heavenly “Father.”  Indeed, even in the story of the creation of Adam some have seen reference to this concept.  When the Torah says, “let Us create Man,” the Us in question has been interpreted by some as G-d speaking to the Earth.  G-d would form Man from the dust of the Earth and then breathe into Him the Living Soul from Heaven.  The Human species is thus a composite entity comprised of two distinct parts, physical and spiritual.  Yet, unless the two work together in harmony, neither can exist independently.

The human species is thus integrally bound to the Earth from which comes forth our flesh, and to where our flesh shall return.  Therefore all the time that we sojourn on Earth we are integrally bound to the land.  We each share a spark of the soul of the Earth.  This spark is our life-force.  In Hebrew, we call it Nefesh.  Torah states that it resides within our blood.

There is an interesting point made by the psychologist Carl Jung that is of relevance here.  His entire body of psychological/psychiatric work is build upon the premise that all humanity at our deepest psychological level are all somehow connected.  Essentially we are all parts of a greater whole.  He refers to this as the Collective Unconscious, or in his later writings as the Objective Psyche. 

Students of Torah should not be so quick to dismiss Jung in this respect, for hundreds of years before him, the great Kabbalists of Tzfat, the Ari’zal and Rav Hayim Vital wrote in similar vein.  They taught that all human souls were included in the greater “super-soul” of Adam.  Adam was thus not just an individual; he was an entire race of entities (not all of whom fell with him in Eden).

Throughout his writings Jung quotes often from the teachings of the Kabbalah.  Indeed, one of Jung’s top students was the Israeli Erich Neumann, who served was president of the Israel Association of Analytical Psychologists.  Jung’s connection to Jewish sources and his embrace of such teachings is clear throughout much of his work.  How much of it influenced his discoveries into the depths of the reality of the human experience, we may never know.

Another point that Jung mentions is that the Collective Unconscious of humanity, shared by all is nonetheless divided into subsections.  He refers to these as the racial subdivisions within the collective unconscious.  Again, we see this same teaching in our Torah.  After Noah’s Flood G-d ordained the division of nations, wherein which groups of individuals developed their own unique identities.  In order to facilitate this development, Heaven ordained that each nation of individuals be assigned a certain geographic area to call their own.  This area would help mold their identities and define them as a people.  Essentially their allocated homeland would mold their identities and define their uniqueness as a specific part of the greater whole of humanity.

Mother Earth therefore gave to each of her children their own unique identities and psychological foundations all based upon their relationship with their homelands.  The people of a land essentially were possessed by the spirit of that land.  It fed them as their life force energy.  It became a part of their souls.  The indigenous relationship of a body of people with a specific piece of real estate defines for the individuals their psychological identities.  These identities cannot be severed, not by time, or by removal from one’s natural indigenous homeland.  This is a simple psychological fact.  The Nefesh soul within each of us thus emanates from our indigenous homelands.

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