Evidence – Schmevidence: Knowledge is Experience

Evidence. What a word. It is thrown around with such self-assurance, as if it is a flag on the moon proving the irrefutability of the conquest. Evidence is an illusion, for either side. If one lays out all the pros and cons in regards to Yeshua’s importance or not, it becomes a sea-saw that is so evenly weighted, neutrality is paralysing. We can only add up the facts and then make a choice. Something moves in us either way to decide whether we deem Yeshua was as it is written in many accounts, or he wasn’t.

I always thought the naysayers, at the end of the day, just end up empty handed, with less colour in their world. Like the quackbusters and scientific scrooges attacking any paranormal or healing phenomena, if all you ever do is say no to things you end up with what you choose to believe in. Nothing. The world is fuller for me, a lot richer, because I believe one, born in the flesh, fulfilled prophecies, taught of love, was willing to die for humanity and God (very different from the willingness to kill for God), and showed it is possible to rise from death, which satisfies the alchemist in me as well as the guy who’d love to live forever.

There are many prophecies that lurked unfulfilled in the Tanach (Old Testamanet) for centuries. Some were so laden with obscurities, and it was only following the coming of the Moshiach / Messiah that they became clear in hindsight. Others stood out as a premonition, a promise, foretelling the arrival of the One in terms one could hold on to, and await. They all came true in Yeshua. He fulfilled them all.

Isaiah 9: 6-12: “For unto us a child is born, unto us a child is given. And the government shall be upon his shoulders and He will be called, Wonderful Counselor, MIGHTY GOD, EVERLASTING FATHER, Prince of Peace.”

There are many ways in which the Messiah can be checklisted and acknowledged. Some are even less conventional than others. One of my favourites is in understanding the parallels between Joseph and Yeshua – how they were both Nazirites and cast out from among their brothers.

Genesis 49:26 “The blessings of thy father are mighty beyond the blessings of my progenitors unto the utmost bound of the everlasting hills; they shall be on the head of Joseph, and on the crown of the head of the prince among his brethren.”

This passage as well as other accompanying Torah passages are some of my favourite prophecies and also, alchemical mysteries of the Torah and I will be excited to blog about it later.

In his Psalm 22, King David spoke in the first person about one experiencing the anguish of crucifixion and the torment of persecution, as if, with the gift of prophecy he did possess, he lived the pain of Yeshua as he way dying on the cross.

^{15 “}My mouth is dried up like a potsherd,
and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth;
you lay me in the dust of death.”

^{16 “}Dogs surround me,
a pack of villains encircles me;
they pierce my hands and my feet.”

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” These are the very words that Yeshua spoke on the cross and the very first line of David’s Psalm. Like a scientist scanning the cosmos for major events, David tuned into Yeshua’s death as it was a massive event horizon of time folding in upon itself and he channeled into, representing it in prose. Anyone with the gift of foresight, prophecy, intuitive reckoning could have scanned ahead and been in the moment of this massive blip of time’s radar (and we are all free now to do the same). Isaiah. Ezekiel as well. All the prophets of the Tanach tuned in and expressed this event-horizon of their future in their own unique way.

There are ample websites and publications that connect the dots between the prophecies and Christ’s life. Yet there are perhaps as many arguments against, alleged evidences, ‘facts’ to disprove Yeshua as the Messiah, some to even deny he ever lived. Some can be very convincing. I know when I read the very learned accounts of religious Torah scholars, they are erudite and compelling, like I’d have to be stupid not to believe what they’re saying. I give them their say and come back to home base.  Some really alluring teachers of today, like David Icke and Zeitgeist documentary, bring huge allure with their great testimony to conspiracies and the deceit of government, yet claim Yeshua was merely a fabrication, a manipulation of the Church. People will be people. It matters not. Let all be free to express their opinion. Putting tape over a person’s mouth makes their resolve to yell and scream all the stronger when it is removed. Killing for either camp is the essence of folly. The argument is fine, so long as one has the desire and the energy for it.

The so-called evidences against Christ’s Divine nature, against his claim to the Throne, even against his having existed at all, and all the historical ‘facts’ are just as arbitrary as anything else. Can they really be proven? Either way? I mean, can you set a camera to 2000 years ago and look around the Mount of Olives and see that Jesus is not wearing sandals and does not have a golden glow around his head? Can you look to Gethsemane with a glass ball of certainty to dispel the fallacy of his agony before the Passion? Or the opposite – Can you prove he was in all the above areas as depicted in scripture?

The accounts? The scriptures? The writings? How do we ever know for sure they were written in such a way that no human element perverts and pervades the purity? How can we say that the Bible is God’s word for word? Let’s face it. We can’t. But that is the point, isn’t it? God requires us to use our free will responsibly. We cannot be spoon fed back to the Garden of Eden. It’s why Yeshua didn’t stick around after the resurrection and why Gandalf doesn’t constantly march out and cast his super spells to defend Middle Earth from the hordes. We need to make the hard choices which are the most soul-enhancing of them all, and they wouldn’t be so impactful on our evolution if we had the Avatars pushing us lightly on the bum in the right direction whenever we walked astray. The nature of this world just doesn’t permit that.

The soup of the material world is brewed with an ingredient of deception, so naturally some of that got into the ladles that brought us the books of the Bible. So that means we need to discern. Everything. Every passage, tuning in to see if it resonates truthfully, falsely, or neutrally. If we’re not sure, we ask, we ponder, we pray. To some, this is sacrilege, but that means they’ve taken the written word as the Will of the living God. This is not so. “The Way to the Tao is not the Eternal Way. It cannot be defined or explained. It can only be experienced.” It’s why Yeshua spoke in parables. Because they point to the pool that the student has to go swimming in to experience the essence of the teachings. The writings and the spoken word are never the full account. They are always distorted as they are squeezed into the left brained characters of a language, and even more are they lost in translation.

As an interesting aside to this discussion, even if a pious person knows all scriptures, takes them all for truth, do they really have faith? Even though a Jew is ultra-orthodox and follows Halacha to the minutest of legalistic commandments, when it comes down to the wire, the tough places life squeezes us in, do they really have faith in God’s existence, in the ultimate reality of the Torah? I suggest that all the bricks and mortar of the religious frameworks of scripture, Bible, Torah do not provide the essential foundation for a person to, through and through, have strong and firm faith and true knowing in God.

In Kabbalah, knowledge of the written word can be likened to the Kabbalistic Sephira Bina (Understanding), yet if it is only learned from the book, from the sacred text, and if there was never any witness to the truth through direct experience, then the Bina is lacking in Chochma (Wisdom). Chochma is the passive reception of the truth from the great Cosmos. It is the antennae that intuitively tunes into the radio waves of the mother station. It is the source of all fluidity and what makes the nature of any knowledge come alive. It is the start of the process of having pure evidence of Truth. As we audit the subtle whispers of the collective cloud, it coalesces, corporifies and becomes dense enough to turn the ethereal meaning into something we can grasp and comprehend. The combination of the passive receptivity (Wisdom) and next stage of understanding what we received (Bina), becomes Da’at (Knowledge). It is this Knowledge (Da’at) that is the true experience of truth. This is our evidence.

The only evidence, therefore, and the strongest faith comes from the actual experience and that only occurs in the inner world of soul rippling emotional resonating heart pounding images of the divine first received through Chochma, understood through Bina, that convey vast volumes of information in the blink of an eye.

The access to this world of living breathing truth is always available to us. Why? Because we ARE it and recognizing the truth is more an act of remembering than it is of learning. So that is why with both camps laden with their own ‘evidences,’ with yeahs and nays shouting across the crowd in a great cacophony of chaos, all that matters is the final choice. It’s a yes or a no. Green or red light, and the final hoorah of confirmation occurs by giving it a chance. No chance means no way, the gates of Chochma are sealed with the obstinate will to know without seeing, an oh so habitual trait of the bipedal.

If you’re teetering on the fulcrum of accepting Yeshua or not, I suggest trying to flip the switch to ‘Go.’ There’s nothing stopping you from switching it back off if you freak out or are met with empty silence. But give it an honest go, open hearted, and at least enough time to bring a big pot of water to boil. Hint – if you’re a tough nut to crack, assume the pot of water is even bigger. I suggest however leaving it more open for a longer period of time. Who knows how these things work or when the Divine will seep through the chink in our certainties? You may be like many of the full-on Muslims who were given revelation of Yeshua out of the blue. Do a google search for “muslims who saw Jesus.” You’ll be amazed at all the abundance of tales of Imams and other devout Muslims being visited by Yeshua in dreams and visions.

There is no doubt in my mind that Yeshua is the One, Messiah of the Jews, the King of Kings. I could allow any anti-Yeshua sword or website or smart argument (or my own doubts) to cut down the trees of my faith, but they’d grow back, simply because it’s in my soul for them to sprout. I grew up with the standard Jewish firmware that was all anti-Yeshua, so how did I go from that to hollering Hallelujahs to the Nazarene? Because, despite thinking one way, I was at least open-minded enough to consider this famous dude that is plastered all over the world, the icon and hero of so many. It was sufficient to look in his direction long enough to allow his innate influence to spring a well within me. With consideration comes friction, with friction comes static electricity which leads to a spark, and therein my heart was kickstarted in a way that it had not been before. There is my evidence. If there’s no openness, there’s no Chochma, then no change can occur, and that is truly a sign of weakness and of doubt, for those with true evidence through experience are secure and firm in their convictions such that they can laugh at themselves and listen to the beliefs and doubts of others with patience and compassion.

Peace be with you. Shalom Aleichem. Salaam Alaikum.