The Bible says that Jacob dreamed of a ladder with the angels going up and down. To make things a little more complicated, in this verse, God told Jacob that the land he laid upon He would give to him and his children who shall be as the dust of the earth. Then Jacob awoke and concluded that this was undoubtedly a place of God and he became frightened. How could Jacob have known that this was a place of God? He was sleeping, and when we sleep are we not unaware of what is around us.
"The biblical stories are merely pointing to ideas that can assist us in our daily lives, to make life easier."
We all dream every night, but most of us do not recall our dreams. Jacob made a big deal of the fact that he had dreamt this and did not know what kind of place it was. How many of us would consider such a dream a reality? How many of us are convinced about the elimination of time, space and motion?
The answers to the questions raised concerning Jacob’s dream are very simple. When the Bible says that Jacob fell asleep, the Zohar explains that what transpired was not in the realm of sleep. The biblical stories are merely pointing to ideas that can assist us in our daily lives, to make life easier. This is the only reason for the Bible. It is not a historical document or a book of laws and rules; it is even written in the Zohar that we could write better stories. The realm of physicality unfortunately coerces our consciousness into beliefs that are illusionary. The Zohar explains that what the Bible is concerned with is the realm of consciousness beyond the realm of physicality.
Rashi (Rav Shlomo ben Itzchaki), renowned commentator on the Bible, says that God rolled up the entire land of Israel like a scroll that fitted where Jacob lay. The Zohar says most of us cannot believe it, and this is our problem. If we were so perfectly convinced without any shadow of a doubt that the physical world as we see it is merely a blip on a computer screen we would understand that ninety-nine percent of Creation is not physical as we understand; and that 99.9 percent of everything in the physical reality is not solid, it is space. In fact, there are more atoms in the air in front of us than there are in the chairs we sit upon, but we cannot feel them.
"The only reality that exists is consciousness, nothing more."
The story of Vayetze is trying to relate the nature of the physical reality. There is no physical liability, restriction or limitation. There is no time, space and motion as a limitation. No one in the world would have a problem if mankind could overcome the limitation of time, space and motion. Those who would see tomorrow would know what to do today; everyone would be wealthy. If we could see an impending disaster on an airline, who would go on that plane? How many disasters each of us could avoid, if we could merely see. But we are governed by these limitations because over millennia we have placed our consciousness completely in the physical reality.
Yet the Zohar reminds us that the only reality that exists is consciousness, nothing more. Whatever is in the mind that is reality. As long as we do not believe we can get younger, we will never get younger. Satan has had a good hold on mankind for millennia and nothing has changed. If we do not think it can change, it will not change.
If we take a look at history, positive transformation seemed unlikely, but in the past century things have changed. Man flew to the moon, travelled at the speed of sound, and how many have asked, why now? No one has asked because our consciousness is asleep. This is the power of Satan.
The only reason things have changed in our time is because of Rav Ashlag (founder of The Kabbalah Centre). The only reason for this that I can see is because the Zohar was revealed for the first time. Instead of being in a place where no one could ever read it, suddenly there was a translation in Modern Hebrew; making the Zohar accessible. This is what made the 20th century different.
