From Holocaust Victim to Immanent Messiah – I

Prologue

As mentioned in the previous post, I am on a spiritual journey for more than 50 years. In hindsight, I was able to understand the stages of my transformation from a Holocaust victim to an Immanent Messiah. In musical terms I could structure these stages as a Prologue, Exposition, Development, Culmination, Reprise, Conclusion and Coda. In fact, they marked my journey through the whole Kabbalistic Tree of Life, following Jacob’s Ladder. This journey required spiritual awakening, passing through the Spiritual School of the Soul (in the Kabbalistic World of Formation), going through the Mystery School of the Spirit (in the Kabbalistic World of Creation), linking with the Great Holy Council and Metatron (in the World of Creation, overlapping the World of Emanation) and finally experiencing the essence of G-d, as the I AM (in the Kabbalistic World of Emanation)!

As a Prologue to the story of spiritual awakening as an Immanent Messiah, I would like to share some facts from my early childhood as a ‘Holocaust Ghetto Victim’. In 1943 we were expelled to Haskovo, Bulgaria, in a Holocaust Ghetto camp. The conditions we lived in were difficult and profoundly affected our entire lives. My brother’s and mine’s immune systems were greatly weakened and this led to severe illnesses. Let me mention only two of them. In Haskovo I suffered from asthma. In 1947, visiting a friendly family in the village of Peshterna, Teteven, unexpectedly I contracted anthrax. I still remember my parents and the hostess going from house to house in search of a remedy that could heal the inflammation. We visited many houses in the village without any success – the remedy was not available. Unfortunately, the anxiety and tension of my parents and the hostess turned into a real drama: if we couldn’t find a cure, in a day or two I would have died from blood poisoning. Finally, in one of the last houses in the village with great relief we found the appropriate cure and I was saved.

Two or three years later, my brother Anri fell ill and was admitted to the nearby children’s hospital “Varcony” in Sofia. He has been there for a few weeks. The official visits were limited, so my sister Becky and I were whistling and shouting from the backyard of the hospital, and when he appeared at the window, we were ecstatic. When he was discharged from the hospital, our joy was great, but unfortunately there was no accurate diagnosis of his immune disease.

As we know, the years after September 9, 1944, have been very difficult in Bulgaria. My father, Issac Moscona, had to work 10-12 hours in the shoe factory “9th of September” in order to feed the family. My mother, Laura, has also to work to supplement family income: she worked during the night at the kindergarten Ana Ventura for years. In the morning, when she returned home, she had no time to rest, but immediately was taking care of the family. When I now remember their difficult life, I am deeply overwhelmed by their great devotion and sacrifice – truly there are no words to express our gratitude and love for the parents!

Years have passed. My father continued to work hard at the shoe factory. My mother became a curator at the School of Music at the Community Library ‘Emil Shekerdjiski’. My brother was developing his extraordinary scientific talent. For him, the well-known academician Azarya Polikarov said that he was amazed by the fact that at the age of 16, my brother had discovered the basic principles of cybernetics; at 26, he patented the spectrophotometer device that was used in many of the spacecrafts. I started taking piano lessons at the School of Music in the Community Library, which became the basis of my entire life as a musician. My sister, Becky, studied in absentia and worked at the library of the Mathematics Institute.

The great tragedy happened in June 1967 – my beloved brother Anri died, aged under 30, in the prime of his extraordinary scientific work. At that time, I was a student in the Gnesins Academy of Music in Moscow and did not know about the tragedy. You can imagine the drama when I returned to Sofia in July and my parents met me at the train station. In the taxi, my mother exploded in tears and with enormous sadness, told me about my brother’s departure. When I saw our home and the entrance, strewn with obituaries, I was in for a real shock! To lose my brother, full of life, cheerfulness and creativity, before even reaching 30 years of age, was an enormous tragedy for all of us!

That very same week my mother developed breast cancer from suffering, while I got into the deepest depression possible, in which, frankly, I preferred to die together with my brother or even instead of him. My father, who retired in 1964, started working even more intensively on the description of Sephardic culture, whereas my sister was sharing her deep grief with us. Here you are, the end result of our eviction in Haskovo caused by the “Holocaust Ghetto” there.

In a direct and indirect way, we were trying to respond to the drama of the Holocaust – the greatest tragedy in human history! My father, from 1967 to 1975, was Chairman of the Central Israelite Spiritual Council and worked tirelessly to preserve the Sephardic culture. Naturally, he was not alone. Helped by the Editor-in-Chief of the Jewish Yearbook, David Benvenisti, and many other friends, he published big articles in this annual edition regularly, describing the history, the lifestyle and spirituality of Balkan Jews, their social stratification and so on. He also worked on a multi-volume dictionary of Judeo-Espanyol language. My father was in correspondence with many professionals in this field around the world and received their great appreciation and recognition. Two of his books were published with great success in Israel; the first, the Sephardic Pearls, had an amazing fate – it was like a desk book of the then UN Secretary, Javier Perez de Cuellar; this book also served as an exciting, symbolic ‘credential’ to the Spanish King Juan Carlos when Israel established diplomatic relations with Spain.

For my part, after my brother’s death, I decided to give up my personal life. However, the fact that he was four years older than me led me to wait and give up my personality when I was his age. This was the only way to make up for my brother’s huge loss. Interestingly, after about four years when I was a PhD aspirant in Moscow, I came across the book The Great Initiates by Édouard Schuré. It included inspired stories about Hermes, Moses, Rama, Krishna, Zoroaster, Buddha, Orpheus, Plato, Jesus Christ and other great spiritual Masters. I felt this as an impulse to devote myself to the spiritual growth of humanity in response to its greatest fall – the Holocaust!

Therefore, I began to study the various world religions, including the Kabbalah. In them, I looked not so much for the religious tradition, the established culture or the Way they were leading. My main focus was to link with the Great Initiates who came from G-d to bear fruit from the Tree of Life. In essence, this was the Messianic Line which, according to the prominent late Kabbalist Z’ev ben Shimon Halevi, begins from Enoch and passes through Abraham, Zoroaster, Buddha and other great Divine Masters.

As a result, after more than 50 years of spiritual journey filled with many trials, challenges and insights, now I have more than 20 books, about 500 international lectures and seminars, a website (www.testamentoftruth.org), a documentary film, The Revelation (YouTube channel TheRevelation215), and many media activities. Of course, this was a common team work with friends from many countries and organizations.

I could summarize that this relatively large series of books is like a Program for the Mission of an Immanent Messiah. In general, the question of the Messiah’s coming is always open and extremely responsible. My personal view is that the Mission of the Immanent Messiah is the collective work of a group of Initiates who are connected with the Messianic Line of great Divine Teachers from the Indo-European cycle. Thus, the Mission of the Immanent Messiah is not to bring a new religion, or a specific spiritual Path, but to reveal the living energy of the Creator, of G-d Who is and Who manifested Himself in the Messianic Line!

My last three books, published with the support and assistance of friends, are: 1) Journey to Heavenly Jerusalem, led by the Light of the Messiah (the second part of this book is Life in the Reality of Heavenly Jerusalem on Earth, illuminated by the Light of the Messiah);  2) The New  Heaven, the New Earth, and the New Humankind (The Program of a Potential Messiah); 3) The Transcendent and  the Immanent Messiah (a few main ideas from this book are presented in the previous four Posts).

I believe that turning the Potential Collective Messiah into the Real One is the worthiest response to the Holocaust tragedy! This is an event not only for the Jewish people, but for all of humanity. However, the Jewish people must unite in Peace, Harmony, and Love to set an example for all other nations. Thus, there will be no ground for anti-Semitism, hatred, nationalism, Nazism and any such negative energy.

As I mentioned above,  I came across the book The Great Initiates by Édouard Schuré, which revealed to me the idea of G-d as supreme Divine Intelligence, Universal Spirit, Living Light, the great mystery of Creation, the Absolute! With this book, in January 1971, my spiritual journey started. From a Kabbalistic point of view, I entered in the Spiritual School of the Soul in the World of Formation. There I have to open my soul and experience the Divinity of the Tree of Life. In the Kabbalistic tradition this is the place where the three lower worlds meet (i.e. Keter of Asiyyah, Tiferet of Yetzirah and Malkhut of Beriah). By opening of the Soul, the journey to the higher worlds was opened and this is why this stage could be considered, after the Prologue, as an Exposition on the path to the Immanent Messiah. In the next three posts I will briefly describe some experiences in the Spiritual School of the Soul.