The Allegory of the Eagle, the Rabbit and the Fox

Michael Laitman
3 min readFeb 7, 2024

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An eagle was sitting on a tree, resting and doing nothing. A little rabbit saw the eagle and asked: “Can I sit like you and do nothing?” “Of course, why not?” answered the eagle. The rabbit sat under a tree and began to rest. A fox then suddenly appeared, grabbing and eating the rabbit. The moral of the story: To sit and do nothing, you need to sit very high (Fable, source unknown).

We can only truly ever be at absolute rest and peace when we are no longer alive. The upper force of nature is a force of love and bestowal that is in absolute rest. To us, such a state is death because we need to kill our egoism, our desires to enjoy for self-benefit alone, in order to reach it.

This is no solution though since the eagle also has its own problems like enemies that it needs to defend itself against. No living being can exist without caring about anything.

We can only truly ever be at absolute rest and peace when we are no longer alive. The upper force of nature is a force of love and bestowal that is in absolute rest. To us, such a state is death because we need to kill our egoism, our desires to enjoy for self-benefit alone, in order to reach it.

Our entire process of evolution leads us to a point where we will need to kill our egoistic intention for self-benefit in order to rise to the degree of the upper force.

We are like the rabbit in the allegory. We cannot be at rest, and we need to be on guard from danger coming at us on all sides. But the danger exists because we are attached to our egoism. So in order to not be like the rabbit in the allegory, we need to know exactly what awaits us, what we must sacrifice and how to be free. That is, we need to learn the nature of our world and of the upper world, and the paths of transition from one to another.

It is quite a complicated educational process requiring remaking ourselves in the process, becoming a person of the upper world.

Peace in the upper world begins with meeting the condition of “love your neighbor as yourself.” That can be considered the height of the eagle. In other words, we can allow ourselves some initial minimal repose if we accept the law of “love your neighbor as yourself” even at least theoretically.

Accepting “’love your neighbor as yourself’ at least theoretically” means that we start looking for ways to master this condition, seeking how to exit and rise above our egoistic nature.

Whether we like it or not, nature has its own plan for us, to develop us to a state where we reach a common state of connection, glued together with ties of love. Since we are developing to such a level out of a nature-set obligation, we still have to prepare ourselves to move to that level.

Whether we like it or not, nature has its own plan for us, to develop us to a state where we reach a common state of connection, glued together with ties of love. Since we are developing to such a level out of a nature-set obligation, we still have to prepare ourselves to move to that level.

Humanity is starting to realize that we are far from that ideal state. We have to rise in our understanding of how the need to reach the condition of “love your neighbor as yourself” is ahead of us, and then we can take a rational step in that direction.

There will be a lot of interference from all sides, but we can overcome it all if we relate to ourselves not as billions of separate and competing individuals, but as a unified whole.

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Michael Laitman
Michael Laitman

Written by Michael Laitman

PhD in Philosophy and Kabbalah. MSc in Medical Bio-Cybernetics. Founder and president of Bnei Baruch Kabbalah Education & Research Institute.

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