The Guide To Life

Dr. Michael LaitmanNone of the Kabbalistic texts are intended for us to understand anything written in them because it is impossible for our earthly mind to understand the Kabbalists’ explanations. These texts are written from the height of a completely different, opposite mind – one that’s based on bestowal instead of reception. This is a completely different program, a different understanding and direction of thoughts.

No matter what we do, we won’t understand these texts until we attain the same state that the author is in, or at least a state that’s somewhat similar to his. As long as we are opposite to the author by our having opposite qualities, this opposition rejects everything we can receive from the texts.

I am not talking about the articles and letters by Kabbalists where they speak about our states before we enter the spiritual world. These texts are intended to prepare us for the spiritual world, to tell us how to enter it, to help form us, and to accompany us on the spiritual path. However, texts such as Talmud Eser Sefirot, The Book of Zohar, and The Tree of Life, which describe the spiritual world to us, are talking about the higher state that we can feel only when we correspond to the laws of the spiritual world, the laws of bestowal.

If we reveal the quality of bestowal, the net of connection between us just like between the cells of one organism, then inside this net, we will reveal laws, states, and pictures of the Upper World that the Kabbalists tell us about. Then we will understand all the words they wrote in The Book of Zohar and Talmud Eser Sefirot because they are talking about what we will see, feel, and reveal.

The entire Torah will become the Torah of life for me and I will reveal it inside my desires because my desires and thoughts will be arranged with each other and together with the desires and thoughts of other souls. This will happen to the degree I reveal the ability to connect with others and I will see this in the Book. Then the book will become a guide for me, since the Torah comes from the word “Oraa” – a guide or instruction manual. We will reveal the entire body of the common soul of Adam and all the connections between his organs.

Therefore, when reading The Zohar we have to attain the sensation that we really are connected together, and that inside the inner, global, integral connection between us we now reveal the forms of this connection. This is what The Zohar tells us about.

The Zohar talks only about the forms of connection on the still, vegetative, animate, and human levels inside the net connecting our souls. It doesn’t say a word about animals, plants, and inanimate objects of this world. There is nothing besides the souls. All the descriptions of inanimate objects, plants, animals, and people are talking only about the The Book of Zohar and Talmud Eser Sefirot.

When our points in the heart, our desires, our aspirations to unity among us, come together correctly, then we will reveal everything written in The Zohar. We will reveal it in the connection between us. What we reveal is called “the World of Infinity” – the world of infinite, unbounded connection among all people.

Let us try to imagine this between us!
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/25/10, The Zohar

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Spiritual Simulator – 10.25.10

Spiritual Simulator: Questions of the Day

Kabbalah Moments: Control In Life

Studying The Creator’s Actions

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: If there is only one soul, then why is it necessary for 600,000 souls to attain mutual guarantee among them?

Answer: We attain the single soul precisely from this division into parts. It is impossible to attain what the common soul is without going through the breaking.

In order to understand this picture, we must first reveal it as broken and try to gather it back together. When you work hard and reach the understanding that you cannot do it on your own, without the Upper One, then you will reveal the One who can help you. And together with Him you will put this “puzzle” together.

Then you will find out what He did and why He broke the common soul. He did it for your sake so you would put the broken parts back together and in the process understand how they have to be arranged and what connection they should have. It’s as if you are putting together a car from thousands of parts and you have to understand why every part is necessary and how it has to be connected with others, and in what order.

When you put it together, you understand that in order for the engine to work, it needs the force of life! That force of life is called the Creator. Thus, we come to know Him from His actions. Otherwise we would never be able to understand Him.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/25/10, “600,000 Souls”

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It’s A Vice To Feel Just Yourself

Dr. Michael LaitmanIt is considered a vice to feel yourself, your soul, instead of the single common soul. Yet some people might consider this a great attainment, since I am nevertheless in the spiritual world, together with the Creator, even though I’m separate from others. However, if a person attains spirituality, he feels that this state is not good because he is separate from others and there are two parts in existence.

 

It’s even worse when there is a third part, the Creator, because everyone must be one whole: the person, the method of correction, and the Creator. However, there are different sins on every level and you are still far away from these “criminals.”

Initially only one soul was created, so how can this perfect will to enjoy created by the perfect Light be divided into parts? How is this separation even possible?

Now do you understand that we are living in an unreal world? Only in our imagination does everything divide into parts this way: the still, vegetative, animate, and human levels, as well as all sorts of colors and sounds. None of this exists in spirituality!

True spirituality is one common sensation, the Simple Light. All the other separations we feel now come from our lack of perfection.

We artificially left the perfect state and that’s why we feel a world where everything is divided, split, separate from others, and opposite. However, if the Creator is one, then several creatures cannot come out of Him, but only one.

Baal HaSulam writes the following in the article, “600,000 Souls“: “Indeed, there is just one soul in the world, as it is written about the creation of man: ‘The Creator breathed the spirit of life into him,'” which means there is one desire and one Light.

A person who aspires to return to the Creator is called “Isra-El” (straight to the Creator) and he attains the one ,single soul. I attach to myself the people who seem to exist outside of me and I attain this as one, single soul, Adam HaRishon, just as it was created by the Creator. It is filled inside by the Light of Infinity, the Creator.

However, in order for me to carry this out more easily, I am given the group through which I relate to the common soul. The group is the part of the soul closest to me, an intermediate means through which I can work.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/25/10, “600,000 Souls”

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Mom, I Want To Go With Them!

Dr. Michael LaitmanA person needs an external factor in order to be able to look at himself from aside. If he is included in the group, then it plays the role of that factor in a positive manner, carrying a person forward and supporting him. However, if a person has a weak connection with the group, he will need many inner troubles to push him to exit to the outside because when egoism suffers, it desires to escape from itself.

One way or another, the discernment has to be done from outside. The surest way to do it is to organize an environment that will always let me inside, that will help me and raise me so I am able to get back to the correct analysis in the fastest and easiest way.

One should not sink into the sensations and thoughts of one’s egoism, but always look at it from above, from the Light’s perspective. Egoism works very simply. Just like toy cars that run on batteries, it moves around among obstacles and when bumping into one, it changes the direction. I am always looking for the place with fewer negatives and more positives. My actions are entirely subject to a dual system where there is only “zero” and “one.”

However, if a higher thought comes to me about the reason and the goal, it means I have been awakened from Above, from the following level which no longer belongs to the desire for pleasure. That is how I receive an explanation in my own language, telling me that there is something better out there, something of a different quality or a higher class.

Nevertheless, I am being spoken to in words I understand, “You will feel better there.” And I reply, “I will feel better? Then I want it!” It’s the same as how we behave with little children, coming down to their level of understanding. There is no other way to go until we acquire the higher mind of the new level, the logic of our spiritual parents. And the group helps us to do this.

Sometimes a child absolutely refuses to go somewhere. But suddenly he sees other kids happily going in that direction. Then he also runs after them because if they are going there, that means there is something good there. Nature has made this approach inherent in us from the breaking of the Kelim, from our connection to each other. Even if we don’t listen to our mom (the Upper Level), we do listen to our friends in the group.

However, this isn’t just a group because the Upper Force resides inside it, being the mind and feeling of the parents’ level. I don’t just join a bunch of kids in the neighborhood, but I annul myself before the group and then, inside that self-rejection, I find the Creator.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/25/10, “Show Me Your Honor”

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Taking Course Toward Creation

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: What should I do to acquire strength and demand correction?

Answer: For this a person needs to have the correct idea about a network of interconnected desires or sparks, realize that they must work together and find between themselves the force regarded as “the Creator.” This force has left that place because in the connection of sparks there is no reciprocity, unity. But a person paints the picture of interconnection again and again, thereby summoning the Light from the corrected system.

It is just a game as of yet; a person is not expected to do spiritual work but to exert effort. He may even break things but at the same time, learn from it. A child doesn’t learn unless he breaks something. He has to take a toy apart in order to find out what’s inside it.

It is the same on the spiritual path, although in this case, we should aim at creation, at ascent. We deal with the broken system of ties between the souls more and more. In fact, we uncover nothing but that.

Within this network, we will see the mechanism that acts from Above downward. It unfolds and comes closer to me in my understanding and awareness from its central point, Malchut of the World of Infinity. This is the system of the worlds. After the breaking, it corrected itself and lined up before me so that I, with its help, undergo all the stages of correction that are programmed in it.

Thus, the system is already within me, we are all interconnected and unified in the state of the final correction (Gmar Tikkun). I only need to find myself in the correct unification and discover the force that is called “the Light” or “the Creator” between us.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/20/10, “The Matter of the Slanders”

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Intelligence Is Not A Flaw

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: If a person is rational by nature, does this mean that he will need more efforts to understand that he can’t attain bestowal without the Creator’s help?

Answer: Some intelligent people find it difficult to make decisions by ascending above their reason, whereas others are intelligent and able to understand that their wisdom is not worth a thing. That is why it is easy for them to renounce it.

It all depends on how a person uses his wisdom. Intelligence is not a flaw. Every quality depends on how a person uses it: usefully or not.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/25/10, “Show Me Your Honor”

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Wake Up And Look At Yourself

Dr. Michael LaitmanIn the beginning of the spiritual path people aren’t yet able to distinguish what is happening to them. The current sensation is the truth for them. They are unable to look at themselves from aside and discern the external influence that comes from the Creator. They don’t yet see the walls of the “laboratory” they are in.

When a person is on the side of the will to enjoy, he automatically reacts to what is happening: He jumps from joy or vice versa, falls into melancholy. He is buried under the states of his egoism.

However, as he works on himself inside unity with the group, he grows estranged from his own desires and acquires the opportunity to analyze: What are the causes of his states, and how does he relate to the group, the study, and the Creator? Instead of feeling like a test animal, he shifts to the side of the Creator who shows him what He is doing to him.

This enables a person to become human, to rise above the animate degree of his desire to the human degree. Now he understands that the purpose of the unpleasant states where he is devoid of energy, Light, and inspiration is to attract his attention to the Source, the Creator.

Why does the Creator send him these states? It’s in order for him to draw closer to the Creator with a request. That is the only way He can awaken me. The pleasant sensations force me to forget about Him, while emptiness does the contrary: gives rise to questions. When I am treated badly, I want to know why, but when I am treated well I have no care in the world about why it is so.

That is why I am awakened through troubles, and at that time I have to understand that these are appeals from the Creator. It is His way of showing me that I depend on Him; He calls me to Him in order for us to come forward against Pharaoh together.

That is when I begin to realize that there is no evil and I am grateful for the “evil” just as for the good and even more so because precisely it helps me to advance, to come closer to the Upper One and to demand corrections from Him. If a person takes the right position for evaluating his state, if he uses the sensation as an object for analysis, then he acquires faith above reason, which always enables him to move forward.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/25/10, “Show Me Your Honor”

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Where Am I: Below Or Above?

Dr. Michael LaitmanA person’s advancement depends on his ability to ascend above the sensation and his previous mind by separating from them and always holding on to the Light, the Creator. However, this is impossible during a descent since the Creator disappears from one’s sensation and awareness. Then only the group can help a person by holding him on the level where he keeps the right attitude or the right perspective on what is happening to him.

That is why it is so important to be connected with the group, with its mindset and approach. The group never loses understanding, willingness, and a connection with the Upper One. It always knows that there is no one besides Him, who is Good and Does Good.

If a person absorbs the spirit of the group, then he quickly goes through all the states and always benefits from them. As he checks his sensations in his egoistic desire, he adds to them what he feels and thinks higher, above the desire. And that is something that comes from the group.

As a person advances along the path, he starts to understand that there are two fundamental elements inherent in his perception:

  1. Inside the egoistic desire his thoughts correspond to the sensations; his mind and heart are unanimous.
  2. When he shifts to the desires and thoughts of his friends in the group, he analyzes himself and builds faith above reason.

Everything depends on what a person identifies himself with and where his point in the heart is: below or above. That is one’s free choice.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/25/10, “Show Me Your Honor”

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