The Depth Of The Point

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe Creator created the desire to receive in the form of a point and wants to bring this desire to self-realization by means of successive actions. It is only possible to get to know something as a result of knowing the opposite.

Consequently, the desire to receive must come to know itself and the Creator, one from the other. In other words, it must come to know the original, fundamental nature of the desire to bestow as well as the nature of the created being, the desire to receive, which was intentionally created as opposite to bestowal.

Originally, the created being is deprived of any understanding and realization of either. It represents a point which is only slightly different from the Creator, and that is why it is called “existence from absence,” while the Creator is “existence from existence.” That’s all there is to the created being. It can attain everything else from this point: as compared to the Creator. While developing in relation to the Creator, the upper Light, the quality of bestowal, the created being finally sees itself as maximally opposite to Him.

Its growth is an ever deeper knowledge, understanding, attainment. The point remains the same. It does not change in any way besides the fact that it gains a deeper and deeper realization of how opposite it is to the Light. Attaining this depth, it becomes a terrible “monster,” an evil inclination, reaching the greatness of the Light in its opposition to it.

The point attains all of this in depth, revealing a fathomless gap between itself and the Creator. It is impossible to throw a bridge over this abyss. In essence, the point attains how much it is cut off from the Light.

This means that it is growing in its perception, understanding, and attainment. It is growing negatively, revealing its own oppositeness to bestowal.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/27/2011, The Principles of Global Education

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Did You Order A Tour To The Spiritual World?

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: How should I experience all of the Kabbalistic terms that we study in Talmud Eser Sefirot, for example, NHY and Nefesh?

Answer: When you attain the spiritual world, you will feel the Light that is called NHY or the Light of Nefesh. You will feel it! And then you will also understand what Kabbalists write.

This is called, “a person’s soul will teach him.” You will feel it, and from your sensation you will also understand what it is called. It’s like you find yourself in an unknown city where you look at some buildings that cannot be recognized from the outside, and you say, “This is a theater that was built 300 years ago. And that’s a museum.” Thus, you describe everything you see. As you recognize things, you reveal their names, their essence, and absolutely everything.

This is called spiritual attainment and it means that a person’s soul teaches him. It’s as if there is an instructor inside of you who teaches you. This is your soul. That’s because you tune into the same sources. Where did Kabbalists get this knowledge from? Only from their attainment. Where did Adam HaRishon get it from, being the first person who attained spirituality? He revealed his inner world, the spiritual world.

This is not an imaginary world that appears as our world in this external shell of our body. When we enter inside, we see the spiritual world. There, Adam revealed everything and he began calling all the parts of reality by different names. He gave them names. That is how you will also know what every element of the spiritual world is called.
From the lesson on 3/25/11, Talmud Eser Sefirot

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We Build Spirituality Ourselves!

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: When we are raising a child, we do our best to prepare him or her for life in this world, but how can we enter the spiritual world if we don’t have any idea what it is like?

Answer: A person who, after leaving his or her parents’ home, enters adult life and wants to succeed in it can lean on the life experience of other people. It doesn’t matter what he wants to be, whether it is a thief, a priest, a scientist, or just a seller at the market place. All of these models can be found in society.

However, a person who wants to advance spiritually doesn’t have any examples or support. He must build his environment on his own. After all, the only thing that fills all of reality is the upper Light, and there are no worlds without a person.

The instant that I activate my desire for spirituality, I immediately arrange all the worlds between myself and Infinity. It is as if I erect a ladder leading to the spiritual world that exists only in the form of Reshimot, spiritual information genes.

In the article “The Matter of Spiritual Attainment” from the book Shamati, Baal HaSulam writes that all the worlds with their multiple steps exist only relative to the souls. Therefore, I cannot demand, as we do on our world, to be taught how to behave in spirituality. I must form the spiritual world, which doesn’t exist, on my own.

It is my job to visualize how the upper one relates to me and how I relate to it. If what I see in my imagination matches the actual Reshimot, then everything is wonderfully arranged that very instant, according to the law of equivalence of form. If that doesn’t happen, spiritual reality doesn’t exist for me.

After all, it exists only relative to the person who reveals, constructs, and forms it. In other words, we are the ones who must build the spiritual world, and we need to turn to the Creator with a request that would match precisely to what is set up from Above in Reshimot.

Hence, in Hebrew the Creator is regarded as Boreh (Bo is “come” and Reh is “see”) since it is you who is creating Him. You are the one who builds this form.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/18/2011, Writings of Rabash

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Raising The Contrast Of The Picture Of Reality

Dr. Michael LaitmanNature is absolute good and therefore everything must be evaluated by the final state to which it is leading us. In general, “nature” and “the Creator” is the same thing. So why did nature arrange things so that in the process of our development we have to go through so many unpleasant, problematic, and atrocious states on the path to the good finish line?

The answer is simple: Goodness as such does not exist. We reveal it only in comparison to evil. There is no good without evil, and therefore we must reveal flaws along with their compensation over and over again. That is the only way we can acquire depth of sensation. The contrast between good and evil brings us understanding, and on the path leading through a procession of states, we gain experience in transitioning from evil to good.

In this constant movement we accumulate all the evil inside of us, and above it all of the good, and then we become aware of the gap between them, the abyss between infinity with a minus sign and infinity with a plus sign. All of this fits inside us, is absorbed in us, and becomes our vessel or volume.

Good and evil, plus and minus cannot exist in us separately. There is no Creator without creation. We talk about the Light only in the context of a vessel that is already present inside. We do not view the Creator separately from creation, which He created. It is impossible to say whether anything existed previously because the very notion of time, the very basis of perception disappears. There is no one to say anything and no one to say it about. Everything is only attained by creation. Even though it is secondary in relation to the Light, it is so only in terms of cause and effect.

The Ari writes, “Behold that before the emanations were emanated and the creatures were created, the Upper Simple Light had filled the whole existence.” In other words, the Light already fills reality, exists in it, and is subject to perception or sensation. Having attained that reality, a Kabbalist tells us about it. We will never be able to discuss anything we did not attain inside our vessels.
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/25/11 on Global Education

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Above The Waves

Dr. Michael LaitmanOn the spiritual path the alternation of emptiness and fulfillment is inevitable. Otherwise creation would remain without any sensation.

However, I go through these cycles purposefully. They all bring me closer to the final state where I am included in absolute goodness.

At the end of the path I will attain that goodness, but until then in my sensations I have to go through completely opposite states. Sometimes I feel good and sometimes bad. So what should I do? Could the Creator really be rocking this pendulum, wishing to constantly throw me into heat and then cold?

No. He wants me to rise above my sensations, both the bad and the good, so I won’t depend on them. The states of my earthly, material life, the suffering or joy of my “flesh,” meaning my desires, have to be goal oriented. If I hold on to the goal, then it doesn’t matter whether I feel good or bad. The aim at the goal is always good.

This is absolute goodness. I don’t wait for the finish line to come, but continuously ascend to it, holding myself up with faith above knowledge. Then good and evil are beneficial and I am completely independent of the states that roll over me.

We don’t have to come to this at the end of the path, but initially. It’s the same as how a child goes to school every day. However, unlike the child, we ascend to the place where we can see the goal and understand that this is beneficial to us. Nothing is accidental, nature is absolute and everything in it is intended to lead the parts of creation to the final goal.

If we connect ourselves to the goal, then even when the worst possible things come our way, we won’t perceive them as evil. There is nothing bad. The next moment this sensation gets replaced with a good sensation, but then we also don’t want to be immersed in the good sensation over our heads. We want to enjoy and be happy because we keep going toward the goal – above all the bad and good things in equal measure. This is the right upbringing.

Humanity will not be able to move forward unless it receives an explanation of the common picture: We go through a specific process, and no matter what happens we have to hold on to the goal. In that case, all the waves will come at us in peace and everything will be there to help us.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/25/11 on Global Education

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Why Do I Grow?

Dr. Michael LaitmanI am in a net of forces that influence me. Their sum total is nature. So what is its goal? What does it want from me? Where is it leading me?

It’s clear to me that my development unfolds purposefully. I am convinced of this by the example of the other parts of nature. For example, a small, sour fruit grows into a large, juicy, sweet apple.

Just as the vegetative and animate levels of nature develop, so I develop, going through opposite states that are good and bad. It is impossible to advance only on one side. I alternate them, taking a step with the left and then a step with the right, again and again. I continuously reveal a lack that corresponds to the future fulfillment.

That is when I make a calculation: Where is this process leading? Where does nature direct me? Then I see that it obligates me to undergo social development. Over the course of the last several millennia humanity needed to develop society more and more, and within the society, to develop the interconnections among us.

We revealed evil, our egoism, our hatred to one another, and as a result we are starting to understand the need to unite. In the modern, global world, this is becoming clear.

What is the use of this? The use is that I will enter the next level of my development, the level of the common nature of the universe. I will attain absolute goodness and will acquire similarity to the perfect nature.

Therefore, I do not take into account the intermediate states which I go through on the path. If I hold the goal in front of my mind’s eye and constantly think about it, then I feel good now as well. The most important thing is to “float up” above all the present sensations, both the good and the bad.
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/25/11 on Global Education

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Why Did The Big Bang Happen?

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: On the Internet, two approaches to the evolution of the vegetative and animate world are constantly clashing with each other: Darwinism and creationism. What does the science of Kabbalah say about this?

Answer: Frankly, Darwin is right in almost everything. Perhaps, even this reservation is unnecessary since he was simply misunderstood. After all, he was a deeply religious man.

Evolution really does progress in a consistent way where one thing follows as the result of another. Successive development is instilled in nature, and we cannot deny this. However, it does not happen in a random fashion at all since the egoistic desire is constantly searching for possibilities to realize itself to the maximum.

The desire to receive lives in each passing moment and cannot peek into the future. It does not know what it will give rise to in a few more stages. The desire to receive has an exclusively egoistic approach: “How do I get what I want? How do I fulfill myself?”

If this desire is working and the mind serves it, then any kind of progress, any successive development, is absolutely impossible. After all, you are constantly threatening your egoism. Under such conditions, evolution would not have moved beyond the very first particle of the universe.

However, the science of Kabbalah talks about the Reshimot, informational data instilled into the initial spark from which the entirety of matter emerged. These Reshimot are activated one by one in a chain, and the common desire realizes them, building up the matter.

This is precisely the factor of successive development. In Darwin’s theory, we see its external manifestation, but the essence is in the inner engine, the origin of the forces of evolution. They come as a result of the Reshimot.

What was in the primary point from which the Big Bang thundered? Was there really the entirety of the Universe’s matter instilled in it? Logically, such an assertion makes absolutely no sense. There were only two things in this spark: energy and information. They included in themselves the entirety of creation, and development started from them. Energy (Light) impacted the information (Reshimot), and the process took off.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/24/2011, The Principles of Global Education

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One Soul For All

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe spiritual world is a unified soul, one for all. By unifying with the others, everyone attains the same integral soul. In the article “600,000 Souls,” Baal HaSulam writes that there is nothing else in the world but one soul.

Every person attains this collective soul in an individual manner, according to his or her program or Reshimot (spiritual genes), just as at present, we observe the surrounding world and see it in our own way. I cannot compare the taste that I obtain from a certain food with how others taste it, or my impression of a painting that we both view. Everyone has impressions that match their Reshimot.

Even if we are standing in front of the same picture in spirituality, the same worlds and Partzufim, everyone receives an individual impression of it anyway. This uniqueness doesn’t vanish.

How do I unify with the integral soul? You do it by way of desires. Suppose I am in the center of the spiritual worlds: Assiya, Yetzira, Beria, Atzilut, Adam Kadmon (AK), or the world of Infinity. By exiting myself, my ego, and unifying with the others, I attain the dimension of the integral soul. In it, I perceive the spiritual world. The more I step out of my ego, acquiring the others’ Kelim (vessels), the more exalted world I perceive thereby.

How do I do that? I “purchase” new desires since I have only a point, an embryo, of the soul. The new desires that I gain while unifying with the others are, in fact, the Kli (vessel) of my soul.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/18/2011, “Introduction of The Book of Zohar”

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Just One Step

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: All of humanity must reach the ultimate goal. Therefore, any deviation from the right path seems very frightening…

Answer: Essentially, we always correct our movement based on deviation. With every step we take we divert from the precise movement toward the goal—and examine this deviation.

One Step The key is to check the deviation before taking another step. Only one step can be made in the wrong direction, and then a person has to immediately come back, in order to avoid making two, and especially three steps on the false path. In the latter case, a person completely loses the opportunity to examine himself or herself and will stray from the path for sure. (We study this in Talmud Eser Sefirot in the section about the exit of the Light from Partzuf and the connection with the previous states before the 3rd step.)
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/28/2011, The Book of Zohar

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