Adam And Eve

Dr. Michael LaitmanComment: It says that the Creator created Adam, as if he is a collective figure that resembles the Creator.

Answer: The attitude of the Creator to the creation is called Adam. And the created being is Eve (Havah), i.e., it is already present, the desire to receive.

Comment: According to The Book of Zohar, Adam is a combination of the male and the female parts.

Answer: That’s right, but the female part in a man is concealed. Of course it stems from the Creator but not directly, not as something from nothing.

Comment: In the past there were organisms that impregnated themselves and then divided into a male and female part.

Answer: We can still see this phenomenon in nature. Now many species in the animal world change their sex from male to female and vice versa depending on the need to continue the species.

Question: Does this correlate with what The Book of Zohar says about the unity of the male and the female parts?

Answer: No. The Book of Zohar tells us only about spiritual states. How their effects are manifested in our world—here there are many options.

When the desire began to develop it was divided into a male and a female part, which led to the emergence of people who were males and females in our world and who have to mate  to have offspring.

It is only by the mating of two opposite separate independent elements of nature that the emergence of a third element is possible, similarly to the way the two lines, the right and the left lines, generate the middle line.
[192145]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 4/24/16

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Woman – A Mystery Of Nature

laitman_547_06The woman is mystery of nature since she symbolizes our desire to receive, a desire that is concealed in us and is revealed only to the extent that we reveal the Creator. Therefore, if we yearn to discover the Creator, we reveal the feminine.

We will not be able to understand a woman until we attain this truth, because the feminine was created by the Creator and is the only thing He created, “and God created woman,” whereas the male is a little different from the Creator and exists in the world only in order to fertilize the woman, to fill her, to generate birth, so that eventually the female desire to receive and the male desire to bestow (the points in the heart) will appear in them in the corrected mutual state called their child.

This process takes place when the feminine is ready for correction, while the male merely fulfills his intermediary role. This is the reason that the woman, the feminine, the desire to receive, is nature’s mystery, which a Kabbalist gradually discovers to what extent she is opposite from the Creator and to what extent he can make her resemble the Creator.
[192059]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 4/24/16

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Corporeal Life And Spiritual Development

Laitman_414Question: Can a person yearn for wealth and prosperity in his corporeal life and at the same time for spiritual growth? Can these two desires coexist?

Answer: No they cannot. First, a person must work for a living and provide for his family, and only then strive for the next state. Spiritual advancement should not be fulfilled at the expense of the family.

If you have a family, you have no right to neglect it; your children, wife and parents need material support. You have to work seriously to bring your whole salary home, to the last penny! Only after distributing it to the needs of your family, can you be free to engage in the wisdom the Kabbalah.

What is more, a Kabbalist must work not only in order to provide for his family, but also in order to be connected through his work with other people. He must be grounded.
[190642]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 4/3/16

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Fear Of Growing Up

Laitman_088In the News (Pacific Standard): The Peter Pan Syndrome was one of the best-selling books of the early 1980s. In it, psychologist Dan Kiley argued that teenage boys were increasingly reluctant to grow up and accept adult responsibilities.

“Any hope that this might be a short-lived phenomenon is refuted by new research. It finds that, compared to previous generations, today’s university students — both male and female — consider maturity a minefield they are in no hurry to start navigating.

“‘Today’s emerging adults seem reluctant to take on life’s next chapter,’ concludes a research team led by Miami University psychologist April Smith. ‘Undergraduates today experience more fear related to facing the demands of adult life than undergraduates in the past.'”

Answer: When I was young, it was the opposite. We wanted to be grownups so much, to start working, to do something, to aspire for something, to discover something. Schools seemed like a prison to us, while today it is the other way around; the young want to remain the way they are because they have everything.

They are locked inside their cell phone screens or computers and are in fact trapped in a cage that provides a filling they cannot give up. Of course they don’t want to break away from the screen because if they can spend all their free time in front of the small screen like small kids, they have no need for anything else.

The average amount of time in which a person can work, discover, and “conquer” the world is between 20 to 60 years, but there is nothing that attracts the youth these days.

In the past when we were that age, we dreamed about being pilots or astronauts. And then all of a sudden everyone began to regard pilots as taxi drivers who merely transport passengers back and forth.  And astronauts? They merely fly, orbit in space, land, and that’s it. People lost the yearning for romanticism, for a special filling, and nothing in this world attracts them anymore.

We are developing very quickly and we understand that there is nothing in our world that can fill us. Although we don’t fully understand it yet, we do feel it.

Humanity is moving in two directions: one is determined by the elite who see what is going on and try to organize and manage everything, but don’t know how to cope with the economic crisis and aspire to reduce the number of people on this planet in non-military ways. This is what humanity can do, and there are no other solutions since people don’t understand what is going on.

The other direction is determined by the wisdom of Kabbalah, according to which humanity is in the midst of a very meaningful evolutionary phase, in the transition and an ascent to the next level. According to the wisdom of Kabbalah, our consciousness has to change; we can and we should change our attitude to the world and to each other.

When my generation looks at young people today, it is hard to understand what they engage in, and  they don’t understand us. We seem to be living on two differ planes. They have their own interests and we have ours.

We can see this as an ordinary generation gap between fathers and sons, but according to the wisdom of Kabbalah this is not really a gap, but the ascent of the new generation to the next dimension. The young people of the new generation will attain it; their consciousness will change completely; they will not regard corporeal problems and there will actually be none.

Modern robotics and scientific discoveries will ensure that we will not have to think about anything but how to build the correct society, since otherwise we will be destroyed.

We have to find out precisely what options we have: either to build one unique network between us, or this is where we will all be buried.

Question: Do people understand that they are in prison?

Answer: It isn’t a prison but a very simple action of the universe, which we have to respond to in order to survive. If a global flood threatened our lives, we would have to take some measures otherwise we would drown.

Similarly, a new system is approaching us, a totally new paradigm, a new level of existence, and we have to adapt to it. Those who will not adapt to it will not survive. It may well be that only a couple of thousand people from all of humanity will survive, and they will attain the new level of existence. Just like after the global flood, they will reach a new land and humanity will be regenerated.

This phase is starting now and I hope it will end in a couple of decades. Then humanity will understand what it is facing, the wisdom of Kabbalah offers a method by which we can quickly undergo this phase, with little suffering, easily, by understanding what is going on and, at the same time, in a qualitative way.

It doesn’t provide us with a tranquilizer in order to mitigate the unavoidable transition to the next phase of united humanity, but it offers us a way to understand the process and to do it by ourselves. This is how we will attain the new quality independently, and it will not only be a totally different feeling, but will lead to a totally different outcome.
[190196]
From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 7/15/16

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Daily Kabbalah Lesson – 08.30.16

Preparation for the Lesson

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Writings of Rabash, “Rungs of the Ladder,” Article 27

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Talmud Eser Sefirot, Vol. 6, Part 16, Item 139

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Writings of Baal HaSulam, “The Peace,” “Proof of His Work by Experience” 

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Audio Version Of The Blog – 08.29.16

Listen to an Audio Version of the Blog
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“Your Clothing Did Not Wear Out Upon You”

laitman_741_02Torah, “Deuteronomy,” 8:4: Your clothing did not wear out upon you, nor did your foot swell these forty years.

Of course, here, we don’t mean the physiological health problems of people wandering in the desert. We are talking only about the desires of a person that he corrects on these levels.

Clothing is a screen that only a man can create and use. The lower desires don’t feel shame or need covering. Their coating is limited to fur, and a person must have a special cover that he himself creates.

The normal cover is made from animal skin. The skins are considered clothing, and in addition, tents can be constructed from them, for example, such as Bedouins erect for themselves. It means that this is the natural clothing and the natural home for a person.

There are clothes of a higher rank. It is wool of animal origin. Only this is considered real clothing, unlike all other materials.

Question: What is meant by “your clothing did not wear out upon you?”

Answer: It means that you constantly were adding screens on the desires that appear in you. Clothing is a screen for the body, for the desires.

“Nor did your foot swell” means that you definitely were mastering such desires that worked together with your head.

The foot symbolizes the end of the spiritual Partzuf, NHY (Netzah, Hod, Yesod). It is the biggest problem in the spiritual body because there are the biggest, deepest, lowest, and most material desires in it.

They are fulfilled only after they rise and become included in the body. When a person doesn’t stand but sits with his legs bent under him, then he receives fulfillment, or even when he lies and his head, body, and feet are on the same spiritual level.

In other words, “nor did your foot swell” means that all parts of a person worked in harmony, in unison.
[191976]
From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 4/27/16

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Desire Stems From The Creator

laitman_566_02A letter I received: “I have been listening to your lectures for quite a while, and I am impressed by your dedication.

“You are a wise and intelligent man who has seen a lot in life and who operates in order to attain the uppermost goal of creation, but I wonder what will happen if what you aspire for will not be revealed at the end. Where do you find the energy to believe in what you do?

“After all, it is an impossible mission, even with all of your great will when many have no patience or desire to reveal the Creator and live with Him forever and to make the world a perfect place. You seem to be the only person on this planet who can be a guarantor for all those who advance toward the Creator.

“I hope that, thanks to all of your efforts for the right to exist in the universe, you will be able to hear the Creator’s voice and receive His specific instructions for life not on this planet, but somewhere else.”

My Comment: There is no question in this letter, but I am publicizing it in order to say one thing only: Desire stems from the Creator, so I only thank Him for that.

In fact, you must pay for such a desire from the Creator, for the desire to reveal Him to the world and bring the world to Him, by your attitude to the Creator. This is what I am trying to do through my actions. Our pleasure stems from the Creator’s greatness in contrast to our shame, pride, and our feelings of worthlessness.
[192004]

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The Ritual Of The Golden Calf

Laitman_115_06Question: What does the wisdom of Kabbalah say about the ritual of the golden calf, an expression that today refers to worshipping material objects and money?

Answer: The golden calf symbolizes the immense egoistic desire the children of Israel came out of Egypt with, rose above temporarily, until they suddenly fell into it and began to build the golden calf out of their desires for wealth and for using others.

In other words, the golden calf symbolizes the mutual desire for bourgeois development that humanity sees as a goal, as a substitute for Godliness.

The more we advance toward the attribute of love and unity, the greater the danger of falling into the desire of the golden calf, every step of the way.

Therefore, there is a method of integral unity according to the wisdom of Kabbalah that enables us to ascend above this growing desire, since this is how we develop.
[190613]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 4/3/16

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Man Does Not Live By Bread Alone

laitman_276_01Question: What does it mean “manna, which you did not know, nor did your forefathers know”? (Torah, “Deuteronomy”, 8:3)

Answer: The forefathers didn’t have big egoistic desires. They didn’t pass through the state of the desert.
The forefathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are Keter, Hochma, and Bina. They had small, light desires and therefore they are called the holy fathers, since the quality of Bina (bestowal) was natural for those desires that were revealed at the time.

Therefore, we divide the entire history into fathers and sons. Fathers are HBD (Hochma, Bina, and Daat or Keter, Hochma, and Bina), meaning the head part of the Partzuf (spiritual body). Sons are HGT (Hesed, Gevura, and Tifferet). And the lowest part of the Partzuf, NHY, is us, meaning sons of the sons.

Comment: But the fathers still had pain, after all, Abraham asked, “And how will I conquer this land?”

Answer: Naturally, he was asking in advance because the head part feels and creates a foundation for the entire future correction until the final correction.

Question: How can we explain the phrase, “Man does not live by bread alone, but rather by, whatever comes forth from the mouth of the Lord does man live.”

Answer: There are qualities that are called pure Bina, the light of Hassadim, the light of bestowal, and this is bread. And there are qualities when inside the light of Hassadim that spreads the light of Hochma. And this is called complete bestowal, reception in order to bestow. Thus you use your egoistic Kelim (vessels) also for bestowal.

For this even bigger light is required from above that will illuminate and correct your egoistic desires to altruistic ones, which is above Bina, on the level of Hochma. Then you use that energy, that light, that comes directly from the Creator.

And it is said about this, “by whatever comes forth from the mouth of the Lord does man live.” This is double correction in two stages.

But there are all sorts of variations in the quality of Bina that represents bread.

For example, we don’t eat bread on Passover. Since the regular bread during mixing is in conjunction with water for more than eighteen minutes (meaning nine Sefirot of the direct light and nine Sefirot of the reflected light), it is considered to be in connection with Malchut and therefore we can’t use it because the connection with Malchut won’t allow us to exit Egypt.

Thus, the exodus from Egypt, meaning separation from Malchut, is symbolized by the unleavened bread called Matzah. This is one of the varieties of the quality of bestowal.

And after Passover begins the holiday of receiving the Torah, Shavuot, which is when we eat everything dairy because milk is a quality of bestowal. And it symbolizes the celebration of giving of the Torah.

All these actions are calculated in the head part of the Partzuf or soul. And after that comes the quality of sons, all those qualities that people of Israel passed under the leadership of Moses. We are at the end of development and are considered sons of the sons.
[191907]
From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 4/27/16

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