Audio Version Of The Blog – 10.09.16

Listen to an Audio Version of the Blog
Download: MP3 Audio

From The Pure Heart

laitman_527_02Torah, Deuteronomy 10:17: For the Lord, your God, is God of gods and the Lord of the lords, the great mighty and awesome God, Who will show no favor, nor will He take a bribe.

The Creator doesn’t take a bribe, unlike kings, leaders, and officials who can be bought.

You can deal with the Creator only from a pure heart, without any relation to yourself, when you can say that you definitely don’t offer any bribes and completely exclude yourself and everything that can be related to you from any consequences.

Then, you have no incentive to give or offer anything to anyone. You have absolutely pure desires and thoughts. This is when you can engage in the Torah, in other words, the real correction.

However, our world is built on a complete deception of ourselves and others, and therefore we don’t feel any spiritual phenomena in it. Everything is constantly bought, and we can’t act in any other way. If we could act directly and honestly at least in something, we immediately would find ourselves in the upper world.
[194031]
From KabTV program “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 6/1/16

Related Material:
Lift The Gates Of The Heart For The King Of Glory
Bribery Blinds The Eyes Of The Wise
From Where Will My Help Come?

One Percent That Made A Human From A Monkey, Part 1

Laitman_707Question: The genetic difference between a human and a monkey is very small, a little more than one percent. In other words, a human is ninety-nine percent chimpanzee. How could such a tiny change in a genome lead to a completely different stage of development? What is this one percent that separates a human from a monkey?

Answer: Human and monkey are two completely different worlds. If we talk about the physical body, man developed through all the levels: still, vegetative, animate, and human, and the monkey is an intermediate stage between animal and human. But this is only if we are comparing bodies.

There is nothing special in the physical body of a human. And although it is different because it doesn’t have fur like monkeys, the arms and legs develop differently, and the attitude to life is different, the main difference is not in this. The human is distinguished by the fact that he develops, acquires wisdom, and changes his environment.

Although animals also change their environment: construct houses for themselves underwater or on trees, it is purely instinctive according to the call of nature and doesn’t change from generation to generation. They live the way they were born according to their nature.

Hence, animals are an inseparable part of nature. They have no desire to change their environment or their society, to build some special artificial systems of relations that were not inherited from their ancestors and known before.

On the contrary, a new mind and senses develop in the human from generation to generation that oblige him to change the world. We can’t discover the source of this radical difference. We only see the consequences of it. Indeed, a person changes the environment, changes the world, and wants an upgrade.

He doesn’t agree to live like the chimpanzee that today lives the same way it did 100,000 years ago. Although the chimpanzee has an excellent memory and mental abilities, they don’t push it to develop.

This is the question: Why does a human have an ability to grow and desire to develop from generation to generation and within each generation? Why is this development different from person to person and from nation to nation?

We collect the experience and pass on all our achievements in culture, education, and science. We build an environment for ourselves, human society, government, and social systems. You can compare the modern world created by man with the one that existed a few hundred years ago.

All this came from the inner impulses of man, which is hidden from us. Why are we given such a desire, for what? After all, if we stopped developing, we would live like monkeys. But in every single human and in all of us together, every moment and at all times, lives the desire to advance.

In other words, there is a special program within us that demands its implementation from us. Therefore people develop in a mandatory manner. We see it in children who never get tired of playing with and have a burning interest in all the gadgets.

Each age has its own games. A child demands it from parents, and when he grows up he will certainly overtake them and will be even more advanced than they are. Nothing like this happens with any animal.

Here all we have to do is to ask: For what are we given this? After all, we can’t say that it makes us happier. Perhaps it would be better to freeze all our development at some stage in order to lead a carefree life? Nevertheless, we develop and build ourselves more and more. This inner aspiration is called the human in us. However, where it is leading us is still a mystery to humanity.
[194086]
From KabTV’s “A New Life” 9/6/16

Related Material:
Extraterrestrial Civilizations On The Planet Earth, Part 2
A Meat Diet Transformed The Ape Into A Human
The Hidden Gene Of Development

The Spiritual Root Of Time

Unity, The Way To A Good FutureQuestion: What is the difference between past, present, and future according to the wisdom of Kabbalah? What is the spiritual root of time?

Answer: The whole universe and all of humanity undergo certain phases of development and are constantly changing.

In fact, the Earth doesn’t actually exist and neither does outer space; it is just how we picture the situation in our ego (our desire). In other words, the world is a reflection of our internal state. A person changes from one state to another, and therefore the Kabbalistic method changes to a certain degree and still develops.

Today we are in an unprecedented phase that no generation before us has undergone, and so we complete this method by adding our part, our chapter. The next generations that will follow the wisdom of Kabbalah will complete and write their own chapters.

Today we are actually in a phase where we can complete the whole story.

The spiritual root of time is the Reshimot (informational records) that have accumulated in us after the shattering.

In the past we were one unique vessel and then we were shattered. And now we are gradually getting back together into one unique vessel under the influence of the Light that constantly operates on us. The continuous assembly of all the shattered particles gives us a feeling of time. In fact, this is not time but changes of our states.

We can say that time is the distance between desire and pleasure.

We have to get together in one central point as one man in one heart. We are moving toward this center whether we like it or not, because the Light inside us directs us toward it. The time during which we have to reach the center is 6,000 years.

thespiritualrootoftime

6,000 years ago our Reshimot began moving toward the center. And we systematically undergo 6,000 states, called 6,000 years. Internally it is felt as time, but in fact it isn’t time but changing states.

What is time? The concept time refers to the fact that now I feel myself in a certain way and in a moment I will feel differently. The gap between these two states is called time. Time doesn’t exist, it is a subjective measure.

Today many scientists understand that time can move both forward and backward. Ups and downs, changes and fluctuations inside all of us give us the feeling of positive and negative time.
[193767]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 5/15/16

Related Material:
Going Beyond The Limits Of Time
Moving Back In Time
Escaping The Clamps Of Time

Should We Come Into Contact With Unpleasant People?

laitman_600_02Question: Suppose people I don’t want to be involved with try to come into contact with me, should I overcome my feelings and start building relationships with people I don’t feel comfortable with?

Answer: At the very least you should make sure you communicate with them in a proper way. You should not repel people. You should try to overcome yourself and try to be polite.

This doesn’t mean that you should love people on the level we are now, but you should aspire to have neutral feelings regarding every individual and then also try to befriend him. This will correct your soul! I am speaking from the perspective of the soul and not from the perspective of your good relations with others. This is how you correct your soul and advance toward the general correction of the world.
[193621]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 5/1/16

Related Material:
Man Is A Social Creature
Man’s Responsibility To Rebuild Society
The End Of Human Development Or A New Beginning?

How Do I Develop Kabbalistic Knowledge?

laitman_209The wisdom of Kabbalah is the science of the theoretical and practical. When a person begins to study, he first learns the theory: the number of worlds, Partzufim, Sefirot; how they are differentiated; how they are formed and extended from above to below according to a hierarchy from the Light to the matter in our world, and how from the matter of our world they again ascend to the Light. In principle, this is the wisdom of Kabbalah.

It is presented in summary in the article by Baal HaSulam “Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah,” along with a similar article by Ramchal “138 Gates of Wisdom,” and a further series of texts by other authors who illuminate the wisdom of Kabbalah in detail. It is revealed in a more comprehensive form in the book, “Etz Hayim” by the Ari and in the six volumes of the Study of the Ten Sefirot by Baal HaSulam.

In addition, many other Kabbalists devoted large serious texts to the wisdom of Kabbalah, expounding, from a scientific point of view, the system of management of our world, which it is located in. But all these texts are intended only to describe the spiritual world to ourselves intellectually, even though it is not possible to understand it with the intellect and it is not possible to describe it to ourselves visually.

As it is written in section 154 of The Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot, the Kabbalists always wrote and write only for those who are already in attainment, with the feeling and the vision of the upper world. When a person like this reads what is written by others, he imagines what the author wanted to say completely precisely, clearly, and tangibly.

Thus Kabbalists shared their knowledge with each other, but it is understandable only to them because they are feeling the same upper world, the system that manages our world. And those who don’t have that feeling cannot imagine it. They only mechanically juggle different concepts and definitions. But this doesn’t give anything. The concepts remain incomprehensible.

So it is difficult to say what the point of studying them is. But according to what Baal HaSulam wrote in that section 154 of the Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot, there is great meaning to relate to the writings of the Kabbalists in a special way because people who wrote these texts were in attainment of a higher energy, the Upper Light.

As a general rule, the books of Kabbalah were written in Hebrew or Aramaic. Aramaic is related to the Hebrew language, which was in use 3,500 years ago in ancient Babylon along with Hebrew.

If a person in our world doesn’t understand and know what is written, and doesn’t even know the language the book is written in, it makes no difference. Suppose that a person knows only Chinese. If he would sit next to the Kabbalists and listen to what they are say and studying, then through his immense desire to understand and attain, he would begin to awaken and invite the Upper Light upon himself.

A unique illumination will descend upon him, and under its influence the person will gradually begin to feel what the Kabbalists are talking about within himself, even without understanding their language. And in time, he will even begin to understand the language.

When I was studying with Rabash, I received a letter from a person in Russia in a distant labor camp in Siberia. He wrote that suddenly knowledge of the Hebrew language was opened in him and he wanted to travel to Israel. Attached to his letter were attached poems that were written in Hebrew. When I showed them to experts, they were amazed because he had written in a very high level of Hebrew.

How could he know it? He didn’t know either. It was simply that an immense desire awakened in him the manifestation of this language. Rabash once said that through such a desire a person can attain the entire knowledge of the wisdom of Kabbalah.

This is because it is specifically through desire, not knowledge and understanding, that the Upper Light begins to work within a person.

So those who don’t understand the language must be concerned about only one thing: a small desire to attain the world of the Creator. If it constantly develops, they will achieve everything.

Incidentally, that person from Siberia later immigrated to Israel, published his poems and disappeared. This suggests that as long as he was suffering in the labor camp, he had a desire, but when he immigrated to Israel, and everything was revealed before him, the desire disappeared.
[193378]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 5/8/16

Related Material:
Reading A Kabbalistic Text
The Effect Of Kabbalistic Books
A Kabbalist’s Function

Who Are The Articles By Baal HaSulam For?

laitman_527_04Question: Why did Baal HaSulam write articles that provide a comparative analysis of Kabbalah and philosophy, Kabbalah and psychology, and Kabbalah and science?

Answer: Baal HaSulam lived a hundred years ago when the world had not heard yet about what the wisdom of Kabbalah is. Until that day, Judaism was in a state of stagnation and constantly denied and opposed the wisdom of Kabbalah. He wanted to rouse the sleeping world, especially before the Second World War, before the Holocaust. So in the twenties and thirties of the last century he wrote articles for the people and in 1940 he published the newspaper The Nation.

He planned to produce fifty pamphlets, each one which would include five articles. But he only managed to publish the first journal, which contained the articles, “Matan Torah (The Giving of the Torah),” “The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee),” “Peace in the World,” “The Peace,” and another article. After that, they closed his small publishing house and he said that he would not write any more because the world was not ready yet for this. We can only imagine how much we lost.
[182919]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 2/28/16

Related Material:
A Ladder Upward
What Baal HaSulam Contributed To The Spiritual System
Closing The Chain Of Great Souls

New Life 627 – Yom Kippur: Spiritual Ascent

New Life 627 – Yom Kippur: Spiritual Ascent
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Tal Mandelbaum ben Moshe

What influence does society have on a person complying with the customs of Yom Kippur; what is the essence of the covenant that we must make with the upper force, and about which transgressions must we atone for on this holiday? Yom Kippur has a special power In Israel and it influences everyone. Yom Kippur is an opportunity for introspection, thinking about why am I alive and what the essence of my life is.

Transgressions between a person and other people are basically about a change in human nature, the ego. Your attitude toward your entire environment must be like your attitude toward yourself. A transgression is using your ego to take advantage of others. Transgressions between man and God mean that you don’t relate to all of reality as if it is you.

Yom Kippur” means you need to correct yourself until you connect with all of creation with a single heart.
[166990]
From KabTV’s “New Life 627 – Yom Kippur: Spiritual Ascent,” 9/17/15

icon for podpress Video: Play Now | Download
icon for podpress Audio: Play Now | Download

Daily Kabbalah Lesson – 10.09.16

Preparation for the Lesson

[media 1] [media 2]

Writings of Rabash, “Rungs of the Ladder,” Article 3 

[media 3] [media 4]

The Book of Zohar — Selected Excerpts, Chapter “Yom Kippur (The Day of Atonement),” Item 224

[media 5] [media 6]

Talmud Eser Sefirot, Vol. 6, Part 16, Item 210

[media 7] [media 8]

Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot,” Item 36

[media 9] [media 10]