Entries in the 'RABASH' Category

Closing The Chain Of Great Souls

Dr. Michael LaitmanSo many people all over the world are truly anxious and totally helpless. They can’t find any justification for their suffering, and they don’t know what to do, how to make a living tomorrow or in the near future. Some are worried about what will happen to their billions, and others don’t know how they to survive when they run out of their last few pennies.

Each one suffers differently, but no one knows how to carry on. We, on the other hand, have suddenly received such a gift from Above that enables us to see the world differently. This is all thanks to the revelations of Baal HaSulam that came to us through his soul, as well as Rabash who was a transitional adaptor between us and Baal HaSulam.

Baal HaSulam has passed on to us Light from the world of Infinity through his perfect soul that attained its final correction. But he asked to be lowered because otherwise, he wouldn’t have been able to come into contact with people. Only after he was lowered by many degrees, was he able to write The Study of Ten Sefirot and the Sulam commentary to The Book of Zohar. We don’t understand the level he was on before that, the enormous height from which he couldn’t even tell us anything in words.

This was the level of GAR of the world of Atzilut and above, where there is the Light not clothed in the vessels. From there he couldn’t approach people and be heard, so he asked to be lowered. In fact, he fulfilled the mission the Creator had appointed him for, knowing that he would ask for and perform it.

We are on the intermediate degree between Rabash and Baal HaSulam and humanity. On one hand, we have to rise in order to understand what Baal HaSulam said. On the other, we have to descend to people’s level and understand what they need from us and how they will be able to accept our message. We have to attain these two poles, both above and below.

Baal HaSulam and Rabash spoke from above. We are below, under the Parsa, so that we will have the opportunity to touch and to awaken the world and then together with all of humanity ascend through the Machsom (the barrier) and become included into the upper Malchut. This is our mission.

Let’s hope we will manage to realize what Baal HaSulam, Rabash, and all the Kabbalists that preceded them didn’t. They only prepared themselves for it. We draw their teaching, their Light and actually realize it in practice.

Let us hope that we will be worthy and will be able to fulfill what Baal HaSulam wrote about. There is no other group that is following his path and is ready to fulfill his method. This is why we call ourselves “Bnei Baruch” (the sons of Baruch Ashlag), and we can say that Baal HaSulam, this great soul, is living among us, and we are bringing it to realization.
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From a talk at the meal devoted to Baal HaSulam’s memorial day, 10/8/11

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Baal HaSulam’s Memorial Day

Dr. Michael LaitmanBaal HaSulam, Letter #39: “… Know that since the times of the Ari and to this day there was no one who could understand the Ari’s method to its very roots. And behold, by the upper will I have merited the reincarnation of the Ari’s soul, and it wasn’t for my good deeds, but by the desire of the upper one.

“It is concealed even from myself why I was chosen for this wondrous soul, which not one man has merited since the time of the Ari’s death and to this day. But I cannot say any more about this because it is not my custom to talk about miraculous secrets….”

Baal HaSulam did not reveal the upper secrets not because it was against his rules, but because we simply don’t have that possibility…. Nevertheless, from his compositions we see how special this person was, that he was sent to us from the heavens. This soul was destined to unite us within the upper system. I don’t even know what to call him. This is not a “person” and not a human force. It’s not the kind of soul that might be present among us and that we might be able to become similar to or come closer to.

I remember this from the time when I was next to my teacher Rabash during his life in this world. You are next to a physical body: You take it to the sauna, to the sea, take a walk next to it, take care of it in a hospital after surgery, but all of that is just a body. Yet the soul that is inside is something completely separate from you and you cannot touch it in any way no matter what you do. It is in a different dimension and there is no connection between it and the body.

If I felt this way next to Rabash, then it’s impossible to even imagine how he felt being next to his great father, the man who wrote Talmud Eser Sefirot, the Commentary to the Book of Zohar, and who was able to explain any word written in the holy books in the language of hints or legends through the language of spiritual attainment. This simply wasn’t a person!

We have been granted a great honor in that we can be at least slightly related to his revelations and to the extent of our limited understanding, uncorrected desires, and lack of spiritual attainment, to nevertheless start realizing his method. We have to be infinitely grateful for that and be aware that a special privilege has been given to us which we do not even understand yet—a connection with such a great soul.

It’s like a baby who is born a prince by inheritance and who does not seem to deserve such an honor by any measure. That is how we have now been born and have merited to belong to the special souls who were chosen out of all humanity, who at least know what is happening to them, who understand the cause and the effects, the entire process, and everything taking place in the world. And thanks to them, we do not remain miserable blind men.
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From a talk at the meal devoted to Baal HaSulam’s memorial day, 10/8/11

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To The Memory Of My Teacher

Dr. Michael LaitmanToday marks 20 years since the day of my Teacher’s passing. Baruch Shalom Halevi Ashlag was the last great Kabbalist in the lineage of sages from Adam until our days: Adam – Abraham – Moses – Rashbi – AriBaal HaSulamRabash, and many thousands between them.

Rabash showed great bravery by transmitting the Kabbalistic method to us so that in this generation we would be able to bring it to the whole world. Without his work we would not have this opportunity. I saw how firmly he abided by this principle: The revelation of the science of Kabbalah to the world is above all other calculations.

During the predawn hours we ascended into Jerusalem and visited his burial place. Of course, this place for us is no more than a symbol or custom because our connection with our Teacher is alive and constant. We all hope to become his worthy sons, which is why we named our group “Bnei Baruch”—the sons of Baruch Ashlag.
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From the TV Program “Conversations,” The Day of Rabash’s Memory

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Rabash’s Successors

Dr. Michael LaitmanIt so happened that Baal HaSulam conveyed his entire method to his oldest son, Rabash (Rav Baruch Ashlag) by virtue of the son annulling himself before his father. But it wasn’t easy to carry out this self-nullification because the father did not make any concessions to his son.

Otherwise, Rabash would not have been able to make enough efforts, or to express firmness and decisiveness in attaining the goal. Baal HaSulam carried himself very harshly, but his son was nevertheless able to give up everything and annul himself. However, this was not easy, and that was precisely for the reason that he was Baal HaSulam’s son.

That is why Rabash was able to realize the hopes his father put upon him. There were only singular and outstanding examples of this in history: Abraham, Rashbi, and Baal HaSulam.

Today we are celebrating Rabash’s memorial day—the anniversary of his death, and let us hope that we will merit fulfilling the same conditions and cleaving to his teaching. It’s not an accident that our organization calls itself “Bnei Baruch,” which means the sons of Baruch.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/2/11, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Kabbalists On The Greatness Of Baal HaSulam, Part 4

Dr. Michael LaitmanDear Friends, please ask questions about these passages from the great Kabbalists. The commentaries in brackets are mine.

I am the first interpreter of Kabbalah by root and branch, and cause and consequence. Hence, having understood it, any person can then comprehend any Kabbalistic text himself.
– Baal HaSulam, “The Teaching of the Kabbalah and Its Essence

The very fact of the possibility to create the Sulam (Ladder) commentary to The Zohar is a clear proof that we are already in the days of the Messiah, at the outset of that generation upon which it was said, “for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Creator.”
– Baal HaSulam, “A Speech for the Completion of The Zohar
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A Duty To Learn From An Authentic Sage-Kabbalist

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: How can a person know that his teacher is a real Kabbalist?

Answer: How can you know that he is a true Kabbalist? He cannot show you any specific diploma or perform miraculous acts that would look spiritual to you since how do you know what spirituality is anyway? Hence, you can only listen to your heart and examine whether what you hear resonates with you, connects you to the root of your soul.

I studied in five or six places before I found Rabash. And I used to leave them not because I would find something better; I just saw that there was nothing else to do there, nothing else to learn. And it isn’t because their intent was to deceive me; it’s just that each of them had their own method, ideas, and delusions.

But I was seeking a place where I could study Kabbalah as a science. And when I met Rabash, I immediately saw that his students studied authentic primary sources: The Zohar, the works of the ARI and Baal HaSulam, which are the most fundamental Kabbalistic texts, and that he attached deep meaning to the concepts in a logical form, without external religious acts or meditation.

In other words, he used a strictly scientific approach without shifting to one or the other side. By then, I had already realized that everything else has nothing to do with truth. I had a sense that wherever they talk about some actions related to the corporeal body or fantasies, it doesn’t have anything to do with spirituality.

I had a very clear feeling that here there was some entrance into a more internal world that doesn’t depend on the body or imagination, on all those attributes I have at the moment. It is required that a person reveals a certain internal layer within, and I was searching: How do I do that? And when I came to Rabash and started to study, I saw that that’s exactly about what he was speaking.

Baal HaSulam writes that anyone who wishes to receive spiritual knowledge must find himself a teacher, an authentic sage-Kabbalist who seems to be right for the job. But if he feels that he is in a place which doesn’t suit him, he shouldn’t stop looking. After all, time is running out.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/13/2011, “The Essence of the Wisdom of Kabbalah”

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Spiritual Diagnosis – A Total Breaking

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: If all our work is to find the place of our breaking, what are we lacking then in order to do it?

Answer: You simply don’t want to reveal it! Why should you disclose your envy and hate? It is much easier and safer to remain apathetic.

A person feels that the friends, “the others,” simply don’t seem to exist. In Kabbalah, “the other” is a person whom I feel as being outside of me. I know that everybody is supposed to be within me if my perception of reality is correct, yet I feel them as outsiders in relation to me, someone who is distant and abhorrent. And it frightens me: Do I really hate the parts of my own soul this much?! That is exactly how the force of the breaking feels. I know that it is a lie, and I want to fix my distorted sight!

Try to attempt to see that all the friends are related to you. Even the whole world already sees how round and interconnected it is. But we don’t arrive at this conclusion from the external side due to the lack of choice. This is what the rest of the world does, by getting blows that point at people’s interconnectedness. Our path is internal and in this way, we gradually discover that all of us are one whole and are linked in an integral system.

Knowing all this, I look around and see people who are alien to me. I don’t feel what they are thinking about, what they desire. Moreover, I don’t even care about them; I am unable to keep focusing on them, let alone feel them. Not even one of them!

In other words, I realize that it is a total breaking: I am ill with a horrible disease. In fact, I see that I completely lost my sensitivity, my ability to feel all these parts that must become mine. I am disintegrating like a corpse. After all, death is when the life force leaves the body and it starts turning into dust. I feel as if I am losing my arms and legs. It throws me into a panic.

I can see and feel all of this in the organs of perception (Kelim) that evolve in me thanks to the study of Kabbalah and that in the future will become my properties of love and bestowal. But love starts with our revelation of hate towards the others, and we begin to hate it within ourselves.

And now I am living this hate, my inability to feel the other because I don’t care about him. And even worse than that, I measure my success by their failures. The worse they feel, the better I feel. What a perverted and distorted perception it is, and how blind I am that I think of the others in this way.

Rabash gives an example of a person who suddenly finds out that the child next door who annoyed him so much is in fact his son. It is possible to repair this picture only if you strive to see how everyone in the group is eager to correct this distortion together.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/13/2011, “The Essence of the Wisdom of Kabbalah”

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We Can Find A Common Language With Adam

Dr. Michael LaitmanWhen a language is not connected with its spiritual root, we do not pay heed to its words, the names of the material branches. If a modern day Italian, Greek, or anybody else met a person of the same nationality who lived a thousand years ago, they wouldn’t understand each other. Some languages have changed so much that it’s hard to understand them in the form they existed 200-300 years ago. This is due to the lack of connection between branch and root.

Only Hebrew links branch and root directly, and hence, this language does not change. If Abraham, Adam, Moses, or Rabbi Shimon visited us today, we would all understand each other. In ancient times, the pronunciation was more guttural, which we have lost; the difference between the letters, which today are pronounced almost identically was more expressed, yet the language itself hasn’t changed.

Nevertheless, we have lost some of its words. Rabash used to read Psalms with me, and he occasionally mentioned that he was not familiar with a certain word. That is, their evident branch does not exist in our world; in the spiritual world, their spiritual root is still unclear and blurry, and for this reason, the connection between root and branch has not become revealed yet.

It turns out that we are yet to clarify certain words. For the time being they can only be found in the Psalms of David who embodies the entire general attainment (Malchut). Being dependent on the general correction, Kabbalists do not yet attain these words. There are a multitude of branches and corresponding spiritual roots, but not all of them have become revealed yet.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/10/2011, “The Essence of the Wisdom of Kabbalah”

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Kabbalah Is The Science Of Love

Dr. Michael LaitmanA person comes to Kabbalah after awakening to the need to learn the concealed upper force, the purpose and the reason for his existence, and the meaning of his life. As he goes through stages in his spiritual development, a person reaches a critical point and begins to think about the ways to attain the spiritual world. Previously he used to think that spirituality could be attained with what he has, meaning the five senses, the mind, and the regular perception of reality.

But at a certain stage, one begins to feel that the spiritual world cannot be revealed this way and that to do it, he needs to change himself. That’s when he remembers a famous saying: “I created the evil inclination and the Torah for its correction, because the Light contained in it returns one to the Source.”

Every person envisions the spiritual world in his own way. The wisdom of Kabbalah defines it as the property of love and bestowal where a person comes out of his egoistic properties and begins to reveal the higher reality in the properties of bestowal that are opposite to his.

Kabbalists explain that it is necessary for us to develop the property of bestowal, that is, to perform the correction of the heart (desire). This means that if right now our desire works to receive, we need to change it so as to perceive the desires of others like our own. The entire method consists of correcting our ego, which desires to consume everything, through developing a sense above it, which means to come out of our desire.

By the time I came to study Kabbalah, I already had over twenty years of education. I was a scientist and an entrepreneur, whereas all of the Kabbalists who I happened to study with were simple people. I remember having a conversation with Rabash when he told me that he began his employment as a blacksmith assistant, then was a shoemaker, and at the end of his career he worked at a tax collector’s office. Yet, I was convinced that I would be able to attain more with my mind. It took me time to understand that Kabbalah is a science of feelings and that we need to correct our heart.

The wisdom of Kabbalah explains that the mind awakens in us only to the extent of the heart employing it. The heart wishes to know what it is feeling and why, where feelings come from, and how they can be changed. And then the heart employs the mind.

It is a known fact that our mind works better when we are facing problems and misery. The need that arises develops the mind. Thus, the function of the system called “mind” is to help us fulfill our desire.

The wisdom of Kabbalah is a science of developing the feeling of love. In other words, I need to attain an ability to connect with everyone else’s desires or needs and accept them as my own. My concern for the needs of another as my own is called my love for him. This bears no relation to receiving fulfillment or pleasure from someone else, but on the contrary, my pleasure will come from fulfilling others.

People who start studying Kabbalah acquire new feelings in the heart which enable them to gradually begin to understand that in reality there is infinite fulfillment and pleasure from being able to come out of one’s own self and fulfilling others. This gives a person an incessant and unlimited opportunity which suddenly reveals a new perception of reality, a new horizon to him.

This is because a person who comes out of himself and begins to feel the needs of others instead of his own ceases perceiving himself, and gradually comes to a state when he no longer needs to take care of himself. When we find the property of bestowal, we receive the fulfillment there and acquire the upper world through it, becoming like the Creator.
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From my lecture in “Kabbalah L’Am” Hall on 12/21/10

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The Windows Of Your House

Dr. Michael LaitmanRabash, “Make Them Happy with a Complete Building”: If a person wishes to erect a house for the Creator, he builds a perfect structure, for the Creator is perfect. …And the Creator will give them joy, the Light of faith, so they may complete their work.

Our foundation, the matter we are made of is Malchut, the will to receive pleasure (desire). We have to use it as construction material for everything because we don’t have any other. If we receive power from our egoism, we build “structures” similar to the Tower of Babel or the cities of Pithom and Ramses. The buildings come out tall and beautiful, but in the end, they don’t please us because we find them empty.

That is how humanity has been constructing itself for centuries until today, when in the final stage of humanity’s historical development, we have come to realize that everything we have built doesn’t make us happy any longer. Yes, we have erected so much, but all of it is empty and lacks content and true fulfillment. Surrounded by our creations, we feel more desperate than ever before.

Hence, it turns out that we cannot bring joy to ourselves and our loved ones as we don’t take pleasure in our construction work any longer. Only a perfect house will bring us joy, when our home, our Kli, will be filled with the Light. How do we fill it? How do we illuminate our matter from within?

The house must let the Light illuminate it. We build it from the will to feel pleasure, but it has to be home to sanctity, a Temple. Sanctity is Bina, the Light, bestowal; and the house is the Kli, the vessel. The vessel must be fit for the Light to come to it, meaning that it needs to have the intention to bestow.

How do I accomplish that? To bring light into a house, we cut windows in it. “Windows” are cavities, empty desires. In the walls of our matter, we make holes of desires similar to Bina, bestowal, openness, and the Light can come into us. Hence, walls and windows must match each other precisely so that our house built from the will to receive pleasure would be “equipped” with the intention to bestow. And then, it will be filled with the Light.

If we wish to feel and bring joy while building our house, we must design it so that its form will match the property of Bina. We include the attribute of mercy into judgment, meaning that we make the openings in the walls to let the Light come in through them.

These niches look as flaws to us at first. Rabash gave the following example: A father brings his son to the tailor to get a suit made for him, and the son sees how the tailor starts cutting a roll of expensive fabric with scissors. He feels that the fabric is ruined, but the father explains: “It’s alright; he will make you a suit that will fit well on you.”

In other words, this fabric at the moment is nothing but material that will acquire a shape that will fit you. But the child doesn’t understand. In his opinion, the cuts and the holes in the fabric look like damage. In reality, thanks to this “damage,” we will later give the right shape to it, and the Light will dress in it. Keeping that in mind, we are willing to be patient and even thank the Master for what He is doing!

In our daily work, we discover such new “flaws.” And from them, as from the bricks, we erect a structure, including the walls and the openings for the Light to come through.

When Bina makes a hole in the wall, Malchut feels that the house is damaged. But in truth, it is the opposite approach, a totally new attribute, which isn’t designed to fortify Malchut. Having realized that including mercy into judgment creates equivalence to the Creator in us, we will see the benefit of refusing to hear Malchut’s complaints. When Bina rules over it, all of the house walls can become windows, or acquire the property of Bina.

Such house will be filled with the Light top to bottom. Its material, Malchut, will be purified by Bina’s attribute completely, and there will be no more hollows in it. Without disturbing one another, Malchut and Bina will act as one whole.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/19/10, “Make them Happy with a Complete Building”

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