Three questions I received on various spiritual practices:

Question: These days we hear many things about secret societies and their influence in our society – societies like the Knights Templar, Rosicrucians and the Freemasons. What does Kabbalah say about these brotherhoods? Are their teachings in accordance with Kabbalah? Are they a good thing to join? Or are they agents who only follow their ego ?

My Answer: I think of them as childish games. All of the secrecy is just for blowing up their importance.

There is a possibility to influence the Creator and thus to govern the world, and it is available to everyone – to the degree one becomes corrected so as to be good toward everyone.

Question: Is there only one school of Kabbalah or several?

My Answer: There are other groups that study Kabbalah. You can probably find them on the Internet.

Question: I am interested in the issue about the red strings. Some say that they have no relation to Kabbalah. Others say that they protect people from “the evil eye.” I understand that this could be explained as a psychological effect, but I heard that the red strings give one a connection with protective energy (due to being produced in a special ritual setting).

My Answer: They are no more than a psychological effect. Kabbalah forbids this because it is a deceit and distracts a person from the goal for which he and this world were created.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: The Illuminati’s Coming to Get You… NOT!
Laitman.com Post: Practical Kabbalah Has No Use for Red Strings
Kabbalah Today Article –  Kabbalah: User Manual
The Kabbalah Experience: Chapter 7 – “Beliefs, Mysticism and The Supernatural”

Filed under: Q&A - No Comments →

Two questions I received on development through Kabbalah:

Question: It says in a book by Rav Kook that there are two kinds of redemption: redemption that comes in due time (בעיתה – Beito), and redemption that comes in response to a person’s plea (אחישנה – Ahishena). Either way, redemption will come eventually. According to Kabbalah, we have to change from within, and then we’ll attain happiness. And by spreading the wisdom of Kabbalah, we will make everyone happy because they will receive the same Light. But then it would seem that Kabbalah contradicts the notion of the existence of time for correction.

Answer: You’ve mixed it all up! Kabbalah was given to us so that instead of progressing “in due time,” we will speed up time (progress through אחישנה – Ahishena). This means that we can develop without waiting for the suffering to come (without בעיתה- Beito).

Question: What do you mean by the point in the heart? Also, do you mean that fate – or circumstances in our life that might be difficult – push us to this point so we will discover our purpose?

Answer: Suffering and emptiness lead a person to the question about their meaning, cause and purpose. Gradually a person starts feeling that he needs to understand the cause of all that’s happening, and this feeling is a subconscious desire to reveal the Creator. A person then discovers the source of this knowledge (the books, group, and teacher), and reaches the goal.

The point in the heart is the desire to reveal the Creator, and Kabbalah is the method or means to reveal Him. The point in the heart is your soul’s initial desire, and your soul then begins to develop from this point. The point in the heart is similar to a seed: when it’s placed in the environment that’s right for its development (the group, books, and teacher), it begins to develop into a vessel of the soul – a desire in which a person begins to sense the Upper Force, the Creator.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Freedom of Will Lies in Acceleration
Laitman.com Post: The Path of Light Versus the Path of Suffering
Interview with the Future: “The Acceleration of the Reshimot”
The Path of Kabbalah: “The Awakening of the Point in the Heart”

Filed under: Suffering - 1 Comment →

News Report (from Science Daily): New research by University of Illinois psychology professor Jesse Preston and her colleague, Nicholas Epley, of the University of Chicago shows that a person’s unconscious attitudes toward science and God may be fundamentally opposed. Those who were asked to use God as an ultimate explanation for various phenomena displayed a more positive association with God and a much more negative association with science than those directed to list other things that can explain God, the researchers found. … The most obvious implication of the research is that “to be compatible, science and religion need to stick to their own territories, their own explanatory space,” Preston said. “However, religion and science have never been able to do that…”

My Comment: Faith is opposite to science, which is based on reliable facts and does not accept unproven data. A belief in God is a belief in something that others said. With respect to its attitude to facts, Kabbalah is science: a person reveals a new reality and then scientifically (experimentally) researches it. He obtains data and then passes it on to others, who also reveal this reality and research it. The results are compared over the course of millennia – and this is what comprises the science of Kabbalah.

The opposition between Kabbalah and religion has been demonstrated for thousands of years. Religious people hate Kabbalah and desire to replace it with their theories, to confuse people by any means possible by offering them their own fabrications under the name of Kabbalah (whether cameos, blessings, healings, or explanations). It’s clear why Kabbalah makes religious people anxious: it’s because Kabbalah comes to replace religion, to reveal the Creator – which is the subject of the science of Kabbalah by definition. Hence Kabbalah annuls religion, reducing it to mundane social and familial cultural traditions.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: The Foundation of the Wisdom of Kabbalah
Laitman.com Post: What Came First, Religion or Kabbalah?
Laitman.com Post: The Creator Cannot Be Attained Anywhere Besides Kabbalah

Filed under: Religion - No Comments →

Questions I received on Kabbalah’s view of this world:

Question: Would it be fair to say that Kabbalists are the Creator’s agents in this world?

My Answer: This wouldn’t be very modest, but that’s correct!

Question: Does Bnei Baruch plan on creating a virtual society?

My Answer: That is exactly what Bnei Baruch is doing: correcting ourselves and educating the world.

Question: I am Catholic. Do I need to change my religion in order to study Kabbalah?

My Answer: No.

Question: Does wearing the Star of David around your neck carry any significance?

My Answer: None that’s spiritual.

Question: What should be done if a person has cancer, suffers from terrible pains, and wants to commit suicide?

My Answer: They should receive medication.

Question: What is your opinion on self-defense and martial art? Does a person have a right to protect himself against violence? And do nations have the same right – i.e., are there “just wars?”

My Answer: Yes.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Kabbalah for Everybody
Laitman.com Post: The Kabbalistic Meaning of the Star of David, and Why We Should Respect Sports Stadiums
Laitman.com Post: What Do a Healthy Mind and Body Have to Do With Kabbalah?
About Bnei Baruch
Fighting Terror the Right Way

Filed under: Q&A - No Comments →

News Report (from The Telegraph): Elizabeth Taylor and Sophia Loren did their best but according to a leading Egyptologist, they came nowhere near to an accurate portrayal of ancient queen Cleopatra.

Using images from ancient artifacts including a ring dating from Cleopatra’s reign 2,000 years ago, Cambridge University’s Sally Ann Ashton has pieced together an entirely different image that shows her as a mixed race beauty. …the monarch came to power at the tender age of 18… Cleopatra was a temptress who ruined two generals of Rome – Julius Caesar and Mark Antony.

My Comment: I think the men will agree with me when I say that this is a perfect example of our subjective perception of reality. Reshimot (informational genes) constantly change inside us and they determine our desires. This, along with the influence of the society’s Reshimot, determines our likes and dislikes. As a result, even this will seem like a “Cleopatra.”

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: The World Is the Perception Inside Our Desires
Laitman.com Post: History Is the Unraveling of Reshimot Inside Us
The Kabbalah Experience: Chapter 5 – “The Desire for Pleasure: Discovery and Correction”

Filed under: History - 1 Comment →

A question I received: What stages will we have to go through to get to the end of the crisis?

My Answer:
1. Economists and manufacturers believe that apparently, the crisis is necessary in order to “change” our world: to rid us of excess manufacturing facilities, to shift to new technologies and means of production, to raise the consumers’ qualification when it comes to assimilating the newest forms of production and services. This is why the crisis has to go through the stages that it does: restriction of production, optimization of business, implementation of new technologies, elimination of physically and morally outdated products, cautious growth and assimilation of new products.

2. Kabbalah says that the crisis will change our society: every person will assume his objective, rational place in the integral human society. This will happen by virtue of one’s desire to receive what one needs and to give everything that one can. One will enjoy the well-being of the society and the revelation of the Upper Source of fulfillment, the Creator, which is revealed through “love for one’s neighbor.” The path can be long and difficult, one of wars and famine (this is the natural egoistic development), or it can be quick and pleasant, by means of revealing the Creator and His plan, and by coming closer to Him (the Kabbalistic development).

See the article “Freedom of Will” and others.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Baal HaSulam Describes the Cause of Suffering and Crises In the World
Laitman.com Post: Baal HaSulam Describes the Society of the Future
Laitman.com Post: The Possibilities of Our Development – War or a Peaceful Transition

Filed under: Crisis - 1 Comment →

A question I received: Do the thoughts of someone who’s advancing in spirituality influence the world more than the thoughts of someone whose point in the heart hasn’t awakened yet?

My Answer: Our egoistic desires and thoughts (the heart and mind) don’t have any influence on the world, since they are entirely controlled from Above. So why is it written that all of man’s thoughts and desires affect the world? It’s because the world is influenced by the degree of one’s lack of correction, or one’s discrepancy with the Reshimo that surfaces in him. However, the world isn’t affected by one’s personal aspiration.

In other words, when one has uncorrected desires and thoughts, he influences the world with their lack of correction. However, the only conscious and direct influence we can have is through a desire that matches the Reshimo or the direction of our development. In other words, it’s possible only by realizing the Reshimo correctly.

Indeed, everything depends on the force of the screen, the quality of bestowal – only this influences the world. Thought is the most powerful force in the world. And generally speaking, the greater a force is, the more concealed from us it is. When a person rises spiritually, the power of his thoughts increases. Physical forces operate only in our dimension of time, place, and movement, whereas spiritual forces are not limited by space, time, and place. See Baal HaSulam’s article “Thou Hast Hemmed Me In Behind and Before.”

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: The Evil Eye Is Our Own Egoism
Laitman.com Post: The Only Point of Freedom Is Your Reaction to the Creator

Filed under: Spirituality - 3 Comments →

From item 40 of the “Introduction to the Book of Zohar,” by Baal HaSulam:

“And I know that it is completely unaccepted in the eyes of some philosophers. They cannot agree that man, whom they think of as low and worthless, is the center of the magnificent creation. But they are like a worm that is born inside a radish and thinks that the world of the Creator is as bitter and as dark as the radish it was born in. But as soon as the shell of the radish [of one’s egoism] breaks and it peeps out [comes out of the egoism, of the intention, “for his own sake,” and enters bestowal and love for others], it wonders [in awe of the Upper World that it revealed] and says: “I thought the whole world was the size of my radish, but now I see before me a grand, beautiful and wondrous world!”

Filed under: Perception - 1 Comment →

Three questions I received on the future of the world:

Question: You mentioned that the governing of the world must change to that of love your friend as yourself, one man with one heart. Why don’t you and your group start with a working model of such a system to serve as a beacon and inspiration for the rest? It would be easier to start on a smaller scale rather than a big one.

My Answer: Due to the current time and circumstances, we cannot close ourselves off but must devote all our energy to disseminating Kabbalah in the world, as it is the means of preventing the world from falling into the Third World War.

Question: What do you mean when you say that we are now entering Biblical times?

My Answer: I meant that we have to start observing the Biblical principle, “Love thy neighbor as thyself.”

Question: In reference to your post, Unity for the Right Purpose Can Stabilize the Banking System, I hope you are not speaking of a new world order, one government, one bank, one currency, and everyone being monitored with chips implanted in their bodies.

My Answer: All of humanity is an integral (global) organism. Hence, everyone must submit to one law of total interaction on all levels of our activity. This means, as Baal HaSulam writes in the article, “The Last Generation,” that eventually there will be one spiritual government, which will regulate all the activities of the world’s inhabitants.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Baal HaSulam Describes the Conditions of Life in a Globalized World
Laitman.com Post: The Possibilities of Our Development – War or a Peaceful Transition
From Chaos to Harmony: “The Evolution of the Correction Method”
Article: “Love for the Creator and Love for the Created Beings”
Baal HaSulam Article: “Building the Future Society”

Filed under: Unity - No Comments →

News Report: (translated from pravda.com): Excerpts from the article “The Crisis of Desires,” by the Ukranian Deputy Minister of Finance and presidential legal advisor, N. Poludenny: The desire and its satisfaction (pleasure) are the basis of man’s energetic-informational nature. We are woven of desires. Our crises will multiply, evolve and intensify until we realize that we must change our perception of the world. First and foremost this means altering the vector of our desires and acquiring the perception of unity between all people in the global system of our world.

Today everyone is talking about restoring trust – trust in the financial system, in the government, and in each other. People presume that this is a matter of an individual’s psychology or the psychology of the masses. In reality, however, trust is a spiritual category, whose root lies in a global spiritual state called “faith.” Confidence and loyalty are derivatives of this state.

These states are impossible as long as people realize their desires with a “minus” sign. And on the contrary, when a person changes the vector of his desire from “receiving for his own sake” to “giving for others’ sake,” he automatically enters the state of confidence, restoring others’ trust in him, and acquiring faith (at the very least, faith in his own abilities).

My Comment: Bravo! Let’s hope that everyone else will soon recognize the reason for the crisis as well! And when they do, people will begin searching for the means (the strength and the method) to correct our nature – and they will reveal Kabbalah.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: People Are Beginning to Open Their Eyes
Laitman.com Post: In His Holiday Greeting, President-elect Obama Speaks of Unity
Laitman.com Post: Pope Decries Self-Interest In Economic Crisis
Laitman.com Post: Gordon Brown, “Seize This Moment of Change to Create a Truly Global Society”

Filed under: Crisis - 2 Comments →