The Entire History Is Within Us

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe Zohar, Chapter “VaYechi (And Jacob Lived), Item 24: The third exile is the long exile that we are in, which corresponds to 100 years in Jacob’s life compared to the forty (years) in the exile in Babylon.

We shouldn’t view this story as an historic recounting. There is no such thing as history. The reality we think we live in transpires within us as imaginary pictures; it unfolds inside of our desire (Kli).

All we are supposed to do is to correct the program of our perception. As we do that, we will sense genuine reality through our authentic properties (that are similar to the Creator who makes them).

This is why we have to treat The Zohar’s narrations as an invitation to reveal everything it describes from within, in our sensations and consciousness, and our minds and hearts.

From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/16/10, The Zohar

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Who Will Show Me The Truth?

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: How does a person situated in an isolated capsule of his egoism know what true and false is?

Answer: Now you will understand how greatly the primordial snake helped us, having pushed us to “sin” with the Tree of Knowledge. Specifically, thanks to this revelation of the immense egoistic desire called “the snake” we received an opportunity to ascend from the spiritual degree of an “animal” to that of a “human.”

The difference between the two degrees (the Delta symbol in the drawing) is called “the snake.” If you wish to ascend from one spiritual degree to the next, please go ahead. But you have to work against this snake, against the empty space that he created in you. Yet, if it were not for him, you would have remained an “animal.”

Precisely this force, the force of the egoistic snake in us, cultivates a human in us. All the breaking, sins, and transgressions described in the Torah are useful acts. They are the templates for the evil desires through the correction of which we discover the Creator. An additional desire for ascension is given to us by the “snake,” and its correction comes through the Kabbalah books, the group, the teacher, and dissemination.

From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/17/10, “Introduction to the Book, Panim Meirot uMasbirot

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Kabbalah With A Smile

Dr. Michael LaitmanPeople are starting to make jokes about Kabbalah:

A man sits and weeps. Seeing his grief, a friend asks, “What’s this all about?”
“That’s it, my goose is cooked. A fortune teller said I have one month to live. It’s destiny, she said. Nothing can be done about it.”
“That’s if you do nothing, but if you study Kabbalah, you can control your destiny.”
“And you seriously expect me to believe this baloney?”

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A Guide To The Book Of Zohar: The Group Is The Means For Spiritual Development

Dr. Michael LaitmanExcerpts from my future book, A Guide To The Book Of Zohar

In order to prepare us for spiritual development, the Creator rouses two sensations in us. The first is the emptiness of this world, and the second is the aspiration to attain the source of life, the awakening of the point in the heart.” The point in the heart, like a charge in an electrical field, brings us to a place where we can give it nourishment and fulfillment. This place is the group.

Truly, we can see how people in whom a point in the heart awakens are drawn to each other naturally. It is always the case in human society that people with similar desires draw closer to each other and gather into groups. A group is a place where people realize the connection with their neighbor on a practical level based on new principles of love and unification instead of hatred and isolation.

Therefore, the work in the group is necessary and mandatory in order to reach a revelation of the Creator. It allows a person to truly evaluate his attitude to his neighbor and not to fall into illusions in regard to spirituality or his personal connection with the Creator. After all, the Creator is the quality of love and bestowal that dwells in the corrected connection among us.

Such groups have always been created over the course of human history. By changing their relationships in the group to mutual bestowal and love of people created the necessary conditions for perceiving the Upper, true reality. Reading books in which they wrote about the world they revealed allows us to acquire the enormous experience accumulated by them and to understand how to achieve a new life by the shortest and most effective path.

Such a group is called a group of Kabbalists. Their goal is to unite with each other in the spirit of what is written in the Torah: “As one man with one heart,” “Don’t do unto another what is hated by you,” and “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” Thus, they correct themselves and achieve equivalence to the Creator.

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Become Your Own Creator!

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: What will help us to look at the group and be able to see only the friends’ strengths and not their flaws?

Answer: The group serves as a magnifying lens or glasses, without which it is impossible to see the Creator. I will be able to see Him only if I look through the group. It is my spiritual vessel and the instrument for the revelation of the Creator.

Only love will help here. Love suppresses our ego, and it starts acting in its opposite form: as the desire to feel pleasure being used for the sake of bestowal. Therefore, the attitude of the importance of friends is crucial.

In corporeal life, when a person forms an egoistic goal, he works in one place, gets paid in another, and purchases something in a third place. None of these places are connected. In spirituality, everything is united in one place: The effort, the reward, the goal itself, and the result are all parts of one whole. This is why it is difficult for us to understand spirituality since we are accustomed to the material world where everything is separate.

However, we have to understand that the friend and I, the Creator and I, people who are far and close, small, big, and equal in relation to me, all make up my spiritual Kli within which I reveal everything, even myself! Until this Kli becomes revealed, I will not exist. It will not be me but a total deception, a chunk of egoism that I identify myself with. When we discover what the collective soul or the group implies, then inside it we reveal ourselves and all the rest.

And for now, I have only the point of breaking, restriction, and expansion that exist outside of spirituality and the Creator. We are given a sensation of being outside of the true reality, in some imaginary dream world. While being in this dream, if I manage to build the true reality that includes the society, the Creator, and my authentic self, then I will be able to enter it. In the meantime, I am only imagining my life.

All of this future reality is the group I need to construct. It is I who build my spiritual world, my soul. In fact, it is my soul that I am assembling from this illusory deceptive reality, from this dream state I have been submerged in, in order to make me my own Creator. In doing so, I, the group, and the Creator come together, and we attain absolute oneness and adhesion.

From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/15/10, "Concerning the Importance of Friends"

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Kabbalists on Kabbalists, Part 3

Dr. Michael LaitmanDear Friends, please ask questions about the passages from the great Kabbalists. I promise to answer them. The commentaries in brackets are mine.

Who Is a Kabbalist?

The depths of the Creator’s secrets cannot be understood by the human mind [because it thinks egoistically], but only in accordance with Kabbalah [by correcting oneself from egoism to bestowal], learned from great people [teachers] whose hearts have been penetrated [filled] with the Creator’s Light [and who can therefore teach others how to attain it].
– Rav Kook, Orot Kodesh, 1, 101

Only the true righteous [those who have attained the Creator’s quality of bestowal, justify Him, and are therefore called righteous] are capable of understanding [attaining in the quality of bestowal, the Light of Hassadim] the purpose of the world to come [the Light of knowledge, the Light of Hochma].
– Rabbi Nahman of Breslav, Likutey Moaran, Talk 18

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Daily Kabbalah Lesson – 08.20.10

Lesson on “Ascents and Descents”
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Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah” Item 79
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Kabbalah for the Student, “Spiritual Expressions”
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