Through Deception Toward The Truth

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Why did Kabbalists intentionally confuse us by using “earthly” words in their books as if they were talking about our material world?

Answer: It is because only out of confusion do we realize the truth. Without confusion, you will never get to understand it. Kabbalists wrote so many books because we need to arrive at revelation from its oppositeness: from the desire to receive pleasure to the desire to bestow.

There is a huge gap between them. We think that it’s enough to modify “plus” into “minus,” but, in fact, it is not that easy. All our thoughts and desires are interconnected, and we have to go through this entire perplexity. Any “confusion” represents a question that we have to resolve. And to come up with a question means already being half way to revelation or even more.

Therefore, every state that we go through in darkness being weak and helpless is an absolute necessity for us. I have no idea how to reach the truth without going through mistakes and deceitful perceptions that are repulsive to my senses and unclear to my mind. However, I grow because of them. This is the only way that we can combine “plus and minus,” or the Creator’s desire to bestow with the creature’s desire to receive: to go through a system of exile, concealment, and complete bewilderment.

When I look back, I see that each moment of my path is irrevocable. If I get rid of even one instant, nothing will look clear to me any more, and there will be no perfection at the end. We won’t be able to recognize or reveal it.

That is why everything that happens to us is indispensable. It was impossible to write The Zohar any other way. A person cannot progress without making mistakes. We have to become conscious of something that is opposite to the truth.

How do we teach our children? We confuse them and allow them to make mistakes so that they learn from them and won’t make them in real life. This is the difference between advancement through affliction and through the science of Kabbalah.

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A World Of Desires

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe Zohar tells us about the “next world” and “this world,” but do not think that it is talking about our material world. The Zohar does not say even one word about the physical bodies and what we feel in this world. Everything that happens to us is not taken into account at all in the spiritual.

Everything that happens in the desire to receive for one’s own sake on the still, vegetative, and animate levels of nature is not described in Kabbalah because it is not subject to correction. Only the relationships between people need to be corrected to unification with each other and with the Creator. When The Zohar refers to “this world” or seemingly physical actions and people, it is referring to different types of desires in a person.

Kabbalah engages only in correction of desires. The Creator created a desire, and He wishes to bring it into equivalence with Him. Meanwhile, our physical body is merely our perception of this desire’s existence.

The whole still, vegetative, and animate nature of this world is the most external form of the same desire, which is not subject to correction. In our world there is nothing to correct! The greatest Kabbalist and the most common citizen are made of the same flesh. We can perform organ transplants from one to the other. There is nothing sacred or faulty in these bodies; both of them will die.

Everything starts from the spiritual desire where there is impurity, an intention for one’s own sake against the Creator, and sanctity, a desire for bestowal for the Creator’s sake. However, we are only talking about the desire, not the material body.

It is like placing a special filter in front of me, which holds back the matter of this world and leaves only spiritual matter, the desire for bestowal, in the open. We study the science of Kabbalah, meaning study about those desires that must be brought to equivalence with the Creator, and the other desires will vanish.

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Daily Kabbalah Lesson – 09.12.10

Rabash, Shlavei HaSulam, “What is the Difference in the Creator’s Work Between the Collective and the Particular ”
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The Book of Zohar – Selections, Chapter “VaYechi (And Jacob Lived in the Land of Egypt),” Item 245
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Rav Yehuda Ashlag, Talmud Eser Sefirot, Vol. 6, Part 15, Item 85
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Yahrtzeit Rabash — Baal HaSulam, Letter 38
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