A New Book About Kabbalah In Finnish
Posted on January 22nd, 2012
My new book about Kabbalah is being published in Finland. It’s the translation of Kabbalah Revealed from English.
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My new book about Kabbalah is being published in Finland. It’s the translation of Kabbalah Revealed from English.
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Baal Hasualm, “The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee)” (abridged version): The Lord hath spoken “Now therefore, if ye will hearken unto My voice indeed, and keep My covenant, then ye shall be Mine own treasure from among all peoples; and ye shall be unto Me a kingdom of priests, and a holy nation.” And all the people answered together, and said: “All that, we will do.” These words do not seem to fit their role, because common sense dictates that if one offers one’s friend to do some work, and he wants him to agree, he should give him an example of the nature of that work and its reward. Only then can the receiver examine it, whether to decline or to accept.”
When we begin to work with the vessels, they are not round yet, because they are divided into three parts: head, internality, and end. As a whole, our reality is in the form of a pyramid that is made of five layers of coarseness: root, one, two, three, and four. This is all of reality.
The point in the heart (*) awakens in the purer vessels and they can fulfill the correction on the levels of root, one, and two. Together they make up the part called “Galgalta ve Eynaim,” (GE), or “Israel” which comes from the Hebrew words “Yasher Kel” meaning “straight to the Creator.” By their nature, they are the vessels of bestowal.
Of course, the lighter vessels of Israel are the first that awaken to correction. The correction itself is performed by the upper Light, which influence the points in their hearts so that they awaken. In these vessels there is the level of the forefathers that don’t need any preparation, and there is also the level of the sons who already have to work in a group or as a people, to go through the heaviness of the heart or to discover the “Egyptian bondage” in order to unite and to make a covenant among them around Mt. Sinai, and then to rise to the levels of the first and second temples.
And so the vessel of Galgalta ve Eynaim reaches its end of correction Gmar Tikkun, and then it is shattered and falls into the vessels of receiving, to a state of exile. Then there is the mixture, the mutual incorporation of the vessels.
At the end of this process, after 2000 years, comes the year 1995, the point from which the clarification and the correction begin.
It is said: “And you shall keep My covenant and ye shall be mine own treasure from among all peoples.” This means that the vessels of GE will have to correct themselves after the 2000 years of mixing. “A kingdom of priests” means that everyone works in bestowal and a “holy nation” is the nation that works for the world. Thus they serve the Creator and the other people and they don’t belong to themselves at all.
They have a choice only in the middle third of Tifferet, in which they come to the decision to devote the upper part to the Creator and to devote the lower part to serving the other nations so that they will also be corrected for the sake of the Creator.
The people of Israel agreed to that when they took upon themselves the correction of all the desires, in mutual guarantee and in unity. It is the desires that are revealed against unity, against the covenant, against mutual guarantee, that belong to the correction.
On the other hand, all the desires that do not belong to the connection, as “high” as they may be, are called “beastly” because they belong to our beastly body. In our world there are the levels of the inanimate, vegetative, and animate, while on the level of speaking, we are all connected to each other. This is why only the desires that yearn for connection or are against it belong to it.
Therefore, the desires on the levels of the inanimate, vegetative, and animate belong to this world and we don’t see them as part of the correction. For example, if you wish to eat ten meals a day, you don’t have to overcome this desire in order to reach the spiritual goal. Just focus on the desires that are aimed at bestowal upon others or those that are against bestowal upon others. They are the only spiritual desires, and only they are called Adam (Man).
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Question: Why don’t we appreciate the path we follow? Why don’t we receive pleasure at every moment? Even if it isn’t easy, we’re still in a group, we’re together, and this in itself is happiness.
Answer: Actually, there are two sides to the coin. If you come here for the meals and the friendly atmosphere, then things will end here. Your ego won’t let you be attracted to something else. On the other hand, if you feel bad here, your ego won’t let you come here and instead of coming to the lesson, you’ll stay in bed.
So we need both things, both the joy and the frustration. After all there are many people here who have the left line, meaning who are critical. They ask themselves: What can I really get out of life? I don’t want to be just a Hasid. I want to advance. Hasids on any level are happy with what they have and don’t want anything more. But if I don’t want anything, how will I advance? How will I acquire an additional deficiency?
This is exactly what Abraham asked the Creator: “How shall I know that I will inherit it?” In other words: How will I want spiritual ascent? Abraham’s attribute is Hassidim, the Sefira of Hesed, and so he worried about feeling the deficiency to ascend to heights that seem unattainable.
The Creator answered him: “Know of a surety that your seed will be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and they shall afflict them four hundred years….” But what sufferings are we talking about here? About the sufferings you go through by the “Torah and the Mitzvot,” by the Light. These aren’t just bad feelings that you have. “The Egyptian exile” isn’t a synonym for unemployment, lack of money, or health problems. The Egyptian exile is the feeling of deficiency that comes from the posterior of the Light, when you feel that you lack spirituality, love, and adhesion. These are the kind of sufferings we have to reach, and hard work is required here. [Read more →]
Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot“: However, when troubles and torments accumulate to a great extent, it causes a double concealment, which the books name “concealment within concealment.” It means that even His posterior is unseen.
A person is a desire to receive. If he finds the power to ascend above his egoism, he becomes equivalent to the Creator and then according to the extent of the equivalence of form, the Creator is revealed to him as the good and the benevolent, as the one who bestows. This is because a person who ascends above his desire also becomes good and benevolent. First His Providence is revealed to him based on reward and punishment and later it is revealed to him as the eternal Providence.
But if a person cannot keep himself above the egoistic desire in equivalence to the Creator, if he doesn’t have a strong enough Masach (screen), he cannot cope with the pleasure that appears before him, and it immediately turns into darkness for him. This is how a person feels the concealment. It isn’t emptiness, and it isn’t lack of knowledge, but rather a feeling of something that is hidden: There is someone out there, and I can distinguish it from my own corrupted qualities. After all, they are opposite to Him, and this is why I feel that He is concealed.
So the concealment is a kind of revelation. It is divided into two parts: double concealment and single concealment, but in any case it isn’t total detachment, like in our case. Here everything depends on the Masach, on my persistence in trying to keep myself above my egoistic desire to resist pleasures from the bestowal, and to relate not to the pleasures of bestowal but to the attribute of bestowal. I have to relate to the source, to the Creator, not because I am fulfilled by Him but because of His quality.
But if there are states with which I cannot cope, I enter concealment and this brings me great suffering. Yet these are spiritual sufferings. After all, the concealment refers to spiritual perception. This doesn’t refer to our “unconscious” world with its “beastly” needs, but rather spiritual sufferings when I cannot please the Creator. Great voids appear in me which cause me great pain and suffering, but I know from what and and why I suffer. [Read more →]
Nature demands equivalence of form from us, balance. Nature is round” and we must build human society in the same round form as well. It will bring benefit to everyone and will lead us to a good state that is comfortable and balanced in all areas.
If we are united, nature will cooperate with us in everything: education, culture, every day life, home life and family, ecology, our relation to nature and its response to us, and in general in all of our activities. Only by correctly uniting integrally will we be rescued from nature’s disasters in the first stage, and then later, be successful in the second stage when completely new perspectives will open before us.
In this way we will, at least, escape the general, global crisis that we are experiencing today. This crisis was created as a result of our oppositeness to nature, which is an integral system. And this was revealed only in the last one hundred years.
Until then, there wasn’t a global crisis: humanity was developing and prospering. Only in this last stage, we see that nature, as it were, envelops us from all directions. In other words, nature shows itself as an integral network and we are not able to demonstrate this same unity. In this way, humanity is being revealed as opposed to nature, opposite from nature. And we feel our oppositeness as a crisis. This is exactly the problem.
Accordingly, the solution is to attain balance with nature. Our program of integral education is intended precisely for this. After all, in any event, nature will win. It is clear that in comparison to it we are weak, small, and nothing. We see this from the disintegrating of all of our systems that we no longer can cope with, for example, rising unemployment in the Western world.
Question: We can imagine the unemployed person who knows that it is unlikely that he will find a new job because there are many like him. No one prepared him for this kind of situation and he is apparently disappointed with life. In addition to this he doesn’t know what to do with all his free time because no one ever taught him this.
Answer: Actually the so-called free time is the most productive hours, during which he creates a man of himself.
Let’s begin with all of humanity sitting at the desk to learn. Man doesn’t know where to place himself. He is used to working according to the schedule of a working day. So everything will stay that way. We will arrange the order of day and we will commit to implementing it. It is only that now we are speaking about introductory courses whose length are a few hours a day. In this way, we don’t disrupt the established framework and don’t try to change the model that the person is used to. No, we only tell the person that he is receiving a “stipend” or “allowance” (not unemployment compensation), and in parallel to this, he works part-time or doesn’t work at all if his main work is the study.
We must pass a course like this. How long will it take—a few months or years? It doesn’t matter. The most important thing is that from now on, it will be our main task and it has to be treated as a job in every respect. Man learned to behave according to a certain framework, and so he now also needs to come to learn, similar to elderly people who happily go to various courses at the university. In this atmosphere, a person feels that he is being renewed, like in childhood.
Today we can talk about this without hesitation. Until recently the media didn’t take the crisis seriously, and two years ago they even announced that it had ended. And today there is no shortage of disaster forecasts. Thus if we talk about retraining courses, of a continuing education program, then it will be accepted.
Then everyone is accepted to this “university,” with all its familiar characteristics, including examinations. People will be busy during the day, obligations are imposed on them, and they have nowhere to run to since success depends on the study. In this way we need to raise the people.
By the way, the curriculum of the integral education program will include general education subject: history, geography, household financial management and others, and the most important psychology, the science of man.
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From “Lessons About a New World” #1, 12/27/11
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“Introduction to the Study of Ten Sefirot,” Item 50, Lesson 26
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