Discouragement Is More Contagious Than Influenza

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: How does the group help a person see that the Creator manages the whole world?

Answer: We cannot advance if we don’t build a support system so that everyone gets immediate support when he falls. It is forbidden to harm others by giving them a descent. If someone goes around with a sour face, another loses his good mood when he looks at him, and so does a third. Ultimately this bad mood extends to the whole group.

It should become a habit, a custom, to have a smile on one’s face. If not a smile, then at least you should show interest, vigor, and the greatness of the goal. Everyone must act and portray this to others. You cannot show others that you are tired, not externally but mentally, or  that you are drained and have lost energy and faith.

I may be physically sick, but I never show everyone my descents and the disappointments that come until the end of correction. They are not as they are with beginners; rather, the higher the level, the stronger they are. But in no way should one show this.

It is not allowed to have a bad mood or show despondency in a group. The group, which is designed to support each one separately and everyone together, thanks to a good connection, suddenly begins to operate in a completely opposite manner. This is very dangerous and eliminates many previous attainments. We must be very careful about this.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/21/14, Writings of Rabash

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Advancing Towards Regaining Our Sight

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: We hope that you will tell us the secret of the complicated stories in the Torah.

Answer: An oral explanation is not a revelation. Everything is attained only in practice. We were brought up to believe that this would reveal all.

If we live in the same world that the written sources tell us about, then they do reveal something, but only to the extent that we know this world. If they tell us about a world that we don’t know at all and everything in it seems strange, then can the written sources explain anything?

It is merely an explanation that tells us that the upper world surrounds us, like a sphere within a sphere, and we are inside it, and that it constantly manages us in every aspect, each and every one of us and all of us together. I need this information only in order to understand how important it is to start engaging in it and to reveal it.

Today we don’t even understand what is happening in our world, and we feel more and more confused with every day that goes by. If we don’t attain the upper world, its influence on us, the way it operates, and its goal, we will be like blind kittens unable to do anything about our fate and will exist as if in chaotic movement. We will live a meaningless life, lost in oblivion, and will float in the current again in the same initial condition because we have not corrected anything and have done nothing to receive new feelings. We also have not developed any additional senses, and so everything will start anew.

First a person has to see that he is managed by the upper world, a world of strict laws. Living in our corporeal world, we only know some of its laws, but we have no idea what the laws of the upper world are.

If a person understands that he is in a rigid set of physical laws that operate on him, that he can influence them and discover the dual connection to the extent that he perceives and understands these laws and is able to manage them, then it will be a great step forward. People will at least know that they can regain their sight and not flow blindly in the current of life, or to put it more bluntly, not life but death.

Question: So a person should try all this himself?

Answer: That’s not enough. Sufferings are needed. If I understand that something operates on me, but I think, “Let it operate while I wait,” it is like a movie where the outlaw is sentenced to hard labor in order to teach him to work, but he allows the work manager to influence him, saying, “You will influence me while I lay down and rest.” But when he is beaten he cries out, “Oh! Mother!”

It is essential that there must be afflictions, even minor ones. We actually want the minor suffering and the great understanding, since together it will enable us to move forward.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 12/18/13

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A Time When You Will Remember Everything That You Have Heard

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Why does Rabash write to a student who asked him to explain the order of spiritual work that as soon as he would start the work, he would immediately remember and understand all that he had heard from Rabash and Baal HaSulam?

Answer: If a person advances in the right way, he discovers all that is written in the books of Kabbalah by himself. It is as if he doesn’t need these writings, he discovers by himself everything that is written.

The writings are required in order to set yourself in the right direction all the time, to know whom are you going to, towards what, and to examine and update yourself. But in truth, if a person works in a group according to the right method, then a small adjustment is enough for him to discover all the rest.

The matter of forgetting is a unique power from Above; it makes free choice possible for us. If we didn’t forget but gathered and kept everything that we heard or felt like a computer, it would stop us and it would not be possible to do anything.

Forgetting, confusion, concealment, and lack of clarity come to give us a place for building ourselves. Therefore it is written, “Write on your heart,” because everyone must write the entire book of Torah on his desire, meaning to convey it to himself by way of all of these states.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/20/14, Writings of Rabash

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Joy For The Upright Of Heart

Dr. Michael LaitmanPsalm 97: The Lord has reigned, the earth will exult; many islands will rejoice. Cloud and thick darkness are around Him; righteousness and judgment are the foundations of His throne. Fire will go before Him and will burn His enemies all around. His lightnings illuminated the world; the earth saw and quaked…You who love the Lord, hate evil; He watches the souls of His pious ones, He rescues them from the hands of the wicked. A light is sown for the righteous, and for the upright of heart, joy. Rejoice, you righteous, with the Lord, and give thanks to His holy name.

In each and every line we notice how King David reveals the Creator more and unites with Him, feeling an increasingly deeper and more internal connection with the Upper.

This is usually attained by the rule You who love the Lord, hate evil to the extent that a person clarifies his egoistic desires and wants to leave evil and thinking about himself, which is possible only by incorporation and adhesion to the group where the Light that Reforms operates on him and helps him advance.

He begins to love the Creator to the extent that he hates evil, He watches the souls of His pious ones, He rescues them from the hands of the wicked. If a person keeps away from evil, he is guarded from Above. His constant efforts to be in thought, in adhesion, with the Upper Force in a request, awakens the Light that Reforms and he receives correction.

Hatred towards evil helps a person ascend from it. He doesn’t need anything but this feeling of hatred, because the evil, the desire to receive, remains. The evil has to accumulate in order to discover the love, the connection, above it.

A person who understands the basics of the creation correctly doesn’t wait for the evil to disappear and for everything to be rosy and bright. These two forces exist one opposite the other and are equal in their power, while a person between them determines which of them is more important: Is holiness more important than the Klipa (shell) or is the Klipa more important than holiness?

This decision constantly changes, moving like a pointer on a balance scale. Thus a person clarifies this balance each time and establishes his middle line, between the two forces, above them, by including the two.

He justifies the creation by including the good and the evil inside him and justifies both, as it is written: A light is sown for the righteous, and for the upright in heart, joy. Honesty and truth is the middle line, by which he attains joy by delighting the Creator.

It is because he determines that everything that was created by the Creator is only for the benefit of man, if used correctly, and has to be aimed at the benefit of the Creator. Thus he reaches adhesion: Rejoice, you righteous, with the Lord, and give thanks to His holy name.
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From the Preparation for Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/20/14

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Daily Kabbalah Lesson – 05.28.14

Preparation for the Lesson

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“The Book of Zohar” — Selected Excerpts, “On the Night of the Bride,” Item 132

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Writings of Baal HaSulam “Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah,” Item 54

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Writings of Baal HaSulam “The Mutual Guarantee” 

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Audio Version Of The Blog – 05.27.14

Listen to an Audio Version of the Blog
Download: MP3 Audio
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Feelings Deceive – And Direct

Dr. Michael LaitmanOpinion (Sergei Mats, psychologist, filmmaker, lecturer at the Institute of Psychology of Russian University for the Humanities in Moscow): “Do feelings deceive you? – Don’t worry, they have been designed mostly for this. Each of us lives in his own individual surrounding world. This world is filled with personal feelings.

“This reality contains optical illusions, strange noises, little understood sensations and smells, pseudo hallucinations (cinema, computer monitor).

“People absolutely realistically see, hear and feel things that did not and could not exist. You are looking at a white cloth, illuminated by a projector, or a panel, consisting of RGB- triads, and it definitely seems to you that there occur the events that make you laugh and cry.

“Similarly, many experienced psychic phenomena; they actually ‘saw,’ ‘felt, and ‘heard voices”; for them they are all true, ’another reality’ that leaves no reason for doubts.

“Sometimes, someone’s life may depend on the complex psychological nature of human emotions. With what degree of truth can one assert that the witness really saw and heard everything that seemed to him to be seen and heard without doubts?

“It is a strange thing: evolution, which is supposed to bring us closer to the main subject of adaptation – reality, in many cases, in fact, separates the mind from it, encloses him in an individual world, which is not always comfortable, but is always felt. Why does it do this?”

My Comment: Our development proceeds along two lines so that we, (1) as a result of our development, (2) discover its complete inadequacy. It is this frustration that will enable us to (3) realize and accept a whole new way of development, opposite to the first one (1), to development towards unity, in which we will reveal a new sense organ and through it will start our existence in a new, higher world.
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Purification From Sin

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe Torah, “Leviticus” (Tzav), 6:17-6:18: And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, “Speak to Aaron and to his sons, saying, This is the law of the sin-offering: The sin offering shall be slaughtered before the Lord in the place where the burnt offering is slaughtered. It is a  holy of holies.”

Sin is a state of being submerged in the ego. If I am closer to myself than to someone else it is already a sin. Therefore it is usually difficult not to sin.

So we must correct the desire in which I want to enjoy before I delight others. This is called an offering (Korban), which in Hebrew stems from the root “getting closer” (Karov) bringing our desire closer to the attribute of bestowal. An offering is the part of my ego I can sacrifice in order to bestow unto others and to love them.

Our role and the role of humanity is to perceive, to understand, and to feel that the ego is bad, because there is nothing other than that. But we refer to the ego that doesn’t allow us to connect with others and not the personal inclinations and calculations every person has, which have nothing to do with the Torah. The Torah is the gathering of the desires around Mt. Sinai, around the mutual hatred we feel towards one another, that starts from a small thing, from my being closer to myself than to you.

Everything comes down to the revelation in the egoism. The formula is very simple: “I have created an evil inclination, I have created the Torah as a spice,” since the Light in it reforms. It is because the Light of the Torah brings us back to the source, to the Creator, to the attribute of bestowal and love.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 12/10/13

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First Steps In Practical Kabbalah

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Did Baal HaSulam leave us information about all the stages on the way so that it will be possible to create the method on the basis of this information?

Answer: No, Baal HaSulam didn’t leave us with information like this. We need to find the way ourselves. The path seems clear, but how to advance on it from stage to stage is what nobody knows.

The problem is that we have to go out on this path without any guarantee, any knowledge, but only by realizing the need and having no choice. The world pressures us, meaning that the Creator pressures us through the world, and we must bring people to connection so that through it they will attain the equivalence of form with the Creator.

The moment we begin the right search through our connection with friends, we begin to discover the method. This is because it is imperative for us and is expressed in our words, our manner and style, with all of our conditions. No Kabbalist until our day could write anything about this.

The wisdom of Kabbalah is a practical science that was conceived through experience, through experiment. And someone who is not living in our time didn’t know and wouldn’t know even if he were a great Kabbalist. He could talk about general tendencies, about two ways, but he could not write more about our time. That’s why the Kabbalists were deployed in each and every generation, and now we find ourselves in our times.

In the writings of Baal HaSulam, it is possible to find some hints about our time. There is something mentioned in the writings of The Last Generation, but it is impossible to copy blindly from there. One may discover that he is trying to draw into the present reality something that will be realized after many years and which in the meantime, is of little importance.
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From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/21/14, The Book of Zohar

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Chosen To Serve The Creator And The Creatures

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe entire great Kli of the soul was shattered into fragments, and among the fragments are pure Kelim (vessels) that are close to the characteristics of the upper Light. It is very easy for them to be awakened, so when Abraham called to them, they were immediately awakened, got up, and followed him, leaving Babylon.

Chosen To Serve The Creator And The Creatures

This is Israel, which only seems to be the most egoistic part in the world because it has already gone through the path of spiritual development. But essentially, this is a very refined Kli (vessel) and belongs to the Kelim of Galgalta ve Eynaim (GE).

Every remaining part of the collective Kli belongs to the nations of the world, and specifically through their correction, we attain Ohr Hochma (Light of Wisdom). They are the goal of creation, whereas Israel acts only as a help in this realization, in the role of an adaptor, a conduit.

Question: It follows that the Creator chose these refined Kelim as sacrifices?

Answer: On the one hand, we are sacrifices, but on the other hand, Israel is a unique nation that serves all the others. Everything depends on how you accept this honored mission: Do you think and receive your service to the Creator and to the world as a respectable merit or as a punishment?

You came into this world to serve all the nations of the world and through this to serve the Creator. These are the refined Kelim that are awakened first and have the readiness to connect. They have an initial preparation for correction because they have the “merit of the forefathers,” meaning that they have already passed through spiritual states that were latent in them in a concealed form and they can be awakened again.

All this is done to be a light to the nations, so that in them the thought of creation will be realized. The goal is to reach all the heaviest Kelim. They are called “the chosen people” because they have a unique role.

Israel is in the service of the Creator and the creatures, and we are in the middle as a conduit, as a pipe. And it is essential to accept this mission when it is necessary, otherwise you will always be obligated from Above. There is no reason to argue with the program of creation; the more rapidly that Israel understands what must be done, it will be to our benefit and the benefit of others and there will be less suffering.
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From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/19/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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