Question: Should it enter into us as axiom that the Creator is the characteristic of bestowal and love?

Answer: We cannot take this even as a hypothesis let alone an axiom, because with the help of an axiom, we solve precise physical problems.

I must accept and perceive Him specifically as not existing according to my characteristics and feelings. He doesn’t exist for me, because I don’t exist for Him. I don’t even have one characteristic in me that will be like Him so that through this characteristic I would be able to understand, feel, and determine precisely that this is Him.

He is not outside of me, this is a characteristic that is only within me, and so the Creator (Bore) is called, “Bo-Re” (come and see). In the Hebrew language all definitions are very precise because they are derived from the attainment of reality. All of the names are based upon practical actions. So the Creator indicates that when I will come and see, I will find Him.

Coming means gradually attaining the characteristic of bestowal. Then within that I will begin to feel the reality that is the Creator. Only by creating this within me can I determine what the Creator is. But if I don’t discover the characteristic of bestowal and love, this indicates that He doesn’t exist. And this is the relationship.

Question: Must an internal war happen inside of me for this?

Answer: No internal war happens inside of you, rather there is an internal investigation.

For if you have a desire to attain, to see, to determine, to feel, to be filled, with this knowledge, meaning that this need is alive inside of you, then according to the scent, according to your sixth sense, you will understand that there is something here for you, you cannot escape it, you must clarify everything and be infected with this.

But if you don’t have an inner drive like this, then you will only yawn and lie down on the couch again. It could be that you will want to satisfy your curiosity or will try to derive benefit from this: do some magic, experimentation, mysticism, and attract girls through interesting conversation. There were a few people who were with us who were only nourished by curiosity and being filled with knowledge. And they all left; they couldn’t hold on.
[135621]
From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 12/18/13

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Question: With the help of what does a person open and close the faucet so that the Light will flow?

Answer: The faucet is opened with the help of the group. The more I reach equivalence of form with the group, connect to it more, the more power I get, the more of a feeling of connection, and I understand what I must change in myself and how I must accommodate myself to the Creator. The Creator is the power of unity and connection. When He shuts off the faucet for me, He shuts off the power, but demands intelligence from me; He wants me to learn to do this by myself. He will give me the Light, but it is up to me to want to be like Him for His work.

The Creator shuts down my reasons, and it is up to me to activate the connection and not the reasons. The Creator plays with me with the help of plates full of food and I play at having a “personal relationship” with Him, trying to be like Him. He influences my “belly” and I influence Him through my personality, through the Adam (man) in me. I work with the help of the society and He influences my body. And that is how I grow by means of this game. This is exactly what the Creator wants, through His influence on my body he makes me into an Adam.

I stand facing the “Master of the House” and facing the plates of food that He is offering to me on the animate level. But I transform the situation into a personal, human relationship, on the level of Adam, on the level of the Creator. I utilize the Kelim of the desire to receive. That is why this reception is called the “wisdom of Kabbalah,” for with its help I can lift myself to the level of divinity.

I am satisfied on my animate level so that I can elevate my relationship above the deficiency that I feel within my belly. I play a bit with the help of the hunger and the appetite that I feel, try to honor the Creator instead of honoring the plate that He offers me. And in this way I raise myself to the spiritual level.

So when “Bina” refuses to receive, she becomes “Keter,” and after that “Malchut” which receives in order to bestow. And all of this is within one spark of Light that was created as “something from nothing,” a small black point. So everything that is needed for building the image of Adam is found in this world.

Until the end of development we will have a “heaviness of heart” not by means of high states but only in this way. But this will be enough for building all of the levels of the five worlds when faced by all situations.

The group opens the faucet through connection. The more I connect with the friends as “one person with one heart,” the more the faucet opens. And in order to push me to connect, the Creator turns off His faucet. So then I am in a “night,” which I must transform into “day.”

The Creator makes one condition for us; we receive or don’t receive within our desire to receive. Everything else is added through the greatness of the Creator that we must attain through the greatness of the group.

The Creator says that His suitcase that He lets us carry is very light. This means that there is no significance to physical pleasures and we build the entire spiritual ladder above them. Everything that is required to begin climbing the rungs of the ladder that is placed in front of us is in the group. And the situations that seem like darkness to us are opportunities, a call to begin to ascend. This is as it is with a child whom they stand on his feet so that he will begin to walk by himself.
[135625]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/21/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Question: What depends upon us?

Answer: Only the building of the right deficiency depends on us; whereas the Upper Light is found at absolute rest. Only to the degree of the power of the deficiency and its components is it possible to see the Light according to its intensity and quality.

According to how many discernments there are within the deficiency, we will see the simple Light, the Light of Nefesh—that is found in rest (Nefisha), without movement—or the Light of Ruach (wind) that already moves and is found in motion. After that, we discover the Ohr Neshama that already shows us the source that the Light comes from. We begin to see in it the desire of the Upper One that is ascribed to us.

After that, comes the Light of Haya that shows us how, with our strong, complex, and versatile desire, we also can enter into contact with the Upper Light and begin to work together with it.

Then comes the last Light, the Light of Yechida, when everything is united through mutual bestowal.

Question: What is the difference between the intensity of the Light and the quality of the Light?

Answer: Intensity and quality are two components of the intensity of the Light. Similar to this, in electricity, there is a power supply that is determined according to voltage times current. This determines how much you can produce from the power supply, in other words, the ability to operate and perform the required work.

The quantity and quality are connected together. In the Upper Light, there is no difference between quantity and quality. It is only in reference to the receivers. All of the substance of the still is equal in value to one vegetative. It follows that one vegetative is great in quality, in contrast to the entire nature of the still, which is great in quantity.

Question: So, what do we need to ask for?

Answer: We need to ask only for a deficiency. It is good that we now are receiving a deficiency during dissemination. There is nothing more valuable than that. Feeling ourselves obligated to the entire world is the best thing. This is the same deficiency in which we discover all of the reality, all of the phenomena of the Creator.

This deficiency will oblige us to feel how much we require the Creator. Up until today, we didn’t need the Creator, but, today, He has become a necessity for us, like air, and so, not for nothing is it written, “Come to Pharaoh!” for, without Pharaoh, we would not need the Creator.
[135790]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/25/14

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Like A Bundle of Reeds, Why Unity and Mutual Guarantee Are Today’s Call of the Hour, Michael Laitman, Ph.D.

Chapter 4: A Nation on a Mission
The Role of the Jewish People

 Mix ‘n Mingle

And yet, how is the correction to flow unto the nations? If the nation of Israel corrects itself, how will that affect any of the other nations?

When Abraham first discovered the Creator, he described it to whomever would listen, and those who joined him became the first corrected people. Those people then went to Egypt and finally emerged from it in much greater numbers, an entire nation. That nation received the Law of Correction, namely the Torah, and corrected itself. In the First Temple, the Jewish nation achieved its highest level of connection with the Creator, as demonstrated in the previous chapter. From there, the nation began to decline until its people were exiled to Babel. When they returned to the Land of Israel, the majority of the Jewish nation chose to stay in the diaspora and gradual assimilation commenced.

Indeed, this is how the passing on of the message began. When people who were once corrected—who had transcended self-interest and discovered the Creator—mingled with those who had never had such thoughts, those noble ideas began to spread within the host society, and help instigate more humane thoughts in people’s minds. While those were not corrected thoughts deriving from minds that had transcended egotism, the notions of universalism and humanism nevertheless began to take hold in people’s minds.

Indeed, during the Renaissance, several renowned scholars maintained that the Greeks had adopted at least some of their concepts from the Jews, in this case specifically from Kabbalah. Johannes Reuchlin (1455-1522), for example, the political counselor to the Chancellor, wrote in De Arte Cabbalistica (On the Art of Kabbalah): “Nevertheless, his [Pythagoras’] preeminence derived not from the Greeks, but again from the Jews. …He himself was the first to convert the name Kabbalah, unknown to the Greeks, into the Greek name philosophy.”[i]

In 1918, a French pastor, Charles Wagner, was quoted as having written, “None of the resplendent names in history—Egypt, Athens, Rome—can compare in eternal grandeur with Jerusalem. For Israel has given to mankind the category of holiness. Israel alone has known the thirst for social justice, and that inner saintliness which is the source of justice.”[ii]

More recently, Christian historian, Paul Johnson, wrote in A History of the Jews: “The Jewish impact on humanity has been protean. In antiquity they were the great innovators in religion and morals. In the Dark Ages and early medieval Europe they were still an advanced people transmitting scarce knowledge and technology. Gradually they were pushed from the van and fell behind; by the end of the eighteenth century they were seen as a bedraggled and obscurantist rearguard in the march of civilized humanity. But then came an astonishing second burst of creativity. Breaking out of the ghettos, they once more transformed human thinking, this time in the secular sphere. Much of the mental furniture of the modern world too is of Jewish fabrication.”[iii]

Similarly, In The Gifts of the Jews: How a Tribe of Desert Nomads Changed the Way Everyone Thinks and Feels, author Thomas Cahill, former director of religious publishing at Doubleday, describes the Jews’ contribution to the world, which, in his view, began during the exile in Babylon. “The Jews started it all,” he writes, “and by ‘it’ I mean so many of the things we care about, the underlying values that make all of us, Jew and Gentile, believer and aethiest, tick. Without the Jews, we would see the world through different eyes, hear with different ears, even feel with different feelings … We would think with a different mind, interpret all our experiences differently, draw different conclusions from the things that befall us. And we would set a different course for our lives.”[iv]

Interestingly, some renowned Jewish leaders also wrote about the spreading (and spoiling) of Jewish wisdom after the ruin of the First Temple. Rabbi Shmuel Bernstein of Sochatchov, for example, wrote, “The Greeks had the wisdom of philosophy, which originated from the writings of King Solomon that have come to their possession after the ruin of the First Temple. However, they were spoiled by them with subtractions, additions, and substitutions until false views mingled with them. And yet, the wisdom itself is good, but parts of the bad have mingled with it.”[v]

Baal HaSulam wrote similarly in “The Wisdom of Kabbalah and Philosophy”: “Sages of Kabbalah observe philosophic theology and complain that they have stolen the upper shell of their wisdom, which Plato and his Greek predecessors had acquired while studying with the disciples of the prophets in Israel. They have stolen basic elements from the wisdom of Israel and wore a cloak that is not theirs.”[vi]

[i] Johannes Reuchlin, De Arte Cabbalistica (Hagenau, Germany: Tomas Anshelm, March, 1517), 126.

[ii] Source: A Book of Jewish Thoughts, ed. J. H. Hertz (London: Oxford University Press, 1920), 134.

[iii] Paul Johnson, (Christian historian), A History of the Jews (New York: First Perennial Library, 1988), 585-6.

[iv] Thomas Cahill, The Gifts of the Jews: How a Tribe of Desert Nomads Changed the Way Everyone Thinks and Feels (New York: Nan A. Talese/Anchor Books (imprints of Doubleday), 1998), 3.

[v] Rabbi Shmuel Bornstein, Shem MiShmuel [A Name Out of Samuel], Miketz [At the End], TARPA (1921).

[vi] Rav Yehuda Leib HaLevi Ashlag (Baal HaSulam), The Writings of Baal HaSulam, “The Wisdom of Kabbalah and Philosophy” (Ashlag Research Institute: Israel, 2009), 38.

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Workshop

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Shamati #33 “The Lots on Yom Kippurim and with Haman”

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Writings of Baal HaSulam “Introduction to The Book of Zohar“

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Lesson on the Topic: “Preparation for the Convention to Arava”

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Listen to an Audio Version of the Blog
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Opinion (Klaus Schwab, Founder and Executive Chairman, World Economic Forum):

“The post-crisis era is over, and the ‘post-post-crisis world’ is upon us. It is time to adopt a new framework of realistic solutions that promote shared prosperity within the global economy of today and tomorrow.

“In this new era, economic growth will occur more slowly – but potentially more sustainably – than it did before the crisis. And technological change will be its driving force.

“The pace of change has been accelerated by the interconnected nature of today’s world. Technological progress is occurring within a complex and deeply integrated ecosystem, meaning that it simultaneously affects economic structures, governments, security arrangements, and people’s daily lives.

“In order to prepare a country to reap the benefits of rapid, far-reaching change, policymakers must account for the entirety of the ecosystem in which it is taking place, ensuring that government, business, and society all adjust to every shift. In other words, competing in the twenty-first century economy will require relentless adaptation.”

My Comment: The changes will positively manifest in us only if we become like them, i.e., will take care to meet them in an integral society. Otherwise, we will be forced to change to more positive relationships with each other, and we will perceive this enforcement as great suffering.
[154747]

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If our intellect and emotions were arranged a bit differently, then all of the reality that we perceive today would seem completely different. We could pass through walls that seem solid to us…

They would suddenly become airy, and what was airy, on the contrary, would become solid. Properties of matter in nature that are not known to us today would be discovered.

Question: Can you really pass through walls?

Answer: Certainly not. The idea is that a person who studies the wisdom of Kabbalah discovers hidden phenomena in nature and sees a different picture of the world. He begins to live within it in addition to his normal existence in this world. He is found simultaneously in two channels of the perception of reality. It is as if there were two channels on our television. The first channel is what we perceive through our physical senses. And the second channel is what we perceive through our spiritual senses, called Keter, Hochma, Bina, Zeir Anpin, and Malchut.

Similar to the senses that are in our bodies: sight, hearing, smelling, taste, and touch, we also have five kinds of feelings that belong to the soul: Keter, Hochma, Bina, Zeir Anpin, and Malchut.

Question: And what do we see on the second channel?

Answer: On the second channel we see another world in which there is a network of forces that govern our world, that is the one broadcast on the first channel. If we want to discover how this world operates, what moves it, which forces manage it, where its control point is found, from where all the decisions go out, all this is found in the spiritual world. The wisdom of Kabbalah teaches us how to enter into it, in order to truly receive an opportunity to manage our situation, our life. Then we wake up from the dream in which we were living all the time. For after all, we can look at ourselves from the side and understand what kind of a dream we will be found in if we don’t attain the upper world.

Question: If we are asleep and are not seeing the real life, why isn’t there some kind of alarm clock that will wake us up to it, like the alarm clock that wakes us up every morning from sleep?

Answer: There is an awakening like this at the time of death. Death interrupts our dream and we stop dreaming about this life. The world that we see now is the lowest world among all the worlds; there is nothing lower than it. Yet, in spite of it all, it gives us some sense of life, even though it is very limited and misleading. It is possible to clarify and analyze this feeling to see its falsity. With the help of the wisdom of Kabbalah we learn to turn our new senses as if they were all turning in different directions: counterclockwise or clockwise. Thus we create all possible combinations and we can see the forms of other worlds, worlds on different levels of the perception of reality. To do this it is only necessary to learn to manage our nature, our desires.
[154181]
From the Radio Program Israeli 103FM 2/1/15

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“There is none else beside Him” is the main and most important topic in the wisdom of Kabbalah and in the life of a person in general. First of all, it is the foundation for our entire outlook on life and the perception of reality since everything is derived from one force. It is up to us to know how to relate to what He portrays within us, how He has constructed us to feel as if we exist within bodies in an external reality, and how desires and thoughts are awakened in us at every moment so it seems to us that we exist and reality surrounds us.

But all in all this is an imaginary portrayal that doesn’t really exist; it only seems that way to us. Through the right attitude towards reality and ourselves, through everything that we feel within our senses, can we reach a true perception of the higher power. We discover that He exists and He actually determines and molds everything for us.

“There is none else beside Him,” means that everything that I feel comes from this Higher Power, which portrays this picture for me. It is up to me to relate to the entire reality that comes from Him.

I forget this at every moment, and at every moment is a new way to perceive a new reality as if I exist and the environment exists by itself, not derived from any outside source.

At every moment I must concentrate my perception, my inner sight, my inner feeling and thought, that in the end, all of this arises as a result of the influence of the upper force on me. There exists a particular point in me and this force portrays all the rest for me. Within that point I feel myself, and the world in which everything is turning and transforming.

I must say that everything that I feel as a disturbance that diverts me from the right perception comes from the Creator and “There is none else beside Him.” Only He creates this reality and confuses me at every moment. It is up to me to say that all of this is for my own good. Which is to say, all of the disturbances, the confusion, the disappointments, all of the pleasant and unpleasant things, everything that attracts or repels, everything that passes my way, He organizes for me very precisely so that according to all of these disturbances I will direct myself at every moment to the only source that arouses everything within me.

In this war between me and the Creator (who is always confusing me), I begin to relate to the world as if it exists on its own, for the various people who influence me and awaken various impressions in me and also that I am constantly changing myself. In all of this, it is up to me to see only Him.

In this way I clarify all of the Reshimot (remembrances), meaning the entire great performance that they display in front of me and in which I participate. If I persist, clarifying as successfully as possible, I seem to advance. But that is not true; I don’t advance that way.

It is logical that if I relate to the Creator like this, then I am found in a conflict, in opposition to Him; we are found one against the other. And this attitude is incorrect. After all, the Creator organized all of these states for me so that I would be constantly directed towards Him. I will err, I will be confused, and I won’t succeed in remaining directed towards Him and feeling that all of this imaginary reality exists on some screen between Him and me on which He portrays the world for me.

If a person constantly wants to locate the Creator behind this entire picture, he reaches absolute despair because he is unable to hold on to this. This despair is most helpful, targeted from the Creator. After all, the person then begins to feel that he needs help from above, because he is not able to be connected to that source, to that single cause that builds for him the reality around him at every moment. And so he breaks out with a request, with a prayer, with a cry, with resentment that he is constantly yearning to be in connection with the source, with the cause, with the Creator, for this escapes him. A request is formed in him, a correct demand that the Creator help him. It means that he stops the game, the competition against the Creator, whereas the Creator had given the person a perception of the world so that he will feel himself. And the person feels that this is the reality. He relates to it without connection to the cause that constructs it, which is the upper force. The person sees that he is detached from the Creator all the time and is found in a performance, in a picture of an imaginary reality.

If the person’s request approaches being an inner demand again and again, he begins to feel that he is having a dialogue with the Creator about reality, faced by disturbances, which he no longer sees as disturbances but help. Through this he builds himself so that he can understand and feel the Creator. He begins to learn the language, how the Creator is turning towards him through all of this reality and how he attributes all of this reality to the Creator and knows how to answer Him.

And then, from his complaint, his suit against the Creator, he reaches thanks. He begins to understand that this is how the Creator is developing, growing, and educating him. He is teaching him to understand the higher language, which doesn’t come through words or letters but through the surrounding world.

The whole world, all of the person’s feelings about himself and the world, all of his perception becomes a very rich language; for the entire world is showing the person how the Creator relates to him and how the person relates to the Creator in response.

The world becomes a screen on which, through various forms, colors, sounds, through all the distinctions in the perception of the world, the person begins to identify a very unique and hidden code. As a result of this he begins to feel and understand the Creator.

Instead of the claims against the Creator that he has no control over the world and he cannot identify the source, the upper force, the unique cause, he begins to thank the Creator for everything that happens. About this it is said, “The entire world is worthwhile for him.” That is how the person advances.

The question that begins to be clarified is, “Why did the Creator make all of this?” To the degree that the person is ready to thank the Creator, to identify with Him, to be detached from himself, as if he didn’t exist at all, but he is ready to penetrate into the picture that the Creator presents to him and to identify with the upper force, he truly begins to feel by way of this language, which is the whole world, that he is adhered to the Creator and advances together with him by means of those same steps, the changes, the colored forms, the sounds, the feelings, and the thoughts.

The person identifies with the Creator and changes himself so much that he begins to advance together with the Creator with the same movement. And not only does he receive impressions from the Creator, but he tries to react, to adhere to that form, to that world, and to that picture. He doesn’t go after the Creator like a little child, but both of them begin to work with the same form, at the same rate. And then this world disappears.

For the world is a result of the difference between the influence of the Creator on the person and the reaction of the person in regard to that. But if they begin to be alike, to move at the same rate, with every step and with every stride without any difference between the deed that the Creator initiates and the deed that the person finishes, but everything happens together, then the form of the world, the picture of the world, disappears (“Olam” [world] from the word “Halam” [hidden]). Then the person and the Creator connect. This state is called “adhesion.” That is what we must reach.
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From the Convention In France “One For All And All For One,” Day Two 5/10/14, Lesson 2

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