Question: Is it worthwhile to study The Book of Zohar in Aramaic?

Answer: It is not necessary to study it in Aramaic, Hebrew, or in any other language, because you won’t understand anything anyway.

You must first study the wisdom of Kabbalah itself as a key to the material in the source books, and only after that will you begin to understand what is said in The Book of Zohar, otherwise it will just be the reading of incomprehensible pages that will only lead you to reject it.

Question: Does reading The Book of Zohar in Aramaic awaken some kind of illumination?

Answer: Yes. But I suspect that people “will get lost” when they read it and are liable to think that they have already had contact with the wisdom of Kabbalah and don’t have anything more to search for there. So it is better to begin with a three-month introductory course on the wisdom of Kabbalah.

In the course you will be able to get an idea about the general system of creation, its management, and a person’s purpose within this system. In that way you will know what is happening to you, what needs to happen to you, how you can manage this system, influence it, and what reactions you can get back from it. What this means is that you can be in mutual cooperation with the general system and manage your life.

The wisdom of Kabbalah is a science.
[196205]
From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 10/26/16

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New Life 783 – Going Up To The Torah
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Yael Leshed-Harel

What is the meaning of going up to the Torah, what is the spiritual stage called Bar Mitzvah, and what kind of process is a person beginning to go through when he reaches this stage?

The Torah is the program of all of reality; it explains how the higher power operates on us.

Main points:

• Two forces come from the higher power—right and left, and they are found in everything. A person must balance both of them.
• “And you shall love your friend as yourself is the great general rule of the Torah” (Yerushalmi Nedarim Chapter 9) means that all options and situations will be directed for the benefit of others.
• Spiritually, going up to the Torah means reaching the middle line, the balance between the two forces.
• Going up to the Torah for a Bar Mitzvah indicates the maturation of a boy who is ready to achieve balance.
• There were Kabbalists who achieved balance before the age of 13, but most people don’t achieve balance until the end of their lives.
• To realize the Torah, we must be in a special society that aims toward balance between people.
• We must organize ourselves within a Minyan, a group of ten, a group, and through these connections between us, we discover the good, balancing force. This force connects us, balancing between our ten opposing egoistic forces.
• One cannot read the Torah except in a Minyan because reading the Torah is the discovery of the higher power.
• There is the Torah that explains reality; there is a Torah that operates as the Light that Reforms, and there is the Torah that is the discovery of the Creator.
• The Creator is the origin, the root of everything. All our tendencies in life are directed toward discovering our roots.
• Cohen, Levi, and Israel are practices that symbolize the different intensities of a corrected ego.
• The Holy Ark and the curtain symbolize the stages of intellectual and emotional development on the way toward discovery of the Torah.
•  The cantillation signs: Taamim, Nekudot, Tagin and Otiot, are the four stages of attainment of the higher power.
• A person who organizes his inner desires according to the Torah and everything that is in it, is called a “man of Torah.”

[195674]
From KabTV’s “New Life 783 –  Going Up To The Torah,” 10/25/16

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Preparation for the Lesson

Lesson on the Topic: “Mimaasecha-Hikarnucha,” Part 1

Lesson on the Topic: “Mimaasecha-Hikarnucha,” Part 2

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Question: If my only desire is to receive pleasure egoistically, how can I want to give someone anything? I feel that it is unpleasant, and I don’t receive any pleasure from it.

Answer: The desire to give, to bestow, suddenly emerges in you under the influence of the Upper Light.

Studying the wisdom of Kabbalah systematically awakens and summons the Light that Reforms, which is called the Surrounding Light (Ohr Makif), to a student.

This Light gradually change us; it gives us such a sensation of properties that we suddenly begin to be willing to pass through ourselves and work for the other.

A person suddenly feels these types of attributes. He didn’t even know about them before, and suddenly they are born and develop in him. This happens because this is how the Upper Light works.

We don’t know anything about this. It is like a little child who runs and hops around, shouting, crying, feeling happy, and doing anything his body demands, and thus eventually develops. We are the same.

We simply need to be in this system, and thus we will develop.
[196984]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 8/28/16

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Question: How important is it to divide the pleasure that is received from the Creator into portions? After all, it is no secret that if you spend a lot of time in the sun, you can get burned and not tanned.

Answer: First, we need to prepare our desire for the right contact. Accordingly, we must first reject all pleasure, restricting (Tzimtzum) it and not allowing it to enter into us.

Then we must build a screen (Masach) that will send the pleasure back. Only after that will it become possible to come in contact with it and gradually begin to receive pleasure in measured amounts called Nefesh, Ruach, Neshama, Haya, Yechida, and so forth.

Everything comes gradually. To the degree that we build a resistance within us called a screen, we can discover the pleasure that is found between us. Above us, there is a system that makes it possible for the Upper Light to reach us only in the same amount that a particular protective system exists within us called a Masach.

Question: How do the brain and nerves of a Kabbalist withstand the feeling of pleasure that is millions of times greater than the pleasure of an ordinary person? Is this not reflected mentally?

Answer: I tdoes not affect the mind because a system exists that protects everything and does not allow the person to be harmed by the Upper Light in any way. What is called a Pulsa de Nura (light shock) is just something to “horror story.” So don’t worry, nothing will happen; no one has ever been harmed by the wisdom of Kabbalah. It is only those who hate it who intentionally disseminate rumors like this.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 8/28/16

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Question: What is the point that all the Upper Light stems from?

Answer: A black point is the only thing that was created by the Creator in the infinite Light. It is called a desire.

This point is not the egoism, but only its rudiment, something that is different from the Light. It is a point from which our development begins.

Question: What does the writing of black letters on a white background mean?

Answer: The white background is associated with the Light and the black is our desire. Therefore, when we draw lines, we represent what our desires look like on the background of the white Light, and what distinguishes them from the Creator’s altruistic attributes.
[196798]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 7/17/16

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New Life 782 – Reading The Torah
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Yael Leshed-Harel

What is the inner meaning of what is said in the Torah, what do the weekly portions represent, and why do we begin to read the Torah every year from the beginning?

The Torah is the general law of nature which explains how to behave regarding the higher operating system.

Main points:

• Reality is built in strata, and there is a higher system that manages it with an operating system called Torah.
• Moses was the first to describe it comprehensively and he gave the Torah to the people of Israel. The Torah was written in a coded language.
• The entire Torah talks about how we must be balanced in relation to the forces that act upon us. It explains how a person develops further and further toward complete balance.
• There is the Torah we read every week that is divided into portions and there is the hidden Torah. With the help of the hidden Torah, a person can discover the Creator, the general force that is operating in reality.
• There is an external maintenance of the laws of the Torah and there is its inner maintenance, which is expressed in the correction of man’s relationships to others. A person knows that he is in true balance when he acts for the benefit of others.
• There is an external reading of the Torah and there is an internal reading: the discovery of the Torah each time on a new level.
• Reading the Torah is a discovery of the higher system, making it possible to discover the Creator through it.
• On every spiritual level, a person must reach an attainment of a deeper understanding of what it reveals.
• The seven days are seven forces: Hesed, Gevura, Tifferet, Netzah, Hod, Yesod, and Malchut.
• “And the heavens and earth were finished….” (Genesis 2:1) A balance between the positive force and the negative force brings a person to a state that is called Shabbat.
• The yearly reading of the Torah represents a new level of discovery of the hidden reality until its complete discovery.
• In the final point of balance, we see “from one end of the world to the other,” the full reconciliation between the opposing forces of nature.
• To read the Torah means discovering the program of the world and achieving a whole and eternal state.
  [195671]
  From KabTV’s “New Life 782 – Reading The Torah,” 10/25/16

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Question: What does “Loving by way of the Creator” mean?

Answer: Loving by way of the Creator means that the Upper Light (Surrounding Light) is illuminating my egoism, awakening the characteristic of bestowal in me, and I want to convey this from my egoism to others, to everyone.

In this case, the Upper Light travels through me and fills me according to how much I convey it to others.

If I don’t convey it to others, I don’t receive because then I become a “plug” in the path of the Light. The principle is very simple, by conveying to others, I myself receive. The problem in our world is that we don’t feel that this is possible.

If I study in a group according to the method of the wisdom of Kabbalah, then the Upper Light illuminates me in any state. This Upper Light begins to awaken particular feelings, particular connections, in me. I build a model of the Creator within me, and I begin to feel the whole world according to this model that I build within myself.

I cannot feel the entire universe and all the worlds in general, but I can build this within me. What follows from this is that I feel all of creation. All of this is done under the influence of the Upper Light (Surrounding Light).

We just need to carry out the advice of the Kabbalists. This is very simple: you must be with a group of friends and organize a small community of brothers with them, even if it is just a few people, it doesn’t have to be ten. And you must study according to the Kabbalistic sources. Under these conditions, the Surrounding Light will shine on you. You will not feel it, but you will feel how you are changed. You will begin to feel your connection with the Light, a connection with humanity, through this small group, and ultimately everything will turn out.
[196988]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 8/28/16

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