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Spiritual Sine Wave

Laitman_041.01Baal HaSulam in his letters and articles explains the states of ascents and descents in spirituality, which are expected.

While working in this world, we practically do not think that there should be an alternation between successful and not successful states. We always strive forward.

But in the spiritual world, it is not so. When we really seriously enter the spiritual process, we start to comprehend that we should take into account the ascents and descents. Moreover, these states alternate, and in fact, the descents are no less important than the ascents so we should relate to them with absolute seriousness and preferably the same way as to the ascents.

Baal HaSulam writes in “Letter 25” that a descent that is intended for the following ascent, is considered an ascent, not a descent. This is really so.

The fact is that on the way to the goal of creation, there is a growth of egoism (blue line on the drawing) above which we build the altruistic part (red line). Afterward, egoism is added and we cover it with altruism again. That is how we ascend: ascent – descent, ascent – descent. There is nowhere to run from this.

Therefore, we need to relate to descents equally as to ascents. In the beginning, the ego is growing in us, and then above it, we grow a spiritual ascent—anti-egoism and cover ego with the quality opposite to it.

So the descents – ascents happen according to phases: 1 – 2, then 3 – 4, etc. Therefore, the ascent is impossible without a descent.

It is also possible to depict this as a sine wave: ascent – descent, ascent – descent. The greater the descent, the greater the corresponding ascent. That is how they are tied together: 1 – 2, 1 – 2.

In spiritual work, everything starts from a descent, from the night, from the darkness. As it is said in the Bible: “And there was evening, and there was morning— one day.”
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 3/31/19

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Descent – Ascent
When Your Ups And Downs End
A Smooth Path Without Any Ups And Downs

My Thoughts On Twitter 8/25/19

Dr Michael Laitman Twitter

Clinging to the Creator is an action that is similar to attaching a load to the ceiling. The glue has to be strong enough to keep the load attached to the ceiling, not letting it fall.
#wisdomofkabbalah #wisdom

– How do I check the measure of my devotion to the Creator?
– It is precisely according to an example: I check the strength of the glue (the strength of my adhesion to the Creator), according to the weight of the load (disturbances that I receive every second) that I want to attach to the ceiling.
#wisdomofkabbalah #Wisdom

All thoughts in our minds are sent by the Creator, they don’t come on their own out of nowhere. The Creator sends them and they control us.
The way He sends rain to the ground, that can’t feel who sent the rain. Neither can a person feel whom the thoughts come from.
#quotes
From Twitter, 8/25/19

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My Thoughts On Twitter 8/23/19
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Mumbai Jewish Community

Dr. Michael LaitmanFrom My Facebook Page Michael Laitman 8/25/19

On my second day in India, I met with over a hundred members of the Mumbai Jewish community. The meeting was held at the Elijah Synagogue, located in the city center, in a magnificent building, turquoise-painted on the outside and white on the inside. We talked about the state of the Jews in the world, and their unique role, the vital need to shine light on humanity’s development in our fragile time.

Humanity is like a teenage boy who was used to being taken care of by his parents for a long time, and is now searching for himself and does not know what to do next. And this is where the role of the Jewish people comes into play: to provide guidance, direction, care and education for the entire world. And where will the Jews have the brains and methodology to do it? From the authentic sources of the wisdom of Kabbalah.

And the essence of the method is connection, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” the great rule of the Torah. Since we lack nothing besides a positively working connection between people. On the basis of this idea, the people of Israel came together in ancient Babylon, following Abraham the patriarch. After the ascents and descents throughout the ages, came the holy Ari in the sixteenth century, who declared that from now on it is imperative for the Jewish people to spread the method of human connection to all.

Some members of the Jewish community understood me more, and some less, like everywhere else in the world. But every ear that listens and every heart that understands take us one step forward on the road to redemption.

India Intro Lectures

Dr. Michael LaitmanFrom My Facebook Page Michael Laitman 8/25/19

Pushkar is a picturesque market town, a magical oasis located in the state of Rajasthan, India. While I was staying on the south side of the subcontinent, some of my students invited people in the area to an introductory lecture on the fundamentals of Kabbalah.

As a result, two introductory lectures were took place—one in Hebrew to Israeli backpackers, and another one in English for tourists from around the world. Both lectures were conducted in the calming atmosphere that is characteristic of India. And so, tourists sat in a circle alongside curious locals, as they were all listening to the simple message of the wisdom of Kabbalah—uniting the hearts as one.

Naturally, everyone understood it differently. However, everyone agreed that we were all one soul. Thank you to everyone who participated, and you can always continue studying online with the click of a button.

Our online KabU course >>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Meeting With Radhanth Swami

Dr. Michael LaitmanFrom My Facebook Page Michael Laitman 8/25/19

Richard Slavin, an American Jew who was born in the suburbs of Chicago, traveled in his youth for a short vacation in Europe and ended his journey in the Himalayas. From a young seeker, he became a hermit in an ashram, an urban American became a famous guru leading a large devotional community, Richard Slavin became Radhanth Swami.

I was happy to meet him and discover that we are almost the same age, we both come from families who fled the former Soviet Union because of anti-Semitic persecution, and we both reached our destination in the early 1970s: he to India and I to Israel.

I innocently asked him what the Hindu religion was, and he replied that “there are many interpretations, and if you translate from the ancient Indian Sanskrit language, it is a belief in one God, one higher truth, the Father and Mother of all beings and creatures. Although there are many powerful entities, many expressions of the same higher force, in the end we worship a single force,” he said.

“The ultimate goal of life is to live in harmony with this law of nature, this Godly law, and love it,” Swami shares with me the wisdom of devotion, which he teaches to the masses. “When we love God we are like watering the root of the tree, and when we water the tree, the water spreads to all parts of the tree: to the branches, to the flowers, to the fruits. When we awaken love within us, compassion spreads in all created beings.”

I agreed with his ideas, as this is what the wisdom of Kabbalah teaches us: that there is one, unique and unified force, a good and benevolent force and there is none else besides him. This is the approach I teach hundreds of thousands of my students every day around the world. Therefore, I agreed with him even more when he talked about the ego as the main reason preventing a person from discovering the single force.

“Our brain is like a mirror,” says Radhanth Swami; “When you look at the mirror you want to see yourself, but if the mirror is covered in dust and dirt then only they appear to us. The dust and dirt are our selfishness—the self-love, anger, jealousy, greed and arrogance that lead to mistrust between people, dishonesty, cruelty. And when we all want to be in control and enjoy ourselves, we are in conflict. Therefore, only when we realize that the Creator is in control, and that the real pleasure comes from service and giving to the Creator, to the ‘Creator’s children,’ only then can there be peace.”

The essential question I had for the guru was how to attain the single, upper force? How do you rise above the ego? And here, although Swami and I speak the same words and seem to agree on the same principles, our path is different, as is the level of spiritual attainment. Swami sees meditation, yoga, and the use of mantras as a way of purification. He sees various moral practices as a way of life for serving others, a way to clear the mirror in one’s mind.

The purification of the ego—as was common among the Kabbalists thousands of years ago, and expressed in Masechet Avot (6, 4): “Bread with salt you shall eat, water in small measure you shall drink, and upon the ground you shall sleep; live a life of deprivation…”—no longer works in our thick, coarse generation. Therefore, some three thousand years ago, the sages made spiritual corrections and determined that the ego should not be eradicated, but transcended. How? With the help of the “light that reforms”—the positive force that exists in nature and emerges when there is a desire for mutual connection, as taught by the wisdom of Kabbalah.

The meeting was purely friendly and symbolic, so there was no attempt to deeply scrutinize and compare our methods. Swami is a close soul and I felt how the Jew in him speaks through his throat. He is an interesting, eloquent, and simple man with a rolling laugh.

I thank you Swami for the warm welcome, the respect you demonstrated to us, and for escorting us through the city streets, an act that we later discovered you don’t typically do and have never done in the past, but that is what happens when, for a moment, we feel like family.

Radhanath Swami

India Under The Fog

Dr. Michael LaitmanFrom My Facebook Page Michael Laitman 8/25/19

India under the fog. Likewise, humanity is groping for its way forward in a fog, expecting the moment when the cloud that hides everything will dissolve. Then, it would clearly see the universal law of nature: the law of love and interconnection among all human beings.

Evolution Of Desires, Part 12

laitman_546.02What does Kabbalah lead us to?

Bluntly speaking, everyone’s nature is to use the life of all creatures in the world for his own benefit. Everything that the person gives to his neighbor is only done forcedly, under compulsion. (Baal HaSulam, “Peace in the World”)

Question: Baal HaSulam writes that each uses the other in different ways. Only about 10% of people have an altruistic orientation. But still, as the Baal HaSulam emphasizes, they are altruistic selfishly, for their own sake.

What does Kabbalah want to lead us to?

Answer: First of all, Kabbalah teaches us what our nature is: we are absolute egoists at all levels. But we do not need to correct ourselves at the inanimate, animate, and vegetative levels because we are unable to do this.

We need to correct ourselves only at the human level, that is, in society. We must create a society in which we will be harmoniously connected with each other, replace each other, support each other.

Only in a network of connection between each other, in the right communication between us, can we rise above egoism. And then all other levels of egoism—inanimate, vegetative, animal—will also join the human level.
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From KabTV’s “Basics of Kabbalah,” 12/3/18

Related Material:
Evolution Of Desires, Part 11
Evolution Of Desires, Part 10
Evolution Of Desires, Part 9

Daily Kabbalah Lesson – 8/25/19

Lesson Preparation

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Lesson on the Topic “There is None Else Besides Him”

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Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah,” Item  20

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