Audio Version Of The Blog – 4/3/21
Posted on April 3rd, 2021
Listen to an Audio Version of the Blog
Download:MP3 Audio
Listen to an Audio Version of the Blog
Download:MP3 Audio
Question: My friend and I recently spoke about the order in studying the primary sources of the wisdom of Kabbalah and touched upon The Tree of Life. By drawing an analogy with musical notes, we came to a conclusion that Baal HaSulam presents this work as a symphony. At that, he is absolutely certain that The Tree of Life will be read by people well-versed in music, and there will be no secrets for them. And for the people who do not completely understand it, he wrote a simpler musical piece and called it The Study of the Ten Sefirot.
Does this mean that there is a group in Bnei Baruch where there is both: the internal part that knows about “C flat” and an external part?
Answer: We all need to advance together and not divide ourselves into parts, groups, or levels in any way. We all make up one homogeneous structure.
We will study what we study and you will begin to feel the material. You are right about the symphony where we all integrate in the general common tune, just like a musical instrument that the Creator plays on. We constantly aim and tune this instrument to a tonality increasingly closer to the Creator, and the Creator plays on it.
[245571]
From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah” 4/14/19
Related Material:
Everyone Has A Place In The General System Of Adam
A Place Of His Own
Why Don’t I Understand TES?
Comment: In Yuval Noah Harari’s book 21 Lessons for the 21st century, he writes that today a computer could cope with the work of a driver, a banker, and a lawyer.
My Response: Absolutely with all problems, because we ourselves are also a computer. If we take away the sensory part, then our mechanical computer will cope with everything else,
Comment: The author writes that in the near future, artificial intelligence will replace humans in medicine, managing transportation, and even will be able to recognize all our emotions and influence them.
My Response: This is already happening today. I don’t even know if it makes sense now to study for ten years to become a doctor because during this time the machine will replace you completely.
Comment: This means that doctors and laboratory technicians will only be engaged in innovative research to create new artificial intelligences and the entire class of maintenance (service) that cannot be retrained will simply disappear.
My Response: It will be disposed of. It will not just disappear as an unemployed class. They will try to make sure it is gone.
Comment: It turns out if before, the future of the person was tied to a profession, today people are in complete confusion since all current professions will cease to exist.
My Response: Yes, the majority of professions will disappear very quickly. People will be replaced with machines. Factories will be created for the production of biomass from which everything you want will be produced. If you want a steak, steak will be made for you now, the machine will print it. And so on. The only thing that will remain is the work of attaining the upper force.
[279628]
From KabTV’s “Challenges of the 21st Century” 4/24/19
Related Material:
21st Century: Looking At The Root Of The Problem
Revolutionary Robots
Surgery Performed By A Robot
Question: Would you be interested in anyone contributing to the revival of Sufism? This is also Kabbalah, but Islamic. At the same time, it is more comprehensible because it is intended for a greater mass of people.
If Sufism is reborn in some way, could these two streams exist simultaneously without creating a conflict?
Answer: First, Sufism and Kabbalah will never contradict each other. There cannot be any conflict between them.
Second, both Sufism and Kabbalah have been ostracized because both teachings are hated by religious leaders of both Islam and Judaism.
Third, there can be no connection between Sufism and Kabbalah yet because they need revival. We must breathe life into both of them. Sufism is in exile.
I have met Sufis abroad: in the Netherlands, in England, in America. They were compelled to flee from Iran and Iraq. But they were mature or old men. I don’t think they are with us anymore. And they practically had no students.
But I really hope that just as Kabbalah is being reborn in Judaism so will Sufism be reborn in Islam and spread throughout the world. Those who are interested in Sufism will start to practice it. Those who are interested in Kabbalah will practice it. It doesn’t matter! The main thing is for a man to work on himself and improve himself.
Practically, both Sufism and Kabbalah teach the same thing. Sufism, like Kabbalah, originated from Abraham. But he passed Sufism as a spiritual teaching to his eldest son Ishmael, and Kabbalah to his second son Isaac. But in fact, these are related techniques.
There are no contradictions between them. The main thing is to develop and spread them.
However, I would not recommend blending them. Let them grow. And later you will start to think and to understand whether it is appropriate for them to be blended and how.
[243451]
From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah” 12/9/18
Related Material:
Sufism Is Islamic Kabbalah
Kabbalah And Sufism
The Influence Of Kabbalah In The East
Question: One of the most interesting chapters in The Book of Zohar is the chapter “The Letters of Rav Hamnuna Saba.” Why is it so important?
Answer: This chapter is about the creation of the letters and how people can depict the revelation of the Creator to man.
Question: The text describes how each letter came to the Creator and said, ” O Lord of the world, it is good for You to create the world with me.” What does that mean?
Answer: Although each letter is the lowest egoistic revelation in relation to the light of the Creator, it believes that it is actually in this manifestation that it can express the inner essence of the Creator’s attitude to the created beings. This is the reason that it makes the claim: “It is befitting that the world will be created with me.”
Question: The Creator replies, “You are comely and upright, but you are unfit to create the world with you…. Moreover, you are the seal of death, since Tav is the last letter in the word ‘Mavet’ [death], as well.” Why does the Creator praise each letter first?
Answer: It is because there cannot be anything bad in the world.
Is there any phenomenon or revelation in the creation that has no right to exist? There is no such thing. Can there be life without one of the letters? No. Can there be life without death? No. Without hate, without anything else? It is impossible. That is, everything is built on the right combination.
Why can’t the world be created by any of the letters other than the letter “Bet”? It is because this letter is not related to anything and there is only blessing in it. This is what the Creator’s bestowal unto the world comes down to.
Question: So, if a person eventually makes place for the Creator, everything will make sense?
Answer: Yes, well said.
[245539]
From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah” 1/6/19
Related Material:
Learn To Read The Creator According To The Letters
Know The Essence Of Things Through Letters
Letters And Sefirot
The Book of Zohar, Genesis, 3:22: Now the Lord God said, “Behold man has become like one of us, having the ability of knowing good and evil, and now, lest he stretch forth his hand and take also from the Tree of Life and eat and live forever.”
Question: Is it necessary to live forever? It depends on what kind of life.
Answer: Indeed. There are many people who would gladly part with life painlessly because it is a chain of suffering.
And yet, we have a kind of an inner stopper that does not allow us to part with life and makes us suffer. If it were not for it, then I am sure that a huge number of people would calmly do it. Like this: you take a pill and fall asleep because, in principle, there are no prospects.
Therefore, it is said that now that a person has fallen into a terrible state, into egoism, it is necessary to arrange it so that he cannot kill himself, so that there would be forces in him and in the surrounding nature that would force him to develop although this development is very difficult.
Question: But why is it said “so that he would not live forever”?
Answer: This means that he would not remain forever in the egoistic state.
For this, on one hand, it is necessary that certain forces restrain a person all the time from ending his earthly existence within the framework of the animal body, and on the other hand, give him the opportunity to develop without feeling himself eternal, perfect and constantly feeling a state of thirst, lack, aspirations toward something. Thus, he will gradually return to the previous state from which he fell.
[279198]
From KabTV’s “The Power of The Book of Zohar,” #7
Related Material:
Life Is A Game
How To Change Your Assessment Of Life?
Preparing For Spiritual Life
Listen to an Audio Version of the Blog
Download:MP3 Audio
Question: Passover symbolizes the exit of each of us from the animal state. But it all begins with the Creator’s promise to Abraham to inherit the land of Israel. The Land of Israel is Eretz Israel, the desire for the Creator. Did nature originally provide that every person will achieve this quality?
Answer: In general, yes. As a result of our development, absolutely all people on Earth must achieve the quality of “Adam – Man,” that is, similarity to the Creator.
Question: What does “becoming a human” mean from the point of view of Kabbalah? What is this level?
Answer: “Man” in Hebrew, “Adam,” is from the word “Domeh,” which means “like the Creator” or “in God’s likeness.”
What does “in God’s likeness” mean? Since all the qualities of the Creator, His attitude to everything that He created, are love, bestowal, and good feelings, then a person acquires these qualities, becomes like the Creator, and is called a Human. And before they are acquired, he is considered an animal.
In other words, if a person is in his natural egoistic qualities and cares only for himself, then this is called the “animal state,” and if he cares for others, and the altruistic quality of the Creator is in him, then this state is called “Man – Human.”
[280228]
From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 3/26/21
Related Material:
Grow To Be Human
Gliding On The Waves Of Desire
Still, Vegetative, Animate And Speaking
My new article on Linkedin “Israel—From Slavery to Freedom”
Passover in Israel is celebrated with a certain sense of freedom this year, with the sensation among its population that the pandemic is behind us. People are taking advantage of the spring sun to relax and travel, almost without restrictions, while the situation around the world is completely different. Many countries continue to battle the coronavirus plague. In Germany and France the third wave is worsening, in Britain and Spain the morbidity rate is climbing again, and in Brazil thousands are dying every day. From country to country we see that the threat of the virus is far from over.
Not only in medicine and technology must Israel be at the forefront, but we must also be a leading force on the spiritual front. It is upon us to demonstrate unity and social cohesion as a supreme value. We were founded as a people upon this root and have been nourished by it since the days of Abraham. Therefore, our first obligation is to unite and, at the same time, find creative ways to make our method of social unity accessible to the world.
Why is Israel first to taste a bit of freedom? Because we are a small and smart country, a country where it is possible to make hasty and effective decisions, and to easily adjust guidelines for the area from one day to the next. Israel did not ask for alms from any nation but simply reached out, bought vaccines and began inoculating its population until it covered the country. The sense of urgency characterized by this nation, which is used to operating in a state of war, would have allowed the vaccination to start even earlier and even faster, but the fears, uncertainties and false news that arose about the raging virus contributed to the relative slowdown.
Still, Israel provides a good example of management of the pandemic. Technological and medical power are Israeli success stories. The historic Mapai party, which bequeathed to Israel a well organized and accessible public health system based on social democratic values, functioned wonderfully during the pandemic.
Another core feature inherent to the Israeli nation that contributed to our effective response is our interdependence. No one in the country can be completely detached from the others since we share a common life. We have suffered together in the Holocaust; we have been persecuted as Jews for generations; we each bring with us our own immigration story. All of this commonality works together for mutual support when a shared challenge like the pandemic arises. There is a shared concern that the situation we go through affects one another.
This foundation of mutual guarantee among us will spur us on to develop further and become an advanced country in many areas. But at the same time, there is an expectation that the world will continue to slander us by claiming that we are the distributors of the coronavirus, spreading stories about how the Jews took care of themselves without regard for the rest of the world.
It is of paramount importance that we carefully consider our role and responsibility to the rest of the world. From a global perspective, the role of the State of Israel towards the world is crucial and complex. It would behoove us to clearly identify where we could and should contribute most to humanity.
Not only in medicine and technology must Israel be at the forefront, but we must also be a leading force on the spiritual front. It is upon us to demonstrate unity and social cohesion as a supreme value. We were founded as a people upon this root and have been nourished by it since the days of Abraham. Therefore, our first obligation is to unite and, at the same time, find creative ways to make our method of social unity accessible to the world.
It is not an easy task to project unity, neither within the complex state of Israel nor within the world in its present state. All of humanity and with us topping the chart are deeply mired in the mud of egoism. If we do not act together with cohesive forces to extricate ourselves, we will sink even deeper. This will cause the spread of more diseases and epidemics in addition to the existing strains and mutations.
These days when Israel enjoys a national respite from the yoke of the coronavirus provide an opportunity for us to take stock and ask how we will increase the unity between us, how we will show positive examples to others, how we will prioritize the needs of others, how we can continue to ascend and connect. It is worthwhile to make any efforts that we can in this direction, even if the actions are artificial at first, because eventually, the habit will become second nature. There is no more perfect time to begin this ascent toward unity than during Passover, passing over the slavery of our selfish approach to an era of unity and mutual guarantee. This is the journey that will truly lead us all to freedom.
[280399]
Question: Going through the ten Egyptian plagues, each time a person is more and more aware of his egoism as the evil that must be gradually corrected. As our great teacher Rabash writes, this is possible only with a correct appeal to the Creator. Does this mean there is a certain positive force in nature, but it is necessary to address it correctly?
Answer: And how can we correctly address it if we are completely under the rule of the negative force, under the rule of Pharaoh? For this, we must all cry out to the Creator together, as it is said: “And the children of Israel sighed from the work, and their cry went up to God,” and He delivered them from Egypt.
Question: Does man clearly feel all ten Egyptian plagues as they are described in the Torah?
Answer: No, not like that. There is what is called the language of branches in which we describe spiritual properties and actions with words, formulations, and definitions of our world.
Therefore, a person in our world, experiencing some kind of limitation in his egoistic desires, cannot say: “Now locusts are passing over me.” It doesn’t feel like that.
Question: There are four types of language that express spiritual action. Can the exodus from Egypt be explained in Kabbalistic language?
Answer: Yes, it can. Unfortunately people who do not study Kabbalah will not understand it.
The fact is that allegories are used by those who try to rewrite the Torah in a common language. And Kabbalists write about this in purely technical terms.
[280114]
From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 1/30/20
Related Material:
Willingness To Leave Egypt
The Point From Which The Exit From Egoism Begins
Leaving The Magnetic Field Of The Ego
Daily Audio Version-MP3
Get the Weekly eNewsletter
Follow on Twitter
