Question: How can a person who has started studying Kabbalah or just decides to study it use the information about the cave of Machpelah correctly for spiritual development?

Answer: There are several possibilities for spiritual development here. First, maybe a person should not even think, talk, or listen to the fact that such places exist physically because he will think that spiritual forces and spiritual qualities are concentrated in them. He will start going there, worshipping them, and so on, which is not really the purpose of our conversation.

Or maybe he will be interested in this topic from a historical or geographical point of view. These are all interesting points since there is nothing in our world that does not have its root in the upper world. Therefore, it is worth looking at it precisely from this point.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 4/23/21

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Did the Ten Commandments come from God?“

The true meaning of ten commandments eludes us in this world, and it is common to refer to them simply as God’s instructions for human morality. However, the ten commandments mean something else entirely.

The ten commandments are limitations that we apply to the use of our nature, the desire to enjoy, which in the wisdom of Kabbalah is called “Malchut.” In the language of Kabbalah, these limitations are a “Masach” (“screen”) and “Ohr Hozer” (“reflected light”) placed on Malchut, which in short means applying an intention to love, bestow and positively connect to each other and to our common source. When our desire to enjoy, Malchut, accepts these limitations, it becomes the place for the dressing of the ten Sefirot, and so it is called “the Ten Commandments.”

A commandment, which in Hebrew is “Dover,” stems from the Hebrew root of the word “utterance” (“Dibur”), which is born in the Peh (mouth) of the Partzuf (spiritual entity), known in Kabbalah as the “Peh de Rosh” (i.e., the place in our soul where we act on our decision to resemble the spiritual quality of love, bestowal and connection, and which receives the ability to love and bestow according to the strength of the intention to bestow). These actions are performed in the world of Atzilut, the highest of the spiritual worlds that is closest to the pure quality of love and bestowal, the Creator’s quality.

We receive the ten commandments only after connecting to each other “as one man with one heart” in order to rise above the raging egoistic desires that resist connection, and which make us hateful of one another. That massive egoistic quality is represented in the Bible story by Mount Sinai (“Sinai” from the Hebrew word for “hatred” [“Sinah”]). If we fail to positively connect to each other in order to rise above the ego that divides us, then we also cannot discover or observe any of the ten commandments. We have to be on a spiritual level of attainment, namely the level of “Bina,” one of the ten Sefirot which represents the pure quality of bestowal, in order to have the ear (Bina is the spiritual root of our sense of hearing) to hear the ten utterances from Mount Sinai. In other words, we need to attain a certain level of equivalence of form with the Creator in order to observe the ten commandments.

We can reach a spiritual level where we will discover and observe the ten commandments by first undergoing a preparation period in this world, where our main emphasis should be to achieve connection “as one man with one heart,” and only then will we observe the commandments. Otherwise we will lack the ability to understand them. In short, “love your neighbor as yourself” is the foundation of all spiritual attainment and ascent to a spiritual level.

Based on the first part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson on June 3, 2014, Shamati 66 “The Giving of the Torah.” Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
Photo by Clint Adair on Unsplash.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Is Israel technically becoming an apartheid state?“

I’m not interested in all these labels people apply to Israel. My view of Israel is guided solely by authentic Kabbalistic sources that I have been studying for over forty years now.

Nonetheless, taking into account the vast amount of Arabs in Israeli society who share equal rights as Israeli citizens, whom you will find studying at universities and in a whole range of respected professions, such as lawyers and doctors, I would not consider Israel an apartheid state. Apartheid is something completely different.

Yet the various categories that people place Israel into do not matter to me. What does matter is the growing need for the people of Israel to realize their role in the world: to unite (“love your neighbor as yourself”) and be a conduit for unity to spread worldwide (“a light unto nations”).

If the people of Israel would observe this condition, then both the people of Israel and the world would experience a whole new kind of harmony, peace and happiness enter into their lives. If the people of Israel fail to make any motion toward more unification among themselves, then the attitude toward Israel will continue worsening.

Whether you define Israel as an “apartheid” or a “terrorist” state makes no difference because it will not change reality. What matters is our attitude to the law of nature that determines everything: to learn how it determines everything and how we are in relation to it.

I need to realize that as a Jew, I ignite the hatred that others have toward me. In other words, if I fail to work on connecting positively to others, starting from a positive connection to the people of Israel, then I stimulate the massive human ego—the desire to enjoy at the expense of others—which brings division and hatred to humanity. Accordingly, negative sentiment toward Israel and the Jewish people grows from one day to the next, leading to decisions that are based on this growing hatred. Therefore, what do I have to fight if I myself give rise to that hatred against me?

All I see in such negative stereotyping of Israel is that we fail to act as we need to. I attribute nothing to Israel’s critics and haters. If the people of Israel would operate according to what made them the people of Israel to begin with—a group that aims at its increasing unity according to “love your neighbor as yourself” in order to spread unity and love to the world—then the world would respond positively to Israel. By uniting and generating a positive force among themselves, people worldwide would feel a much more harmonious, balanced, happy and confident sensation surface within them, myriad problems and crises would thus subside, and the attitude toward Israel would also invert from an increasingly negative one—as it currently is—to one that respects and loves the people who bring unification and goodness to the world. The nations of the world are like a shadow of the actions of the people of Israel.

“The Israeli nation was to be a ‘transition.’ This means that to the extent that Israel cleanse themselves … so they pass their power on to the rest of the nations.” – Kabbalist Yehuda Ashlag (Baal HaSulam), “The Love of the Creator and the Love of the Created Beings.”

Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Connecting in Order to Attain the Creator

Question: If a family is the beastly level, what relations can we build between a man and a woman on the spiritual level?

Answer: This will already be a different family. People will begin to live not just in order to have children, to supply their basic needs, and to plant a tree. In fact, they will unite between them according to the spiritual principle.

This is the meaning of the unity between a man and a woman. It is as is said in the Torah, “A man and a woman, Shechina between them.”

Question: What should they do so that the Creator will be revealed?

Answer: They should connect on all levels, on the corporeal level, internally, mentally, and psychologically so that it will be for the sake of attaining the Creator.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah” 3/3/19

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Question: There is a lot of controversy around the date of writing of the Torah and its authorship and there are several approaches to this issue: religious, academic, and Kabbalistic.

The religious approach explains everything very simply: The Creator Himself, God Himself gave people the Torah through Moses. According to the academic approach, there was no way out of Egypt at all, up to the fact that the Torah was written in the 6th century BC and was written over hundreds of years.

It is interesting that The Book of Zohar says: “When the Creator wished to create the world, and this was manifested in a desire before Him, He looked into the Torah and created it.” This means that the Torah existed even before the creation of the world.

What does Kabbalah say about this? What is the Torah and who wrote it?

Answer: Indeed, there are completely different definitions of what the Torah is. I adhere to a clear generally accepted approach of the Halacha [the totality of laws and ordinances that have evolved since biblical times to regulate religious observances and the daily life and conduct of the Jewish people] to everything that concerns the writing of not only the Torah, but also the Tanakh, Talmud, and other sources.

The only difference from the point of view of Kabbalah is that the Torah is a list of the laws of nature. It is just that it is described in this form, in the application to a person. But in principle, these are the laws of nature.

Therefore, people who are in the comprehension of the Creator fulfill these laws because they feel them in themselves. They have changed themselves internally, for them, these laws are the laws of their life, behavior, adaptation to the world, and perception of the world.

Moreover, the Torah for them is not a book that you can leaf through, read, do something from what is written in it, and somehow act, but the law according to which they exist internally because it talks about how they can completely coincide with nature. Nature or the Creator is one and the same.

This is the law of communication between people and between man and nature or the Creator.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 6/3/19

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There is no other book besides The Book of Zohar that performs spiritual work on us. It takes us from the corporeal level to the spiritual level; it shows us its projection as if the upper world is getting revealed through our world illuminated by a powerful projector.

The Book of Zohar illustrates the difference between our world and the upper world. On one hand, as in the Torah, it gives us a picture of our world, and in parallel, describes the next, spiritual level, the world of forces, the world of qualities.

By shining through and superimposing the picture of our world on the spiritual world, you understand their correlation and what is really happening. In this way, you develop new qualities in yourself. It is when the root and its branch, that is, the spiritual world and our world, overlap each other and become one.

You enter both worlds simultaneously with your feelings, your attainments, with your entire life, and you break away from earthly limitations, even to the point that when your body dies, you continue to exist because your animalistic body no longer has anything to do with spirituality.

This is what a person should achieve. The most important point that Kabbalah gives us is to exit the animalistic degree, rise above the point of death, and reach the spiritual degree, which is infinite and everlasting, while in this life.
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From KabTV’s “The Power of The Book of Zohar” #7

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The Tenth Commandment says: “And you shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife.” This means that you must reach a state where you change the initially egoistic desire into an altruistic one, fully achieve the property of bestowal called “receiving for the sake of bestowal,” and all of this huge infinite desire becomes “your wife.”

To desire “your neighbor’s wife” means to receive for your own sake. If you are directed at the Creator, then any desires that are not directed at Him are forbidden for you.

This commandment corresponds to the act of creation: “It is not good for a man to be alone.” If you want to reach the Creator, you cannot be alone. You must connect all the great desire, which is called feminine, to yourself, to the property of “Adam.” And only by combining the screen with the desire do you fully become like the Creator.

This is what it says: “Husband and wife, and the Creator between them.” This is the state when these two opposite qualities are combined and the Creator fills the vessel of the soul.

As for our world, we must abandon any hope that something right will happen in it if we do not start to change spiritually. Then other signals will come down to our world from above and make it better. But only as a result of spiritual correction! No other way!

We see how for thousands of years we have tried to do something good here but in the end we only destroy the world. Humanity is so lost, confused, and exhausted that it does not know what to do.

I look at the leaders of the world. They want to achieve something, they constantly plot behind the scenes, but in fact they are confused like small children who are lost and are about to cry. That’s how we are in this world today. Therefore, the science of Kabbalah is now spreading. If we reveal the Ten Commandments for ourselves, we will find ourselves eternal, perfect, and equal to the Creator, and then we will see that everything we have gone through was for our benefit.
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From KabTV’s “The Power of The Book of Zohar” #11

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Comment: It is said in The Book of Zohar that the commandment “You shall not commit adultery” corresponds to the act of creation: “Let the earth produce living creatures according to their kind, so that a woman does not produce offspring unless it is a continuation of the family. And who is her family? It is her husband.”

Answer: Both The Book of Zohar and all of Kabbalah have nothing to do with our world and do not affect any actions in it. Everything we do on the material (animate) level has nothing to do with spirituality. This is repeatedly stated in Kabbalah.

It explains what we should do inside our souls, which means within our soul to “cheat on your spouse with someone or not.”

A person must constantly care to see and feel the world through the right desire called his wife. And only through the point of contact between the screen and Malchut, through the common male and female desires that are in the soul, should one relate to the Creator.

Only through a corrected desire! This is called his “spouse,” his “wife,” “betrothed,” “bride,” etc…

An uncorrected desire is called a “stranger,” not one you can connect with or advance toward the Creator. Only this is meant because we always talk about a single common soul and not about the fact that you are cheating on someone somewhere.

In addition, throughout history, in various epochs, one man could have had up to a thousand wives. Therefore, what is written in The Book of Zohar is completely irrelevant to our lives.

When it is said: “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife,” it means that the male part of my soul should take only that corrected female part of my soul that it can connect with in order to make common acts of bestowal. Thus, the next level will appear, the so-called “children,” the next generation.

Question: So the right desire is the wife?

Answer: Yes. A wife for a person in our world is really something that accompanies his spiritual growth. And if not, then even if she is his legal wife, the truth is that this union is not acknowledged in the universe.

Question: Why did it happen that she still became his wife?

Answer: To answer this, you need to analyze the origins and roots of the souls and their reincarnations.

Question: That is, such states are still necessary in order to find the right desires, that is, the right wife?

Answer: Yes.

Question: What kind of animals are these: “Let the earth produce living creatures according to their kind?”

Answer: When you begin to properly connect with your inner, corrected desire called “your wife,” you give birth to the next degree—children.
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From KabTV’s “The Power of The Book of Zohar” #11

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Preparation to the Lesson

Lesson on the Topic “Work with Intention”

Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Study of the Ten Sefirot, Vol. 1, Part 1, Chapter 1, Item 3″

Selected Highlights 

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