Preparation to the Lesson
| [media 1] | [media 2] |
Lesson on the Topic of “Faith in the Sages as the Means for Faith Above Reason”
| [media 3] | [media 4] |
Selected Highlights
| [media 5] | [media 6] |
Listen to an Audio Version of the Blog
Download:MP3 Audio
The Book of Zohar, “Chayei Sarah” (The Life of Sarah), Item 87: When one observes the tweeting of fowl to know the future, why is it called “a serpent” and “witchcraft”?
Witchcraft means that I want to ascend to the highest level, to the so-called “birds,” not through my correction but with my existing egoism.
To invent some kind of system that would raise me without changing me to an altruist from the property of receiving to the property of bestowing, this is called sorcery, fortune-telling, witchcraft.
When do I go to a sorcerer? When I want to gain what I am not supposed to. If I was supposed to, then I would have walked straight, just like the true, direct law goes.
If I go to shamans, sorcerers, or fortune-tellers, it means that I want to act in some unclean, wrong, perhaps unknown way. But “unknown” also means wrong because I have to go only by my own choice.
Therefore, in the Torah, it is forbidden to bewitch and prophesize. So it is said: “Do not bewitch and do not guess, and burn every sorcerer.” A person has no right to try to ascend the spiritual levels with the help of indefinite, undeserved forces. After all, this contradicts spiritual elevation, which is possible only if you acquire the corresponding property.
Comment: It looks like some kind of amateurism.
My Response: But people believe in it. They are at those levels when a person is confused, like a small child. Children believe in fairy tales. And adults, while remaining children, believe in fairy tales.
The science of Kabbalah teaches us exactly the opposite: there is no miracle in the world, do not bewitch and do not prophesize, but not because you cannot. You cannot because it does not exist, and you are deceiving yourself by it. You must discover all the attributes of the world, all its laws, and use them correctly.
[277802]
From KabTV’s “The Power of The Book of Zohar” #4
Related Material:
We Want To Know The Future
Miracles That Slow Down The Advancement Of Humanity
Beware Of Substitutes
Baal HaSulam, Shamati, Article 34, “The Advantage of the Land“: Thus, one must believe that His guidance is benevolent, but since one is immersed in self-love, it induces disparity of form in him, since there was a correction called in order to bestow, called “equivalence of form.”
The question is what does it mean that a person must believe? To believe what one is told is nonsense. Self-persuasion is also not worth it.
Faith refers to feeling the Creator. To attain faith is to attain the feeling of the Creator in the light of Hasadim. If a person constantly keeps himself on this level, he does not feel afraid of problems he encounters in life. He knows where everything stems from and where everything is going. He is in constant contact with the upper force. This is his anchor, the root of his existence.
We must therefore attain the attribute of Bina, the attribute of bestowal, where we adhere to the Creator even to the smallest extent. And then everything, whatever we feel will be like connecting to eternity, to the eternal flow of our states.
Question: Why is it called faith?
Answer: Faith is the attribute of Bina—when I ascend above my ego and see everything not inside my egoism, but above it.
Comment: It turns out that the concept of faith is totally distorted in our world. We are told something and we believe blindly.
Answer: In our world, I am told something and I accept it as a fact. This is totally wrong. True faith is when I perceive the presence of the Creator and my connection with Him.
[258604]
From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah” 12/22/19
Related Material:
Faith Is A Vessel Of Bestowal
Faith In The Spiritual And In The Material
The Three Parameters Of Faith
Humanity has fought for different forms of freedom for thousands of years, but in the end we see that we do not have it. Man begins to realize that he was not born free and he will not die free. “Against your will you are born; against your will you live, and against your will you die.”
The concept of freedom is quite relative. I can go as if to the right or to the left, do what I am predisposed to at any given moment. But this is not freedom because I cannot imagine how trapped I am in the network of forces and control.
Each of us is influenced by our genes, society, upbringing, and the generation in which we were born. Thus, a person has only the illusion of freedom. Within the framework of this illusion, we exist and fight for it.
To give man the opportunity to be in this illusion, in general, is the concern of all sovereigns and rulers, how to indulge people so that they are satisfied, but actually are completely controlled. This is what remains for people and their leaders.
[277666]
From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 4/29/19
Related Material:
Freedom Is A Way Out Of Egoism
Close To The Point Of Choice
Where Is My Freewill?
Question: If Israel are people who descended from Abraham, then when did the Erev Rav (Mixed Multitude) appear?
Answer: The Erev Rav appeared in the time of Abraham. Practically, they were constantly developing and became even stronger in Egypt. Egypt does not mean a geographical place but a person’s spiritual state.
The group which Abraham assembled in Ancient Babylon moved to another place, meaning ascended to another level, to the Land of Canaan (Eretz Canaan). This means that its level was constantly changing.
When they reached such a state that they began to feel themselves in Egypt, that is, under the burdening of egoism, the force called the mixed multitude (Erev Rav) was revealed in them and pulled them back.
The fact is that until you reach final correction, this force runs parallel to you, helps you with its opposition, and points out your flaws like any opponent shows where he can harm you. That is, the Erev Rav gives you an understanding of where you can improve yourself.
[277746]
From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 4/22/19
Related Material:
Erev Rav Or The Mixed Multitude
“God-Fearing” Egyptians
“The Mixed Multitude” In A Person, Nation, And The World
Listen to an Audio Version of the Blog
Download:MP3 Audio
My new article on Linkedin “The More Woke We Become, the Less We See”
Look at what is happening: We have built a world where you can live however you want, be whatever you want, and do whatever you want. We are woke, progressive, and expressive; we are high when we are high, and we are high when we are low. Everything is legal; everyone’s the same; and every road you take is fine with everyone. But, why is everyone so angry? Why are there aggression, canceling of others, and violence everywhere you look?
Only when we abandon the current mindset of “grab as much as you can while you still can,” we will realize that each of us and all of us will have much more if we pull together! The whole purpose of the current “Me! Me! Me!” pandemic is to drive this attitude to implosion. When we have given up on it, we will see that the people we competed with are in fact our only hope of achieving what we want.
The more absorbed we become with satisfying our every whim, the more frustrated and angry we grow. We feel so entitled that, to paraphrase Descartes’ “I think, therefore I am” dictum, we have adopted the motto, “I want, therefore I deserve” as justification for our actions. But if everyone feels this way and behaves accordingly, how long will we last? Not surprisingly, no one asks this question, since the answer is obvious and no one is willing to make the necessary adjustments.
But bit by bit, humanity is amassing despair. More and more people are giving up on the fantasy that someday, they will have what they want. Eventually, everyone will despair, even the super rich. Our whims are incessant, but our energy and resources are finite. When enough people realize the futility of chasing their quirks, they will start asking about the purpose of it all. This is when we will begin to understand what is really going on.
When we stop chasing our own tails, we will realize that our blowing egos aren’t simply driving us out of our minds; they are driving us out of our current minds and into a new mind. Only when we abandon the current mindset of “grab as much as you can while you still can,” we will realize that each of us and all of us will have much more if we pull together! The whole purpose of the current “Me! Me! Me!” pandemic is to drive this attitude to implosion. When we have given up on it, we will see that the people we competed with are in fact our only hope of achieving what we want.
Together, we can build a great material life for all of us! Together, we can build great communities! Together, we can build great countries! And together, we can build a great world.
Alone, we can only ruin the world. I hope we wise up before our wokeness kills us.
[278551]
Comment: Before I began to study the wisdom of Kabbalah I thought that love and hate were not related, that hate is one thing and love another. I also did not understand how a person can feel both at the same time.
My Response: This is because in our world we are unable to connect opposites. At best, we can understand the fact that they destroy, which means that they destroy each other, but we cannot understand that they exist mutually, that they complement each other mutually, and that they define each other mutually. This doesn’t happen in our world.
The point is that there is no hate without love and there is no love without hate. Moreover, if you cannot sustain love and hate together, it means that you have neither real love nor real hate.
Question: What determines the growth of hate in a person? Is this growth proportional to the future love?
Answer: This happens only in a group that yearns to acquire the attribute of bestowal. If a person has a small group and wants to be in close mutual contact with it, and to even feel love, he begins to feel different disturbances that bring him to the recognition of his evil nature. By overcoming these disturbances he advances.
[258611]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 12/29/19
Related Material:
There Is No Love Without Hate
Love Always Rises Above Hate
Penetrating Love Through Barricades Of Hate
Baal HaSulam, “The Freedom“: The Torah and the Mitzvot were given only to purify Israel, to develop in us the sense of recognition of evil imprinted in us at birth, which is generally defined as our self-love, and to come to the pure good defined as “love of others,” which is the one and only passage to the love of the Creator.
People would never unite with each other, but because they yearn for the Creator and want to reveal Him, this yearning connects them. Nothing else can truly unite not a mother with her children, nor a husband with his wife, family, relatives, nations, or humanity. Therefore, we need to yearn and turn to our spiritual root in which we are in absolute fusion, such as, for example, mixed gases or liquids from which nothing remains but a homogeneous mixture. For this Kabbalah was given—to mix and unite us.
When we try to unite, we begin to understand the extent to which we are unable to achieve this, and the Creator is perceived precisely to the extent that we are connected. What to do to make this work? We cannot do anything! And this “we cannot” is our nature and is the absolute evil that makes us feel repulsed by each other, just as two identical poles of a magnet reject each other.
The recognition of evil shows who we are from birth and the extent to which we cannot connect to become one whole. This mutual rejection is defined as our ego, our self-love.
When we begin to feel the real force of the ego, the rejection, hatred, failure, lack of awakening toward each other, we can begin to imagine the opposite form, which is love of others.
Our great teacher, Baal HaSulam, says that this is the only and unique transition to the love of the Creator. We must therefore reach a state in which we are powerless to unite, we push it away with all our might, and we do not want it at all.
It is difficult to imagine how one can bear a feeling like love, the total dissolution in others, when there is nothing left of you. It is actually the feeling that you cannot fully dissolve in others that brings you the recognition of what love and connection actually are.
In other words, we cannot sustain the connection of love if we do not attain it as a result of rejection. This is the only way to make the transition from hate and inability to unite toward love.
[258731]
From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah” 12/29/19
Related Material:
Making A “Heavenly Firmament” Above Us
Where Does The Unifying Force Come From?
It’s Impossible To Get Far On Bare Enthusiasm
Daily Audio Version-MP3
Get the Weekly eNewsletter
Follow on Twitter
