Lesson Preparation
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Writings of Rabash, Article 1 “Make for Yourself a Rav and Buy Yourself a Friend – 1” (1985)
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Writings of Baal HaSulam, “The Freedom,” (Subtitle: “The Will to Receive—Existence from Absence”)
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Selected Highlights
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Question: What will be the leadership in the new period?
Answer: The leadership of the new era belongs to integral humanity, which has realized that it cannot exist in any other form. If we go this way, we will succeed.
During the period of our many thousands of years of evolution, we have come to a state where humanity should be harmoniously connected with the surrounding nature, with the world, with the cosmos. We must stop using only our egoistic forces and egoistic mind. We need to become one whole. Only in this case will we be able to continue our existence.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah” 5/24/20
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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What is the spiritual meaning of Tisha B’Av?“
Our world is governed by two forces, positive and negative, and we humans exist between these forces. In spirituality, the root of the negative force is called “Tisha B’Av” (“the 9th of Av“).
Even as far back as in ancient Babylon, the negative force always reveals around this special date. Whether it be the sin of the spies, the ruin of the First Temple, the exile of Babylon, the ruin of the Second Temple at Tisha B’Av, and the expulsion of Jews from the Land of Israel, or afterward from Spain, Germany and England, the people of Israel execute major sins and also receive punishments on Tisha B’Av.
Why do such sins and punishments take place?
It is all because we fail to bring the positive force in advance of the negative force that reveals at Tisha B’Av.
The First Temple was ruined due to our lack of connection, and the Second Temple was ruined due to unfounded hatred.
In each case, we encounter a shattering due to our growing distance from each other, which unleashes the negative force among our relations.
As Kabbalist Yehuda Ashlag (Baal HaSulam) writes:
“As the natural death of the individual results from disharmony among one’s organs, the nation’s natural decline results from some obstruction that occurred among its organs, as our sages testified (Tosfot, Baba Metzia, Chapter Two), ‘Jerusalem was ruined only because of unfounded hatred that existed in that generation.’ At that time, the nation was plagued and died, and its organs were scattered to every direction.” (Yehuda Ashlag, “The Nation.”)
On the contrary, our unity has the power to block the negative force from entering into our relations, and in its place, our unity lets the positive force shine through our connections, bringing about peace and harmony.
Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What do you think about reincarnation?“
There are two ways we can think about reincarnation: in relation to the soul’s development, i.e., the ascent from this world to the spiritual world, and also as the succession of generations in this world.
In terms of the latter, reincarnation is the passing down of genetic, material, perceptual and sensory information from one generation to the next.
For instance, the current generation’s children contain information accumulated by their previous generations. This is why children in each generation can quickly work out how to use the technology and tools of their generation.
Humanity’s development thus unfolds as a succession of generations, where we transfer material progress in science, technology, art and culture, as well as psychological advancements and an inner human message, to each successive generation.
In terms of our ascent from this world to the spiritual world, reincarnation starts from when we feel the awakening of a spiritual desire.
Such a desire is expressed as questions about the meaning and purpose of life.
Kabbalah describes this desire as the seed of our soul, and calls it a “point in the heart.”
Depending on how much we feel such a desire, it urges us to seek through various teachers and environments until we find one that we feel can guide us to attain our spiritual root.
Attaining our spiritual root, according to Kabbalah, is our life’s purpose.
By attaining our spiritual root, we receive clear answers to questions about the meaning and purpose of life—clear because they become expressed in us as sensations of attainment of the spiritual world, where our perception opens up to the complete fulfillment and knowledge that exists above the level of our current world, in our soul.
The journey of developing our spiritual desire and reaching the attainment of our spiritual root is by undergoing a series of spiritual reincarnations, until we reach our final destination from where we emerged.
By doing so, we complete our reincarnation cycle.
Kabbalists explain how such a process can take many lifetimes. Thus, if we discontinue this journey, we will return to it in future lives until we eventually attain the root of our soul.
Until we become granted with a spiritual desire, we accumulate suffering via the formerly-mentioned process of reincarnation at the level of this world.
The more we suffer in our development, the more it leads us to ask existential questions, differentiating our spiritual desire from our other desires, and adding to our yearning to rise above this world and attain our spiritual root.
Question: In the fight against the coronavirus, it is clear that we have already received a global brain: information and experience diverge across all countries.
How can we reach a global heart? How do we feel others? And what feelings are you talking about? Don’t doctors who save lives by working 16 hours a day do it out of feelings? After all, many people have a choice not to work.
Answer: I don’t think doctors have a choice to work or not. I don’t think they themselves decide to stay at home. In principle, their profession and circumstances do not exclude self-sacrifice.
But the fact is that the time has come to understand that we are connected to each other and each country cannot take care only of itself separately because the virus practically has no borders.
How it is transmitted and how it arises, we still do not know at all. Therefore, absolutely everyone takes part in the fight against it. So far, this is the best achievement that the pandemic has brought us.
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From KabTV’s “The Post-Coronavirus Era” 4/30/20
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Team Building Principles: “Buy Yourself a Friend”
Question: Fifth rule: Each member of the group should try to “buy friends.” This is an ancient principle that sages of all generations have written about a lot.
How should one buy a friend? Your attention, concessions, cancellation of personal interests? Or are there some other principles?
Answer: However you can buy him, buy him. Gifts, words, actions. Anything.
Question: That is, it is a tool. And the result? What will it give me?
Answer: You attract him to you. After all, a friend is someone who can support you, agree with you. Even based on purely selfish interests.
Question: Meaning, by my attention I buy him and thereby buy his support?
Answer: Naturally.
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From KabTV’s “Management Skills” 6/18/20
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The Confrontation Between Two Movements
Question: Some time after the expulsion of Jews from Spain, spiritual movements began to flourish in Safed, and Kabbalistic knowledge among the masses began to spread.
But then the rapid dissemination of the new movement caused a response and resistance. Spiritual teachers of the traditional Lithuanian school began to oppose the spread of this knowledge with boycotts, slander to authorities, and physical extermination.
How does one explain this? Why did the teaching of the Ari, which should have already been embodied in humanity, suddenly fail and the fall began again?
Answer: This is not a failure, but a natural development of the method of correction, which cannot go by only one line. It goes precisely by two lines and is realized between them, in the third one.
As a result, it turned out that the Kabbalah of the Baal Shem Tov is the same Kabbalah of the Ari, which was understood by the masses. He organized a Cheder, that is, a place for classes. He recruited talented young people into his group, completely regardless of their status. And then large groups of students and leaders of Hasidic movements were formed from his students. They were especially popular among the Jewish population of Ukraine, Belarus, and Eastern Europe where their own schools were organized.
But at the same time, another school, which was founded by the Vilna Gaon appeared. He believed that people should be taught gradually, and only those who had achieved great knowledge in the Talmud, in a simple study of the Torah.
In his opinion, studying Kabbalah should be spread not among ordinary people, but among the elite to whom the spiritual worlds and other predestinations of humanity can be explained only after they had seriously mastered the “dry” Torah.
Question: Kabbalah speaks of love for one’s neighbor in its simplest, earthly form. What could be the danger of studying Kabbalah?
Answer: The fact is that when you simply talk about love for your neighbor, by that you let a person think that if he treats others correctly, then nothing else is needed. Therefore, there is some lightheadedness in the understanding of “love for one’s neighbor.”
This is how a movement was formed in Hasidism that if you love another person and seem to treat him correctly, then this is enough. Nothing more is needed, and you are already fulfilling your predestination.
And the Vilna Gaon claimed: “No, it is necessary to seriously study the Torah, the Babylonian Talmud, and carefully keep all the laws. Only after that one can study Kabbalah.”
Therefore, in the introduction to his great work, The Study of the Ten Sefirot, Baal HaSulam pays much attention to this. At the very beginning, he asks the question: “Is it really necessary to fully know all the great laws of fulfilling the Torah in our world and only after that study Kabbalah?
“Or is it enough to do it in parallel? Or even, perhaps, is it not at all necessary to know and obey all the laws so scrupulously? Because the Creator requires us to correct our hearts more than to fill our heads with all kinds of laws.”
So here we are in a state of great ideological contradiction. And it is very serious because it speaks of the method of the soul’s correction. Should it be taught to children from the age of thirteen or even earlier? Or maybe, it can be explained to women as well? Or only to great experts on the Babylonian Talmud?
This ideological contradiction was a necessary process and was brewing by itself.
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From KabTV’s “Systematic Analysis of the Development of the People of Israel” 8/5/19
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New Life 1258 – East, West, And The Integral World
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi
The world is divided into East and West according to the root of the soul of every nation. The nation of Israel is a third component, a special one which is neither East nor West; it is unlike any other nation. The West cannot learn from the East as they cannot be compared. In collective societies people are ready and willing to accept and obey laws whereas Western culture is rational. The West does not need to learn from the East or vice versa.
Each party needs to correct itself according to the root of its soul. We need to explain to Western people that, today, nature is obligating us to build an integral connection between different individuals for the sake of a better future for everyone. The fulfillment of the freedom of the individual is expressed by self-fulfillment in my connections with others. This is the formula for a perfect world.
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From KabTV’s “New Life 1258 – East, West, And The Integral World,” 7/1/20
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Question: To what extent and how will I become free from the chains of popular views and the impact of the external society if I study the wisdom of Kabbalah?
Answer: I can tell you from my experience that you totally cease to feel the impact of the external society and that you perceive it as childish babble because you try to implement the upper spiritual principles of nature.
Remark: People will say that it is arrogance.
My Comment: Let them say so; it makes no difference. When I reveal the upper goal of nature and it illuminates for me, different popular views have no effect on me and I am simply above them. If you know that this is the truth, you regret that others are unaware of this truth, but you do not descend to the beastly level of existence because of it.
Question: Aren’t you sorry that a person does not understand the truth?
Answer: I would like to bring the truth to the whole world so that people will see and hear what the wisdom of Kabbalah says and so that everyone will open their eyes, and then once they see the truth about the whole system and how nature is managed, they will decide what to do independently. I would like that very much, but unfortunately an individual can attain it only by his own efforts.
Question: But as a result of his efforts, does a person still come to a free, conscious decision? I mean, doesn’t he simply force himself to choose the path to the truth but seemingly feels it?
Answer: Yes, no one can do it for him. As we say, “Freedom is a conscious necessity.”
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah” 11/17/19
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