On November 4-6, 2016 our friends from San Antonio, Texas participated in Texas’ largest book fair, the Texas Book Festival in Austin Texas with over 40,000 attendees. Our friends sold our books and presented our Internet resources to the readers.
Question: Why did Baal HaSulam write articles that provide a comparative analysis of Kabbalah and philosophy, Kabbalah and psychology, and Kabbalah and science?
Answer: Baal HaSulam lived a hundred years ago when the world had not heard yet about what the wisdom of Kabbalah is. Until that day, Judaism was in a state of stagnation and constantly denied and opposed the wisdom of Kabbalah. He wanted to rouse the sleeping world, especially before the Second World War, before the Holocaust. So in the twenties and thirties of the last century he wrote articles for the people and in 1940 he published the newspaper The Nation.
He planned to produce fifty pamphlets, each one which would include five articles. But he only managed to publish the first journal, which contained the articles, “Matan Torah (The Giving of the Torah),” “The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee),” “Peace in the World,” “The Peace,” and another article. After that, they closed his small publishing house and he said that he would not write any more because the world was not ready yet for this. We can only imagine how much we lost.
[182919]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 2/28/16
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The Torah, Deuteronomy, “Ekev,” 10:03 – 10:05: So I made an ark of acacia wood, and I hewed two stone tablets like the first ones, and I ascended the mountain, with the two tablets in my hand. And He inscribed on the tablets, like the first writing, the Ten Commandments, which the Lord had spoken to you on the mountain, from the midst of the fire, on the day of the assembly, and the Lord gave them to me.
And I turned and came down from the mountain, and placed the tablets in the ark which I had made, and there they were, as the Lord had commanded me.
This speaks about the same Ten Commandments, but on an entirely different level. It is like saying the same words to a child, an adolescent, and an adult, but all of them will understand differently and will accept and implement the words in different ways.
These commandments are intended for a different generation; therefore, they are different. This is exactly the way this process should happen, and this is how it happened with both Temples when Rabbi Akiva laughed about the destruction of the First Temple and said, “Now I trust that more is exactly what will occur.”
Question: But what was it like for people who saw the tragedy occurring to look at him? The leader of the generation laughing at the very moment when everyone else cried.
Answer: These are two levels of attainment. The problem is that people don’t understand Kabbalists. In order to understand them, a person has to rise to their level. There is no other way. After all, it is said, he who increases knowledge, increases pain. (Ecclesiastes 1:18). In fact, a Kabbalist is the one who worries more than the others, but on the other hand, he also rejoices.
Question: If a generation doesn’t understand the Kabbalist, what was Baal Sulam expecting when he wrote his articles?
Answer: The fact is that there must be some feedback from the generation, and there was none. A Kabbalist mainly works only when he receives a certain task from above.
Baal Sulam didn’t work for the last generation, although he wrote a little bit about it. He lived in a very difficult time, with the creation of the State of Israel, World War II, the Holocaust, and the death of the Jews. He worked specifically to accept and to shape people spiritually at the time he lived here in the land of Israel, and to lay the foundation for the last generation.
[193486]
From KabTV program “Secrets of the eternal book” 5/16/16
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Question: Who is the dissemination of the method of unity meant for?
Answer: Since our egoism has reached its complete development in the process of evolution, we are in a crisis with nature that surrounds us. Nature is single and integrated while we are egoists, detached from one another and divided, and so we are opposite from nature.
This leads to a crisis in many aspects of life including the ecology and society. Nature might just omit us out of its system if we don’t reach a state of balance with it. The wisdom of Kabbalah tells us about it in a much simpler way. Love thy friend as thyself is the main law of nature, and it is even simpler to yearn for unity. This is what we explain to people.
[193265]
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Question: Who is the dissemination of the wisdom of Kabbalah meant for?
Answer: The wisdom of Kabbalah answers the question about the meaning of life. Man has evolved for years yet he hasn’t asked himself about the meaning of life, but lived just like all the other animals. But as his egoism grew, he began to wonder, “What is the meaning of life and the meaning of suffering? Why do we suffer or for whom?”
In our generation many ask these questions, as is evidenced by the statistics showing half of humanity is depressed. The wisdom of Kabbalah tells us what the reason is and what the meaning and purpose of life are, not those invented by man, but as determined by nature.
The meaning of life is to reveal the next level of our existence, to ascend to this level in this lifetime, to transcend the barrier between life and death, and to break away from our corporeal body. There are many people who want to do so. And there are those who come, listen, and leave since it doesn’t interest them yet. There are also those who having heard our ideas turn to religion.
We don’t force anyone to stay because the wisdom of Kabbalah is meant for those whose ego has developed to the fullest. These people ask themselves the question about the meaning of life and feel that they must get an answer for it, and they need to know its purpose.
[193189]
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During its evolution, humanity has gone through many preliminary stages of development. It is trying to connect in order to become one man, Adam, like the upper force.
The first time such an attempt was made was in ancient Babylon. Rambam writes the patriarch Abraham gathered many Babylonians around him and organized them into a big group that he later led to the land of Canaan.
Under Jacob’s leadership, they moved to Egypt from the land of Canaan, went through Egyptian slavery, and exited from it under the leadership of Moses. But since they exited ancient Babylon, this group had one constant motto: unity and love your neighbor as yourself.
These weren’t just movements from one country to another. These were stages of development. Their egoism grew and developed, demanding a new method of connection. Abraham’s method wasn’t working anymore because it was suitable only for the period of the forefathers.
This period was over, and a new time had come. Pharaoh symbolized the huge egoism that the group of Abraham had accumulated, and therefore a more effective method of connection was required that was stronger and deeper than the old one.
And then they received the Light that Reforms. In other words, they began to work with the upper force, attracting it through practical attempts to unite. The condition for receiving this force is mutual guarantee. If we are ready to become guarantors for each other, meaning to connect, then we create the quality of unity and love between us, similar to the upper force of nature.
And then on the basis of the principle of similarity and equivalence of qualities, they could attract the positive force of unity, hidden in nature, called the Creator. Although all of nature of this world is based on a negative force, we can attract the positive force and include both of them within ourselves.
Symbols of the negative force that are revealed between them are the golden calf and the numerous other problems and troubles that the Torah tells us about that are haunting them constantly during their wandering in the desert. Despite this, they attract the positive force more and more, until they compensate the entire negative force that is revealed between them with it. It means that they have prepared themselves for the next stage.
This whole process is called forty years of wandering in the desert; it is the acquisition of the positive force that will cover the negative force. In all the egoism that was revealed in them in Egypt, they were given an additional force to enable them to treat each other with compassion. This is called the preparation for entering the land of Israel.
Obviously, we are talking about a new internal state, not about geography nor history.
Entering the land of Israel means that much stronger desires are revealed in them that were not revealed during the previous stage, called the desert. Much stronger egoism is revealed that is called the seven nations inhabiting the land of Israel, which must be destroyed or banished.
Of course, we are not talking about the people, but about the destruction of the egoistic desires inside a person and inside this entire group that is entering a new state, a new level of development.
[192027]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/12/16, Writings of Rabash
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Question: For three years we have been engaged in the general dissemination of the wisdom of Kabbalah, but then we began spreading it among the Jews, we separated the friends from the general dissemination. How is it possible to cover the shortage of forces?
Answer: According to the “Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” dissemination of the method of correction, the wisdom of Kabbalah in the world, must be carried out according to a pyramid of desires:
1) to those who yearn for the goal of creation,
2) to Jews who carry Reshimot (Remembrances) from previous spiritual states, and
3) to the rest of humanity.
[192239]
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Question: How do you see the generation that is growing up that toward the year 2030 will become adults and build the new Israel?
Answer: I only know one thing: we need to educate the nation so that they won’t become just a mixed collection of people from all corners of the world, that they truly will become a nation.
For this to happen, we need to educate them in the spirit of unity that goes above the problems, something that is possible to attain only with the help of the system of integral unity, which comes from the wisdom of Kabbalah. I don’t see any other possibility! Otherwise, all of the nations and the countries will crush us! Just as the world decided and determined to re-establish the state of Israel, so it also will decide to cancel it, and nothing will save us!
The only thing that we can do is to become involved with the education of the nation, and thus provide an example to the whole of humanity, to show what education should include on a national scale and to continue to pass on the system of unity to all of humanity since in the integral world where everything is connected in one network, only humanity is in a state of separation. Therefore, we are experiencing two conflicting systems that are leading us to a global world war.
The wisdom of Kabbalah also warns about this. The time has come to understand what the Jewish State is accountable for in its education, in the usage of its historical mission. It is this with which we specifically need to become involved, not in building a prosperous society because that won’t help us to survive.
Question: Many are convinced that the nation of Israel survived all through history thanks to its culture and customs, including its religion.
Answer: All of that was prior to the Holocaust and the expulsion to exile! Therefore, it’s not worthwhile to reassure ourselves that it will help.
Question: What does it mean that Judaism won’t be maintained?
Answer: If we don’t carry out our mission, don’t come to connection and unity, then from above this opportunity will be taken from us and we will be forced to scatter around the world. Some of us will be destroyed, and some will be assimilated among other nations.
[183193]
From KabTV’s “A Talk About the Independence Day” 4/30/16
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Question: Not long ago we marked the day that the ARI departed. Why do we specifically mark the day of the departure of a great Kabbalist?
Answer: Actually it is a holiday for us. Because a giant like the ARI departed from our world, he ascends the levels of attainment and in this way he is able to positively influence more and more about our world and us, everything that is connected with him.
Clearly, this speaks about his soul and not his body. The body is a “beast” that we bury and that is all. Nothing happens with it, nothing.
The ARI is a giant soul that was clothed in a body in our world. In this manner, a young man of 37, whom we call the ARI, began to reveal the wisdom of Kabbalah to his students. For a year and a half he revealed the entire method, the entire system of the wisdom of Kabbalah, which nobody before him was able to reveal.
The ARI knew more than everyone and knew how to convey and formulate it as nobody before him was able to. For this we are in debt to him because he laid the foundation for the method of correction of a person and the world, which we must implement. Through this we attain the highest, eternal, and complete level of our development. Therefore we are grateful to him.
He left only one student after him, Chaim Vital, who recorded everything that he heard from the mouth of his teacher with absolute precision, and where he had doubts about the precise transmission of the words of the ARI, he left comments. We learn these writings, like all the Kabbalists in the world have done for five generations. Specifically thanks to these records we are able to advance in a good way toward the correction of ourselves, all of nature, and the whole world.
Without these records and writings, we would advance like little wretched and stupid “beasts” that don’t even know why they live, what their nature is, what their development is, and why they are given sufferings.
Whereas the method that was revealed by the ARI helps us understand toward what we must develop, what the goals are, what the stages are through which we must pass in our development, and how we must pass through all of these stages. For our development in a good way under the influence of the good force instead of the evil force, we are bound to be thankful to him.
Comment: They say that the ARI was a turning point in the history of humanity.
Answer: Humanity discovered the method of correction in our world through him, understanding why and how everything is done in the world. There were giant Kabbalists before him, as exemplified by Abraham, Moses, Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, and others. But it was specifically the ARI who succeeded in disclosing this method and revealing it for us.
So only the ARI is a giant teacher for us, and we absolutely rely on him; he opens our eyes. Already Baal HaSulam and Rabash have come after him, a father and son who described the method of the ARI in a purely practical way so that in our time we can use it and attain truly visible results.
The ARI discovered the wisdom of Kabbalah in our world, and today, someone who truly wants to correct himself and attain the goal of creation, to discover the upper world in addition to this world, can use this method. Our Bnei Baruch Kabbalah Education Center accepts everyone who is interested, in all languages, and is ready to help anyone who specifically wants to study the writings of the ARI.
[191754]
From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 8/10/16
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Question: My little daughter refuses to even taste certain foods claiming that it doesn’t taste good even though she has never tasted it. What is the reason for this kind of natural behavior?
I believe that many people feel the same way about the wisdom of Kabbalah, feeling repulsed by it although they don’t really understand what it is. Understanding this phenomenon could help us spread the wisdom of Kabbalah in the world.
Answer: If we don’t know what something tastes like, we don’t want it. But once we taste it we begin to yearn for it according to the Reshimo, the impression that is left.
The opposition to the wisdom of Kabbalah stems from the lack of a Reshimo (spiritual record), but mainly because the wisdom of Kabbalah is in opposition to our nature and it is about the correction of the ego, which is actually our whole essence. Therefore, only a person in whom the Reshimo is revealed, the impression from an earlier spiritual state, will come to study and implement the wisdom of Kabbalah.
[191738]
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