From My Facebook Page Michael Laitman 8/30/19

Czech photographer Vladimir Brunton has photographed great European leaders for years, and has become a famous artist throughout Europe. In the middle of 2017, Brunton began to study the wisdom of Kabbalah. From the very first moment he admired the depth of wisdom and its endless layers.

He decided to express his impressions in a series of artistic photographs that were processed using an original and unique technique: layers of photographs (2×2 m) developed on handmade Japanese canvas (watch the work process here).

During his first few weeks of learning, when he was all fired up, he decided to convey the magic of creation in color. After a year of strenuous work in his studio, Brunton delivered a spectacular collection of art photographs. In collaboration with the Art Gallery in Prague (Czech Photo), he decided to display them to the public in the Prague Capital Exhibition.

I was delighted to visit the exhibition with my local students. I praised Brunton for finding an original way to shake the mystical dust off the wisdom of Kabbalah, and present it in a positive light. I was even more thrilled to find the portraits of my two teachers: Baal HaSulam and The Rabash, and I was even surprised to find my portraits.

If you are staying in Prague until mid-September, come and be impressed (address: Seydlerova 2835/4); Or visit Vladimir Brunton’s website, where you will find the thought-provoking exhibition.

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From My Facebook Page Michael Laitman 8/25/19

On my second day in India, I met with over a hundred members of the Mumbai Jewish community. The meeting was held at the Elijah Synagogue, located in the city center, in a magnificent building, turquoise-painted on the outside and white on the inside. We talked about the state of the Jews in the world, and their unique role, the vital need to shine light on humanity’s development in our fragile time.

Humanity is like a teenage boy who was used to being taken care of by his parents for a long time, and is now searching for himself and does not know what to do next. And this is where the role of the Jewish people comes into play: to provide guidance, direction, care and education for the entire world. And where will the Jews have the brains and methodology to do it? From the authentic sources of the wisdom of Kabbalah.

And the essence of the method is connection, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” the great rule of the Torah. Since we lack nothing besides a positively working connection between people. On the basis of this idea, the people of Israel came together in ancient Babylon, following Abraham the patriarch. After the ascents and descents throughout the ages, came the holy Ari in the sixteenth century, who declared that from now on it is imperative for the Jewish people to spread the method of human connection to all.

Some members of the Jewish community understood me more, and some less, like everywhere else in the world. But every ear that listens and every heart that understands take us one step forward on the road to redemption.

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From My Facebook Page Michael Laitman 8/25/19

Pushkar is a picturesque market town, a magical oasis located in the state of Rajasthan, India. While I was staying on the south side of the subcontinent, some of my students invited people in the area to an introductory lecture on the fundamentals of Kabbalah.

As a result, two introductory lectures were took place—one in Hebrew to Israeli backpackers, and another one in English for tourists from around the world. Both lectures were conducted in the calming atmosphere that is characteristic of India. And so, tourists sat in a circle alongside curious locals, as they were all listening to the simple message of the wisdom of Kabbalah—uniting the hearts as one.

Naturally, everyone understood it differently. However, everyone agreed that we were all one soul. Thank you to everyone who participated, and you can always continue studying online with the click of a button.

Our online KabU course >>>>>>>>>>>>>>

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From My Facebook Page Michael Laitman 8/25/19

Richard Slavin, an American Jew who was born in the suburbs of Chicago, traveled in his youth for a short vacation in Europe and ended his journey in the Himalayas. From a young seeker, he became a hermit in an ashram, an urban American became a famous guru leading a large devotional community, Richard Slavin became Radhanth Swami.

I was happy to meet him and discover that we are almost the same age, we both come from families who fled the former Soviet Union because of anti-Semitic persecution, and we both reached our destination in the early 1970s: he to India and I to Israel.

I innocently asked him what the Hindu religion was, and he replied that “there are many interpretations, and if you translate from the ancient Indian Sanskrit language, it is a belief in one God, one higher truth, the Father and Mother of all beings and creatures. Although there are many powerful entities, many expressions of the same higher force, in the end we worship a single force,” he said.

“The ultimate goal of life is to live in harmony with this law of nature, this Godly law, and love it,” Swami shares with me the wisdom of devotion, which he teaches to the masses. “When we love God we are like watering the root of the tree, and when we water the tree, the water spreads to all parts of the tree: to the branches, to the flowers, to the fruits. When we awaken love within us, compassion spreads in all created beings.”

I agreed with his ideas, as this is what the wisdom of Kabbalah teaches us: that there is one, unique and unified force, a good and benevolent force and there is none else besides him. This is the approach I teach hundreds of thousands of my students every day around the world. Therefore, I agreed with him even more when he talked about the ego as the main reason preventing a person from discovering the single force.

“Our brain is like a mirror,” says Radhanth Swami; “When you look at the mirror you want to see yourself, but if the mirror is covered in dust and dirt then only they appear to us. The dust and dirt are our selfishness—the self-love, anger, jealousy, greed and arrogance that lead to mistrust between people, dishonesty, cruelty. And when we all want to be in control and enjoy ourselves, we are in conflict. Therefore, only when we realize that the Creator is in control, and that the real pleasure comes from service and giving to the Creator, to the ‘Creator’s children,’ only then can there be peace.”

The essential question I had for the guru was how to attain the single, upper force? How do you rise above the ego? And here, although Swami and I speak the same words and seem to agree on the same principles, our path is different, as is the level of spiritual attainment. Swami sees meditation, yoga, and the use of mantras as a way of purification. He sees various moral practices as a way of life for serving others, a way to clear the mirror in one’s mind.

The purification of the ego—as was common among the Kabbalists thousands of years ago, and expressed in Masechet Avot (6, 4): “Bread with salt you shall eat, water in small measure you shall drink, and upon the ground you shall sleep; live a life of deprivation…”—no longer works in our thick, coarse generation. Therefore, some three thousand years ago, the sages made spiritual corrections and determined that the ego should not be eradicated, but transcended. How? With the help of the “light that reforms”—the positive force that exists in nature and emerges when there is a desire for mutual connection, as taught by the wisdom of Kabbalah.

The meeting was purely friendly and symbolic, so there was no attempt to deeply scrutinize and compare our methods. Swami is a close soul and I felt how the Jew in him speaks through his throat. He is an interesting, eloquent, and simple man with a rolling laugh.

I thank you Swami for the warm welcome, the respect you demonstrated to us, and for escorting us through the city streets, an act that we later discovered you don’t typically do and have never done in the past, but that is what happens when, for a moment, we feel like family.

Radhanath Swami

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From My Facebook Page Michael Laitman 8/25/19

India under the fog. Likewise, humanity is groping for its way forward in a fog, expecting the moment when the cloud that hides everything will dissolve. Then, it would clearly see the universal law of nature: the law of love and interconnection among all human beings.

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From My Facebook Page Michael Laitman 8/17/19

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From My Facebook Page Michael Laitman 8/18/19

One of the biggest anti-Semites of the 20th century, Henry Ford, wrote about a special influence on the world that Jewish people can have. Somehow, this fact calls out the nations of the world toward Jews. Why would it be so?

The wisdom of Kabbalah describes the cause and solution of anti-Semitism in a way that leads to peace for everybody, regardless of race or nationality.

It describes the Jewish people as those who gathered upon a common desire to unite, i.e. 4,000 years ago in ancient Babylon, during times of growing social division and hatred. Abraham’s group gathered out of 70 nations, connected around the principle “love covers all transgressions,” and later on became known as “the people of Israel” (from the term “Yashar Kel” – “straight to the upper force”), and “Jews” (the Hebrew word for “Jew” [Yehudi] comes from the word for “united” [yihudi] [Yaarot Devash, Part 2, Drush no. 2]). At that time, atop growing social division and hatred, Jews received the method of how to connect above the division, and its implementation brought about great improvements in society.

Unfortunately, through the centuries of exile, the Jews forgot about this method and attainment they once received. Therefore, as social division brews in our times, the nations of the world feel subconsciously that the Jews are to blame for all kinds of problems in their lives. Anti-Semitic sentiment thus intensifies as an alarm clock getting louder and louder, trying to wake up the people of Israel to realize their inner potential for unification above the divisions, above the growing urge to enjoy at the expense of others.

Humanity feels that its well-being depends on Jews, and if the latter fail to put some effort into making the correction happen, they experience its negative consequences in the form of anti-Semitism. Likewise, just a little effort toward creating a more united, positive, supportive and encouraging environment among the Jewish people will send positive ripples of unifying energy around humanity, and the lessening anti-Semitism would come about together with a happier, better connected world.

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From My Facebook Page Michael Laitman 8/16/19

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From My Facebook Page Michael Laitman 8/16/19

Today, on Friday, August 16, 2019, the street upon which the central building of the Bnei Baruch Kabbalah Education and Research Institute is located—called in Israel, Kabbalah L’Am –Bnei Baruch Association—will have its name changed to “Rabash Street” in commemoration of the great Kabbalist Baruch Shalom HaLevi Ashlag (the Rabash)—a decision made by the Municipality of Petah Tikva, headed by Rami Greenberg.

Rabash was a special Kabbalist who acted for the unity of all the people of Israel: religious and secular, all races and factions as one. He was very concerned that the true Torah of Israel—unity of the people—would reach the ears of all people and increase unity in society: a power capable of healing all of the world’s problems.

As a result of Rabash’s many years of devoted work, a group became established—men, women and children—who wanted to realize the vision of Kabbalist Yehuda Leib HaLevi Ashlag (Baal HaSulam), as he specified in The Writings of the Last Generation: a vision of a corrected and unified human society. This group became known as “Bnei Baruch” (i.e. “the sons of Baruch Shalom HaLevi Ashlag [the Rabash]”). We, as members of this group, understand that it is a long path, as Rabash himself described in his first article, that “although we have not yet achieved this goal, we have the desire to achieve it. And this, too, should be appreciated by us, for even though we are at the beginning of the way, we do hope to achieve the exalted goal.” (Rabash, “The Purpose of Society,” 1984.)

We—the members of Bnei Baruch, the students of the method of connection and the wisdom of Kabbalah that Rabash received from his teacher and father, Baal HaSulam, and passed down to us—have a strong will and determination to continue the path of our teacher. We are currently in a lab-like environment, learning upon ourselves how tocreate a new unified society and increasing our understanding of what that means, because we are still unworthy of being such a society.
Rabash is our teacher, the source and fountain from which we have received our entire method. Therefore, we are very moved and delighted that the residents and municipal authorities of Petah Tikva recognize us as a positive force and valuable addition to the city, deciding to change the name of the street where our world center is located, to the name of our teacher, Rabash.

We will endeavor to give back to the city’s residents, and to all who know our teacher and what he stood for, our maximal efforts to realize our teachers’ vision of a new unified society. I very much hope that we will reach a state where Rabash’s great name will be promoted in the world, as the one who opened the path of Torah, the method of correction, and that his method will bring about the unification of human society in Israel and around the world

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From My Facebook Page Michael Laitman 8/8/19

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