Entries in the 'Kabbalah Study' Category

Us And The Creator

laitman_558Question: Is the Creator inside us or are we inside the Creator? How does a Kabbalist feel that?

Answer: It is both. It makes no difference because it is a mutual state. The Creator is everything there is. It makes no difference what framework you attribute to Him: square, triangle, or round, we are inside Him.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 3/12/17

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How Did The First Matter Appear?

laitman_747.04Question: How does Kabbalah explain the first appearance of matter?

Answer: The first substance appears from a point of Light or a thin ray of light that produces the desire that is opposite the Light under it. A ray of Light is not a ray of light in our world; rather, this is a desire to bestow that creates a desire to receive under it. A desire is a force.

Question: From where does the Creator have a desire?

Answer: We cannot say anything about the Creator Himself. We learn the wisdom of Kabbalah beginning from the moment we attain the Creator and His relationship toward us, meaning the beginning of the appearance of an intention to create a creature and bring it to a particular state. About what existed before then, we cannot say because He was not yet called a Creator.

Question: If so, the desire to create a creature is the Big Bang?

Answer: Yes, but this didn’t happen in the physical world as the physicists say.

Question: According to the wisdom of Kabbalah there are five worlds. Were they created after the creature?

Answer: These worlds were not created and don’t exist on their own. They exist only within a person. When we attain the upper world, we immediately discover it in a picture of five worlds. If we don’t perceive them, then these worlds don’t exist.

For example, the world of Atzilut is the world of the Creator, meaning His revelation, therefore it is called “Atzilut” from the word, “Etzlo” (with Him).

Question: Why is the Creator called first? Is it because He preceded the creature?

Answer: It is because His desire exists in the beginning of everything that happens and He manages every action.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 3/12/17

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The Book Of Zohar, Learning The Spiritual Language

laitman_531.01We should not yearn to understand what we read in The Book of Zohar with our corporeal mind. It is better to totally shut the mind off and to try to hear or to read and at the same time open our mouth like a baby who doesn’t understand anything he is told.

Although a baby doesn’t understand and doesn’t perceive anything, when you say something directly to him he looks at you and tries to understand. It is very important that the baby in me should open his mouth that way and simply try to understand what he is told.

In our world a baby learns how to speak this way; we have to teach the spiritual language in the same manner, and thus we will acquire it. If we process the text of The Zohar through our understanding of our world, we will not understand or know anything.

Nothing in The Book of Zohar has anything to do with our world. It tells us about animals, people, palaces, mountains, rivers, etc., but all these images refer to the attributes of the upper world, to different vectors we don’t fully know or feel.

Therefore, we should not make anything up because we can imagine whatever we want in our distorted egoistic attributes and feelings, but all this has nothing to do with the spiritual world so we will only confuse ourselves.

It was determined that The Book of Zohar will actually be revealed in our generation, which is very far from spirituality and cannot imagine anything sublime in a correct way. Therefore, it can easily relinquish the need to connect the text of The Zohar to the corporeal world and read it only in order to evoke and summon the upper Light unto ourselves, which will reveal The Book inside us and depict for us what is happening inside us and not on the outside.

We must remember that only a person who understands that The Book is about the forces that impact us can understand and perceive The Book of Zohar correctly.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 2/12/17

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Reading The Book Of Zohar With A Critical Approach

laitman_527.05Question: Is it possible to read The Book of Zohar with a critical approach, with doubt that the truth is written in it?

Answer: I would not recommend it; this will cause harm. How can there be a critical approach? Someone who doesn’t understand the upper world doesn’t have the tools in his hands for criticizing things.

In the wisdom of Kabbalah there is no concept of a “critical approach” because anyone who attains the upper world understands what it is talking about. And someone who has not attained can criticize as much as he wants, that is his own business, but he is only harming himself.

I am amazed at your words! How can you evaluate a book that speaks about things you do not understand at all? In doing so, you bring it down to the level of ordinary philosophy or mysticism.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 2/5/17

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Signs Of Progress In The Study

laitman_219.01Question: How can I check whether I am making progress in studying Kabbalah? How is progress measured?

Answer: A sign of progress in the study is a change in your attitude to life. The more I understand that life is much longer than the time between my birth and my death, the more ready I am to exit these limitations; the more deeply I get to know my life and discover the hidden forces that impact this world, the more I have progressed.
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From the “Beginners’ Q&A” 7/24/17

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To Open The Book Of Zohar

laitman_530Question: How does the upper force expand our boundaries of knowledge and our sensations when we read The Book of Zohar?

Answer: The Book of Zohar becomes closer to us and is revealed to us to the degree that we while studying The Book of Zohar connect between us, open ourselves to each other, and try to combine and create a common desire out of our different egoistic desires and focus it on attaining the upper level—the Creator.

This is the reason why everything depends on how people connect with each other; they correctly understand the condition that they must acquire in connection with each other so that The Book of Zohar opens up in them.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 2/12/17

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Feeling The Book Of Zohar

Laitman_633.4Question: Does everyone feel The Book of Zohar in the same way?

Answer: Basically, yes. When we speak about our feelings in this world, there are differences of opinion and misunderstandings. And when we speak about spiritual attainments, there aren’t any problems because the references are absolutely accurate and there is a common terminology.

Question: How can I develop my sensitivity by using The Book of Zohar?

Answer: Sensitivity to The Book of Zohar emerges only to the extent that one reads it. You should begin to read it. The main part is in the first volume. You should go over it several times and you will see how the book suddenly begins to operate in you; this happens quite quickly.

Good luck to us all that we can properly put ourselves under the upper illumination called The Zohar.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 2/5/17

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A Different Kabbalah

laitman_570Question: I can understand some of the grievances that religious people have against you, but why are you also criticised by scholars who study Kabbalah in universities?

Answer: Scholars who study Kabbalah sit in universities and nobody has any issue with them, whereas with us Bnei Baruch, everybody attacks us and everyone is unhappy with us. So the issue is not that we are studying Kabbalah, but precisely how much this type of study of Kabbalah is not tolerated by religion and religious and secular people.

University scholars write about each other, of what each one thinks about Kabbalah. This came from ancient Greeks who studied Kabbalah from the prophets, but they understood it on a purely superficial level and this is how they began to write about it. Then, following generations wrote about the previous generations of philosophers and what they believed.

In other words, academic Kabbalah does not pursue the goal of attaining the Creator and the upper world and of making Kabbalists of their students, it merely aims to study previous university researchers.

Perhaps such people also come to us with a desire to study Kabbalah on the surface like in universities, and so they leave dissatisfied with us, for allegedly, we are studying the “wrong thing.” Likewise, scientists who study us in universities do not understand us and internally resent us for being different, not like them.

They cannot comprehend that our Kabbalah is DIFFERENT from theirs: We have attainment of the upper world from Kabbalists who perceive it in practice, while what they have is studying the opinions of their predecessors who have not attained the higher world.
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Write On The Tablet Of Your Heart

laitman_281.02Question: In the past, it was unacceptable and even forbidden to write down the explanations of teachers who taught Torah; why don’t we behave that way today?

Answer: They didn’t record the words of the teacher in the past but learned orally, not because it was difficult to record on wooden tablets, for example, but because the students heard and attained the upper world while processing the profundity of the words of the teacher.

Now the situation is different; we hear and record to know mechanically, not through living attainment. When a student follows his teacher like a lower Partzuf following an upper Partzuf through adhesion with it, a living picture of the upper world is revealed to the student. Therefore, the student receives his attainment “mouth to mouth” from the higher level, meaning through sharing a Masach (Screen) with the teacher.

This is called “writing on the tablet of your heart” on the corrected desires. And today people learn dead letters and words because there is no Light in them; there is no characteristic of bestowal, only external knowledge. This is called exile from the upper world.

So, after the fall from the level of spiritual attainment happened two thousand years ago, they began to record the words of the sages of the Torah so that when we would leave the exile in the future, we would ascend to love and bestowal and could revitalize their texts through the upper Light.
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Creation Is Desire

laitman_243.05Question: What is creation according to Kabbalah?

Answer: Creation is a desire to receive, which can be found in different forms: in insects, in people, in space, in angels, in everything

There are desires on the levels of the still, vegetative, animate, and speaking, and the levels of intention are determined accordingly.

Question: What is the difference between intention and desire?

Answer: The desire is awakened in us by the upper Light, and the intention is the manner in which we use our desire.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 3/19/17

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