Entries in the 'Kabbalah Study' Category

An Eye For An Eye, And Where Is The Love?

laitman_558Question from Facebook: What is the meaning of “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth?”

Answer: It means that we have to establish the correct relations between people at the level of nature, on the egoistic level.

On the one hand, we should not take anything into account besides equality, when the force of action causes an equal force of opposition.

On the other hand, if all the people in the world opposed each other, then there is an understanding that the system of connection should be higher than their nature.

The wisdom of Kabbalah helps a person acquire the attribute of connection above egoism. It is called “faith above reason” or “love will cover all transgressions.” Love doesn’t erase anything. We see all the pollution and all the problems between us and to what extent each is opposed to others and how different each one is from the other, which is given to us from nature! But by making efforts together, we build a bridge of a totally different type of connection above everything, understanding who we are.

The wisdom of Kabbalah offers us a method called the “middle line,” which helps us do this. If we think about the world, about a normal life, and about good mutual relations between us, we can attain that only by this method.
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From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 1/30/16

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Why People Lie

laitman_559Question: Scientists say that people lie to preserve their value in the eyes of others. According to psychologists, the so-called “white lie” is used in this case. What is a lie from your point of view?

Answer: A lie is a natural defensive reaction of an organism that doesn’t want to see itself damaged and humiliated. What difference does it make to me whether it’s a lie or the truth? The main thing is to keep myself at a certain level. If I need to lie, I’ll lie, and if I need to tell the truth, I’ll tell the truth. I don’t take into account either one or the other, I consider only my inner state.

Therefore, people don’t have any understanding of what is a lie or the truth. Everything is determined only in relation to a person. You can’t say to someone, “Why are you lying?” He’ll say, “I’m not lying, for me this is the truth.” Why is it the truth? Because in this way, I support myself in the best possible condition. That’s the only truth!

Objective truth doesn’t exist because our nature is only the desire to receive pleasure and to keep ourselves in the state of maximum possible comfort at any moment in time. Therefore, what supports this state is the truth for me, and what doesn’t support it is a lie.

Question: What is a lie in the Kabbalistic sense?

Answer: In the Kabbalistic sense, everything is evaluated only with respect to the purpose of creation. Everything that is in agreement with the purpose of creation is the truth, and whatever isn’t in agreement is a lie. What leads to bestowal, love, adhesion with the upper force, and ascent to the next level is the truth. All the opposite is a lie.

Question: What if this isn’t related to the purpose of creation and exists as we do in this world? Is it the truth or a lie?

Answer: Nothing can be said. We see in different eras and in different cultures completely different criteria for truth or a lie.

Question: Does it mean that we live in the world without coordinates?

Answer: Of course. Coordinates indicate how my egoistic heart twists me. One minute I can say, “Yes, this is the truth” and the next minute I say, “No, this is a lie.”
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From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 3/1/17

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Reading A Kabbalah Book

laitman_531_02-jpgQuestion: How does the power in a Kabbalah book format new sensors inside me and open the curtain to the spiritual world that is concealed from me?

Answer: The book doesn’t do anything; any book no matter whom it was written by is merely paper.

What makes us fulfill the whole work is our desire. We summon and evoke the impact of the Surrounding Light (Ohr Makif) that surrounds us to the extent that we yearn to be connected to each other.

While reading the book, we establish a connection with the upper Kabbalistic source, and it impacts us and changes us. It is not the book itself, but what we want to comprehend in it, what we want to resemble. Therefore, while studying the wisdom of Kabbalah, we summon unto ourselves the force field that surrounds us, and it is what changes us.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 11/27/16

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New Life 829 – Religions And The Development Of Man

New Life 829 – Religions And The Development Of Man
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Yael Leshed-Harel

What does the return to religion today indicate? How did Abraham discover the upper force? What was the impact of this revelation on humanity and why did popular religion emerge?

There is a trend of returning to religion today as a result of the growing egoism. People are looking for meaning of life. Religion tells us that there is a force that manages us above nature, that we should believe in it and obey its commandments. We don’t need to “believe” in order to reveal the Creator; we need to work and to acquire the attribute of love of others.
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From KabTV’s “New Life 829 – Religions And The Development Of Man,” 2/14/17

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New Life 828 – Between Religions And The Wisdom Of Kabbalah

New Life 828 – Between Religions And The Wisdom Of Kabbalah
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Yael Leshed-Harel

What does religion provide us with? How does the wisdom of Kabbalah teach us to get to know the upper force and what is the goal that people of all religions have to reach according to this wisdom?

We don’t know what we are living for, and religions offer a person something that is beyond this life. The wisdom of Kabbalah is the internality of Judaism. It is the method of revealing the Creator to man while still in this world.
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From KabTV’s “New Life 828 –  Between Religions And The Wisdom Of Kabbalah,” 2/14/17

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Is It Possible To Advance Without A Group?

laitman_245_09Question: With what should I begin the path of the soul, spiritual life?

Answer: With virtual study or from ordinary study in our courses. Then as you advance in your studies, you will feel that you need a group.

Question: Why are you so sure that it is impossible to advance without a group? I have met quite a few people who claim that they quite successfully practice Kabbalah without a group. Even Baal HaSulam doesn’t mention it in his writings. After all he never had a group.

Answer: There are numerous articles about the need for a group, not by modern Kabbalists. Kabbalists have written very clearly about the importance of the group for ages. You simply don’t know the sources.

Question: Rabash had one teacher, his father Baal HaSulam. What is the shortest way to the Creator: in a group where the optimal number of people is ten, or one-on-one with a wise teacher?

Answer: Baal HaSulam had a group of students and Rabash was one of them. Then Rabash also organized a group in which I studied together with other students. After having studied with Rabash for some time, I asked him what I needed in order to continue to advance and he answered: “nothing will help you unless you organize a group.”

His group included a few old men with whom he had studied with Baal HaSulam. This group did not suit me, so I began to collect young men and gave lectures to them. This is how a new group was created.

It is impossible to study the wisdom of Kabbalah without a group. Without a group, you will not understand anything and will surely not achieve anything!
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 10/30/16

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Four Races And Four Phases Of Light

laitman_629_1Question: Do the four races match the four letters of the name HaVaYaH and the four phases of the Ohr Yashar (Direct Light)?

Answer: Yes, the four races are divided into the four phases of Direct Light, but this doesn’t mean anything because we must unite in order to carry out the correction.

There cannot be a Partzuf, meaning, a normal spiritual system in which the Creator is revealed, if a connection doesn’t exist between everyone. So, no one can be removed from it: white, black, yellow, or red.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 8/14/16

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The Secret Of The Hebrew Alphabet Revealed

Laitman_151In the News (ScienceNews): “The world’s earliest alphabet, inscribed on stone slabs at several Egyptian sites, was an early form of Hebrew, a controversial new analysis concludes.

“Israelites living in Egypt transformed that civilization’s hieroglyphics into Hebrew 1.0 more than 3,800 years ago, at a time when the Old Testament describes Jews living in Egypt, says archaeologist and epigrapher Douglas Petrovich of Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Canada. Hebrew speakers seeking a way to communicate in writing with other Egyptian Jews simplified the pharaohs’ complex hieroglyphic writing system into 22 alphabetic letters, Petrovich proposed on November 17 at the annual meeting of the American Schools of Oriental Research.”

My Comment: A mistake is concealed here.

The Jews didn’t borrow anything from anyone because the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet are derived from the spiritual structure of three levels (Bina, Zeir Anpin, and Malchut) of the upper world that influence us. So humanity began to realize them subconsciously. The Hebrew alphabet comes from Adam, who discovered them 5,777 years ago and used them himself. So in any case, humanity will have to reconsider archaeology, paleontology, and everything else, and will then agree that everything comes from there.

If there were any records before then, as far as it seems, these were notes and symbols, but an alphabet by which we connect a collection of images into a meaningful word and create a sentence from the words, meaning a completed thought on a particular subject that even after generations can be transmitted, something like this didn’t exist anywhere. This is only because the Jews had a connection with the upper world and specifically took the terms and the method from there.

In other words, there are three levels between us and the upper world that are filled with a particular collection of forces that become the letters in our world.

Each spiritual force is a letter. We get a word by connecting them together and by connecting words, we get a thought.

Question: Did all signs and hieroglyphs appear after these letters?

Answer: Certainly. The Hebrew letters are the foundation of written languages, including Chinese and Japanese.

Question: Why do we have no way of proving this?

Answer: Why should we prove it? Humanity is searching in its own way based on excavations, motivations, opinions, and theories. But this was written in our books thousands of years ago. Nobody wants to pay attention to this because it contradicts the Christian and Muslim approach. So it is preferable that we remain quietly on the side.

The different languages, the alphabet, and everything else came from ancient Babylon and this reached ancient Babylon from Adam.

Horizontal and vertical lines and other elements of the letters are derived from those forces that we try to symbolize, because each letter is a symbol of a particular spiritual expression, of a particular spiritual form, of a force, and so forth. They are like a seal. So there are 22 such seals, which are absolutely sufficient for conveying the higher spiritual characteristics of Bina and the lower spiritual characteristics of Malchut.

Nothing more or less is required. That is how the letters must be conveyed. However, there have been permutations, their replacement. In general, this is a deep, complex system, because everything is found in the letters.

So in this way, the secret of the letters, their combinations, their formation, and their development is still waiting to be discovered. There are laws according to which it is impossible to modify anything in the Hebrew alphabet. It is impossible to change even one letter, even one line, font, or embellishment. Everything about the calligraphy must be preserved.

In computer programs, we find twenty thousand different fonts. This has no connection to truth. There exists only one font called “Ktav sofer – scribal writing” through which everything is presented in the Torah, because there the precise graphic form expresses the inner content of the force in the letter.
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From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 12/14/16

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First Impressions Of Kabbalah

laitman_527_07Question: I am a new student. When I listen to you, your words sound like a fresh mountain stream. But when I look at a thick book, it becomes scary. What should I do?

Answer: When I began to search for Kabbalistic sources, I ran around to all the shops and could not find anything. Then, suddenly, I came to a place where I found all the books about the wisdom of Kabbalah: Talmud Eser Sefirot, all of the volumes of The Book of Zohar, the writings of Ramchal, and others.

I immediately bought everything because they were nowhere else to be found. To acquire the collection of the writings of the Ari, I specifically went to a small suburb of Tel Aviv, went to the front garden, and knocked on the gate. An old woman came out to me who, after learning what I wanted, said, “I will look to see if there’s something left.” I asked for two sets of the fifteen volumes of the writings of the Ari, but she only handed me one.

She was the wife of a Kabbalist who, during his lifetime, published books, and he probably left her with a large storeroom after his death. That is how it was possible to get the writings of the Kabbalists.

When I brought these books home and began to read, it was like a bolt from the blue; they affected me so passionately. These were my very first impressions. After that, when you become familiar with the wisdom of Kabbalah, you feel how infinitely good it is and that it wishes to reveal the eternity, serenity, and goodness of creation to you.

Question: Did you understand anything from the writings of the Ari when you opened them?

Answer: In fact, at that time, I didn’t know how to read Hebrew. I had a local friend my same age who read them aloud, and I sat next to him and listened. Although I didn’t understand anything, I sensed that this was the most important thing.

I memorized what I heard, and somehow compared it within myself. Different kinds of pictures were born in my thoughts. I experienced all kinds of emotions, something incomprehensible. So, over four or five years, everything was read, and when I came to Rabash, it all instantly took on a completely different form.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 11/20/16

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ISIS Executes A Hundred-Year-Old Sufi Sheikh

Laitman_153In the News (Al Arabiya): “Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis – ISIS-affiliated extremist group in Egypt – has released images purporting to show the execution of a 100-year-old man.

“The group, who rebranded as ISIS-Sinai when they pledged allegiance to the extremist group holding swathes of Iraq and Syria, killed Sheikh Sulaiman Abu Haraz after kidnapping him earlier.

“Abu Haraz, considered one of the symbolic Sufi clerics and elders of the Sinai Peninsula, was taken by the group from in front of his house in Arish city under gun point.”

My Comment: Sufism is Islamic Kabbalah. They live their lives in exile from their nations because they are hated, similar to the attitude toward Kabbalists in Judaism. Likewise, Sufism calls for everyone to achieve unity through limitless love, as a fundamental principle for all of humanity.
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