New Life 780 – The Study Of Torah Is Not What You Thought
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Nitzah Mazoz

What do we imagine the Torah is beyond historical events, how does it spread before us a deeper and wider reality than the one with which we are familiar, and how does it develop the person who studies it?

The study of Torah is not what is customary in our day and not how we understand it. The Torah is the program of the world. Studying Torah is learning about the world, how it is built and is managed according to a program of development. True study of Torah is not just study; rather, it changes a person and raises him to the summit of reality.
The main points:

• The study of the whole of nature, which is also called Elohim, shows how we can climb toward the highest level.
• Within himself, a person can develop a system that is called a soul, which will be like the entire system of nature.
• The texts that were written in the sacred books were written in codes that must be deciphered. To crack the codes, a person must change himself. He must change his mind and feelings.
• The more a person expands his love for others, the greater the depth he will discover in the Torah. Love of others develops a sense in a person that makes it possible for him to go out of himself and absorb the true reality. A person begins to acquire divine intelligence and feeling, and is connected with eternity and the wholeness of nature.
• To be connected to the power of the Torah requires a teacher who is a Kabbalist and special work within a study group.
• The Torah is the Light that surrounds us. We must study how to place ourselves before it, like sunbathing.
• “And meditate on it day and night” (Joshua 1:8) means that a person must constantly search for how to advance toward love of others.
• I read a book within a group and hope to receive the force of connection and love, which is how the Torah becomes opened for us.
  [195531]
  From KabTV’s “New Life 780 – The Study Of Torah Is Not What You Thought,” 10/20/16

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New Life 779 –  Studying The Torah Today
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Tal Mandelbaum ben Moshe

The Torah is not a book or an encyclopedia, but an upper force that exists in nature called the Light.

The first to discover the upper force 5,777 years ago was called Adam and then Abraham discovered it after him.

Abraham taught his group how to draw the Upper Light, called the Torah, in order to connect people through love. This is how the nation of Israel was founded. Later a new egoistic desire was revealed among the nation of Israel and this process is referred to as going down to Egypt.

The exodus from Egypt describes how we ascend above the egoism that divides us. Then there is a series of instructions of how we should correct ourselves, according to which we have to connect as one man in one heart, in mutual guarantee.

We have 613 egoistic desires and the force of the Torah corrects each of them. Throughout history there were times in which the people used the Torah correctly and times when they didn’t.

After the destruction of the second Temple, only Rashbi’s group of ten people was left, and they passed The Book of Zohar, the Light for the future, to us. Today The Book of Zohar was revealed thanks to the Sulam Commentary, which is meant to help us draw the Light in the Torah.

The Ari discovered the wisdom of Kabbalah back in the 16^th century in Safed and Baal Shem Tov was the next to discover it. Every generation is given the writings that are suitable for it, and in our generations it is the writings of Baal HaSulam and Rabash.

The Torah has been studied in exile since the destruction of the Temple, which means studying what is written in the book without correcting the heart. Today we have to return to the original attitude to the Torah as a means for the correction of the heart and the connection between us.

Why do we need the Torah today? Because the world is in a general crisis and the ego is the cause of the collapse of systems.

The saying “and you shall repeat to your sons” means that for thousands of years the Torah has kept us as the level of “the still nature of Holiness.” Today it is our duty to add the internality of the Torah since without it the externality will not be preserved either.

Studying the wisdom of Kabbalah is studying in a group in order to connect.

The Jews are different from all the other nations of the world since it is their duty to connect and to set an example of love to all of humanity. They are the spearhead on the way to correcting the world and therefore it says: “My home will be called a home of prayer for all the nations.”
[195446]
From KabTV’s “New Life 779 – Studying The Torah Today,” 10/18/16

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Question: Can humanity overcome the crisis by a method other than the wisdom of Kabbalah, like religion and love of others, for example? And why is it necessarily the wisdom of Kabbalah?

Answer: The wisdom of Kabbalah is a science, and its laws are revealed to us as we learn about nature, just like the laws of physics, chemistry, etc. Studying and exploring nature reveal them.

We receive data and summarize it, and thus penetrate the secrets of the world around us, and this is also how Kabbalists penetrate the secrets of nature. The wisdom of Kabbalah tells us how we can do that, and by using it anyone can become a scientist and an explorer and attain the depths of nature and even see the next phase of human evolution. A person can achieve all that. It isn’t an artificial system of certain exercises.

There is only one thing we should do, we should gather and bring all of humanity  together into one whole. This is where nature is leading us by showing us how to fulfill that.
[195652]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 7/10/16

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Question: Does the study of Kabbalah guarantee reaching the upper degree?

Answer: Study itself is not a guarantee. You can study physics your whole life and not be a physicist. Everything depends on realization.

If you have a group, a guide, if you hear what he says and realize it between yourselves in the group connection, attracting the Surrounding Light, which changes each of you and unites you into a unified whole, one united desire, then the results of the realization are evident.

You start feeling one force in one desire according to the law of the equivalence of form because you’ve created a united desire: one from many.

This desire contains the power of unity in which you feel a unified power of nature, which fills the entire universe on all levels, in all dimensions, and this is all the outcome of your realization. If you want this, yes, if not, no. Study in itself will bring nothing; you can study all your life and achieve nothing.
[196167]
From the Prelimenary Lesson, the Prague Convention 9/9/2016

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Question: The study of the Torah accompanied the Jewish people throughout the ages, but in our time our attitude to it has become controversial.

Secular people associate the study of the Torah with Orthodox Jews, dressed in black and swaying over a book. What is the meaning of “engage in it day and night” if for the majority, the Torah study is limited to a short course in the school curriculum?

Answer: The study of the Torah is absolutely not what it implies nowadays. The Torah is a program of the entire world. The system that controls our universe and all of us above time, movement, and space is called the Torah. Therefore, engaging in the Torah means studying how our world is organized, how it works, and what program controls it, developing and advancing us as a person must participate in this program.

If a person receives access to this program, he can learn it and correct himself with its help by bringing himself in line with the entire world and the general system of nature. Nature is called the Creator; therefore, the real study of the Torah is knowledge of all the boundless nature that includes the entire universe.

To study Torah means to learn the general system of nature, its programs, laws, and the forces that operate in it. We study it not for the sake of idle curiosity, but in order to join the work of this system. After all, despite the fact that we are inside the system, we are given some freewill and the ability to correct ourselves, bringing us into conformity with the system.

If I change my nature and adjust myself to the system, I begin to enter and understand it. From an ordinary person that lives on this small planet, in a limited number of years I turn into a person that climbs the spiritual degrees. All of nature, its program, the process of its development, infinity, and eternity inherent to nature become clear to me.

Apart from the feelings in the bodily sensors on the animal level, I can develop within myself a system that is similar to the entire all-embracing nature that is called the soul. Initially I don’t have a soul, but I can develop it through the study of the general system of nature —the program that exists in nature and is called Torah.

Therefore, the study of the Torah is not a simple study of the book; we work on our change and rise to the degree that is higher than our current one. Thanks to this, I get the opportunity to see the world from end to end, at unlimited distances, over time, movement, and space. I will know the conditions that preceded the emergence of our universe, the beginning of its development, and the end result to which it should come.

I see myself in it, that eternal part in me that is constantly transforming, and I understand how it is changing and how to help it to develop in the best way. I also understand how it is possible to impact the entire reality, the whole world, all the people, and especially the people of Israel so that all of them will develop well and correctly.

Now we constantly suffer from the blows of nature that push us to development with sharp pricks. This is called the path of suffering, the natural flow of time (Beito). However, instead of it, we ourselves can aspire to advance to develop by seeing our future state and moving to it the good way. This is called hastening time (Achishena).

It turns out that the study of the Torah implies the revelation of the special forces in the surrounding nature through which I and all of humanity can develop the perfect way to a very sublime goal, above time and space, and it allows everyone to reach immortality and perfection.

As you can see, this has nothing to do with the study of Torah we are familiar with.
[195534]

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The wisdom of Kabbalah provides a person with a patent for attaining infinite pleasure, for the goal of creation is to provide all of creation with infinite pleasure, as it is written, “The Creator created the world to give pleasure to His creatures.” But first we must do some work, and then we will receive pleasure.

In fact, the moment a person receives an approach to this wisdom, he must immediately understand that this is not just wisdom on its own; it is a means for attaining pleasure.

This may sound egoistic, but there is nothing else for a person to do in life besides searching and discovering, with the help of his ego, the treasure that is found within him: his soul, within which is the Creator, and ultimately eternal pleasure, eternal life, and unlimited existence. All of this is possible only if a person truly has a healthy and good egoism and constantly yearns for this goal, never separating from it in exchange for any of the pleasures of this world.

At first, a person doesn’t understand the egoism hidden within him and what it means to work with it, what the upper Light is, and how it is possible to attract it and direct it toward himself so that the Light will begin to “divide” him into an egoist and an altruist, bestowal and reception. This is not easy.

Everything depends on the ability of the person to persist. If he has a serious desire, then he will attain the goal.
[196024]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 8/28/16

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Question: Why doesn’t history teach society anything? Why are people unable to understand and accept clear and self-evident facts and draw conclusions from them about the present and the future?

Answer: Humanity learns gradually, but only from its mistakes. Suffering pushes humanity forward. According to what is described in the books of the wisdom of Kabbalah, it had to be this way until our time. Until the end of the 19^th century and the beginning of the 20^th century, humanity developed according to “blows.” And from the end of the 19^th century, the world began to change. The First World War was the beginning of the manifestation of global processes in the world. This trend gradually continued and was manisfested more distinctly after the Second World War. And today we already live in a global world with distinct integral connections.

In our era, when humanity has reached such an integral ego, we are fully entering mutual connections and people are beginning to come into contact with each other over oceans and continents. It is already possible to explain to people that they are not just integrally connected, but that the connections that we have built are bad. Poorly built global connections are fraught with danger.

Therefore, the wisdom of Kabbalah is revealed and it begins to explain that we must rise to our next level of development. This means that we must begin to comprehend the world through a common mutual connection between us, not each one of us personally through his or her senses. When this happens, we will feel the world in a completely different way, on another plane, in another dimension. We will see it as a  fully interconnected system, a system in which a single force acts, managing everything.

It is similar to a flock of birds. Their number can reach into the thousands, and yet they all obey a single desire, one intention and motion. Between them exists a collective connection, a collective intelligence, a collective feeling, a collective goal. None of them have personal goals. They all aim only toward instinctive cooperation, realizing a collective program and attaining a common goal. If we were to feel this common system of mutual connection between us, despite our egoism, then through it we would begin to feel what is called “the upper world”; we would reach the feeling of a common nature, a state of eternity and wholeness.

We must reach this state independently and not instinctively as happens with the birds, fish, bees, and the like that are found on the animate level. We must reach this despite and in opposition to our egoism by rising above it and connecting to each other. Then we will begin to feel the force that manages everything.

When the various ants, birds, or fish connect, the general collective force manages them. This is also a higher power, which manifests itself among the birds in such moments. They move without conversing, precisely within this general collective force. This is also what needs to happen to us through the right connection. This is what is called the revelation of the Creator among people.

If we were already in such a connection, we would be able to discuss the next level of our development, an existence that is not within the body, but outside the body, within our common collective intelligence and desire. Then we would traverse our present egoistic and personal perception of reality and become a single being of the one upper world.

We can do this in our world in our day, and we must attain this either against our will or consciously. Now the wisdom of Kabbalah is emerging, explaining to us that we must try to attain this state consciously, otherwise we will endure great turmoil.
[194830]
From a Kabbalah lesson on 7/10/16

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Question: Despite the fact that Islam emerged as a consequence of Christianity and Judaism, Islam has an extreme negative attitude to both religions and especially to Judaism. If we ignore the territorial claims and demands of the Muslim world against Israel for a moment, why is there such hatred between these religions?

Answer: Initially, there was no animosity between Islam and Judaism. Christianity, having completely opposite origins, places itself in opposition to Judaism. Islam has never been considered as a religion that is strange to Judaism. The foundations of Islam are very close to Judaism. The Muslims believe in the same Creator, the same God, which is in no way material and cannot be expressed or described in any other way.

The difference between the two religions stems from the fact that the Arab nation, which stems from Abraham’s son and his female slave, has another prophet named Mohamed. Mohamed put forth his prophecy, and it spread among the Bedouins who lived in the deserts of Saudi Arabia in the sixth and seventh centuries. Later, his prophecy gradually spread as a religion. Basically, Islam is founded on commandments that are absolutely Jewish, and there is nothing in Islam that contradicts Judaism. For ages, there were no conflicts or clashes between Jews and Arabs.

The problems began much later during the time of colonialism in the lands they lived in since the Christians conquered the region and began to persecute the Jews, as expressed as disrespect and hatred toward them. This attitude was passed on to the Arabs as well, and they gradually developed this attitude into ideology, which grew into deep hatred.

Question: What is the root of this phenomenon? Why has this process taken place in this way?

Answer: According to the wisdom of Kabbalah, this phenomenon has taken place in order to force the nation of Israel to fulfill its duty to humanity. Its duty is the revelation of the method of connection and bringing all the nations to a level of total, absolute unity. The Torah also tells us that the entire world must be united, and if the Jews don’t reveal the method of unity, no other nation will be able to do so,

Question: Today, Islam is actually at the spearhead of this pressure and not Christianity.

Answer: Christianity has been greatly weakened; it agrees to anything. This situation is not dependent on external forces, but on spiritual forces that are running out, and therefore, the power is drying up like fuel in a nuclear power plant gradually runs out, and it can’t do anything since it is processed and spent. In the future, we are going to face very strong pressure from Islam, which will also be on the Christian nations and, first of all, on Europe and America. Then, their common pressure will be aimed at Israel. We are going to see how they will try to start great wars in our region.

Question: Is Islam putting pressure on the Christian world in order to subsequently force them to also put pressure on the Jews?

Answer: No, the goal of Islam is to conquer the world, and therefore the Muslims feel that Christianity is an enemy that opposes their ideology.

Question: According to the wisdom of Kabbalah, the greatest enemies will later turn into the closest friends.

Answer: Everything depends on how we promote the method of integral unity in the world. Only the Upper Light, the great good force that we must reveal to the world in order to unite, can settle all of the conflicts.
[196452]
From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 9/26/16

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New Life 778 – What Is Really Studying The Torah?
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Tal Mandelbaum ben Moshe

What does it mean to really study the Torah? How can we connect to the force concealed in this book, and what upper goal does it lead us to?

The general force of all of reality is called the Torah, the Light, the upper force, the force of love and bestowal.

The Light created the desire and therefore it is stated that the world was created by the Torah and a person has to reach the ability to use the force of the Torah in order to attain the goal of creation. There is a Torah that operates the world and everything that happens in it, and there is a Torah that we have to operate, but if we don’t operate it correctly, there are forces that operate in order to correct our diversion.

As the nation of Israel, our role is to attribute the upper force to ourselves and to properly activate it unto us.

3,500 years ago, humanity reached a certain maturity and made the first contact with the Torah.

The people who tell us how to properly operate the Torah in their books are called Kabbalists. Kabbalists learn how to operate themselves in order to influence the upper force called the Torah.

Everyone interprets the Torah, which means Light, and teaching, as one wishes, but eventually we all have to reach the state in which the nation of Israel, the Torah, and the Creator become one.

The essence of the Torah is: “I have created the evil inclination; I have created the Torah as a spice for it, since the Light in it reforms.” The Torah can turn our egoistic nature into the nature of loving others, but if we study the Torah and don’t reach the love of others, it is a sign that we aren’t studying the Torah but that we study for wisdom.

Kabbalists wrote books of Torah suitable for each and every generation. In the days of ARI, for example, Kabbalists used a scientific style.

A person’s desire is divided into 613 egoistic parts and they all have to be corrected into love by the Torah. If a person studies the Torah only in order to fill his brain with information, just like you fill a computer, he doesn’t become holy.

During the Age of Enlightenment, some people began to leave the superficial study of the Torah. Today we have to leave the exile of the Torah and return to the Torah of truth by studying the wisdom of Kabbalah.

The Torah tells us about actions that are opposite from love in order to tell us what we shouldn’t do. When a person wants to develop the attitude of love of others, 613 egoistic desires are revealed in him, and then he needs the Torah, which turns every desire from hatred to love. Therefore, it says that the Torah is a spice.
[195311]
From KabTV’s “New Life 778 – What Is Really Studying The Torah?” 10/18/16

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Question: Why do you believe that every person who studies the Torah must also study the wisdom of Kabbalah?

Answer: This is imperative because without learning the wisdom of Kabbalah, it is not possible to reach Lishma (for Her Name), which is what is necessary for everyone who studies Torah. The problem is the manner in which the concept of “Lishma” is interpreted.

It is customary to think that Lishma is already happening simply by studying the Torah. I have even heard that a number of Yeshiva students have reached Torah Lishma at the age of 20. So we must first clarify the precise definition of the concept of “Torah Lishma.” Regarding this, see The Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot.
[194582]

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