Question: Why are the spiritual levels that descend downward changed while the letters on them remain the same?

Answer: Letters are directives from the Light so they are unchanged. Only the material from which they are composed is changed. The letters themselves, being similar to the Light, are not subject to change, whereas their substance, still, vegetative, animate, or Human, meaning the desire constantly changes.
[196745]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 7/17/16

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The study of the Torah is often perceived as a simple study of the book’s text. However, we need to understand what is written in these stories. There are four languages in the Torah: Pshat, Remez, Drush, and Sod (a simple narrative, allusion, allegory, and mystery)—four stages of understanding the material.

The text of the Torah can never be perceived in the ordinary sense as a historical narrative.

This is a code that we must decipher. It has four degrees of understanding and the deepest degree is the wisdom of Kabbalah. Through it we reach the truth, and therefore Kabbalah is called the true wisdom.

Each one can decipher this code, but in order to do it, he must change himself, develop and expand his mind and senses. Then he will discover what is actually written in the Torah.

There are four stages of presentation of the Torah, and each of them is an additional development with respect to the level where we are born and live in this world. The Torah doesn’t imply that its text will be understood literally, as in any other book. It expects that a person will change himself and understand the writing on a more internal level.

Imagine that a child reads a fairy tale with his mother, how a prince met a girl, fell in love with her, and took her to his palace. The son only receives very shallow, primitive information from this story, and a mother understands it more deeply and sees what really happened there because she is familiar with the nature of people. That is, each understands the story according to the level of his development.

First, we need to understand that it is necessary to develop a person so that he will understand the Torah. The Torah itself prepares us for the understanding of it, if we study it correctly. Advancing to the love of others, the great rule of the Torah, to the extent of the expansion of this love within ourselves, we learn to understand the Torah deeper and deeper.

We perceive the reality where we live in a wider, deeper, and more multi-faceted manner. Then we really see all four degrees in it.

Love for others begins with close friends and extends to the nation and then to the entire world. If the entire humanity becomes as close to me as my own children and myself, then from this feeling I can understand what the Torah says; there is no other way.

Question: Who develops whom? Does the Torah develop a person or does a person have to develop to understand the Torah?

Answer: A person can develop only through studying the “inner Torah,” in other words, Kabbalah.

Love for others reveals new feelings in us that allow us to exit ourselves. Now I want to draw everything to me and to investigate it within me, only for my own benefit. But if I go out and begin to love my neighbor, I feel the reality that is outside of me. It already doesn’t depend on my relation to it and how much I benefit from it. It is the way it is by itself, as if I don’t exist.

Reality is not refracted in my feelings and mind anymore. After all, once I exit my own egoistic perception, I acquire the feelings and mind of the general system that the Torah provides to me. These are the feelings and mind of the upper system, and with them I can feel and understand all of nature in its true form.

Thanks to this, I reach eternity and perfection inherent in nature. I don’t bring interferences to nature as before due to my limitations, stereotypes, incorrect understanding, and perception in the material senses and the mind that I acquired during the life in this generation.

It turns out that the Torah raises me to the degree of eternity and perfection. I even cease to depend on my body. The body can suddenly get sick and die, and I will stay in the same consciousness, in the same mind and feelings that I acquired. Since the Torah is eternal, it makes me an immortal person—an eternal entity that is called the soul.
[195763]
From KabTV’s “A New Life” 10/20/16

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Question: What is the difference between the infinite pleasure that is offered through the wisdom of Kabbalah and the acquisition of eternal happiness as promised by most of the religions that exist in the world?

Answer: All of the religions that exist mislead people to one degree or another.

According to the wisdom of Kabbalah, a person must achieve his true state while living in this world, and precisely because of this, he is here.

Baal HaSulam writes about this and asks: What is the connection between working within this temporary and small world, and the infinite pleasure that is to be attained after the death of my body?

How can it be that I carry out conditions that are dictated to me by religion for which I gain the next world full of enormous, eternal, and wonderful pleasures and paradise? In what way does a person pay for his next existence? Why is everything arranged like this, and where is the logic?

All of the Kabbalistic sources say that pleasure is to be felt by a person in this world in the present situation, here and now, when he discovers the Creator and approaches Him. The greatest pleasure prepared for us by the Creator is through this. That is why we were created.
[196160]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 8/28/16

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Question: Can I write prayers for myself?

Answer: Certainly, just like King David wrote the Psalms.

Question: Were the Shamati articles written in the language of the branches? What I mean is, is it possible to understand the meaning of the words in the text as they are usually explained in this world?

Answer: No!
[196196]

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Question: Is it worthwhile to study The Book of Zohar in Aramaic?

Answer: It is not necessary to study it in Aramaic, Hebrew, or in any other language, because you won’t understand anything anyway.

You must first study the wisdom of Kabbalah itself as a key to the material in the source books, and only after that will you begin to understand what is said in The Book of Zohar, otherwise it will just be the reading of incomprehensible pages that will only lead you to reject it.

Question: Does reading The Book of Zohar in Aramaic awaken some kind of illumination?

Answer: Yes. But I suspect that people “will get lost” when they read it and are liable to think that they have already had contact with the wisdom of Kabbalah and don’t have anything more to search for there. So it is better to begin with a three-month introductory course on the wisdom of Kabbalah.

In the course you will be able to get an idea about the general system of creation, its management, and a person’s purpose within this system. In that way you will know what is happening to you, what needs to happen to you, how you can manage this system, influence it, and what reactions you can get back from it. What this means is that you can be in mutual cooperation with the general system and manage your life.

The wisdom of Kabbalah is a science.
[196205]
From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 10/26/16

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Question: What is the point that all the Upper Light stems from?

Answer: A black point is the only thing that was created by the Creator in the infinite Light. It is called a desire.

This point is not the egoism, but only its rudiment, something that is different from the Light. It is a point from which our development begins.

Question: What does the writing of black letters on a white background mean?

Answer: The white background is associated with the Light and the black is our desire. Therefore, when we draw lines, we represent what our desires look like on the background of the white Light, and what distinguishes them from the Creator’s altruistic attributes.
[196798]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 7/17/16

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Question: According to the Torah, Adam HaRishon gave different names to the animals and the birds. What is the meaning of giving a name according to the wisdom of Kabbalah?

Answer: This means that Adam established a connection between the upper root of every phenomenon and its outcome in our world, and gave names to all the objects according to their spiritual origin.

The book The Angel Raziel, which Adam wrote according to the alphabet he discovered, can be bought in any bookstore now. However, I doubt whether we will understand anything, because it is written from the precise perception of the upper management.

Twenty generations after Adam, another Kabbalist, Abraham, wrote the book Sefer Yetzira (Book of Creation), again, only by looking at the spiritual root, and his book also seems to be encoded, even though the language seems very clear. Then the descent of the generations began and the Kabbalists who followed Abraham, his students, began to write differently. They looked at the corporeal branches and not at the spiritual roots. Moses, for example, wrote the Torah according to the way it is depicted in our world.

All the generations are advancing toward a spiritual decent. On the one hand, we can say that Moses was on a lower spiritual level than Abraham, but on the other hand, he left us and did much more for us, because we can use his writings and through understanding their branches, we yearn for the roots. This means that Moses’ book is much more important for us than Adam’s book.
[196742]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 7/17/16

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New Life 781 – Jewish Culture: Myths About Studying Torah
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Nitzah Mazoz

How does studying the Torah protect the people of Israel? Is the Torah meant only for Jews? Why is there a separation between men and women at the time of study?

A Yehudi (Jew) is someone who yearns for Yichud (union), for oneness. That is why it is said that studying the Torah is meant for Jews. It is also said that the Torah protects the people of Israel. This is referring to the people who want the ability to connect.

Main points:

• In general, people don’t feel that they hate others, but when they try to get closer to others, this is what they discover.
• In contrast, those who are in a group that studies the wisdom of Kabbalah are actively trying to be as if they are one, like a centipede with one mind and one heart. To the degree that we connect, we receive Light, meaning a special power that develops new intellectual and emotional capabilities. To realize this requires at least ten people who want to connect (men separately and women separately). The concept of a Minyan comes from here.
• A person who observes a group of Kabbalists cannot understand what they are feeling. That is why the wisdom of Kabbalah is also called the hidden wisdom.
• Maintaining the 613 Mitzvot (commandments) means correcting the 613 egoistic desires that are inherent in us. All the customs of Judaism actually signify the spiritual actions that we must carry out to correct the relationships between us. For instance, hand washing signifies cleansing our absorptive Kli from an intention of taking from others for ourselves.
• The correct reading of sacred writings written by those with spiritual attainment can happen only through group study under the guidance of a teacher of Kabbalah.
• The joint reading of books of Kabbalah by a group must be done with texts that were written by those who had spiritual attainment.
• In our era, the secular public is closer to recognition of the true Torah, the wisdom of Kabbalah, as opposed to the religious community, which is satisfied with its form of life.
• The wisdom of Kabbalah will add to the secular public an awareness of the goal of existence and a connection to eternity and wholeness.
  [195578]
  From KabTV’s “New Life 781 – Jewish Culture: Myths About Studying Torah,” 10/20/16

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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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