Question:  Is Kabbalah ideologically against religion?

Answer: Certainly not. On the contrary, religion and the wisdom of Kabbalah complement each other in a person’s correction process toward attaining the goal of creation, which is to resemble the Creator.

A person’s nature can change only if he uses the method of Kabbalah, which transforms his way of thinking. A person doesn’t change as a result of mechanical actions, and therefore when he only performs religious actions he is called the Holy still.

Furthermore, in the actual correction, when studying the wisdom of Kabbalah, a person has to be around people who have the same goal in order to draw the effect of the force of correction, the Light of the Torah, called the Light that Reforms. It is written, “I have created the evil inclination; I have created the Torah as a spice for it.”

We can say that religion formats and directs a person’s behavior while the wisdom of Kabbalah directs his thoughts. It is said that “a prayer without an intention is like a body without a soul.” We are living in the time of the Messiah in which we can get rid of our evil inclination, the ego, and so the wisdom of Kabbalah is revealed in the world today in order to enable a person to correct his ego and resemble the Creator.
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Question: If in the beginning there was only Kabbalah, then how did religions appear from it?

Answer: This happened exactly because they abandoned the continuous work of uniting (within a group, within a nation) and allowed egoism to appear in relationships between people. This caused the outer seal—Judaism to originate from Kabbalah. Judaism regulates the outer actions that a person performs with his body (this is why it is called the “External Torah” – “Hitzhoniut aTorah”), whereas, Kabbalah refers only to inner actions (therefore, it is called the “Inner part of Torah” – “Pnimit aTorah”).

This means that Kabbalah shows how through uniting in the group a person can achieve an elevation above his egoism and in this mutual annulment of egoism he can reveal the Creator. The difference between Kabbalah and religion is not only in the action (whether it is mechanical or in intention) but also in the result (he hopes to receive a reward after death or he hopes to reveal the Creator in this life).
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Talmud Eser Sefirot, Part 1, “Histaklut Pnimit,” Item 7: … They said that there is a great flaw in free gifts, namely the shame that encounters every receiver of a free gift. To mend this, the Creator has prepared this world, where there is work and labor, so as to be rewarded in the next world for their labor and work.

Usually the religious stop with this saying and do not advance further. They claim that in this world one needs to work in order to receive the reward in the next world, meaning, after death. As if we work today and tomorrow receive the reward.

But that excuse is very strange. It is like a person who says to his friend, “Work with me for just a minute, and in return I will give you every pleasure and treasure in the world for the rest of your life. There is indeed no greater free gift than that, because the reward is incomparable with the work. The work is in this transient, worthless world compared to the reward and the pleasure in the eternal world.

What value is there to the passing world compared to the eternal world? It is even more so with regards to the quality of the labor, which is worthless compared to the quality of the reward.

Our sages have said: “The Creator is destined to inherit each and every righteous person 310 worlds etc.” We cannot say that some of the reward is given in return for their work, and the rest is a free gift, for then what good would that do? The blemish of shame would still remain! Indeed, their words are not to be taken literally, for there is a profound meaning in their words.

Shame is a creation by itself. It is a feeling in the souls of the difference between them and the Creator, a feeling of disconnection from Him that was created by the Creator Himself. Therefore, as much as man rises higher in the level of the degrees, the feeling of shame grows in him and becomes more refined and clarified. Therefore, it is said that shame is intended only for higher souls.

If I feel disconnected from the Creator, then the feeling of the “I” is awakened, the feeling of a separated existence. I understand that I must annul this separation, close it, do something with it. And therefore I work. This feeling of the gap between me and the Creator, between the guest and the host, the feeling shame, forced me to work. To the degree I feel this shame, I am willing to work until I remove the separation between us and I reach an equivalence of form with the Creator, meaning adhesion.

It is clear that it does not talk about the 70 years of man’s life in this world and in the next world after this life. When I work for myself, it is called Olam Haze (this world) and I must work in it and correct myself. When sometimes I succeed in correcting myself compared to each amount of shame, the difference that I reveal between me and the Creator, by that I perform my work in this world, and as a result I reach equivalence of form and adhesion, which is called reward in the next world.

Therefore, in my life in this world I must feel this world and also the next world. The difference between them is that state in which a person feels shame and works in order to remove it, to correct his lack of equivalence with the landlord, called this world. This is the world and these are the efforts in this world. And the attainment of equivalence and adhesion is called the next world. According to this principle, the two worlds are separated.
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Question: Why aren’t you content with attaining the revealed meaning of the Torah? Why should we penetrate its inner concealed layers?

Answer: According to Baal HaSulam in the Introduction to The Study of the Ten Sefirot and the Vilna Gaon in the Sidur of the HAGRA, it is impossible to attain the Torah without understanding its four layers.

The sages who wrote the Torah and all the holy books wrote them from the level on which they attained every part of reality and the corporeal reality, which is revealed to us. This is the reason that I want to learn from what they revealed in the Torah and not to settle for mechanical actions.

I cannot understand what the Torah says and what the sages wanted to convey if I don’t understand the internal meaning of the Torah. I am like a kid who doesn’t know how to read but only leafs through a book looking at the pictures.
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Question: Why do you, as a Kabbalist, interpret, clarify, and explain so much about everyday life? After all, the wisdom of Kabbalah is apparently speaking about the eternal, upper world.

Answer: Since Baal HaSulam from the beginning of the 20^th century Kabbalists began to be very interested in our world and in everyday life because the Kabbalah is a practical science about the correction of the person. But it was concealed until our times, for the time has now come for the correction of man and mankind.

Therefore, in our time, contemporary Kabbalists, beginning with Baal HaSulam, have written that Kabbalah has become the most modern and necessary of the sciences. And it has the answers for all the problems of modern society.
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Question: According to statistics, more than one-half of materialistic scientists believe in God. They comprise 54 to 85% in their various countries. In spite of this, you mentioned that it is not so simple for scientists to believe in God.

Answer: It is possible to divide the scientists’ opinions into several categories. In the meantime, there are people who automatically believe in God. Some do “just in case.” There are those who are in doubt and say, “We don’t know everything. It could be that there is some force,” and there are scientists who have Galileo’s or Spinoza’s views or others, meaning that God is nature, the supreme, upper intellect.

The wisdom of Kabbalah speaks about God as the collective intellect above our beastly nature.

When we connect among ourselves—and that is possible through annulling the ego and rising above it in connection with each other, according to the principle of “Love your neighbor as yourself”—then one, common intellect is formed between us, which is called Creator, God. That’s all, and there is nothing supernatural about it.

If scientists would think this way, it would be good since then they would do it themselves and advise everyone to connect in order to attain the supreme intellect. Then science would become the wisdom of Kabbalah.
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From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 12/10/15

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Question: I have read one of your books and didn’t understand anything. How do I know whether I have already entered the upper world? What should I feel?

How do I know whether I have begun to develop spiritually? How can I acquire a Masach (screen)?

What egoistic desires should I have so that I should correct them? Is it about certain desires or about egoism as a whole? After all, it is infinite. I sometimes perceive my ego and I am ashamed of myself, but I don’t feel that I ascend spiritually or perhaps I don’t perceive this sensation.

What is more, there are no groups that study Kabbalah in my city and so I see everything on video. Is it possible to study Kabbalah this way?

Answer: You should study intensively and systematically according to the program of our virtual groups. When you join a virtual group you will find both a guide and friends in it.
Good luck!
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I remember that at the time of the first Lebanon War,  my teacher Rabash and I listened to the news on the radio all the time, and he shared his impressions with me about how he perceived all that was happening. And I was surprised about how such a great Kabbalist was worried about events in the country and the world.

And for him it was a map of the battlefield. He completed everything through his internal calculations with higher Sefirot, and somehow this worked for him.

During the military operations Rabash was very focused, more quiet than usual. In general he was a person who very much loved jokes, but the moment the war began, his state changed sharply. This was truly derived from within; he was terribly concerned and very happy about our victories and successes on the battlefield.

I felt that this was terribly close to him, unlike the rest of the people around him in Bnei Brak. At that time I was a beginning student, and I was quite surprised about how much a person believed or didn’t believe in the Creator, His power and how everything comes from above.

Rabash always wanted to know the factual news, without any commentary, to react to them correctly. And when they asked him why he needed it, he answered: “And if your children were there, even then would you act calmly and dispassionately like this?” That is, he felt that his children were there in Lebanon. That is really how he felt about it.
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Spiritual Anti-Matter

Question: What is so bad about everyone yearning to get the greatest pleasure, and why are there so many problems and so much suffering in our world?

Answer: The problem is that each of us receives pleasure at the expense of someone else. By enjoying myself, I take pleasure away from others. I steal from them. I limit them somehow. This is what arouses war between people. Besides this, we were created with an evil, egoistic nature, and we want more pleasure specifically from having more than others. Enjoyment at the expense of others is a much greater pleasure. It is enough to see how we behave on the highway, cutting each other off and not giving each other the right of way. Is there really anyone for whom another minute would determine his life? Not at all, we simply get pleasure from moving ahead of everyone. This is our evil inclination. There is nothing bad about yearning to enjoy oneself. It is typical of any animal. However, a person specifically wants to have pleasure at the expense of others, rising above them and trampling them, and this is what is destroying our society. So the world has come to such a crisis.

Question: But there are many people who sacrifice themselves for the good of society.

Answer: They also are acting from their desire to enjoy. In fact, no one thinks about others. They themselves simply don’t understand the true motivation of their actions. If we were to take away the pleasure that humane people get from helping others, they couldn’t even make the smallest movement. If a mother were suddenly to stop feeling pleasure from her baby, he would die of starvation.

All matter works only according to this single principle. However, there is more matter, which is called “spiritual,” that is not felt by us and that acts according to another principle, bestowal, not reception. Spirituality is based upon this, giving pleasure and not receiving pleasure. This is antimatter, an upside-down world.

The spiritual world exists, and even ordinary science is discovering some borderline phenomena, but we are not ready to catch them with the help of our instruments. However, a person can attain a feeling of the upper world, of antimatter, and it is specifically with this that the wisdom of Kabbalah is involved.

Through special exercises, we can transform our matter into new matter, a desire to bestow, instead of a desire to receive. Then, we can enjoy bestowal, instead of reception.
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From the Israeli Radio Program 103FM 11/29/15

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Comment: A secret document of the “Islamic State” was published in the British newspaper The Guardian. It was a detailed program for building a caliphate in Iraq and Syria, which involves world control not only through the use of the sword, but also through the careful alignment of administrative, bureaucratic, social, and international components.

This 24-page document details the future state agencies: a propaganda machine, a diplomatic department responsible for international relations, centralized control over oil, etc. It devotes a lot of attention to educating the young generation to master new technologies.

Answer: The people of ISIS have common sense and know exactly what they want. From the outset, they adhere to a very clear ideological goal, and all their actions are detailed in line with this. They take into account that their plan is to control the world, so their tactics are structured correctly.

Indeed, they create their own venues and ideologies, and apart from them, also terrorism, bringing their new weapons of mass destruction: chemical, gas, radioactive, and others. They know how to disperse and hide them. In addition, they recruit foreign scientists to develop those kinds of weapons for use in guerilla warfare.

Their only weak spot is that they do not have their own state, on behalf of which they could expand.

Therefore, all the efforts of Western countries should be directed to destroy the country in its “embryonic” state, and to prevent the education of the young generation in this spirit.

As soon as Western Europe and the US allow the appearance of such a nation, just like a cancerous growth, it will immediately spread to the entire world. This is the first thing.

Second, they attract people by saying, “We want to unite and thereby save the world from ideological conflicts and a new world war. If one state is formed, one opinion, one single ideology, then there will be no war.”

The background is this: if the world surrenders, then everything will be fine. So the world, which by and large is opposed to this ideology, has only one option: to give in to them.

Only the ideology of Kabbalah, which is against this backdrop that will awaken and emerge more and more, confronts the ideology of the Islamic State.

As a result, the world will confront this resistance and will understand that the Kabbalistic ideology allows people not only to unite, but to do so without losing the freedom to follow the plan of nature. After all, this system wasn’t artificially set up but was taken from the depth of nature, from its laws. Thus, it is specifically this system that has the right of existence.

The wisdom of Kabbalah speaks about how humanity needs to rise to the next level of its development and enter the next dimension in which we will exist together as one whole. And then with our unity, we will feel the manifestation of a single force of nature, which is called the Creator.

Comment: This Islamic State also wants to be a single entity, a unified whole.

Answer: Yes, but this is a whole that is egoistic and doesn’t correct man’s nature; it unites everyone through fear and pressure, and is therefore not viable. The period where people try to unite under the pressure of a dictator will quickly end and will bring much bloodshed.

From the perspective of Kabbalah, unity reveals the upper force, which connects us. This means that we don’t unite under pressure of fear or some human factors, but under the influence of the upper force of nature. We feel how it brings us together!

We feel it brings us together. Therein lies difference between the two ideologies. Thus the world, in any case, will come to unity, but it’s advisable to avoid the terrible and bloody dictatorship, and do so in a good way. I think that it will be this way.

As for today, the main thing for all of humanity is to not to allow the formation of the Islamic State in either Iraq or Syria.
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From KabTV’s “Conversations with Michael Laitman” 12/8/15

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