Fundamentals Of Kabbalah – 06.19.11
Posted on June 19th, 2011
The science of Kabbalah has an interesting section about the way we perceive the universe, about how man attains the world in which he lives. Why do we feel the world precisely in this way? Is our world really the way we perceive it to be, or is it completely different? In reality, after it passes through our five senses, it acquires a specific form in our perception. We observe precisely this picture, rather than having a direct, objective perception of the actual world.
Today scientists research how the world is seen by butterflies, bees, snakes, and dogs. Every creature sees it in its own way, in different ranges, through a schema of color or scent, and so on. Every creature has its own kind of orientation in the world and sees its own picture, which differs from what others see.
So why is the picture precisely this way in our eyes? And what is it really like from the objective point of view? Can we even attain a truly objective worldview? This is what the section of Kabbalah called “Perception of Reality” talks about.
However, the most important part of Kabbalah is not the descent from above downwards from the world of Infinity into our world, but what happens afterwards. The most important thing for us is the Machsom and the subsequent path upwards. This is what we are now facing, what we now have to go through. We have to go through it in practice, not in theory, and we have to go through this path all together.
We have to implement this as fast as possible so the negative force of development won’t pressure us from behind, giving us a negative stimulus. In ancient Rome, Stimulus meant a sharp stick that was used to prick donkeys so they would move forward. Thus, it’s important for us not to feel this stimulus on our flesh, but to aspire forward ourselves, with the help of the positive force that is given to us for now.
This is essentially the reason we have gathered together. We can get together and get organized, and we can start feeling each other internally, even without physical contact. Let’s feel that by uniting with one another we become similar to the common, global nature. Then, inside of our unity, we will reveal the common field and will feel that we are rising slightly higher. This is realistic and I hope that you and I will do it.
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From the 1st lesson at the Moscow Convention 6/10/11
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The crisis that has enveloped the world was very obvious at the recent conventions we held, including the one in Italy three weeks ago and especially the one in Madrid, Spain a week ago. There the crisis is very apparent. The masses are in disarray, and the rate of unemployment among young people is 40%. And things only get worse every day. There are demonstrations and protestors holding sit-ins on the streets, and more.
I deliberately walked around the streets there and talked to people. They don’t know what to do and are holding protests in front of government buildings. But the government also doesn’t know what to do. Everyone is confused and no one is guilty. And it’s all because we are finding ourselves facing nature’s challenge.
Work places cannot be created out of empty space. And what for? By doing that we would only exhaust the remaining natural resources even faster, ruin the soil, and pollute the environment even more. Our water and air resources will dwindle even faster. So why should we stimulate the deteriorating economy? Just to give people work? With these kinds of consequences, it’s better not to give it to them!
In Spain I appeared on the most popular TV channel during prime time. Instead of speaking for just a few minutes, which was planned according to the program, the interview lasted thirteen minutes. Can you imagine—thirteen minutes on the morning news, among reports about the most important current events! They just couldn’t put an end to the interview.
My suggestion was simple and came down to one piece of practical advice: We have to sit people down to study. They should be paid unemployment benefits (which will also be the most effective money-saving strategy) and they should be taught about what kind of world we are living in, what exists in front of us, and what kind of challenge nature is throwing at us.
This is not someone’s whim or the interests of a certain party or government leaders. This is none other than nature, which is challenging us. And the challenge is for us to change. We do not have to change anything besides ourselves.
We have to become integral and global, in conformity to the current crisis. After all, the crisis is the sensation of one’s lack of conformity with the surrounding nature. Therefore, if we correct ourselves this way, everything will become balanced out and will reach harmony. This is what people should be taught.
The interview received a widespread positive response throughout all of Spain, as well as Latin American and North America, and that’s because it really is the only sensible way to come out of the situation that has formed. And Spain is not alone. Greece, Iceland, Italy and others are in a similar situation, and there are many other countries gradually entering this crisis. And in other places the crisis is coming in different ways.
That is how nature places a clear task before us: We have to change. We have to be integral with nature just like everything else it contains—the still, vegetative, and animate levels. Man should not think that he is above nature and that he can do anything he wishes. His most important task is to consciously become an integral part of the whole.
By becoming an integral part of nature, he begins to understand what it is, and suddenly discovers new depths in it: the worlds of Assiya, Beria, Yetzira, Atzilut, Adam Kadmon, and the world of Infinity. He no longer obstructs himself from nature with his egoism, but starts to feel nature as transparent. He finally understands and becomes aware of the forces that control everything, including himself.
This is the task we are facing today. Therefore, if we desire it and use the force of aspiration forward, which exists in many people in the world, then we really will aspire to self-correction, to the world’s revelation, to exiting from the state of dreaming, from unconsciousness. Then we will attain total equality with nature, the Creator’s level.
From the 1st lesson at the Moscow Convention 6/10/11
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Question: Are you familiar with the writings of Kabbalist Isaac the Blind (Rabbi Yitzhak Saggi Nehor, 1600-1235, Provence, France)?
Answer: We study three main sources of the wisdom of Kabbalah: The Book of Zohar, the writings of the Ari (mostly his book The Tree of Life), and the works of Baal HaSulam, the great Kabbalist of the 20th century. Baal HaSulam handed down the entire wisdom of Kabbalah to us in the form most suitable for its publishing and distributing to everyone in the world.
Among all the great Kabbalists, starting with Babylon and to this day, each generation produced many other Kabbalists. But some of them concealed themselves and others wrote very little since until very recently, just thirty years ago, to reveal any part of Kabbalah, one had to receive special permission from Above. Hence, Kabbalists rarely wrote and when they did, it was in a secret form.
And only in the 20th century, when the time has come for the revelation of Kabbalah to everyone so as to correct the collective ego, Baal HaSulam wrote what was permitted to distribute. And we are offering this specific part of Kabbalah to the world.
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From the Lecture in Rome 5/20/2011
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Question: During the studies, sometimes I think about how I can attract the Light, and sometimes I try to understand the inner meaning with all my might. Do I have to try and regulate these states, or should I just accept them as they come?
Answer: We have to study the upper system the way it is explained in “The Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah” (Pticha) and The Study of the Ten Sefirot. Without this, we will not acquire the language of Kabbalah, and we will not have anything in which we can clothe our sensations, to express them in any way, or give them names.
That is why we have to know the definitions. In every science that we begin to study, we first of all learn the definitions and terms in order to understand its language. Having learned the definitions, we can start linking them together and come to know more complex concepts. However, for now, I’m just learning the terms and not the qualities I would be feeling. For now, I’m just playing with them like a child with toy blocks.
Hence, we need to study, and this is study in the mind. Yet, you shouldn’t immerse yourself in it too deeply. This system has to gradually become clearer in a purely mechanical form without your trying to attract your sensations or spirituality into it. Otherwise, these examinations will harm the inner work.
However, after you have learned the system, you have to look into how it can relate to you. That is why when reading The Study of the Ten Sefirot, you are sometimes thinking about your inner states without any connection with the text. But in some states you understand that all this is happening inside you, and you try to look for these states.
Sometimes you even start feeling that with every word you read, something is happening inside you; you already have inner, sensory reactions. Furthermore, you start to react in your sensations just by recognizing familiar words.
This means that the Light is spreading inside you and coming closer and closer to the degree of Malchut, organizing the inner HaVaYaH inside you, taking it to the first spiritual step on which the revelation occurs. That is why you start feeling and reacting to different qualities.
Of course, during the studies, you not only have to look deeply into yourself in an inner search, but also align yourself with how you are connected with the group and how you want to reveal the quality of bestowal between you.
You have to align yourself as follows: me, the group, and the Creator whom I reveal in the connection between us, and that’s what I’m reading about right now. Now you only need to start studying, trying to reveal this common network in which you will reveal the state you are reading about.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/31/2011, Writings of Rabash
Question: On one of the lessons I heard you say that when we read The Book of Zohar, a kind of flow arises that connects us. How do we join this flow, despite the various disturbances that awaken during the lesson?
Answer: This happens gradually. You must get used to it, to exert a certain amount of effort, to discover how to approach the text, how to connect it to yourself, to the state in the group, to the world; to learn where you get confused and where you don’t.
You must unify yourself and the Torah in one. Then, to the extent of your desire to connect to the Torah which speaks of your inner state, you begin to receive the Inner Light contained in it, which influences you, allowing you to see within the system it describes.
This happens in the process of the study, when the Light (the Creator) teaches you. If you try to move straight toward the goal, as much as you can, to use the group and the study correctly, if you’re ready to relinquish your egoistic aspirations and plans at least a little, then the Torah teaches you—the subsequent spiritual states are revealed in you.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/31/2011, The Zohar
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The entire wisdom of Kabbalah came to us from The Book of Zohar and the works of the Ari. If it were not for Baal HaSulam, we would not be able to study. The Book of Zohar is full of allegories and stories understandable only to a person who is on the same spiritual degree and can decipher these clues.
As for the Ari, he himself never wrote anything; he only talked. All his works are written by the Ari’s disciple Chaim Vital and the entire multi-volume collection of essays is based on what the Ari said over one and a half years. His group existed only for a short time; he taught it and then passed away.
By various ways, this material went to various people who compiled books from it. One part of the records was kept in some secret place; the other was buried in Chaim Vital’s grave and retrieved later, when the grave was opened. The third part was handed down the generations and passed through many people, and who knows what they have done with it.
The Ari talked about the whole system in general, and if a person doesn’t have the complete works and cannot understand the material well, he cannot compile it correctly. That’s why, although these records were collected by Kabbalists, much was missing, and the accurate sequence couldn’t be kept.
Therefore, Baal HaSulam added his commentaries to the Ari’s works so that we could follow a natural progression from simple to increasingly complex and, studying in the correct form, understand the Ari’s writings. We wouldn’t be able to comprehend anything without it. In Kabbalah, this is very dangerous because it you don’t understand what is being described, you fantasize about anything.
So, we have to appreciate the great work that Baal HaSulam has accomplished: We would have achieved nothing without it. Sometimes people ask me: “If there are so many other Kabbalists, why don’t we study their works?” But we don’t have anybody else to learn from because all of them wrote from their high degrees, for example, such Kabbalists as the Vilna Gaon or Ramchal. We can’t base our studies on their works because Kabbalists didn’t interpret them for ordinary people like us so that we could understand, use, and realize them on ourselves.
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From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/27/2011, “General Introduction to the Book, Panim Meirot uMasbirot”
Question: How will the changes happen in the education system—by the initiative of the government from above, or pressure from the masses from below?
Answer: Leaders are only afraid for their “seats” and nothing else. If the masses come out to the streets and start shaking those chairs, and they aren’t just setting cars on fire but starting to making more serious actions, then the leaders start listening to their demands. In the end, they will have to agree to them. The question is: Will we be able to offer them our explanation of the necessary measures? We have to try to do that as much as we can.
One way or another, we have to get through to the leaders, but from both sides: from below, through the masses that go out onto the street, and from above directly. After all, we are talking about a global study of the world, about changes in education, and about building a worldwide system of upbringing in which everyone will study while receiving a specific salary for it, the means for sustenance.
This learning will take place instead of work, but in reality it will become people’s work in the spiritual sense. Every person will attract Light to the extent of his forces and capabilities, and this will be his reward. After all, the Light holds all of the abundance there can possibly be.
How many people are required to provide the vital necessities for all of the earth’s inhabitants? Clothing, food, construction, service—everything that’s necessary within the framework of a normal existence? For example, people will work for half a day and will study for half a day. And this will be done by everyone.
However, this can only be achieved through the leaders, or more precisely, through the public opinion, through people who think, including scientists, sociologists, political scientists, and all those who rise above the mass, but not too high. After all, the very top is occupied by the “destroyers,” whereas we are talking primarily about the university circles.
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/26/11, “Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah”
A person who opens The Book of Zohar, opens it in order to reveal the Creator. By definition, the science of Kabbalah is the method of revealing the Creator to creation in this world. Otherwise why would Kabbalah and all of Torah be given to us? The Creator becomes revealed in the desire to bestow and love in a person. This desire is equal to the Creator in qualities, and the Creator becomes revealed in it according to the law of equivalence of form.
Thus, the Creator is the quality of bestowing and loving, the force of bestowal and love, “the Good who does Good.” How, then, can we achieve the desire to bestow and love, the Good who does Good? By connecting with each other in spite of every person’s egoistic forces that mutually repel one another and by building a net of good connection between us above the net of hatred. By building a net in which every person is good and does good, bestows and loves in relation to others.
But how do we do this if each of us is just a small egoist? We read The Book of Zohar, which talks about our corrected states in which we are connected by a good connection between us, and we desire for this to come true inside of us. In that case we receive an impression of those good states, which already exist in infinity. This impression, the influence of forces from our corrected states upon our current state, is called “surrounding Light” or “the Light that returns us to the source of goodness.”
Then, according to the formula, “I created the evil inclination and I gave the Torah for its correction, because the Light in it returns to the source,” we return to the source—the Good who does Good. Thus, we reveal the Creator, the Good who does Good, our root.
From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/26/11, The Zohar
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