Baal HaSulam, “The Wisdom of Kabbalah and Philosophy”: Philosophy loves to concern itself with His Essence and prove which rules do not apply to Him. However, Kabbalah has no dealings whatsoever with it, for how can the unattainable and imperceptible be defined?

Kabbalists do speak a great deal about His illumination in reality, meaning all those illuminations they have actually attained, as validly as tangible attainment.

Kabbalists attain an abstract Light when it dresses into vessels and turns from a theoretical form to a tangible structure by manifesting Itself in us as various features of ours.

It is said that “we do not define by name or word that which we do not attain.” We attain everything there is by analyzing it in our vessels of receiving. They are our “eyes,” our vision, the channel through which we perceive the world. Only on condition that we know a certain phenomenon can we explore it to the degree of our immersion in it. Thus, we advance. There is a rigid principle: “We shall know You by Your deeds.” That’s why we always rely on our perception within our vessels, desires. Our internal reactions to them are in fact the Light.

Similarly, we recognize electricity not by its essence, but according to its results. Something flows through wires and generates various phenomena. All we see are the results. Baal HaSulam writes about it in his article “The Essence of the Wisdom of Kabbalah.” Actual things are found even in the corporeal reality set before our eyes, although we have neither perception nor image of their essence. Such are the electricity and the magnet, called “fluidum.” Nevertheless, who can say that these names are not real, when we vividly and satisfactorily know their actions? We could not be more indifferent to the fact that we have no perception of the essence of the subject itself, namely electricity itself.

We always explore the consequences of various essential categories, rather than deal with the categories per se. I have no idea what the subject that I look at is in fact, but I know how it acts.

All I do is check my sensations and reactions: Something looks black to me, other things feel solid, some are long, and certain things I can taste or smell. Reality is comprised of my internal reactions to outer impacts, rather than the factors that cause them per se. Therefore, phenomena that we differentiate are actually the effects that externality causes in us.

Why do philosophers refuse to admit it? The answer is that it will obligate them to become Kabbalists and study the Wisdom of Kabbalah in order to explore spirituality. Common sense prompts that they don’t know or understand a thing and have nothing to say. Really, what can one say if one doesn’t live in spirituality, nor does one sense It in one’s vessels, desires?

We shouldn’t approach Kabbalah with a regular human mind; we are not in the dimension that Kabbalah describes as of yet. We can fantasize about what’s inside the Earth and imagine life on other planets since these things are at least somehow interlaced with our sensations. However, they have nothing in common with spirituality. Moreover, we don’t have any connection with the spiritual realm: Our material reality as we see it is absolutely detached from the picture that is created in our minds. How can we deliberate about something that we have no contact with whatsoever?

This is one of the reasons the Wisdom of Kabbalah was concealed from humanity throughout millennia. Kabbalists were afraid of “smart alecks” who just tended to philosophize about the topics that are related to Kabbalah.

It also applies to the philosophers who valued Kabbalah, such as Reichlin, Goethe, Pico Della Mirandola, and others. Even these people did not understand a thing in the great wisdom, nor could they realize that the general universal knowledge that is beyond traditional disciplines originates from Kabbalah. What they proclaimed is in fact nothing but philosophizing. Some philosophers approach Kabbalah with critical analysis that is based on a subjective approach, others admit its importance, although none of them understand it. Their position lacks rationalism that is so much needed. Nevertheless, the truth will be revealed soon; we are very close to it.
[112384]

Related Material:
Philosophy: A Building Without A Foundation
The Wisdom Of Kabbalah And Philosophy: Who Has The Last Word?
Kabbalah And Other Sciences, Philosophy, and Religion

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Kabbalah Study, Perception, Science, Spiritual Work - No Comments →

Question: Lately you have been advising us to “let go of the reins” and not to object to the spiritual process, “to flow with the current.” But the ego doesn’t let us do so since it constantly objects and refuses to. How pleasant and easy it would be to simply let go…

Answer: It is quite difficult since we can’t just do nothing, but rather we have to accept everything that happens in a totally open manner, gladly, and see that it comes only from the Creator, not to examine it, criticize, or assess it.

This is very complicated. Apparently there is nothing special here, just live freely and rejoice at everything. But in fact there is nothing more difficult than this. It isn’t easy to go with the flow, since in this case you need to be in absolute unity with the Creator. Absolutely! While he puts you in such circumstances in which you find yourself in states that are contradictory to Him, disagreeing with the world, with this life, with the problems that constantly trouble you! You constantly disagree! There is always something that makes you feel bad.

This is done on purpose from above. How can you accept everything calmly and flow with the current? Only by changing yourself! There is no other way! This is the problem. This is how you attain a peaceful tranquil world—when a person totally annuls himself and adheres to the Creator.

This type of rest is relative since a person advances quickly above the speed of light by going through an infinite number of changes. At any given moment he goes through billions of changes according to the upper Providence, in total acceptance, thinking logically, engaging only in what suppresses his ego and rising above it, thus entering a state of absolute rest. This is opposite from the concept of rest that we refer to today.
[115542]
From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 7/29/13

Related Material:
Don’t Resist Change
The World Where “There Is None Else Besides Him”
How To Accept The Creator’s Governance

Filed under: Perception, Spiritual Work, Torah - No Comments →

The Torah, “Exodus,” Mishpatim, 23:6: Thou shalt not wrest the judgment of thy poor in his cause.

This is about looking at everyone through my attributes, and it seems to me that someone is wrong, poor, or weak. I do not see objectively what is really going on. There is no objective perspective! I see everything through my current attributes, and therefore I cannot trust them at all. If I relate to everything through them, I will never be able to ascend.

I have to examine things and reach a state in which I will have no way to judge something, but only raise it to the next upper level, to the Creator. This is why I am given different options such as the right line and the left line, which actually lead me to the middle line. So by engaging in integral education we don’t descend to a person’s problems, but rather raise him to the connection with others.

The Torah, “Exodus,” Mishpatim, 23:7: Keep thee far from a false matter, and the innocent and righteous slay thou not; for I will not justify the wicked.

Shun falsehood and the truth too, since it’s all subjective and a person must examine this correctly. There is no truth or lie here, not righteous or wicked, and not rich or poor.

It only seems this way to you, and you have to raise it to a balanced state in order to see that everyone is equal. You have to see that you cannot judge since the answer is always on the next level. It’s the upper level that determines the lower level and which provides it with all the troubles, so ascending to it is the solution.
[115440]
From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 5/24/13

Related Material:
You Shall Not Bow To Your Ego’s Opinion
A Contrast That Reveals The True Picture Of The World
Judges And Princes

Filed under: Perception, Spiritual Work, Torah - 1 Comment →

In fact, the Creator displays a “theatrical performance” before me in which everything, the actors and all, are puppets, except me. Therefore, trying to bring them closer to Him, I in essence correct myself. The whole world is part of my soul, broken and scattered vessels, desires that are split apart from me in different directions. And now I have to bring them closer together again.

If I were strong enough, the Creator would have let me feel their sorrows as my own. However, to ease my work, He sends me the feeling of “their” troubles so I will work on them. If, however, I neglect this work, I will feel that I am in trouble myself.

That’s why I still perceive the whole world “from the side,” so it is easier for me to work with. Indeed, if all the misery of people who are dying from hunger, wars, and other disasters would have manifested in me, if I had concentrated all my empty vessels even on the small degree of our world, I would not have sustained such pressure.

To prevent this from happening, these vessels were alienated from me and given to me to feel them as foreign so that gradually, as I become stronger, I would bring them closer to myself. Then, in the course of this approach, I find that they are not in trouble, that on the contrary, they are corrected and experiencing pleasure. Baal HaSulam writes about this in his article “The Creator’s Concealment and Revelation.”

There is no other way. I am not able to absorb all the ills of the world, although we are talking of my vessels, desires.

We just do not understand that higher mercy is truly hidden in the breaking of the vessels. In the end, due to it, I obtain a vessel capable of encompassing the entire reality, all the Light of the Creator; however, I never feel this empty vessel as it is because it is impossible to sustain this sensation.

A person can barely stand even on our small stage with his troubles. So, what can we say about the entire empty Malchut of the world of Infinity? Sometimes a person is given a drop of this state, the “illumination of Malchut,” a horrible feeling of a gaping abyss …

However, we were given the breaking of the vessels to help us, and now we are able to pass a series of states, gradually assembling them together. And when I bring any external part closer to me in the process, this bitter “fruit” becomes sweet, and as the result, I put it in my “basket” until it is filled with all the fruits of the tree of knowledge.
[115449]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/23/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam

Related Material:
Connecting The Entire World To The Creator
By Changing Ourselves, We Are Changing The World
Genuine Dissemination

Filed under: Adam-The Common Soul, Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Perception, Spiritual Work - No Comments →

Question: How can you love everyone? How can one subdue what is given to him?

Answer: Only the Upper Light corrects a person and nothing else. We cannot correct ourselves and attain a certain connection between us.

I am, for example, an ordinary person sitting before you and everything inside me is aimed inward. You look at me, but you don’t see my real face. I am focused totally inward—how I hear myself, how I see myself, how I feel myself. I feel this entire reality, the whole world inside me (we study this in the perception of reality).

Love is when I am in a state of turning myself inside out, but only under the influence of the Upper Light. I cannot do it on my own.

This happens when I feel whatever is on the outside as more important than what is inside me. This is called the revelation of the upper world that is external to me. A person suddenly discovers what is actually around him and sees that it is totally different from what it seemed to be. Now, he perceives everything inside him, while later, he will see the upper state. This is possible only under the influence of the Light.

Changing the vector from “myself” to “outside myself” is called integral education. This is what it exists for.
[115356]
From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 5/24/13

Related Material:
Studying Myself In The Mirror Of The World
Bestowal Makes Us Related To The Whole World
The Choice Is Yours

Filed under: Perception, Spiritual Work, Torah - No Comments →

If we create a shared connection between us above our egoistic desires and nullify ourselves within it in order to bestow to the Creator and to give Him satisfaction, and we use all this for work with the public in that we want to bring them closer to us and through us to bring them closer to the Creator so the Creator will bestow to them through us, then we will discover all the higher “worlds,” the entire system. It doesn’t exist outside of humans, rather only among us.

And also the still, vegetative, and animate nature, we discover are within us. Suddenly we discover within us the giraffes, lions, all the wild animals, every plant, and all humans. All of this is just a copy of our properties.

We once had other properties, apparently there were dinosaurs living in the world then. And now the properties have changed and the dinosaurs have disappeared. In our times the properties in us are transforming very rapidly and we see that many species of plants and animals are becoming extinct. They say that in the world 150 species disappear daily, at such a rapid rate, our desire to receive changes, develops, and advances.

It seems to us that nothing has changed on the level of the vegetative and the animate, but essentially every day very great changes are taking place in nature because it is entirely included within a person. Nature itself is only a copy of our inner qualities.
[115224]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/21/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam

Related Material:
Why Did Dinosaurs Become Extinct?
There Are Many Surprises Up Ahead
The Pictures Of Reality That Come To Life

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Egoism, Perception, Spiritual Work - No Comments →

Baal HaSulam, “A Handmaid That Is Heir to Her Mistress:” Hence, the worlds have been divided into internality and externality, where each world contains illuminations suitable to operate in slow development. And these are called “the internality of the world.”

The system we are in is divided into internality and externality. This division relates to the Lights and the vessels, both to the direct and to the opposite correlation between them depending on if we speak about the corrected vessels or the corrupt ones.

Accordingly, we should understand what it means for us after the preparation in the spiritual system and the creation of the corporeal system. It is actually also a spiritual system, but we perceive it as the current fictitious world. I discover that I exist in a certain reality with people and the still, vegetative, and animate nature  around me. It is as if everyone lives on his own here, moving around independently, operating and influencing others. After I reveal all that, I must attribute myself, together with the whole picture that is depicted inside me to one cause, to one source, to one goal, to a simple reality in which there is none else besides Him, and that He is good and benevolent. The point that is created as “something from nothing” remains in me only in order to determine that everything else is Him.

We must connect everything that is outside that point to the perception of the upper, the Creator. This is our work, and everyone who feels that he has a point in the heart—”something from nothing” and who feels different from the eminent—participates in it.

The work is divided into two parts:

1. Strengthening the point in the heart by connecting the points that can be connected to it for the sake of the spiritual goal. These are the members of the group, my friends along the spiritual path, who actually are parts of my soul, of my point in the heart.
2. In addition, there are other parts that are not directly connected to this goal. They don’t feel “something from nothing,” but rather, “something from something,” and they don’t ask complicated questions that stem from the point in the heart, from the opposite form. They live their lives and don’t feel any deficiency but that. I also need to connect them to my work according to the type and size of the desires that are revealed inside them.

Eventually, I connect all of reality: the whole desire to receive that is before me—that is at my disposal, inside me, no matter how you put it—to the attribute of bestowal and love called the Creator. It seems that I correct the world, but in fact, I fulfill my private correction. This is because there is nothing in the world but one man and one Creator. A person is the point of “something from nothing” that operates in order to bring it back to “something from something,” everything that seems separate from it.
[114668]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/15/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam

Related Material:
From Multiplicity To Unity
A Point Which Encompasses The Whole Process
Correction Begins With Those Who Have Awakened

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Dissemination, Group Work, Perception, Spiritual Work - No Comments →

Baal HaSulam, “Exile and Redemption”: By these words, I only mean to show that the Torah and the natural law of development go hand in hand in wondrous unity even with blind fate.

Although it seems that my life is managed by blind fate, it is in fact managed by the natural law of evolution. It seems that my fate depends on many accidental incidents, but in fact all the events and occurrences in my life are predetermined by creation.

Only one thing depends on me and that is how I accept these events. If I prepare myself correctly, then I can accept and feel them in an opposite way than I feel them today. Today I have a special “receiver,” a mechanism with a sensor, that can totally change the receiving, the feeling, from minus one hundred percent to plus one hundred percent.

But the whole chain of events doesn’t change and I will go through all of them. The Creator initiates this process and manages creation, but on the way He gives you a chance to accept His actions if you want to. If you don’t want to, then He will make you want to.

It is because there is none else besides Him. Everything is already predetermined and even if He changes the “letters” in this “story,” which means if one letter doesn’t match and He replaces it by another letter, it is only with regard to my feeling, so that I will work on it better.

In fact, I am in an eternal process and can only ask myself about my perception: “Are there actually any changes? And if so, are they inside or outside of me?”

But if it is about my impressions, then I can certainly change them. If I don’t change them, they will become so unpleasant that eventually I will try to change them and correct my “receiver.”
[113964]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/04/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam

Related Material:
The Creator Governs With Love
When Everything Is To Our Benefit
The Light Of A New Candle

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Perception, Spiritual Work - No Comments →

Filed under: Laitman Unplugged, Perception - 1 Comment →

Rabash: “Make Haste My Beloved”: Therefore when one prays for the general, he engages in bestowal by this prayer. And the more he prays, the vessel of bestowal is formed to the same extent, so that the Light of bestowal, called “merciful” can be revealed.

We don’t know how it happens. We have troubling thoughts only about ourselves and we cannot think about anything else. We read and hear that we have to think about the group, about the environment, about the friends, but we don’t have the power to do so.

Sometimes we succeed but mostly we don’t. We may remember for a couple of minutes that we should think about others, but then we suddenly encounter some personal problem which troubles us more than anything else and deviates us from the love of friends, the Creator, and the next world.

We see that what we go through now in this world, the need to solve a certain problem that has come up, is the most important thing for us. Sometimes we cannot get rid of such thoughts for months and sometimes we are occupied with them for years and they cause us great pain.

This is how the Creator teaches us and reveals to us our true state. He gives us the accurate standard by which we can evaluate the state we are in: What thoughts and desires we have, what matter we are made of, which means what exactly the desire to receive is. Thus we learn about our matter and how deeply immersed we are in troubling thoughts about ourselves that come up one after another and constantly occupy us. We keep returning to them and cannot do anything about it.

Sometimes they occupy us more and we are totally immersed in our concern about ourselves. Sometimes this pressure decreases and we understand that all these problems were given to us on purpose in order to teach us to resist them and not to dedicate our whole life to them. Sometimes we feel that all these problems are supposed to push us to other thoughts: about the goal of life and its meaning instead of being immersed in our small worries about our corporeal existence. After all, no real disaster ever happens.

Still, we cannot get rid of these egoistic thoughts. This is how the Creator teaches a person and it’s about that that it says “make haste my beloved.” We don’t feel the importance of the Creator anymore, the greatness of the goal. We wake up in the middle of the night troubled with our eternal personal problems and cannot get rid of them. They simply give us no rest.

We turn to the group for help, to the friends, and don’t know what else we can do. Thanks to the fact that we are among friends and participate in their activities, we finally understand, after all these efforts, that everything that happens is a game from above by which we have to learn how we are being played with from above. We see that the Creator trains us and wants to reveal to us the uppermost importance of the spiritual development by doing it.

We suddenly begin to feel that the thoughts about the friends are more important to us than all the troubling thoughts about ourselves. On the basis of these thoughts we can examine and measure how important the spiritual goal is, which means bestowal upon others, thinking about the friends and worrying about all of humanity. It is compared to the troubling thoughts that we get a chance to assess whether we can hold ourselves above them to the same extent, and worry about the good of others and the Creator.

We understand that this process is essential so that we will finally understand the importance of our spiritual advancement, of the spiritual goal. After all, spirituality has no form, no picture, no image; we form the spiritual world by ourselves, like a wrapping that is made of the intention of in order to bestow above our corporeal life. It’s as if we change the world into an opposite world and thus build the spiritual world.

It’s as if the spiritual world does not exist before we build it with regard to the person who attains it. It turns out that it’s actually above the troubling egoistic thoughts about ourselves and struggling with the problems that we have a chance to build the spiritual form that is fulfilled in us. This is why it says “your own eyes will see and not a foreigner’s eyes.” Only then will those who can face all the obstacles and overcome them—and by them learn how to build the cover of bestowal on top of all our corporeal reality—turn it into our spirituality to see the Creator.

Then we see that life has no meaning by itself. This world is only an illusion that was created on purpose so we would be able to build the real eternal spiritual world on top of it.
[112295]
From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/17/13

Related Material:
The Last Bit
How Can I Stop Thinking About Myself?
Lacking Just A Little Bit

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Group Work, Perception, Spiritual Work - No Comments →