Kabbalah Insights – Sandglass
Posted on April 11th, 2011
We cannot say anything about the Creator as such, but Kabbalists who attain Him say that “There is none else beside Him, who is good that does good” and that there is no change in His attitude towards us. In other words, they reach the attainment of the upper force which contains everything.
Hence, our entire path is the same. And today, when we don’t feel anything but our world, we need to understand that it is an instrument given to us now in order to attain. We feel the Creator even now but only according to our current organs of perception!
Our present perception is opposite to the authentic one since we don’t perceive the Creator as He is in His properties, even in the smallest degree, but rather we sense Him in an absolutely opposite way. And we can’t attain even this reverse side of Him.
In other words, the reality we see right now is the Creator indeed. And I myself, you, and the whole world is the Creator as well, but perceived in corrupted, broken organs of perception. When, however, we correct our desires, the organs of perception, then we discover the upper force, the Creator, more and more, until we uncover Him completely in His real form.
Besides the degree of “this world” that we receive as the initial state, we are unable to attain anything without achieving equivalence to the Creator, without equalizing our properties. The flawed vessel must correct itself by acquiring the form of the Creator and having come closer to Him.
The property of the Creator is bestowal and love. Hence, we are given an opportunity from Above to work in the group, and in our relationships reach equivalence with the Creator. The group must be perceived by everyone as the Creator in relation to oneself.
The attitude toward the friends should be treated as the attitude toward the Creator. And then, even though the Creator is concealed, we will be able to attain Him by His actions and continue approaching Him by placing before ourselves, instead of Him, the correct environment, one that yearns for the Creator.
Know that by deceiving the friend, you deceive the Creator; by treating the friend poorly, you treat the Creator likewise! This is the order of our work. Hence, when within the group evil and hatred unfold, this is the revelation of the broken state, and we understand that we are broken and opposite to the Creator.
Such a broken state, the hatred, is regarded as “this world.” And prior to that, there is just animate existence. The human degree begins with the revelation of hatred.
If a person realizes that he has to correct himself, the desires in which one begins perceiving the Creator, there is an opportunity to do it in the group, to attain the Creator by His actions: to start getting to know Him even more, feeling Him in the degree of being reformed.
We must constantly walk along this line where Israel (a person aimed directly to the Creator), the Torah (the Light that Reforms), and the Creator unify into one whole. A person adjusts himself to the group and in it reveals the Creator.
The group becomes one’s spiritual vessel for revealing the Creator. If a person relates to the friends with bestowal, he will discover the force of bestowal that fills his relations, which is regarded as the Creator. This is why the Creator is named Boreh, “come and see” (Bo and Reh), since He is attained through His actions.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/8/2011, Writings of Rabash
The worldwide WE! Convention that was held in New Jersey was the first convention where we already felt that it doesn’t matter where we are. People felt the same thing no matter where they were.
And it wasn’t because we learned to do this in some way, but because we ascended above the net of our material, virtual connection, and through the virtuality that connects us, above it, we started feeling the spiritual net of connection.
Now we continue this convention further from the same degree that we attained. We attach all the difficulties and problems that become revealed to us to the same ascent. There cannot be an ascent without difficulties because it is always difficult to ascend, just like climbing up a mountain. That is why we are now revealing various problems, depression, confusion, various questions that demand to be resolved, and work among us that has to rise to a qualitatively new level.
We are about to have a large convention in Moscow, and before that two meetings with our groups in Italy and Spain. It is necessary to prepare for this convention. Otherwise, why have it at all? We have to develop a great, powerful desire and at the next convention to already see ourselves on a completely different qualitative level compared to the previous.
What we attained at the convention in America is good. But the next convention has to give us the sensation that we are in one place, rather than in different places in our sensation. This is our goal.
At the previous convention we sat by our computer screens, slightly ascending above this virtual connection. Almost all of us felt how in every corner of the world, at all the mirror conventions, people had the same feeling of joy and inspiration, and the same thoughts. But nevertheless, people felt that they were in different places—in Israel, in New Jersey, in Toronto, in Moscow, in Sao-Paulo, and other cities and countries, as if they were all together.
Now we have to attain the sensation that we aren’t located in different places, but in one spiritual space, where we are connected together. We have to turn off the “as if,” the virtual illusion, and attain the state of being all together. There are no boundaries or distances for sensations and this is what we have to achieve.
This is our goal at the next convention: We have to completely separate from the geographic locations and from the virtual connection. True, all of this does exist. But above all of this, we will very quickly attain the sensation that we are in one spiritual place, rather than in any material location. This is what we should attain at the next convention.
And now we have to work on this. If this is the goal we have placed before us, then we must form a common desire, the need to attain it. We have to talk about this, work in this direction, and maybe write several songs and organize several events and friends’ assemblies.
Everything has to be done for the sake of this goal: to be in one place, meaning in one desire, because “place” in spirituality means “desire.” This is already called “as one man with one heart.” This is what we have to reach, and it happens gradually, step by step, from one convention to the next. This is the goal.
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From the lesson on 4/8/11, “Preface to Pticha”
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Kabbalists begin telling us about creation by saying that “before the creatures were created, the simple upper Light filled the whole existence” (beginning words of the ARI’s book, The Tree of Life). In other words, reality had already existed, which is the desire of the creature to feel pleasure that was filled with Light.
The plan of creation is to delight the created beings. And this gift that the Creator wishes to bestow can be accepted only by having met two conditions: the creature must become like the Creator and at the same be independent of Him.
The best state of existence is feeling the presence of the Creator. It is the greatest delight, and it must be felt regardless of anyone else. The created being must be completely autonomous and equal to the Creator.
Therefore, the upper force is concealed. At this moment we are surrounded by various radio waves, yet the only person aware of them is the one possessing a radio capable of receiving something that can be recreated within, in one’s properties. We are surrounded by white light, but we perceive it as blue, red, and all other colors. While the light itself has no color, the color is created by the one receiving it, absorbing only certain waves through one’s own prism.
Hence, light seems to us as yellow, blue, and red. Actually the reason for this is the glass which stops and reflects these waves that thereby seem as colors. But there are no shades in the light itself.
And in the same way we perceive the Creator. To the degree that we can equalize ourselves with Him, His property of bestowal, in each of our 613 desires, in that very desire and degree, we will perceive the Creator. So we gradually get to know Him in small portions.
In man, there are always 613 desires acting, which are the foundation of our perception. Yet, we can strengthen the power of this spiritual vessel, having risen on the 125 steps of equivalence to the Creator, until all of our 613 desires have become completely identical to Him. Thus we attain the Creator, and this is regarded as “know Him by His actions.”
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/8/2011, Writings of Rabash
Question: Why does the exit from Egypt occur in the darkness, late at night? Is it not tied to time?
Answer: As time passes, there are no changes in spirituality. Only the animate body grows along with its earthly desires. Meanwhile, there is no time in spirituality. If you performed no action, the time stood still.
In the spiritual world there is no axis of time, meaning the axis where our actions get deposited on. Time in spirituality is the amount of actions, the chain of causes and effects that you have realized.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/10/2011, Writings of Rabash
Question: How can we know what desires we need to correct?
Answer: Everything becomes revealed along the path. We don’t know what it is all about, but there is an order to the actions a person must carry out, as Baal HaSulam and Rabash explain to us.
They were the two last Kabbalists who created a method suitable to the souls descending into this world in our generation and detailed all our work regarding the soul’s correction. By correcting it we reach revelation of the Creator; the reality and the world unfold before us—it is happening here and now.
All the worlds, souls, and upper forces, everything is right here, but we don’t feel it. We must cultivate a sensory organ within, discover our desires as deeply and widely as possible, give them definitions, feel changes in them, and arrange them so as to discern all their peculiarities and components.
We must feel the entire depth of the existing reality so that our impressions and sensations would merge into one image regarded as the Creator, the upper force. Similarly, we attain the authentic reality as we rise along the steps of the five spiritual worlds, where in the world of Infinity everything unifies as one whole.
All that we attain on the path, we attain in small doses, as individual parts, after which everything merges into an integral form. This is the perfection we are to achieve.
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From the Lesson on Weekly Torah Portion 2/10/2011
There are many stories in The Book of Zohar that are written in allegorical language (Midrash). They are seemingly describing people and angels (the forces of nature), animals, and plants, which is because the Book’s authors wished to explain all levels of creation to us: the still, vegetative, animate, and speaking.
Baal HaSulam prepared four introductions to The Book of Zohar:
1. “Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah (Pticha)”: It is a scientific preface where he explains the structure of the worlds, Partzufim, Sefirot, and the interaction of the Lights and desires (vessels, Kelim).
2. “The Preamble to the Sulam Commentary”: It is connected to the above mentioned preface. Here, he also explains how to work in the three lines, with Lights and desires, if only in a more particular form, closer to each soul.
3. “Preface to The Book of Zohar”: In this introduction, Baal HaSulam explains the perception of reality. He describes how we transition from our ordinary, corporeal perception of reality to the spiritual one, when we start perceiving reality through this world, which becomes transparent, and see the forces working in it instead of the external picture of the world.
Similarly, when we look at the computer screen, we see a certain image. But it exists only pertaining to us since we created this screen and this method of projection on purpose. In reality though, it is merely an external manifestation of information stored inside the computer, on its hard drive. If we could read information directly from the disk, we wouldn’t need to retrieve it onto the screen and read it from it.
The wisdom of Kabbalah is the instrument that allows us to enter the internal, concealed part of reality and see not the external form presented to us at the moment, but rather the internal activity: the forces working behind the scenes of the familiar image of the world.
In this introduction, Baal HaSulam also explains that our perception of reality is divided into four components: the essence, the abstract form, the form clothed in matter, and the matter itself. Until the final correction (Gmar Tikkun), we attain only our matter (desire) and form that this desire assumes: either an egoistic or altruistic one. We cannot know the abstract form and less so the essence. Thus we advance to the final correction.
Hence, the wisdom of Kabbalah gives us a very serious warning not to indulge in fantasies, but rather to be realistic and use a scientific approach while striving to discover the spiritual world in a sound, tangible form.
4. “Introduction to The Book of Zohar”: Here, Baal HaSulam explains various problems a person faces in his or her questions about who we are, what our essence and role in this world is, why the Creator created us so flawed, low, and despicable, why we must walk this entire long path and become equivalent to Him, and so on. In the beginning of this introduction, Baal HaSulam asks these questions and answers them further on.
And in the end of the introduction, there is a very special, well-known, and widespread part where he writes about our correction in our days. There he explains that the world is divided into inner and outer parts. People who feel they belong in spiritual attainment are regarded as the inner part of the world. It is they who must unify among themselves and use The Book of Zohar to draw the Light that Reforms to themselves.
By doing so, they will become the spiritual source and the spiritual center of the world. Having the spiritual force, they will be spreading the wisdom of Kabbalah, and the whole world will get to feel that they have something exalted: knowledge, wisdom, the correct, common sense approach to what is happening in the world, and the answers to questions about it.
The world will begin to understand that these people reside at a much higher degree than all scientists and the so-called great leaders of this world since they possess the knowledge of the forces that act and transform our world in such an unpredictable way.
Then, after resistance and confrontations, the world will still begin to feel drawn to these people and recognize in them the upper force, the upper wisdom. And thus, in the end, the whole world will arrive at correction. After all, correction is basically performed between the individuals who are regarded as the inner part of the world, the ones with the point in the heart, while the rest of the world will only join in and cling to them, just like today in the world the masses live their daily lives while the world is ruled by a handful of others.
And thus, as Baal HaSulam explains in the end of the “Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” the entire humanity will keep developing until the world unifies together, all become as one whole, thanks to the same Book of Zohar, and reaches the same very ten primordial Sefirot that Rabbi Shimon and his nine disciples wrote about.
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From Lesson 4, WE! Convention 4/2/2011
The answer is simple: It’s because spirituality is opposite to us, to our essence, to our egoistic nature. Egoism rules over us; we wish to fill it. Hence, out of everything that surrounds us, we only see what we want to see in our egoism: something pleasant or, at most, threatening.
This is why a person who wants to reveal the upper world, to discover what surrounds him but remains undetected in his egoistic perception, needs to reconstruct himself. For this reason the environment is so critical for a person: It helps to rebuild one’s perception, to attune oneself to the importance of perceiving what is unpleasant to egoism, opposite to it. Then one will be able to witness a wide world that has always surrounded him or her. It is called the spiritual world because it is above the egoistic one.
It seems to us that our views are the result of our experience, but they are the upshot of the accumulation of information convenient for our egoism. And it makes no difference what they say, the truth or a lie: For us the truth is what coincides with our opinion—egoism.
We always look only for what supports our opinion and reject what opposes it. Ultimately, we form ourselves and do not wish to change. Only suffering, the attempts to find the meaning of existence, and a strong spiritual environment, the group, will help a person to become objective, to replace the egoistic perception with the environment’s opinion. And then the upper world that has always existed around him will open for him!
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Dear friends!
All of us together experienced the unforgettable minutes at the WE! Convention that was held in New Jersey. With each convention our connection and the sensation of the entire world group becomes clearer and closer.
But at the same time, there is a need to see and hear all of us simultaneously on one common screen as if we are located all together in one convention hall. I ask all of you to think about this because then we will succeed in creating a program that would be able to accept all the groups and present everyone as if they are together, hearing and seeing the same thing.
We have to create this virtual illusion among us. It will help us to quickly reach the total, spiritual unification of everyone into one desire and one thought, to become one man, Adam.
Dr. Michael Laitman
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Even to study Einstein’s theory or quantum physics, we need a new approach with another kind of math and other phenomena. The principle applies all the more so to the spiritual world, where we need additional sensory organs and our standard five senses and our mind, which operates by the same scheme, are insufficient.
Our animate sensations are limited, but which way are we to expand them? We must develop the point in the heart into a new dimension. Then, next to the familiar human being of this world, a new creature will emerge.
We already have its root within us. Now we only need to draw the upper Light, a special energy which will cultivate this seed, this spiritual gene, into an additional human being whom we will call man. Kabbalists also call this a soul.
When we identify ourselves with it, from its qualities, continuously changing as a result of our work, we will begin to attain the world pertaining to this new creature, deliberately developed by us in order to investigate the upper one with its help. It will be called our soul existing in the spiritual world.
And this additional human being can continue developing gradually until it spans the entire universe. It possesses unlimited sensory organs, desires, and opportunities!
We are born animals, and the expansion of our sensory spectrum is limited to telescopes, eyeglasses, and the like because our mind does not change but works precisely according to its nature. That is why we still pertain to the animate level, whereas “man” is the spiritual entity that we will build beside ourselves. In it, our entire perception may change.
It will change so greatly that from state to state, from one spiritual degree to another, we won’t even recognize ourselves or our world which will suddenly be revealed to us! Each time we will suddenly become somebody else, not the same as even a moment ago, unable to recognize the world around us, for everything will be brand new!
Indeed, as opposed to this world, all my senses—the mind and the heart—will be changing. They won’t simply grow; rather, they will completely replace the system of coordinates, the entire perception, to the extent that whoever is at a lower degree cannot possibly understand the upper one.
Just as here we work with our senses so as to reveal nature, the same principle applies in spirituality, and it is also called a “natural science,” except here nature is lower, corporeal, whereas there it is higher, spiritual. But the scientific method remains the same.
Obviously, the scientists of this world won’t accept this because they work only in their five corporeal senses, and so they will not consider it a science. Naturally, if someone is limited by some tiny sphere of perception, only willing to accept that and nothing else, there’s no use in arguing.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/28/2010, “Body and Soul”
Daily Audio Version-MP3
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