Question: Does Kabbalah suggest investigating a person’s reactions to one’s attaining the force of upper governance?
Answer: Yes it does. But besides that, even more.
Question:Can we rely on our senses to understand reality?
Answer: If we advance correctly toward the goal and are in the process of development under the influence of studying the wisdom of Kabbalah, we can partially rely upon our senses, and understand them in a limited frequency range.
Question: What is my illusion in regard to events or my reactions to those events?
Answer: It is absolutely everything.
Question: Is it possible to achieve correction intuitively without studying the wisdom of Kabbalah if there is only a strong inner desire to attain the Creator?
Answer: How could there be? What would you act according to? From your egoism, from your very great desire? What would be the reason for this? You would only increase your ego and wander within it, nothing more than that.
Question:My feeling is different on each level. It is not at all like it was before because it is deeper. Is the Creator changing for me or am I changing?
Answer: You are changing or the Creator changes with regard to you or within you. It is the same thing. How else could you determine it? I am changing. Therefore, the reflection of the world within me is changing.
Question: How should I behave if I want to convey love to people while they think I pressure them?
Answer: It is unnecessary to exert any particular pressure upon those people to whom you want to bestow love. It is best if you do nothing. First you need to feel that they call you, expecting such an attitude. Then you must fulfill this expectation. [254550] From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 9/15/19
Accelerated by the Internet, the media has become steroid-pumped with power, acquiring freedom, influence and control like never before.
Anyone can promote anything they want. If you are paying, you can control the media, and by doing so, control public opinion: society’s psychology, awareness and subconscious.
Individuals and groups guided by wealth and power motives thus methodically change public opinion, even using the media to manipulate legal proceedings and government elections.
People of law, such as judges, police and lawyers, have become involved in the media’s brainwashing machine, and all human systems have come under the media’s influence.
The media has become the influencer following us everywhere we go, in our hands and pockets, ears and eyes, all day, every day.
And who or what controls the media?
Money. Not an ideology. Not a plan aimed at educating and raising society to better connect and enjoy happier lives. No, just money.
Money is the worst fuel for a system. It is just quantitative units, where the more of these units you have, the more value you have.
How the Bought Media Has Contributed to Society’s Decline
Since so many people pump money into the media, and the media plays such an influential role in shaping public opinion, the media is increasingly feeling the power it has, and it has begun using its power in the most aggressive and egoistic way possible. Today, there is regular behind-the-scenes buying-and-selling in the media, manipulating power at the highest levels.
The egoistic use of the media is a major disease-like problem spreading throughout human society. It confuses people, since anyone can promote whatever they want, as long as they have enough money.
The more money a person aspiring for a position of power has, the more he can influence his opinion on society. Comedian Sacha Baron Cohen’s statement at a recent ADL conference contextualized the severity of what this means: “If Facebook were around in the 1930s, it would have allowed Hitler to post 30-second ads on his ‘solution’ to the ‘Jewish problem.’”
Since we value money and power so much, then we live in a world where those with more money—not wisdom, knowledge, expertise and experience, but money—control.
We see situations today where judges, i.e., people who need to be “untouchable,” have become influenced by the media to pass judgments with the fear of what could be done to their image in the media.
If we would start setting boundaries to limit the media that we consume, so that it would aim at benefiting the public and not merely the self-interests of those who take advantage of it, then we could prevent any further blind acceleration toward an oncoming wall.
The Solution to Bought Media – The New Media Review Organization
Although it seems unrealistic to discuss any kind of regulation on the media today, it would become more realistic if another major financial collapse struck.
The world as we know it today would come to a complete halt.
Picture the scenario that the stock market crashes. Money flow stops. Our exchange system—buying and selling by means of money—stops. Advertising stops. Nothing fuels the systems we’ve built to connect us. Everything stops.
Our constantly flowing competitive, materialistic and self-interest energized value system, based on money, gets shocked.
Since money stops moving and we wouldn’t be able to buy or sell anything, we would stop valuing money, and then we would be able to see how much money got out of hand.
At that point, we could envision a collective of people around the world forming, creating a new media review organization. Due to seeing the error in the way the media was bought by anyone who was paying beforehand and how our money-focused lives led us to a shattering, we would be more inclined to reach an agreement that the media needs to be reviewed and filtered in a way that cannot be bought by money.
Their role would be to make the media informative, and not act out of interests. It would start by closing off the Internet as we know it, so that there would be no fake political, economic and national promotions.
This new organization would define laws and boundaries for filtering out anything that could incite the public, with the focus on giving the public the information it needs, events described as objectively as possible.
The main team would of a diverse group of people from all backgrounds. They would be expected to argue regularly, but the leading principle they would be continuously reminded about would be that they need to reach a common agreement on what’s most beneficial for the public, and thus, the organization reviews and passes on information to the public in an unbiased manner.
They would also engage in learning about how to work together as equals, regularly checking to make sure that everyone in the decisive committee had equal weight.
Where Does That Leave Us Today?
The question is, do we need to wait for a financial collapse, where everyone becomes desperate from not being able to live the materialistic lives we currently live in order to undergo this change?
It all depends on how much we can raise awareness of the kind of connections we need to establish in human society. If we aim to connect human society to be as interconnected and interdependent as the technological, economic and cultural connections naturally revealing to us, then we would experience harmony. Likewise, on the contrary, anything we do that doesn’t head toward better connecting people will have negative side effects.
The media crisis we find ourselves in today comes to show us that we are nearing the end of an era of unconscious human development, one where the egoistic system based on money is positioned between all of us. It is a system that has no value other than the ego of the person who outcompetes others.
The more we suffer today from this system increasingly malfunctioning, the more we will have the opportunity to consider what it would take to wake up from our coma-like state and realize unity.
Human society today is gradually nearing this new awakening. All society needs is that its mental and emotional development match the connectedness of its technological and economic development, and then distances between people will fill up with the unifying force dwelling in nature.
Also, as I regularly explain, the Jewish people hold the key to pioneering this process of unity, and it depends on Jewish unity (“love your friend as yourself”) before expanding to the unity of humanity (“light unto the nations”).
Question: Are the spiritual worlds a mirror image of our world? In our world, love is first given and it is up to us to maintain it, while in the spiritual worlds do we have to first develop relationships that will become love?
Answer: This is not entirely correct. You are talking about egoistic feelings in our world, while in the spiritual world they are altruistic, so you cannot compare them. When we talk about the law of root and branch, the intention is for the lower levels to resemble the structure of the upper level.
Question: What is the connection of the Olam Ein Sof (World of Infinity) with the rest of the worlds?
Answer:Olam Ein Sof is a world that has no end, meaning that there is no limit for the quality of bestowal and love. It is infinite, and it is therefore called Olam Ein Sof.
Question: Where are the 125 levels found, and where does the final correction happen? Is it in the world of Atzilut or in Olam Ein Sof?
Answer: It is preferable to say that it is in Olam Ein Sof; this is more understandable.
Question: Are we correcting a part of our egoism on every level?
Answer: Yes.
Question: Is there a correspondence between the levels in our world and Olam Ein Sof?
Answer: The worlds are a division of the 125 levels into five worlds.
Question: Does the concept of unity in our world have its root in spirituality?
Answer: Everything that happens in our world has a root in the upper world, all properties, effects, and actions, including the most evil and terrible, all descend from the upper world.
Question: How can I attain the upper worlds when I feel rejection and hostility toward people?
Answer: Rejection of people is a very good phenomenon. It means that you are in a state where you are aware of your own nature. Whether you agree or disagree is already a different matter, but you understand that you don’t love everyone, and even reject and hate them. It is your nature. A wonderful state indeed. It is a very good state for learning the wisdom of Kabbalah and it is also the beginning of correction. [254980] From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 10/6/19
There are all kinds of stated reasons for hating Jews, whether it be holding too much power in countries we’ve assimilated into, ruling the whole world, being greedy, envy of our disproportionate success in the world compared to other nations, oppressing Palestine as a Jewish State, the fall of Germany in World War I, the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 19th Century Russia, drinking children’s blood in the Middle Ages, denying Muhammad’s prophethood and murdering Jesus Christ.
More fundamentally, however, according to the wisdom of Kabbalah, the reasons many people give for Jew hatred are preceded by the sensation of hatred in and of itself. As Kabbalist Rav Yehuda Ashlag (Baal HaSulam) writes in his article “The Solution“:
“It is a fact that Israel is hated by all nations, whether for religious reasons, racial reasons, capitalist reasons, communist reasons, or for cosmopolitan reasons, etc. It is so because the hatred precedes all reasons, but each merely resolves its loathing according to its own psychology.”
In other words, hatred of Jews doesn’t depend on the many varied actions and behaviors of the Jewish people.
Hatred of Jews is rather a sensation embedded in nature that emerges within people.
How does the sensation of Jew-hatred surface?
In order to answer this, we need to understand the foundation of the Jewish people, the Jewish role in the world, and how non-Jews respond in relation to whether or not Jews are performing this role.
The Foundation of the Jewish People
The Jewish people emerged in ancient Babylon some 4,000 years ago. It was a time when Babylon was experiencing a crisis of social division, with conflicts and hatred tearing up the ancient Babylonian society. During this period, Abraham, a Babylonian priest who discovered the path to unite above the growing divisions, i.e. reaching the revelation of the single force of love and bestowal that exists in reality above the growing ego, began openly teaching his method to anyone who wanted to learn.
Since social division was felt as a burning problem, many people flocked to learn with Abraham. He guided them to the discovery of the single force of love and bestowal above their divisive drives. The group he led became known as “the people of Israel” (i.e., “Israel” coming from “Yashar Kel,” which means “straight to God,” i.e. straight to the single force of love and bestowal that exists in reality), and later they became known as “Jews” (the Hebrew word for “Jew” [Yehudi] comes from the word for “united” [yihudi] [Yaarot Devash, Part 2, Drush no. 2]).
Therefore, the Jewish nation was founded not on a biological basis, but on an ideological one.
People from all over ancient Babylon who felt a problem with social division and a need for unity gathered under Abraham’s method and united above their divisive drives. By doing so, they became known as “a light unto the nations,” as the attainment of the one, unique and unified force of nature above the human ego, which causes all the divisiveness and problems in society, has a positive domino effect that “upgrades” human consciousness: it leads to more positive connections, more consideration, support, love and care, among humanity in general.
The Jewish Role in the World
As it was then, so it is today, but on a much larger, global scale.
The overblown human ego, social division, conflicts and hatred are all experiencing an exponential boost, bringing about myriad problems and crises. For instance, despite more human population than ever before on the planet, and all the technological and cross-cultural connections that have been established worldwide, human society feels more and more isolation, stress, depression, emptiness and anxiety.
The more people feel such problems, the more people subconsciously feel that the Jews are the cause of these problems.
That is where the sensation of Jew-hatred comes from: that the Jews have a role in the world, to unite (“love your friend as yourself”) above division (“love will cover all transgressions”), and by doing so, be a conduit for the single unifying force of love and bestowal to spread throughout the collective human consciousness (“a light unto the nations”).
The Response to the Jews from the Nations of the World in Relation to the Jewish Role
If we function correctly in relation to our role in the world, uniting among each other in order to pass unity to the world, then we will experience a positive reaction from everyone in the world.
If, however, as it currently stands, we fail to acknowledge or make any effort to unite among each other, we then block the positive unifying force from reaching humanity, and hatred stirs up in non-Jews toward the Jews as a natural phenomenon that serves to pressure us to perform our role.
It is thus my hope that we will realize our role in the world sooner rather than later, sparing the world and ourselves much suffering.
We simply don’t see what it would mean if we make some steps toward uniting, how much all the tension in human society and between nations would calm down, how all the exploitation, manipulation, hatred and abuse in humanity would be replaced by mutual support, consideration, love and care for our fellow human beings.
This is why I put in so many efforts to disseminate the message about the role of Jews in the world, and the cause and solution to anti-Semitism, since humanity’s future of happiness or torment depends specifically on this.
Halacha is how a person progresses from his current state to a state of similarity with the Creator, i.e., to a state with an intention to bestow, adhered to the Creator according to the force of bestowal that the person acquires.
The person’s ultimate goal in life is to become like the Creator.
Halachot are the laws that the person needs to observe in order to become like the Creator.
When I lived in Russia, it was a time when anti-Semitism was completely forbidden. Whoever would say a single word against Jews would be put into prison. Then, gradually, it started coming out little by little.
I experienced a situation in Leningrad where someone erupted on a Jewish man on the street, and I got myself involved to try and break it up. I was taken with the men to the police station, and noticed how the police were actually pro-Jewish.
Afterward, when they imprisoned the guy who attacked the Jewish man, I asked the investigator, “Why are you putting him in prison? He’s also got his reasons.”
The investigator replied, “I don’t get involved with what he feels or not. I get my instructions from above. Anti-Semites help Zionists. Jews are a positive force in our country. They work in respectable professions that are good for the country, such as doctors, engineers and lawyers. Therefore, we are pro-Jewish.”
In other words, what he said was not to ask him whether or not he likes Jews. He hated them, but he saw them as beneficial for his country.
In those days, Jews were not in key leadership positions and in the financial banking sector as they are today. They filled those places considered as respectable professions. It was only when the Jews started entering places like the finance and banking sector that the tides of anti-Semitic sentiment started turning.
Today, however, I feel anti-Semitism everywhere I go.
I recently traveled around Europe, visiting and teaching groups of my students in Berlin, Prague, Nuremberg, Moldova, Rome, and most recently where we held a European Kabbalah Convention in Bulgaria.
Everywhere I went, I felt feelings of blame from the nations of the world.
For instance, most recently in Bulgaria, I arrived with nine of my students, and we traveled to a house that we rented in a rural village. It was a lonely house, and there were a few small stores and restaurants, with a local café where people sat from morning till evening.
Even in such a comfortable setting, I felt how they looked at us. I could feel how the attitude was not toward fellow human beings, but that it was an attitude to Jews.
There were no physical signs. It is a feeling that emerges from nature itself, and I understood them well.
Since the Jewish people were founded on an ideological basis of uniting (“love your neighbor as yourself”) from among the divisive social atmosphere of ancient Babylon around 3,800 years ago, then today too, the nations of the world hold a subconscious demand upon the Jewish people to unite. As social division tears through modern society more and more, making people feel increasingly isolated, depressed, anxious and stressed, the more people suffer in today’s modern world, the more they subconsciously blame the Jews for their misfortunes.
Today, anti-Semitism has re-ripened into a global form that has spread over many developed countries and cultures. For instance, South and North Korea, countries with basically no Jews, are generally anti-Semitic countries. The hatred emerges from within human nature, which ultimately wants to access the Creator, the force of bestowal and love that fills reality, but there is a force blocking them from that sensation.
That force is known as “the Jews.”
Therefore, in all anti-Semitic sentiment, and in every anti-Semitic action, I see only a cry from the nations of the world toward the Jews in order that the Jews fulfill their function in the world: to unite “as one man with one heart” and be a connecting plug between humanity and the upper force of love and bestowal.
However, before I see the Jews as a people to blame, I see myself principally as the one to blame.
I see everyone as parts of a grand mechanism that I activate, and whether the connection of the mechanism’s parts are well-oiled, functioning smoothly and harmoniously together, or the contrary, malfunctioning with all kinds of breakages and defects, depends solely on me.
Question: Is a question the most important element of practical work in studying the wisdom of Kabbalah?
Answer: Yes. A question is of utmost importance to our spiritual advancement. However, it is unnecessary to ask a question and wait for its answer. You study it, want it answered, then you ask the Creator through the group and receive an answer.
All our advancement is comprised of questions and answers. The Passover tale about four sons speaks about this: even when you are in a state when you do not know how to ask a question, you must look for opportunities to have it. There is no advancement without it.
Question:Is a question considered a spiritual action?
Answer: Yes, of course. It is the left line, which is necessary for movement.
Question: Can a question be a real gift for a teacher or for a friend, an example of bestowing to the group?
Answer: In principle, yes.
Question: Is it worth asking a question if the methodology teaches us that questions that arise in us are revealed and clarified naturally in the course of our work in the group?
Answer: When you ask a question or do something in general, you should think about how you are helping others. [254544] From Lesson 4, World Kabbalah Convention in Moldova 9/7/19, Rejoice in What We Lack/Work in Concealment
Indeed, we are in an era of growing hostility toward Israel running parallel with an exponential rise in anti-Semitic crimes and threats around the world.
However, the extent of destruction, or its opposite, a bright and blossoming future, for Israel depends solely on the people of Israel.
If we determine a goal before us, where we want to reach unity of the people of Israel in order for a spirit of unity to spread worldwide, then we’ll see all negativity toward Israel disappear, and in its place, witness a refreshingly new positive response from the world.
We cannot imagine what such a change would look like. For instance, world leaders who currently hold anti-Israel stances would suddenly start feeling the need to help Israel. The effect of this critical mass of people uniting would shift the tectonic plates of human consciousness into a positive “click,” and everyone would think, feel and interact more harmoniously. Moreover, the people of Israel would be felt as hubs in the human network of this newfound harmony.
Therefore, destruction or progress of the people of Israel depends solely on our behavior. If we take steps to unite, it will work to ours and everyone’s favor, and if we reject such steps, hatred and resentment toward us will continue rising to extents that could be far worse than the Holocaust.
Despite our widespread recognition as a smart and progressive people, we also have a distinctive foolish side: we forget our past. After the end of the Holocaust, we should have made a summary on how to never reach such a terrifying state ever again, but we did nothing of the sort.
While we make egoistic strides in the world, behaving as any other nation does, we fail to recognize that we’re actually in a coma-like state in relation to the ideology that made us the people of Israel to begin with: “Love your neighbor as yourself,” which our ancestors achieved under the guidance of Abraham some 3,800 years ago. After uniting for a brief period, our relations soon after shattered into unfounded hatred, and from the ruin of the Temple onward till today, we experience mutual rejection—our Achilles heel.
For the time being, there is mercy on us. We can still maneuver our lives in Israel and around the world relatively peacefully, regardless of the increasing anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic sentiment. It is my hope that we make the most of the time we have left to unite and become a positive example of unity for the world. Otherwise, the tides could turn very quickly, and we could suddenly find ourselves trapped on a road to destruction.
The solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is in the people of Israel’s hands.
In order to understand how Israel holds the solution, we need to understand who are the people of Israel, what is their role in the world, and how the world responds to Israel in relation to the fulfillment or lack of fulfillment, of their role.
The nation of Israel was founded as a group who gathered from all parts of ancient Babylon under a common unifying concept: “love your neighbor as yourself.” Since this nation was based on an ideological foundation, not a biological one, then the world feels it as a strange phenomenon.
As the nation of Israel once attained unity above the growing divisions in ancient Babylon, so it is today: there is a subconscious expectation from the nations of the world toward Israel that they usher in the same positive force of love and connection that they once attained, and pioneer an example of a new society led by values of love, unity, mutual support and consideration. The more human society feels torn apart by division and hatred, the more it feels the people of Israel responsible for the world’s misfortunes.
Therefore, Palestine is only one of many characters frowning at Israel. Accordingly, Israel needs to respond to all of its enemies the only way it ultimately knows how to: by turning to its long-ignored power of unity.
First, the people of Israel need to understand that beneath all the surface reasons the world points out its hatred to us, whether it be oppression of Palestinians or too much power in countries we have assimilated into, there is fundamentally a much more significant and subconscious demand upon us.
It is a demand for our unity.
Neither Jews nor non-Jews know about it, because it is an ideological foundation that was lost around 3,800 years ago, and while we were all born and raised through a range of egoistic desires, we have no idea what it means to live in a unified state. Since we lack any feeling or experience of the kind of unity that our ancestors once attained, then we feel no lack for unity like we feel no lack for a sixth finger on our hand. We simply fail to see that if we unite, we will solve not only the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but our unity will have a positive rippling effect throughout humanity, solving myriad other problems too.
The people of Israel have no ears for this message. Those who understand it, Kabbalists, are very small in number, and so there is no solution in sight on any mass scale.
The solution is solely that the nation of Israel listens to what the nations of the world want from them: to implement the unity that the nations of the world are crying out for behind all the surface anti-Israelism and anti-Semitism. We will then all live in peace.
Question: Does Kabbalah suggest investigating a person’s reactions to one’s attaining the force of upper governance?
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