Entries in the 'Q&A' Category

Your Personal Desires Won’t Take You Far

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Can the circulation of Kabbalah serve as a springboard for doing the work in order to bestow, as desire does?

Answer: Circulation is a priority. After all, by spreading the wisdom of Kabbalah, I give explanations to the whole world so that people may wake up. And as a result, I will receive their desire aimed for correction.

Desires that awaken in us, in the world movement of “Bnei Baruch,” in those who aspire to the Creator (Israel), are not sufficient. We need to store desires from all over the world, and to achieve this, we must spread the wisdom of Kabbalah. Such dissemination is regarded as the “Messiah’s Horn.”

Thanks to these desires, we will be able to deliver the method of transformation correctly, to make it lighter and simpler for all. The way we present it depends upon who is sitting before us and to whom we give all the explanations. In accordance with that, we can speak more freely, openly, and simply, all because we absorb the desires of others.

This is why we need desires from that part of humanity that cannot repair itself. And then, strength will be given from Above to the part that is capable of correcting itself so that the second part may get corrected through the first.

And if there is a part yearning for the Creator (Israel), which is able to establish a connection with Him, then the part that doesn’t have direct connection with the Creator must be attached to it. Then both of them, “Israel” and “the nations of the world,” will receive powers and repair themselves.

However, if they aren’t mutually connected, Israel won’t receive strength from Above since on one’s own, a person doesn’t require correction. He was broken solely in order to transform the peoples of the world. And the nations of the world, or those who cannot wake up by themselves, won’t receive the strength either since they don’t have anyone to receive it from. Then, the nations of the world will turn their hate and bad influence onto Israel in order to wake it up to the fulfillment of their task.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/13/2011, Writings of Rabash

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Steps Toward Uniting With The Creator

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: How can we attain unity?

Answer: Unity means that according to all the desires of the Giver and the receiver, the two unite with one another like the guest and the Host in Baal HaSulam’s famous example.

The guest has nothing to give to the Host besides his attitude, provided that he develops the same attitude to the Host as the Host has to him. Meaning, we don’t take into consideration the fact that the guest uses his appetite, and the Host—his power. They are initially this way: one is the Creator, and the other is creation.

But if we remove these initial conditions, the fact that one is the Creator and the other is creation, since they have to attain total equality, then by what criterion can they be equal? According to their attitude, which they build without any connection to what existed before.

That is, we must ascend in the relationships between us so it wouldn’t matter that He is the Creator, He is primary, and He created me in the desire to enjoy and does anything He wants with me because all of this initially comes from Him, being the upper root. And it doesn’t matter that I, the creation, am unable to do anything more than that.

However, if He and I attain this state where we have absolutely equal opportunities, then out of our equal opportunities we desire to attain adhesion and unity. First of all, the Creator and creation have to attain the state where they are both completely equal and independent from one another—the creation from the Creator and the Creator from the creation.

Once we are equal and we have the opportunity to create any connection between us that each of us freely desires, we attain the state where we desire only love, unity, and adhesion between us.

As Baal HaSulam explains, the guest and the Host reach a state where they depend on one another in equal measure: the Host on the guest and the guest on the Host, like children and parents. Then the will to enjoy contained in creation and the will to bestow that the Creator has both harness one another and obligate each other. And even though on one hand the Creator is able to do anything, this does not indicate anything because He feels love for creation and this love limits Him, enabling Him to do only what love dictates, rather than everything He can do.

That means that the force of love is the force of restriction, the reverse force operating in the Creator. It does not let you do anything. You cannot destroy the person you love. Love rules.

Therefore, the condition of unity is equality—in opportunities, forces, abilities, and freedom of expression. Once the equality is there, then out of all of these opportunities we activate precisely the force of love and attain unity.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/14/11, The Zohar

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So The World Would Be Created For Me….

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Does my intention depend on the intention of the entire environment and the intention of the environment on my intention?

Answer: Definitely! It says in Shamati #225: One cannot raise oneself above one’s circle. Hence, [if one wishes to advance] one must suck from one’s environment. And one has no other counsel, except through much work and Torah. Therefore, if one chooses for oneself a good environment, one saves time and efforts, since one is drawn according to one’s environment.

This is clear. If I receive energy from the environment—and the fact is that I receive everything in order to ascend from it—then I will ascend only inasmuch as I receive from them. I cannot be above this level.

Question: How can I see my environment as great if I do not see my friends as great?

Answer: Therein lies the entire problem. Who do you consider great? There is no one great in your world. Meaning, the world was not created for you. Then what means will you use to advance? The Creator is concealed. The environment is small. You have no one to advance toward and you are alone in the whole world. That is how you feel.

In principle, everyone feels this way and this is what we have to change.

From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/14/11, The Zohar

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From The Branch To Its Root

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: How can a simple, ordinary person use the law of root and branch in his daily life?

Answer: His life will turn upside down whether he wants it to or not. And it’s better that a person knows what is going to happen with him so that he could participate in this inevitable revolution himself. If he does participate in it, he will feel good, and if he doesn’t, he will feel bad.

A person needs to understand that perception of reality is relative and depends on the point of reference which can be changed. Through this, reality changes as well since it exists only relative to a person who perceives it.

Hence, if one wants to change his life, it implies changing his reality. He can do it even today: from the present moment and on, and from this world to the world of Infinity.

Question: Do all human inventions (planes, machines, and so on) point to man’s unconscious aspiration to oneness?

Answer: Surely, they do. They are man’s aspiration to merge with the Creator, his desire to attain the upper degree. Every single action a person performs is aimed only at this goal.

And even when he is busy with something completely opposite, when he eats, drinks, or is having a good time, all of it is merely a preparation; it is all included in his movement toward his root.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/8/2011, “The Essence of the Wisdom of Kabbalah”

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What I Sowed

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: If we want to correct ourselves in order to benefit humanity, does this mean that we desire bestowal?

Answer: Yes and no. Suppose some kind of problem has come up for me and I have to correct it. I have to call a doctor or technician, or do something else. Who am I doing this for: those who have suffered or myself?

Everything depends on the circle by which we determine our boundaries. A small person is restricted to himself. One who is more developed takes his family into consideration. One who is even more developed expands this circle to neighbors, the city, the nation, the world, and finally, all reality.

If I understand that the world’s correction must happen through Israel, which exists solely for that purpose, then everything I do externally is the same as what I do for me. Moreover, if I exist in order to correct the world and this is my entire mission, then I must first correct the desires (Kelim) of the whole world, and then I will receive a response through them.

Therefore, “what I sow” is that I turn to the world, bestow to it, become permeated by its desires, and bring them to correction. Then I can hope to receive a response from the Creator to those desires. When this happens, I receive the response first because the world is only able to receive it through me.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/13/11, Writings of Rabash

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Raising The Future Generation

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: What is the best way to educate a child in order to prepare him for the perception of the spiritual world?

Answer: We need to give a child the ability to work with a force called love, which can only be received from the correct environment. This is the only thing a person needs.

It’s essential to place a child in the correct environment. If he starts feeling what love and hate is in relation to a fellow human being, this feeling will help him resolve all problems independently. The sensitivity toward love and hatred for a fellow human being is what determines the human within us.

All that he sees and hears will pass through this perception and will allow him to interpret everything correctly. There won’t be any need to lecture or to force him into anything. A child only needs the society that will constantly engage him or her in relations of either confrontation or love, all for the sake of the spiritual goal. Such society has to be managed by proper educators, Kabbalists.

A child doesn’t need to know anything more: no special wisdom or “the number of angels in the sky.” We must only give him the ability to feel another, and by doing so we will solve all problems. He will begin to see a true reality because this is the only way that it can be revealed. He will see that all people are connected and will understand the relationships between all of them.

These aren’t psychological relationships: He will reveal the upper force hidden within and the program of creation according to which we are all interconnected.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/9/2011, “The Essence of the Wisdom of Kabbalah”

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There Is No Oblivion In Spirituality

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe Zohar, Introduction, “The Second Commandment,” Item 203: …Then fear clings to both sides, the side of good and love and the side of harsh Din, and she is included in them. If fear is included on the side of good and love, it is complete love, as it should be. …since there is love only in two sides—GAR and ZAT de Bina—and love is incomplete on either of the two sides unless there is fear in each of them, since there cannot be Hochma without Bina, which is love without fear.

This explains the completion of all of our work: How to attain love in Kelim (or desires) of bestowal and then also in the receiving Kelim. In essence this is already the full correction of creation in Malchut, which unites with Bina so much that it attains Keter, where its bestowal is perfect in all of its Kelim.

Question: What is fear?

Answer: Fear is the first commandment, meaning the first correction we have to go through. It is a person’s worry and fear: Is he able to attain bestowal to the Creator? This is fear: Will I attain this? Am I capable of this? Will I ever desire this? Then a person has work.

As a rule our work is aimed at maintaining what we have attained. Baal HaSulam writes about this in Letter #2 from 1920:

Wisdom only comes with experience. I advise you to awaken inner fear that the love among you might cool down, even though the mind rejects this view of things. You should go through the trouble anyway. If someone has the opportunity to add more love, but he doesn’t do it, this will be deemed a flaw.

It’s similar to how a person gives his friend a great gift. The love for his friend that becomes revealed at the moment of the action in the heart of the gift’s receiver, is not similar to the love that remains in his heart when the action is completed. Day by day it cools down, until it may reach total oblivion to the gift of love.That is why the person who received the gift has to invent tricks so as to look at it with new eyes every day.

Spirituality is built on the fact that we do not forget the inspiration that we have attained and we constantly keep the same inspiration while expanding it more and more.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/13/11, The Zohar

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“Ask The Kabbalist” – 2

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Use Your Mind To Bestow

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: How is it that the intelligence which assisted us in growing and advancing over the course of human history only distracts and halts us from it today, at the most vital point when we need to evolve spiritually?

Answer: Intelligence has always serviced your ego, so it was helping you to achieve everything during these thousands of years. However, today, when you have finished evolving on the still, vegetative, and animate levels and must ascend new degrees of evolution at the human level, a completely different approach is required.

The view of life and the world, the whole paradigm have totally changed. Now, you need to relate to all that surrounds you with bestowal that originates from another kind of desire, but your rational mind doesn’t wish to work for bestowal since you don’t have a desire to bestow.

When you receive the desire to bestow, your mind will start working with it, but for now you have only egoistic desire, and your intelligence only serves it. The mind is a device, a computer. It doesn’t care what data it processes, what digits are loaded into it. As long as it receives data from your egoism, the will to receive pleasure, it works accordingly.

What can you do with this? Try to transform your desire rather than your mind. Draw the Light that Reforms into your desire. The Light created this desire, and only it can change it. Then, your mind will start working for the new desire to bestow and advise you as to how to bestow in a better way.

Therefore, intelligence is not the key in studying, as it’s written: “It isn’t the wise one who learns.” Everything is defined by desire. Mind is what you gain while your desire evolves. As to desire, it can be changed only by the upper Light and nothing else, except for the environment that awakes you and inspires to transform your desire, triggering it by “envy, lust, and ambition.” Using such material tools as your earthly desires, it leads you to spiritual aspiration.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/3/2011, "The Wisdom of Kabbalah and Philosophy"

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How We Turn Love Into Hatred

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: If everything that exists in this world is an imprint of the spiritual world based on love, then how can there be murder in our world?

Answer: Everything comes to us from the world of Infinity, from the constant and perfect state, the complete adhesion with the Creator. But in the creature, all these perfect roots manifest in accord with its imperfection, exposing the degree of disparity between us and the upper perfection.

In the upper world, there acts a program which helps you discover yourself and realize what you need to complete so as to rise to the root. There, everything occurs in the most pure, corrected, and perfect form. But in our world, due to the difference between the degrees, the worlds, everything manifests in the opposite form.

We reveal the spiritual action, but see how non-spiritual it is according to our own dissimilarity to the upper degree. This is called: "Everyone judges according to his flaws." I see or perform certain unseemly actions because I myself am corrupted. If I correct myself, I will see that these actions are good.

But didn’t I see yesterday that people were killing each other? Today I observe how they are giving each other presents! At the root, the action remained the same, but I completed myself to the root and, hence, changed my vision. I could see how the egoistic intention got killed in the spiritual world, but instead I see how in our world, real murders occur.

The upper and the lower worlds consist of the same elements, but in the upper world, there is love between them, whereas in the lower one hatred. In the lower world, everything is inverted! Only the details remain, while all the types of connections between them change because in our world, these connections are totally broken, and we are separated by hate, rejection, and neglect. Meanwhile, in the spiritual world, we are all connected and totally committed to each other.

As you and I exist in this world, so do the spiritual you and I exist in the spiritual dimension, only in spirituality we are connected and love each other, while here we are separated and hateful. The difference between the worlds turns into the difference between the way you and I treat each other.

The upper roots establish that something has to happen between us. However, by our correction or lack thereof, we determine what will occur and how: Will we hate and kill or love and embrace each other.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbbalah Lesson 2/9/2011, “The Essence of the Wisdom of Kabbalah”

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