Question: I’ve been a student of Rav for about eight years; I respect him, am grateful for his teachings and seek to implement the teachings and his advice the best that I can, the same as Rav’s other students.

Raised as a Muslim, lately, I too have had a lot of concern about the talk about the Muslim faith, the questions asked, and Rav’s answers to them regarding the danger of Islam and the Muslims. I don’t believe Rav is anti-Islam or anti any faith. I do trust Rav, but can’t stop feeling pain whenever the subject comes up and the discussion around it.

I’m not sure that Rav’s response is always perceived correctly by most of his students and audience; some of Rav’s devoted students come across as anti-Muslim, I must say.

I am not a practicing Muslim, but know a lot of Muslims, including my own family, who are good people, practicing their faith the best way they can without feeling hatred and malice toward others.

Rav’s students raised as Muslims take a lot of risks following Kabbalah teachings, I’m sure Rav is aware of this. I don’t know what the solution is, but surely giving the unintended impression that one religion is more harmful than others cannot be very helpful.

Wishing Rav good health and success, always.

Answer: Kabbalah is not against religions, they all emerged from it. Baal HaSulam writes that even at the end of correction of human nature, there is a place for all religions.

I’m just against the distortion of religions we see today: Judaism has turned solely into the method of performing mechanical actions, Christianity engages in purely external decorations, and Islam demonstrates its hatred to everyone and in everything.

Indeed, the source of all religions, Kabbalah (see Baal HaSulam’s article “The Essence of Religion and Its Purpose”), calls all the nations of the world only for unification and love above our egoism.

The practice of today’s Islam is active hatred and killings. At the same time, they have expelled the Kabbalists of Islam, Sufis, from their environment. I meet with them only in their exile from the Arab countries. So I cannot hate the true Islam, but only those who distort it today and turn it into the practice of hatred toward all people of other faiths, even within Islam itself.
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Question: What influence has the wisdom of Kabbalah had on Middle Eastern and Far Eastern nations?

Answer: The wisdom of Kabbalah had a direct influence through Judaism even on Christianity and especially on Islam because until lately Islam developed under the influence of the inner forces of the wisdom of Kabbalah, Sufism.

Sufism is the Islamic wisdom of Kabbalah. It also talks about how we need to unite, to love others, and things like that. I have met with many Sufis in the world, and they would have the same opinion. But now, in the Muslim nations, Sufis are not held in high esteem and they are forced to hide in the West.

The wisdom of Kabbalah laid the foundation for Far Eastern faiths in the same form in which they existed and still partially exist today. But they have gone through big changes since then.

Since there is no precise record of historical or fundamental principles, it is said that Abraham gave his children (he had many concubines, as did all the rich and famous people in those times) his knowledge (the wisdom of Kabbalah) in a form they would be able to understand and grasp. It is said that Abraham transmitted the information to them in the form of “gifts,” meaning spiritual powers, that they would need in the future to lighten their path and specify it. Through these so-called “gifts,” the leaders of the Eastern faiths and religions were spiritually linked with Abraham.

All of the faiths and religions, except for the most primitive, began with Abraham.
[195009]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 5/29/16

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In the News (Wired): “Co-operation is a key component in human interaction and also, according to new research from the University of British Columbia, the spread of civilisation. Not because for any altruistic reason, though; instead it might be directly down to a fear of a vengeful god.

“In a study published by Nature, a team from the university found that it wasn’t a belief in divine reward that promoted co-operation, but a fear of punishment. “Co-operation among throngs of strangers in expanding societies required a common faith in moralistic gods,” said Benjamin Purzycki, who conducted the research. Worshippers believed that these gods were able to read thoughts, observe good and bad behaviour and punish and reward them accordingly, the study suggests. Shared beliefs about these gods apparently paved the way for trade networks, economies and institutions such as governments and courts. …

“‘The threat of punishment from a god if that individual did not reach out to help strangers may have been one reason for the close bonds that developed between different communities around the world.’ …

“The team suggest that belief in punishment promoted good behaviour — that is, behaviour that promoted trust, co-operation and fairness. Because religions such as Christianity, Islam and Hinduism spread globally, worshippers in far and disparate lands had similar beliefs about how to act towards others of the same religion. ‘These results build on previous findings and tell us more about how wide-ranging co-operation has evolved in large-scale societies today,’ said Purzycki. ‘In addition to some forms of religious rituals and non-religious norms and institutions such as courts, markets and policy, our findings suggest the threat of punishment from a god if that individual did not reach out to help strangers may have been one reason for the close bonds that developed between different communities around the world.’”

My Comment: That is, religion or beliefs in an omniscient God as punishing and rewarding, obliges a person to behave more honestly due to fear of punishment and desire for reward. If not for our egoism, we would not respond to these demands. In general, if God did not exist, He would have had to be invented.

Kabbalah comes from the desire to understand the meaning of life, as stated in part 2 of The Introduction to The Study of the Ten Sefirot. And that is why Kabbalah is intended only for those who really want to reveal this secret.

Discovering the meaning of life leads a person to reveal the only force of nature—the Creator. But belief in a fictitious God, and knowing Him as Elokim – Nature, as it is written: “And all will know Me.”
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Question: Primitive tribes that have survived until our day live much more peacefully and in greater mutual altruism than people who belong to any representatives of any religion. Why is religion considered such a good thing? After all, we could all live a quiet peaceful life without it, grazing our goats and living on the fruit of the earth.

Answer: If we lived that way we would remain on the animate level, living in a cave or a hut, hunting mammoths, fishing, and everything would be fine. But the process of evolution is not up to us.

We develop thanks to the egoism that grows in us, thanks to our evil nature. But the additions given to us by religions have tamed our egoism to a certain degree and shaped it in a certain way. And for this we have to acknowledge the merit of religions.

Although they stemmed from human egoism, each religion and its own form, among its own people, in its own sector, was fruitful. Medicine, culture, dancing, and even science stem from religious development.

Science developed from religion in order to prove the basics of the religious beliefs and to explain different situations in our life. Then conflicts and contradictions seemingly emerged between science and the different religions, which continue to this very day because religions were fossilized. We should respect the religions for being the root of human development.
[194787]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 5/29/16

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Question: What came first, the Torah or the wisdom of Kabbalah? Why do we study the wisdom of Kabbalah without studying the Torah, Moses’ Torah?

Answer: History tells us that gases were created after the Big Bang and the particles of matter that began to spread came together, and this is how our planet was created. Then the oceans were formed, then came the vegetative and the animate world, and finally man.

Man began to develop significantly about 3,500 years ago. The bulk of the developed people were in ancient Babylon, which became the basis of modern civilization.

From 20 generations to ancient Babylon, 5,777 years ago, a man called Adam appeared. He discovered the leadership system of our world, which he described in the book The Angel Raziel (The Secret Force). According to Rambam, the great Kabbalist of the 12^th century, Adam and his students wrote books, but none of them have reached us except for the book The Angel Raziel. Twenty generations after the first generation of Kabbalists, Abraham appeared.

Abraham was a priest in ancient Babylon, and according to Midrash Rabba, he used to go out at nights, look at the stars, and wonder where the force that moves the whole universe comes from. Why do people live, for what purpose, how, who manages them, who is spinning this whole mechanism of the galaxy?

Gradually he began to explore the system of creation in great depth. Of course, there were many other people who looked at the stars, but only he was lucky enough to discover it since this is a special attribute of the soul.

Abraham discovered the system of creation and described it in his book The Book of Yetzira (creation). It is a small book of several dozen pages, which summarize the main points of the system of creation and how the world is managed. This book, just like Adam’s book, can be bought in bookstores today. The other writings of Abraham have not reached our days.

Everything Adam and Abraham wrote is the pure wisdom of Kabbalah. After Abraham, his students Isaac and Jacob, called the children of Abraham, continued his study, which actually represented a development of the wisdom of Kabbalah.

Only after the exodus from Egypt when the need for a more sophisticated method of uniting the nation and attaining the Creator arose was it revealed to Moses in the same way that we study it today. This method is called the Torah.

Adam wrote his book almost 6,000 years ago; Abraham wrote about 3,500 years ago, and the Torah was written about 3,300 years ago.

Question: Does this mean that the Torah is secondary to the wisdom of Kabbalah?

Answer: The Torah is also the wisdom of Kabbalah.

We study the basics of the wisdom of Kabbalah in order to study the Torah, The Five Books of Moses, since it continues the wisdom of Kabbalah on the next level.

To a person who doesn’t study the wisdom of Kabbalah, the Torah seems like a collection of stories about the ancient Jews who wandered in the desert and about what happened to them. In order to understand what this book really says and what is encoded in it, we must know the wisdom of Kabbalah.
[194080]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 5/8/16

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Question: The Temple isn’t a house but a spiritual concept, and yet we mourn the destroyed Temple?

Answer: Do we need to mourn the Temple once we understand that it had to fall? Are we sorry about the destroyed house that stood in Jerusalem, or do we mourn its internal structure?

All the hearts had to be in my heart, but I cast them out, not wishing to feel or even allowing them to get close to my heart. This is the real destruction that I mourn.

If we don’t mourn the internal essence of the destruction, we don’t have a chance to reach the correction. Then the destruction of the Temple was useless because it didn’t lead us to any correct conclusions. In this case, we cry only about stones. In fact, with our stony heart we can only feel regret for the stones and no more.

These are meaningless tears that are completely useless. We’ve already reached such a development when we can rise to mourn the real problems: the reason the destruction happened. Then maybe we will decide that it is right that the Temple was destroyed; after all, it was bound to happen. The entire program had to be realized until the time of  the ARI.

However, from the moment the ARI discovered the wisdom of Kabbalah and this method became ready for the correction of the world, everything depended on us. Now we can mourn but not about what happened in history because all of it was in the hands of the Creator. Until the 16^th century, when the wisdom of Kabbalah was revealed thanks to the ARI, it was impossible to change anything.

However, from the time of the ARI onward it is permitted for us to intervene in the process of development of the world and to accelerate it, that is, to change it to a better one with our participation. Then we can write a new story that is different, not as bitter as before! This is what all the Kabbalists mourned.

They wanted to do it very much. Ramchal thought about disseminating the wisdom of Kabbalah to the people, but he wasn’t allowed to do it and he became subject to such persecutions that he had to run away from Italy to Europe. Abulafia did a lot to spread the wisdom of Kabbalah and even taught it to non-Jews.

Baal Shem Tov began to implement wide dissemination of Kabbalah by creating Hassidism. But the countermovement Metnagdim rose, which fought against the revelation of Kabbalah by declaring that Hassidism was a sect. On the basis of their denunciations, Hassidim were imprisoned, although both sides were Jewish. This split is felt even today.

“Metnagdim” is translated as “opponent,” opponents to the dissemination of the wisdom of Kabbalah, i.e., the method of correction. And the Hassidim argued that it is required to spread it the way Baal Shem Tov taught them and they studied Kabbalistic books.

Today we live in such time when it is necessary to continue this work. After all, we are given much better conditions than 2,000 years ago, and we can realize the purpose of creation in a good way.

We have this opportunity; we don’t just go through it by the easier way, we will grow through the effort of this work. It is impossible to reach the final purpose of creation in the state humanity is in now. We shouldn’t hope that it will happen by itself over time.

We have to be smarter and develop the feelings and mind, and fully reveal the Creator that is a good force, on condition that we will learn to love our neighbor as ourselves. And this is only possible using the method of Kabbalah. The question is only how we use it: either under the pressure of huge disasters, even world wars, or we will understand that we should engage in it right now and begin to implement it. The choice is ours.

Therefore we disseminate the wisdom of Kabbalah among people because otherwise the world is entering the path of great suffering. Of course, in any case the end will be good. However, let’s hope that it will come as a result of our work and not under pressure from the forces of nature that will force us to it by suffering, since it will be more terrible than all the previous destructions of the Temples combined together.

Question: Prior to the ARI, why was it impossible to move to the path of the Light (Achishena)?

Answer: First, the complete shattering of the common desire had to happen on two main layers, which correspond to the destructions of the First and Second Temples. Then the desires fell from the world of Atzilut to the worlds of BYA, and once under the Parsa, the boundary of the world of Atzilut, all these broken shards begin to mix with each other and with the stony heart that wasn’t directly included with the shattering.

All the desires have to mix with each other; this period is called the time of exile. Exile isn’t just a meaningless waiting, but a sequence of ongoing actions, mutual inclusion of broken desires. These desires, previously separated from each other, now connect in all sorts of shapes and become arranged in a ladder according to the degree of their shattering with respect to the upper force.

When they all are distributed into their places from top to bottom, the first action of correction begins. This is what the manifestation of the soul of the ARI means. Therefore, before this time, it was impossible to do anything. However, from the time of the ARI onward, the period of correction begins.
[192273]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/12/16, Writings of Rabash

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New Life 705 – Jewish Culture: The Synagogue
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Tal Mandelbaum ben Moshe

The internal essence of the synagogue is a place where people connect and ask for the power to love one another. Today the attitude to the synagogue is very far from the attitude to a place that the synagogue is supposed to represent.

When Abraham and Sarah gathered people in their tents they taught them to connect and to reveal the upper force in the connection between them. When the Temple was destroyed we drew away from the upper force, from love of others, and the synagogues became formal rituals.

Unfortunately there is no warmth or love in the synagogue today and so people are not attracted to it. They only come to pray and then hurry back home. There is no soul in the synagogue, no spirit of life, and this is a state called exile. In order to come out of exile we need the force of the Messiah, the force that can draw us from exile, from the separation between us to connection, to the revelation of the soul. The Temple and the Ark of the Covenant, and nowadays the synagogue and the Holy Ark, are symbols of spiritual roots.

There is no holiness in stones if there is no holiness in the heart, and holiness is love. We have to pray for the love to be restored between us.

A Minyan, a prayer, reading the Torah, etc. are all symbols of the right connection in which the Creator is revealed. There is no trace of the inner essence of spirituality in all the rituals held in the synagogue these days. One can be psychologically moved by these rituals, but this isn’t the necessary correction of the heart. In the synagogue, all the hearts should melt into one heart in which the force of love is revealed, and the real Torah is the force that can connect all the hearts despite the evil inclination that is revealed.

A Minyan, a group of ten people who come to the synagogue wishing to connect, can reveal the Creator, the force of love between them. The revelation of the force of love in the world is the purpose of development, as it is written, “My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations.”
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From KabTV’s “New Life 705 – Jewish Culture: The Synagogue,” 3/17/16

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Question: What is the wisdom of Kabbalah about?

Answer: The wisdom of Kabbalah tells us how we all have to rise above our egoism by the good force in nature, the Light, and how to become good and connect with everyone into one whole desire. The positive attribute of love and bestowal that is revealed among us is called the upper force because it is above our egoism. It is called the Creator because He created us with an attribute that is opposite from Him, as it is written, “I have created the evil inclination.”

Question: Who is the wisdom of Kabbalah intended for?

Answer: For anyone who feels a desire to discover the secret of his birth, his destiny, and the meaning in of life. According to all our sources there are no limitations in studying the wisdom of Kabbalah.

Question: Why do religious people object to the study of the wisdom of Kabbalah?

Answer: Only religious people who do not understand the goal of the wisdom of Kabbalah object to it, as do many non-religious people. The wisdom of Kabbalah does not refer to religion in any way because religion does not have the goal of changing a person’s attribute from egoistic to altruistic but only to keep him in frameworks where he can live according to corporeal customs. Baal HaSulam describes this in great detail in the article “The Essence of Religion and Its Purpose.”
[192551]

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Torah, “Deuteronomy,” 9:1 – 9:2: Hear, O Israel: Today, you are crossing the Jordan to come in to possess nations greater and stronger than you, great cities, fortified up to the heavens. A great and tall people, the children of the ‘Anakim, whom you know and of whom you have heard said, “Who can stand against the children of ‘Anak?!”

When a person advances in his Kabbalah studies and tries to get closer to his friends on the spiritual path in order to reach unity where the Creator will be revealed, he sees huge external and internal obstacles in front of him.

Internal obstacles appear between the participants who try to get closer to each other because such an egoism erupts between them that, as The Book of Zohar tells us, they literally want to kill and burn each other.

On the other hand, they are subjected to adverse external influences because everyone who doesn’t participate in the movement to establish a common heart are their adversaries.

These are the nations of the world, people of Israel that aren’t connected to their movement yet, and the so-called mixed multitude (Erev Rav – workers of Pharaoh). It means all of the adversaries of Kabbalah, all adversaries of the method of connecting people into one whole, are currently enemies of the spiritual path.

We see this for ourselves and cannot do anything. This is a natural product of our advancement. After all, it is written, “Who can stand against the children of ‘Anak?”

Our adversaries seem to us very strong, wise, sure of themselves, and logical. They understand what they are living for and are convincing because there is an egoistic world in front of them where they exist and navigate perfectly.

From their point of view, you are an unreal person full of unrealistic fantasies and just lead people away from a normal life. It is exactly like Pharaoh who said to Moses, “Why do you and Aaron distract people from my work? Let them work for me, I will pay them, and everything will be fine.”

Pharaoh commanded his servants, “Give them more work so that they won’t listen to these two. What is it that they suddenly decided to deal with some kind of love?!”

Today, the same thing happens. The ideological Kabbalah haters, the mixed multitude (Erev Rav), are trying to succeed especially in this. In all times, there is a war waged with them.

Question: But the people of Israel are entering the land of Israel and beginning to develop it.

Answer: The people of Israel gradually are joining the handful of Kabbalists under the leadership of Moses and Aaron, which includes their disciples and the ancestors of the tribes. In this way, they gradually lead people to a state of connection between them that is called the land of Israel.

Question: Then, do the children of ‘Anak cease to be giants?

Answer: Actually, there are no more giants in the land of Israel. They appear there only when another shattering happens.

For example, before the destruction of the First and the Second Temples egoistic societies appeared that stated that they knew how to serve the Creator, destroying through this the level of bestowal and love that was achieved between people. It was they who brought the Romans and Greeks to Israel that banished its people from it. Since then, we have existed in this state for 2,000 years.

Even now, they don’t let us to assemble together to reach integrity, bestowal, love, and unity between us. They feel that it undermines the foundation of their power over the people, and therefore, they are strongly against the wisdom of Kabbalah.

Question: How do we not see giants in them, that is, knowledgeable and logical people?

Answer: It is said very simply, “Turn your gaze to them, and they will turn into a mountain of bones.” We need to unite between us, attract the force of the Creator to us, and direct our energy to the connection of the people.

By this, we will destroy the giants because they exist only in order to shatter people to pieces, small currents, to not let them assemble and make them work only in egoism.

Therefore, even though they sometimes talk about the principle of “Love your neighbor as yourself,” they haven’t realized it themselves.
[192346]
From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 5/4/16

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The spiritual knowledge lost by the people of Israel after destruction of the Temple gave a special impetus to the development of the European civilization. It gave Europeans an exceptional strength of spirit, the desire to conquer, explore new lands, and to develop.

Pilgrims travelled the roads and spread the Christian religion everywhere and taught people to pray. It brought science, knowledge, and faith to the residents of Europe that were complete barbarians at that time. This religion supports people until today.

Ancient Greeks received all their wisdom from the Jews. Initially, there were quite primitive beliefs in many gods in ancient Greece. The legends of ancient Greece are so naive that can attract only young children. Science and conception of the human soul that, allegedly, develops from a deep breathing, were also primitive.

Ancient Greece rose due to borrowing ideas from the wisdom of Kabbalah that was alive in the people of Israel. Although the Greeks learned from it only external ideas in a distorted form, that is exactly what developed European civilization and gave Europe the form it is in today.

Thanks to this influence, Europe received a special spirit that it was striving to pass to the whole world. Therefore, Europeans went to discover new lands and continents, but their main motive was religious and missionary.

From religion science developed, alchemy and geography that were necessary in order to prove to everyone that the Christian religion was the truest  that conquers the world. It was very important for the Europeans. The colonial wars and conquests initially had exclusively religious purposes. It was only later that they realized that they could receive economic benefit from them.

Closer to our time, ships began to bring goods from China and India to England and a need for the Suez Canal arose.

There was a transition from the Christian religion to science. Europe shifted the focus from God to man, the human spirit, and the human values. It is possible to say that this change began with the French Revolution that was followed by revolutions in other countries. Science began to develop rapidly in addition to religion.

There was no other continent where so many different nations lived in close proximity and had a common religion and philosophy received from Rome and Greece. Besides, the people of Israel, who came out into exile, were living among the European nations. They moved from one country to another and were contacting other nations, passing to them the spirit that lived inside them. Therefore, Europe has developed as no other country.

It is possible to say that the place where the people of Israel came from began to flourish. And as soon as they were expelled from there, these countries fell immediately. It means that we can see two ways of development in Europe. The first one is the development of the Christian religion, and the second is the development of the Jewish spirit. These two directions, influencing each other, have built the European civilization.
[192547]
From KabTV’s “A New Life” 8/18/16

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