Question: What is the difference between the infinite pleasure that is offered through the wisdom of Kabbalah and the acquisition of eternal happiness as promised by most of the religions that exist in the world?

Answer: All of the religions that exist mislead people to one degree or another.

According to the wisdom of Kabbalah, a person must achieve his true state while living in this world, and precisely because of this, he is here.

Baal HaSulam writes about this and asks: What is the connection between working within this temporary and small world, and the infinite pleasure that is to be attained after the death of my body?

How can it be that I carry out conditions that are dictated to me by religion for which I gain the next world full of enormous, eternal, and wonderful pleasures and paradise? In what way does a person pay for his next existence? Why is everything arranged like this, and where is the logic?

All of the Kabbalistic sources say that pleasure is to be felt by a person in this world in the present situation, here and now, when he discovers the Creator and approaches Him. The greatest pleasure prepared for us by the Creator is through this. That is why we were created.
[196160]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 8/28/16

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Question: Despite the fact that Islam emerged as a consequence of Christianity and Judaism, Islam has an extreme negative attitude to both religions and especially to Judaism. If we ignore the territorial claims and demands of the Muslim world against Israel for a moment, why is there such hatred between these religions?

Answer: Initially, there was no animosity between Islam and Judaism. Christianity, having completely opposite origins, places itself in opposition to Judaism. Islam has never been considered as a religion that is strange to Judaism. The foundations of Islam are very close to Judaism. The Muslims believe in the same Creator, the same God, which is in no way material and cannot be expressed or described in any other way.

The difference between the two religions stems from the fact that the Arab nation, which stems from Abraham’s son and his female slave, has another prophet named Mohamed. Mohamed put forth his prophecy, and it spread among the Bedouins who lived in the deserts of Saudi Arabia in the sixth and seventh centuries. Later, his prophecy gradually spread as a religion. Basically, Islam is founded on commandments that are absolutely Jewish, and there is nothing in Islam that contradicts Judaism. For ages, there were no conflicts or clashes between Jews and Arabs.

The problems began much later during the time of colonialism in the lands they lived in since the Christians conquered the region and began to persecute the Jews, as expressed as disrespect and hatred toward them. This attitude was passed on to the Arabs as well, and they gradually developed this attitude into ideology, which grew into deep hatred.

Question: What is the root of this phenomenon? Why has this process taken place in this way?

Answer: According to the wisdom of Kabbalah, this phenomenon has taken place in order to force the nation of Israel to fulfill its duty to humanity. Its duty is the revelation of the method of connection and bringing all the nations to a level of total, absolute unity. The Torah also tells us that the entire world must be united, and if the Jews don’t reveal the method of unity, no other nation will be able to do so,

Question: Today, Islam is actually at the spearhead of this pressure and not Christianity.

Answer: Christianity has been greatly weakened; it agrees to anything. This situation is not dependent on external forces, but on spiritual forces that are running out, and therefore, the power is drying up like fuel in a nuclear power plant gradually runs out, and it can’t do anything since it is processed and spent. In the future, we are going to face very strong pressure from Islam, which will also be on the Christian nations and, first of all, on Europe and America. Then, their common pressure will be aimed at Israel. We are going to see how they will try to start great wars in our region.

Question: Is Islam putting pressure on the Christian world in order to subsequently force them to also put pressure on the Jews?

Answer: No, the goal of Islam is to conquer the world, and therefore the Muslims feel that Christianity is an enemy that opposes their ideology.

Question: According to the wisdom of Kabbalah, the greatest enemies will later turn into the closest friends.

Answer: Everything depends on how we promote the method of integral unity in the world. Only the Upper Light, the great good force that we must reveal to the world in order to unite, can settle all of the conflicts.
[196452]
From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 9/26/16

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In the News (The Guardian): “Christian publisher Kingstone has been working on the project for seven years, using more than 45 illustrators to pull together what it is calling ‘the most complete graphic-novel adaptation of the Bible ever published’, …

“Art Ayris, the founder of Kingstone, says the publisher plumped for the comics format because ‘the interplay of text and images allows one to convey a large amount of content in an abbreviated form’.”

My Comment: People interpret the Torah according to their perception of the world, as a story taking place on Earth. It is difficult to imagine that the Torah is speaking about an energy field, its influence on us, and how we are changed under its influence from being diametrically opposed to this field until we become absolutely like it.

We consist of a desire to receive pleasure; this desire is composed of 613 parts. They are corrected from a desire to receive pleasure to a desire to bestow pleasure to others through the upper force, called the Upper Light, which is also composed of 613 Lights.

In general, this Upper Light is called Torah, and the correction of desires is called keeping the Mitzvot (commandments). The Torah speaks only about the correction of the 613 desires. To the degree of their correction, a person begins to feel the surrounding with new properties, and this is called discovering the Upper World.
[195546]

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Torah, Deuteronomy 12:4 – 12:5: You shall not do so to the Lord, your God. But only to the place which the Lord your God shall choose from all your tribes, to set His Name there; you shall inquire after His dwelling and come there.

This is a temple in the heart of a person.

A temple isn’t some kind of building in Jerusalem or anywhere else in Israel where people rush to kiss its stones and the wall, as it is today.

The only time my great teacher Rabbi Baruch Ashlag and I were in Jerusalem at the Wailing Wall, he went to it no closer than two meters, looked, and calmly, without stopping, turned back.

Not feeling any holiness in these stones, he didn’t even come close to them, and I clearly saw a complete detachment from this place in his behavior. However, a common person is drawn to this, he needs such a toy, as a baby feels comfortable only when he holds a familiar rattle in his hands, so does he.

It is necessary to educate people so that each will feel that he is related to our common temple—the unity of the hearts. The common temple is the soul.

The Torah speaks only about the construction of the temple in our hearts and from our hearts.

The place is a desire. A desire in Kabbalah is called “the place,” because only in the corrected desire that is in the right place is it possible to receive the Upper Light, the revelation of the Creator.
[195605]
From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 6/30/16

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Torah, Deuteronomy 12:2: You shall utterly destroy from all the places where the nations, that you shall possess, worshipped their gods, upon the lofty mountains and upon the hills, and under every lush tree.

Mountains, hills, and trees are what people worshipped. Either they worshipped something in these places: in the lowlands or valleys, in the mountains or on the hills, etc.

A person can pray to anything. In the repertory (Homeopathic reference), where all sorts of human motives and methods of their treatment are described, very interesting impulses of a person are mentioned, for example, a prayer to the tail of the horse and other similar things.

A person is subject to all sorts of internal fluctuations; there are various doubts, forces, and twilight states in him.

People worshipped trees a lot. However, if we speak about the internal work of a person, then the tree of knowledge of good and evil is the personification of the fact that out of something grows something. That is, knowledge is the fruit of the tree.
[195330]
From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 6/22/16

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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.
[195281]

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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.”
[179775]

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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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