Question: Why do the religious Torah scholars attack those who study Kabbalah?

Answer: It is absolutely natural that people don’t want us to reveal the wisdom of Kabbalah because it eliminates the need for everything else. The world won’t need other sciences and culture, no poetry and literature, ballet and music, nothing.

The attainment of the Creator gives a person the sense of higher harmony that will completely fill him. All the hidden niches of the soul will be filled with the Upper Light, with the most natural and complete joy.

Specifically for this reason, those who are involved with all kinds of areas of science and art immediately oppose the wisdom of Kabbalah. It follows that we are taking their livelihood from them. What is left for them?

Similarly, nothing will remain for the religious, because the wisdom of Kabbalah is a method that is very directly involved with the greatest general rule, as is stated in our sources and in the Torah, “And you shall love your friend as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18). The question is whether religious people are carrying out this general rule correctly and maintaining their love for others.

All the religions hate and have killed each other. For thousands of years they have been killing people in the name of God. Obviously this is not the correct attitude toward people; there is only one divine Mitzvah (commandment): “And you shall love your friend.” This is what the upper force, the Creator, requires from everyone and we must follow it.

But since religions are the offspring of the ego, they are engaged in every thing possible except good relationships between one another. On the contrary, they incite people against each other. Today it is difficult for the common man to understand this, but from the moment he begins to attain the higher reality, he understands how deeply he is immersed in hatred and how much he has gotten used to thinking of this as a matter of course.

All of the religions grew as a result of the fall of the Jews from the level of “And you shall love your friend as yourself” into mutual hatred, and from that, 2,000 years ago, after the destruction of the Beit HaMikdash (Temple), modern Judaism appeared, and then Christianity emerged and at a later stage, in the 6^th to the 7^th century, the religion of Islam. Since then they have existed to this day: each within its separate circle, conflicting with and opposing each other.

The time has come now for Jews, Christians, and Muslims to rise above all religions and unite as the only religion in the world, which exists under the Mitzvah of “And you shall love your friend as yourself,” as Baal HaSulam writes.

Question: Do the representatives of the religions have freedom of choice about this?

Answer: No, this is determined by the program of development. As long as the wisdom of Kabbalah has not been fully revealed, all of the religions will be against it. Only after its final revelation, choice will not remain for them except to agree with the wisdom of Kabbalah and be included within it.

Question: How do the religions relate to the goal of creation?

Answer: The religions are required for the discovery of the goal of creation, so that a person can understand the wisdom of Kabbalah from its opposite reflection. The religions open a person and bring him to a state in which he begins to feel, see, and understand that it is not by chance that he is on the plane of this world.

It is difficult to imagine from what a low point people are developing, and to develop humanity to the level of attaining the higher nature requires many tools like religions, faiths, philosophy, music, culture, and science, anything. The main thing is that humanity will be in a state in which it will be able to feel what the wisdom of Kabbalah gives it.

Question: Does this mean that you are not against art, literature, and the like?

Answer: Not in any way; all of this opens people, including the religions. They were intentionally given to develop humanity and prepare it for awareness of the spiritual system.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 11/15/15

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Opinion (zeit online, Tamim Ansary): “The true power of the IS is not in his bombs and guns or its hideous determination. It resides rather in the ingenious way in which how the organization formulates their worldview and forges a weapon: It is an apocalyptic confrontation between Islam and the West is in progress. … They will wipe out the satanic other and unite the world under the umbrella of Islam.”

My Comment: No matter what you call modern Islam, we already see the chaos it generates and spreads in the world. It also makes no difference what the true Islam is, which like true Judaism and Christianity, perhaps may not exist in our world.

Humanity must learn to live together without imposing any ideas by force but by appreciating only one idea—the inclusive connection and unity above all the differences and contradictions.
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Comment: A year after the massacre at the offices of the French satirical weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo, a new edition was published depicting God on its cover with a Kalashnikov assault rifle and hands soiled with blood. The Vatican immediately protested.

Answer: Why was the Vatican indignant? Didn’t God to this?! Who creates all the problems in the world?

After all, God said: “I created the evil inclination” (Kiddushin 30b). What is the origin of all the terrible crimes and everything else? Our evil inclination that the Creator created in us: so turn to Him.

He gave us the evil inclination so that we would correct and reeducate ourselves, but we are not doing this. The second half of the phrase “I created the evil inclination…” is “I created the Torah as a spice.” Therefore, it is necessary to take the Torah and use it correctly.

The wisdom of Kabbalah explains how to change our nature from an evil and egoistic nature to a good and altruistic nature. That is how God will be revealed before us correctly. Then we, the evil inclination, and the good inclination will be aimed correctly and will rise to the level of the Creator. That is what the Creator created the evil inclination for.

When we use only one characteristic without the other, we don’t have anyone to blame except ourselves, and anyway the Creator created even this in us.

Therefore one must turn to the Creator, but through the second half of His statement.
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From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 1/7/16

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Comment: Not long ago a well-known Egyptian theologian came to the University of Haifa and conducted a series of lectures for Arab students. In one of them he indicated, that from a realistic point of view the Jews have no fewer rights to the Temple Mount than the Muslims.

His words aroused complaints. Students shouted that he indulges the “Zionist invaders.” And it happened in our University of Haifa!

Answer: All the state is working to ensure some way to appease those who vote against the government. We, all of us, exist here according to the will of God. So I don’t see any contradiction between what is really going on and the incident at the University of Haifa where probably more than half the teachers and students are Arabs. I would call this institution one of the largest Arab universities.

And how many Arabs do you think are studying at Jewish, religious Bar Ilan University? For a long time we have stopped being the owners in charge of the nation, the people, or the land. From this we can conclude that there is no proper education and formulation of the question.

People who receive an Israeli passport, not necessarily Jews, must feel they are citizens of this state, and not take a non-religious university into national religious wars. That should not be. Otherwise, the government should declare itself a religious organization like the Arab states.

Arab students receive serious ideological education directed against Zionists. And this isn’t so with the Jews. The Jews are not tied to the land or the nation, so they don’t show any resistance. The Jews don’t understand how valuable this land is. The land of Israel possesses an amazing characteristic; in a certain way it connects a person with higher forces.

This is the place in the world where you can find your spiritual destiny, and because I am here and not somewhere else is on the basis of the root and branch. It is very important to be in here. A man who understands this feels he has no other place on Earth. Then he reacts differently to everything and has the right to protect this land.

And those who don’t have these roots don’t feel this. In the Six Day War we conquered Jerusalem but due to a lack of a clear ideological foundation, we have now given up what we won because it was not important to us. So all flows gradually away from us drop by drop.

I am not against all of this also belonging to Islam. I am against all of this belonging only to Islam. In general, Israel doesn’t need to belong to religions, but should equally be for all people on the face of the Earth. Religions are a product of human egoism.   We must by all means pull out all that belongs to the spiritual from religious dictatorship.
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From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 1/4/16

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Comment: The execution of the Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr in Saudi Arabia led to a great scandal in the Arab world. In response, the enraged public totally destroyed the Saudi embassy building in Iran. Consequently the two countries severed diplomatic relations and the hatred between them is now greater than their hatred toward Israel.

Answer: The infighting is the toughest and this conflict has been going on for ages! It is not the fundamental differences between the Sunni and the Shiites but the grievances that have accumulated over the centuries: who has done what to whom and who killed whom. All of this applied layer by layer results in a huge pile of hatred.

Comment: You often say that the reason is the disappearance of the Sufi movement.

Answer: In Judaism there is also a split into different religious streams because the human ego, which doesn’t yearn for one unique Creator, is involved, and it makes no difference whether you call Him Allah, God, or the Creator. The point is that the Creator is one and you should yearn for Him and not for clarifying our relations.

If we aim our thoughts at the one Creator and only seek connection with Him and His attainment, everything will be very simple. All the religions will merge into one wisdom called Kabbalah, which is the revelation of the Creator in our world.

But in order to do so, we have to work against the ego. We can only reveal the Creator in the attribute that is opposite from our nature and no one wants that. We would rather fight and quarrel for centuries than change our nature. It turns out that the most important thing for a person is to remain inside his ego, and this is the root of all the conflicts and disputes. This is the reason that we have to teach the wisdom of truth and to disseminate it, publicize it, and allow people to gradually receive this wisdom and teach them to strive for the single unified force.

There is another way of reaching the truth, but it is a path of terrible afflictions and wars. How long will it take for humanity to grow wise along the path of its internal development? After all, this has been going on for thousands of years.

We need to bring this wisdom to the world, to demonstrate, and bring all to a common denominator because we all have one Creator.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 1/4/16

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Comment: It has been five years since the events of the “Arab Spring.” In the beginning it was considered to be a revolution of the youth who were ready to change the Arab world. After then everything changed when in Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya the “Muslim Brotherhood” took control of the government. They all were mistaken in thinking that they had toppled the dictatorships.

Answer: And what is bad about the dictatorships? Today it already seems that it is preferable for a king to rule a nation rather than a dysfunctional parliament.

Our world must be arranged according to the principle of oneness with the upper world, meaning that above there is one, the Creator, and below there is one, a king. In the days of the Kings David and Solomon, there was complete similarity between our world and the upper world. According to this similarity, the king had all the tools with which he managed the nation, like the Sanhedrin and other government institutions. It is very interesting to learn about this because from their conduct it is possible to learn about the structure of the upper world. That is how it was designed from the start.

Comment: But when the “Arab Spring” began, there still was hope that worthy people would come into power.

Answer: Who can be put in power? How many upstarts will play with the public and the national treasury until nothing is left?

Comment: As a result of this, Daesh has actually risen to power. A relatively soft Arab dictatorship was replaced by an extremist regime.

Answer: Today we are necessarily returning again to one and only one leader because the integral world can be headed by only a single center, a single idea, the staff a collective that is interconnected as one person and presents this idea to our world. Otherwise everything will deteriorate to extremism and will be one big brawl.

The problem is that the world is more and more revealed as integral, interdependent, and global. We still cannot orient ourselves in a such a world. We suddenly feel insecure: we don’t know what and how, from where and to where. There are thousands of different data we must work with in order to advance toward something, to decide something concretely, and we cannot; our senses and mind are not arranged integrally.

We cannot communicate with others to assemble a team with them, a small system (let’s say a government), that will be able to solve problems like these, because there are a huge number of unknowns and we don’t know how to work with them. We can only solve linear problems. That is the problem.

We cannot change the world. Humanity is entering into a state in which the world is becoming round and integral, in which everyone depends on everyone. To perceive it correctly and make the right decisions, we need to change our perception of the world; that is, we must change the person. We must also become integral, and then we can solve these problems. But this is not easy.

The wisdom of Kabbalah was designed for this; it says that the transition to integral thinking is possible only through “And you shall love your friend as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18). When we begin to love others instead of ourselves, in this way we can feel their perception, their desires, and their direction. This naturally becomes alive within us; each one becomes “multipurpose,” like in a beehive composed of many other people. In this case, each one can simply solve every problem. It becomes my own, personal, natural.

After all, in any family, we naturally take care of everyone as much as possible. Therefore, the family, to some extent, can be compared to the solution to our problem: there must be one thing for little children, something else for old people, a third thing for the husband and wife, and so on.

In a family, we more or less know how to deal with problems because all the members of the family live within us and we feel what truly is best for them and what they need. If we had an attitude toward the world like this, we could handle all of its challenges.

In order to transform every person to being concerned about the whole world, what we really need is a new system of education according to the principles of the wisdom of Kabbalah.
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From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 12/28/15

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Question: Can a person appease the evil forces?

Answer: “Appeasement” or balancing the evil forces is possible only through a higher positive force that a person attracts to himself.

Question: In the wisdom of Kabbalah does a concept like “being at the right time and the right place” exist?

Answer: If a person’s main occupation is the development of the soul, he has no more interest in this because through his concern for integral connection between all the creatures, he is the one who completely determines all activities, even the smallest.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 11/08/15

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Question:  Is Kabbalah ideologically against religion?

Answer: Certainly not. On the contrary, religion and the wisdom of Kabbalah complement each other in a person’s correction process toward attaining the goal of creation, which is to resemble the Creator.

A person’s nature can change only if he uses the method of Kabbalah, which transforms his way of thinking. A person doesn’t change as a result of mechanical actions, and therefore when he only performs religious actions he is called the Holy still.

Furthermore, in the actual correction, when studying the wisdom of Kabbalah, a person has to be around people who have the same goal in order to draw the effect of the force of correction, the Light of the Torah, called the Light that Reforms. It is written, “I have created the evil inclination; I have created the Torah as a spice for it.”

We can say that religion formats and directs a person’s behavior while the wisdom of Kabbalah directs his thoughts. It is said that “a prayer without an intention is like a body without a soul.” We are living in the time of the Messiah in which we can get rid of our evil inclination, the ego, and so the wisdom of Kabbalah is revealed in the world today in order to enable a person to correct his ego and resemble the Creator.
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Question: If in the beginning there was only Kabbalah, then how did religions appear from it?

Answer: This happened exactly because they abandoned the continuous work of uniting (within a group, within a nation) and allowed egoism to appear in relationships between people. This caused the outer seal—Judaism to originate from Kabbalah. Judaism regulates the outer actions that a person performs with his body (this is why it is called the “External Torah” – “Hitzhoniut aTorah”), whereas, Kabbalah refers only to inner actions (therefore, it is called the “Inner part of Torah” – “Pnimit aTorah”).

This means that Kabbalah shows how through uniting in the group a person can achieve an elevation above his egoism and in this mutual annulment of egoism he can reveal the Creator. The difference between Kabbalah and religion is not only in the action (whether it is mechanical or in intention) but also in the result (he hopes to receive a reward after death or he hopes to reveal the Creator in this life).
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Talmud Eser Sefirot, Part 1, “Histaklut Pnimit,” Item 7: … They said that there is a great flaw in free gifts, namely the shame that encounters every receiver of a free gift. To mend this, the Creator has prepared this world, where there is work and labor, so as to be rewarded in the next world for their labor and work.

Usually the religious stop with this saying and do not advance further. They claim that in this world one needs to work in order to receive the reward in the next world, meaning, after death. As if we work today and tomorrow receive the reward.

But that excuse is very strange. It is like a person who says to his friend, “Work with me for just a minute, and in return I will give you every pleasure and treasure in the world for the rest of your life. There is indeed no greater free gift than that, because the reward is incomparable with the work. The work is in this transient, worthless world compared to the reward and the pleasure in the eternal world.

What value is there to the passing world compared to the eternal world? It is even more so with regards to the quality of the labor, which is worthless compared to the quality of the reward.

Our sages have said: “The Creator is destined to inherit each and every righteous person 310 worlds etc.” We cannot say that some of the reward is given in return for their work, and the rest is a free gift, for then what good would that do? The blemish of shame would still remain! Indeed, their words are not to be taken literally, for there is a profound meaning in their words.

Shame is a creation by itself. It is a feeling in the souls of the difference between them and the Creator, a feeling of disconnection from Him that was created by the Creator Himself. Therefore, as much as man rises higher in the level of the degrees, the feeling of shame grows in him and becomes more refined and clarified. Therefore, it is said that shame is intended only for higher souls.

If I feel disconnected from the Creator, then the feeling of the “I” is awakened, the feeling of a separated existence. I understand that I must annul this separation, close it, do something with it. And therefore I work. This feeling of the gap between me and the Creator, between the guest and the host, the feeling shame, forced me to work. To the degree I feel this shame, I am willing to work until I remove the separation between us and I reach an equivalence of form with the Creator, meaning adhesion.

It is clear that it does not talk about the 70 years of man’s life in this world and in the next world after this life. When I work for myself, it is called Olam Haze (this world) and I must work in it and correct myself. When sometimes I succeed in correcting myself compared to each amount of shame, the difference that I reveal between me and the Creator, by that I perform my work in this world, and as a result I reach equivalence of form and adhesion, which is called reward in the next world.

Therefore, in my life in this world I must feel this world and also the next world. The difference between them is that state in which a person feels shame and works in order to remove it, to correct his lack of equivalence with the landlord, called this world. This is the world and these are the efforts in this world. And the attainment of equivalence and adhesion is called the next world. According to this principle, the two worlds are separated.
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