Entries in the 'Religion' Category

Mutual Scrutinies

942Question: If a thought comes like light, but I don’t let it into the Kli, and it doesn’t become reality, but remains outside as light that I don’t give form to, can it be said that this emptiness already contains equivalence of form?

Can bestowal begin not from desire, but from emptiness?

Answer: I wouldn’t say so. Let’s work through the questions and answers together, and you’ll see that by the end of the convention, the path will become more or less clear to you, what we are asking for and how we plan to reach the end.
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From the World Kabbalah Convention 5/22/2025, Lesson 1, “There Is None Else Besides Him”

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Understand the Creator’s Plan

235In the generations from Adam to Noah and from Noah onward, both in the people of Israel and among the nations of the world, the Aviut (the thickness of the desire) was still very small.

Abraham is unique in his generation in that a yearning for the Creator was revealed in him despite the fact that his father Terach was an idol-worshipper and engaged in Avoda Zara (foreign work), meaning he believed that there are many forces in the world besides the Creator that each act independently.

If a person “sees” that all these forces govern him for better or worse, he turns to each of them. He does not consider that behind them stands another force, one that unites them all, possesses thought, has a program and a goal for humanity, and uses all these forces merely as its messengers, messengers that have no program of their own, no free will, and no particular relation to a person. He does not believe that everything is governed by a single force.

This in essence is the qualitative difference between Abraham and his father. The approach that one must believe there is a single force and seek it replaces the former view of nature as a collection of many forces. This refers to a qualitative effort and distinction that requires a special purification of the “body,” that is, the desire to receive.

Abraham taught this to his followers; he taught that behind all the forces stands a single thought, a single desire. None of the individual forces contains good or evil; behind them is one thought that is good and benevolent to both the wicked and the righteous, which leads a person to the goal.

Good and evil, though perceived differently by us, serve one purpose. We must understand the plan of the Creator and accept it, relate to it rationally, correctly, and develop ourselves accordingly.

The Creator demands that we participate in our development from our own independent desire. This is the only way we can be truly independent; it is by strengthening ourselves on the path of development, that is, by accepting His program and realizing it.

In essence, no one in the generation of Abraham, except Abraham himself, grasped this idea. People did not yet have a prepared foundation within their souls to reveal the true picture of reality. Abraham, however, came to this through purification, that is, a special quality in the soul.
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From the 1st part from the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/14/2025, Writings of Baal HaSulam “The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee)”

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Horoscopes and Fortune-Telling in Kabbalah

632.4Comment: In order not to frighten the masses, you cannot reveal everything Kabbalah speaks about. After all, many things are revealed: horoscopes and so on.

My Response: Kabbalah explains the general method of correction, and that is it. What else can it say? It cannot explain why things happen one way to one person and another to someone else.

Question: But did horoscopes originate from Kabbalistic sources?

Answer: No, it was before Kabbalah. Horoscopes go back to very ancient methods of unraveling the path of man in this world; that is, to the most ancient methods of exploring nature and oneself; it has nothing to do with Kabbalah, which was revealed in Ancient Babylon only three and a half thousand years ago.

Comment: But at the same time, it still describes everything that exists in perception of this universe.

My Response: It does not matter. Kabbalah does not ask this question at all; it does not care how the fate of man in our world will turn out in his animate state; it has nothing to do with our body. To us the soul is important, the point in the heart and how to develop it is important.

What is Kabbalah by definition? It is the revelation of the Creator to man in this world. How does the Creator reveal Himself? In desire. Which one? In the one you develop from the point in your heart.

And everything else? Everything else is important only to the extent it applies to this desire, to this point in the heart. As soon as you start going into some kind of horoscopes, into human physiology, into the animal body, this is no longer Kabbalah. Then you should go to the gypsies and fortune tellers, and they will tell you things. By the way, real experts in this field can predict everything correctly.

Question: But in any case, if a person has to live his physical life, does he reveal his soul in the same process?

Answer: Yes, but Kabbalah does not speak about the physical world! This science speaks only about the development of the soul and about what you can feel in it.

I spoke about it with my teacher. He confirmed that the fortune tellers and soothsayers can tell the truth, as they possess this technique. But we do not have this technique, we do not need it. What difference does it make to me what happens to me? I have only one calculation: how to end my life with the highest score possible.

Is that what a fortune teller is for? To do this, I have to think only about the point in my heart! Let the body die, just let me bring it as close as possible to my spiritual correction.

Question: What should I do to not renounce the body altogether, but use it to the fullest?

Answer: Kabbalah does not allow us to renounce the body. You have to live a normal life: work, study, give birth, raise children, and treat this life exactly the same as everyone else around you.

Question: So how can you maximize using your body to achieve the goal?

Answer: Involve yourself only with achieving the goal, and everything else—as needed.
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From KabTV’s “I Got A Call. Horoscopes and Fortune-Telling in Kabbalah” 8/11/10

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A Kabbalist’s Dream

962.3Question: Sometimes you say that people are ready to hear us, but we are not yet ready to properly convey the Kabbalistic information. Are people really ready to hear us?

Answer: No, they are not ready yet. If they were, they would hear. However, it is a dual problem: both on my side and theirs. I am not yet able to convey everything in the way that is most accessible and close to them, and they are not yet capable of grasping it with their inner qualities. So we both still need to move toward each other.

That is why I say that maybe I have a few years left in my life to make the Kabbalah method closer, clearer, and easier for everyone to understand. On the other hand, humanity is gradually approaching me because it is being pushed from behind by crises.

Of course I do not wish any misfortunes upon anyone, but I hope that blows will affect people, and they will come to the goal faster. I see these crises as a manifestation of the disease that is choking and oppressing us but is still hidden inside.

What did they do with the previous wave of crisis? They suppressed it, pushed it inward with “antibiotics” like they usually treat a disease. It seems like it is gone, but it is smoldering inside, everything is already rotting, but you do not feel it yet. And then suddenly, a person gets an X-ray, is opened up, and they say: That’s it, we are sewing you up—and off to the cemetery.

But I do not want things to get to this point. That is why it would be better if humanity gains awareness of the evil of its state at the same time as we provide the method. People will realize that they have nowhere to turn, that they must correct their state, and right there beside them there will be a method showing how to correct it and attain confidence, peace, and a normal life.

We at least speak to them about that, not even about the world to come. At least in this world, they can achieve a good life, for themselves and for their children in everything.

Our task is to bring humanity to this. That will be the first stage of correction, the first stage of accepting Kabbalah as a method of correction. This is my dream.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Berg and Laitman” 8/9/10

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Spiritual Ascent

232.05Question: You said we are attracting much more light than desire (Hisaron). Can this really happen?

Answer: Of course, we attract a negative amount of light. There is a continuous connection between the Reshimot (spiritual information data) created as a result of the descent of souls from the world of infinity to our world through the 125 degrees of the worlds. As a result, we are at the bottom, and we have information records of all the past states that we parted with when we descended into our world.

Now each of us must make the same journey from bottom up just as was descended from top to bottom, but only on our own accord. This is the difference between descent—fall and ascent—rise in that we must stock up in advance, find, form, and create a desire for bestowal, a desire for love, and a desire for connection between us.

Initially, when we fell, we did not have this desire. It is unnatural because we do not want to rise in attributes of bestowal, love, and unification. We want to receive, grab, dominate, and be filled. In our world, we imagine a spiritual ascent, a connection with the Creator, in an entirely opposite way of how it happens. These pictures are presented to us in an egoistic way as, for example, Muslims think that 72 virgins are waiting to dance for them in the world to come.

That is, people have taken the greatest pleasure in the material world, sexual pleasure, and made a paradise out of it. A person in our world cannot imagine anything more. There is nothing to laugh about. Clearly we have nothing else. Food, sex, such eternal fun, this is paradise.

But we cannot imagine this is about bestowal, absolute love, and connection between us, where on one hand you remain as a person, but on the other hand you completely give yourself, dissolve into everyone else, and work only for their desires. We avoid such thoughts; we dont’ want it to be like that.

Therefore, the return ascent is so difficult because every ascent, every small step, has to have an underlying desire. We must want to rise to this degree in advance, that is, to become more giving, more connected to each other, and more dependent on others.
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From KabTV’s “I Got A Call. Virtual Community, Part 1” 5/16/10

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Is Kabbalah Like Meditation?

530Question: If a person meditates, he looks at some object and tries to feel how this object affects him. When we study Kabbalistic texts, we also look into them and ask for them to influence us internally. So how, then, does Kabbalah differ from ordinary meditation?

Answer: I don’t understand what meditation has to do with it? Meditation is when you envision some kind of image, some kind of letter, something hanging in the air, and you meditate on it.

I absolutely cannot relate to this action and intention that we would develop in ourselves in our Kabbalistic efforts to unite. Because in Kabbalah everything is very real. We discover within ourselves mutual hatred, rejection of one another, and we try not to run away from it, not to float away somewhere in the clouds, but instead to find connections that would force us, despite the mutual rejection, to unite with each other.

Kabbalah by no circumstances destroys egoism, it uses it. That is why it is called “the science of receiving.” All meditations are based on the idea that you suppress egoism, as if it doesn’t exist. And so, I fly off somewhere into the clouds, and I’m already an angel of God.

But here, no, you become even more vile, an even more egoistic individualist, opposite to others. But you rise above yourself, above your “I,” above mutual rejection.

Mutual rejection is called “Aviut“(the “thickness” of your egoism in the group), and mutual connection is called “Zakut” (the “purity,” the serenity of your relationships). These two qualities must be together, one above the other, and through this, a third quality is created, the so–called “middle line,” which combines both of them in itself.

Therefore, Kabbalistic meditation, if it can even be called that, is absolutely real, because it always and entirely is based on egoism, which is growing more and more.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Kabbalistic Meditation” 5/23/10

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We Can only Dream of Peace and Quiet

276.03Comment: You say that a person should develop in many ways. But as a rule, there is some association or community that builds a framework and walks within that framework all the time.

My Response: That is natural. These include religions, all kinds of spiritual practices, and everyday cultures of humanity. In this way, people create a reliable environment for themselves within which they exist in confidence, and it supports them.

But for a Kabbalist, it is like death. He needs to constantly develop, change, transform his environment, and feel highly unconfident so he would have a need to hold on to the Creator and the group. He has a need to find his support in bestowal and love for the others rather than in the notion “my house is my fortress.”

Question: Does it mean that “we only dream of peace”?

Answer: You bet! And you should not dream of it; it is bad. “We only dream of peace” when I am forced to come out of the state of rest, and not that I am pulled out of it. I exit this state on my own into the raging inner world where I feel completely lost every time, and it is precisely because of this that I am ready to cling even to love for the neighbor.

Question: Does it mean that the step your students are taking is one of the many steps ahead?

Answer: Yes, of course. And the entire humanity will go this way. We are only beginning to shake. Ahead of us are even bigger social and natural disasters. We will have no choice but to look for a true and serious decision.

There will be no escape. It is like an exploded volcano. Imagine that it is really erupting, approaching you, enclosing you, the day becomes night, and this will be for the next couple of years. The temperature drops to the negative 40 to 50 degrees. What can you do here? You can oppose these forces of nature only with the spiritual force. Only! You have nothing else.
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From KabTV’s “I Got A Call. Efficiency of Combined Actions” 4/17/10

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Kabbalah and Religion, Opposite Concepts

202.0Kabbalah and religion are completely opposite concepts. Kabbalah teaches that one must change oneself, whereas religion suggests that performing external actions is sufficient to achieve everything necessary in life and you to attain paradise and all kinds of blessings in the next world.

According to Kabbalah, heaven and hell are states experienced by a person in our world while being in the body. However, one has the opportunity to rise above his body so that it no longer controls him. In this case he will perceive reality beyond the body and will not need to die to experience this.

If one does not reach a state above the body, his death only leads to the most minimal spiritual state, which cannot even be called spiritual. It is merely a state of some detachment from egoism but not the possession of a spiritual quality.

The focus is on the soul of a person who desires to correct it. In our world there is nothing higher than this, and if a person strives for it, you cannot prohibit him.

This is the issue between Kabbalists and the religious who put up a barrier: “Follow the rules up to this point, but do not engage in the development of the soul.”
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/2/19, “Questions and Answers”

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Don’t Nullify Your Ego

232.05The wisdom of Kabbalah is not like yoga or any other methods or religions that say that we must eradicate the ego. Kabbalah differs from all other systems on this point. We do not eradicate egoism, but use it to create an even greater connection between us despite it and above it. Then this connection will be much higher than the one that was between us before the shattering of Adam.

It is said: “Everyone who has more egoism is greater than others.” Therefore, do not be offended by your egoism, do not curse it, do not try to level it, destroy it, or annul it. There is no need. We must constantly think about how to create the right connections between us above it. This approach is purely Kabbalistic, there is nothing like it anywhere else.

In Kabbalah, you remain the same egoist you were, and on each degree, you become an even greater egoist. This is called growth along the left line, and in the right line you must correct yourself. And so, one above the other. That is why it is said that all transgressions are covered with love. There can be no love without transgressions.

So do not worry about the fact that you are egoists, that you are the most disgusting people on earth, and sometimes are offended by the fact that you are like this. This is all done by the Creator. As it is said: “Turn to the Creator who created this, He will correct everything.” Moreover, our appeal to Him so that He can correct what He has created brings Him contentment and gives us the opportunity to rise above our egoism.

And so, we rise all the time. Left leg—egoism rises, right leg—we rise above it in the quality of bestowal. Reception—bestowal, reception—bestowal, there are two lines, and we are in the middle line. The middle line is called “Adam,” similar to the Creator and consisting of black and white.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/2/19, “Questions and Answers”

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Questions about Spiritual Work—177

276.04For even a thief in hiding calls on the Creator. For this reason, it does not require Mochin de Gadlut to keep the branch from cutting from its root (Baal HaSulam, Letters, 18).

Question: What does this mean?

Answer: It means that even “a thief in hiding calls on the Creator,” thus, there is no need for the upper light to guard him so that he does not disconnect from the Creator.

Question: Religious people are born with the name of the Creator and live with it. How can I come to a state where there is none else besides Him and I begin to love without knowing who, just as they revere Him?

Answer: The thing is, there is a big difference between your path and theirs. The Creator Himself gradually brings you to Him and pulls you toward Him.

Question: How can I attract the force of overcoming and work only for the sake of the Creator?

Answer: You need to ask to be able to change what descends upon you from above through your desire.

Question: If I ask, while in Lo Lishma, about what will come of my work and I do it with the intention of annulling myself, is there room for a personal request here?

Answer: There is almost never room for a personal request. You can have a personal one only after you rise to the level of a common request.

Question: To reach the first spiritual degree, do we need to awaken a certain number of souls? How will this happen?

Answer: It will happen through the correction of those who have already been awakened.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/15/24, “Continuing the Congress With an Ascent”

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