Question from Facebook: The central place in all religions is the concept of God. What does God mean in Kabbalah?

Answer: God in Kabbalah means the general force of nature, except for it, nothing exists.

In itself, this is an abstract concept in relation to a person, and we cannot speak about something that exists outside our perception. No one has ever felt it. This state of the Creator, which is not in relative to us when this upper force exists by itself, in no way can be perceived by us, and therefore, this force is called Atzmuto, meaning He by Himself is Himself.

Everything that we attain and what is possible for us to attain are the actions of the upper force in relation to us. The wisdom of Kabbalah deals with revealing these actions in relation to a person.

We call this upper force the Creator because He created man, He created all the qualities in a person, within which we feel our world and can explore through our senses the Creator Himself, the one who created us. We can explore why He created us with these qualities, with these limitations or, conversely, with these abilities, and what the Creator wants from us.

Developing in this direction, we begin to attain Him, meaning the Creator. Not Atzmuto, not Him by Himself, but exactly the Creator in relation to us. In this way, we explore His actions, how He created our world and all other worlds, which is a certain system of connections between Him and us. Such a system of connections of gradually descending degrees is called worlds. This system affects us.

By studying these worlds, we study the Creator, we study ourselves, we understand in what states we are in connection with Him. And we can change our behavior and our actions in accordance with this in order to raise ourselves to higher connections, to be connected directly with the Creator, literally face to face.

In other words, we can see what kind of reactions our actions produce in Him and, conversely, what reactions His actions produce in us. We can reach an absolutely complete, open two-way connection.

When we begin to attain this opportunity, to reveal and achieve it gradually, we naturally change our behavior in accordance with what we reveal, and we enter a completely different stage of our development where we begin to change into similarity with the Creator. At the same time, our world and we ourselves are change radically and our state becomes more and more reliable, convenient, correct, and true.

Question: Who do I call God if I study Kabbalah?

Answer: I call God the general force of nature. It is called Elokim, which in gematria (the numeric value of the word) is equal to Teva (Nature). The entirety of nature that I reveal, everything that affects me externally, I call the Creator, and everything that is inside of me, I call the derivatives of the Creator.

This is the whole purpose of our work, study, and all sorts of actions—to make an absolute similarity between ourselves and the Creator in desires, intentions, and actions and to reach a completely harmonious connection.

Just as I discover that all the qualities of the Creator are bestowal and love, so I raise myself to these qualities. All this is perceived through feelings; after all, a person is a sensory creature. The mind is given to him in order to control these feelings and form them into similarity to the Creator.

We are created only for this. However, in order to come to this decision, conclusion, and action, we must go through a very long stage of historical development: inanimate, vegetative, animate, and speaking.

Now we have come to the very last stage of human development. We just need to reveal the Creator and make ourselves similar to Him. Then we will be called “Man” (Adam, which means similar).
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From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 8/31/17

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Question: What is the meaning of the workshop, discussions in a circle, as a method of practical work widely used in Kabbalah?

Answer: A “workshop” is a joint action of ten men or ten women who perform exercises according to the recommendations given in the Kabbalistic sources or under the guidance of a teacher, like athletes under the guidance of a coach. Only these are not physical exercises, like in sports, but internal ones based on inner efforts to connect with each other to such an extent that inside this connection the Creator will be revealed.

It might seem good if this could be realized in one action. However, usually this requires a lot of exercises for many months or even years. Such an exercise with an aim of creating a special connection between us, inside which we will be able to sense the upper force of bestowal and love, is called a “workshop.”

There are many different types of workshops, but as a rule they are held as a preparation for Kabbalah lessons. During the workshop, we check connections between us, how much they correspond to the nature of the Creator, bestowal and love. Once we reach such bestowal and love for each other during the workshop, or conversely, we cannot reach them, but discover our oppositeness to each other—we move to studying.

Then through the study, we demand from above the force of bestowal, the Light that returns to the source, that is, the force that exists in the Creator. This is called the study of the Torah, about which it is written, “I created the evil inclination” that separates us in the ten and “in addition to it, I created the Torah, the Light that returns to the source”.

It turns out that if we study Kabbalah in the ten in order to get closer and connect with each other, then we can use the force of the Torah. During the study, we learn what it means to be connected, how spiritual objects (Partzufim) and worlds are built, what the ladder of spiritual degrees is, and how all this connects together and joins us to itself.

In this case, we attract a special force to ourselves called Torah, Surrounding Light, or the Light that returns to the source, which influences us and brings us closer to each other.

In this way, we build a network of connections in which we eventually reveal the special phenomena called the manifestation of the upper force, the revelation of the Creator.
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From KabTV’s “A New Life” 7/20/17

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Torah, Deuteronomy 32:18 – 32:21: You forgot the [Mighty] Rock Who bore you; you forgot the God Who delivered you. And the Lord saw this and became angry, provoked by His sons and daughters. And He said, “I will hide My face from them. I will see what their end will be, for they are a generation of changes; they are not [recognizable] as My children whom I have reared. They have provoked My jealousy with a non-god, provoked My anger with their vanities. Thus, I will provoke their jealousy with a non-people, provoke their anger with a foolish nation.

The Creator does not allow the children of Israel to calm down. He seems to say: “You will behave in a criminal way toward each other and the rest of the nations, and the peoples of the world in relation to you, and eventually all together in relation to Me. But only in this way will you become the chosen and special people.”

The people of Israel have to pass through these states because only from a sense of evil and the necessity to achieve good does a person begin to call out to the Creator. He understands that he is obliged to undergo this operation and agrees that the Creator will perform it on him. This is called the awareness of evil.

Question: Does the Creator speak in such a way on purpose, so that a person connects to His thought?

Answer: The Creator explains his future states to him from which he must act and come to life. It is written, “They have provoked My jealousy with a non-god, provoked My anger with their vanities. Thus, I will provoke their jealousy with a non-people, provoke their anger with a foolish nation.” This means: “I will give you the states in which you will hate each other and will hardly exist in this hatred at the lowest level.”

And really, look at what is happening now with our people. To what extent it is torn, separated, internally opposed to itself. There is no other people that would be so multifaceted in its negative polarity.

Compared to what the Creator requires of us, there is nothing positive within us. And if there is, then this positive correlation is not with us, but with the fact that we have a spark from the Creator, from which, perhaps, the flame will kindle.

We are its carriers. But this is why we are even meaner and more egoistic than all other nations. If it weren’t for this spark, we would be like the rest. But we will never be like them. Inside us there is something that has been distinguishing us from other nations throughout the millennia of our history, and there is nowhere that we can get away from it.

We need to understand that we are obliged to realize in ourselves a special truth, a method: “to be a light unto nations.” That is, to show all nations the possibility of uniting, creating the correct community of people in which the Creator is revealed. Only we can do this, but we do not fulfill our role. That is why we are so hated. That is why the Torah calls us a “foolish nation” that can do good to others, but does not do it. The nations of the world instinctively understand this and rightfully hate it.

Especially at a time when we have already received the land, the state, all the conditions to reveal the wisdom of Kabbalah to the whole world and bring it to people. But no one wants to listen to Kabbalists, everybody turns away from us.

Question: That is why He “will hide My face”?

Answer: Yes. The Creator is moving away. He is hiding behind our egoism, while right now He must reveal himself in the quality of bestowal and love over the egoistic quality. And since we do not do it, He hides even more.

“Disclosing the face of the Creator” means that we see the correct management, we know how to act, and in response to our every right action, we immediately receive a good, wonderful impact of nature. This is an absolutely complete interaction! We immediately receive an answer for any action. Baal HaSulam writes about this in the article “Concealment and Disclosure of the Face of the Creator.” That is, all of nature is revealed to us as a panel on which we see everything and can take anything from it. We work with it in unison, in friendly tandem.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 1/30/17

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Question: The method of Kabbalah allows us to change a person’s nature so that he will start caring for others instead of himself. To implement this technique, workshops in the circles, roundtables, are used. What is a roundtable?

Answer: The roundtable is a group action in which men, women, and children participate. Kabbalah is a method of revealing the Creator by the created beings in this world, and this is only possible when there is an equivalence of qualities. It means that we must acquire qualities that are similar to the upper force and then we will be able to reveal it, like any locator should be ready for those phenomena that it is designed to discover.

For example, a smoke detector is built in order to react to smoke rather than a sweet, bitter, or sour taste. So here if I want to reveal the upper force, I must form the sensory organ within myself that is similar to the nature of the Creator that I do not have yet. Then I will be able to find the Creator, like a bloodhound that got the trail. All I need is a sense of smell to discover where He is hiding.

Kabbalists say that the Creator hides between us. If we have kind, good relationships between us and there is mutual aid and love for friends, as if we are one man with one heart, it means that we indeed want to feel ourselves as one whole.

In this aspiration, we begin to feel, like a dog with its nose, the presence of the Creator. We do not look for Him somewhere in other worlds and spaces, but connect with each other more and more in order to find where and how we can reveal the Creator.

It is clear that once we build friendly relations between us we will reveal the upper force inside them. The network of connections between us that are as kind as possible, up to love, is called Shechina (Divinity), because we want to discover the presence of the Creator within it, which is called Shochen.

Therefore, there is no need to move to another space; we just need to correct the network of relations between us to mutual love, bestowal, embracing, and unity to such an extent that we will become so close to each other internally that within this connection the Creator will be revealed. The only thing we need to worry about is our unity, and everything else will be revealed within it.

In order to build such a special connection, we work in a group of ten people who want to reveal the upper force. If they implement the advice of Kabbalists, they gradually reveal this force.

It is desirable that such a ten gather every day to study the wisdom of Kabbalah and also to try to connect all the friends together through talking about unity, reading Kabbalistic articles, and performing all sorts of exercises.

All this is in order to build such relations between the friends within which the network of connections between us will be revealed. This network already exists, but we need to pull it out of concealment, like a net from depths of the sea. As fishermen drag the fish out with the net, so too will we pull the Creator out with this network and reveal Him.

A workshop in a circle is an action that allows us to become similar to the qualities of the upper force. This is the entire practical wisdom of Kabbalah that speaks about the ascent of a person from the bottom upward.

There is a part of Kabbalah that explains the structure of the universe that descends from the world of Infinity downward. Its other part teaches how from this world to rise back to the world of Infinity and reveal the Creator. This work is done through the workshops in the circles.
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From KabTV’s “A New Life” 7/20/17

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Torah, Deuteronomy 32:04: The deeds of the [Mighty] Rock are perfect, for all His ways are just; a faithful God, without injustice He is righteous and upright.

This is what Moses passes to the people and what is attained by the people who reveal the Creator.

Today those who come to study Kabbalah attain Him in the same way. The Torah is the same for everyone. In any case, everyone will come to the revelation of the Creator in this life or in future reincarnations and will attain Him exactly like that.

“Mighty Rock” is written about the foundation that is unshakable and unchanging, meaning that movement toward the Creator occurs according to the clear and definite laws from Malchut to Keter.

“The deeds of the [Mighty] Rock are perfect” means that those things that happen to us, no matter what they seem to us at the time of correction, we gradually justify, up to the realization of the Creator’s overall perfection in everything that we have gone through.

Everything that happened to us and will happen during the entire evolution of humanity, we will eventually call “His perfect deeds.”

It is written that “all His ways are just.” This means that each of us and all of us together go through certain paths, wander all the time, make efforts, and eventually reach the state where we see that the Creator at every point of our development had only one goal: to bring us to the state of perfection.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 1/30/17

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Torah, Deuteronomy 32:11 – 32:12: As an eagle awakens its nest, hovering over its fledglings, it spreads its wings, taking them and carrying them on its pinions.

[So] the Lord guided them alone, and there was no alien deity with Him.

The language of the Torah is very poetic. But when Kabbalah explains what the Torah is about, it is revealed that there is no poetry there. What is meant is the forces that rule us, lead us through all these states: both when we rise above the screen and when we go down below the screen, and so on.

These are very serious, uneasy, heavy actions that the Creator performs on us. And we must participate in them.

The eagle that “spreads its wings, taking them, carrying them” is the anti-egoistic screen that lifts us higher and higher.

The eagle carries its nestlings away not in claws, but puts them on its wings and flies. It’s amazing, but that’s exactly what happens. This is a special action of Bina when she raises Malchut to her and thus protects her from egoistic arrows that fly to her from below.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 1/30/17

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Question: How does a Kabbalist analyze his inner states with the Creator? How does the environment of our world affect this?

Answer: It does not affect it in any way. When I come to the lesson in the morning, can you tell in what condition I am with the Creator? What I had with him before, any talk or relationship? This is a different level, a different world.

Therefore, what I feel and what I give to my students are two different steps, and one does not affect the other.

It happens sometimes that it is very difficult to teach a lesson because everything has been “taken” from you. But it is taken on your own level, and when you switch to the students and use their desires while you are at their level, then you are practically being realized in accordance to them, and they do not feel it.

In this respect, I win and it’s easier for me. I hide myself, and students cannot tell what spiritual state I am in. It is impossible.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 1/29/17

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Torah, Deuteronomy 32:15 – 32:17: And Jeshurun became fat and rebelled; you grew fat, thick and rotund; [Israel] forsook the God Who made them, and spurned the [Mighty] Rock of their salvation.

They provoked His zeal with alien worship; they made Him angry with abominations deeds.

They sacrificed to demons, which have no power, deities they did not know, new things that only recently came, which your forefathers did not fear.

Question: Does a person come to a certain turning point? First, he rises to a level when he “…rides upon the high places of the earth, (and) …eats the produce of the field,” then suddenly falls again to “you grew fat, thick and rotund…”

Answer: This is necessary in order to rise to the next degree. You do everything to justify and correct the level you are on. And when it is necessary to rise to the next degree, you are given additional egoism, and everything you achieved earlier disappears to who knows where.

You again feel yourself as an absolute sinner with respect to the Creator and lament that you are constantly being set up this way. A person comes to a state when he can’t justify His actions and frequently rejects everything that he had already achieved and may even leave this path.

Plunging into new, greater, egoism associated with the next degree is a very difficult experience; the entire past is completely erased. Moreover, at the very last degree, you fall lower than ever before. And it is like that each time. That’s why very serious difficulties can arise here.

Question: It is written, “you grew fat, thick and rotund and forsook the God…” What does that mean?

Answer: You start to receive everything only for your own pleasure. After you had achieved so much good, corrected yourself, you again fall into self-gratification. That’s why new egoism has to be added to you, so that you understand the place  you fell to. And then the blows come.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 1/30/17

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Question: Is the meaning of the term “unification” that we make sure that this is a utopia and call out to the Creator from powerlessness?

Answer: No. The reason for discovering the Creator is specifically in our unification. And on the way, there are many different states including impotence, misunderstandings, confusion, or the opposite, excitement, elation, etc., that is, a whole spectrum of experiences.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 2/19/17

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Question: If a person does not have an acute inner question about the meaning of life, can he reveal the spiritual world?

Answer: He must begin to study and he will have these questions. After all, he does not even imagine what Kabbalah is opening before him.

He will slightly open the door to the upper world and will see what is prepared for him. It is like you enter a shop without any desire and suddenly see that everything in it is sparkling, spinning, and ringing, and this begins to interest you.

It is possible to receive absolutely everything from Kabbalah because it fills a person with the upper Light. This Light is not limited and is absolute!

Under the influence of the upper Light a person is filled with what he himself desires. This filling is universal. Therefore, imagine your greatest desires, whatever they are, and they will be fulfilled.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 6/25/17

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