Entries in the 'Spirituality' Category

The Breath Of The Next Level

Dr. Michael LaitmanWhy is our world special? On the one hand, it’s the last and worst of all the worlds. On the other hand, it’s necessary since here we are in a totally still state, which means breathless, and we can begin to advance as we “play” with each other, with the bodies and not with the forces, which we still don’t know how to manage.

This is why our world is called “the imaginary world.” It doesn’t actually exist, but is only felt that way in our egoistic desires. The moment we rise above it, we begin to feel that it’s an absolute replica that is opposite from the upper level, and then this world simply loses its meaning for us. This is what we have to attain.

First we have to internalize the fact that the soul is the general vessel, which is the only thing that was created and which is constantly in contact and in adhesion with the Light. We are in that state, in that vessel, in that desire. Imagine that it has layers, we are on the most “coarse,” darkest layer, and above us there are 125 layers until the real state. We have to go through these 125 layers gradually by rejecting our ego, which is inside us, in the gradual, constant connection between us.

Do the plants, animals and the still nature have a soul? Every small desire that exists in nature is already part of the general soul, but without freewill. It totally depends on us, on those who fulfill the correction of the soul.

There are many different levels in the soul. There are people who are on the human level, who have started their correction ages before us, who have attained where they really are, and saw that everything is one soul, one Light. There are people who carried on this mission, and there are people like us who are reaching this level now.

But we are special. The development of our world is the development of the same ego on the lowest level. Throughout the ages it developed egoistically and eventually has reached a “round” form, its maximum size, and at the same time, it is global and integral (∫) in its quality.

Now, too, this ego is the state we are in. It cannot grow any further, and it has become global and closed. So we don’t understand what is happening to us. Being egoistic and individualists, we cannot understand this “round” state.


We have always grown and aspired forward. Each of us was pushed forward by an egoistic force and we tried to fulfill it. We felt good. Even 50-60 years ago we used to praise the consumerist society, the benefit of competition, and we called it “general democracy.”

Now the same ego, that has reached huge dimensions on the last level of its existence, has “exploded.” It doesn’t work as it used to, and we are trapped. The only way out is if we understand how the integral system of the general soul operates.

What does humanity feel today in the general system that is becoming evident? It actually feels the first level of the general soul that hasn’t been revealed yet and that should illuminate upon us here, the level at which we have to acknowledge the fact that we are connected.

On the whole, there are 125 levels in this ascent and now the very first level seems to illuminate upon us from a distance. This is the reason that we feel that the world is global and integral and we cannot do anything about it.

We study about this in the wisdom of Kabbalah: When two Partzufim are made of ten Sefirot, from Keter (K) to Malchut (M), and are one under the other, this illumination flows from one to the other. When one Partzuf “dresses” in another that is next to it, it illuminates through it.

On the one hand, we receive factual data about our world that is in a crisis today and can’t do anything about it. After all, it’s an upper level that illuminates upon us, the first level of my soul, which means of the general vessel.

On the other hand, we suddenly find ourselves tied to one another, connected through the whole world: What people think in one place, people also know in a second and third place and so on. We are mutually interdependent. We suddenly discover that we can’t get rid of any part in the chain, whether we like it or not. On the whole, this mutual network is expressed in the states being one on top of the other or one below the other.

In any case, it’s a special state: We are now experiencing the solution phase of the general soul.
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From the Novosibirsk Convention 12/7/12, Lesson 2

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The Contemporary Maccabean War With Global Egoism

Dr. Michael LaitmanNow, after 2000 years of exile we return to the Tower of Babel, which in the meantime has grown even more. We have returned to the great grief of the ego, to the huge tower of human egoism that we have erected and find ourselves at a dead end not knowing what we should do with our lives.

Everything that we have built on the foundation of egoism doesn’t bring us any solutions: We are left with nothing; all we built in the world is crumbling and is overwhelmed by crisis.

Today, we should refer to the same solution that was found in ancient times, in the days of Abraham—unity. However, not only on group, which was then named “the people of Israel,” is supposed to unite, but rather the whole world has to finally connect and forever.

As an example, let’s use the Maccabean Revolt to which the holiday of Chanukah is dedicated. This story happened at the time of the Second Temple and its downfall. As always, the egoistic force, which at that time was called the “Greek power,” endangered the group, which was called “Israel”; the Greek power tried to separate Israel.

And in this category of “Greek authorities” were included many who were previously in the group of Israel. In other words, people who used to live in a spiritual level, fell en mass from the spiritual level to our material plane when they began to act according to their egoism instead of rising above it and connecting with others.

So the affects of global egoism, which appeared in the form of “Greeks” led to the destruction of the Temple.

History tells us that an uprising of Maccabees took place at that time; they began to fight this power. It was more of a spiritual war than a material combat. Their only goal was to bring their people to unity. By achieving unity, they attained victory: they managed to correct Jews who were following the Greeks and their customs, and the Greek invaders were forced to retreat.

In this way they were able to rebuild the Temple (Beit HaMikdash), then there is the building (Beit) of mutual love and bestowal, and so they achieved correction.

We need to learn from this history how to reach correction when we were in such a deep crisis. Today, the resolution is still the same. It differs from the previous situation only by the fact that at that time they had a group of Maccabees who were known to the entire nation as a distinct family, a dynasty of priests.

Today, there is nothing like that. We are in a total confusion and have no idea how to live further. It seems that we have a state of Israel on the land of Israel and have built the Israeli nation, but none of them correspond to the internal definition given by Abraham.

However, this situation can be corrected in an instant. Indeed, at the moment we join together in mutual guarantee, we will elicit the upper force according to the law of equivalence of form that will combine us into one whole. This is how we regain bliss and joy and feel powerful.

We become happy because we reveal the upper force that again reigns between them, and opens the spiritual world. After we connect even a little bit, just to modify our predisposition and direction, we immediately will feel that the upper force empowers us from the inside.

We don’t even have to fight any longer; the Creator will struggle for us, since it is the only force that previously was elevating our egoism and creating hardships, particularly to make us rise above them. If we try to elevate above them and make the slightest effort to achieve it, the upper force will complete the work for us. That’s why the Greeks simply left. This is what is called a “spiritual war.”
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From KabTV’s “Kabbalists Write” 12/4/12

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The Oil For The Sacred Fire

Dr. Michael LaitmanDuring the time of the Hanukkah holiday, it is obvious that today the world requires the same kind of correction that was once achieved as a result of the Maccabean revolt. It is a spiritual war for the sake of finding “a jar of oil for the sacred fire.” It means that we unite together and reach the minimal connection that is sufficient to combine the sparks that are present in each of us, merge them together, and end up being as one burning candle, as a jar of oil for the lamp.

Then, one candle will light all other candles, thus rising above this world, which is denoted by the eight candles of the Hanukkah lamp. This is exactly what we are supposed to do at the present time. The holiday of Hanukkah is a symbol of the Maccabean revolt against the narrow-minded approach of the world, huge egoism and protectionism, isolation and separation from each other. The world tries to live by the rule: “Every man for himself,” and people don’t know what to do next because this statute leads them to crisis.

We don’t know where this world is headed. We feel as little children who are lost and don’t see the way out. Until recently, this world was governed by egoism that took a very primitive form: money and power. People regarded themselves as big, strong, important, and powerful.

Today, they have lost control over the world and have no idea what will happen to them tomorrow. Old liaisons are destroyed. The world cannot be controlled by military might or financial means. The most influential people of this world lost control over others and seem to be quite helpless.

Under these circumstances, we have to expand Kabbalah dissemination and make it as extensive as possible. This wisdom was transferred from one generation to another and finally reached us. It was brought to us from ancient Babylon, which at that time was experiencing precisely the same conditions as we are now. Today, we have to make the same correction that Abraham did.

However, Abraham laid the foundation for all faiths and religions; it was adequate for their developmental level at that time. Our time requires using his power at a higher level to raise the entire world to a spiritual degree. At that time, this methodology served the purpose of evolving the world, whereas at this time, it has to finally correct it.
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From the Weekly Torah Portion 12/4/12

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A Look At Life Through The Creator’s Eyes

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: After the congress in Novosibirsk, we feel a very strong responsibility. It is as if a new system of relations between us was born, when our whole life should be in mutual care for each other. How do we start our work anew, with a clean slate; how do we take the first step onto this new platform?

Answer: Indeed, a new sensation was born. But the connection itself is not new; it already exists and only becomes revealed to us more and more. I see that you feel the new stage and discovered a new experience. And respectively, your mind that works in sync with the feelings was renewed. Now the question is how will we accept this as a fact that binds us to connect even more—all of us together, and me with you as well. This was the qualitative change—I am much more engaged in the group since you have come to a more advanced state. And our further advancement is in that each of us now should maintain the unity we achieved.

We should at least try to maintain the same feeling that arose during our uniting at the congress. This is despite the fact that totally opposite states will be coming: totally opposite feelings and calculations will wash over. And they will not even contradict the former unity, but will just distract and sway you off to the side, forcing you to strive for the philistine values that you used to have in the past. And this is where you should try to view your condition with the Creator’s eyes. This means to look at it not only from “below upward” but also from “above downward”. In other words, you should see yourself as a child who is imagining being a grownup.

He doesn’t just look upward at adults from his place, but he imagines being big and what he would do then, how he would arrange his life, himself. That is, we should visualize how we would apply an “adult” spiritual state to our life if we were already in it.

To be an adult means to be like the Creator. And I need to envision I am next to the Creator and my spiritual vessel creates a complete connection of all desires, thanks to our self-annulment and the mutual inclusion of everyone into everyone infinitely, so that each of us feels all the common desire and the Creator being revealed in it. This cannot be described with words because all our words derive from the broken world and not from oneness.

With these eyes we should look upon life, the friends, the teacher, and on your entire work, and regard them accordingly. In normal life, “outside the temple walls,” we act as all others, not separating from them. But inside your group, you should see the corrected state. Everyone should view the group and his or her life this way. Then, a person can fit into this corrected picture. Likewise, as during studying, so with the teacher and the group, one can act in sync with the upper state being envisioned. After all, who is the Creator? It is the upper state. And this is all we need.

Most importantly, stay in “There is none else besides Him, the good who does good” every moment. I envision the Creator, who resides within me, as such, and what He demands of me in this case. What would be required of me if I were in such a state? How would I see everything if I were exactly the one, besides whom there is nobody else, someone good who does good?

I need to see that all my actions come from the Creator, and my attitude to the friends, and to the world—and all of it is good and only for their benefit. Everyone will eventually feel this way, and gradually, we are beginning to feel it. This is described as “penny by penny builds to a large sum.” We exerted efforts that accumulate and ultimately result in a leap: one passes level 0, 1, 2, 3, 4 and finally makes a leap. And then again stages 0, 1, 2, 3, 4 and a new leap. That is how we finally reach our first spiritual state.
[95181]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/11/12, “Questions and Answers Regarding Novosibirsk Convention”

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There Are No Changes For The Creator

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: If relative to the Creator, we are already in the third, corrected state, then what does it mean that we have to give pleasure to the Creator?

Answer: We have never gone out of the third and the first states; relative to the Creator, there are no changes. Everything that was created by Him was created at once and instantly, and there is not even question of time. We will begin to feel this soon.

Ari wrote in his poem: Behold, that before the emanations were emanated and the creatures created, the upper simple light had filled the whole existence. What do it was before and then mean? Baal HaSulam explains this in his writings.

The state of time is a causal relationship. But we do not understand that either. Cause and effect are always related to time for us.

The picture that we attain in spirituality is beyond our limitations of time, space, and motion. We feel them only at our lowest earthly level. Once we start to feel the upper world, we will see that there is no time, no death, no birth—nothing! There is only a constant ascent in the property of bestowal.
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From the Novosibirsk Convention 12/8/12, Lesson 3

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Seeing The World As It Is

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe wisdom of Kabbalah is a special wisdom which actually explains everything. However, one must attain it. It isn’t perceived by the mind and the desires we were born with, not through our nature.

We were born on the “animate” level” and we have to develop the properties of the next level in us, the “human” (Adam) level, which means resembling (Domeh – resemble in Hebrew) the upper force.

In our corporeal reality we also receive different signals from the world around us according to our equivalence to it. I perceive the world around me according to my sensitivity to the range of frequencies and to the sensitivity of my senses of sight, hearing, and other senses, but, in addition, many other frequencies exist, all different sources, which I don’t perceive. I perceive the world only in the range of frequencies that my senses are tuned to or through the instruments I can create in order to expand the range of these frequencies, and not more than that. We don’t create something that we don’t have; we only expand what we have.

On the other hand, in order to reveal the upper force, we have to create a totally new additional sense inside us. It is new qualitatively; since all our senses are locked on receiving, on the egoistic intention for one’s self, we perceive the world around us only with regard to what concerns us: what good we can receive from it and what bad things to avoid.

Initially I perceive the world through the filter of my five senses, in the frequencies I am tuned to. Besides that, there is my ego, which filters every thing according to one principle, “Will it be good or bad for me?” If there is no response in our huge desire for something, in the estimate of the potential benefit or the harm, then I don’t perceive and don’t see it. We only perceive what our desire wants, which means what is positive or negative for it, or what can harm me or bring me contentment—then I see it.

With such an approach, even if we expand our senses by creating different instruments such as telescopes, microscopes, etc., nothing will help since our ego, which is behind them, will still classify everything according to this scale.

There is a lot of research on this issue by psychologists and physicists. In modern physics, there is the concept of the “observer.” At first Newton’s physics claimed that the universe is as we see it. The picture that was depicted was rather simple, although Newton studied the wisdom of Kabbalah and also studied Hebrew in order to read the original version of the sources.

Then came Albert Einstein and Hugh Everett who reached a different phrasing of the concept: The world around us is as we perceive it; in fact, it is totally different, but as we perceive it, we change, tilt, and break it by our attributes. By observing any physical events, we distort them just by viewing them, and as a result they will not be as they were without us.

So, it isn’t enough that we perceive everything through the filter of our ego, but even when we just look at something, by our participation, we interfere with the picture of the world. Look at a star and it is already different just by your looking at it; this is what physicists say.

Today, we reach the understanding that there is a different perception of the world, not the formal perception that is based on our animal attributes. The wisdom of Kabbalah puts it simply; it says: Instead of your ordinary sense, instead of the ego in which you receive only for your own good, stabilize a different sense, make it totally different, make it in order to bestow. If you open the attribute of this new sense so that it is focused outside yourself, you will determine what the world actually looks like. You will see that it is totally different; you will see that it is real. In addition, you will change yourself. The new sense that will appear in you is called a “soul.”

Actually, it doesn’t matter what you call it. One way or the other, with this new sense, you will see the whole external world that “hasn’t been touched” as it is—the forces, the connections, and its goals. You will be so adapted to it and so connected to it that everything that is in your ego, your animal state, your animal body, will simply “die.” This means that you will not feel it—this is how microscopic the current feeling of life will seem to you compared to what you will feel when you discover the world outside yourself and exist in it.

This is what the wisdom of Kabbalah leads a person to.
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From the Novosibirsk Convention 12/7/12, Lesson 1

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Upbringing By The Light

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: You said that the soul is altruism, that is, the property that is available to few people. When we are engaged in correction and raise the world with us, do we share with the world the soul that we have earned or do we grow the world soul with the Light of correction that comes down to us?

Answer: We do not create anything new. We have very small animalistic, selfish desires, and the Light with which we can manipulate if we become like it. We draw the influence of the Light on ourselves, and the Light causes even greater egoistic desires in our egoistic desires, which, each time, we are correcting.

Let’s suppose that the desire to receive is small, like a dot, with a minimum capacity equal to one. The Light, the property of bestowal, exists in it.

The Light enters this desire: The property of bestowal pumps this dot with its desire to bestow, with warmth, love, compassion, and tenderness. This dot swells, and a huge desire emerges in it. And then the power of Malchut is equal to, say, a thousand. Why did it get such a tremendous power of desire to receive? It’s because the Light filled it in that way.

We say that there is Aviut (the thickness of desire) in the Light. What does it mean? I offered you a cake, gave you some candy, handed you a pillow, and suggested something warm to you. I pumped my attitude into you so that you begin to desire all this. My good attitude toward you is turned into a desire, and then if you do not get it from me, you begin to suffer. Thus, I cultivate a desire in you. This is what the Light does to us similar to what we do with a spoiled child. Thus, It builds us during the descent from above downward.

Then during the ascent from the bottom upward, It does the opposite, but almost the same. It affects our egoism, irritating it, as if crushes it. Under the influence of the Light, the ego swells and becomes bigger and bigger. Thus, we grow.

The egoistic and altruistic components grow in parallel, and at every state, in every world, they are opposite and have to complement each other until we reach the level of infinity.

The Light does everything; it increasingly develops negative desires in us. When you start to study, you have small desires. And tomorrow, you begin to hate others, and then something else, etc. And so it is with the Creator: Today you are afraid to say anything against Him, tomorrow you will hate Him, and the day after tomorrow, you will yell at Him. The time will come; you will grow up and will find out that this is so.
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From the Novosibirsk Convention 12/7/12, Lesson 2

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Spirituality And Warm-Heartedness

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: What is the difference between spirituality and warm-heartedness? There are some warm people who are very pleasant and there are spiritual people who may be very unpleasant. What’s the difference between them?

Answer: We call warm-hearted people “good souls” in everyday life, nice people, who are ready to give quick support to others. This person understands you, is sympathetic and empathetic, feels compassion, helps you, etc.

A spiritual person is someone who is working hard on himself, “breaking his teeth,” fighting himself under great strain developing something that is totally different from a person in our world, bestowal, which doesn’t exist in our world. And this attribute develops by huge efforts, great intention, and immense concentration of exertion, attention, and constant work, and very strong self-control.

When a person reaches this state, he has a special attitude to others that doesn’t necessarily seem warm, kind, loving, or nice to us, because he thinks about how to turn us into spiritual people, meaning people who have a soul. This involves serious efforts by a person against himself, under pressure, with hard work. So the people are not necessarily pleasant or nice. Their mission forces them to relate to us, the small weak people, purposefully and in a goal oriented manner.

I experienced it myself. My teacher Rabash looked at me as clay from which he had to sculpt and he assessed the extent to which this clay would moan, but would allow itself to be molded. This is how I felt then. On the one hand, it is a great love, an inner participation and understanding, but actually, the external expressions are still very special. A person who can truly value them is a person who understands the goal before him, the attributes of the student and the work of the teacher.
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From the Novosibirsk Convention 12/7/12, Lesson 2

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The Faces Of Pharaoh

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe vessels of bestowal that once were separated, fell to the vessels of reception, and now are found there, under their control. This state is called “exile” and it is expressed in the fact that the desire to receive is using the quality of bestowal in order to bestow in order to receive.

This means, “exile” is a spiritual concept, that is not simple. I reach it truly, when I know that I bestow to the Creator in order to receive pleasure from Him. I am all Klipa, and this is to say that I am in exile, on a very high spiritual level of tainted connection with the Creator. There are only two forces: to receive and to bestow. And I, the receiving force, received the force to bestow, I hold and use it for self-pleasure.

Today, however, I do not feel that I am in exile; to the contrary, I identify with the desire to receive. If I would identify with the desire to bestow, then I would have said that I am in exile, under the control of Pharaoh, meaning of the ego. Each time that I want to bestow, I would have suddenly felt that I act in order to receive.

We can divide the exile of Egypt into phases, according to the feeling of the exile. Baal HaSulam writes about it in his Letter 14: And the thing is that the measurement that the people of Israel thought that Egypt enslaved them and disturbed them from their work for the Creator, and in the same measurement they really were in the Egyptian exile. Everything depends on the “user,” the one that receives, feels. For example, when Moses killed the Egyptian, the Jews denounced him. They didn’t feel that they were in exile, but to the contrary, it is Moses and not Pharaoh making their lives hard.

So when the breaking happened, the vessels of bestowal, or the souls of Israel that are called Yasher Kel, meaning the intention to bestow, fell to the vessels of reception, to the intention to receive. But this thing itself doesn’t mean anything. We need clarification, the results of which we will be able to identify either with the vessels of reception or with the vessels of bestowal. If in Egypt, I identify with the vessels of receiving, I am blossoming, like Pharaoh, that is building beautiful cities, Pithom and Ramses, for him.

And from the other side, to the one that wants to reach bestowal, these are poor cities, cities of danger: “Maybe we will not be able to exit the control of the ego, the control of Pharaoh?”

Therefore, we must understand where we are. The one who has a point in the heart, the one who already yearns to the wisdom of Kabbalah, to the revelation of the Creator, he needs to always check himself: “What in me prevails now, the desire to receive or the desire to bestow? If it turns out to be the desire to receive, then I am a worker of Pharaoh; if the desire to bestow, then I am “Israel in exile.”

This is the first discernment, then from it, if one develops it, one finally exits the exile. As Rabash writes in Shlavey Sulam (The Rungs of the Ladder) (1985/1986),  Article 6: It is found, that exile is the state of the Kli, and redemption is the Light and bestowal. And precisely from within the troubles, when we feel that we are under this control, that the new vessel begins to form, with which one exits exile. There are no ready vessels; “vessels” are new discernments that we give birth to from the work in Egypt, in exile, the four phases, which eventually create a complete desire, that then feels that it became redemption for us.

Actually what is escape from Egypt? Who are you running away from? From the desire to receive? No, it remains as the desire to bestow remains. So why does Pharaoh invert?

In the first stage, the group of Abraham exits Babylon, meaning, from the desire to take advantage of the Creator for their own good. In other words, vessels of bestowal made a “restriction” on their desire to receive, which at that time couldn’t be corrected, and they separated from it. Later, this desire grew—Isaac appeared, who represents the “left line,” and he separated from Esau. Each time desire to receive is added to us, and we make clarifications and disconnect from it, leaving it for the future, until we will be able to work with it.

We only add to ourselves, to the intention to bestow, the vessels that we are able to correct.

So “Pharaoh” is a very big desire to receive that came after the people of Israel prepared themselves for the new stage. First they completed the next degree in the desire to receive called “Jacob.” Then the need to continue to grow was created, that is called “hunger in the land,” and they descended to Egypt.

In the beginning, Pharaoh was good and their life in the new place was good. They felt that the addition of the desire to receive did not disturb the desire to bestow. So at first, they managed in Egypt—they controlled their desire to receive. So it wasn’t the exile yet, but “seven years of satiation.”

And later, when the sons of Israel connected to the new vessel, it turned to the “seven years of famine.” The desire to receive continued to grow, and at some point, I am not capable of doing anything with it Slowly he “swallows me,” and puts me into the desire to bestow in order to receive. Pharaoh takes more and more from the children of Israel, and they are powerless against his control. This desire simply swallows them, like a crocodile, and nothing is left from bestowal, and Pharaoh grows. Finally, from within the total darkness, the point in the heart awakens in us—Moses that will take us out of Egypt.

This is the path of the desire to receive, and these are the typical discernments for it. The whole story is developed inside the desire. After exiting slavery in Egypt, we come to “Mt Sinai,” the mountain of hatred (Sina). This is the same Pharaoh, only in a different form. Later, again and again, we are faced with growing egoism. Each time in a different form, and this allows us to continue to make corrections.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/29/12, “Exile and Redemption”

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Educational Program Of Terminology

Dr. Michael LaitmanAll of our life, history, and everything that we went through from the beginning of creation until now divides into two parts: exile and redemption. There is nothing else except for these two states:

      • It could be that I separate from the upper force and exist in exile, in some kind of illusion, in a “dream” that is called “this world” under the influence of my egoistic desire which detaches me from seeing and feeling the spiritual world;
      • Or by means of certain actions, which the wisdom of Kabbalah teaches us, I reach the revelation of the upper force and demand it to take me out of exile, and to raise me above this world to the upper world, and when that finally happens, then I am rewarded with redemption.

The difference between exile (Galut – גלות) and redemption (Geula – גאולה) is the letter “Aleph” (א), which  symbolizes the Creator, (Aluph – אלוף) Champion of the world. This is how all of our reality is divided, all the process of development. We certainly aren’t aware of this until suddenly we receive an awakening which allows us to stop the period of exile, the darkness, the feeling of this world, the intolerable and worst state, and to pass to a new period, a new level, a new state, that is called redemption. It’s for this that we study.

Since we exist in this world, we use the words to describe the upper world, the spiritual state. But together with this, it’s forbidden to forget that the contents and meanings of the words are different from their usual meanings. For example, Adam (man/human) belongs to the category of “Israel,” which isn’t according to one’s birth, but according to his spiritual longings.

“Religious,” from the spiritual meaning of the wisdom of Kabbalah, are the Sefirot of “Daat (intellect/knowledge), “Tifferet (Splendor) and “Yesod” (Foundation) which is the middle line. In other words, a person who already works with three lines and arrives, or at least longs to adhere to the Creator is called “religious.” And secular is one who is found under the control of the desire to receive. “Holiness” is the attribute of bestowal and love.

In this way, all our terms and definitions are characteristic of only one thing: identifying what force operates on a person in determining his intention in each action. Either it’s with the intention for the sake of bestowal, according to the principle of “love your friend as yourself,” which comes to “love of the Creator,” or the opposite, with the intention to receive for oneself. That is all the difference that exists between people.

A person who studies the wisdom of Kabbalah without the intention to attract the Light that Reforms has no chance to attract this Light in any other way. And without this Light he remains “secular,” meaning he exists with the intention to receive for himself. He is separated from the Creator and even from the Light that Reforms, which is also called the “Torah.” Thus, when we are reading the writings of the Kabbalists, we need to always understand and remember that they express solely spiritual terms.
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From the 4th part the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/3/12, Exile and Redemption”

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