New Life 501 – The Real Purpose Of The Bible
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Tal Mandelbaum ben Moshe

The Bible is the book of life. It tells us how to ascend above our ordinary attitude to life and how to flow in one current, like a river in which a person connects to the water and flows in it.

We all know the stories of the Bible on one level or another, but few understand its uniqueness. The Bible isn’t a book that teaches us history or geography, and it isn’t a book of laws, either. The Bible is the book of life and it has the power to affect the reader so that by reading it he changes and discovers that it is about himself and that everything in the Bible is inside him.

The Bible is written in a code that must be deciphered, and in order to deeply understand it, we must learn a new language, the language of bestowal. According to the wisdom of Kabbalah, bestowal means to bestow abundance.

Bestowal is a special, internal attribute of giving that is not easy to acquire. A person who acquires it is in a reality of love of others and is called a Kabbalist.

One may be confused and think that we also feel love of others now, but if we look at ourselves without embellishing things, we will discover that alongside the love we have of others, there is always a certain level of self-pleasure, a pleasant feeling, satisfaction, and so on. Our nature doesn’t allow us to love unilaterally without receiving anything in return. When a person ascends above his nature, a new channel of perception, thinking, and of feeling opens up for him, and he begins to live in an embrace with the Bible.

It is only through the attribute of love, through the connection between us, that we can open the Bible correctly. We are called the people of the Book, and we have the responsibility to open the Bible and learn its internality. This is the reason that we must ascend to a state of total bestowal, love of others, love of the world, and then we will understand what it says. This revelation is possible only through connection and love that are attained by studying the wisdom of Kabbalah. Therefore, there is no need for any special intelligence or sublime attributes. The only thing you need is a desire.
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From KabTV’s “New Life 501 — The Real Purpose Of The Bible,” 1/15/16

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The Torah, Genesis 21:12: “And God said to Abraham, “Be not displeased concerning the lad and concerning your handmaid; whatever Sarah tells you, hearken to her voice, for in Isaac will be called your seed.”

Pirkei Avot (Ethics of the Fathers) 1:5: “Let your home be wide open, and let the poor be members of your household. And do not engage in excessive conversation with a woman. This is said even regarding one’s own wife—how much more so regarding the wife of another.”

Question: On the one hand, it is written, “…whatever Sarah tells you, hearken to her voice,” and on the other hand, it is written, “do not engage in excessive conversation with a woman.” How can we understand this contradiction?

Answer: A person is made of different desires that are divided into two levels: a desire to receive, which means to draw everything to myself for my own egoistic filling, and a desire to bestow by which I bestow, give, and connect with others. Each of them is also correspondingly called a female desire to receive and a male desire to bestow.

Bestowal refers to a person’s attitude toward others, his effort to bestow, to give, and to connect with everyone into one unique whole, which is the correct schema of the final corrected state of humanity. Naturally there are egoistic desires among the male and female desires when the bestowal is carried out with the intention of getting something back and and gaining something, and there are desires of giving without getting something in return.

Among the female desires, there is a desire to take indiscriminately as much as possible, and there is a more essential desire to receive only in order to exist; then it as if  helps the male desire in bestowal.

Question: What does “…whatever Sarah tells you, hearken to her voice?” mean?

Answer: Sarah represents the desire that operates in order to bestow and helps her husband. For herself the basic necessities are enough, and everything else is for others. Abraham was known for his hospitality, inviting every passerby to his tent. He told his guests about the uniqueness of the Creator and offered that they could be part of a covenant he called Yashar El (Straight to the Creator), that is, straight to the goal of connection and unity among people. This covenant was based on the absolute connection between people in order to become one unique whole, and Sarah helped him in that.

However, at the same time, different sources say, “…do not engage in excessive conversation with a woman,” and it also says, “This is said even regarding one’s own wife—how much more so regarding the wife of another.” It refers to the female desire, to the desire to receive with which one should have as little contact as possible. Take from it only what can help you in the desire to bestow.

Therefore, there is no contradiction, but simply the upgrading of our desires that everyone has: both male and female. Two male desires and two female desires, only a total of four, exist in each of us. The right connection between them is the Creator’s four-letter name.
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From KabTV’s “Conversations with Michael Laitman” 1/19/16

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New Life 672 – What The Torah And Mitzvot (Commandments) Actually Are
 Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Tal Mandelbaum ben Moshe

People today don’t understand and don’t know the real meaning of the Torah and Mitzvot. The Torah and commandments are a system of laws of the upper world that control us, and it is our duty to get to know it.

Abraham explained the Torah and Mitzvot to the people of Babylon, and they reached an equivalence of form with the upper operating system of nature and Judaism was born. The upper system includes a network of forces operating in the primary law of mutuality, connection, and complementation. Man’s nature is totally opposite to the law of nature; he wants to draw away from, disparage, and dismiss others.

Abraham spoke about mercy and the love of others as a means of resembling the upper system since eventually all parts of reality have to be totally connected. Later Abraham’s students received additional egoism, went to Egypt, and received the Torah, the method of correcting the ego, at Mt. Sinai, which symbolizes the mountain of hatred between them. According to this method, they had to work on the connection between them, feel mutual guarantee toward each other, and expect the correcting force, the Torah.

The Torah is the Light that awakens in us when we try to get closer to one another. Rabash explained that there are 613 egoistic desires in a person and that there is a special correcting Light for each of them. The Torah was written in the language of branches and tells us how to relate to all the desires on the still, vegetative, animate, and speaking levels of nature.

He also explains that the picture of this world a person sees is the picture that his desires depict for him when they are reflected against the white light, and the Torah, which is the correcting Light, enables a person to see a new world instead of the dark egoistic world. The difference in perception is expressed in the relations between us, and it is described in the Torah by expressions like: Mt. Sinai, the Golden calf, the desert, etc. The land of Israel is the good attitude, the desire to love and to bestow, and a state that is similar to the upper force.

To observe the 613 Mitzvot means to correct the 613 egoistic desires and every person is obliged to do so. Abraham’s students discovered how they had to relate to the still, vegetative, animate, and speaking levels of nature, and taught the next generations. They used the language of branches and behaved in corporeality just as they behaved in spirituality since the corporeal life is only an addition to spirituality; it doesn’t affect it in any way and certainly doesn’t replace it.
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From KabTV’s “New Life 672 – What The Torah And Mitzvot (Commandments) Actually Are,” 1/13/16

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New Life 673 – Torah And Mitzvot: Not What You Thought
 Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Tal Mandelbaum ben Moshe

Humanity lives in its world without being aware of the system that manages it, and so it takes a beating. This system is what we call “Torah.” The Torah describes the 613 forces that manage a person and the 613 desires that are desirable as a correct reaction to the active forces. The situation is like a person who is in a dark room with a treasure, and he is hungry and sad, not seeing anything. And only if he implements the Torah and Mitzvot (commandments) according to the definition of Mitzvot in the wisdom of Kabbalah, will he correct his desires and discover the Light.

From the period of the destruction of the first Beit HaMikdash (Temple), the decline of the generations began, and ignorance spread among the people of Israel about the understanding of the Torah and Mitzvot. The children of Israel who fell under the control of the ego stopped seeing life spiritually and the attitude towards the Torah and Mitzvot became a formality. They implemented the Mitzvot in their literal sense as written in the Torah in an external form without trying to reach, “And you shall love your friend as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18), and the connection with the Light that Reforms to correct the soul disappeared.

If we return to the internal and correct implementation of Torah and Mitzvot, another world will be opened for us, and we will discover the upper force that is the general force in nature, and we will understand how it acts on us and toward what it is leading us. The correct reaction of a person to this force makes him similar to it until he becomes one with it.

It is our obligation today to teach humanity what the correct meaning of Torah and Mitzvot is; otherwise, life will just go on until a time when it will be possible to attain eternity. According to the religious perception, a person expects a reward, a paradise in the next world while the wisdom of Kabbalah teaches us that everything depends on the person who attains it, “You will see your world in your lifetime” (Berachot 17a), and if we develop love for each other, we will discover the upper world.

In the past we attained the upper world from which we understood how to relate to everything that exists on all levels of existence: still, vegetative, animate, and speaking. Over time, the feeling of the upper world disappeared and we were left with only mechanical actions without any correction of the heart.

The human ego is in constant development; the world is continuing to become more difficult, filled with emptiness, and humanity doesn’t know how to fulfill itself. The screaming will be terrible until ultimately everyone will reach the question: What are we living for? And then a new world will open before us.

With the help of the Light that Reforms, we correct the 613 desires in us, from egoism to love. Each one of us is connected to others with 613 threads; in our egoistic nature we want to exploit each other, and the correction is to want to connect and bestow goodness to everyone.
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From KabTV’s “New Life 673 – Torah And Mitzvot: Not What You Thought,” 1/7/16

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Question: Is there a connection between Israel, the Jewish people, Judaism, and the Torah?

Answer: Unfortunately these concepts are only slightly connected at the moment.

The Jewish people are the nation that was founded according to the laws of the wisdom of Kabbalah, the laws of close cooperation, mutual help, and a mutual struggle over egoism, to raise above egosim in the connection between us.

To do this there is a whole method that teaches us how to rise above our increasingly growing ego. When we reach this connection, the spiritual connection that appears between us enables us to be a nation.

Modern Judaism is divided into two parts:

• Judaism that implements the external part of the Torah and focuses on observing the Mitzvot (commandments) in the corporeal earthly form as Orthodox Jews do.
• Judaism that implements the internal part of the Torah and focuses on intentions: “What am I doing this for, what is my goal?” The focus here is not on the physical observation but on the internal observation of the Mitzvot that are aimed at ascending above our nature, and the ascent that follows to the next level of our existence, a level on which we exist before we are born and after we die.

These two parts of the Torah are opposites: the internal part of the Torah is called the wisdom of Kabbalah and the external part is called the keeping of the corporeal Mitzvot.

The wisdom of Kabbalah will gradually be revealed not only to the Jews but also to all the people in the world because everyone has to eventually reach complete mutual cooperation between them thanks to the wisdom of Kabbalah, since otherwise this world has no right to exist.

The year 5,776 according to the Hebrew calendar is now coming to an end. According to the Torah humanity has to reach the full mutual connection by the end of the year 6,000. There are 224 years left to reach the state in which we will be able to feel as organs in one healthy body, living in complete cooperation between us. Can you imagine that? Everyone connected to seven billion other people.

This is what we have to do. It is possible on the spiritual level. When you ascend a bit with the help of the wisdom of Kabbalah, you begin to see a totally different dimension, the leadership system of our world in mutual cooperation. In fact you can choose your future.
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In spiritual advancement, great obstacles are placed before a person—all the big egoistic forces that in the Torah are called Balak, Balaam, etc. continue to grow. By overcoming them, a person ascends and begins to understand the structure of the management of the world.

Precisely through the contradictions and problems that he faces and through their gradual resolution, a person becomes wise and strong in intellect, desire, and understanding, and in this way he can take upon himself the reins for the management of the system of creation.

On the way to the summit, the egoistic forces push a person away from the mission more and more strongly. First he corrects the desires of the world of Beria, then those of the world of Yetzira and then those of the world of Assiya, and then he gradually raises them all to the level of Atzilut. The process of correction is done from easy to more difficult problems because the correction of easier problems helps him to understand, discover, and correct problems that are more difficult.

With the help of two opposing forces, a person begins to manipulate his properties, and then builds himself between two systems (the right and left lines) through the right connection between them, as in an electrical equation of plus and minus, or capacitor and solenoid. After all, everything in nature is constructed according to the right integration of two forces.

Life is always between opposing characteristics and the mutual and correct cooperation between them. So the wisdom of Kabbalah relies on this principle, correctly matching them and existing between them. Only in this way can a person discover the Creator, the system, the force, that is above these two forces.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 7/8/15

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Question: Balak’s proposal touched the personal interests of Balaam who didn’t want anything in the world except to hurt the Jews. Balaam was the grandson of Lavan and he believed the slander of the sons of Lavan that said that Jacob robbed their father and took everything from him.

Answer: Really, Jacob stole the birthright that Esau had to receive through deceit. To date, this is the reason for the hatred of all nations toward the Jews.

According to Islamic sources, the Muslims don’t have and did not have hatred. Although Abraham sent out Hagar with Ishmael, they received this as an act of a great prophet because Abraham was their father. In this regard they don’t have complaints toward Israel.

Here it is spoken about what Jacob did with Esau, meaning claims directed to the middle line. The Christians based their claims on Israel to expose this problem: “You took away our birthright.” And when their prophet Jesus arrived, then everything seems to be restored. This is a very big problem that is based on spiritual forces.

Imagine that an inheritance comes to you, and someone takes it from you. Your grandchildren become poor, and the descendants of the one who stole the inheritance from you are thriving and enjoying a good life in all generations. Interestingly, on one hand the Christians understand it, but on the other hand, the Creator restrained them, so they didn’t come to us with the Crusades. How can such a thing be if they feel towards us hatred because we crucified their God, or more correctly their prophet?

In all generations one sees clearly the hand of God: when from above is given an order for pogroms, they execute them in the time and place as set. When there is no order, they don’t do anything. After all, logically they should have annihilated us if not for our historical role, to reveal the wisdom of Kabbalah and transfer it to the world. That is, until today we are the basis of their troubles, the source of their sufferings, and it all comes from there.

Therefore one needs to understand Balaam, who is on the level of Moses. In comparison to the nation of Israel, look at the condition those nations are in that he honors; he is their guardian, connects them with the Creator. And what is he doing now? Instead of cursing, he is blessing!

If we stop all these oppositions, we will see there is no greater tragedy in the history of humanity that touches so many civilizations through thousands of years! It is not a simple thing.

When the wisdom of Kabbalah will begin to be revealed to the nations of the world, then everything will be revealed. On one hand, they, so to speak, will have claims against the Jews. But on the other side, precisely these claims will help them understand everything that happened. Why was history spun from above precisely this way, where is the reason concealed for that, and why did it have to happen through the lie of the selling of the birthright?

All this interweaving during the generations and the alleged false actions of the Jews against the Christians must be revealed in the course of time.

All these tricks are nothing more than the deceit of the ego that is lying to us; there is nothing else here. It is impossible to go directly against the ego; it is possible to deceive it.

It is a force against which nothing can be done. We will see how all the peoples of the world—Muslims and Christians—will rise up against Israel. They will erase us from the whole world map. In Eastern Europe some countries already don’t indicate Israel in their atlases; that is how their ego revolts. How will you go directly against the ego if the whole world is against you? What can you do? Logically, a nuclear bomb would fall here so that there would be nothing left of us.

Question: What stops the world from doing this?

Answer: Our upper designation and the upper leadership of the Creator, although the peoples of the world don’t sense it, subconsciously they feel that they cannot allow themselves to attack us. If there is such an order as in the time of the Crusades, the exile, the Middle Ages, and Hitler, then it is another matter. But if there is no order like that, meaning the nation of Israel is in motion for correction, then their hands are tied.

But today we spoil the whole picture, and therefore it has to come to a state that the whole world will be completely against us! This is the war of Gog and Magog.

For the first time in the history of mankind, our spiritual mission is clearly manifest, when as a result of this trouble between the right line and the left line, the Creator will be revealed as the middle line. And this will be the critical point, because the struggle between the left and right lines is the confrontation between the two forces Balaam and Moses.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 6/24/15

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The Torah, “Numbers” 22:22: God’s wrath flared because he was going, and an angel of the Lord stationed himself on the road to thwart him, and he was riding on his she-donkey, and his two servants were with him.

There is only one law in nature that refers to all of the levels of existence called the law of love and bestowal. The Torah calls the individual forces of this law “angels.”

The law of gravity, for example, can be described as an angel that sits inside the earth and catches everything that is in the air and on the surface of the earth and pulls it to the ground.

A person feels angels as positive or negative forces because a person can measure and feel a certain phenomenon in his senses only compared to a phenomenon that is opposite to it such as light and darkness, cold and heat, bitterness and sweetness, strength and weakness, and so on. This is how every phenomenon appears in nature because everything must be balanced.

A person also exists opposite from the Creator at first. Although the Creator is concealed from us, we measure everything in relation to Him. This is our nature, and therefore, it is actually in this oppositeness that we feel we exist.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 8/12/15

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The Torah, “Numbers,” 22:7 – 22:11: And the elders of Moab and the elders of Midian departed with the rewards of divination in their hand; and they came unto Balaam, and spoke unto him the words of Balak. And he said unto them: “Lodge here this night, and I will bring you back word, as the LORD may speak unto me”; and the princes of Moab abode with Balaam. And God came unto Balaam, and said: “What men are these with thee?” And Balaam said unto God: “Balak the son of Zippor, king of Moab, hath sent unto me [saying]: Behold the people that is come out of Egypt, it covereth the face of the earth; now, come curse me them; peradventure I shall be able to fight against them, and shall drive them out.”

“It covereth the face of the earth” refers to his egoistic desire and he is ready to digest it and turn it into an attribute of pure bestowal.

The Torah, “Numbers,” 22:12: And God said unto Balaam: “Thou shalt not go with them; thou shalt not curse the people; for they are blessed.”

Question: Does Balaam speak with the Creator because he is on the same level as the Creator?

Answer: No. The Creator is the only upper force that controls everything and all the other figures in the Torah are a person’s forces and attributes with which he has to work in order to resemble the Creator. Balaam has an absolute connection with the Creator because he is on the level of a prophet and can fulfill the Creator’s commandments. Moreover, it says, “and God came to Balaam” and not that Balaam heard the Creator’s voice, which means that it is not the level of Bina (of hearing) anymore but the level of Hochma (seeing), the revelation of the Creator in the attainment. This is the uppermost prophetic level.

Question: But Balaam hates Israel.

Answer: This is indeed a problem, and what does it say about Jethro? After all, Jethro is Balaam’s grandfather, which means a level that is higher than his.

Question: Does that mean that Jethro also hates Israel?

Answer: Jethro is the force that isn’t found in Israel but which is in contact with the Creator, with Israel, and with Pharaoh. He understands the goal of creation and its purpose and why it has to be in this system. How does Moses advance? Where does all his wisdom come from? From Jethro! This is the only system we can study the wisdom from since the Light actually comes unto the wisdom of Kabbalah and thus enables us to use it correctly and to fulfill it.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 7/8/15

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From the words of the “Midrash Rabba,” Parshat “Balak”: For the most part, Balaam has very little interest in his curses. He worked solely and only in exchange for money, and if the agreement assured him of a profit, he could curse anyone whom he formerly blessed and vice versa.

Balaam acts like a contemporary politician; he only does what is useful in a given moment, without any emotional involvement.

Comment: But nevertheless Balaam confronted the Creator; he could feel the “master of the house.”

Answer: Moses often confronted the Creator too. He struck the rock with a staff and asked to be taken and the people spared. Basically, he had many arguments with the Creator and so did Balaam. Both of them, both Moses and Balaam, had the possibility of turning toward the Creator with a call, with pleading, with a request, and even with a demand.
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