Entries in the 'correction' Category

The Soul’s Correction Is Invisible on the Corporeal Level

soulQuestions I received on the soul’s correction:

Question: Which actions bring about the soul’s correction?

My Answer: When the quality of bestowal is born in a person, helping him rise above his egoism.

Question: How is this expressed on the corporeal level, among people who study and don’t study Kabbalah?

My Answer: It doesn’t. No one around you will notice anything. How could they?

Question: How is love for others implemented if the corporeal aspect is not used?

My Answer: Through thoughts and intentions. If possible, also through actions – the dissemination of Kabbalah.

Question: What is the purpose of this blog?

My Answer: To explain the purpose of the world’s creation and how to attain it through the good path.

Question: What is the purpose of man’s existence?

My Answer: To attain the purpose of his creation.

Question: Why don’t these two things coincide?

My Answer: Because people do not want to actualize the method of attaining the goal and instead prefer to be on the path of suffering.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Intention and Action
Laitman.com Post: Why Did I Open this Blog?
Kabbalah Today Article: Echoes of the Future
Article: “The Structure of the Soul”
Article: “Who am I?”

How Egoism Compares to Kabbalah

You Are Welcome to Help YourselfEgoistic religion: Nature and Science, the two most quoted science magazines, have published synoptic articles on the origin of religion (“The Origin and Evolution of Religious Prosociality” in Science, and “Religion: Bound to Believe?” in Nature). This topic became popular again after the release of Richard Dawkins’ book, The God Delusion. Dawkins supposes that the spread of computer and biological viruses is similar to the spread of religious ideas: that their spread is based on an egoistic mechanism, and this is why we are so susceptible to religious ideas.

Altruistic religion: Canadian psychologists Ara Norenzayan and Azim Shariff of the University of British Columbia went even further. In an article published in Science magazine they suppose that the value of religion must be tied to the stimulation of positive behavior and personal example, and with people’s egoistic need to constantly display their high moral qualities, trustworthiness and willingness to sacrifice their personal interests for the benefit of society.

Kabbalah: These ideas are surpassed by Kabbalah, which allows man to ascend entirely above his egoism and to make it “absolutely useful” to society, by giving everything and receiving only what is necessary in order to live and bestow. In this scenario the reward is not what one receives from society, but comes from the Creator – closeness with the Creator. This is what gives one the energy and inspiration to work wholeheartedly for the benefit of the society.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Religion’s Place In Our Lives
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Humankind vs. Human Kindness
Baal HaSulam Article: “The Essence of Religion and Its Purpose”
Baal HaSulam Article: “Peace in the World”

The Foundation Of The Wisdom Of Kabbalah


A question I received: I’m trying to reconcile the contradiction between the notion of “faith above reason” and your recurring claim that Kabbalah isn’t built on faith, but on sensations and accurate knowledge.

Is the meaning of “faith above reason” that instead of blindly believing something I an told, I take the path that allows me to see for myself whether the things I’m being told are right or wrong?

My Answer: The first man who felt the Creator was Adam (see Baal HaSulam’s article, “The Secret of Attaining the Wisdom” in the book Fruits of Wisdom). The Jewish calendar starts on that day – the first day of the month of Tishrey of the year 0 (5768 years ago).

In the generations following Adam there were others who attained the Creator, but Kabbalah became what it is now only twenty generations later, in Ancient Babylon (4000 years ago). A Babylonian priest named Abraham discovered Kabbalah and described its basic laws in The Book of Creation. He also gathered students and formed the first Kabbalistic group. His followers – his physical and spiritual sons (in those times people were named by the leader of the clan or tribe) continued to develop spiritually. This continued until the people fell from the sensation of the Creator to the sensation of just our world (and as a result, the Second Temple was destroyed 2000 years ago).

After this fall from the sensation of the spiritual world into our world, all of the definitions and names they used before, and their language in general (Hebrew) fell from the spiritual level to the corporeal level. The same words began to signify the things that they started to see, hear and understand. That is to say, the words acquired a corporeal meaning, instead of the things they used to signify in the past. Ever since, the Kabbalistic texts were written with the same letters and words, but everything depends on who reads them – whether it’s someone who’s on the spiritual level like the author, or only on the corporeal level.

“Faith above reason,” for instance, denotes the following condition: the desire (quality) to bestow (Bina, Hafetz Hessed, the Light of Hassadim) is above the desire to receive, called “knowledge,” because in it one receives the Light of Hochma, the Light of Wisdom.

For those who do not perceive the Upper World, the word “faith” means belief in something that may or may not exist, something people only talk about but cannot sense. Kabbalah never talks about this kind of faith, because by definition it engages only in the revelation of the Creator to man in this world! (See Baal HaSulam’s article, “The Essence of the Wisdom of Kabbalah.”)

So if you want to understand the truth, when reading the Kabbalistic texts you must “translate” what you read from the corporeal level to the spiritual level. Then you won’t err like all the religious people who read Kabbalistic texts (the Torah, the Talmud, the prayer book, and so on), interpreting them on the corporeal level. This is actually the source of mankind’s misunderstanding of the Creator.

In the article, “The Secret of Attaining the Wisdom,” Baal HaSulam writes: “The attainment of the whole universe in its absolute depth and interconnections of its parts was revealed in its entirety by Adam.” This is why we call him “The First Man” – because he was the first to achieve the level of “Human” – Adam (in Hebrew), which means “similar to the Creator.”

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Religion Is a Cultural Tradition, Kabblah Is the Method of Correction
Talk – Disclosure of the Wisdom of Kabbalah, 1
Chapter 6.2 from the book The Path of Kabblah – “Abraham the Patriarch”
Chapter 24 from the book Attaining the World’s Beyond – “Faith”

The Coming of the Messiah

Dr. Michael LaitmanTwo questions I received on the Messiah:

Question: The Book of Zohar says that before the arrival of the Mashiach Ben David (Messiah Son of David), the Mashiach Ben Yoseph (Messiah Son of Joseph) will come. There will be a preparation before arrival of the Mashiach. Is the world’s current condition (the crisis) this preparation? And what kind of force is the Mashiach Ben Yoseph?

My Answer: The Mashiach Ben Yoseph is the revelation of the modern method of correction by the Ari in the 16th century. The world’s present condition is the beginning of the revelation of the Creator, or the preparation for His revelation. The speed of this process depends on us.

Question: Is the Messiah the name of the Light that’s powerful enough to raise both the righteous and the wicked to the Creator – everyone together, in response to mankind’s prayer after recognizing that it’s impossible to keep living in this world? Or is it a person sent to this world with the power to attract the Light called the Messiah?

My Answer: The Messiah is the revelation of the Creator. This action (revelation) of the Upper Light takes place together with the revelation of knowledge about the nature of creation, its plan, process and purpose. This is achieved through disseminating this knowledge (“the call of Messiah”) by those who aspire toward the goal of creation. To the degree people resist this process, their intentions and actions – the forces of resistance – will elicit suffering.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: The Third Temple and the Coming of the Messiah
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Kabbalah Today Article: Echoes of the Future
Chapter 10 from the Book The Kabbalah Experience – “The Messiah and the End of Days”

The Crisis of Earthly Wisdom

History Is the Unraveling of Reshimot Inside UsTwo questions I received on failed “wisdoms”:

Question: Why are all the “wise people” in crisis?

My Answer: Because it has become clear that their “wisdom” is in crisis! After all, it is human and earthly, not “Upper.” Only the wisdom of Kabbalah alone will become revealed to everyone – proudly alone, on the throne of the highest value.

Question: Lenin was driven by the desire to make more people (the proletariat) happy with the help of a better society. In essence – though not in form – this desire coincides with the Creator’s desire to make the creatures happy. Then why do you still feel “sick” about his “speech on the armored car?”

My Answer: Half of the world are still sick in the stomach just thinking of him! Today they still can’t recover from this mistake of forcefully imposing the condition of unity, mutual guarantee, brotherhood, communal property, and mutual means of production, as well as the consequences of this.

All of these must occur by means of man’s self-correction, voluntarily, and through education, instead of through the overbearing “education” of the KGB, when they were annihilating their own people. Baal HaSulam writes about it in his newspaper “HaUma” (The Nation) and in the article “The Future Generation.”

Related Material:
Lesson on the article: “Peace In the World”
Introduction to the Book of Zohar. Items 19-25

How Will We Live In The Last Generation?

liveTwo questions I received on life after the full correction:

Question: If people will rise to the highest spiritual degree, how will we live? What will we eat? Where will we sleep? How will we travel from one place to another? What will be our general form of existence?

My Answer: There are two states:

1. Before the full correction, when our corporeal level of egoism is still not corrected. Hence even though we attain spiritual degrees, we still retain the sensation of this world.

2. After we are fully corrected, when even our corporeal egoism is corrected, we will cease perceiving this world. That’s because it is perceived precisely in this corporeal part of our desire, whereas we will sense ourselves as being fully and exclusively in the World of Infinity – the only true state. All the other states are partial states of its concealment. In Hebrew the word for “concealment” is Olama, and it is the root of the word “world” – Olam. Hence all the concealments of the one existing state of infinity are called worlds.

In the article, “The Future Generation,” Baal HaSulam provides a detailed description of what life will be like before the attainment of the second state above. I have also written a book on this article, called The Last Generation. In addition, there are lessons on it in our online archive.

Question: Did the sons of Israel accept the mutual guarantee after the exodus from Egypt? And what does the exodus from Egypt represent for us?

My Answer: Yes, after their exodus from Egypt the sons of Israel (the group of Kabbalists, students of Abraham) accepted the condition of the “mutual guarantee” – an absolute spiritual bond between them, and the willingness to be as one soul of Adam.

For them as well as for us, this signifies the complete unification into one desire (one soul). However, in our case this is no longer a unification of a portion of the “Babylonians,” but of the whole “Babylon” (all of humankind) in the joint desire of Adam.

For more on this, see the article “The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee).” In it Baal HaSulam writes that the sons of Israel are just a transitional link intended to pass the method of egoism’s correction, Kabbalah, on to all of humankind.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: The Book of Zohar. Chapter “The Seventh Commandment”
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Chapter from the Book A Guide To The Hidden Wisdom of Kabbalah: Lesson 9
Shamati #110: “A Field Which the Lord Has Blessed”

The Machsom: Numbers and Statistics

MachsomA question I received: You’ve been the leader and mentor of the Bnei Baruch group for nearly twenty years. Maybe it’s time to make a public summary? How many people have crossed the Machsom over this period of time, and how has the world changed as a consequence? Or is this no longer the objective today? Are you now simply trying to change the world without your students’ personal correction?

I understand that this question will be deleted, but at least someone will read it. But if you do decide to publish an answer, then please don’t beat around the bush: give us real numbers and results, and the actual improvement in the world.

My Answer:

  • Number of students in the world – around 2,000,000.
  • Number of groups in the world – 73.
  • Number of people who have crossed the Machsom – 19.
  • Number of people who are about to cross the Machsom – 210. The rest will cross it by the year 2012.
  • Annual growth of students – 700-900%.
  • Number of hopeless students – 1. It’s you.

Hollywood Is Also Affected by the World Crisis

America - Optimistic, and Why?News Report (translated from Israland): Hollywood will be affected by the global crisis as well. Nevertheless, film studios feel better than everyone else because most people prefer watching movies to watching the market keep plummeting. This is what happened during the Great Depression in America 80 years ago.

My Comment: Man is a will to enjoy or be filled. His top two demands are “bread,” and “something to feast his eyes on” (a spectacle). It has always been this way throughout our entire history, when the ego was growing from one generation to the next.

Today, however, we’ve stepped up to a new level of development: We are no longer pushed forward by the quantitative growth of egoism, but by its qualitative change. Today egoism has become global. Hence we can no longer be satisfied with “bread and a spectacle.” The blows of fate are manifesting due to our global, egoistic opposition to the altruistic Nature. And the blows will keep getting bigger until we change the direction of our development, redirecting it toward the correction of our egoism, until we reach the point of “Love thy neighbor as thyself.”

Only then will we become similar to Nature and the blows will stop coming at us. Even Hollywood will have to change its “spectacles” from egoistic to altruistic if it is to survive!

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Reflections On The Crisis

crisisGlobalization is the revelation of a new level of connection between us. It should be beneficial, but as we can see, it only causes more problems.

Why is this happening? It is because we are using the integral global system backwards – aiming to suppress one another, instead of learning to work together. We keep trying to defeat each other, to put others down and be superior to them.

Even if we wanted to maintain the proper interconnection – the commerce principle of “I scratch your back, you scratch mine” – this would still bring us to a crisis today. It would happen even if we did not lie to one another and conducted honest commerce. That’s because nowadays we are all interconnected, like parts of one body. Under these conditions it is useless to be egoistically honest, just as it is useless to create a global government or a world bank – to seek a common regulator.

The world’s political and economic leaders want to arrange a joint meeting between the G20 (heads of the leading countries) to discuss a joint global government. However, this will not help us come out of the crisis, because we are in opposition to Nature and Its general law. The system must not just be based on the correct interconnection, on agreements and honesty, but must operate in accordance with the inner connection between the elements of a single system, at whose basis lies a consideration of others as yourself.

This is the root of the problem. Kabbalah warns humanity that if we continue to try building our relationships according to the corporeal, egoistic laws – even the most direct and honest ones, following the principle of “what’s yours is yours and what’s mine is mine” – then the system will not work and we will elicit an even greater explosion.

As we start to reveal that we are all part of a single global system, we must come to the conclusion that everything is collective, and everyone must take care of everyone else. The only things that are “personal” are those necessary for one’s existence, while everything else is the collective property of the whole world. This pertains to natural resources, goods and production, education, health care, and so forth. Everything must be collective, global property. Otherwise the crises will not stop, and no matter how hard we try to set things right according to our egoistic logic, we will continue experiencing one crisis after another.

Kabbalah warns us that nature has already elevated us – in terms of our development – to the level of a single integral system, which follows the law of absolute interconnection of all its parts. No one can escape this law. Essentially, this is the ancient Biblical principle of “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” And we must use our ego in order to establish the correct connection with others.

Even if we create a rational system of interaction between different countries, according to the egoistic principle, “what’s mine is mine and what’s yours is yours,” then this quality of Sodom will actually bring about an even greater crisis. That’s because in doing so we will seek to use the interconnection between people in order to raise the usage of egoism even higher, instead of correcting it. In this scenario a crisis will arise which will reflect this pseudo-correction, in order to expose the error. And it will be stronger and more acute, in order to teach us a lesson of what not to do.

What does Kabbalah suggest? To already take into account the future form, the functioning of the integral system as one body, by the principle of “the end of an action lies in the initial thought,” and actualize this end state to the best of our ability right now, even if we do it gradually and fragmentarily.

Does “actualize it right now” mean “fair distribution”? No. However, even if we initially accept the distribution of “what’s mine is mine and what’s yours is yours,” and at the same time begin to intensively teach all humanity the laws of coexistence, which are based on the discovery of our society as a single organism; if we teach people the laws of behavior and distribution – then we will already be on the right path. We will shift to the path of correction and will stop being opposite to nature. We will then feel an immediate reduction of the suffering.

Baal HaSulam has a parable that says: We have lost our way in the desert and don’t know where to go. Now that we’ve completely lost our strength, we’ve realized that it was impossible to avoid wandering in the desert. And now we are revealing the path that we must walk. At the end of the path lies a castle full of all the goodness in the world. We are desperate; we are ready to sink into depression and drugs. All of a sudden, in this situation, we receive a global positioning system (a GPS map or GPS navigator) from people who can see everything from above. If a person agrees and changes his attitude to the world, then he discovers that the whole world was created for this path, and he suddenly has the strength to reach the goal.

How can we implement this change? We can do it by revealing the goal and the method of attaining it. The method comes to us from Ancient Babylon, when this problem of civilization came to light for the first time: a closed civilization is like a single body and must function as one organism. That is also when Kabbalah was revealed, in order to change the use of egoism – to use it for the benefit of society. However, the people didn’t want to use Kabbalah, and solved the problem in another way – they scattered all over the earth and globalization receded.

Now we are faced with the same situation, but this time we must utilize it, because we can no longer “run away” from one another, just as we cannot destroy the interconnection between us. Should America, Russia and Europe decide to isolate themselves from one another, they will face the emergence of Nazism in their countries and bring the world to a Third World War – a nuclear one.

What is the most practical solution that we can offer people? They have to know about the world they are living in today. Today we must learn about how to live in an integral system, where we’re all together “in one boat.” In this boat, the salvation of all depends on each individual. This is what we must also teach our children. We are dealing with nature: a global ecology and a global human society. We must teach ourselves and our children how to be incorporated in this system, where every person must care for the others.

Related Material:
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Baal HaSulam Article: “Building the Future Society”
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The Society of the Future

Why Do We See Such a Diverse World?A question I received: I have a question regarding the society of the future. I came from a state that was a part of former Yugoslavia, which was an artificially established “communist” state. I can still remember the good feelings that everybody had in that society. However, it fell apart and all sorts of nationalistic, ethnic and religious hatred emerged, escalating in a terrible war.

Now, after reading a portion of the material on your website, I find it difficult to understand one of the principles stated in the text of “Building the Future Society,” which contradicts some things from other texts. In “Building the Future Society” it is clearly stated that it is the Jews who should be members of the future altruistic-communistic government, because they suffered most in history and thus are the most experienced and knowledgeable about the best ways of ruling.

In other texts it is also clearly stated that the Creator invites all nations to unite, that the word Israel means “directly to God” rather than current Israeli citizens or Jews. I wonder if there is a sound explanation to this. Can you please clarify this for me as well as for others who are firm believers in the so called “Jewish conspiracy”?

My Answer: Historically it happened that a part of the people from Ancient Babylon have already gone through correction, reached the level of the Temple, and then fell from the spiritual level of “Love thy neighbor as thyself” into our world of “Unfounded hatred.” These people are the carriers of the inner spiritual potential – and you are admitting this very fact with your prejudice to them! They are heading the dissemination of the method of correcting all humanity. This is why they have already gone through this path.

Everyone who joins them are also Israel (IsraEl – those who aspire toward the Creator), and later everyone else will also gradually join the process of correction. This is how the full correction of the common soul of Adam is attained. For more on this, see items 61-71 of the “Introduction to the Book of Zohar.”

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