Entries in the 'kabbalah' Category

The Degree Of “Virginity”

Dr. Michael LaitmanWritings of Rabash, Article 29, “Marrying a Virgin”: Every time a person receives a wife, he will receive a virgin who has never had a husband. In other words, he has never used this Malchut and she must always be a new wife. In spiritual work Malchut is called “the kingdom of heaven” which a person must take upon himself every day anew. He has to imagine that he is now starting spiritual work and does not care about anything that came before.

The Creator created creation and exists in adhesion and unity with it. We call this the first state or the world of Infinity. However, creation does not perceive itself in this state. It was simply created this way, but it is not permeated by any details of perception besides one sensation. Therefore, it is like the still degree, a drop of semen which does not have any self-perception.

The Creator’s desire is to bring creation to the realization of who He is so it would become similar and equal to Him. Therefore the true state is concealed from creation and it instead begins to perceive itself in the opposite state. This phase, in turn, divides into several: creation perceives itself as existing at the still, vegetative, animate, and speaking levels.

You and I feel our existence on the human degree of this world. Yet we don’t feel that we developed from the still level. We do not feel our past life cycles on the human level, but simply experience ourselves as existing here and now.

The matter is that every analysis has to happen by itself. A person in this world discerns adhesion, connection with the Creator, and develops to a level where he begins to express his part in creation, his attitude to the Creator.

The Creator brings him to this, giving him the sensation of emptiness in life, but on the other hand motivating him to connect to Him and become similar to Him. Thereby the Creator awakens a person’s desire in the first spiritual point. If a person properly realizes this desire by means of the method of correction, meaning the science of Kabbalah, if he increases his small desire with the help of the group, raising the importance of becoming similar to the Creator and uniting with Him, if he eventually makes his desire similar to the Creator, then he acquires a new degree. The initial point in him grows to become Malchut.

In Hebrew Malchut means kingdom. It is also called “the kingdom of heaven” because a person makes it similar to Bina, the heavens. That is how the first connection between Malchut and Bina, between creation and the Creator, is made.

Then, in order to give a person the opportunity to develop further, everything he had before becomes erased and he receives the next part of the egoistic desire that has to be corrected and made similar to the Creator. This part has to be brought to adhesion so he would become a person on a higher degree. Then no trace of the previous state is left.

Thus, if a person works correctly, then he continuously receives “a virgin for a wife.” Then he once against corrects his desire for the sake of bestowal, making it similar to the Creator and acquiring greater equivalence and closeness with Him. When he completes this phase, the adhesion once again disappears in him and a person again receives a new, corrupted desire that he once again has to work with by means of the group, raising the importance of the goal, increasing his desire, and uniting it with other souls. That is how a person advances.

He continuously receives a new part of Malchut, a “new wife.” If he works for the sake of bestowal, wishing to become similar to the Creator, then in the new state everything that occurred before becomes erased completely and he does not have anything to rely on from past experience. This is indeed a new degree, “virginity.”
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/20/11, Writings of Rabash

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The One Who Makes All The Difference

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: In the “Introduction to the Book, Panim Meirot uMasbirot,” Item 3, Baal HaSulam writes: “We distinguish four divisions in the Speaking species, arranged in gradations one atop the other. Those are the Masses, the Strong, the Wealthy, and the Sagacious. They are equal to the four degrees in the whole of reality, called “Still,” “Vegetative,” “Animate,” and “Speaking [human]…. It follows that the value of one person from the Speaking equalizes with the value of all the forces in the Vegetative and the Animate in the whole of reality at that time, and in all the past generations.”

Is it correct to assume that it is enough to have one person who, by having made his free choice, can open the path of further development to all other levels of nature, which cannot evolve further without it?

Answer: Certainly, by using his free will, one person can open the path to and ensure further development of all the still, vegetative, and animate levels of the human pyramid if all of them unify with each other and join this human degree. This is how Rashbi, the ARI, and Baal HaSulam opened it for us. One person can draw and lead all the others if he is at the “speaking” level of development, whereas they are at the still, vegetative, and animate ones.

We see this in practice. How would humanity evolve if not for certain outstanding individuals who open the door to a new world for the others?

But after such a person makes a breakthrough, reaching balance is up to all others who follow him. The former has done his job, as for instance, Baal HaSulam who revealed to us the entire method of the wisdom of Kabbalah; now it is up to us to actualize it. Until our work is complete, we won’t achieve equilibrium.

He merely explains to us that the problem lies in our imbalance with nature and it’s necessary to come to balance. Nature in its integral form is the Creator. It is with Him that we must harmonize ourselves, meaning to reach equivalence of form, oneness. This is what we must implement. It is necessary to engage the whole world into it, which will require a lot of work.

You may ask who is this person that makes all the difference and must use his free will? You are this person! It is every person who received spiritual awakening within and heard about the method of its realization from the outside.

Only the initial awakening occurs within, and because of it, a person hears a call to him or her from the outside. As a result, one comes to a place where it is indeed possible to realize one’s free will.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/17/2011, “Introduction to the Book, Panim Meirot uMasbirot

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Open The Door To Tomorrow

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe world is reaching the state of wanting to become unified! It has to become unified as a result of the revelation of our inner desire due to nature’s demand. That is why our mind is starting to develop and we invent things that help us hear each other from a distance. That is how we invented the radio 150 years ago. It was just 150 years ago! Then the television appeared less than 100 years ago and people invented the cinema in order to create the illusion of motion. Then, around 25 years ago we reached the developed of the Internet connection.

All of this is a result of our desire which develops and demands greater integration and unity among us. This desire develops and we cannot stop it. It demands constant, unceasing, and universal interconnection, 24 hours a day, all over the world.

200 years ago a person would travel to somewhere and then he would return. During his absence of a month, for example, he did not know what was happening back home. But today this is impossible! In addition, books have disappeared. It takes too long for someone to write, print, and send it, and then for someone to read it…. Newspapers, the news, and everything will happen at the speed of light, at the speed of electronic connection. All of this is caused by the need for our correction!

Our nature is being revealed as a single, integral system, forcing us to be connected together. What happens in one place is immediately continued in another place and everything around begins to be set aflame. Who throws the match that ignites the whole world? No one! It’s happening because we are connected among each other in our inner desires.

If you compare the beginning of the year to its end, you will see the whole world totally interconnected. After all, we have to advance towards the general correction, to become as one man with one heart, to attain the state where we are in the world of Infinity, to reveal the single force of connection among us.

That is why we have to develop our Kabbalistic television and Internet resources in this way, so they would be as interactive and live as possible. Live broadcasts must take place around the clock and people should be calling each other from the whole world in all the languages so no one would feel any separation or difference between anyone. This has to happen live, rather than being recorded ahead of time and pulled out of the archive. That way the information won’t be perceived as “dead,” but everyone will feel that it is live! Your desire lives in the present and no longer perceives what you did yesterday. It has changed, but you are trying to sell it something that’s already dead.

People will feel this so acutely that they won’t be able to watch movies! You will feel that you are not impressed by a movie that used to excite you or make you cry. You will see that this does not affect you because it was filmed several months ago, so it’s no longer live! Everything has to happen at this very moment. I am giving you my sensations, while the external form that helps us be virtually connected with one another is just a means to attain the inner connection from heart to heart! If we could do things in this way, we would achieve success in disseminating the science of Kabbalah!

This is what the whole world is yearning for. It doesn’t even know that yet, but this is exactly what it desires. A person who understands this and knows how to tell the world the right things from his heart, how to tell the world about the things it aspires for, and to do so in a way that’s not only current today, but also tomorrow to some extent—that person opens the door to tomorrow!
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From the lesson on the weekly Torah portion on 2/10/11

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The Answer To All My Questions

Dr. Michael LaitmanKabbalah does not talk about our imaginary world, but about the soul’s correction and how to attain the true reality. The true reality is the Kli in which the Creator is perceived by virtue of a certain degree of adhesion with Him.

The Kli or soul is divided into two parts: Israel, the part that aspires toward unity with the Creator, toward the goal, and the nations of the world, which is the part that’s unable to do so. We feel a certain yearning to reveal the Creator. The science of Kabbalah is by definition the method of revealing the Creator to creation. In other words, it is talking about revealing the quality of bestowal and love in creation itself.

In order for us to have the opportunity to attain this goal, the people who have the suitable desire unite in the common field of the Creator. They feel attracted to one another without knowing why and they come together like electrical charges or metal shavings in a magnetic field. That’s when they acquire the opportunity to realize the method of correction.

At first they do not know that they have to correct themselves. They simply feel a calling to the most important thing: “What am I living for? What is the meaning of my life?” Eventually they start to understand that all of these questions lead to the revelation of the Creator, the upper force that builds, supports, forms, and controls all of reality. There is nothing besides this force.

That is how a person goes from the question about the meaning of life to the question about how to reveal the Creator. After all, the revelation of the Creator gives him the answer to everything. Thus, in order to come closer to revealing the Creator, these people unite.

The Creator is concealed, and in order to reveal Him rather than anything else, meaning to reveal the quality of bestowal and love that lies outside of our nature of reception and hate, to rise above it, I am brought to a certain gathering of people.

Together with them I begin to understand that the question about the meaning of life shifts to the need to reveal the Creator as the answer to all questions that I have asked and will ask. Revealing the Creator means revealing the force of bestowal and love. It can be understood only to the degree of one’s similarity to it, only if I will also attain this quality, which is Him.

I have to acquire this quality, and in order to ensure this acquisition I am among people similar to me. This was arranged for me deliberately. The Creator is concealed because the quality of bestowal is opposite to me. Due to their fundamental difference, these qualities do not feel one another and therefore I do not feel the Creator. And it is impossible to work in relation to someone I do not feel. I will definitely be mistaken and will fall into self-deception.

Therefore, instead of giving me work with Himself, the Creator gave me work with my neighbor. This enables me to perform authentic verifications, to receive forces from the friends, and to check myself in relation to them: How much do I advance from hatred to love?
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/15/11, Writings of Rabash

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Spiritual Diagnosis – A Total Breaking

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: If all our work is to find the place of our breaking, what are we lacking then in order to do it?

Answer: You simply don’t want to reveal it! Why should you disclose your envy and hate? It is much easier and safer to remain apathetic.

A person feels that the friends, “the others,” simply don’t seem to exist. In Kabbalah, “the other” is a person whom I feel as being outside of me. I know that everybody is supposed to be within me if my perception of reality is correct, yet I feel them as outsiders in relation to me, someone who is distant and abhorrent. And it frightens me: Do I really hate the parts of my own soul this much?! That is exactly how the force of the breaking feels. I know that it is a lie, and I want to fix my distorted sight!

Try to attempt to see that all the friends are related to you. Even the whole world already sees how round and interconnected it is. But we don’t arrive at this conclusion from the external side due to the lack of choice. This is what the rest of the world does, by getting blows that point at people’s interconnectedness. Our path is internal and in this way, we gradually discover that all of us are one whole and are linked in an integral system.

Knowing all this, I look around and see people who are alien to me. I don’t feel what they are thinking about, what they desire. Moreover, I don’t even care about them; I am unable to keep focusing on them, let alone feel them. Not even one of them!

In other words, I realize that it is a total breaking: I am ill with a horrible disease. In fact, I see that I completely lost my sensitivity, my ability to feel all these parts that must become mine. I am disintegrating like a corpse. After all, death is when the life force leaves the body and it starts turning into dust. I feel as if I am losing my arms and legs. It throws me into a panic.

I can see and feel all of this in the organs of perception (Kelim) that evolve in me thanks to the study of Kabbalah and that in the future will become my properties of love and bestowal. But love starts with our revelation of hate towards the others, and we begin to hate it within ourselves.

And now I am living this hate, my inability to feel the other because I don’t care about him. And even worse than that, I measure my success by their failures. The worse they feel, the better I feel. What a perverted and distorted perception it is, and how blind I am that I think of the others in this way.

Rabash gives an example of a person who suddenly finds out that the child next door who annoyed him so much is in fact his son. It is possible to repair this picture only if you strive to see how everyone in the group is eager to correct this distortion together.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/13/2011, “The Essence of the Wisdom of Kabbalah”

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Your Personal Desires Won’t Take You Far

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Can the circulation of Kabbalah serve as a springboard for doing the work in order to bestow, as desire does?

Answer: Circulation is a priority. After all, by spreading the wisdom of Kabbalah, I give explanations to the whole world so that people may wake up. And as a result, I will receive their desire aimed for correction.

Desires that awaken in us, in the world movement of “Bnei Baruch,” in those who aspire to the Creator (Israel), are not sufficient. We need to store desires from all over the world, and to achieve this, we must spread the wisdom of Kabbalah. Such dissemination is regarded as the “Messiah’s Horn.”

Thanks to these desires, we will be able to deliver the method of transformation correctly, to make it lighter and simpler for all. The way we present it depends upon who is sitting before us and to whom we give all the explanations. In accordance with that, we can speak more freely, openly, and simply, all because we absorb the desires of others.

This is why we need desires from that part of humanity that cannot repair itself. And then, strength will be given from Above to the part that is capable of correcting itself so that the second part may get corrected through the first.

And if there is a part yearning for the Creator (Israel), which is able to establish a connection with Him, then the part that doesn’t have direct connection with the Creator must be attached to it. Then both of them, “Israel” and “the nations of the world,” will receive powers and repair themselves.

However, if they aren’t mutually connected, Israel won’t receive strength from Above since on one’s own, a person doesn’t require correction. He was broken solely in order to transform the peoples of the world. And the nations of the world, or those who cannot wake up by themselves, won’t receive the strength either since they don’t have anyone to receive it from. Then, the nations of the world will turn their hate and bad influence onto Israel in order to wake it up to the fulfillment of their task.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/13/2011, Writings of Rabash

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Upbringing Has To Catch Up To The Times

Dr. Michael LaitmanUpbringing as we understand it has lost the meaning it had in previous generations when we used to raise children so they would be good, kind, cheerful, and pleasant, behave properly, and so on. Upbringing today is something altogether different and we are increasingly sensing that it is necessary to all. That’s because “receiving an upbringing” or “education” means knowing how to act with yourself, with the environment, with the country and the world, as well as in different situations that happen to us.

Stated differently, “upbringing” is a person who changes inside of me, while my parents and surroundings help me to build myself correctly so I would know how to live my life well, confidently, and securely. After all, everything we learn as children later becomes our nature, and then we can behave well effortlessly. This is also confirmed by the latest research which shows that children’s education from the ages two until six or seven is what serves as their foundation.

Our development throughout all of human history unfolded in the egoistic direction where every person thought only of himself: How can I succeed, how can I earn, and how can I swindle everyone without being harmed myself? This is the simple, egoistic formula by which a person was previously taught how to arrange his life. And this really was considered the right education.

Today this is starting to change as we feel that the world has become integral, meaning connected with all of its parts, on all levels, and in all elements. We are facing a very serious problem because we do not correspond to the new world that is now appearing and coming to us. A new governance is becoming apparent, a new method, and a new law of Nature.

Previously I didn’t care about anything. I could cut down forests over here, dry up lakes over there, and do anything I wanted in society. Each of us personally was able to do anything he wished without asking others.

However, now we have reached a world in which there is no freedom of the individual. Now you cannot do anything you like even in your own backyard unless it is for our good because whether you want it or not, through the common connection between us you evoke a blow upon everyone.

We do not know which of our actions bring harm and what the consequences are because we aren’t yet integrally connected with one another in our consciousness. And if I want to have some work done or make a deal with someone, then I have to take the whole world into consideration. But I am unable to do so. I cannot accept the fact that I influence the world and I don’t know whether the world will benefit from this or not.

Yet since all of us together make up a single organism, even a small tremor will later influence the whole system, just like in our animate bodies. If we don’t have the right attitude to the nature that is now being revealed, then what will happen to us? It means that I will not be able to succeed in business, nor at work, nor in upbringing, nor in my attitude to anyone.

Soon the connection between us will manifest to such a degree that unless I consider all of the consequences of calling the police or my landlord, for example, then I will definitely cause harm. In other words, as the science of Kabbalah explains to us, having reached the current level of development, we are already required to correct man’s nature. This correction is for all of us to unite “as one man with one heart” by the principle of “love your neighbor as yourself.”
From my lecture in “Kabbalah L’Am” Hall on 2/8/11

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The Most Important Thing Is The Connection With The Root!

Dr. Michael LaitmanEvery science is a language. However, in regular science you explain your attainments on the same level as you attain them (in the same world), whereas using the language of Kabbalah you explain what you attain in relation to the root. This is the difference between regular science and the science of Kabbalah. You record any phenomenon that you study and attain in this world on the same level that you attain and research it. However, in Kabbalah you do not attain matter itself, but its connection with the root. This is the most important thing!

Baal HaSulam writes the following in the article, “The Teaching of the Kabbalah and Its Essence”: …physics is mere knowledge of the arrangements of a particular kind existing in a particular world. It is unique to its subject, and no other wisdom is included in it.

This is not so with the wisdom of truth, since it is knowledge of the whole of the still, vegetative, animate, and speaking in all the worlds with all their instances and conducts, as they were included in the Creator’s Thought, that is, in the purpose. For this reason, all the teachings in the world, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, are wondrously included in it….

The connection with the root is unique to the science of Kabbalah. That is what enables it to include all the other sciences in itself. You can explain the qualities of a certain matter at this moment or the connection between phenomena, but this does not explain the essence of things and phenomena.
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson on 2/10/11, “The Essence of the Wisdom of Kabbalah”

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Kabbalah Is The Science Of Love

Dr. Michael LaitmanA person comes to Kabbalah after awakening to the need to learn the concealed upper force, the purpose and the reason for his existence, and the meaning of his life. As he goes through stages in his spiritual development, a person reaches a critical point and begins to think about the ways to attain the spiritual world. Previously he used to think that spirituality could be attained with what he has, meaning the five senses, the mind, and the regular perception of reality.

But at a certain stage, one begins to feel that the spiritual world cannot be revealed this way and that to do it, he needs to change himself. That’s when he remembers a famous saying: “I created the evil inclination and the Torah for its correction, because the Light contained in it returns one to the Source.”

Every person envisions the spiritual world in his own way. The wisdom of Kabbalah defines it as the property of love and bestowal where a person comes out of his egoistic properties and begins to reveal the higher reality in the properties of bestowal that are opposite to his.

Kabbalists explain that it is necessary for us to develop the property of bestowal, that is, to perform the correction of the heart (desire). This means that if right now our desire works to receive, we need to change it so as to perceive the desires of others like our own. The entire method consists of correcting our ego, which desires to consume everything, through developing a sense above it, which means to come out of our desire.

By the time I came to study Kabbalah, I already had over twenty years of education. I was a scientist and an entrepreneur, whereas all of the Kabbalists who I happened to study with were simple people. I remember having a conversation with Rabash when he told me that he began his employment as a blacksmith assistant, then was a shoemaker, and at the end of his career he worked at a tax collector’s office. Yet, I was convinced that I would be able to attain more with my mind. It took me time to understand that Kabbalah is a science of feelings and that we need to correct our heart.

The wisdom of Kabbalah explains that the mind awakens in us only to the extent of the heart employing it. The heart wishes to know what it is feeling and why, where feelings come from, and how they can be changed. And then the heart employs the mind.

It is a known fact that our mind works better when we are facing problems and misery. The need that arises develops the mind. Thus, the function of the system called “mind” is to help us fulfill our desire.

The wisdom of Kabbalah is a science of developing the feeling of love. In other words, I need to attain an ability to connect with everyone else’s desires or needs and accept them as my own. My concern for the needs of another as my own is called my love for him. This bears no relation to receiving fulfillment or pleasure from someone else, but on the contrary, my pleasure will come from fulfilling others.

People who start studying Kabbalah acquire new feelings in the heart which enable them to gradually begin to understand that in reality there is infinite fulfillment and pleasure from being able to come out of one’s own self and fulfilling others. This gives a person an incessant and unlimited opportunity which suddenly reveals a new perception of reality, a new horizon to him.

This is because a person who comes out of himself and begins to feel the needs of others instead of his own ceases perceiving himself, and gradually comes to a state when he no longer needs to take care of himself. When we find the property of bestowal, we receive the fulfillment there and acquire the upper world through it, becoming like the Creator.
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From my lecture in “Kabbalah L’Am” Hall on 12/21/10

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Inside The Ego’s Trap

Dr. Michael LaitmanA person is faced with a big problem: How does he know what world he is living in? How is he supposed to view reality? What perspective should he choose? How does he detach from the inner deception and see not what he wishes to see in his egoism, but rather an objective view devoid of ego’s attributes, desires, and emotions?

We know that we judge according to how corrupted we are and look with subjective, biased eyes which fully distort our perspective of life. The world does the same. We witness how throughout history people were deceived in their perception of reality, their approach to life, unable to comprehend the world they were living in and why.

A person who studies Kabbalah has an opportunity to see the truth, but a person who is locked in the internal sphere of our world, bound by this small circle, cannot see anything that goes beyond its boundaries. Inside it, he sees everything according to his ego, based on his personal benefit, and is unable to think about anything else.

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Either way, all his aspirations are aimed inward, solely toward his inner point. Hence, it can’t be that he can develop a desire or thought to see something outside of his own, innermost interest. He is made initially in such way so as to be unable to see or feel anything that does not correspond with his inner point. A person cannot even start thinking about it since it is completely outside the realm of his perception.

There may be another reality next to him that is billions of times greater and more powerful than the one he experiences in his inner egoistic point, but he has absolutely no interest in it and, therefore, can’t see it. His information genes (Reshimot) dictate that he should care solely about things that involve only himself, and that is exactly what he does.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/10/2011, “The Wisdom of Kabbalah and Philosophy”

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