Two questions I received on Rabbi Akiva and Kabbalists who weren’t Jewish:

Question: Why did the great Kabbalist Rabbi Akiva ben Yosef, who saw the future, support the uprising of Bar Kokhba (Shimon Bar Koziv) and proclaimed him the Messiah? We know from history that this uprising led to the most deplorable results: it was crushed and Rabbi Akiva was sentenced to a horrible execution! How could a Kabbalist of his stature not have known how this uprising was going to end on the corporeal level and that he would be executed? And how could he have been mistaken about who the Messiah is?

My Answer: A Kabbalist only sees what is revealed to him from above. Complete revelation will take place only at the end of correction.

Question: Were there any great Kabbalists who weren’t Jewish?

My Answer: Yes. One example is our Great Teacher Rabbi Akiva, from whom we received all the commentaries on the Torah.

Related Material:
Kabbalah for Beginners: Chapter 2 – “Timeless Teachers of Kabbalah – Rabbi Akiva”

Filed under: History - 1 Comment →

Three questions I received on working with egoistic and altruistic desires:

Question: What are the “egoistic desires” and what does it mean “to be above them?”

My Answer: Egoistic desires are all the desires that are not to bestow to others, to love others, and to bestow and love the Creator. They are called egoistic because you desire to receive fulfillment inside them.

“To be above them” means to use them in order to be independent of them, and moreover, to use them for fulfilling others.

Question: You have explained that the “screen” is a rejection of the egoistic desires, an aspiration to be above them. When I want something and strive for it, but I don’t attain it, I tell myself that I don’t want to want it and that it doesn’t depend on me. Is this a rejection of the egoistic desires?

My Answer: No, because in doing so you egoistically don’t want to suffer. This is why you reject your desires: in order to stop feeling emptiness and pain in them.

Question: When one works with absolute bestowal in the corporeal world, despite the feeling of emptiness, the suffering caused by external factors causes a lot of heartache. What can be done about it?

My Answer: Read a lot of material about the global correction. The texts should evoke enough force of the Upper Light in order for you to start feeling the common desire and the Light within it.

Related Material:
From Chaos to Harmony: The Solution to the Global Crisis According to the Wisdom of Kabbalah

Filed under: Egoism - No Comments →

News Report (from BBC News): “Sex-matched transplants ‘better.'” The chance of long-term survival after a heart transplant rises if the person getting the new heart is the same sex as the donor, researchers say. The precise reason is unclear – although the difference in size could be a factor.

Scientists at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, USA looked back at heart transplants which happened between 1998 and 2007, comparing survival rates in matched against non-matched transplants. The worst scenario appeared to be a woman receiving a “male” heart, while the most successful operations were those involving male recipients and male donors.

My Comment: According to the science of Kabbalah, the difference between the male and female bodies determines the difference between their particular components – including every organ and even every cell of their organisms. There is nothing similar in men and women, and that’s because they come from opposite spiritual roots. Doctors should take this into account when operating with the human body.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Men, Women, and the Soul’s Correction
Laitman.com Post: On the Men and Women Inside Us
Laitman.com Post: Why Are Women More Depressed?

Filed under: Science - No Comments →

A question I received: What specific, practical measures would you advise the governments to take to combat the crisis?

My Answer: Kabbalah says that the world’s integrality requires that each person receive what is necessary for him to exist, and give the rest for the benefit of the society as a whole. This shouldn’t be done forcefully, like in the Soviet regime, but should come from people’s understanding that it’s necessary to carry out the law of nature that states: “All people are one family.” Every person will be rewarded for this with the sensation of eternal and perfect existence (outside of one’s egoism), just like all of Nature.

The needed actions: In addition to establishing an educational organization, every person must be given whatever amount of money he needs to lead a normal existence. No one should be allowed to have more than this amount in his bank account. Everything else should go into the “common account.”

The result: It makes no difference how much funds or resources there are for this. What’s important is the action itself, because it is integral, global, and harmonious with Nature (the Creator). Hence, it will evoke a positive reaction from Nature upon the society.

Comment:
1. These actions must be carried out together with distributing powerful educational, explanatory material through all mass media channels (see my “Lecture in Arosa“). Bnei Baruch already has the material!

2. If humanity won’t act as described above, with understanding, willingly and voluntarily – through the study of Kabbalah, then nature will force us to do the same thing, but through a long and bitter path of suffering. The situation will be like a stubborn child who doesn’t want to do what his parents tell him to, and who’s only swayed by punishment into understanding that he needs to listen and do as they say. Only later will he come to realize how correct and good his parents were.

Related Material:
Transcript of my Lecture at the 3rd World Spirit Forum in Arosa, Swtizerland

Filed under: Crisis - No Comments →

News Report (from gizmag): Lubrication enables all of the world’s machinery to function, but even then, at least a quarter of all the energy is lost to friction. Despite some ingenious lubrication methods, at least 15% of the power made in a car engine is lost to friction. In most machinery, frictional losses are much higher than 15% and the heat resultant from friction generates trillions of dollars of repair and maintenance every year. Now a breakthrough in lubricant design employing liquid crystals promises a vast reduction in friction and some quite remarkable lubricants are about five years from market – oils that could reduce friction to almost zero.

My Comment: If only they would invent this kind of oil for people! Actually, it already exists: the quality of bestowal creates exactly this kind of interaction between everyone. It not only erases the friction, but also creates additional energy for the engine – the general soul – to function. This energy comes from each person’s intention to bestow to everyone. Then a common intention of bestowal emerges, called the Creator, which creates infinite energy and the sensation of eternal fulfillment.

Related Material:
Laitman.com: Equality and Brotherhood Are the Means of Attaining Spirituality

Filed under: Science - No Comments →

News Report (from Times Online): The maverick economist John Maynard Keynes, whose ideas helped to navigate Britain out of the mass unemployment of the 1930s, imagined a completely different future for us. He predicted that in three generations’ time (the era we are entering), everyone would have enough to satisfy their needs and basic desires. We would then be liberated to explore the greater potential of humankind.

Keynes rejected the possibility that once we had solved the economic problem we would shackle ourselves by constantly chasing ever more stuff – possessions, debt, celebrity, Brand’n’Woss-style infotainment, rather than learning to be satisfied with material contentment and evolving from there.

My Comment: The source of all our mistakes is our ignorance of the fact that human nature is absolutely egoistic. Kabbalah warns that in our time of global interdependence between all human systems, ignorance of these laws will lead to a catastrophe. So stop trusting all the sociologists and economists, because we’ve entered a period of new social laws!

“Mom, who is Karl Marx?” – “Karl Marx was an economist.”

“Like our aunt Dalia?” –“No, aunt Dalia is a senior economist!”

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: What Would It Be Like to Live In a Perfect World?

Filed under: Crisis - No Comments →

News Report (translated from gazeta. ru): Does the stock market have rules or is it governed by a divine whim? A great deal of research has been done on this question. A “divine whim” is defined as the difference between real prices and those set by the rate of return and liquidity. In other words: the stock market operates at a low return, but prices keep growing or dropping according to the prevalent opinion at the moment: “everything will get back to the good old times” or “this is the end of the Western civilization.” This would mean that the process we are dealing with, which is turning the world around, is accidental.

My Comment: There is no going back! Our egoism has grown and we have risen to the level of global interconnection. This is happening for the first time in human history, just as Kabbalah predicted thousands of years ago. I invite you to verify this by going into our old lesson archive and listening to our lessons from many years ago.

Nothing will return to the good old times. Everything taking place marks the end of Western civilization. Ahead of us lies a global, single, common world. We are all one family; we can’t run away from it and we depend on it completely. Even dying won’t help, because you will have to come back to complete the correction!

We need to create a stock market that will be based on the rules of the world’s global system. Everything has already been described. Study Kabbalah!

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: The Present Crisis Is a Crisis of People’s Trust in the Egoistic System of Relationships
Laitman.com Post: My Article on Ynetnews – A Kabbalistic Interpretation of the Economic Crisis

Filed under: Crisis - No Comments →

Two questions I received on Kabbalah books:

Question: At the Blackpool Congress you recommended for everyone to have the book Kabbalah for the Student in Hebrew. Why?

My Answer: Experience shows that our permanent students end up learning the original language of Kabbalah – Hebrew, because it is impossible to convey all of the information in a different language, using different symbols. However, this only applies to our permanent students. For example, right now I am in St Louis. The local group, who are Christian Americans, study Hebrew twice a week. They understand it and listen to the lessons with almost no translation.

Question: In one of your recent lessons you said that the texts on a computer screen give less Light than a book. What difference does it make how the text is displayed?

My Answer: It makes a difference, especially for a beginner, who can open a book anywhere, anytime. However, for the new generation, the monitor screen is closer.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: “Kabbalah for the Student” – A New Book
Laitman.com Post: The Power of Kabbalistic Texts
Kabbalah Books in English
Kabbalah Books in Hebrew

Filed under: Books - No Comments →

News Report: The Telegraph reports that the UK Government intends to obligate internet providers to report every e-mail and website visited. This information will be submitted to a database, such that not a single phone call, e-mail or website visit will remain unnoticed. The bill is expected to appear in 2009.

My Comment: There is no doubt that this is the wish of every government in the world. However, they would be better off educating their people. According to the law “The general and the particular are equal,” the government must treat its people as parents treat their children, and that means not to just restrict and punish them, but also to take care of their education and upbringing. And it shouldn’t matter how expensive or difficult this is.

Kabbalah talks about the need to manage the public opinion. However, this shouldn’t be done in order for the government to manipulate the citizens more easily, but for the sake of creating a correct hierarchy of values in society – values that include the meaning of the existence of man, the family unit, the state, and humanity. We think that the masses cannot adopt such high values, but Kabbalah asserts that everything depends on the public opinion! See Baal HaSulam’s article, “The Freedom.”

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: What Will Happen If Countries Draw National Boundaries on the Internet?
Laitman.com Post: The Internet Is a Reflection of the Society

Filed under: Internet - No Comments →

News Report: Scientists at the Institute of Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology at the University of Oxford have begun research that aims to find a scientific answer to the question: Why would anyone believe in God? The £1.9 million project is made possible by a fund from the John Templeton Foundation.

The researchers’ objective isn’t to find out whether God exists. They want to find out whether belief in a higher power is a natural phenomenon inherent to human mentality, a product of upbringing, or of social evolution.

My Comment: According to the science of Kabbalah, everything was created by the Light and contains information about It, since everything originated from It. (See Part 1, Ohr Pnimi, of Talmud Eser Sefirot.) However, the general desire that was created consists of four levels of development: still, vegetative, animate, and human; and only the desire of the “human” level is able to develop to a point where it feels a need to perceive the Creator. Hence, this desire is natural.

This created desire to feel the Creator – to feel its Root, to know “Where did I come from?” – also has four levels: still, vegetative, animate, and human. Each of these levels can be satisfied by revealing the Creator to the degree of the desire:

• Simple acceptance of His existence;
• Connection with Him through actions;
• Complete personal devotion to serving Him;
• The need to reveal the Creator;
• The need to completely attain the entire universe and hence to reveal the Creator in His entirety.

Additional information will be disclosed upon receiving our part of the grant! (That’s a joke.)

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Scientific Theories Cannot Prove that God Exists
Laitman.com Post: Black Cats and Psychics
Laitman.com Post: Will God Want to Repeat the Act of Creation?

Filed under: Science - 1 Comment →