Two questions I received on Kabbalistic texts:

Question: On your website you published a quote about the Segula (special quality) of studying The Book of Zohar, and that studying The Book of Zohar is necessary in our times in order to defend and save ourselves from all evil.

You took this quote from the “Introduction to the Tree of Life” by Rav Yaakov Tzemah, but I wasn’t able to find there one of the parts you quoted, that the revelation of this wisdom will happen during the time of the worst generations, so we would have protection to hold onto in our hearts.

My Answer: Read Baal HaSulam, I was quoting him.

Question: Why do the books of Baal HaSulam and books of Rabash say so little about the process people go through beneath the Machsom? If I am wrong, then please direct me to the appropriate materials.

My Answer: Everything besides Talmud Eser Sefirot and Pticha is written for people who are beneath the Machsom! Talmud Eser Sefirot and Pticha are also for them, in order to study and thereby draw the Light of correction.

Related Material:
Purchase the book: The Zohar
Purchase the book: The Science of Kabbalah (Pticha)

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Editorial News Report (from Executive Intelligence Review): If the participants of the G-20 meeting won’t reach an agreement, the world economy will rapidly collapse, billions of people will die from hunger, and social chaos will begin in the G-7 countries.

My Comment: The participants of the G-20 meeting should at least reach a certain level of mutual trust in order to coordinate their actions in the economic (and perhaps military) spheres. The world needs to see a connection between different countries. It won’t help to simply exercise control over fiscal operations (banks, companies, equalization of different currencies, cancellation of offshore accounts, annihilation of monopolies) and to reach a consensus to refrain from military attacks. This won’t help because Nature is forcing us to become integrated!

Even if they won’t reach an agreement, they should at least agree to meet together in order to solve the problems of global reconstruction, according to the laws of the single system.

A Kabbalistic text says: “The hearts of the kings and their ministers are in the hands of the Creator.” And the Creator is governed by people’s desires to the degree they are similar to the Creator – to the quality of love for one’s neighbor. Therefore, everything depends on the dissemination of the knowledge about the world’s globality and our connection within one family. When we realize this, we won’t feel hatred for others, but for our own egoism, which is the only evil in the world. And after that we will also feel an aspiration for love of others.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Another Unfortunate Meeting of the G20

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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:
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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.

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Kabbalah Books in English
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A question I received: Why do you say that the word Mashiach (Messiah) originates from the word Lishmoch – to pull? I think it originates from the word Limshoach – to anoint, and it refers to one who is anointed for service.

My Answer: To be anointed means to draw the Upper Light of Hochma upon a person. In our world, this Light is represented by oil. This is how a person ascends to a level required to serve the Creator.

This procedure was done by a prophet who was on such a high level that he could pull a person up to the spiritual level of service to the Creator. Kabbalah doesn’t talk about “whom, how and with what to anoint,” but tells us about the essence of this phenomenon: about the reception of the Upper Light that actually gives a person the force and right to be God’s anointed, to be close to the Creator. I “translate” these words to get directly to the essence of what is happening.

By the way, these letters are interchangeable in Hebrew. However, if you feel more drawn to corporeal anointment, then you should read the non-Kabbalistic explanations. Everything written in the Torah can be understood directly, as physical actions, and/or according to its true, inner meaning. Still, by understanding the text literally, one does not reveal its true meaning. It is because the Mashiach is the force of liberation from egoism, and not a person.

It says in the “Introduction to the Book of Zohar, Item 70: “Alas, these people, who make the spirit of the Messiah vanish from the world, so as never to return, make the Torah dry, without the moist of mind and knowledge, for they confine themselves to the practical part of the Torah, and do not wish to try and understand the wisdom of Kabbalah, to know and educate themselves in the secrets and the reason behind the Torah and Mitzvot…”

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The Book of Zohar. Chapter “The Vision of Rabbi Hiya”, items 57-60

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Three questions I received on Kabbalistic texts:

Question: If Kabbalah lifts man above his animate and psychological levels, how are the Kabbalistic texts emotional?

My Answer: Because of the force of the Upper Light that they evoke, since they speak about the Upper World.

Question: Can a person cross the Machsom without knowing the structure of the spiritual worlds and without understanding the Talmud Eser Sefirot, but by just evoking the Surrounding Light?

My Answer: A person does not have to understand the Talmud Eser Sefirot in his mind in order to cross the Machsom, but he does have to strive to find out how he is governed and where is his root. For more on this, see item 155 of the “Introduction to Talmud Eser Sefirot.”

Question: What books should a husband and wife read together and separately?

My Answer: They should read the parts of the Kabbalistic materials that they like reading. It’s best to read together for up to half an hour a day, and even better to do it every day.

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News Report (on Nature): In an article called “Economics Needs a Scientific Revolution,” Physicist Jean-Philippe Bouchaud states that we can avoid global economic crises in the future by applying the approach of physics to economic models, thereby changing the economists’ system of thinking and training. He writes: “Compared to physics, it seems fair to say that the quantitative success of the economic sciences is disappointing. What is the flagship achievement of economics, apart from its recurrent inability to predict and avert crises, including the current worldwide credit crunch? Why is this?”

My Comment: The physicist is wrong! It’s easy for him to make these claims because he investigates the part of nature that’s revealed to us, or to our senses. Economics, on the other hand, is a science about human relationships, which aren’t clearly revealed to our senses. We don’t know ourselves as people. All the sciences reveal our world and us in it only on the still, vegetative and animate levels. The “human” level is unattainable to us. We can only study it if we rise to the level above it – the Creator’s level. In other words, we can study it to the degree we are similar to the Creator, or stated simply – when we become Kabbalists.

For this reason, we cannot come out of this global crisis until we begin changing ourselves as parts of a single system, all of whose the parts exist in harmony of all their desires, thoughts and actions. How can we do this? This is what Kabbalah explains to us.

Therefore, there are many new sciences ahead of us about the global system of humanity. Today there is a science that’s very much in demand – “Kabbalistic Economics,” or to be more neutral, “the economics of the global system.”

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A question I received: I converted to Judaism five years ago after a lifetime of study and searching. In these past few years I have been awed by the Torah and its Pardes. Now, due to your lectures, I have fallen into a dangerous question. When Boreh Olam (the Creator) says, “My thoughts are not your thoughts,” and the wise men say that the Torah is the wisdom of Boreh Olam, i.e., his thoughts, does this mean that for the past few thousand years, the practicing Jew has got it all wrong, and in fact my search has brought me to the wrong place?

My Answer: Man was created egoistic from the very beginning. His thoughts are opposite to the Creator’s thoughts. The Kabbalistic group (Abraham’s students) was called “the people of Israel” because of their aspiration: Isra-El – straight to (similarity with) the Creator. This is how they lived until they fell from the spiritual level of “Love your neighbor as yourself” into egoism. This is called the destruction of the Temple.

Since then, this group has existed in exile from the spiritual level, in egoism and “unfounded hatred for each other.” Instead of attaining the Creator, He is concealed to them. Instead of direct communication with Him, there is religion. Instead of mutual deeds with the Creator (correction and adhesion), they perform mechanical “commandments” based on egoism (Mitzvot Anashim Melumeda – mechanical actions that are taught from childhood and are performed automatically).

No one is to blame for this condition of the nation – the downfall had to happen. But today (for nearly 100 years already), we are obliged to begin correcting ourselves and to thereby come out of exile. Those who oppose this are opponents of the nation, the world, and the Creator.

Besides this, you should just study Kabbalah. It doesn’t matter what religion you belong to. Kabbalah is for everyone!

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Baal HaSulam Article: “Exile and Redemption”

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The Congress that is currently taking place in the UK is the first Kabbalistic Congress to take place after the revelation of humanity’s crisis. Just two months ago we held a Congress in Odessa on the Black Sea, and back then we still couldn’t speak about the future as explicitly as now, since now it is a definite requirement. We are entering the period that Kabbalah was intended for, the reason it was revealed to man, because its application can bring the world to the one and only goal, but through a completely different path – a path that is pleasant and swift, through realizing the law of Nature which states that “The global humankind must unite into one whole, according to the law of ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”

This is against our nature, we hate it, it seems unrealistic, and is repulsive to us, but it is necessary because it is a law of nature. Hence, this state can be achieved either through great suffering, or by attracting the Upper Light upon us. Kabbalah is the method of attracting the Upper Light for our correction. So use this means, pass it on to others – and then all of humanity will gradually and easily shift to a different state that’s harmonious with Nature – the state of rest, confidence, and happiness.

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The book Interview with the Future is based on Baal HaSulam’s original manuscripts in our archive that talk about our times and the generations of the future. Among these materials, Baal HaSulam’s newspaper “HaUma” (The Nation) was the first Kabbalistic newspaper in the world; he published it in 1940. (However, it was immediately shut down by the British authorities because of complaints from Kabbalah’s opponents.)

These materials are necessary for understanding the global crisis that’s taking place in the world today.

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