The Medicable magazine in Mexico has published my article called “The Science of Kabbalah.”
The magazine is bi-monthly, with a circulation of 70,000 copies. It is circulated for free in hospitals of large cities, such as Mexico City, Guadalajara, Monterrey and others.
Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Dissemination in Mexico
Kabbalah website in Spanish
Questions I received on spiritual advancement:
Question: I have been studying with you for three years through the Internet. I used to attend a local group and even came to one of your lessons. Ever since I started studying Kabbalah, I have become grave and withdrawn. It has become very difficult to communicate with people, including you. My girlfriend left me, nothing seems to be going right in life, and I’ve been planning to write you a letter for a few years already. On the other hand, I am doing better: I have registered on the forum and am writing you a letter. I hope that I’ll be able to keep in touch with you at least virtually. There are many times when I’d like to talk to you.
My Answer: If you’re drowning, you have to save yourself. And if you don’t have friends, then who will rescue you? Hence, success can only come by becoming included in the group, even if you have to force yourself to do it. Then the friends will support you and push you toward the goal.
Question: In one of your lectures you said that we shouldn’t forget that there are ups and downs and that they lead a person toward the goal only if they come from the right aspiration. What is the right aspiration? How can I know that I aspire to the right goal? And generally speaking – does my desire or aspiration really depend on me?
My Answer: If your aspiration emerged in you as a result of unifying with the group, then it is correct.
Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: We Must Only Unite Our Points In the Heart
Laitman.com Post: In All Life Situations, Your Behavior Should Be Determined Only by the Spiritual Goal
Laitman.com Post: The Group Is the Place for Discerning All Your Spiritual Questions
Article: “The Structure of the Soul”
Baal HaSulam Article: The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee)
A question I received: My wife was victim of a maniac: she suffered physical and sexual abuse. How can I help her in this moment of pain and despair? What can I do if she doesn’t like to hear or see a thing about Kabbalah? What can I do now, when she is at risk of getting HIV and other diseases, like HPV, syphilis, and hepatitis? I don´t know what to think or do. I know I have to continue to study Kabbalah, but my depression has no end…
My Answer: You should only rise above your animate body, live higher than your body – both of you. Then you will reveal the cause of what happened.
Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: What Is Pain, and How Can We Stop Feeling It All the Time?
Laitman.com Post: Now Is the Time for Freedom!
Kabbalah Today Article: The All-Purpose Remedy
Article: “Spirit and Body”
We were visited by the President of the University of Haifa – Professor Aaron Ben-Ze’ev (left in the photograph below). Prof. Ben Ze’ev is considered one of the world’s leading experts in the study of emotions and perception. He has written many books and articles on these topics.
There were no contradictions between us. The only difference is that Kabbalah clearly defines every desire and the sensation inside it, and it graduates the sensations according to their levels and qualities. However, the earthy sciences cannot do this, because we can only research something while being on a level above the object being researched. Hence we can research the still and vegetative levels of nature, and a part of the animate level, but we cannot accurately research man since we are at the same level as the object being researched.
This is why psychology isn’t an accurate science. Kabbalah, on the other hand, lifts man above his animate and psychological levels, allowing him to measure and reproduce any sensation, and to examine its cause, process, and consequences.
One of Professor Ben-Ze’ev’s specialties is the research of the feeling of love. He has an enormous amount of empirical data on this, yet this earthly science does not enable him to systematize them. In the future scientists will discover that it’s vitally necessary to systematize knowledge and to have a clear understanding of the nature of feelings and sensations. Then this “crisis” will lead psychologists to Kabbalah.
Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Kabbalah and the Earthly Sciences
Laitman.com Post: The Sciences Are Subordinate to the Wisdom of Kabbalah
Laitman.com Post: Love Is Providing Others With the Means to Fulfill Their Point in the Heart
Lesson on Baal HaSulam’s article “The Wisdom of Kabbalah and Philosophy”
Watch this video!
The souls reincarnating today are ones we have suppressed in the past, trying to turn everyone into robots. Whether one is secular or religious, everyone has his own canon. However, today the souls can no longer be overpowered. They will overcome us and put us on a completely different path, in spite of our bourgeois way of thinking.
I am glad to see this kind of thinking surface in humanity, which is presently on the still (inanimate) level.
Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: The Soul Is the Part of One’s Desire That’s Similar to the Creator
Laitman.com Post: Destiny and the Root of the Soul
Kabbalah for Beginners: Chapter 8 – “Reincarnation and Kabbalah”
Booklet: The Structure of the Soul
A question I received (my responses appear in bold): You say that that the massive crises – economic, ecological, and others, will eventually bring humanity to correction, though the path will be bitter. But don’t you think that if there won’t be any food left in the supermarkets, this will give rise to many informal power structures on the streets, who will try to survive at any cost – by stealing and killing for a loaf of bread? And all these crises will beget only more evil and hatred between people? I agree!
“Where there’s no bread – there’s no Torah,” – this is something you said. If a person is desperate, if his friends and family are dying from hunger and disease, and it’s too dangerous to show your face outside, will he really go and start studying Kabbalah? Keep in mind that there won’t be any Internet when there are no computers and electricity. I can tell you for sure that in this situation people will not study Kabbalah – neither now nor in 232 years (at the end of 6000 years). I agree!
Even if I understand that the science of Kabbalah is necessary, even if I have a point in the heart and I know about this science and the method of studying it, still, if someone in my family will be starving to death, then I won’t be sitting and reading books. And this is truer for the people who don’t even know about Kabbalah’s existence. I agree!
The point in the heart appears when you already have everything and realize that it hasn’t fulfilled you, and that there’s nowhere else to go. But when you’re thinking about how to get your hands on a glass of drinking water in order to survive, then no one will care about any points in the heart. I agree!
My Answer: I agree with you completely and I myself have underlined the rule: “When there is no bread – there is no Torah.” This means that there are situations when people are only concerned with survival, and then all the laws are abolished and everything is determined only by the necessity to survive (with the exception of murdering others in order to save your own life).
However, your arguments overlook the four phases of the development of desire. It is not the size of the desire that grows, but its ability to recognize the source of its emptiness and fulfillment. It’s because everything takes place under the influence of the Light. You will discover that your acquaintances don’t merely suffer, but they will suddenly begin to understand the reason for their suffering – that it is purposeful and has a final goal.
You should help them reach this realization quicker – then the suffering will recede. After all, it’s being revealed in us only to provoke this realization! This is why the dissemination of Kabbalah is so essential: when the masses understand the Creator’s plan even slightly, this will defer great suffering – and suddenly affluence and peace will appear in the world.
I suggest that you review the book From Chaos to Harmony, my lecture in Arosa, and the materials on the article “The Future Generation.” One spark of the Upper Light was enough to give rise to our entire world and the entire universe. And this one spark is sufficient to correct this world, which it had created in the first place! All that’s needed is our collective desire!
Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: The Solution – Excerpts from the Writings of the Last Generation by Baal HaSulam
Laitman.com Post: The Writings of the Last Generation
Laitman.com Post: The World Will Never Be the Same
Laitman.com Post: Kabbalah’s Model of a New World
Kabbalah Today Article: Mankind’s Growing Hunger
Baal HaSulam writes in the article “The Peace,” the section “The Necessity to Practice Caution With the Laws of Nature”:
It is vitally important for us to study the commandments of nature and know what it demands of us, lest it would mercilessly punish us. Nature obligates man to lead a social life, and we need to examine the commandments that nature necessitates us to observe in society. There are in fact only two social precepts to observe: “reception” and “bestowal.”
Meaning, nature obligates each member of society to:
1) Receive his needs from society, and
2) To benefit society through his work for its wellbeing.
And he is obligated to observe both commandments correctly, for if he breaks one of them, he will be mercilessly punished.
When one violates the commandment of reception, the punishment is carried out immediately, which prevents any neglect and forces us to observe it. But in the other commandment, that of bestowal upon society, not only does the punishment not occur immediately, but it is given indirectly. Therefore, this commandment is not properly observed.
Nature, like a competent judge, punishes us according to our development, for we can see that to the extent that mankind develops, so increase the pains and torments of providing for our existence. And the suffering will continue to increase, until the global crisis will show us that the Creator’s providence has commanded us to observe with all our might the commandment of bestowal upon others with utter precision.
And as long as we are idle in performing this law to the fullest, nature will not stop punishing us. And of course, nature will defeat us and we will all be compelled to join hands – as one man – in the following of the commandments with all the required measure.
Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Correct Yourself and Everything Will Radiate Harmony
Laitman.com Post: Another Pointless Conference of the World’s Leaders
Kabbalah Today Article: The Hurricane Within
Kabbalah, Science and the Meaning of Life: “The Spiritual Gene, Part IV – Nature’s Laws”
A question I received: I read an interesting work by researcher A. D. Panov entitled, “The Crisis of the Universal History’s Planetary Cycle.” In it he uses the method of interpolating the times of civilizations’ revolutions and reaches the conclusion that the next and most significant crisis in the development of nature and man is scheduled to happen in the year 2027 (the Snooks–Panov vertical). After this crisis the entire development of human civilization will change fundamentally. What do you think about this, and that this will happen in 2027?
My Answer: There are many hypotheses about the crisis, and people’s premonitions are justified. However, do they understand the causes of the crisis, its process and its purpose? It is pointless to predict dates, because we cannot take into account our participation in becoming aware of the process and of our conscious self-correction, which will immediately introduce positive changes and accelerate the whole process.
This is because the “crisis” is the process of restoring our balance (similarity) with Nature – with the quality of love and bestowal. As soon as we reached the level of global egoism, we started being influenced by the general force of nature (the global interdependency between all of nature’s parts), which forces us to become similar to it (like parts of one body, to be in harmony all together).
If we recognize that this is what Nature demands from us and aspire to correspond to it, then to the extent we strive to become a harmonious part of the general system of nature, we will not need its negative correcting influence, which we feel as suffering (war, hunger, destruction).
Because it is impossible to calculate the degree to which we will participate in our correction, we cannot predict the flow of the entire process. The prophets – the Kabbalists of antiquity, described this process without incorporating the human constituent into it. This is why their descriptions are full of terrible suffering on the global scale. However, it is within our power to alter its flow, and this is why we’ve been given Kabbalah. This is also why it has been concealed until our time, and why it is now being revealed to everyone.
Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Disasters and Diseases Come to an End When Humanity Unites Above Selfishness
Latman.com Post: The Consequences of Egoism’s Growth
Article: “Peace in the World”
Interview with the Future – Part 6 “The Face of the Future”
The Upper Light shines upon one who is engaged in the study of the wisdom of Kabbalah, even though he doesn’t feel it, because he is not yet corrected in order to receive this Light. Nevertheless this illumination from afar gradually corrects him, making him fit to receive the Light within.
Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to Talmud Eser Sefirot,” item 155
All the obstacles that come to a person are from the Creator, in order to push him toward spiritual development, so he will not stay satisfied with his current condition. Only for those whom the Creator wishes to bring closer does He send help by showing them that they don’t advance in spirituality, sending them hindering thoughts against the Creator.
Baal HaSulam, Shamati article, There is None Else Besides Him
The goal of creation is to please the creatures, and as long as a person doesn’t receive all the abundance that the Creator prepared for him, this means that he still hasn’t reached the goal of creation.
Rabash, article, “The Essence and Correction of the Creation”
It is man’s duty to reach the goal of creation by correcting himself. The correction lies in acquiring the intention of bestowal. To the extent one has this intention, one receives that which the Creator has prepared for him.
Rabash, article, “The Essence and Correction of the Creation”
A person should not correct anything about his externality but only his internality – his “I,” his egoism. It cannot be corrected through any actions, such as fasting and other restrictions. On the contrary, egoism loves such actions because it can be proud of them. Correction lies in feeling one’s insignificance relative one’s friends – those with whom one studies Kabbalah, but under no circumstances relative others.
Baal HaSulam, “Pri Chacham – Letters,” p.75
A small hole in the heart is enough for a person to return to the Creator, but under the condition that it will be as a needle stuck into living flesh, and not dead.
The Kotzker Rebbe (Rabbi Menachem Mendel), “There is No More Whole Broken Heart,” p.30
The holy war is not a war between people but against yourself. It’s when you strike blows against the evil inside you and tell the good in you, “Grow.”
Rav Kook, “Maamarei Reiya,” 508
Numerous false doctrines will arise before the coming of the Mashiach. You can save yourself from them only by studying The Book of Zohar every day. Even if you don’t understand anything in this book, this is already enough for cleansing the heart.
“Ohr Yasharim.” Mira Dah’ya
Studying of The Book of Zohar for one hour brings more than studying the simple commentary for a year.
“Kisseh Melech,” Tikkun 43, ch. 60
The Creator can’t have more pleasure than when people study Kabbalah. Moreover, a person was created only for the study of Kabbalah.”
Rabbi Chaim Vital, “Introduction to Shaar HaHakdamot”
While the Creator conceals Himself, He allows evil, but not to the point of the complete destruction of the world. Through this, one later reveals the oneness of the Creator and the correction of all evil by His Mighty Power.
Ramchal (Moshe Chaim Luzzato), “Da`at Tevunoth” p.185
There is no action in the world that does not come from the Upper Light.
Ramchal, Adir BaMarom, p.227
All the commandments, though they seem to talk about physical actions or verses to be pronounced, are intended only for correcting the heart, because the Creator only demands the correction of the intentions that are in the heart.
Abraham ben Meir ibn Ezra, “Yesod Mora” p.8
This was sent by my student R. Tzarev:
The financial crisis in the United States is conducted forcefully and is controlled. Russia, Iran, China and the Emirates possess the world’s largest gold and foreign currency reserves. Russia, Iran, Venezuela, China, India and Brazil have begun creating their own alternative global economic system. Together they are beginning to pressure Europe, which is dependent on energy resources, causing it to break away from the US. By now Germany, Italy and France are lobbying for Russia’s interests, speaking out against the US. The European countries, Russia, Iran, Venezuela and Kuwait are using the Euro instead of the dollar in their business dealings related to energy products. This rejection of the dollar in the energy dealings will bring about a catastrophic drop of the entire US economy. The US must not allow this to happen. America must not allow itself to be bullied or bankrupted. There’s your reason for the “crisis.”
This was sent by my student O. Yahalom:
In our world there is a system of interaction of two opposite forces – positive and negative, altruistic and egoistic. Otherwise there would never be any growth, change or exchange. Of course, in our world the altruistic force is also egoistic – giving for the sake of greater profit. The dynamics of the current events can be explained by the interaction of these two forces in the world.
The entire global economy is structured in such a way that a person does not hope to receive from a specific source, but from the system as a whole. This leads to the formation of long chains of exchange: one person exchanges with another, the other with someone else, and if the end of the chain gets lost somewhere, man’s animate egoism can no longer motivate him to work, because he no longer sees when he will receive the reward and from whom. The only thing left is a vague “altruistic” intention to receive something from someone. But it gets weaker, because egoism constantly grows – and that’s how an economic crisis starts.
An economic crisis cannot happen within the boundaries of a city, state or other kind of region, because even if the end of the chain is not seen physically, a person still feels that it’s there. However, economic crises take place regularly in the context of a country, yet none of the economists know exactly what causes them. The fact is that they are caused by the undulating changes of balance between egoism and altruism in large groups of people. When egoism recedes – business flourishes. But when egoism continues to grow, altruism grows weaker, and egoism suddenly takes over the people’s consciousness, telling them that they shouldn’t trust the system, but instead receive more and “to the point” – the more the better, and all for themselves!
The first true crisis of altruism on the level of a country happened in the US, in 1929. Back then the American economy came out of the crisis because Roosevelt pumped all the foremost leaders of production and economy with optimism.
The first true crisis on the global level happened in September 2008. The true causes of the crisis lie on the spiritual level, on the level of the opposition between egoism and altruism in every single person and in humanity as a whole. Accordingly, the solution, the way out of the economic crisis can only be found on the spiritual level – humanity’s work towards evoking the Light that corrects egoism.
The Baal Shem Tov (a great Kabbalist who lived in the Russian empire at the end of the 18th century, founder of the Hassidut movement): “If only the Russian Tzar knew how beneficial the study of the Torah is for his country, he would set a guard with a sword beside every Jew, who would stand over him and keep repeating: “Study the Torah! Study the Torah!”
The countries that will lose most from this crisis will be those with energy resources. All of the earth’s resources, no matter where they are, belong to all humankind (see Baal HaSulam’s newspaper, “HaUma (The Nation)” and the article “The Last Generation”). That’s because the Upper Force sees us – humanity – as one single body, the creation. And to the extent that every country (every organ of this body) acts against this unified altruistic organism (reveals that it is ill), to that extent it will eventually be punished (be influenced by negative, correcting feedback, which brings the system to harmony, to recovery) or rewarded (be successful in this world and reveal the governing force).
Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Humanity Is One Integral, Interconnected Organism
Laitman.com Post: The Financial Crisis – an Analysis
Kabbalah Today Article: Humankind and Human Kindness
Article: “On Roots and Branches”
Article: “A Kabbalistic Interpretation of the Economic Crisis”
Daily Audio Version-MP3
Get the Weekly eNewsletter
Follow on Twitter
