A question I received: I am a 31 year old woman, married with five children. Recently my marriage went through a difficult crisis. My husband cheated on me with my best friend (a divorcee) and then left me for her. Their relationship continued for four months, and it was very difficult for me to live through that period. Now my husband and I are living together again and trying to rekindle our relationship. He says he needs to share with me what he went through during that period, but I’m afraid that I just won’t be able to bear the pain of it all over again. I think that I have to erase everything that happened from my memory in order to go on with my life. What do you think?

My Answer: You are right. Don’t think about the past, but only about the present and the future. Think of your husband as if you’ve just met, and erase everything that happened. This is what Kabbalah advises us to do, and it’s the same with our relationship with the Creator. This action is called “Dilug” – skipping over.

One should think that events happening now are happening through one’s active participation and that they are actions that he can and must change. However, as soon as part of an action or the entire action has happened, one should immediately accept it as something that happened according to the Creator’s initial plan.

In other words, do not regret anything, but also do not be proud of what you did or think that it happened because of you, that you participated in it. Rather, accept it as something that nature gave to you and that passed over you in order to teach you about the following action – which depends entirely on you. Your attitude to the future should be ordinary, materialistic – without relying on the Creator. We learn in Kabbalah that everything depends on raising a MAN – a request for correction.

It is difficult to relate everything that happened in the past to the Creator. Yet it is necessary, because otherwise you can’t be constantly unified with the Creator. The union with the Creator lies in always perceiving Him, while attributing all of the past to Him, and all of the future – to yourself.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Stop Thinking About the Past!
Laitman.com Post: Kabbalists Aren’t Interested In History
Laitman.com Post: Look Forward, Only Forward
Laitman.com Post: Disasters and Diseases Come to an End When Humanity Unites Above Selfishness
Laitman.com Post: Everybody Has Their Own Path
Laitman.com Post: Horrible Manifestations of the Ever-Growing Egoism

Filed under: Spirituality - No Comments →

Questions I received about the relationship between the body, the mind and spirituality:

Question: What’s the right attitude to have to your body? The body is the most perfect machine in the world. Every cell in it works like a perfect system, maybe even like the entire cosmos. This is why it’s difficult for me to think of it as just an “animal.”

My Answer: You should think of your body as a valuable animal that’s meant for doing work. You have to take care of it (but not pamper it!) – wash it, feed it, and so on – and demand for it to work.

Question: Should a person solve all or most of his psychological problems before turning to Kabbalah?

My Answer: If a person is mentally sane, then Kabbalah will solve his psychological problems. But if he is mentally ill (his brain does not function properly), then he cannot study Kabbalah. In this case I would advise doing more things to relax the mind, as well as more sports and physical work.

Question: You say that there is no connection between spirituality and corporeality. Then how can a corrected intention affect the health of one’s physical body?

My Answer: It’s because everything in our world is a consequence of the Upper Light’s (Ohr Makif’s) influence. Man is a part of the integral system of Adam, the single soul. Therefore, even if he is righteous, he can get sick and suffer, because he is contained within a single organism with others who are not yet corrected.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Kabbalah – The Cure for Any Affliction
A Talk with Rav Michael Laitman: Exodus – From Physical to Spiritual
Body and Soul – a Booklet

Filed under: Health - 1 Comment →

Questions I received on whether one should visit the graves of the righteous, and what to ask for at these sites:

Question: I want to visit the graves of the righteous on Mount Miron. The trip I’m interested in going on will be held at night, and the trip’s organizer said that according to Kabbalah, you can use the moon’s cycle to calculate what is the best time to ask to be cured from illness. However, I also heard another opinion from someone who studies Kabbalah – he said that this shouldn’t be done. I would like to find out whether it can be done, and why at night?

My Answer: No one ever visits graves at night. The one exception is the night of Lag BaOmer, when people light bonfires all over Israel, including Mount Miron, by the grave of Rashbi, the author of The Book of Zohar. This is an ancient custom. However, asking to be cured from illness when there is a full moon has nothing to do with Kabbalah, but only with mysticism and shamanism.

Rabash and I used to go to Tiberius for two days out of the week, and sometimes we visited the grave of Rashbi on Mount Miron. Rabash respected that place. However, he didn’t see it as a place to ask for people’s corporeal, egoistic problems to be solved, such as healing, but rather only as a place to ask for similarity to the Creator. When one is there, he should ask for the ability to love his neighbor, instead of being concerned with one’s animate body, with healing it, or other benefits.

By definition, Kabbalah is the method of revealing the Creator (the property of love and bestowal) to a person in this world (in this life). Kabbalah bears no relation to receiving something for oneself. (See the definition in the article “The Essence of the Wisdom of Kabbalah.”)

Between the years 1979 and 1991, when I knew Rabash, he visited the Wailing Wall only once – in 1983. He just walked past the wall, at least 2-3 meters away from it, and didn’t even come close to it, not to mention touching it. He visited the grave of the Ari once in ten years.

Baal HaSulam once said that he really doesn’t care where they’ll bury the bag with his bones. When he passed away and his students didn’t know where to bury him, one student remembered that Baal HaSulam used to like walking on a specific hill, and that’s where they buried him.

Once I asked Rabash for permission to fix up Baal HaSulam’s grave – to whiten it, make a place for candles, and so on. Rabash told me to leave this to others, because there were more important things to do.  Rabash also didn’t prepare a burial place for himself, even though it’s a custom among the religious. (In the past bodies weren’t buried, but locked in a cave that was dug for this purpose. They were left there for some time, and when only the bones remained, they were placed into a vessel.)

Kabbalists do not respect anything corporeal. Every person respects what is important to him, and what he is attached to – the body or the soul. To a Kabbalist, the body is intended to do work, just like an animal (for example, cattle). All his attention is focused on developing the soul – the part of the Creator in man, the property of love and bestowal.

Question: Rashbi is buried on Mount Miron, and thousands of people visit his grave every year. Is this something the Creator instructed them to do, or do these instructions come from religious leaders who want to influence people and have power over them?

My Answer: Kabbalah favors this custom, because it brings people closer to Kabbalah, making them respect it and become interested in it.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Only the Upper Light Can Change Our Destiny
Laitman.com Post: Love Thy Neighbor as Thyself
Laitman.com Post: Always With Me
Laitman.com Post: Corporeality Has No Effect On Spirituality
Baal HaSulam Article: The Essence of the Wisdom of Kabbalah

Filed under: Spirituality - 1 Comment →

A news report that appeared in The Economist: “A battle of ideas is going on inside your mind.” That problem solving becomes easier when more minds are put to the task is no more than common sense. But the phenomenon goes further than that. Ask two people to answer a question like “how many windows are there on a London double-decker bus” and average their answers. Their combined guesses will usually be more accurate than if just one person had been asked. Ask a crowd, rather than a pair, and the average is often very close to the truth. The phenomenon was called “the wisdom of crowds” by James Surowiecki, a columnist for the New Yorker who wrote a book about it.

Now a pair of psychologists have found an intriguing corollary. They have discovered that two guesses made by the same person at different times are also better than one.That is strange. Until now, psychologists have assumed that when people make a guess, they make the most accurate guess that they can. Ask them to make a second guess and it should, by definition, be less accurate. If that were true, averaging the first and second guesses should decrease the accuracy. Yet Edward Vul at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harold Pashler at the University of California, San Diego, have revealed in a study just published in Psychological Science that the average of first and second guesses is indeed better than either guess on its own.

The two researchers asked 428 people eight questions drawn from the “CIA World Factbook”: for example, “What percentage of the world’s airports are in the USA?” Half the participants were unexpectedly asked to make a second, different guess immediately after they completed the initial questionnaire. The other half were asked to make a second guess three weeks later.

Dr Vul and Dr Pashler found that in both circumstances the average of the two guesses was better than either guess on its own. They also noticed that the interval between the first and second guesses determined how accurate that average was. Second guesses made immediately improved accuracy by an average of 6.5%; those made after three weeks improved the accuracy by 16%.

Even after three weeks, the result is still only one-third as good as the wisdom of several different people. But that this happens at all raises questions about “individuality” within an individual. If guesses can shift almost at random, where are they coming from?

My Comment: Everything comes from the common informational field – the common soul. We are all connected in one system, and it makes no difference whether we realize it or not. For the time being, we are in an unconscious state in relation to this system – a state Kabbalah calls “sleeping.”

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: The Internet Is Just A Step Toward Revealing Our True Connection With Each Other
Kabbalah Blog Post: From Egoism to Altruism-The Key to Social Change

Filed under: Science - No Comments →

Two questions I received on overcoming our fears:

Question: In one of your lessons on the book Shamati you spoke about fear, and you said that when a person is afraid, he should immediately connect to the Creator. Can you elaborate on this? What should I do when I feel chilled to the bone with worry about my loved ones?

My Answer: You should connect everything that is happening with the Creator, with yourself, and with the entire world, so that all of these will unite into one and there won’t be any difference between them. All of your doubts and fears should vanish within this union. And if they don’t – then it’s even better! Then you can ask the Creator to help you.

Actually, if you open The Book of Zohar , you’ll discover that the first correction, “Pkuda Kadma” (in Aramaic) is when one attains true fear. In fact, fear always haunts everyone and everything: On the still level of nature, there is fear to preserve its structure, on the vegetative and animate levels of nature, there is fear to become filled with what’s necessary and to push away what’s harmful. And it’s the same with man.

Question: Can studying Kabbalah help one get rid of his fears, for example, the fear of being on stage or of expressing one’s opinion?

My Answer: Yes, because studying Kabbalah develops your perception of the unity of everything, of the integral universe. It also replaces one’s earthly fears with the true fear – the need to attain the Creator.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Kabbalah – the Cure for Any Affliction
Shamati #38: The Fear of God is His Treasure
Shamati #138: About Fear that Sometimes Comes Upon a Person

Filed under: Spirituality - 1 Comment →

A question I received: I was an alcoholic and drug addict for 20 years. A year ago I went through rehabilitation and have stayed off drugs and alcohol thanks to a “12 step” program – a program of spiritual growth. Recently I started studying Kabbalah and became confused – should I continue the “12 step” program or devote myself completely to Kabbalah? Or should I combine both paths? Maybe some Kabbalah students are anonymous alcoholics and drug addicts, but I haven’t been able to find them yet. Can they share their experience with me?

My Answer: Kabbalah is spreading throughout the world. Obviously, the people who begin studying it come from all walks of life. I recommend and ask you to support each other.

A question I received: Suppose that a person is above the Machsom and he already attains and feels the connection with the Creator. As he continues working on his correction, he still decides to experiment with LSD in order to compare the different states. Will he not feel the Upper World then? I’d like you to give this question the attention it deserves, because modern science doesn’t consider LSD an ordinary drug, but an extremely powerful psycho-stimulant.

My Answer: As soon as a person takes drugs, he detaches from the perception of the real world and enters a realm of “wandering,” illusory images.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Drugs Have No Connection With the Attainment of the Upper World
Laitman.com Post: Can Identifying the Chemical Pathways and Brain Structures that Generate Religious Experiences Lead Us to Spirituality?
Kabbalah Today, Quote from the book The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Kabbalah

Filed under: Spirituality - 2 Comments →

Two questions I received from women about the purpose of preparation in one’s inner work, and the need to pay Maaser:

Question: I always try to be in the state of “preparation” – to hold the intention, connect to my husband who also studies Kabbalah, disseminate, and study. Still, sometimes I experience descents and lose all of my connection with the Creator. Later I come out of them and try to increase my preparation even more, as much as I can. But after that there are more descents, and then I again increase my preparation and aspiration, and this is followed by more descents.

I understand that there will always be descents and ascents, and that they are necessary. However, if I lose my connection with the Creator, doesn’t this mean that I don’t spend enough time preparing? Or am I wrong about the purpose of the preparation? Isn’t it intended to help you get out of a descent faster? Or is it intended to prevent the descents, to have less of them?

My Answer: If you prepare correctly, then whenever you experience some state, and then this state finishes passing over you (it finishes manifesting fully, through all ten Sefirot or all four stages), then if you prepared well beforehand, you’ll immediately begin perceiving the end of this state as a descent. And then you’ll immediately want to ascend from it, and you’ll begin intensively attracting the external forces of the group. The group will give you:

1) The importance of the goal;
2) The sensation of your own weakness;
3) The necessary aspiration to ask for correction from above.

As a result of all this, you will produce a request (a MAN), and then the Light of correction (Ohr Makif, MAD) will descend during the general group study. And then you’ll ascend – that is, you’ll perceive and value the property of love and bestowal as if it’s the highest possible thing.

And that’s how a new cycle begins.

Question: When women participate in the group together with men, do they also have to pay the Maaser?

My Answer: Yes. Every person who advances must give a tenth of his net profit to Kabbalah’s dissemination around the world – to the world’s correction. This is not a tradition, but a necessity in order to correct a tenth of your egoistic desire, Malchut. The other parts become corrected by your efforts in the study, the group, and dissemination. You can’t just “buy them off” the way you do to correct this “still” part of your desires.

Isn’t that a shame? It would be so easy to just pay someone, and then suddenly to find yourself in the spiritual world! However, since our act of giving 10% for the correction of the world is part of correction, our egoism objects to it in every way possible, and this is why every person receives enormous disturbances when it comes to giving away the Maaser. Yet every person normally has no problem gambling away or spending 10% of his earnings in any other way, on things he doesn’t really need at all or on entertainment. However, without participating in the common correction this way, one cannot undergo any private correction either! We usually recommend using this money to buy Kabbalistic materials and disseminating them yourself – in other words, putting your own 10% to the right use.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Women Need to Work On Correction Just Like Men
Laitman.com Post: The Woman’s Correction
Laitman.com Post: Be Happy about the Descents!
Maaser FAQ
A Talk about Women’s Spiritual Development #1 [40:34m]
A Talk about Women’s Spiritual Development #2 [1:35:23m]

Filed under: Spirituality - No Comments →

Questions I received on movement, celebrities, the Masons, and pop music that uses prayers for lyrics:

Question: Dear Rav, I envy everything that moves. What can I do about it?

My Answer: Also move! (Meaning spiritual movement!)

Question: Why do you have conversations with celebrities, with people who are famous, instead of ordinary people? Do you really need the publicity? Do these talks with celebrities flatter your ego?

My Answer: Famous people meet different people thousands more times than ordinary people do. After my conversations with them they gain an understanding of the great value that Kabbalah has for every person and for the whole world, and they begin disseminating Kabbalah on a broad scale, or rather – they bring the Kabbalistic idea to the world. Experience proves this!

The reason I’m doing this is to accelerate man’s recognition of evil so he wouldn’t have to actually go through it in reality. As the Soviet satiric writer Zhvanetsky once said, “The difference between a clever person and a wise person is that a clever person gets out of a difficult situation with huge efforts, but a wise person never gets into that situation.” I want to be wise and I wish the same for everyone else.

Question: What is the connection between the Masons and Kabbalah, if there is any?

My Answer: There is no connection at all. Even my attempt a few years ago to give a lecture for the Masons in Jerusalem failed – they were scared. Secret brotherhoods of any type feel sick in the stomach at the thought of Kabbalah, because Kabbalah promotes wide dissemination to everyone, while the Masons aspire to maintain secrecy. However, there are no hidden forces there, but only traditions and a belief in their exclusivity.

I’m sure that the wave of world-wide change will soon overtake them, as well as all the other philosophies and religions. The only things that will remain will be man, the Creator and the connection between them, while the Masons’ protocols and religious faith “in something” will disappear.

Question: Recently we often hear the song “אנא בכוח,” with moving lyrics that go straight into the heart. Can you explain this text?

My Answer: Why does it move you so much if you don’t know the meaning of the text? Who taught you to think of this prayer in a special way? You wrote, “Recently we often hear” – but I’d like to ask you: who hears it, and where? I have never heard about it! I only know this prayer from the prayer book. In religion and in Kabbalah, no one treats it in a special way. This is just another “sensation” – someone just wants to stand out!

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: The Illuminati’s Coming to Get You… NOT!
Laitman.com Post: The Recipe for Rejuvenation
Laitman.com Post: Kabbalah and Your Career
Media coverage from a lecture & book promo tour of Rav Michael Laitman in the US and Canada, 2007

Filed under: Spirituality - No Comments →

Questions I received on making life choices, understanding Baal HaSulam’s Letters, and preparing for the future

Question: I have a problem on my hands: I’ve been studying Kabbalah for two years and now I’m supposed to go to the army for a year. I can get out of it by paying money (without violating the law!), which will also take about a year of work. If I go to the army, then I won’t be able to watch lessons or disseminate Kabbalah, but if I work for a year, then I’ll have time to disseminate and go to lessons. What’s better?

My Answer: If you will be working as you’re supposed to, studying Kabbalah, and working on inner correction and dissemination, then you will be more useful to the world as a Kabbalah student. So if it’s legal, choose this route.

Question: In reference to Baal HaSulam’s Letters (Igrot) that are included in the kabbalah.info Library section, to whom was Rav Ashlag addressing them?

My Answer: To you! Even though these letters contain some personal answers and comments, mainly they talk about things that are experienced by every person who’s going toward the Creator.

Question: You have disseminated Kabbalah to thousands of people, and I’m one of them. (Thank you. I’m an example of the benefit that comes from dissemination work, which unfortunately I don’t do yet.) I’d like to know: Are you preparing someone to be your successor, to continue the lineage of the wisdom? Or is there no need for a leader in the new era of Kabbalah’s revelation?

My Answer: The leader will be the group that is now learning to resolve the management issues. They are growing right beside me – and you are one of them. Every person who learns the wisdom of Kabbalah at least to some degree, will have to serve others, in order to help them learn and actualize the degrees of man’s transformation until the level of the Creator. This work of attaining equivalence to the Creator has already begun, and the leaders of the new spiritual upbringing of the common worldwide civilization will be determined from above.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Spiritual Labor Pains and the Future of Kabbalah
Laitman.com Post: If I Don’t Do It for Myself, Who Will Help Me?
Laitman.com Post: Guidelines for Achieving Unity – Selected Quotes of Baal HaSulam

Filed under: Spirituality - No Comments →

A question I received: I searched your name in Google and found an article about two people who studied Kabbalah at “Beit Kabbalah L’Am” and then dropped out of the classes. They said that it looks good at the beginning – free classes and free everything, but later you’re forced to pay 20% of your income – 10% for Maaser and 10% for books. They also said that you brainwash people, and that you told the husband to leave his wife and to get another one – someone you will introduce him to. What do you say to this?

My Answer: I say that there are many scoundrels in the world, and out of the 2,000,000 students studying with me, two of them happened to be this way. He’s Catholic and she’s Jewish. They lived in India and did drugs and all kinds of mysticisms for many years. He tried to find himself with us, but didn’t succeed because she was against it. And they aren’t married, by the way. When I saw her, I told him straight out, “Leave her or leave Kabbalah.”

Everything else they wrote about us are lies. Kabbalah’s enemies managed to find this couple, who agreed to talk about us this way. This story is already seven or eight years old.

So far our Kabbalah Academy is spreading and growing, and this is what matters. The entire world opposes Kabbalah, so you shouldn’t be surprised at how many opponents we have. I completely understand this and I don’t take their hatred personally. I see the hand of the Creator in it, according to the principle: “Go to the Pharaoh because I have hardened his heart.”

If I paid attention to the opponents personally, then I wouldn’t accomplish anything in my life. I understand the game that the evil forces are playing with me, and I don’t leave any room for them in my heart and mind – and without it, they die.

Life goes on and it’s in our favor! There are still many wars ahead of us, but all these wars aren’t against us – they are wars of man against himself, his nature.

The only things coming from outside that I pay attention to are comments about how I disseminate (but not about the meaning of the dissemination), in order to learn how to create a better external appearance for our material, to make it more suitable for people’s preferences and habits, so that its external form will attract people instead of pushing them away. And I’m trying to simplify the inner content as much as possible.

There’s no doubt that Kabbalah is repulsive to man’s nature and it will still scare many people away, and many will be intimidated by it. This is a battle of the ages – the battle between the Creator and Amalek, but its victorious finish can already be seen.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Do Kabbalists Need an Army?
Laitman.com Post: How to Use Anger
Laitman.com Post: An Invitation to Ascend – the Purpose of This Blog
Laitman.com Post: Why Kabbalah Disgusts Us

Filed under: Spirituality - 1 Comment →