A question I received: In the “Introduction to the Book Tree of Life” Rabbi Chaim Vital describes many aspects of the Kabbalah of the Ari. He writes the following about the Ari: “He was able to speak with reincarnated souls. He knew all the secrets of all people, the roots of their souls and all the details of their past lives. He was able to speak with the dybbuks (translator’s comment: this probably refers to evil spirits that possess people and need to be exorcised), as well as to correct them and drive them out of the bodies of the people whom they possessed.” My question is: What are the “dybbuks”? I couldn’t find this word in any of the study materials available today. It probably refers to one’s inner forces, doesn’t it?

My Answer: That is absolutely correct. This refers to man’s inner forces, since everything that exists is inside us in the form of forces, desires, and thoughts. See Baal HaSulam’s “Introduction to the Book of Zohar,” item 34. Nothing exists outside of man. We perceive the world as being outside of us, but in fact it is only a projection of our properties onto the white Light. It says in The Book of Zohar, “All the worlds are inside man,” but man perceives them on the outside in order to feel the Creator as being outside him and to attain similarity to the Creator. To the degree that he attains similarity to HIm, he will start perceiving everything that happens “outside him” as happening “inside him.” Today in our world we are beginning to attain the fact that our perception is absolutely subjective – that it happens inside us.

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Questions I received on perceiving the common soul and the Upper World:

Question: Everyone and everything is inside of me. The Creator is all around me and inside me. Once you understand that everything is inside you, you start desiring to unite with everything that “surrounds” you. So far so good. However, this means that I will be doing everything only for myself, since even a chance passerby is actually inside me. So in reality I actually want to correct everything for myself and not for others?

My Answer: A person certainly discovers that everything around him is part of him, and is incorporated in his egoism. However, this only happens when one aspires to come out of his egoism and be inside others – inside the environment. First he acquires the property of Bina, bestowal, “not for one’s own sake”; and then, once he is above this property (Tshuva mi Iraa, Hafetz Hesed), he attaches everything to himself and makes everything a part of him. Then he perceives all the souls as his own (Tshuva mi Ahava) and receives the entire Upper Light into this united Kli.

Question: How do we know that the Upper Force is the only one, and that what we will feel after the Upper Worlds are revealed is not our imagination or an illusion?

My Answer: We will know this by revealing the Upper World in our soul and comparing the two worlds. Everything in spirituality is attained inside us – just like we attain this world. We draw our conclusions only from our attainment of the Upper World. The science of Kabbalah is based exclusively on Kabbalists’ practical experience.

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News Report (translated from www.YNet.co.il): The philosophy department is being closed down! Representatives of the Department of Humanities at Tel Aviv University have announced that they are considering not opening the registration to the Department of Philosophy for the coming school year.

My Comment: We are living in a truly remarkable time! For thousands of years our lives were ruled by human speculation about the essence and meaning of life, and now we are finally reaching the correct conclusion, which coincides with the opinion of Kabbalah – that philosophy has only harmed us all along.

I understand how cruel my words may seem to those who don’t know about the opposition between Kabbalah and philosophy, but I still hope that the closing of the philosophy department at a local university will rouse some interest in you to read Baal HaSulam’s article “The Wisdom of Kabbalah and Philosophy.” To me, an event such as the closing of the philosophy department is a sign from above!

Baal HaSulam. “The Wisdom of Kabbalah and Philosophy” (selected excerpts)

Philosophy has gone through a great deal of trouble to prove that corporeality is the offspring of spirituality and that the soul begets the body – and this is their primary mistake. The meaning of the word “spirituality” has nothing to do with philosophy. How can they discuss something that they have never seen or felt?

Philosophy loves to pride itself in understanding all about His essence. Philosophy has generally worn a mantle that is not its own, for it has pilfered definitions from the wisdom of Kabbalah, and made delicacies with its human understanding. If it had not been for that, they would never have thought of fabricating such acumen.

We will still have to regard only the tangible reality. This erring of separating the operator from the operation comes from the Figurative Philosophy, which insisted on proving that the spiritual act influences the corporeal operation.

The opinion of Kabbalah in this matter is crystal clear, excluding any mixture of philosophy. That is because it is the opinion of the sages of Kabbalah that even the separated spiritual entities, which philosophy denies having any corporeality and displays them as purely conceptual substance, although they are indeed spiritual, more sublime and abstract, consist of a body and soul just like the physical human.

Their thoughts are not our thoughts, for the way of the sages of the Kabbalah is one of finding actual proof of attainment, making its revocation through intellectual pondering impossible.

Philosophy fabricated that the different individuals are not combined materials (Kabbalah believes that everything consists of two forces, the vessel and the Light).

The old philosophy presents three opinions as obstacles before my explanation:
1. Their decision that the power of the human intellect is the eternal soul, man’s essence.
2. Their conjecture that the body is an upshot of the soul.
3. Their saying that spiritual people are simple and not complex.

Not only is it the wrong place to argue with them about their fabricated conjectures, but also their time has already passed and their authority revoked. We should also thank the experts of materialistic psychology for that, having built its plinth on the ruin of the former, winning the public’s favor. Now everyone admits to the nullity of philosophy, for it is not built on concrete foundations.

The old doctrine became a stumbling rock and a deadly thorn to the sages of Kabbalah. Where they should have subdued before the sages of Kabbalah and taken upon themselves abstinence and prudence prior to admittance to even the slightest thing in spirituality, they received what they had wanted easily from the figurative philosophy. Without payment or a price they have watered them from their fountain of wisdom to satiation, and refrained from delving in the wisdom of Kabbalah. As a consequence, the wisdom has almost been forgotten from among Israel.

For that reason we are grateful to materialistic psychology for having beaten it a deadly blow.

Therefore, there was not a salvation for Israel as at the time when the materialistic psychology appeared and struck theological philosophy on its head a lethal blow.

Now, every person who seeks the Lord must bring Kabbalah back to its throne – and restore its past glory.

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A question I received: You said that Kabbalah is a science without axioms. Yet in Shamati Baal HaSulam says that there is only Atzmuto (the Unattainable), Ein Sof and the Souls. Aren’t these the axioms upon which Kabbalah is based? Everything else can be derived from these notions.

My Answer: No, these aren’t axioms, but revelations made by Kabbalists. You simply don’t understand how one can say that Atzmuto exists if it is unattainable. But the fact is – one clearly attains its unattainability! The rest you’ll have to reveal for yourself.

There is a rule in Kabbalah: We only talk about what we attain. So when a Kabbalist says that something is “unattainable,” this denotes a particular attainment. The same applies to all Kabbalistic notions – they all come from clear attainment and scientific research. They were perceived in feelings that one can control, and are based on a Kabbalist’s comprehension of the connections by way of analysis and mental synthesis. However, this wasn’t done with the regular mind. Kabbalists develop an “unearthly” mind or brain, because one’s mind develops alongside one’s desires, in order to ensure their actualization.

If one’s desires are at the level of this world, then one’s mind can never step out of its boundaries, because it is produced by one’s desires. Hence, you must first correct yourself, and then, as a result of the change in your properties, you will become smarter and acquire a mind that isn’t corporeal, but is different, higher – a mind that can understand opposites as one whole, can comprehend that time doesn’t exist, and that motion means changing one’s properties in similarity to the Creator.

One then reveals an entirely different worldview (see the material on the perception of spiritual reality). One reveals the souls and the governing forces, as well as the cause and purpose of this world. In addition, one sees all of this together, as a single picture that is stationary yet moving toward revealing this state of rest.

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A question I received: Dear Rav Laitman, Kabbalah says that the Creator’s plan is for creation to come close to the Creator through its intention, by gradually developing while being in its animate body. When the souls (parts of the single eternal soul) attain their utmost development, they no longer have to live in our world. What will happen once all the souls go through all 125 degrees and reunite? Will they no longer need the bodies to serve as a starting point? Will the animate bodies disappear as a species? If not – if the bodies will continue being born, then what for?

My Answer: It is written that when all the souls attain the full correction, then our world will rise to the World of Infinity. This means that the perception of the World of Infinity through the five “bodily” senses will disappear, because these five “bodily” senses will also become corrected and incorporated into the true perception of the universe – the World of Infinity.

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We will be holding a course for beginners at our Learning Center, starting September 3.

The course will run for 24 weeks, and will be led by two of Bnei Baruch’s veteran students, Tony Kosinec and Mike Kellogg. Any newcomer to Kabbalah will benefit by acquiring a firm basis in Kabbalah’s basic concepts, including:

• What Kabbalah is and isn’t,
• How Kabbalah defines our perception of reality,
• What determines our feelings of pleasure and pain and how to correct the source of suffering,
• How to understand the “language of the Kabbalists”
• What Kabbalistic texts are actually talking about,
• What is free will is and how to attain it.

For more information about the course, and to register, visit the information page, or go directly to our Learning Center.

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A question I received: In reference to your blog post: Video Conference with Canadian Television: How much longer will people have to get hurt by others in order to finally understand that we are responsible for our actions before the Creator? And as long as each person doesn’t strive to unite with the properties of the Creator, it is impossible to create a group of single-minded people who will support and reinforce each other?

My Answer: The spiritual world operates according to the impulse mode – a digital mode rather than an analog mode. That is to say, there is always a process of accumulation taking place where efforts, knowledge, and perceptions accumulate until they reach a moment when they add up to attain the following spiritual level and turn into a qualitatively new degree.

Today we are at a level where our spiritual state is concealed and we do not see how close we are to reaching the following degree – the first spiritual degree of revelation. Starting with that degree, we will have a better understanding of where we are and how we are advancing.

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A question I received: How does one pray in Kabbalah? I pray every night, yet I find myself asking whether this is the correct way to pray. It seems so egoistic to pray only for my own desires and requests. Does Kabbalah have “instructions” on how to pray, or a general, single prayer that a person can say? Perhaps every person should pray individually, according to how he feels, or is it better to just stop praying altogether?

My Answer: A prayer is a desire that comes from the bottom of one’s heart – the desire to become similar to the Creator, to bestow and selflessly love. This is the only desire that the Creator perceives as a prayer – the desire to be similar to Him, or to attain adhesion with Him. Hence, He doesn’t feel all the egoistic prayers people say, and the entire history of mankind shows this.

This is how the system of Atzilut (the system of the Creator’s connection with the creation or soul) is built: AVI (Aba ve Ima) feel a MAN coming from Malchut (the soul), and react to it by giving Malchut the Light of correction or the Light of fulfillment, depending on what Malchut asks for.

One cannot reach such a request, or the true prayer, alone. This can only be done through a group, by trying to unite with it into one whole, as requested by AVI, and as it was before the breaking of the soul. In addition, it can only be done through studying authentic Kabbalistic books – the original books of Baal HaSulam, because then one is influenced by a special Upper Force called the Surrounding Light (Ohr Makif). (See item 155 in the “Introduction to Talmud Eser Sefirot.”)

Precisely this Light creates the true prayer in a person, which immediately receives an answer from the Creator in that He reveals Himself to the person. This revelation of the Creator is called the evidence (Edut) of the fact that a person will never sin again, that is, that he will never act egoistically under the influence of this revelation. This is why the Upper World becomes revealed to him.

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Questions I received on perception, mountains and poor people:

Question: Do animals and nature feel their “self”? Do they perceive reality differently than we do, or do they perceive limited reality like us?

My Answer: They live, but they don’t feel that they live. They don’t have a perception of their “self” or that it’s “their life.” They also don’t feel jealousy of others, but are concerned only with survival.

Question: If we exist in an imaginary reality that we create in our consciousness, then where are we all actually going?

My Answer: By gradually discovering that our reality is distorted, we unknowingly prepare ourselves for attaining the true reality. Science is discovering that matter and waves are the same thing. By studying our perceptions, we have discovered that solid can turn into liquid, and liquid can then turn into gas – a substance that’s imperceptible to our senses. But then the imperceptible gas becomes liquid and then solid again. For example, a piece of ice melts and evaporates, and then condenses into water and becomes solid ice again.

Reality is subjective and depends on our senses. We create it within us. All development is aimed at bringing us to the true state – “There is none else but Him.”

Question: What are mountains from the point of view of Kabbalah – for example Mount Miron and Mount Sinai?

My Answer: A mountain is a mass of egoism, because earth is desire (Aretz means earth, and it comes from the word Ratzon – desire). A mountain is a “protruding” desire. By rising to the top of the mountain – by rising above one’s egoism to the Creator, to equivalence with the Creator, one attains Him.

Question: The Bible very often speaks about poor people. What is a “poor person” in spirituality?

My Answer: In Kabbalah (the Torah) a poor person is one who does not have any knowledge of the Creator (Ani be Daat). It’s because knowledge of the universe and attainment of the Creator (of the only force in existence, the source of everything and the one who governs everything) – is the same thing. A wealthy person in Kabbalah (the Torah) is a one with a wealth of knowledge (of the Creator).

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Questions I received on the limits of perception and the proper way to understand Baal HaSulam’s words:

Question: It is written that we can only perceive the Matter and the Form in the Matter, but not the Abstract Form and the Essence. It is also said that when we become one with the Creator, we achieve all His qualities, which means that we’ll be able to perceive as He perceives. In the book Kabbalah Revealed it is stated that we can never perceive the Abstract Form and the Essence.

I cannot agree to this, because as I wrote, when we become united with the Creator, we will have the same qualities as He has, and He is surely able to perceive the Abstract Form and the Essence! So, I can agree that we cannot perceive these states for now, but at some point or state (Gmar Tikkun) we will be able to do so! Please comment on my question.

My Answer: At the end of our correction we will definitely be able to fulfill all our questions and desires. If a question (desire) arises in us, then someday, at the end of its correction, it will receive an answer (fulfillment).

Question: Dear Rav Laitman, I am reading the “Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah” and in item 6, at the end, it says: “Even the souls of other creatures passing through this world (Atzilut) merge with the Creator.”

Will you please explain who the other creatures are and what do you mean by passing? I suppose it is on the way up, but I am not sure what is meant by “the other creatures.” I hope you will answer this question.

My Answer: These are Baal HaSulam’s words. He is referring to the souls – the desires of the still, vegetative, and animate levels, or all the degrees besides the fourth degree – the “speaking” level. The speaking level passes independently, and it incorporates the other levels.

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