A question I received: Didn’t Abraham know that the Eastern methods and teachings are false? Why, then, did he give them to his sons?

My Answer: The difference between all the teachings and methods is their suggested way of working with and correcting man’s egoistic desire. The Eastern methods are incorrect for our time. However, as long as man’s egoism was small, it was possible to tame it using the Eastern methods. As soon as people’s egoism grew, however, these methods stopped working.

While humanity was egoistically developing throughout thousands of years, we needed these methods as well as the three major religions of the world. The religions are methods of developing the souls during the period of exile, which is an exile from spirituality, when the Upper World is concealed. This period began with the destruction of the Temple and lasted until the era of the Messiah.

When this period comes to an end, religion turns into a cultural heritage or a tradition. We are living in a time when all the methods have to become clear for what they are, once and for all. Then, Kabbalah will be revealed above them.

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson - No Comments →

A question I received: If I haven’t attained the spiritual sensation yet, do I have to perform the physical commandments of Judaism?

My Answer: Kabbalah does not obligate anyone to do this. This science is studied by people of all nationalities, including those who observe religious commandments as well as those who are completely secular. We don’t meddle in these affairs; this is your personal business. We only teach people how they can attain equivalence with the Creator, or in other words, how to correct their 613 desires.

We are nearing the time when all humanity will have to attain the Creator, according to the written, “My house will be called the house of prayer for all the nations.” This means that the entire global egoism will be corrected, and the desire of every person will go through correction.

All the other aspects of people’s lives may remain and carry on in the same fashion, in whatever way people find the most comfortable and the best, if it matches their inner correction. Baal HaSulam writes that in the state of the final correction, every person can keep his religion.

That’s because Kabbalah views religion as a national custom, the culture of a nation, which each nation can keep. Religious observance constitutes external actions that are nothing more than a cultural tradition, an external covering, and the framework of people’s lives, telling them how to behave at home, with their families, and so on. However, this does not affect the correction of a person’s soul.

The most important thing is to attain the correction of you soul – to attain love for your neighbor.
(From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson)

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson - No Comments →

Even now, we are all in the World of Infinity; we just don’t feel it. Everything depends on our qualities, because the Upper Light is the unchanging quality of bestowal and love.

We don’t have to work on correcting our egoism and we don’t need to fight it. What we have to work on is building the quality of bestowal and love (the screen) above it, so we will be able to receive the Light inside this quality and discover the Creator. This is why in Kabbalah, the work and the reward are the same thing.

This is different from the earthly or religious systems where the work takes place in one place and the reward is given elsewhere. Moreover, if you could get the reward without the work, you would happily abandon the work. In Kabbalah, the only reward is to become bestowing and loving like Him.

It is written: “The reward for a Mitzvah is the Mitzvah (Schar Mitzvah – Mitzvah).” This is followed by knowing the Creator or merging with Him (Schar Mitzvah Ladaat HaMetsuveh). On the other hand, in religion people think that by performing commandments mechanically, they will earn a reward in the world to come, and once they get there, they will have everything. This is what religion tells us, and this is the fundamental difference between religion and Kabbalah, which says that we have to receive our reward here and now! There is nothing waiting for us after death, besides the next life cycle where you will get another chance to reveal the Creator within yourself.

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson - 1 Comment →

A person thinks that when his life is over, he will receive a reward in the world to come for having behaved well and being faithful, as well as for having carried out all that was demanded of him by his religion. But what can he receive if he did not prepare his desires for it?

His desires are for the pleasures of this world – pleasures that don’t exist in the spiritual world! A person’s primitive imagination made him decide to collect as much “stuff” as possible from this world in order to take it all with him to the grave.

If we think of the Creator as a king-like character for whom we must work, then we are like the religious people. The Creator is within us; He is the quality of bestowal and love which we have to acquire here and now.

Therefore, we have to work on ourselves in order to correct ourselves, rather than to be rewarded or punished by some contrived powerful ruler. This is Kabbalah’s difference from religion, and the reason why we need the force of correction – the force of Kabbalah, or the Torah. It’s because its Light returns us to the Source – the Creator.

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson - No Comments →

A question I received: It is written, “What’s important is not your reward, but who you are working for.” How can I be thinking about this, instead of the reward?

My Answer: These words may confuse you. Who am I working for? For myself, and no one else! It’s forbidden to imagine the Creator as any image or form. The Creator is the quality of bestowal which we have to reveal within us. Therefore, the answer to the question, “Who am I working for?” depends on who I identify myself with.

If I identify myself with my egoistic desire, then I will think that I am working for the Creator. Alternatively, I can identify myself with the point in the heart, which is the quality of bestowal – the embryo of the soul. This will mean that I want to attain the quality of bestowal, called the Creator; I want it to manifest inside me.

By definition, the Creator is Boreh, from the words Bo – come, and Reh – see. This means that you have to discover this quality inside you. So, there is no one outside of me that I’m working for. I am working on my own correction in order to attain bestowal and love, which are called “the Creator.”

On the other hand, if I will imagine that the Creator is somewhere outside of me and I have to work for Him, to carry out His desires, then I will not be interpreting the Kabbalistic texts correctly. This is exactly how the religion of Judaism came to be, when the people lost their inner sensation of the Creator during the fall of the Second Temple. Later on, Christianity and Islam also originated from Judaism. These religions depict the Creator outside of a person, separate from him, instead of inside him.

During the period of the Second Temple, the Creator disappeared from man’s sensations and became concealed from him. Thus, people lost the correct picture of the world, because they started thinking that the Creator is someone that exists separately from them, that He isn’t a quality that becomes revealed inside them. They started believing that they have a Master they have to work for, like slaves. All the religions are founded on this false interpretation of the Creator’s essence.

Instead of thinking of the Creator as the main, most important quality of creation, which becomes expressed inside a person, people started thinking of Him as an external individual that sits somewhere up in the clouds and pulls the levers controlling our lives. This is why it’s so important to learn the correct Kabbalistic definitions, as otherwise it’s very easy to make mistakes and bring everything down to regular religion.

In Kabbalah, the rules are explained very simply: There is no Light without a Kli; there is no Creator without creation, Boreh = Bo + Reh, and so on.
(From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson)

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson - No Comments →

Why can’t I attain the sensation of spirituality directly? Well, say I am not very knowledgeable in some profession, for example, I don’t know anything about economics. If I start working at a bank, then I will understand the importance of economics. Then, when someone tells me that some stock rose 0.1 percent, this will be a really big deal to me. But right now, I don’t feel anything since I just don’t understand it, even though it may be something really important!

How do we grow? We teach our “will to enjoy” to be more sensitive and to discern the finest of details. We teach ourselves, just like people train dogs or raise a small child. In our world, in the material, egoistic system, this happens directly. The Light acts inside this system as well, but in a concealed manner, and we don’t have to ask the Light to create any special sensations inside us. If, however, besides the material system we want to reveal one more system – the spiritual one, then we cannot develop our sensitivity to it directly, because we don’t feel it at all. We simply cannot increase our own sensitivities in order to start feeling it. We need the Light to build the new sensations inside.

No matter how much I desire spirituality, I cannot attain it directly; I cannot make it “come out of the fog.” In the material system, I already have a desire, even if it is very coarse and undeveloped. All I have to do is develop it by influencing it with a “painful rod” or a “sweet candy.” That is how I develop and refine my sensation. But when it comes to spirituality, I don’t feel it in any way at all. Even my point in the heart is opposite to this system, since this point is the reverse side of holiness. This is why I need the Light so much, because it will carry out my correction from Above and reveal this system to me! This action requires an additional force.

In the material world, however, we don’t need the Creator. In fact, the more people develop and the more they perfect their culture (their feelings) and science (their mind), the less they believe in God and religion. It’s because people reveal that they don’t need an Upper Force. They can accomplish things, understand and feel everything on their own. This is why people delve deeper into the arts and sciences, leaving religion behind. This is natural, because people don’t need the Upper Force for egoistic development.

If, however, we want to develop spiritually, with the help of the science of Kabbalah, then everything happens in the opposite way: we need the Upper Force to create a new desire in us. Initially we don’t have this desire, so we can’t develop it and feel the spiritual system inside it. The point in the heart gives us the only the opportunity of a place to start. But it will have to go through an inverse transformation in order to turn into “a drop of semen.” In the meantime, it is not a drop of semen, but just a black point.

This is why you need the Upper Force through every step of your development, and the way to connect with It is by building yourself. This Force is what sustains your existence in the spiritual world, so if It doesn’t give you the quality you need to reveal this system, you won’t feel it. The Creator is all the spiritual qualities that you have within. He is the spiritual system, the Force that fulfills you. All of this is Him alone.

The more you develop, the more you develop the Creator within you. In Hebrew, the Creator is called “Bo-reh,” which means, “Come and see!” This is what distinguishes one’s development using the science of Kabbalah. You reveal the Upper Force clearly, inside you. You then see that it is a system that governs everything and that you are inside this system and thereby establish a mutual connection with the Master of this system.

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson - No Comments →

In the “Introduction to Talmud Eser Sefirot,” Baal HaSulam writes about a person’s desire to clearly understand the meaning of his life. He says, “Yet the question, ‘What is the meaning of my life?’ stands as bitterly and as vehemently as ever. Sometimes it meets us uninvited, pecks at our minds and humiliates us to the ground before we find the famous ploy to flow mindlessly in the currents of life as yesterday.”

People will small desires are like small children: they want order. They set limits for themselves and live within confines that help them to feel safe. In addition, these people want their relationships with others to follow a hierarchy. They want to know, “This person is higher than me, and that one is lower. This one I have to fear and that one I have to respect.”

Many politicians, psychologists and sociologists use this to their advantage, and religion is also based on this. Throughout history, people have feared the forces of nature, believing that they are more powerful than they. They tried to smooth things over by treating these forces with respect, and thus, people built special systems by which they expressed their attitude to the forces of nature.

This is how religion was created. And religion was good for the people because it gave them a clear understanding of what was required of them. This institution was satisfactory to all, because people were able to shield themselves with religion.

Today, however, we are living in an entirely different era. Now the will to receive pleasure has outgrown all limitations. Whether people are secular or religious, they can no longer contain themselves within the previously set limits. They can no longer flow “within the currents of life as yesterday.”

In the past, people simply carried out predetermined actions without much analysis or debate. People acted in certain ways, and were contented by this because they knew that they were living their lives correctly. Today, however, people can no longer be satisfied by this lifestyle, because none of these actions give them the answer to the question, “What do I live for?”

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Percieving The World From Beginning To End
Laitman.com Post: Religion Is Just A Cultural Framework In Our World
Laitman.com Post: All Of Evolution Is Aimed At Making Us Attain The Upper Level Of Consciousness
Baal HaSulam Article: “The Essence of Religion and its Purpose” – Lesson 1
Interview: “Psychological Counseling at the Time of the Crisis” (Part 2)

Filed under: Spirituality - No Comments →

In the News (from BBC News): “There is a strongly felt need for a reform of the United Nations Organisation, and likewise of economic institutions and international finance, so that the concept of the family of nations can acquire real teeth,” the pope wrote in the third encyclical of his papacy… “To manage the global economy, to revive economies hit by the crisis, to avoid any deterioration of the present crisis and the greater imbalances that would result … there is urgent need of a true world political authority,” he wrote… It “would need to be regulated by law, to observe consistently the principles of subsidiarity and solidarity [and] to seek to establish the common good,” … “Furthermore, such an authority would need to be universally recognised and to be vested with the effective power to ensure security for all, regard for justice, and respect for rights,” said the letter.

My Comment: I agree with this idea, as long as it isn’t mixed up with religion and the religious understanding of moral principles, mercy and the social good. However, the only way to implement it is to change human nature from egoism to bestowal, and this can only be done using the method of Kabbalah.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: The Truth Belongs To Everyone
Laitman.com Post: The Religion Of The Future Is “Love For The Fellow Man”
Laitman.com Post: Today, Religion Is Being Replaced By Kabbalah
Kabbalah Today Article: Kabbalah Steps in

Filed under: World - No Comments →

In the News (from The Guardian): “Atheist camp to give children ‘godless alternative’” An atheist summer camp for children is to be held in the UK for the first time this year, offering a “godless alternative” to similar religious events under canvas… The purpose of Camp Quest UK, which has been praised by the atheist and skeptic author Richard Dawkins, is to encourage critical thinking and provide children with a summer camp “free of religious dogma”…Camp Quest UK’s website says its counselors and volunteers will lead activities teaching eight to 17-year-olds “about science, free thought and humanist principles. Activities cover critical thinking, science, history, human rights and ethics”.

My Comment: The religious view of God as an angry or an all-forgiving persona originated from ancient human fears of Nature and our desire to safeguard and secure ourselves.

But the complete negation of a higher world (which is impossible to perceive using our egoistic desires but which we are in a position to perceive if we change our desires in the opposite direction) also restricts a person to the physical world without giving him an understanding of “science, free thought and humanist principles.”  In fact, the denial of religion gives birth to yet another religion.

Kabbalah explains that this world consists of two forces. Our world is based on the force of the will to receive. But an opposite world is possible, an anti-world, which is based on the will to bestow. Kabbalah is the method for the revelation of this other world to man.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Today, Religion Is Being Replaced By Kabbalah
Laitman.com Post: Religion Is A Harbor For People In Times Of Crisis
Article: “The Difference between Kabbalah and Religion”
Baal HaSulam Article: “The Essence of Religion and Its Purpose”

Filed under: Education - 1 Comment →

A question I received: I am a member of a Chile group; I work as a teacher at the University of Protestant Theology, and have a PhD in Practical Theology. The inner conflict that I have been going through relates to my analysis of everything that I have studied for the last 7 years. I understand that Kabbalah should not interfere with my work as a teacher, but it can’t last indefinitely.

I do teach Christian theology, philosophy, Islam and Orthodox Judaism. My path brings me to a conflict with my friends at work, who consider themselves to be wise. I have decided to openly declare my commitment and endorsement of Kabbalah, as the only divine wisdom, capable of correcting the heart. Today, I handed our newspaper across the department and explained to them my view. A lot is at stake, so here’s my question: “What do you think about my actions?”

My Answer: I am concerned with your future at the university, and more precisely, with your source of income. I understand that you can’t remain professionally what you were, before you came to Kabbalah.

I recommend that you start writing comparative research articles, portraying Kabbalah as the source of all religions, while underscoring the similarities and not the differences. It would add purpose to religion (bestowal and love of fellow man) and help guide people to the means of correction. I wouldn’t criticize religions and would even stay away from them!

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: The Religion of the Future Is “Love for the Fellow Man”
Laitman.com Post: Religion Is Just a Cultural Framework In Our World
Laitman.com Post: The True Origin of Religions
Baal HaSulam Article: “The Essence of Religion and Its Purpose”
Shamati #179: “Three Lines”

Filed under: Religion - No Comments →