A question I received: How can I find out what my personal predestination is? I understand that we all have a common predestination, but we also all have our own personal mission, and it’s only logical that each person should have the opportunity to realize his or her responsibility. I spend too much time doubting things and feeling insecure. Is this a sign of something?

My Answer: This is something that only you can discover on your own, to the degree that you progress spiritually.

In our world, we are called “animals” because we spend our lives taking care of our bodies, our offspring, and satisfying our animalistic desires, such as fighting for leadership, our place in the tribe, and so on and so forth. Therefore, nothing you do in this world will be your purpose, because all your actions are designed for benefiting your body, which will eventually die. As such, your predestination can only be a goal that is eternal, and that has you in it.

Kabbalah reveals both the general predestination, and your personal predestination, together with the means to attain it. The general purpose is to connect everyone together and become similar to the Creator through such a connection. Your personal predestination is to bring the whole world to this state, because you are the only one who can do it.

Related Material:
Article: Attainment of the Unity of the Universe
Article: The Essence of the Science of Kabbalah
Baal HaSulam Article: The Essence of the Wisdom of Kabbalah
Lesson: The Essence of the Wisdom of Kabbalah
Lesson: The Essence of the Wisdom of Kabbalah
Lesson: The Essence of the Wisdom of Kabbalah (Transcript)

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A question I received: What would you say to a person who knows the answer to the question “Why do I live?”

My Answer: The question “Why do I live?” always and constantly leads a person from action to thought, and from thought to the next action. In general, a person always lives for something, he always wants something in the next moment.

For most people, the question about the meaning of life exists only within the span of our world. As such, most people work to achieve all sorts of goals in our world, goals such as food, sex, family, wealth, power, honor, fame, and knowledge. Most people find meaning to their lives in such goals.

However, after the person has achieved all that, and within each and every person, the question about the meaning of life common to all needs to arise, rather than how to fulfill ourselves during the seventy years of the body’s existence. This question also has many answers from many different “spiritual” methods and religions, but these will all gradually become irrelevant because of their inadequacy. Kabbalah is all that will remain, and the answer it provides is the following: “The meaning of life is to attain our root, the source from where we came – to attain the Creator. Our greatest aspiration – our innermost part that becomes revealed after everything else – is for the Creator, because that is where we came from.” Read Baal HaSulam’s definition in “The Essence of the Wisdom of Kabbalah.”

Therefore, to answer your question, if there’s a person who knows the answer to the question “Why do I live?” I would ask him “Did you discover it by attaining the Creator, by becoming like Him?”

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A question I received: You wrote: “Someday I will tell you about how the Creator humiliates a Kabbalist in the eyes of society and his students. This is done to make sure that he won’t be proud, grow close to the incorrect environment, so people won’t bother him, and so on.” In this case, I don’t understand: What criteria can one use to assess whether one is working correctly or not? After all, when you act correctly, you receive beatings to make sure that you won’t be proud, and when you act incorrectly you receive beatings for acting incorrectly. Either way, you’re being beaten! Moreover, you’re told that if you take the path of Torah, you’ll then avoid blows. Also, what concerns me even more than always getting beatings, is: How can one understand what the Creator desires and what He doesn’t?

My Answer: In principle, all actions we make are incorrect, or in other words, they are egoistically driven. The difference is whether or not our actions are aimed at the goal of creation. If you’re moving correctly, you’ll then receive a descent into egoism in order to understand what is controlling you and how to get rid of it, similar to the Egyptian exile and the bitterness in Pharaoh’s heart.

Since one studying Kabbalah is under the influence of the teacher, books, and group, he then assesses his descents in comparison to movement toward the goal. In such a way, he understands that the sensations of descent and pain are signs of his deviation from the path toward the goal, in order to make him aim more accurately. After all, if he will deviate without being corrected to aim closer to the goal, then the more he will progress, the (exponentially) greater inaccuracy he will accumulate and the more he will deviate from the goal, to the point that he will stop understanding what Kabbalah is explaining. Thus, spiritual progress is impossible without beatings.

You also, however, get beaten in your ordinary, “non-spiritual” life. The difference with these beatings is that they don’t lead you anywhere, and you don’t know why they’re happening and where they’re coming from! A Kabbalist, on the other hand, doesn’t receive blows – he receives greater sharpness on the spiritual path. Nevertheless, people who come to Kabbalah are only those who already understand that there is no other way, and they are willing to face the difficulties to reach creation’s goal.

Related Material:
Baal HaSulam Article: There Is None Else Beside Him

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Two questions I received on “love thy neighbor”

Question: When you discussed the article “The Revelation of Godliness,” you explained that there is no rule of “love thy neighbor” in religions. You have given examples of religious wars and caste among Hindus. How am I to understand the wars against the “seven nations” and Amalek through the prism of love for one’s neighbor?

My Answer: These are internal wars that take place within the person, wars against one’s egoism. They aren’t wars where people are killed physically! Kabbalah only engages in correcting human egoism.

Question: I get the impression that there is purification through complete destruction (for example, idol worshiping cities), and that this is present even in the Torah. I am trying to understand how such actions can be properly carried out in accordance with “love for one’s neighbor.” It seems to me that even if these actions are sincerely performed out of love for one’s neighbor, they will still bring the following generations to wrong conclusions, and cruelty and destruction will result.

My Answer: Once again, these questions support the following conclusions: the Torah does not discuss externality; it only discusses the person’s inner correction. It is impossible to change or correct anything in egoism with physical actions. We only need to correct our egoistic nature. This is why the Torah only speaks about our inner correction.

Baal HaSulam writes with sorrow about the fact that Kabbalah books and The Zohar are full of “descriptions of our world,” and how this confuses people studying Kabbalah. For this reason, it is of utmost importance to free Kabbalah from that style, so that it would become clear to each and everyone studying Kabbalah that it only discusses spirituality. Spirituality does not clothe into materiality, and it has no connection to it whatsoever; it is only a force outside of matter. The entirety of Kabbalah needs to be rewritten in this style, so that nobody will be confused, and everybody will perceive its methodology correctly. This is what we still have to do!

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Two questions I received on this perfect system we live in:

Question: How is it possible that we perform actions that don’t exist in the Creator? That is to say, He doesn’t have to change His nature, but we do. Is this like sacrificing oneself for one’s new “I,” which is real and perfect?”

My Answer: I will slightly correct you: We were created perfect by the Creator, and as a consequence, we don’t perceive this perfection. Hence, He took us out of that state and put us in the opposite state, so we would find the best state on our own – and become convinced that this is exactly what He gave us from the beginning.

Question: I recently began studying Kabbalah, and have reached the conclusion that the diversity or “division” of human (corporeal) desires begets the retardation or as you have said, “the feeling of a dead end” in the development of science, technology, and humanity in general. Is this really so? Have I reached the right conclusion?

My Answer: Obviously, the more harmoniously this single organism of Nature works (in which only man adds disorder, because only he has the freedom of action), the higher is our state, until we reach the point where we perceive the world’s harmony. This is perceived on spiritual levels, degrees of unity with the Creator, the general force of Nature, to the degree that we are equal to him through bestowal and love.

Related Material:
Kabbalah Today Article: I Saw a Reversed World
Kabbalah Today Article: Exodus – the Worldwide 21st Century Version
Kabbalah Today Article: Making Room for the Creator
Article: Perfection and the World

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A question I received: It’s been around the news lately, that in Ethiopia, in the city of Aksum, archeologists have found the palace of Queen Sheba. Inside, the researchers found an altar and Judaism’s most valuable treasure – the Arc of the Covenant. According to legend, the Arc contained Moses’s stone tablets with the Ten Commandments, and it was brought to Ethiopia by Menelik – the son of Queen Sheba and King Solomon. The scientists believe that Menelik changed his faith and began worshiping Sirius, but he kept the Arc – a chest made of acacia and covered with gold plates. ITAR-TASS notes that there were evident traces of calf sacrifices around the Arc.” In your opinion, could this be true, or is it just another piece of gossip?

My Answer: I don’t know whether it’s true and I don’t care. With the fall of the Second Temple, when people fell from “love thy neighbor” to “unfounded hatred,” holiness left Israel, as well as all of the Temple’s paraphernalia, because it’s the people who make these objects holy, and not the objects themselves. Rather than striving for material objects, which don’t contain any spirituality, we should strive to obtain the property of bestowal and love for all people, since this is holiness and the property of the Creator. However, as it seems, we are willing to do everything but this!

Related Material:
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Two questions I received on the masses’ participation in the method of correction

Question: Please let me know whether I understand you correctly or not: You’re saying that there will be a very small quantity of people serving the Creator through studying the science of Kabbalah in comparison to the whole of humanity?

My Answer: No. Everyone needs to understand that there is a method of attaining happiness. Until everyone comes to this understanding, then no one will actually achieve it. That’s the condition. People subdivide into four groups according to their natural development and the size of their desire. Those with the largest desire are Kabbalists, and those with the smallest desire are people who will merely understand that they need this method for survival; that they need to join the rest and do everything like everyone else, like in a herd. It’s the same way as the masses operate today, according to social influence and advertisement.

Question: You have described the main mass of society (99% of people) as being “individually and socially passive.” These are, apparently, people who don’t ask questions about the meaning of life, i.e. people without a point in the heart. Are all such people just flesh and bones made for the herding, or can they all be “awakened” in the foreseeable future for spiritual progress?

My Answer: Every single person has free will. The only difference is the extent to which one’s free will becomes realized within oneself. However, according to one’s soul, each one needs to completely and independently realize oneself. There are leaders and there are followers, but all are conscious!

Related Material:
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Chapter 12 from the eBook The Open Book: Four Degrees in the Development of the Desire
Article: Freedom of Will

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Two questions I received on corporeality’s relationship to spirituality:

Question: You’ve said that if people don’t study Kabbalah, it will lead to material consequences such as murder, destruction, and corporeal suffering, and that by studying Kabbalah, we can prevent the suffering. You have also said that the spiritual and the corporeal aren’t connected. How do you explain this contradiction?

My Answer: Spiritual forces operate from above downwards. They create and determine everything in the corporeal world. However, it is impossible to have a reverse effect, from below upwards, and influence the Upper World with one’s corporeal, physical actions. One can, however, influence the Upper World with one’s desires, by becoming similar and balanced with the Upper World to the extent of one’s desire for it. As a consequence, a force descends upon you from the Upper World – a Light that corrects you, making you similar to the Upper World.

Question: Is there a connection between a person’s place of residence and his luck, health, and happiness? How can someone find out where he should live?

My Answer: It doesn’t matter where one lives. It only matters if you live in a physically or spiritually dangerous place, near physical or spiritual criminals, because they influence you negatively. See Baal HaSulam’s article “The Freedom,” section “The Environment as a Factor.”

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Questions I received on a scientific experiment that aims to reproduce the formation of creation: This week I saw an interview with a scientist specializing in quantum physics who talked about a project that he and seventy other scientists from around the world are planning. Next month, they want to reproduce the entire formation of creation with the aim of finding some missing photon. For this purpose they have constructed a 27km long tunnel between Switzerland and France, as well as various tools. The interesting thing was that at the end of the interview, this scientist said that they will succeed only if God so wishes, and if He doesn’t, then they won’t! My questions in relation to this are as follows:

Question: Will this affect the world, climate, pollution, and so on?

My Answer: No. Only our thoughts and desires have an effect on these.

Question: How can a scientist rely on God?

My Answer: Who else should a scientist rely on at a time when science is already showing itself to be the science of its own end?

Question: What do you think they’ll discover?

My Answer: Even if they were to discover the “missing photon,” they would discover thousands more questions behind it, and this would continue forever, because the second part to the world is the upper part, and it’s hidden from them. Moreover, the barrier separating them from it is a spiritual barrier, and this is why it cannot be penetrated with a physical accelerator. One needs spiritual preparation in order to do this, to ascend over one’s egoism with the property of bestowal and love for one’s neighbor. The scientists want to attain the forces controlling our world, and they’ll continue the way they are until they come to understand and feel, as a result of their experiments, that they need to change themselves – the observer.

Related Material:
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Question: What are the 613 desires?

My Answer: They are desires not for pleasures in our world, but are egoistically directed toward the Creator, and for this reason they are called “impure,” “Pharaoh,” and so on. In order to discover these desires within oneself, one needs to study Kabbalah and do a great deal of work upon oneself. While these desires are being discovered, the shame that Adam had discovered also begins to be felt, and begins to become corrected. As such, only through the study of Kabbalah can a person come to spiritual work, and the attain the goal of creation.

A dialog with a user called Caligula (from my Russian blog):

Caligula’s Comment: “Spirituality is above time, motion, and space; that is to say, when these parameters change in our world, they never influence a person’s spiritual state!” – that’s a quote. In other words, no matter what we do, study, and aspire to – it is all in vain and unnecessary.

My Response: That’s wrong! We cannot influence the Upper Light directly, but we can evoke it indirectly, by making efforts in the group and proper study. Read the “Introduction to Talmud Eser Sefirot,” item 155.

Caligula: Yes, but there’s more to it… If we follow Rav Laitman’s assertion in this case, we can reach an absurd conclusion – I don’t know what this is about, but you are demonstrating such great confidence in understanding what I said that it’s worthy of envy.

I am not speaking about regular people, but about those who aspire toward the Creator and study Kabbalah. Actually, I’m not the one saying this, but the Ari in Shaar HaKedusha. There he lists certain age-specific levels in a person’s life. A child is when the vessels of the will to receive haven’t yet developed; age 13 is when a person is already governed by his Yetzer Ra; and age 21 is when a person gains the ability to spiritually ascend

My Response: This is all wrong! Specifically, see the Ari in Etz Chaim or part 12 of Talmud Eser Sefirot. Birth means spiritual birth, regardless of one’s age. All people, except Kabbalists, die physically without even having been born spiritually.

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