A question I received: Rather than the “punishment” related articles, I would like to read more about how a student of Kabbalah should not be drawn into being a little more isolated than the norm. Surely some hermit-like behavior is inevitable when one is in a “virtual group,” physically isolated from Kli participants and not particularly interested in spending too much time in idle chit chat.

My Answer: You are right – one studying Kabbalah cannot help but grow detached from the world. On the other hand, every day I spend some time watching news or movies about nature and current events. Every day I go to the sea, where I speed walk for five kilometers and then swim. I spend the rest of my time sitting in one place, indoors – and I’ve been following this routine for many years already.

So don’t worry about feeling isolated from the world. This is how one feels in the beginning – as if one is leaving this entire world. This happens because you are being filled by spiritual information, but later on you will also find room for this world.

Time will balance everything out. Don’t worry about this, and don’t make any artificial actions. I recommend not wasting your time on communication with empty people. Whenever you can, absorb the maximum possible knowledge and impressions from the Kabbalistic sources. Find a sensible way to distribute work, sports, family, and Kabbalah – and soon you will feel the result!

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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.

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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.”

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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.

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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.

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A question I received: What do you think about disseminating Kabbalah to the masses through Christianity and Islam? Applying the method of Kabbalah to the study of the Gospel yields tremendous results. You begin to understand that you’re not reading fairytales about magic tricks, but about attempts to change something in the spiritual world, and you want to explain this to everyone who doesn’t yet know or understand it. I think that you should explain this to your Christian students, especially since the Old Testament is a major part of the Bible. Once they understand this, once they feel the bliss of true attainment without having to be detached from their culture and religion, then perhaps they will take it even further.

My Answer: Religion is not connected to Kabbalah in any way, but is actually opposite to it. Religion was given to humanity to be a framework for life in the time of darkness, before the revelation of Kabbalah. And this is why religion is dying out in our times, although this process is lengthy and it’s possible that there will still be religious wars in the future.

We do not approach religious Jews, and we disseminate Kabbalah only among the secular public. There’s nothing new about showing religious people that the Torah contains a deeper meaning. However, they’re not interested in this, because it knocks out the foundation of their faith – the egoistic principle of our world, “Do certain actions and you’ll receive a reward.”

Kabbalah, on the other hand, contradicts egoism, and tells you that you won’t receive anything for your actions (you won’t receive anything into your egoism, that is). Your entire reward lies in being corrected by the Upper Light, in loving your neighbor as yourself.

This is something you can only say to people who have already gone through all the egoistic desires and have a “point in the heart” – the desire for the Creator or the meaning of life. People who are still satisfied by faith do not have a “point in the heart” yet, and therefore we cannot talk to them for now. Kabbalah reveals the law of spiritual development to a person, but this development can only happen when it’s free and non-coercive – and that’s another aspect that’s fundamentally opposite to religion.

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Two questions I received on whether spiritual correction requires observance of physical rituals:

Question: You say that it’s possible to attain spiritual correction without physically observing the commandments of Judaism. Maybe you’re just saying this out of your concern for Kabbalah’s dissemination around the world? Or maybe what you really mean is that people can’t understand these commandments by simply reading them? If you can’t publish the answer on the blog, I would like to receive a private answer.

My Answer: The Creator created the will to receive pleasure with an intention “for one’s own sake,” and this is how we find ourselves in this world. We were created this way in order to correct our intention to “for the sake of the neighbor or the Creator,” on all of our 613 desires. This correction happens under the influence of the Upper Light, Ohr Makif, which descends during the study of Kabbalah.

This bears no relation to the observance of religious rituals. A person can attain correction and spiritual attainment without physically observing the commandments, or rather – the traditions. This is true for both Jews and the nations of the world. Moreover, every person can keep his religion, because religion is no more than a nation’s cultural framework. Kabbalah only teaches us about the intention “for the sake of the neighbor,” how to love and bestow to others – and nothing else.

Question: You’re all about spirituality and the love revolution. But what about connecting the root with the branch? After all, the still, vegetative, and animate levels are also levels of the will to receive. You always speak about the internality without any externality, and this confuses me. Baal HaSulam writes at the end of the “Introduction to the Book of Zohar” that the internality should be preferred over the externality. But it looks like Bnei Baruch gives 100% of their attention to the internality, and 0% to the externality! This is difficult and confusing. Why not make a small change and pay a little more attention to the externality? Why not combine both parts? Dedicate 90% of your attention to the internality, and 10% to the externality. This will really help everyone! What do you think?

My Answer: We at Bnei Baruch actually do this – we follow the traditions. But do you really think that all the people in the world – who are now approaching correction – have to observe the physical commandments of Judaism, even if it isn’t their tradition? In the article “The Future Generation” Baal HaSulam writes that every person can keep his religion!

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Filed under: Baal HaSulam, Egoism, Love, Perception, Q&A, Quora, Spiritual Work - No Comments →

Two questions I received on whether it’s necessary to know the Torah before studying Kabbalah:

Question: I have been examining Kabbalah from every angle: science, religion, faith, spirituality, and so on. Are you sure that a person who studies Kabbalah with you and reads Baal HaSulam’s articles is able to understand what you are saying correctly? This wisdom is great and there is nothing like it in the entire world. Should it really be so easily available to every person who wants to study it? Maybe these people don’t even understand what they are reading.

I am asking this because I’ve met students who explain Kabbalah in a completely different way, and they have preconceived notions that are difficult to change. Shouldn’t they first learn about Abraham, Moses, and the stories from the Bible? Shouldn’t they first understand the simple meaning of the Torah before they start studying the spiritual part of the Torah?

My Answer: I brought many new students to my teacher, Rabash. They were secular and didn’t know anything about Torah, yet he accepted them to be his students. Rav Kook also wrote that the study of Kabbalah does not require any preliminary preparation. It doesn’t matter how a person understands the material, because this wisdom isn’t learned through common sense, but by attracting the Upper Light in order to reveal new qualities in the student. And to the degree that the student acquires the Light’s qualities, he starts understanding the Light.

On the other hand, people who “examine” this wisdom’s meaning with their corporeal qualities won’t be able to understand anything! The wisdom of Kabbalah differs from any other science, because in all other sciences, we can examine the world with the five senses that we already have, but in the wisdom of Kabbalah one first needs to acquire the sixth sense – similarity to the Light, and only after that, to the degree one is similar to the Light, he will be able to examine It.

Hence, this wisdom is much more practical, since we attain it within us, not outside of us. Using this wisdom, we reveal the Upper World, and we attain it from within, in a profound way. This attainment changes the student, since he studies everything inside himself only. This is why Kabbalah is called the wisdom of the inner, or the Inner Torah.

Question: If it’s impossible to understand the Torah without knowing Kabbalah, then why did most Kabbalists of the past say that before one can start studying Kabbalah, one has to learn the Torah in detail?

My Answer: It’s because the period from the 1st century until the 16th century (from the fall of the Second Temple until the Ari) was a period of exile from spirituality. During this time it was necessary to wait for the souls that fell from the spiritual level to intermix with the souls that have never been on that level. For example, Abraham was told ahead of time that the Egyptian exile was to last for 400 years. Similarly, Baal HaSulam predicted what would happen in our times – that beginning from 1995 on, there will be intensive, mass revelation of Kabbalah.

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Questions I received from women on how to be sure that one is advancing in spirituality:

Question: Can a woman cross the Machsom without participating in the group, by studying your books for at least two hours a day?

My Answer: To ascend spiritually, a woman has to study and disseminate.

Question: Is it possible to follow the path of Kabbalah incorrectly? What I mean is: If I study with you in Bnei Baruch and I physically do what is needed – disseminate, pay Maaser, study Kabbalah, and have contact with the group, then can I still be doing something wrong in my inner work?

My Answer: Check yourself against the articles and recommendations of Baal HaSulam and Rabash. With every lesson, we delve deeper into this decisive question.

Question: What is the difference between regular feelings and spiritual feelings? When I have regular feelings, should I keep in mind that they aren’t real? And if yes, then how can I trust my feelings?

My Answer: Right now you should only study, and the Light will bring you new, correct notions, which will enable you to measure and judge everything correctly.

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I had a conversation that was recorded on the topic of love. I spoke with Oren Levi, manager of our Hebrew publishing department.

We analyzed how the spiritual property of the Creator, “love for creation,” is expressed in action – “bestowal and fulfillment.” However, since creation is egoistic and opposite to the Creator, it interprets this as love for fulfillment and reception. Creation aspires to use and humiliate others, in order to feel more fulfilled than them. In other words, its love manifests in a completely opposite form than the spiritual quality of “love,” yet we refer to both of them with the same word, according to the law of “root and consequence.”

However, when creation attains equivalence of form with the Creator (when it acquires the aspiration toward the property – “Love thy neighbor as thyself,” which is attained only through the influence of the Upper Light that descends during the study of Kabbalah), it begins to comprehend the true meaning of the Torah’s words and of Kabbalistic notions, including “bestowal” and “love.”

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