The Concept Of Faith In Kabbalah

Question: When we talk about faith above reason in Kabbalah does it mean the same as the word “faith”does as is generally accepted in our world?

Answer: No, faith in the wisdom of Kabbalah has nothing to do with the earthly understanding of this word. The category of faith is not in philosophy, psychology, or everyday life.

Faith is the property of bestowal, which is formed in us under the influence of the upper force. When I say that I believe in something, it means that I simply have a certain connection with some phenomenon. But this is in no way connected with the faith that Kabbalah implies.

In Kabbalah, the concept of faith is a special property that arises in a person under the influence of the upper force, upper light. Only then can one make absolutely altruistic actions that are completely unrelated to himself. It is as if he has an additional body—a spiritual one, and with its help it works.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian, 12/23/18

Einstein Quotations Part 1

Question: Could you please comment on some quotations attributed to Albert Einstein?

Quotation: “Only a fool needs order, genius can handle chaos.”

Answer: Yes. A person usually rushes to order because he cannot embrace what is in front of him.

The genius on the other hand, feels that he must dissolve in the chaos and then he will see an internal order in it: not the one he imposes on the existing world, but the one that initially exists within this world.

Quotation: “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”

Answer: If miracles did not exist, then everything would be very simple and clear. I too want to explain to everyone: “Why are you suffering? Look, everything is written simply. You are trying to do something in your life with incomprehensible attempts.”

This is one life when we try to grasp the immensity with our minds. But we say in advance: “Why is it there? Everything is simple and good,” embrace it all in our mind.

And the other is when we dissolve in the spiritual, in space, when we understand that we cannot swallow it and we believe that we can only enter into it, dissolve in it.

Thus, we accept the world by entering it. At the same time, we belittle ourselves, our minds, our capabilities; we see nature above us, not us ruling over nature. As Sir Isaac Newton [and often attributed to Einstein] said: “to myself, I seem to have been like a boy playing on the seashore, diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.” Only in this way can we enter nature and begin to truly understand it.

Remark: Then we seem to say: “Some wonders abound!”

My Comment: Yes. And this is the correct approach. In fact—only miracles. Why miracles? It is because I cannot comprehend them with my mind. However, when I say that these are miracles and I want to be in them, then I begin to understand them, precisely because I cancel myself before them.

Quotation: “Education is what remains after everything learned in school is forgotten.”

Answer: What does education mean? We form, or we can say, format our brain. As we launch certain programs into computers and then with the help of these programs, we start processing materials, working with them. Education should be just that. In and of itself, it does not matter. Only after I begin to treat life correctly with its help, do I begin to appreciate it.

Question: And what does it mean to forget education in general?

Answer: What did we study at school? I don’t remember history, geography, even math, I don’t know all those equations. Of course, I can somehow speculate about them. In principle,  in college, how much was seemingly unnecessary? Yes, it is all necessary in order to develop brains, develop and stir them. Otherwise what? Will I only be able to count my goats or cows in the herd? Or should I still be able to work with the conceptual apparatus?
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 2/26/18

New Life #210 – Shame And Appreciation In Families

New Life #210 – Shame and Appreciation in Families
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Nitzah Mazoz

Summary:

The feeling of shame is the most severe injury to a person. Everyone wants to be appreciated, but also makes a calculation about how much should be invested in order to gain appreciation. Those around us define the values toward which we will gain respect or feel ashamed. Parents should give correct values to a child from childhood, but not press too hard for achievements. The goal is to develop the feelings of others in the child so that the child will develop and will know how to direct himself in life.
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From KabTV’s “New Life #210 – Shame and Appreciation in Families,” 7/16/13

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The Power Over The Spiritual State

Question: What are the degrees of power over the heart and over spiritual states?

Answer: The power over the spiritual state lies in domination over egoism, since it separates us from the spiritual one. It is possible to master egoism only with the help of the upper light. It does not depend on our willpower, strength of our character, or the stern vows that we take upon ourselves.

It all depends on how much a person includes himself in the group and can dissolve in it. In this measure, he will more correspond to the higher light, the property of the Creator, and will gradually become closer to Him.

The Creator is not always in hiding. I can reveal Him at some stage, and He will immediately disappear so that I can go further and focus even more on Him. Suppose I caught Him with my new, more corrected properties, and He disappears again so that I again focus on Him with my kinder properties, which I develop in even greater conjugation with the group, and so on.

If I am a part the ten, we should make such mutual intersections with each other so that a uniform field appears between us.

When we strive to create this field, the Creator appears within it. That is, the Creator is the result of the desire of the ten to be as one. This is the main condition.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian, 12/9/18

Strive For Balance

Question: If I am complete egoism, in what can I become similar to the upper force?

Answer: It is possible to become similar to the upper force only if you strive for a balance between two forces: egoism and altruism. The force that naturally arises in you is your egoism and it seems to you that it is you. But it is not you, it is also the Creator.

You are something absolutely neutral, like a slightly frozen jelly, in which constantly without interruption, egoistic power is stirred from birth to death, and it seems to a person that it is him.

However, he is given the opportunity to balance this negative force with a positive one, which he must independently ask of the Creator. This is exactly how he gets closer to the Creator and unites with Him. He asks the Creator to teach him to be in balance with the positive force so two opposing forces appear and balance, called the middle line, emerges between them.

This middle line, which arises in the balance between the right (altruistic) and the left (egoistic) lines, is called Adam (human) because exactly in it he becomes similar to the Creator.

By having a good command of both egoism and altruism, a person can interact with them correctly, constantly balancing up and down and rising on this balance. The main thing is that he learns to maintain balance. This is our work.
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From the Daily Kabbalah lesson in Russian, 12/16/18

The Calendar—Our Life Schedule

Question: What is the new year for a Kabbalist?

Answer: A new year is a new venture. “Year” in Hebrew is “Shana,” from the word “Leshanen” (repetition).

The repetition of the four seasons that change by one revolution of the Earth around the Sun and other calendar cycles are based on the ten Sefirot of the spiritual Partzuf and their division.

For example, the 4 stages of the Partzuf multiplied by 3 lines equals 12. Therefore, a year is divided into 12 months, a day into 12 hours of daytime (the light of Hassadim) and 12 hours of night (the light of Hochma).

The division into 6 parts of ZA (Zeir Anpin) multiplied by 10 equals 60. Therefore, there are 60 seconds in a minute and 60 minutes in an hour.

In addition, there is a leap year in which there are 13 months. There is a special year, the 7^th, and another special year, the 50^th.

Everything is built on the correspondence between the phases of the Sun, the Moon, the Earth, and their mutual changes.

A calendar is a schedule of our life. Measuring only by the Sun or by the Moon does not reflect all the features of our existence, its framework, and does not clearly graph our life. Therefore, while the Christian calendar is built on the solar cycle and the Muslim calendar on the lunar cycle, the Jewish calendar is based on the Sun, Moon, and the Earth’s rotation.

Three types of calendars correspond to the three lines: left, right, and middle. The left line is the Christian calendar, the right line is Muslim, and the middle line is the Jewish calendar, which includes the Sun, Moon, and Earth.

Therefore, the Jewish calendar is the most accurate. It was calculated thousands of years ago in ancient Babylon and then tested and confirmed 2,200 years ago by Rabbi Yehuda Ha-Nasi. It hasn’t changed since then.

That is, Jewish holidays never move to the summer or the winter like they wander with the Muslims. There are also no problems with the years, like with Christians. In the Jewish calendar, the middle line is maintained, which is always stable.

Thus, everything happens according to the division into ten Sefirot: Keter, Hochma, Bina, Zeir Anpin, and Malchut. This is the way the correspondence between the planets is arranged in nature, and it works.
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From the Daily Kabbalah lesson in Russian, 12/30/18

New Life #209 – Parenting Teenagers, Part 2

New Life #209 – Parenting Teenagers, Part 2
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Nitzah Mazoz

Summary:

The role of the parent is in setting boundaries for the child and helping them develop their own limits. In order to teach the child, the parent must speak constantly, in the presence of the child, that is, to describe aloud what he thinks, feels, and does. The child thus perceives the parent’s attitude to everything in life, and learns to know the limits himself. There is a time and a place for the parent to be firm and serious while always maintaining a sense of togetherness and friendship.
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From KabTV’s “New Life #209 – Parenting Teenagers, Part 2,” 7/12/13

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Single Source Of All Thoughts And Feelings

Question: What does it mean to think and analyze? Should I just sit and think that I want to attain spirituality? Or does this imply my actions toward the friends?

Answer: The action is very simple: all my thoughts and feelings should have one basis—the Creator. He creates, enlivens, and places everything that I think and feel in me. Whatever happens to me, whatever manifests in me, the Creator does it all.

Therefore, it is advisable to constantly be in the thought that “there is none else besides Him.” If I aspire to the same thoughts and feelings of the friends and try to unite all our hearts and mind, then we connect all our efforts together into a single massive common effort, one big heart and one big head in which we want to feel the Creator as the source, as the root cause of our feelings and our mind.

If we, in such a way insistently demand that He reveal Himself to us as the cause of our thoughts and feelings, then we very quickly come to a state where, with the help of the upper light, the Creator begins to manifest in us.
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From the Daily Kabbalah lesson in Russian 2/11/19