The Meaning Of Kabbalistic Books, Part 1

The Many Faces of the Torah

Question: When we open the Torah, we find a collection of historical stories with many characters. How should we correctly relate to them?

Answer: If the Torah did not come from a special source but was an ordinary book written, suppose by a person in the Middle Ages, then it would just be an interesting historical novel.

The Torah itself is presented in very interesting language, and when you start reading it, you cannot stop, because it captivates you. There is something in it that makes you never get tired of reading it.

I speak of this as an ordinary reader who has nothing to do with the origin of this book, religion, history, geography, or with anything else. It is just written in an interesting style.

Some perceive the Torah as a historical document, others as fiction, or, perhaps, as a collection of instructions or legal documents. It contains a lot of information about the interaction of people and nations in ancient times, about their view of the world.

In general, the Torah is a very interesting book. We see something similar in Josephus Flavius, if it is possible to compare the Torah and his works at all. To some extent, he retells the Torah and describes it as a historian.

Josephus is a truly stunning historian with a broad outlook and a deep knowledge of historical facts. He wrote his works while in exile in Rome where a huge institute was created especially for him, where hundreds of people worked for him.

But all the same, what he wrote cannot be compared with the Torah itself.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah” 12/18/18

Why We Need To Understand The Greatness And Uniqueness Of Baal HaSulam

Today is a special day, the Yahrzeit, the day commemorating the death of Kabbalist Yehuda Ashlag, Baal HaSulam.  

Who is Baal HaSulam? He is the soul that connects us to the Creator. He was a person who opened all the gates of the wisdom of Kabbalah to the last generation we’re now in.

Without Baal HaSulam’s teaching, we would be unable to be awarded with what we have already received. Moreover, without Baal HaSulam’s teaching, we would be unable to progress to what is ahead of us, both in terms of the knowledge and the method of Kabbalah, and also its stages of attainment.

No matter what will happen as we head forth, we will reach a need for the Creator. However, such a need will have to pass through this great soul.

“A person has the choice of going to a place where there are righteous. One can accept their authority, and then he will receive all the powers that he lacks by the nature of his own qualities. He will receive it from the righteous. This is the benefit in ‘planted them in each generation,’ so that each generation would have someone to turn to, adhere to, and from whom to receive the strength required to rise to the degree of a righteous.”

– Baal Hasulam. Shamati article 99. “He Did Not Say Wicked or Righteous.”

One of the reasons why the wisdom of Kabbalah is called “the wisdom of Kabbalah (reception)” is because it passes through each generation, and every generation needs a teacher, a Kabbalist, one with spiritual attainment, in the world. That is a necessity in the wisdom of Kabbalah. Only extremely rare and unique individuals can reach attainment of the Creator by receiving special treatment from above. As such, we need to always be connected to great sages who are in spiritual attainment, so that in each generation, we can make spiritual progress.

Since the wisdom of Kabbalah discusses phenomena that a person can only attain through the teacher, then he learns sources, through the teacher, which pass through all generations. The key to the student’s attainment of what passes through his teacher is subjugation, through which the small can receive from the great. Accordingly, there are degrees of the student’s subjugation to the teacher.

Therefore, we need to understand how great and unique Baal HaSulam was, and how much we need to subjugate to what he left us, his writings, with the hope that to the extent of such subjugation, we will be able to connect to his spirit, through which we can receive the upper force from the Creator.
Lesson on the Topic “Baal HaSulam Memorial Day” on October 10, 2019.

New Life # 281 – The Source Of Emotions And Their Role

New Life # 281 – The Source of Emotions and Their Role
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Nitzah Mazoz

Emotions exist in order to lead us to the most internal source of all life where matter disappears. Emotions are the desire to enjoy pleasure, expressed through bodily sensations and feelings. The mind is enslaved to the emotions and directs a person toward what feels good. The desire to receive pleasure is in constant movement, growth, and change and can therefore never be fulfilled. This leads a person to despair at which point he begins to ask himself questions about the meaning of life. He starts to disagree with the process of life and criticizes what is truly good. He develops new desires as a result of his growing awareness in both mind and body. He discovers a way to experience an absolute and full sense of goodness by leaving the body completely and going directly to the unlimited source of all life and fulfillment, the foundation of nature.
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From Kab TV’s “New Life # 281 – The Source of Emotions and Their Role,” 1/2/14

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“Anti-Semitism In Australia: The Deeper Cause And Solution” (Times Of Israel)

The Times of Israel published my new article “Anti-Semitism in Australia: The Deeper Cause and Solution”

Two anti-Semitic events involving children that hit Australia in the past week are just the tip of the iceberg showing a worldwide boost in anti-Semitic sentiment, crimes and threats.

The first was a 5-year-old who was revealed to be subject to anti-Semitic bullying at his school’s bathrooms regularly for months. It reached such scales where the boy would wet his pants in class rather than use the bathroom to avoid the ridicule. All it took was his classmates finding out that he was circumcised for the abuse to begin, which included calling him a “Jewish cockroach.”

At another school, a 12-year-old Jewish student was taken to the park by his classmates, who forced him to bend over and kiss the shoes of a Muslim boy. Of course, the act was photographed and spread on social media. In the months following, the child suffered from anti-Semitic slander, physical assaults, threats and curses. Beyond an injury to his face, which ended with a visit to the hospital, the child began to suffer from acute anxiety.

In both cases, the schools denied involvement in the incidents, and faced minor backlash from the Jewish children’s parents and Jewish organizations. Both Jewish children eventually left the schools.

Despite these events coming to light in the media, there is no guarantee of a safeguard from future such events. We are left with no reason to believe that other Jewish children won’t face similar or worse bullying.

The 2018 Anti-Semitism Report of the Kantor Center reported an unprecedented 59% increase in anti-Semitism cases in Australia compared to the previous year. The cases included phone and email harassment and threats, verbal abuse, vandalism, and anti-Semitic posters and graffiti spreading in the public sphere unimpeded.

These are just some of the cases. Most cases are not reported at all, and Jews continue encountering harassment and curses on a regular basis whether on their way to synagogues on Shabbat, whether at Jewish festivals or other Jewish events.

It’s no wonder that Jews and Israelis living in Australia are starting to feel uncomfortable, to say the least.

I have quite a few students and friends there. Debbie and Avi are part of a large Jewish and Israeli community, living in Bondi Beach in Sydney. Debbie stated that she shivered when she saw the pews of Sydney’s northwestern neighborhoods covered with swastikas and graffiti that call for killing Jews.

Aviva and her family also migrated to Australia a decade ago in her work for a small town near Byron Bay, which has a large community of Israelis. One day when Aviva was sitting in a little café, as she usually did, she was surprised to discover a swastika adorning her coffee. When she asked the waiter what this meant, he explained that Hitler was basically pursuing peace and equality, and his ideas had good intentions.

Apparently, even in a stable and tolerant democracy, in which Jews are free to maintain their beliefs and customs, there is reason to fear. Again, we find that Jews have nowhere else in the world to escape and shake off their role.

The wisdom of Kabbalah explains that Jews have a special role in the human puzzle: “Israel’s purpose is to unite the entire world into one family,” writes Rabbi Kook. The people of Israel are a special people who rose with the common agreement to love one another and live “as one man with one heart.”

The method of uniting the Jewish people, which can also unite humanity, has been instilled in us Jews. Therefore, it is our duty to use it, and to bring about the long-awaited union between us—to set an example for a humanity that is suffering from increasing division and hatred. But as long as we continue letting ourselves get driven into conflict with each other, failing to transcend our egos and connect with each other, anti-Semitism intensifies and gives us a hard reminder that we have a role.

The only way to stop and even reverse the rising trend of anti-Semitism around the world is if we Jews realize our unity above our growing divisions, and to spread this unifying tendency to the world.
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In The Grip Of The Integral Nature

Baal HaSulam, “Peace in the World”: … the benefit of each and every person within his collective is evaluated not according to his own goodness, but according to his service to the public. And vice-versa, we appreciate the attribute of evil of each and every individual only according to the harm one inflicts upon the public in general, and not by one’s own individual value.

These things are crystal clear both from the perspective of the truth in them, and from the perspective of the good in them. This is because what is found in the collective is only what is found in the individual. And the benefit of the collective is the benefit of each and every individual: who harms the collective takes his share in the harm, and who benefits the collective takes his share in the benefit, since individuals are part of the whole, and the whole is not worth in anyway more than the sum of its individuals.

Here is a constant calculation, absolutely complete and very real.

I see before me a vast integral system of the entire world, not our world, but all the worlds. I feel like I am locked in this system through the rest of humanity, an enormous amount of interconnected cogwheels. And I have absolutely no freedom to turn by a few degrees in one direction or another.

After all, a cogwheel is like a sphere: I can spin here and there, in different directions, at different angles.

Yet, wherever I turn, I am connected with other cogwheels. I affect their rotation, their state, and they affect me. This is the world.

This means that nature is absolutely whole and interconnected and we have no way to do anything against it.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 7/21/19

One Common Reality Called The Kli

Why should our work be in concealment and darkness? It is because initially we feel nothing spiritual. We are created opposite to the spiritual quality of bestowal and love in order to build spiritual, real people. The human (Adam) is called “similar” (“Domeh“) to the Creator, and we need to create this from ourselves.

How do we do this? The Creator has broken us into pieces and He is between us. In order to reveal Him, we need to connect among each other. To the extent of such connection—tension, intensity, sensory perception of our connection, unification, and aspiration to each other—we will begin to feel the Creator.

This work is being hidden because we do not feel and are not interested in what is between us at all. We are only interested in what is inside of us, and what is outside of us as if does not exist. Externality exists only to the extent that we feel its benefit for ourselves and no more.

How can I transform myself to a sensor that feels externality more than internality? To stop feeling what is inside of me means restriction (Tzimtzum). I begin to feel that outside of me is the reflected light (Ohr Hozer), and what I will feel in this reflected Light, that is, in the feelings emanating from me outwardly, will be called the Creator.

Therefore, the work is being done in concealment, in the dark, at night.

The Creator invented a trick to let us perceive a reality that we should not perceive. This trick is called darkness. When it seems to us that we are lost, lacking understanding, knowledge and sensation, when we are confused, lost, falling into an unknown state, and losing our orientation in the world, this means that we are at the beginning of a new spiritual stage of comprehension and have a reliable basis for revealing the light. As the saying goes: “the advantage of the light is from within the darkness.”

Therefore, the feeling that I understand even less than before actually creates very good prerequisites for moving forward. Any new spiritual step begins with loss, disorientation, and a feeling of hopelessness, that is, darkness. To the extent that we feel darkness, we continue to make efforts and search for the light. The light is outside of us and the darkness is revealed within us.

This is where the whole method comes from: you must exit yourself toward your friends, and on the way toward them, you will find the light. They come to you and you go to them: this is how we mutually help each other even with selfish goals. This is already some kind of movement, like a baby that may make some movements unconsciously. But these chaotic and unconscious movements propel us forward.

The upper force gives us hints and plays with us. This Creator creates everything around us. We will later see how He works in us. There is nothing around us—the reality we feel is in each of us. Then we will understand that there is not each of us individually but only the one common reality called the Kli, HaVaYaH.

If I feel lost, this is a template from the Creator of my new state. I have to close my eyes and just connect to my friends. The Creator will resist this, assuring that there is nothing to look for because they are the same as me, and perhaps even worse. While in egoism, I see them in even greater egoism and greater darkness.

But I try to navigate in this chaotic state by exiting myself and trying to understand how to connect with others outside myself, right up to the feeling of a new reality there.¹
From Lesson 4, World Kabbalah Convention in Moldova 9/7/19, Rejoice in What We Lack/Work in Concealment

Who Are The Judges?

In the News (The Guardian):  “Prisoners could be handed the keys to their cells to incentivize good behavior, as well as a series of other benefits, under government plans that call on governors to put more emphasis on rewards and less on punishments.

“Ministers want to give prison chiefs the power to begin allowing inmates who follow the rules more time out of their cells, the freedom to cook their own meals and more time to spend in the gym, as well as the freedom to choose when to shower and more time to meet visitors. …

“Officials cited evidence summarized by the government last month that positive reinforcement was more effective as a means by which to change behavior in the long term. And they stressed that those who did not abide by the rules could still lose privileges. …

“The policy also called for prison staff to ‘consistently use verbal reinforcement for good behavior and challenge poor behavior outside formal reviews’, and handed prison chiefs the ‘freedom to increase the amount of time out of cell for recreational activities or exercise alongside education and work programs’.”

Question: What do you think about this system of detention?

Answer: In principle, the Torah and especially Kabbalah feel that incarceration is not a correction. We see that it corrects nothing. On the contrary, people leave prison even more angry with huge malicious egoism that they again begin to use in everyday life among people.

Prison is not education. Education must be organized differently.

In the past, a few thousand years ago, there were cities of refuge where people were deported and looked after. They had to remain inside the city and had no right to leave it.

When the ones supervising them (educators, etc.) saw that a person was functioning normally, they could gradually take him beyond the boundaries of this system.

Remark: It is also said in the Torah that the guilty ones were sent there so that others could not take revenge on them.

My Comment: Yes. It was all organized very seriously for the mutual benefit of both these people and external society. Later they returned.

I would advise this. They should feel free and change gradually.

Remark: But still the idea of the accusers and those that endorse incarceration is different, “They must be humiliated, locked up.”

My Comment: That is natural because we do not have a system of education; we only have a system of coercion and punishment.

Question: Does the system of punishment not work?

Answer: We see that it does not work. Moreover, the rest of society becomes infected by these thoughts. We see proof of the insufficiency of the punishment system in the ones who return to the streets, destroy everything, break store windows, set up barricades, and so on.

Question: Do you think that even the most inveterate criminal can be re-educated?

Answer: I think that it is possible to re-educate them and give them an opportunity for self-control in these cities. They can establish such an order that all others will envy because there is a concept of honor among them. We must understand that they are serious people who can establish order.

Question: What should change in the way of thinking of law enforcement agencies and prosecutors?

Answer: I think they should be locked up instead of these criminals. Then their way of thinking would change. It is impossible to be on one side and think for the other side. Of course, I mean this as a joke, but there is some truth in it.

Remark: You always say that the system of judges used to be completely different. Judges were those who simply could not accept a bribe.

My Comment: Being a judge was the highest position. In principle, to this day it is considered that a judge should receive a good salary, should be protected and independent. But what kind of independence can there be today if all judges obey governments, all are in collusion with each other, “one hand rubs another,” etc.?

Remark: Previously judges did not need to be paid a lot.

My Comment: This is not the point. They really were independent.

Question: How was that possible? What is this ideal image of a judge?

Answer: A judge greatly valued his position. He cherished the public opinion that was constantly tuned in such a way that a judge was above everyone, even above a king. A judge was on the same level as the Creator. It is possible to see this in the Torah, in the Book of Judges. This is the highest position in the country.

Question: Is it possible to raise such people in our egoistic world?

Answer: For this, it is necessary to educate them. We need an education system, not a penal system and not this public one that is a mess. But it is possible.

Question: Do you think that what they want to do in Britain is a step toward education?

Answer: Let them try. But in order to build a correct system, the right people must build it. I do not hold out hope that they will succeed. People with a different way of thinking should create such a system.

Question: So, is this a dead end?

Answer: Yes. Until they turn to Kabbalists nothing will help them. Good luck, British ladies and gentlemen!
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From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman”, 7/16/19

Why Reveal Egoism In The Ten?

Question: Why are tens of thousands of the quintessential historical examples of the manifestation of egoism and evil not enough to come to the need for correction? Why reveal egoism between ten unfamiliar people? What can we reveal there?

Answer: The egoism that you reveal every day in relation to your loved ones and all the others is not the ego that we are talking about.

Egoism is what interferes when you want to connect in the ten in order to reveal the Creator.

Therefore, we should study the qualities of connection to know them. By connecting correctly in the ten, we receive the manifestation of egoism. In further work on the ego in order to rise above it for the sake of revealing the Creator, both egoism and the Creator are revealed.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 7/7/19