The Purpose Of A Kabbalistic Group, Part 9

The principle of a Kabbalistic group is a special attitude toward the friends.

Comment: One of the principles of working in a group is valuing each of the friend’s individuality.

My Response: It is necessary to give everyone the opportunity to show their abilities, to help them in this, so that when identifying all the abilities of the friends, we come to the maximum development of a common desire, intention, effort.

Comment: The principle is as follows: Constantly exalt your friends and feel the lowliness of your egoism.

My Response: That is, as an egoist, I must always lower myself in relation to the group, to relate to my friend with an increased desire to help and support them in everything. There are two forces within me, positive and negative. Maximize the positive and minimize the negative.

Comment: Another principle: Try to see the friends in a more corrected state than what my egoism is showing me.

My Response: I should try to see my friends as more corrected than I am. Then I will have a desire to get closer to them, to lower myself before them. My admiration for them will give me the strength to advance.

Question: The next principle: annul yourself before the friends. What exactly needs to be done here?

Answer: This arises naturally in a person. When one works in a group, whether one wants to or not, a person begins to feel lower and lower than the rest. He or she sees strength and goodness in the friends, but not in oneself.

Moreover, we are not saying that this happens on its own, but that a person can annul themself before the friends by one’s own effort. That is, to artificially lower oneself before the friends and to see oneself as worse than them, lower, less advanced. This will give a person the opportunity to raise them, raise the Creator through them, and thus, advance.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 3/6/20

“What Books Can I Read To Understand Kabbalah?” (Quora)

Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What books can I read to understand Kabbalah?“

The science of Kabbalah is unique in the way it talks about you and me, about all of us. It doesn’t deal with anything abstract, only with the way we are created and how we function at higher levels of existence.

One of its sections talks about the descent of the higher forces from the world of Ein Sof (Infinity). The world of Ein Sof is our initial state, and there we exist as a single, unified system of souls, completely interconnected. Then, from the world of Ein Sof, we study the sequence of worlds, Sefirot and Partzufim as they descend to the world we live in.

Many Kabbalistic books have been written about it, starting with Abraham the Patriarch around 4,000 years ago, who wrote a book called Sefer Yetzira (The Book of Creation).

The next important work is The Book of Zohar, written in the second century CE. The Zohar is followed by the works of the Ari, a renowned 16th century Kabbalist. And the 20th century saw the appearance of the works of Kabbalist Yehuda Ashlag (Baal HaSulam).

Baal HaSulam’s texts are best suited for our generation.

They, as well as other Kabbalistic sources, describe the structure of the upper worlds, how they descend and successively bring lower worlds into existence, and how our world came into being, the universe, our globe, and how life evolved. Studying how that system was created and how it descends to our world allows us to master the method of entering this system and governing it.

We, for the most part, study the six volume textbook Talmud Eser Sefirot (The Study of the Ten Sefirot), written by Yehuda Ashlag. It is designed as a study aid with questions, answers, materials for repetition and memorization, explanations, graphics and drawings. This is, if you will, the physics of the upper world, describing the laws and forces governing the universe.

This material gradually transforms the students, because when searching how to enter and begin to live in the spiritual world, one gradually adapts oneself to the material.

The science of Kabbalah does not deal with life in this world. Instead, by studying this system we re-attain our level before we descended, the same level where we will be at the end of our ascent from this world. During this ascent, the study of Kabbalah builds within the student a system equal to the higher system.

This system begins to organize and manifest itself in the person who wants to achieve it, and who studies it for this purpose. Just like a drop of semen can potentially evolve into an entire human being, and subsequently grows into a mature grown-up, the science of Kabbalah develops our desire to attain a higher level of existence.

At first this is a tiny desire, called “a point in the heart.” This point is like the embryo of our future states. By studying the structure of the upper world, we develop the “genetic” information within it, and as it grows, the structure resembling the higher levels forms within us.

This is why studying is so rewarding. Even if we do not understand a single thing about what we are reading, simply trying to understand the Kabbalistic texts nurtures the point in the heart, the desire for the higher force, and the point begins to grow. The more it grows, the more we feel the appearance of a new creation, a new and different feeling of a world within ourselves.

In so doing, the science of Kabbalah gives us the opportunity to feel the upper worlds, to understand everything that happens to us, and most of all, to control this process for ourselves.

I recommend that before approaching the aforementioned books, to take a introductory course, so that you will be able to get guidance on how to approach the books to reap the most spiritual benefit. I have added links to various courses you could choose to start from in my Quora bio.

Test Tube Babies

From My Facebook Page Michael Laitman 1/27/20

Stanford University professor Hank Greely thinks that in 20-30 years people will be choosing children from a laboratory.

The Jewish Choice: Unity Or Anti-Semitism—Scary To Even Think About

It is scary to think about what might happen to the world if we do not succeed in disseminating the method of connection. A new world war awaits the world, after which it would take humanity several more centuries to recover from and begin to gather to implement the correction. Yet, the final correction must manifest here in this world in the corporeal framework in which we live now.

This world does not exist but the spiritual form, which now appears before our eyes as the corporeal world, must be exactly like this so that the process of correction will begin and end in it. Once we complete the correction at the level of this world together with the spiritual world, this world will rise to a spiritual degree.

We can avoid third and fourth world wars while this is still in our hands. However, the allotted time is already coming to an end so we need to hurry up and realize our mission.
^{From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/9/20, ”The Jewish Choice: Unity or Anti-Semitism,” Chapter 6Minute 1:53:10}

Building The Future Society, Part 3

To Reach the State of Bestowal

Question: Nature obliges us to comply with the law of reception, and we constantly care about satisfying our own needs. This is normal, we are created that way. The second law “to give to society, to take care of society, of the neighbor” is hidden from us.

However, the Creator obliges us to obey this law by sending us blows and suffering; we just do not associate them with the failure to comply with this law. So we don’t have freedom of choice after all? As Baal HaSulam writes: Our absolute duty is to completely obey the law of nature.

Answer: No, a person is not strictly obligated to this, but only pushed to want him or her to adopt the law of bestowal consciously, realizing its need.

What does realizing mean? When I am my own, one might say, civic consciousness, I understand that I need to do this. Not for my own sake, but for the sake of others and the Creator. I accept this law and execute it not involuntarily, but because I realize how much good I can do with this deed for others and for the Creator. Just for the sake of them! And in no case for my own sake!

This does not make me an even more developed animal, standing on the same level with other animals because a person does not have automatic instinctive fulfillment of the laws of nature; one must fulfill them oneself. The fact is that I must reach a completely different level, the quality of bestowal and love, not the instinctive fulfillment of the laws of nature. By this I rise to the level of the Creator.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 2/7/19

The Purpose Of A Kabbalistic Group, Part 7

The Group: New Community

Question: In Rabash’s articles, it is written that the goal of the group is to investigate and practically check its attitude to a neighbor.

If I want to attain the property of the Creator, where can I check it? Only in the group? And how do I know that the property of the Creator is a property of bestowal?

Answer: We study this from the materials of Kabbalists: do everything possible to connect with each other, somehow organize ourselves into one whole in completion to each other, so that in communication with each other we begin to feel that each of us is dissolved in the group and disappears in it.

Instead, in the center of our circle, in the center of the ten, a new entity arises: a common desire, a common aspiration, a common goal, a common connection between us. Then through this state we begin to feel the revelation of the Creator.

Question: Is the goal of the group is to develop pride in a person that he belongs to it?

Answer: Certainly. Pride regarding a special group, a special purpose, a special idea in the world.

Question: Isn’t pride egoistic?

Answer: It depends on what a person is proud. If one is proud to be acting for the good of humanity, then why not? There is nothing negative in any impulse, in any movement, in any state; it always depends on the goal.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 3/6/19

“What Does Kabbalah Entail And Believe?” (Quora)

Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What does Kabbalah entail and believe?“

The wisdom of Kabbalah doesn’t involve believing in anything. Or in other words, “belief” is a degree in Kabbalah where only once one attains something, then one can discuss believing in that thing.

There is only one practice in Kabbalah: attracting the Ohr Makif (surrounding light), i.e., the higher force dwelling in nature that changes us from our inborn corporeal form to a spiritual one.

This wisdom is very simple because it is based on the interaction of two forces: the higher spiritual force of bestowal and love and the lower corporeal force of egoism, of reception. Moreover, it states that there is nothing other than these two forces in reality.

The higher force of bestowal and love controls the lower force, the egoistic desire, and everything that happens in reality, which the wisdom of Kabbalah studies, is realized in the interaction between these forces.

The lower force is generated by the higher force and is called “existence from absence.” It is like in mathematics where there is zero and something different to zero.

The higher force acts upon and influences our desire, which is completely under its control. We are desire: each one of us individually and all of us together.

We are unconscious of how the higher force acts through us, thinking that we are in control of ourselves. But, in fact, each one of us is simply a small device. We have the opportunity of evoking the additional influence of the higher force.

To the extent that we attract it to develop wisely, we understand how the higher force influences us and carries out particular actions in us. We begin to study how it operates on us, and by doing so, start developing the ability to control the way it influences us.

The Jewish Choice: Unity Or Anti-Semitism—Birth In Agony

The solution is not in the greater emancipation of the Jews, and not in greater religiosity, but in the spiritual ascent of a person. The lessons of history teach one thing: no matter what we do within the framework of this world, the outcome will always be disastrous, and we will be hit with blows right up to destruction. Salvation is only in rising above the level of this world.

No matter where we turn at the level of this world: to liberalism, religions, emancipation—nothing will help. We cannot stay in the corporeal level; we are not allowed to get stuck in it. We can only go up from this platform.

People have not been told or taught about this; therefore, they do not want it and cannot do it, a situation similar to labor pains. The upper providence does not take a person’s corporeal life into account, but only the development of desire. The desires must develop until they reach our time, where, at last, a group will appear that will begin to implement the solution.

Inside the general vessel of the soul, Reshimot  are accumulating from all the sufferings endured by millions of people who died during the Holocaust, the Inquisition, and Stalinist repressions. All this is in order for the desire to enjoy to accumulate great pain from the fact that it is in egoism and to let the spiritual genes (Reshimot) of bestowal start working.

From the viewpoint of human logic, there is no justification for this. After all, who arranges all these disasters? The Creator! You can take Him to court.
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah lesson 1/9/20, ”The Jewish Choice: Unity or Anti-Semitism,” Chapter 6Minute 1:31:30