What Does A Kabbalist Take Offense At?

Question: Does a Kabbalist have a feeling of resentment? What do you get offended by?

Answer: I do not get offended, but rather get irritated. And I get irritated only by one thing: if there is freewill in a person and he does not realize it. He has received direction and support and he does not apply efforts to implement them.

And there is nothing to be offended by with ordinary people. Who are they? Fully managed creatures. Take offense at the Creator.

There is nothing to take offense at the Creator. He is the Absolute for you. If He does not do something, it means that you do not implement something.

Question: If a person does not take offense at anything, does it mean that he is happy?

Answer: I am happy. It cannot be said that I do not take offense at all because a Kabbalist is also human. He suddenly falls and rises, suddenly disconnects from the Creator and his spiritual state and somehow reacts differently to everything, and then again returns to his previous state.

We are given such metamorphosis. But they are all necessary to emphasize that we work with the Absolute.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 8/13/17

New Life #201 – First Date

New Life #201 – First Date
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Nitzah Mazoz

Summary

The purpose of a first date is to determine if the person can be in a deep and proper relationship with you. Do not focus on external appearances or rush into sex. Rather, learn about the person’s environment, experiences in school and work, and relationships with family. Is there a flow, mutual understanding, and a similar view of life? Can you fit together like two puzzle pieces?
From KabTV’s “New Life #201 – First Date,” 6/25/13

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Rambam On Health

Remark: The great physician and Kabbalist Rambam wrote: “Taking care of one’s health is a component on the path to the Creator, for it is difficult to understand and attain while being sick. Therefore a person should distance himself from everything that is harmful to the body, and accustom himself to what is healthy, to rebuild his well-being.”

My Comment: Rambam’s words can be interpreted on the spiritual level, as well as on the physical one, either of them is correct.

Everything written by him comes from spiritual attainment, so he was a great healer. His medical tractates and drawings still remain; they show how to trepan the skull, the brain, and how to treat such areas of our body that we still know very little about today. You can gain a great deal from his writings. I would advise doctors to learn from them.

Question: Would it be possible for a person to understand anything in Rambam’s books without instruction, without a teacher? He writes about spiritual states.

Answer: Relatively, yes. An ancient book survived to this day, called Rambam’s Recipes. But who would use it? It is written there that you should take, let’s say, some kind of a tree, mix it with something else, use it in a certain way, etc. In our day and age, there are amateurs that are engaged with this, but generally people prefer to take a pill and be done with it. No one will search for various roots, branches, or minerals.

Question: Is it true that during a meal a person should engage all his five senses? So there should be music and aromas?

Answer: This is how it was done in the past. A regular meal was conducted with music, scents, while assuming the correct position, leaning to your left, etc. All this is supported by our physiology.

Rambam wrote: “Every time a person eats, he should sit or lay leaning on his left. One should not walk or ride a horse, work, or make sharp movements, nor stroll until the food is digested.”

Remark: It is hard to imagine eating this way.

My Comment: Indeed, today we grab a hamburger on the street, inhaling some exhaust fumes with it, or drink a bottle of soda that contains 20 teaspoons of sugar per 200 grams of water, and this is considered normal.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 8/20/17

“Dogs Bark And The Caravan Goes”

Question: Suppose a person started studying at one of our international Kabbalah Education Centers. Suddenly online he comes across criticism of Laitman’s Kabbalah. How should he react to this?

Answer: People should react as they please; it is their business. I hope to live a few more years, until I bring all those who wish to the spiritual goal, and during this time others will write many more “beautiful” pages about me.

How can you react to this? In no way. “Dogs bark, and the caravan goes.” We cannot do anything. This is human nature. Realizing this, I pay no attention to anything. So it’s easier for me. They are the ones who splutter with anger.

Question: Let’s say a new student is excited to read about Laitman. And then something bad comes to him, as nature plays with a man. Is there a freedom of choice?

Answer: Yes. Let him understand what Laitman says and what others say.

Question: What tools does he have to understand this?

Answer: It is a point in the heart. If it does not let him rest, it will force him to open not my but Baal HaSulam’s books. Gradually, he will begin to understand that they contain divine wisdom, which is the next level.

Therefore, he will not be able to confine himself only to performing mechanical actions in our world—any religion, no matter which—but he will want to comprehend the source of life and his fate, where he comes from, what and where he is. He will not be able to live without it and nature will force him.

All the problems that we see today—natural disasters, hurricanes, and wars—happen only to force a person to understand that he needs to find an answer to the question of the meaning of life. Otherwise life is completely empty.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 9/10/17

New Life #477 – Creating Balance With The Positive Force

New Life #477 – Creating Balance With The Positive Force
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Nitzah Mazoz

Summary:

The human ego is an evil super force that destroys our chances for peace. It runs us, but there is an opposing positive force that can create balance on top of the negative egoistic force. Kabbalah teaches us how to discover and use this positive force so that we can communicate correctly with one another and build good lives.
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From KabTV’s “New Life #477 – Creating Balance With The Positive Force,” 12/18/14

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The Recipe For Health From Kabbalists

Question: How do Kabbalists explain the notion of health?

Answer: There is a famous saying: “Healthy body—healthy mind.” Kabbalists believe the opposite, “With the healthy spirit comes a healthy body.”

A healthy spirit is a state when a person works for bestowal, for the benefit of others and for all of humanity.

If we could live like this, we would feel ourselves in eternal existence, in absolute health, and would not even have an idea of what a disease or a bad state is. A person would be healthy all the time because all illnesses are the consequence of thoughts about oneself.

Immediately a question arises: “Then why do the Kabbalists get sick?” The fact is that while all of humanity is not yet corrected, people get sick for each other. The Kabbalists are also included in humanity and naturally get sick along with everyone.

However, approaching correction, we will get sick less and will live longer until the transition into a state where the feeling of life will be replaced by the feeling of immortality and healthy existence.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 8/12/17

JPost: “Israel Must Be the Beacon of Peace the World Awaits”

The Jerusalem Post published my new article: “Israel Must Be the Beacon of Peace the World Awaits“

Seventy years after the declaration of Israel’s independence warrants a deep look at our current state. Especially since earlier this week a U.S. President suddenly felt compelled to make a statement recognizing Israel’s right to exist.

“It went on and on, for many nerve wracking moments of that winter night in 1947. Finally the American announcer pierced the silence with his announcement: 33 in favor, 13 against, the resolution is approved. The state of Israel was declared. Then came the dancing and tears, and flags appeared. Cars honked their horns as loudly as they could, and the sounds of Shofars sounded from all the synagogues… My father said to me as we wandered between the circles of dancers, ‘Take a good look at this my boy, because you will never forget this night as long as you live, and you will tell your children and grandchildren about it long after we’re gone.’”

Amos Oz, A Tale of Love and Darkness

Indeed we’ve never forgotten that night. Somewhere along the corridors of Israel’s collective memory, those cheers of elation and bursts of spontaneous singing can still be heard, like an annoying reminder that it wasn’t just a dream. For a brief moment we experienced how it really feels to be together, unified as one.

Seventy years of endless wars, internal struggles and the exhausting search for our path, makes you stop and wonder at times, if these events ever really occurred. On the one hand, we cannot dismiss our achievements. We have a flag and an anthem, an electrical company, an airport, an army, a thriving high-tech industry, and rich culture. There is much to be proud of.

But imagine if we could take all the hopes and dreams from deep within the hearts of those dancing people, and pour them all out on the table opposite our current life in the state of Israel; If we take a good hard look and be honest with ourselves, have any of those aspirations we had come true? Have we turned out the way we hoped we would — a unified people, independent and free in our own land? Would the United Nations vote the same way if they voted again today?

DID WE LEARN ANYTHING FROM OUR EXILE?

There gap between the dreams of the past and today’s reality is undeniable. Somewhere along the way, we must have missed something big. We came back to the land of our ancestors after two thousand years in exile, and we tried to create a modern day version of the Hebrew culture, but it’s not nearly enough.

At some point the hands that once held each other tight began to loosen their grip and even each pull in their own direction. Seventy years have passed and we still haven’t found a formula for making that fleeting sensation of togetherness into a lasting experience.

With all due respect to the United Nations, the justification for the state of Israel dates way back, to a time when Abraham the patriarch gathered disciples in ancient Babylon who searched for the source of life. Together they discovered the method to rise above their ego, and cultivate genuine mutual concern for each other. The group grew until it finally became a nation — the nation of Israel who inhabited its given land upon the foundation of “love thy neighbor as thyself.”

Ever since then, our moral and spiritual obligation has always been to “be a light unto nations” and serve as a positive example for the world. It is the only real mandate for our existence as a nation as well as for the land upon which we reside.

THE CHOSEN PEOPLE HAVE A SPIRITUAL MISSION

The long years of exile made us forget that we have a spiritual mission. But towards the end of the 19th century a fateful shift took place and the Jewish people began to yearn once again to return to their land and build an independent state. It was precisely at this time that Abraham’s method began to resurface as “the authentic wisdom of Kabbalah.” With this new turn of events, Baal Hasulam and Rav Kook, two of the greatest Kabbalists of the 20th century, declared that our external independence depends directly upon the attainment of our spiritual independence:

“As long as we do not raise our purpose above our corporeal lives” wrote Baal Hasulam in his article “Exile and Redemption”, “we shall not have a corporeal resurrection, for we are the people of the ideal”.

With the world’s eyes set on Jerusalem, the significance of the above excerpt becomes more relevant than ever: Israel cannot be a society based on egoistic values and principles, even if it appears to be successful in other countries. The people of Israel must rediscover their foundation of mutual love and be a beacon of peace for the entire world.

In Israel of 2017, the Promised Land has become the land of milk, honey and Coca Cola, and cars only honk in the streets after a great football or basketball triumph abroad.

However, the world needs a positive example of unity now more than ever before. The current fractured reality in Israeli society presents the perfect opportunity to build a new foundation for our shared life as a nation. It is time for Israelis to start dancing around a spiritual ideal of love. Then, Jerusalem too, can become the beacon of peace that so many around the world anticipate it to be.
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What Is Love?

Question: What can a person do if during his entire life he never experienced love?

Answer: It depends for whom. If a person does not feel love for himself, this is some kind of abnormality, because love for ourselves is our nature. If he does not feel love for others, then this is natural and he is a normal, healthy person.

Question: Why do some say in response to the phrase “love your neighbor as yourself”: “I do not love myself very much, so I will not love others very much either”?

Answer: Try to love others the way you love yourself and you will see how much you love yourself. You will suddenly discover that you love yourself more and more every day.

Question: Is love a state, a feeling, or some kind of quality, a force, in a person?

Answer: Love is a feeling when I feel I belong to myself. The force of belonging to yourself is called love.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 8/13/17

The Place Where The Creator Is Revealed

Torah, Leviticus 8:33 – 8:36: And you shall not leave the entrance of the Tent of Meeting for seven days, until the day of the completion of your investiture days, he will inaugurate you for seven days. As he did on this day, so the Lord has commanded to do, to effect atonement for you.

And you shall stay day and night for seven days at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting. You shall observe the Lord’s command, so that you will not die, for thus I was commanded. And Aaron and his sons did all the things that the Lord commanded through Moses.

Breaking away from egoism is the atonement.

It is compensation for getting rid of something impure, negative, and detrimental like, for example, some kind of disease. This is the way you purify yourself and start a different, healthier life. This is exactly what happened here.

The six days symbolize the six Sefirot: Chesed, Gevurah,Tiferet, Netzach, Hod, and Yesod; the seventh day represents self-purification and is called Malchut. Aaron and his sons are able to ascend above the ego and use it for the purpose of love and bestowal. Then, they will be called Cohens or Levis.

Malchut works only above itself by raising the reflecting Light. In other words, I work in order for someone else to get pleasure.
But we are not talking here about people and their physical bodies that require energy. We are talking about spiritual qualities. Therefore, everything I can share, apart from necessities for my own survival, goes toward giving above Malchut.

Question: What does “work with the reflecting Light” mean?

Answer: Malchut has to become similar to the six upper qualities that are above it.

The Light gets reflected off the screen between Malchut and Yesod and then returns back up. Specifically, in the Light that is reflected off Malchut and rises from the bottom upward, the similarity to the six qualities gets formed, which is the revelation and perception of the Creator. From that reflection, an image is formed of the new, spiritual person, which is the embodiment of the Creator.

The person and the Creator join within this image. Moreover, the joined image resides between the inborn egoism of the person and the altruism of the Creator. It follows that the image is neither the Creator nor the person, but is their joining into one whole. This is the state of wholeness that we aspire to.

Based on the strength of the unified image of the person and the Creator, we can determine which of the 125 levels of correction the person is on.

Malchut remains a desire to receive. The intention to give is above Malchut and it transfers from there to the others. Therefore, the quality of bestowal—the place in which the Creator is revealed—is built above Malchut.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 12/10/13

New Life #476 – The Whole Truth About The Wisdom Of Kabbalah

New Life #476 – The Whole Truth About The Wisdom Of Kabbalah
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Nitzah Mazoz

Summary:

The wisdom of Kabbalah teaches us how to establish harmonious and balanced relationships by revealing the unified, general force of nature between us. It explains how to ascend to a higher level by developing our minds and emotions on the level of the next world. Kabbalah books are encoded and a teacher is required in order to fully understand them.
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From KabTV’s “New Life #476 – The Whole Truth About The Wisdom Of Kabbalah,” 12/18/14

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Envy Is A Useful Quality

Question: What is envy, and how can you use it for spiritual advancement?

Answer: Envy is a very good quality, as is shame. However, shame seems to slow you down, stop you, make you hide and shrink, but envy, on the contrary, expands you and pushes you forward, and therefore, we must use it.

However, the most important thing is envy between the friends. When I sit in class, I look at each one and envy them endlessly. I do not hate them, but I envy them. We need to control ourselves here because dislike appears along with envy.

I am grateful for the fact that my friend demonstrates to me what he can do, what he knows, the way he feels, and so on. A white envy grows in me toward his aspirations, and it pushes me forward. Therefore, envy is a very good quality.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 8/13/17

Spiritual Love

Question: Is it possible to see examples of real spiritual love in order to understand the practice?

Answer: You will not be able to understand this, as a dog cannot feel the love between two people because their love is on a different level.

Spiritual love is the relationship between the pluses and minuses in two people when they do not destroy the qualities opposite to them, but use each other as a lever.

As Archimedes said: “Give me a place to stand and with a lever I will move the world.” We too need a negative lever in order to rise to the upper world.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 8/6/17

The Last Generation: Each Will Fill His Own Niche

In the society of the last generation there will be no entrepreneurs and none who fall behind because each will fill his own niche in the collective soul and it will be clear to the society that without the participation of each, it is not whole. Each person will be equally valued because this is an integral system. That’s why in the society of the last generation there are no oppressed and no oppressors, no winners and no losers.

Question: Then why did nature divide people into different classes?

Answer: In order for them to work on themselves.

Question: If in the society of the last generation someone comes up with a brilliant idea, will he be able to actualize it?

Answer: If you exist within an integral system, then you, being in your correct placement within the system, will not be able to suddenly come up with some brilliant idea that you are not able to actualize. You will not need to go anywhere or prove anything.

That which arises within you is needed for the equilibrium of the system specifically from the place that you occupy. But, because right now we are not yet in this system, the individual needs to somewhere, somehow force his ideas forward.

Question: But doesn’t this also arise precisely because the system is affecting me? Isn’t it just that right now I don’t feel its effect, but in the society of the future I will and will be grateful to this system for whatever is happening? Will there be gratitude?

Answer: Absolutely. To the point of complete happiness.
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From KabTV’s “The Last Generation,” 8/7/17

New Life #384 – Overcoming Difficulties In Our Lives

New Life #384 – Overcoming Difficulties In Our Lives
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Yael Leshed-Harel

Summary

Overcoming difficulties in our lives requires that we are part of an environment that encourages us to work together. We need to be educated to raise the importance of others in our own eyes so that we will see things from their point of view. All difficulties come from the Creator to advance us toward this goal. Children would also benefit from schools that demonstrated this same type of environment.
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From KabTV’s “New Life #384 – Overcoming Difficulties In Our Lives,” 5/27/14

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Connection With The Group Is Connection With The Creator

Question: Recently I felt terrible shame that I am still an animal body. What can I do about it?

Answer: Nothing! This is not your concern; you did not create it. Do what is required of you.

You just must rise in your intention to be associated with the Creator all the time through the group, through the friends. After all, an individual aspiration to the Creator is absolutely egoistic and will not yield any good results.

Check your connection with other friends well. Try to find an opportunity to improve these connections. You cannot imagine how this will advance you toward the truth, the understanding of what is really happening in the connection with the Creator, because connection with the group is connection with the Creator.

Now, you do not think so at all, but then you will see that this is so. If you look at a friend and see your own properties with respect to the Creator, this will be the correct spiritual direction.
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From the lesson in Russian 8/13/17

“A Wind Went Forth From The Lord”

Torah, Numbers 11:30 – 11:31: Then Moses entered the camp; he and the elders of Israel. A wind went forth from the Lord and swept quails from the sea and spread them over the camp about one day’s journey this way and one day’s journey that way, around the camp, about two cubits above the ground.

A wind (Ruach) is a movement. “A wind went forth from the Lord” means that a new inner movement enveloped a person.

“And swept quails from the sea and spread them over the camp… about two cubits above the ground.” If we look at this from the point of view of physical units of measurement, an elbow [an ell, a cubit] is approximately 60 centimetres. This means that two cubits are one meter and twenty centimetres. The whole camp was covered with quails for one day’s journey from the camp in all directions. Can you imagine how many tons of meat this is? The people demanded food and they received it.

Naturally, this is an allegory. It does not mean quails. Do you want to receive fulfillment into your egoistic desires? Please, come and get it!
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 3/25/15

A Common Basis For Different Methods

Question: There are many types of Kabbalah: the Kabbalah of Ramchal, Lurianic Kabbalah, Christian Kabbalah, Hasidism, practical Kabbalah, and so on.

You teach the Kabbalah of Baal HaSulam. Some claim that this branch is one of many others, while you present it as the main one.

Answer: Personally, I have no complaints about this matter against anyone. I understand man’s nature, and therefore, even the greatest opponent of Kabbalah is legitimate in my eyes. There are no discrepancies here: everything comes from the nature and structure of mankind and man. That is first.

Secondly, there are many ways to reveal the Creator, which can co-exist and be parallel to each other.

When I was next to my teacher Rabash, I went with him to many Kabbalists and saw his meetings with them. Granted, at the time I still had a very limited understanding of what they were talking about and could not tell whether I was next to a Kabbalist or not, what degree he was on, and what method he used to penetrate into the upper world and attain the Creator.

Naturally, there are different methods. But they all come down to raising people above their egoism. This happens based on what is written in the Torah: everyone must gather into tens, the way Moses established when coming out of Egypt.

In other words, rising from Egypt, going through the desert—through a specific phase of attaining the quality of Bina—is possible only in groups where people divide into tens and where a system of interconnection between people is created in them. This is described by all the Kabbalists. There are no disagreements about this at all.

Kabbalah is divided into two parts: theoretical study and practical Kabbalah.

The theoretical study of texts is usually associated with the term “Jerusalem Kabbalists.” You see, there used to be a group of Kabbalists in Jerusalem who engaged only in individual study of the texts. They knew the books of the Ari, The Book of Zohar, and others inside out, literally by heart, but at the same time, they were not doing any inner work. They had no attainment.

Getting back to the question of different teachings in Kabbalah, the great Kabbalist of the 16th-17th century Baal Shem Tov is notable. He gathered about thirty young men around him, taught them Kabbalah, and sent them off across all of Eastern Europe.

Each of them created his own Kabbalistic school and these schools have practically no differences between each other. They are based on the same method of Baal Shem Tov. The only difference is the external explanation. It is the same as how, for example, at a university there are 20 physics teachers and each of them explains it differently in some way. The meaning is the same, but the external presentation is different.

This is felt among Kabbalists to this day, but it does not mean that they are explaining different things. The only problem is to tell whether or not they are engaged in attainment of the Creator. As Baal HaSulam writes, Kabbalah is the system of attaining the Creator by man in our world.

Question: Do you teach only according to the method of Baal HaSulam?

Answer: I teach according to the method of the Ari, meaning along the lineage: The Book of Zohar, the Ari, Baal HaSulam, and Rabash.

Question: But are there other methods as well?

Answer: No, they are all still based on The Book of Zohar and the method of the Ari.

There was a time even before I came to Rabash, around 1978, that I was acquainted with people who followed the Ramak. There were several such old men in their seventies in Tel Aviv. They had no students. Therefore, I think there is no one left from that group today.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 9/10/17

New Life #383 – What It Means To Overcome

New Life #383 – What It Means To Overcome
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Yael Leshed-Harel

Summary

Our entire life is about overcoming the desire to receive for the self alone. In order to acquire the significance of this matter, it is worthwhile to choose an environment that supports the development of this goal. Otherwise we enter into despair, powerlessness, and death.
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From KabTV”s “New Life #383 – What It Means To Overcome,” 5/27/14

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How The Spiritual Embryo Grows

We need to understand what is involved in advancing along the path of the Creator. We think that overcoming is that we actually overcome the obstacles and by that we are rising and growing. But it is actually the opposite: the exertion of effort is in maintaining the point of adhesion with the Creator above all the difficulties and problems.

When I achieve the point where I annul myself before the upper, I enter the state called embryo, and that is how I remain, always

in this point. And no matter how many alien thoughts and problems arise, I must understand that all of them come from “There is none else besides Him,” and I must only annul myself above all the extraneous thoughts, events, and influences that are descending upon me.

And to the extent to which I continue to annul myself before the Creator more and more, I expand my adhesion with Him—from the first point called “embryo” and onward; it is as if my point of embryo expands; in other words, that same original seed grows and I fill all the alien desires and thoughts that arise within me with the power of faith and the force of bestowal. That is how the embryo grows.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/08/17, Lesson on the Topic: “Holding Onto the State of Entering Ibur (Conception),” “Above All Disturbances”

Humor Is A Brilliance Of Mind

Question: Humor is a gift that is impossible to develop. Is it inherent only to developed people?

Answer: Naturally. For example, animals have no sense of humor. They have a desire to play, or perhaps to imitate someone, but not a sense of humor.

Humor is inherent only in humans, but in a developed human. Humor is a conjugation of opposites that aren’t connected. But a person finds a special way to tie them together in the most unexpected way. And in this he sees a special charm, a brilliance of mind.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 8/13/17

“I Will Give You The Stone Tablets”

Torah, Exodus, 24:12 – 24:14: And the Lord said to Moses, “Come up to Me to the mountain and remain there, and I will give you the stone tablets, the Law and the commandments, which I have written to instruct them.”

So Moses and Joshua, his servant, arose, and Moses ascended to the mount of God.

And to the elders he said, “Wait for us here until we return to you, and here Aaron and Hur are with you; whoever has a case, let him go to them.”

This is about the separation of various levels of governance. There is the same separation within a person as there is in society. There are common people, Levites, Cohens, and Moses within him. Yet, only the point called Moses enters the uppermost contact with the next level, and then the ascent begins.

It is written, “I will give you the stone tablets, the Law and the commandments.” The point called Moses gets included into the next degree that starts from the inanimate level (Domem – stony level, what is called Lev HaEven, the stony heart) and surrenders to the upper force that carves the commandments on it. This is the work of the Creator.

Moses is unable to carve on his heart (on the level of Lev HaEven) the words of the Torah, that is, the spiritual commandments that represent the ten Sefirot, the most corrected and most profound ones. After all, the basis of the next degree is the correction of a person on the deepest egoistic level.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 7/1/13

New Life #382 – Plays For Children

New Life #382 – Plays For Children
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Nitzah Mazoz

Summary

Children have wonderful imaginations which are great for development and learning. They can easily be educated by watching theatrical plays that demonstrate interpersonal values such as connection, mutual giving, and a positive attitude toward others. It is also worthwhile to have them participate by asking them to imagine a better world, what is in it, and how it could work.
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From KabTV’s “New Life #382 – Plays For Children,” 5/22/14

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When Did The Term “Ego” First Appear?

Question: Science believes that the term “ego” was introduced through Sigmund Freud’s theory of psychoanalysis. But Kabbalah is much older than psychology. When did this term first appear in it?

Answer: In Kabbalah, this term was originally called the desire to receive pleasure. It was introduced by Adam 5,778 years ago.
The desire to receive pleasure is the matter of our world.

Question: And when did the word “Kabbalah” appear?

Answer: I cannot say with full certainty when the word “Kabbalah” began to occur for the first time, but the ancient Greeks translated it as ‘reception’—that is, ‘receiving,” the science of receiving, of disclosure.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 9/10/17

“The People Rose Up All That Day”

Torah, Numbers 11:32 – 11:34: The people rose up all that day and all night and the next day and gathered the quails. [Even] the one who gathered the least collected ten heaps. They spread them around the camp in piles. The meat was still between their teeth; it was not yet finished, and the anger of the Lord flared against the people, and the Lord struck the people with a very mighty blow. He named that place Kivroth Hata’avah [Graves of Craving], for there they buried the people who craved.

Everyone died except those who did not touch this ration from the sky. This is not talking about people but desires in every person.

All egoistic desires—those that hunt these gifts—are instantly punished in the desert. Therein lies their correction—they die.

This is about one person who advances in his spiritual development and sees that all of his requests can be satisfied, but it will entail his spiritual death.

Question: What are the “quails”?

Answer: Everything in our world results from the influence on a desire of a certain Light and the desire is formed by its influence. The Light generates desires, which then are revealed as dead, and is named in this world.

Question: In principle, do all the desires that prevent one from advancing get cut off?

Answer: On this degree, yes. But then they arise again and are corrected. Nothing remains in the egoistic state.

Dead means not suitable for use now. The next moment, at the next degree, all of this is revived and corrected. Just as we die in this world, in our understanding, in our view of what happens to us, and are then reborn.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 3/25/15