The Torah: Changing Yourself In Order To Reveal The Creator

The Torah, “Numbers”, 14:13 – 14:16: Moses said to the Lord, “But the Egyptians will hear that You have brought this nation out from its midst with great power. They will say about the inhabitants of this land, who have heard that You, O Lord, are in the midst of this people; that You, the Lord, appear to them eye to eye and that Your cloud rests over them. And You go before them with a pillar of cloud by day and with a pillar of fire by night, and if You kill this nation like one man, the nations who have heard of Your reputation will say as follows: ‘Since the Lord lacked the ability to bring this nation to the Land which He swore to them, He slaughtered them in the desert.'”

Moses seems to say to the Creator: “You could have educated your children properly, if not by incentives, then at least by punishment. What kind of an educator are you if you simply punish your children and kill them?”

Moses is the innermost point in a person’s heart, where he can be in contact with the Creator. When a person ascends to the next level, from the level of Bina to the level ofHochma, for example, he undergoes an internal change. He must say that! It isn’t that Moses suddenly begins to complain: “How dare you behave that way?!” On the whole, religious people fear such thoughts: “Is it possible to think that way about the Creator? God forbid! What will happen to me if I think this way?” On the other hand, here is the opposite situation, since after all, it is nature itself that was created by the Creator that now rebels against Him inside us so that we will actually understand our current situation is opposite from nature.

This means that when a person ascends and gets closer to the Creator, he can not be afraid to disagree with Him and curse Him, even from the depths of his soul. He is glad about such changes because they actually indicate his true, high state.

Therefore, what Moses says indicates that he is about to complete his level on which he led the people in the desert for 40 years. He turns the attribute of receiving into the attribute of bestowal and now attains the last corrections of his ego. This level is like a missile that has fulfilled its function, becomes detached, and burns up in the atmosphere.

Moses’ complaints stem from the state of the end of correction, after he completed his work on the current level. The next level is totally different and on this level there is the fulfillment of receiving with the intention to bestow.

It is impossible to perform the mission that the Creator now gives the people who have just crossed the desert and reached Him. This mission cannot be attained this way because the next phase is to receive with the intention of in order to bestow. In the next phase, called the crossing of the border of the land of Israel, changes in a person from the outside towards the inside take place and totally new vessels appear within him, which is a new method of working on himself and a new perception of the world. This isn’t only the feeling of the world but the beginnings of the realization of how he has to correct the world. Until then he only prepared himself to enter the land of Israel and conquer it, which means in order to defeat all the nations of giants that live there and to attain such a level that the giant fruits that he carried would become light because he can receive with the intention of in order to bestow.

So Moses’ complaints are just because he demands new powers and new knowledge from the Creator. He wants to learn a new correction and receive education on how to enter this land and conquer it. There has to be an extreme upheaval inside a person and he has to turn into a different person.

Question: Does that mean that Moses can complain to the Creator?

Answer: The talk between Moses and the Creator is the complete recognition of what should happen to him now: “I need an inner transformation and You have to do it for me.” If he doesn’t complain to the Creator about this, it means that he is not yet ready for the transition. Therefore, everything Moses says, which may seem like a serious attack on the Creator is actually desirable to Him. This means that a person understands what a serious inner transformation he has to undergo in order to start working with his ego with the intention of in order to bestow. No one can imagine this.

Comment: Instead of not saying the Lord’s name in vain and not being angry at Him etc., everything happens in the exact opposite manner.

Answer: We shouldn’t be afraid of anything. The Creator is the attribute of absolute goodness. He is still and lifeless until you bring Him to life through your feelings. Just as you can be angry at a volcano that destroyed a certain region or fear the sun, the moon, or earthquakes, when you attribute your feelings to still objects, you also relate to the Creator in the same manner, to the attribute of bestowal and absolute love. You cannot bestow in one way or another, but simply change yourself.

When you change yourself, you change your personal reception and so the Creator seems different to you. But you are actually the one who is changing yourself! The whole Torah is based on a prayer, which in Hebrew stems from the root word that means to judge yourself.

A prayer means self-judgment, and asks what I need to change inside myself in order to reveal the Creator as the absolute good. Of course, this where Moses’ job ends, but is a preparation for the next phase.[165477]From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 4/29/15

What Does The Wisdom Of Kabbalah Give Us?

Baal HaSulam writes in the article, “The Essence of the Wisdom of Kabbalah,” that the wisdom of Kabbalah is the revelation of the Creator to the creature in this world.

This means that every person who exists in our world can discover the Creator, i.e., the higher force that encompasses everything, manages everything, holds everything, is responsible for all activity of every atom, molecule, still, vegetative, and animate nature, and humans, surrounds everything, and fills everything, and there is none else besides Him.

This is the one and only higher force, and we can discover it with the help of a method called the wisdom of Kabbalah.

Throughout all of history, there were many people who discovered this force. They are called Kabbalists from the word “Kabbalah” (Reception) since they work on this discovery and receive this revelation.

To the degree that they discover the higher force, what is happening will become clear to them: why we are alive, for what do we live, how do we move correctly in this life, what must a person achieve as a result of his life, with what is he connected every day, what guides him, how must he respond correctly to the world that surrounds him at every moment of his life, how something is changed in him and in the world, why these changes happen in the world, and where all of this is leading.

A person begins to feel that he exists in a unique universe filled with forces and achieves the purpose of creation. This fills his life. He knows why he is alive, what he got up in the morning for, and with what is his day filled.

He isn’t advancing toward the end of life, but discovers the higher force more and more every day until he begins to feel it as the force that animates and guides him. He achieves this intellectually and emotionally.

Every person in our world can achieve this, as it is written, “…for they shall all know Me from their smallest to their greatest…” (Jeremiah 31:33), and “…for My house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples” (Isaiah 56:7). But first the people of Israel must achieve this and after that the entire world.

There was a time that Abraham wanted to bring all the Babylonians to this method, to truly carry out a spiritual revolution, but only a small number of the inhabitants of ancient Babylon joined him. He brought them to the land of Canaan and built thepeople of Israel from them. However, from the start, he wanted to bring all people to this spiritual level, so the wisdom of Kabbalah was intended equally for all.
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From the Israeli Radio Program 103FM, 8/9/15

How Can We Bridge The Generation Gap?

Question: Why is there a period called youth in our development?

Answer: It is in order to enter life. If the youth knew and understood how to do it correctly, they would learn first and foremost from the sages and try to explore all the impulses that youth have with the help of the adults.

Question: What should be the relationships between the youth and their parents since, on the whole, they never listen to the parents?

Answer: The problem of fathers and sons is an eternal problem that repeats every generation since the time of the ancient Greek philosophers: Plato, Aristotle, and Socrates. There is nothing new here.

Today, the problem relates not only to fathers and sons, but also to mothers and daughters. In the past, men worked, went on journeys, explored new places, and invented different things while women were excluded totally from these areas and were expected to sit quietly at home and engage in housekeeping.

Therefore, in the past, this was considered a fathers and children problem, but it referred to the sons, and today it is a much greater problem and exists also between mothers and daughters.

Basically, I don’t see the relationships between parents and children as a problem since everything stems from our evolution. We are the only part in nature that evolves in such a turbulent manner from one generation to the next.

The next generation doesn’t feel that it belongs to the older generation anymore. They believe that the older generation is hopelessly old fashioned because there is such a quick change of desires, intentions, and goals.

I see it in my children and especially in my grandchildren. I don’t understand them, but I do understand and perceive the fact that I don’t understand them. They have a different attitude toward life.

So, what can we do? Both the older and the younger generations must undergo mutual education so that they could establish accurate communication between them; otherwise, they will be disconnected totally.

The younger generation demands to be given food, shelter, and clothing, and whatever they do is their own business and not their parents’. This is certainly not a solution to the situation. At the same time, the older generation cannot dictate to the younger generation what to do, and that isn’t the right solution.

There must be a continuous common aspiration for connection and mutual understanding, but mainly an aspiration for determining the right goal, the attainment of the attribute of absolute love by all of humanity, absolute mutual connection, absolute bestowal unto one another.

If the goal is right, it connects all the generations, but first we must reveal it. We first must teach the older generation so that they will understand the goal of the evolution of humanity, how it is advancing toward this goal, and how it perceives it.

If it is perceived correctly by both the older and the younger generations, all the opposition and conflict between them will disappear. The older generation will see this goal, what it can offer, and how to fulfill it in its paradigm, and the younger generation will perceive it in its paradigm. Then, these two generations will integrate into one another and mutually help one another attain it.
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From KabTV’s “Conversations with Michael Laitman” 10/8/14

At The Borders Of The Promised Land

Parshat Shelach speaks about what happens with a person before his entry into the land of Israel, meaning before ascent to the next spiritual level. Here, the example is given clearly of how it is necessary to go with faith above reason.

The next spiritual level that is revealed before a person is a wonderful world of a land flowing with milk and honey, but it is impossible to enter.

There was a time when the inhabitants of the Soviet Union dreamed about Communism, “This will be a good life! We can fulfill all of our wishes and needs, give vent to all our hopes, dreams, and desires!” But when they understood that  along with this comes equality, concern for others, and the necessity to work for everyone and feel happy about this, they immediately lost interest. Is this communistic happiness? Take it back!

So, when speaking about a land flowing with milk and honey, it is necessary to understand that this is not today’s milk and not today’s honey but completely different values for which I must create a desire and yearning within me.

They must specifically become the most important for me, and then I truly will enter into a state that will fulfill me like milk and honey.

Now, these values seem really terrible to me: to work for others, to be concerned for others, to think about them, and to be concerned for everyone. With this, I would fulfill my life?

Today, this seems like Hell to me! So, I need to change myself so that the new values will seem like the Garden of Eden to me, and then, for me, this land will become the Promised Land.

Question: Why are people against this? What is bad about living for others, thinking about them, and loving them?

Answer: There is nothing bad about this. Theoretically, this is basically a wonderful system, a wonderful state, but when it comes into actual practice, what happened in the Soviet regime, in the Kibbutzim and in other similar communities, is that nothing became concrete because our ego is against this.

It cannot even think about working for the sake of others. With us, the perception exists to fulfill myself, and if we think about others, this is only regarding how to satisfy ourselves through them.

The moment that a person begins to work on this, the romantic aspect ends immediately. The revolution devours its children.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 4/29/15

Locked In The Universe

A Kabbalist is a scientist who investigates our lives, this world, the reality in which we are found. However, he investigates it with special tools, with new senses developed within him. In the meantime, we don’t have senses like these through which it would be possible to discover the upper world that is now concealed from us.

This sixth sense is the feeling of the higher power, love and bestowal, that we do not possess now. We feel our world through our ego with the five corporeal senses.

Our egoistic desire wants to know, to understand, and to feel the reality in which we are. An approach like this locks us into some kind of closed sphere, this universe.

The universe only seems gigantic to us, but, in fact, it is nothing compared to the world that is found beyond its limits. We need to break out from this sphere and feel the reality that is outside of us, and for this we require an additional sense based upon bestowal.

We only have senses of reception now, so we draw everything to us and are limited only by this physical world. We call everything that is discovered through the five corporeal senses the world in which we live, but this world is given to us only so that throughout this life we would break out beyond its limits to a higher, more external and extensive world. How can we break out if we draw everything to us internally? So, we need to develop a sense of bestowal, instead of the sense of reception. This new feeling of bestowal takes us out of our physical sphere.

The wisdom of Kabbalah is designed to develop in a person a desire to bestow, to love, and to grant to him a feeling of the outside world. That is how he discovers that another reality exists that is right next to us, but is revealed only through a new approach: from yourself outward.

Therefore, it was written, “you shall love your neighbor as yourself” is the great general rule of the Torah because it indicates what characteristic we must develop within us to feel the upper world, the higher power.

To be continued…
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From the Israeli Radio Program 103FM, 8/16/15

The Main Law Of Israel: General Integral Education

Question: We are all very different from one another. The nation of Israel is probably the most fragmented nation in the world since it is divided into a plurality of layers and factions in which there is an infinite number of differences.

If I differ from others, I can present to anyone an entire list of what he must correct about himself. So, how will we ever become one whole with all this criticism? After all, criticism invokes hatred and division. How should we unite if we are in continuous conflict?

Answer: We do it in discussion circles! These circles are held all over the country. In these circles, we try to teach people to connect and unite above all the differences. As it is written, “Love covers all transgressions.”

You can build love only when you ascend above all the “sins” that you see in others. The reason is that I see that the other is immersed in all the sins that are opposite to me, behaving in a contemptuous manner, relating only to others. I must build an umbrella of love that will cover all of us.

Question: What is this umbrella made of? What sustains it?

Answer: It is the fact that each of us ascends above himself in order to work out the connection with others. This is possible only with the help of education that the wisdom of Kabbalah offers to us.

We also must introduce this method of education in kindergartens, schools, universities, workplaces, and to the unemployed. It must become the most important thing! Every person, every citizen in Israel, should have a notebook with the tests and courses he has taken.

Question: What will these people study?

Answer: Integral education. They will learn how to become one nation, how to achieve brotherly love, connection and unity among everyone, and how to ascend above their ego and connect to others. Everyone must learn this; otherwise, he will not get any benefits from the state!

The study must be on a daily basis since a person must be renewed every day and must receive a new portion of knowledge. He must hear what he must fulfill, how crucial it is, what the connection and unity give us, and how it heals all of our illnesses.

This must become the general law, the supreme law of the country. After all, the problem of our country is to turn the nation into the nation of Israel since we will not be able to exist any other way.

We always have existed only if we were united and connected between us. The moment we ceased to be united, we fell from brotherly love to unfounded hatred, were thrown out of our land and dispersed among the nations of the world.

Now, we have returned to this land, but everyone already realizes that it is only temporary. Listen to what the American government says, to what the Europeans say, to what they keep saying in increasingly louder voices. They want to eliminate the state of Israel.

Question: What do you think can save us?

Answer: Just by becoming one whole! Then everyone will understand and feel that we are needed in the world because we set an example of connection and unity above all the differences. After all, this is what the world needs so much! This is called being a Light unto the nations.

All of nature is built on connection. If a single atom did not connect to another atom, we wouldn’t exist in this universe on this planet.

How has nature developed on this planet? It is only thanks to the connection of more and more components that were increasingly more different from one another. See what we have come to! This is the only way we can exist!

Now we must grow and ascend even higher in our internal, spiritual evolution so that we will be able to see the future world now, as it is written, “May you see your world in your lifetime.” It is all thanks to an increasingly greater connection. Nothing is attained any other way but by connection.

This is the reason that integral education isn’t just the education of “good kids” but a means to advance, not under the blows of nature, but thanks to the right solution of the problems that nature intentionally has given to us so that we will continue ascending above them and will unite more and more strongly. Now, we must continue the process of evolution, but by ourselves, implementing it on ourselves.
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From the Israeli Radio Program 103FM, 8/2/15

The Torah Begins From A Secret

The possibility of attaining the higher power of nature was revealed for the first time to a person who lived 5,775 years ago.For this reason, he was called Adam HaRishon (the First Man). This is because he implemented in himself all kinds of corrections allowing him to discover the ability to feel, understand, and attain the higher force within himself, to break through to a dimension in which this force operates.

He was the first Kabbalist because he discovered a new sense that was not based upon the characteristic of reception but on the characteristic of bestowal. Adam wrote a book about the discovery of the higher force and was survived by his students who began to develop this method, making it possible for every person to develop within himself the sense for feeling the higher force, according to his desire.

Question: It is strange to hear this because we are used to this person being a half-legendary figure who lived with his wife Eve in the Garden of Eden and ate an apple from the tree of knowledge.

Answer: The idea is that the Torah always speaks in human language, even when it talks about very exalted things.

The Torah describes a unique spiritual process on a number of levels called PARDES(Pshat – Simplicity, Remez – Hint, Drush – Allegory, Sod – Secret), and if we know how to read it correctly, then we can reach the state of Adam HaRishon, Adam.

This PARDES is four levels of understanding the Torah, and attainment of the Torah begins from the Sod, as the giant Kabbalist, the Gaon of Vilna said, because still we don’t know anything. So, when we begin from Adam HaRishon who ate an apple, for us, this is a true secret because we don’t understand what the Torah is talking about.

However, if we work according to the Kabbalistic method, gradually we approach the hidden realm, the hidden higher force, and we begin to discover this part of creation. Then we begin to see in the Torah what is really happening there, and, from Sod, we move to the simplest interpretation, to the Pshat.

The Pshat symbolizes for us that everything that is said in the Torah is simple and revealed to our understanding.
To be continued…
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From the Israeli Radio Program 103FM, 8/16/15

What Makes The Human A Human?

Opinion (worldcrisis.ru): “Human children raised by animals don’t become people. This testifies that the person is not a natural reality, but the product of a particular cultural environment.

“We are not born human, rather we become human as a result of difficult cultural work. The society produces the person; the person is a social phenomenon. If during the formative stage, a person leaves society, he will not become a person; human consciousness is not recreated by itself.

“The Formation of a Human – The formation of a particular cultural type happens within appropriate social groups. Common interests and meaning unify, creating a stable social group. This meaning must transcend merely practical goals, otherwise it will not be able to connect anything. It is difficult to transform people into a group, the opposite can be accomplished by the destruction of social connections, meaning through a social war according to 4 trends:

1. The separation of a person from other people, the reduction of his area of interests to a daily minimum, putting him into a struggle for survival, into life problems that cannot be solved without help from the nation and society.
2. Through the escalation of drug addiction, alcoholism, drug abuse, prostitution, the propaganda machine working on human degeneration, television and the communications media giving examples to the impoverished population of the need for unlimited wealth, criminal behavior and disparagement of the norms of morality and law.
3. Undermining all forms of social integration, citizenship, work and family.

The family, the last bastion of morality – transfers from generation to generation through the family the arrangement of spiritual priorities and values of life. Precisely because all of the communications media are now working on the destruction of the institution of the family, the matter is heading towards a global crisis in the institution of the family. The growth of individualism in society (instead of family, freedom; living for yourself instead of having children), the weakening of moral factors that protected the family in the past; this is the true reason for divorce; people have forgotten how to live together.

4. Increasing the distance between the top and bottom line, splitting the society with incitement and the encouragement of forms of aggression and violence.

“A process of transformation of the population into laborers, the lack of social, professional and physical communication in life, in geographic location, without a profession, occupation and a stable place of employment. Students without profession.

“The Collapse of Humanity – Hevrah (society) is derived from the word “Hivrut(socialization)”. An idea and a common purpose create the collective. The human is shaped and grows only within society; the human is a social being. If the society is destroyed, the person begins to degenerate, to withdraw, and this is a comprehensive process. The national culture disintegrates, the human face is erased, and as a result of this, a subhuman person appears.

“Salvation – We need to establish our own social groups, build bridges with each other. The society must be built by our efforts from below, without waiting for the government to begin to be involved with this. If we don’t restore our society, death is inevitable.”

My Comment: We are seeing a widespread phenomenon that has been carefully planned by nature. We need to pass through this stage in order to create a new society, on different principles. We will not succeed in holding onto the past and there is no reason to hold onto what is already obsolete.

Society must acquire and accept its next form, full integration, until “And you shall love your friend as yourself” becomes a reality. But this imperative appears specifically as a result of the inevitable feeling that disintegration is happening!
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