A Kabbalist Is Not An Ordinary Scientist

Question: Who is a Kabbalist? What does he see that we don’t see? What does he feel that we don’t feel? Does he have supernatural powers? How does a person become a Kabbalist? Will you reveal to us all the secrets of the wisdom of Kabbalah?

Answer: A Kabbalist is a scientist, only not an ordinary scientist. He explores the world and wants to reach the root of everything that is happening, to discover and know why everything is arranged in such a form, from where this appears and where everything is going.

This is a person who has an inner need to reach the world in which he lives and discover what this world expects of him. This is a person who is born with a question that burns within him and doesn’t let him rest: What were we given this life for? What is its meaning? Why was I born? Today this question bothers many people, but in the past it was the inheritance of selected people.

The first Kabbalist was Adam HaRishon (The First Man), a person who lived 5,775 years ago. Adam discovered the secret of life and wrote a book about this. Certainly people lived long before him, but Adam is considered the first man because he discovered the inner essence of nature and the hidden power that stands behind all the external and individual forces that appear before us.

We live in a reality in which part of it is clearly revealed, whereas the other part is hidden. Each time we disclose some other part of reality, and so we advance. But there is a reality that always remains hidden from our discernment if we don’t change ourselves.

The hidden reality is imperceptible to our senses; we are limited by the five senses: sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch, but reality is much more extensive than them. We know nothing about anything that doesn’t enter into the range of our senses.

We are only ready to expand their range a bit: increasing vision through microscopes and telescopes, hearing through radar and range finders; we invent all kinds of sensory instruments. But in principle, these are only small additions to our natural senses so that the eyes will see a greater distance and the ears will hear better.

In principle, we cannot even guess what senses we still lack. The world is much more rich and diverse, but we don’t know a thing about it. There are other, higher dimensions, more expansive than the usual mundane reality, and they could be revealed to us, but we are not ready to discover them.

The development of science brings a person to a line; he feels that there must be something else beyond the limits of our world. But where is its door, the way through which it would be possible to go out of our nature and enter into whatever dimensions we are unaware and don’t feel now?

Suppose that all people were blind, then we would get along in this world without sight, even without suspecting that we are missing something. In the same manner, we don’t suspect that we are missing a very important sense, the feeling of the general Higher Power that organizes everything and manages everything.

We don’t feel this power and our connection with it; it is concealed from us as if it didn’t exist at all. But in fact, we simply lack the development that will make it possible for us to discover and attain it.
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From the Israeli Radio Program 103FM, 8/2/15

Eternity And Wholeness Instead Of The Dominance Of Money

Question: What does it mean to look at the economy and the system of human relationships correctly to prevent the future crisis?

Answer: In the 60s of the previous century, the world began to transform into an integral, circular, and closed system. But this was not yet clearly felt.

It is possible to claim that in the past century the world experienced a series of crises: “The Great Depression” in the United States, the crisis of Socialism in Russia, the crisis in Japan after great prosperity, and so forth. All of this became the origin of problems, but in the meantime doesn’t indicate a need for an absolutely different approach towards us and towards society.

We tried to find other ways out of the crisis. And the main thing is that people in whose hands wealth, power, and control are concentrated, until today, have not wanted to let go of all this because the coming relationship to the world is circular, integral. So those who have money, power, and an army will not manage the world.

This will be an absolutely different society. There are none who are higher, lower, and in the middle there; there is no control through force, the power of money, and the military. We call this society communist, but it should not be confused with the egoistic communistic experiments that were made in Russia, in Kibbutzim in Israel, and so forth.

The transition to this society, in principle, takes from those who dominate through all the power of money and the military. So it is necessary for some event to happen that is very difficult to predict.

When these people become convinced that the discovery of the next level of existence will transform them into eternal, perfect creatures that are not influenced by any defect, disease, and death, then this discovery can influence them so that they will let go of their desire for the imaginary dominance that attracts them like a child’s game.

Moreover, this will make it possible for the present rulers of the world to take a new role upon themselves: gently distributing the army and wealth, to move gradually to an absolutely different relationship to society in which each one will receive all that is required and necessary for him on a physical level.

And people will direct their time, power, and energy only so that there will be the right mutual connection between them because specifically with that we will begin to attain our eternal existence on a higher and higher level.

This can happen either through natural disasters and very difficult wars, or in a good way if the great ones in the world will understand that in exchange for all the happiness and physical control, they will acquire control over their nature, over death. I think that what will influence them in a positive way is the possibility of transforming physical, temporal, and insignificant control into eternal and perfect control.

I want to believe that humanity will reach this smoothly.
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From KabTV’s “The Last Generation” 8/12/15

A Love That Never Dies

Question: Are you saying that love between a married couple is not enough and that they need to reach love between the Creator and the creature?

Answer: We don’t find any love in married couples nowadays. Our family relationships are in a state of the mournful day of the ninth ofAv.

The destruction is felt in our entire lives, the relationships between parents and children, the boss and the workers, and between cabinet members as well. There is no understanding anywhere.

Question: There are many types of love, love for children, parents, close relatives, and so forth, but why is there a special romance in the love between a man and a woman?

Answer: Love is when I fulfill the desire of another person before my own desire. I need to know and feel what the other wants so that his desire becomes more important than my own.

This is the most general definition of love, but it fits all cases. The bond of marriage is just more encompassing than others since this connection includes mutual obligations, the experience of living together, knowing the partner, children in common, a common home and money, and a feeling of security and a guarantee of support in difficult times. A marriage is unification in this world with all the consequences that follow.

However, in the spiritual world, you are able to know your partner in a new way every moment. It is written that Malchut becomes a virgin again every day, and hence, a new relationship begins as if you weren’t familiar with her.

It seems that we lack this aspect in our regular life and family. If a married couple were on the spiritual level, they could renew their corporeal relationship every day.

Once, three and a half thousand years ago, the nation of Israel lived this way. Let’s hope that soon we will return to that and learn to reveal new qualities in each other every day. Then, it will be correct, true love, which is renewed at every moment.

Meanwhile, today, in order to enliven our relationship even slightly and feel a connection, we are forced to fight. Upon making up after a fight, the flavor of love, which was dulled, is renewed.

However, it is impossible to get used to spiritual love. It changes all the time. New conditions are revealed constantly, and thus the love is rejuvenated all the time.
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From KabTV’s “A New Life” 7/30/15

Concealed Suffering = Revealed Pleasure

Question: Baal HaSulam writes in the “Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot”: “And we have already learned that the matter of the disclosure of the face will inevitably turn every grief and sadness that came during the concealment of the face into wondrous pleasures…”

How is grief transformed into pleasure if it happened in the past? Maybe the same movie is played for us again?

Answer: Suppose that you have an upset stomach and you cannot eat anything because you have terrible pains from the food. In front of you is wonderful and exquisite food, but you get sick just from the sight of it.

After your stomach is healed, you can enjoy all the delicacies. Before you corrected your problem, it was bad for you when you looked at the delights, and now you enjoy looking at it.

It follows that the problem was not in the filling, but in yourself, in your Kelim. The filling didn’t cause you any harm. The presence of the filling upset you, but, in itself, it wasn’t bad. Rather, the evil was found in your illness.
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From the preparation for the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/5/14

About The Blows Of The Past And Of The Future

Question: Several researchers of modern anti-Semitism refer to the fact that the Torah calls the nation of Israel the chosen and the holy nation, which is hard to swallow for those looking for a correction in equality…

Answer: It is not that the Torah tells us such things; it is the more the Israeli nation doesn’t display them and doesn’t proclaim them as its foundation. Many don’t know about this, but it didn’t decrease the intensity of their feelings.

We are actually dealing with the force found in nature, in our human desires. Even people who feel nothing towards the nation of Israel and who don’t know anything about its roots, still feel this hatred. It stems from their very nature, and there is nothing we can do about it. The vessels of the desire to receive naturally hate bestowal and true connection the Torah speaks about.

We don’t feel hatred towards this but resistance. Bestowal still belongs to us and not to anyone else. Those who don’t feel part of it hate it to such an extent that they are actually ready to destroy, kill, and eliminate it.

Nothing is more natural than this. This is actually the reason that Esau wanted to kill Jacob, but couldn’t do it because the subconscious image of Esau in a person is the thought that without Jacob he will not survive that stops him. We see in the Torah that it is impossible to manage in the world without a source of bestowal. But the desire to destroy or to subdue and to bend the attribute of bestowal still burns in a person, especially now.

We may wonder how this is possible in the 21^st century. People don’t understand that a new era is beginning, which requires the nation of Israel to actually act. Previously this was so. Despite the hatred of the other nations, it wasn’t really obliged to fulfill the correction, but still underwent terrible sufferings.

Only recently, we haven’t suffered for a short time because the Creator enabled us to return to the land of Israel and determine that we are here in order to start the correction. But the initial period of our return to this land has ended. Baal HaSulam tells us about it in the “A Speech for the Completion of The Zohar,” saying that we were given the chance and now if the nation of Israel doesn’t actually fulfill its correction, all the sufferings we have underwent will seem like nothing compared to the new sufferings that will come.

It is because we have never been in a state in which we had to fulfill the correction after the exile of the nation of Israel, and so the account with this nation will be very hard. All the blows we received before were only in order to keep us from connecting with the nations of the world so that we would not forget. They helped us remain separate and to guard ourselves so that we would be able to return to the correction that will come later. But those were also terrible blows.

Now, however, they will come from a totally different source. We have to understand that it is our duty to bring the message of the correction to the world. After all,  ultimately we who are to blame. Others still don’t know about this, while we do know, and so we will be demanded to fulfill it. If we fall asleep, all the blows of the world will be on our conscience.
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From the 3d part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/2/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam

Connected Desires Are Like Welded Pipes

Question: What does one need in order to be as closely in an equivalence of form with the teacher as possible?

Answer: Everyone feels this according to the sublteties of his soul. But if we decide to perform some general action, everyone has to participate in them, otherwise a person is neither with the group nor with me and it is as if he is thrown off the boat into the stormy sea, although he may not feel it.

Besides, if I work with someone on a certain project, no matter what one does: one can take care of the electricity, another can prepare excerpts from articles, etc., and there are others who have to see what is required of them. They come to me to clarify what I want exactly and why I think so, an expert may explain to me that it should be done in a different way and then I may change my mind.

But the student has to care that his opinion and my opinion should be one! If he doesn’t agree with me, let him come and convince me. This often happens, I am not so stubborn that I don’t listen to reason. It’s usually about corporeal matters, includingdissemination because there can be different local conditions I am not aware of. But the principle is “make your desire his desire,” which means that there should be an agreement between the student and his teacher and the fulfillment of the desire.

Question: How should I know that I have made my desire his desire? Not everyone can come and ask!

Answer: If it is a personal project you may come and ask. If it is a general project in dissemination, I count on the people in charge of this project. I hope that they understand the responsibility they have to guide everyone according to what has been decided. It is as if we all reach one desire, one intention, one direction, and then we go out and disseminate. There you have to make sure that things don’t divert in other directions, and if this suddenly happens you should consult me.

If we don’t hold on to the accurate direction, it is like two connected pipes where one suddenly shifts and then nothing can flow through them. I have to make my desire his desire for the Light to flow.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/27/14, Topic of Lesson “Teacher”

The Sixth Sense

Question: Is there any connection between Kabbalah and religion? Is Kabbalah a religion?

Answer: Kabbalah is not a religion; it is a science. Kabbalah is about the part of reality that is hidden from us but with which we have an opportunity to work, like in science. Therefore, Kabbalah is called a science.

Through special actions that we perform on ourselves, we can reveal our senses for perceiving a higher level. We have five corporeal senses—vision, hearing, taste, smell, and touch—through which we perceive this world, but in a very limited form. Yet we perceive it to some extent and live accordingly.

We cannot even imagine that in this world around us there are so many other phenomena because our senses do not reveal them in a manner similar to that we cannot see what happens far away without binoculars, or without a radar we don’t see what exists in the air except the sound waves that are in our voice diapason, and so on.

We have so many instruments that we created in order to broaden the range of our senses. But they can only expand them while the science of Kabbalah creates an additional sense, “the sixth sense,” through which we can reveal the rest of reality, which is hidden from us. Then we know what we live for and how to live correctly. This is precisely what a person needs to attain.

Question: What kind of additional sense is it?

Answer: This sense works like our corporeal senses, only our five senses act in the form of receiving, consuming, attracting within all the data that is outside. And this additional sense, which we develop through Kabbalah, operates according to the desire to give, bestow, and love.

We come outside of and rise above ourselves, and thus we are not limited by our body with its five senses. Our spiritual sense exists outside of our corporeal body. It is like we deploy this sense onto all of reality. Then we can perceive everything. In fact, this sense is the soul.
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From the Israeli Radio Program 103FM, 8/9/15

The Refugee Crisis In Europe

Question: A gigantic flood of asylum seekers overwhelms Europe. Last year alone, 260,000 immigrants and refugees reached European shores. They flee wars, genocide, humanitarian crises, and bad lives.

As a result, the immense wave creates a tremendous tension and makes the situation uncontrollable.

It is especially hard for the countries that are already under the blows of the economic crisis. Middle Eastern problems disturb Europe and do not let it live quietly.

The question is how to cope with this disaster. There are numerous opinions about this issue. Some of them demand solidarity with the displaced masses of people, others plea to stop their invasion. What do you personally think about this matter?

Answer: Let those who agree with migrants open their doors and take care of them directly.

Maybe, this will resolve the problem.

People are supposed to stand behind their own ideals rather than affirm values that eventually are imposed on other people’s shoulders. If one thinks that displaced individuals should be taken care of, one has to do it personally. Any other behavior is just about lofty words.

Ambiguity has to be stopped immediately! Who else must implement one’s principles instead of the one who asserts them? If I support hospitality, I have to bear the burden on my own shoulders too.

Question: Still, don’t you think that a broader approach to the problem should be exercised? Whole countries seek help from the European Union.

Answer: Governmental institutions are useless here. Why talk about Greece if the richest countries such as France or Germany are not able to accomodate the flow of immigrants? There is no feasible solution even in the long run, especially taking into consideration the upcoming crisis.

So I repeat: each one who declares solidarity with migrants must personally implement it to life. If so, the resolution might be as follows: infiltrators are stopped at the borders, a line that moves forward to the degree of local Europeans’ desire to take personal care of displaced families should be formed. After getting permission to enter and stay in the country, refugees should go directly to concrete addresses.

For instance, when my family and I repatriated to Israel more than 40 years ago, we were given IDs in the airport and told exactly where to go. Moreover, there was a car that picked us up with our luggage and took us to Karmelia hotel in Haifa.

Is today’s Europe capable of accommodating migrants the same way? Can it provide work places, national insurance and other benefits to them? If not, then their arrival to Europe is totally unpredictable.

This explains why the only alternative today is the help of the private sector, community organizations, state bodies, and immigration offices that take full responsibility for refugees’ absorption. It must be done in an orderly way.

However, the situation is already in progress no matter that there is no feasible solution that works today, might work tomorrow or the day after. If migrants were stopped at the borders in the beginning of the process, if they were not allowed to  enter the European Union, no new waves of refugees would emerge. Only after taking an adequate decision on their accommodation will it become possible for them to reside in the countries of their destination. It’s a two-way street: no solution, no infiltration.

Acting otherwise is just impossible. If someone thinks that it is viable, let them implement their ideas literally and personally.

Instead of finding a solution, Europe allows unwanted guests settle in the parks, beaches, and temporary improvised shelters. Then what?

Anyone who claims that we should help the refugees is welcome to open his home to them. Words will not help here. The problem isn’t only in Greece but even in stronger countries like Germany and France, which cannot take care of the refugees.
(Rav Michael Laitman in a talk with Oren Levi and Tal Mendelbaum Ben Moshe).

Summary:

Anyone who claims that we should help the refugees is welcome to open his home to them. Words will not help here. The problem isn’t only in Greece but even in stronger countries like Germany and France, which cannot take care of the refugees.

Why is this happening today? The reason is that the world is taking on a new form, without boundaries, where everything is mixed and everything is round. Imagine meeting strangers in your kitchen or someone sleeping in your bed. It is scary! There is nowhere you can escape to. There is no place on this planet where you can be alone, not even 10 quiet square meters.

Why do we feel this way? So we will acknowledge our obligation to change our nature, to break out of our internal boundaries. Nature obliges us to develop to a level on which we will feel that we are all one heart, one body, and one thought. The corrections that we don’t perform in the relations between us are forced upon us by the steamroller of evolution.

It is actually the individualist Europeans who are given this crisis with the refugees since nature forces us to change our attitude to strangers and to regard them as if they were our children, “love thy friend as thyself.” There will also be financial blows and different natural blows that will teach us that we are all in one boat and that’s it!

Then the world will come to the nation of Israel and demand the solution from us, because the solution is found in the wisdom of Kabbalah, the wisdom of connection.

The refugee crisis in Europe is not a temporary crisis but actually part of a series of intentional blows that will force us to correct ourselves. The waves of immigrants that will lead to the mixing of populations will flood the world: from South America to North America, and Moslems all over the world. The Europeans will feel that they cannot go on living unless we change our attitude towards others. Then they will be worthy of the correction of human nature and will feel that the nation of Israel has the method for correction.

When we develop the ability to feel that we are all one family, life in our world will be Heavenly.
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From KabTV’s “A New Life” 8/27/15