You Are Where Your Thoughts Are

Question: Can saying to yourself that there is only the Creatorprotect you from disturbances, or is this only a psychological self-deception?

Answer: No, it isn’t only psychological. This is how a person is built. If you repeat the expression, “There is none else besides Him,” all of the time in every situation you encounter in life, you cannot imagine what it can teach you.

It isn’t just a mantra that you say because you have been told to say “hocus pocus,” and you repeat that.

If a person tries to connect any situation in this world with its source, if he connects the group and the Creator to himself, it constantly keeps him in the right direction and helps him to advance.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 1/3/16

Painful Birth

Question: Why is a person’s birth always in great pain?

Answer: It is written in the Torah, “…in pain you shall bear children.” Spiritual birth cannot take place without pain, so giving birth in our world is painful; this is the root and branch.

Even elementary particles that connect feel pain in the creation of a new connection. Each particle must diminish its influence and obey the opposite particle and thus create a kind of conglomerate, a connection of opposite attributes.

If a new life is created—which means that the transformation becomes you are for me and I am for you, alternately—it turns out that everything is based on painful concessions.

When it comes to the birth of the next spiritual level, it is always painful since you must ascend above yourself, above your ego.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 1/3/16

The Sciences And The Wisdom Of Kabbalah

The sciences of our world investigate the forces that create it and operate within it. The wisdom of Kabbalah is a science that investigates the general force of the entire creation, the force that creates all of creation, including the part that is concealed from us. The general power of everything that exists that is called divine. The science of Kabbalah explores this.

In order to study the forces of our world, we use tools, devices, and various materials that exist in our world. At the same time, we study everything through our natural senses that we are accustomed to use because we exist and perceive only with them. To investigate the upper world, we must first acquire senses that reach the upper world, and only after that can we study it, just like in our world.

Therefore, the wisdom of Kabbalah includes two stages:

• First, our senses are corrected to become like the upper world,
• And then with their help, we study the upper world.

Adam discovered the wisdom of Kabbalah; he was the first Kabbalist. From him, the study of the higher power and the upper world began to be developed. The difference between the upper force and the upper world is that the higher power exists on its own, whereas the upper world is what a Kabbalist attains within himself as the discovery of the higher power within his characteristics.
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Answers To Your Questions, Part 125

Question: How does the Kabbalah interpret the concept of conscience?

Answer: Conscience is born in a person only to the degree that he or she connects with the Creator, and receives His attribute ofbestowal and love.

Question: In what manner do we take the knowledge that we accumulate with us if the soul has no memory?

Answer: We don’t take anything with us anywhere. We just begin to feel a new state.
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New Life #615 – Learning To Be Human

New Life #615 – Learning To Be Human
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Yael Leshed-Harel

Summary

We don’t build schools that are suitable for children; we treat them like bottles on an assembly line. So the school is not a good place, a place full of anxiety, pain, arguments, aggression, and competition.

We don’t build human beings; we don’t teach them how to relate to one another or how to choose a profession that is right for them. We don’t create a sense of togetherness and connecting to each other at the time of study, and thus we see the outcome in our society.

The value we should educate children according to today is to be a human being. We have to teach them about relationships between people and social psychology.

We need to start by training parents so that our children can receive a new education. Through discussion circles, joint discussions, and games children should learn proper social interactions. The school of the future will look very different from today’s schools. One third of the time will be devoted to discussion circles. Another third of the time will be devoted to visiting different places, while the last third will be devoted to classic studies of elementary subjects like mathematics, etc. When children visit different places outside the school, they will learn different things that they will perceive differently.

The most important thing a child should learn is how to become a human being who is part of society, a human being that can communicate with everyone. A good student will be one who learns how to get along with others everywhere and who has the right social relations. A person who knows how to properly connect to others will succeed in life in everything he does everywhere. In the future the most highly demanded profession will be a social guide, an expert who can teach people how to get along with each other.
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From KabTV’s “New Life #615 – Learning To Be Human,” 8/25/15

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Dispelling Myths About Kabbalah, Part 1

Listen to Sarah

Question: People say that only Jews are allowed to study Kabbalah. Is this true?

Answer: I have another question: Who are these “Jews?” Originally those who studied the wisdom of Kabbalah were called Jews.

People who gathered around the forefather Abraham called themselves Jews. He brought them from ancient Babylon to the land of Canaan. The nation of Israeloriginated from this group. “Jews (Yehudim)“ comes from the word “unity (Yehud)” – connection. That is, the original meaning of the concept “Jew” is precisely the one who is engaged in Kabbalah.

Question: What if a Turkish-Muslim studies Kabbalah?

Answer: It doesn’t matter who he is. There were many tribes and various communities in ancient Babylon. Those who joined Abraham became “Jews.”

In essence, a Jew is not a nationality like all other nations. One can be French and become a Jew. Being a Jew does not mean to belong to one’s father and mother, but rather to belong to an idea, to the aspiration to find the meaning of life, the purpose of development.

A Jew is a spiritual notion. Therefore, any person can be a Jew. A French or German who devotes himself to this approach, to one upper force (the good who does good) where there is nothing else besides this force, and to the law of love the other as yourself becomes a Jew. This is what determines his “Jewishness” (Yehudiut).

Question: Can a woman study Kabbalah? Did women Kabbalists exist in the past?

Answer: Certainly! All Jewish foremothers and prophetesses were Kabbalists. Up until the destruction of the Temple, both men and women of the nation of Israel possessed spiritual attainment. They lived simultaneously in sensation of the two worlds as one whole.

Question: It turns out that there is no difference between men and women in Kabbalah?

Answer: There is a difference. Just like in our world a woman is different from a man in her perception of reality and her behavior. However, with respect to the upper force and the goal of creation both of them have the same direction. Therefore, any person can study Kabbalah regardless of their nationality and gender.

In previous centuries there were such prophetesses as Huldah, Deborah, Miriam, and foremothers of the Jewish nation. Their spiritual levels were not less but even greater than men’s. Not without reason the Creator says to Abraham “Listen to what Sarah tells you.”
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From the Israel Radio Program 103 FM, 2/28/16

How Does One Become Free From Suffering?

Question: Does a person cause illness and suffering for himself?

Answer: It is impossible to say that suffering comes to us as a punishment. We must look at it as a revelation under the influence of the Light of more egoism within us. The Light, being a certain distance from the ego, shines on one, but doesn’t enter it so the ego feels suffering.

The closer the Light gets, the greater the pain. The person begins to think about how to avoid this pain, how to protect the ego from it, maybe even get away from it, to let the mind go and not think about anything. Masses of people take drugs, consume alcohol, or immerse themselves in various fields like: science, art, sports, and so forth; the main thing being to escape and not think about the meaning of life!

The Light is what brings us the meaning of life. We begin to understand that without the pain we wouldn’t begin this journey. All that remains for us is to take one step toward the Light so that it can enter into us.

If I search for a method to become free of suffering and to tell me how to find the meaning of life, I come the wisdom of Kabbalah. After all, those who come to it only come because they feel emptiness in this world. They have already experienced all kinds of problems, pain, and failures in previous incarnations, and even in this lifetime they mainly experience suffering from emptiness.

Question: A few years ago I became ill with a serious illness. This suffering led me to study the Bible and then the wisdom of Kabbalah. But this suffering no longer hurts me like it used to so I just about don’t pay attention to it. Can I become healthy?

Answer: There is no problem, just continue to do this so that the Upper Light will come closer to you. All problems are derived from the fact that it is standing in front of you but cannot enter.

Question: Does this mean that if I approach it willingly, the suffering will be reduced?

Answer: No. It will only gradually change in quality because there is a need for it. This is so that the movement toward the Light will not weaken. After all, we are egoists. How else is it possible to work with the ego? One can only poke it with a sharp stick , which is called a “stimulus.”

So it is said that a person advances being equally thankful for the bad and the good, and this means that he is advancing correctly. No matter where they come from, after all, in any case they are coming only from the Creator because “There is none else beside Him” (Deuteronomy 4:35). If a person is equally thankful for these influences, he will not deviate from the prescribed path and will advance directly toward the Creator.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 1/3/16

From The Meaning Of Suffering To The Meaning Of Life

Question: Why do children suffer? After all they are helpless innocent creatures. If there is a God, how could there be so much pain and how could He allow so much suffering in the world?

Answer: The world is full of suffering and we cannot justify the fact that someone kills, steals, or afflicts pain on others.

But when a person begins to feel that the sufferings on the corporeal level can bring him to some correction, to the acceptance of justice, to the feeling pleasure and healing, he begins to justify these sufferings. On the whole, we don’t understand that sufferings don’t come in response to any transgressions, like the suffering of small children, for example, who haven’t done anything wrong yet. They only come in order to force us to look for the meaning behind them; they are the “stick” that spurs us to do so.

The problem is that we don’t feel or understand why we should be beaten and the blows may be very serious.  We see what happens in children’s wards in hospitals and what is happening in the world in general. There is tremendous suffering that eventually connects to one general desire that forces a person to be wiser and to begin to realize that he was created to perform a certain mission.

It is actually the feeling of injustice, meaninglessness suffering, and the lack of understanding of their source, the reason why such things happen, which invoke the question: Where does it all stem from? After all, there must be a reason for it!

The sufferings leaving us with a question mark direct us to the search for their real reason that we eventually find by making a switch from the search for the meaning of suffering to the search for the meaning of life.

Basically there isn’t even the slightest clue in the sufferings that we experience that they are for a certain cause. But this is the only reason we feel them.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 1/3/16