Disspelling Myths About Kabbalah, Part 14

To Study Kabbalah Is Not Necessary, But It Is Fun

Question: The requirement to sit and study scares me; I never liked it. Do you enjoy studying Kabbalah?

Answer: I, by my nature, love to study. Even the television programs I choose are either non-fiction or about nature.

And studying Kabbalah gives me pleasure because I begin to see how our world is managed, and how I myself am managed from above. I understand where the desires and thoughts that arise in me come from, why they are given to me, and how I must react to them.

While studying Kabbalah, I am in a constant game with the Creator. However, if a person doesn’t like to study, it is not required of him, although I would advise trying to study Kabbalah. After all, it is quite possible that this is exactly what will interest the person, even if previously he was never attracted to studying. I have seen many such examples.

A person didn’t want to study at school because it wasn’t interesting to him. The study wasn’t giving him fulfillment because he saw how limited and artificial it is.

He studied the relationship between the still, vegetative, and animate nature of our world and didn’t understand what it gives for his soul, for reaching the purpose of life and for uncovering its meaning. And by studying the wisdom of Kabbalah, he begins to feel that it is talking about him, his soul, the eternal part in him.

He will want to attain this eternal part, to connect to it, and to live inside this eternity. Otherwise this eternal part exists in him, but like a vestige of the dead. And he wants to revive and to reveal it.

If he enters it and begins to live in it, he will see the entire universe, beyond the universe, and all the worlds. He will become their integral part, eternal and perfect, not limited by time and space.

It is very different from the usual school studies. And therefore people who didn’t like to study the science of our world become successful students when they come to Kabbalah.
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Israeli Radio Program 103FM, 2/28/16

The Difference Between Islam And Muslims

Comment: From time to time I publish your commentaries on the news on my Facebook page and many write to me and claim that you are confusing Islam and Muslims. Sometimes you make sharp remarks regarding Islam.

Answer: In my commentaries I don’t mean the religion itself but its extremist clerics.

I have nothing against the Islamic religion because after all, thousands of wonderful things were written in the Koran, and as a philosopher, I can say that the Islamic religion is a positive religion at its foundation.

On the one hand, there certainly is an extremist side to Islam, but if it is not artificially inflated, if it isn’t developed and put above all other faiths, it is a religion with which every person in the world can live in peace.

On the other hand, what is presented to us today as the religion of Islam is not really the original Islam.

I have met with many Arab religious leaders, particularly the Sufis who are representatives of the Arab Kabbalah, and I can say with certainty that in the past among them was a very developed aspiration toward love, toward connection between people. But today everything has completely changed. Many contemporary scholars who are involved with this phenomenon have written about it.

In my commentaries I talk about the extremist Islamic religion of our day. You can not be extreme, kill others indiscriminately, and then hide behind religion. There is no connection with this behavior and religion. Everything depends on the way in which you use religion.

The same thing can be said about Judaism. There are many people who promote hatred, while Judaism itself relies on the principle of “And you shall love your friend as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18), and “your friend” is every person near you. This means that everything is inherent in religion but not in the same form that people interpret it.

If you enter into a religious area in Israel, you can see how the religious people move to the side and avoid contact with strangers. That is how they also behave in America in the areas where they live. So it is possible to say the same thing about Islam and even about other religions.

The problem is that today the Islamic religion is flourishing and bears an extremist religious character and there are people who under the guise of religion convey their policies in that way. Of course you can close your eyes to this phenomenon, just as we do with everything else, but it will not make you any safer.

I am not a politician, I am a philosopher, so I am completely neutral and don’t belong to any political party. I express my point of view as a person who studies the wisdom of Kabbalah and understands the evolution of nature, the general internal law and its power, which is called “Allah,” Elyon (higher). The problem is that it is necessary to interpret it correctly. The higher power is the power of love and connection between everyone in the world.

Only then will we see that between true Islam and the wisdom of Kabbalah (true Judaism), there are no differnces.
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From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 6/23/16

Peace Between Israel And Turkey

Question: What is your attitude regarding the reestablishment of a full peace agreement with Turkey?

Answer: I can judge only in relation to global changes. And here we are talking about a local change. They quarreled a bit, made peace, and don’t know who gains and who loses.

Everyone understands that agreements are signed only for that moment when they are beneficial to the two sides, otherwise they are violated.

Question: Are you in favor of the signing of peace agreements?

Answer: We have no possibility of reaching an agreement with the Arabs of the East, but only with the Arabs of the West (with Gaza) because they need help and restoration.

Question: What do you mean when you use the term “peace” (Shalom)?

Answer: By peace I mean “wholeness” (Shlemut). This is not the signing of a non-aggression agreement that at a given moment is beneficial to the two sides that is signed for a short time and is violated most of the time.

Wholeness is the yearning for connection into one single whole without borders, not just finding contact with each other.

We see that even in Europe this is not happening because there is no feeling of a single whole. They arranged banking and marketing links between them but didn’t simultaneously create a connection between the peoples.

Question: At what moment does wholeness begin?

Answer: Wholeness will begin only after a long-term process of re-education of the population about a mentality of approaching one another. And this is ongoing work.

Even a small nation like Israel remains divided to date, divided into the Jews of the East and West, those who left Europe, Russia, America, and Africa and the Arab nations.

If it is not possible to do anything with a small group of people who have experienced so much and are under the pressure of the whole world, what is it possible to say about Europe where the peoples have fought against each other for thousands of years and hate each other in every variation possible?!

Question: Is there a possibility of beginning the process of education among us in Israel?

Answer: This requires the willingness of the political system. But our politicians don’t think about this at all.

If they speak about connection, about friendship or about something else, they do this to express their political demands—how to act in order to be closer to power and directing.

Clearly this is a dead end regarding peace! There is nothing to do. In the meantime humanity listens and develops only in this way.

The decision regarding an educational process can be reached through the government, through the elite, only to the degree that people willingly will be compelled to listen and obey for the purpose of consolidating the people and creating special conditions for it.

But for this we need to fight against the media is required to ultimately reach the heart of the people. The people must understand that they only need unity because there are no other means for survival. This will gradually become increasingly tangible. Twenty years ago there was nothing like this.

Forty years ago I began to talk about this, but at that time who took me seriously? So it was necessary to remain silent so as not to sully the wisdom of Kabbalahsince to a particular degree I was its representative.

Only twenty years ago did we gradually began to speak about unification. Today we can proclaim and announce to everyone that there is no other way out. And we even see that new materials and new opinions are appearing that are closer and closer to this approach. So I am optimistic.
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From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 6/27/16

Don’t Steal Others’ Happiness

Question: Can the upper forces affect others through one person?

Answer: The upper force always affect us through other people. It is quite rare when it happens directly and only when a person summons them unto himself because he already has his own communication channel with them.

If a person summons the influence of the upper forces unto himself it operates on him directly, and if it doesn’t, it operates through the still, vegetative, or animate levels of nature.

Question: How does the Light that a person draws while studying the wisdom of Kabbalah affect other people?

Answer: The Light affects everyone in a positive manner because we are forcibly connected to each other in one system called Adam (Man). Therefore, if I draw the Light, I become a source of Light on that level and it spreads through me to others. The only problem is how to draw more Light.

The Jews have the method, and if they drew the right Light, everyone would treat them better. But since they don’t draw the Light and don’t spread it around them, people feel that they “steal” their happiness and are the source of all the troubles in the world.

Thus we can understand to what degree each of us can be a source of Light for others.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 3/20/16

Brexit—the Possibility of a New World Order

Although it is presented as London’s retirement from European integration and supranational democracy, Brexit is actually the beginning of the collapse of the old world and rejection of the old egoistic relationships built on the elite’s aspiration to rule over their people. The fact is that apart from the dictates of the politicians and the bankers over the people in this union, there was nothing more.

I am all for unity, but just as long as it is subject to the laws of nature and society. Otherwise unification will only expose our contradictions and lead to conflicts and wars.

Look how China refers to any kind of union as nothing more than the development of trade relations. Actually, the EU was exactly that. Obviously, its architects thought that communication would bring peoples together naturally, but we have not seen it, not in Europe, not ever!

Now I hear them groaning over the old Europe with its shared values and goals. But who saw them under the German dictates, market force, and austerity measures, even in the pursuit of greater integration? Moreover, the entire EU depends on what kind of leader comes to power in each EU country! How can you buildintegration on such a shaky basis?

In my view, Brexit can be the impetus for a new attitude to the construction of our future world: unity on the basis of shared values, the true ones, meaning taken from humankind’s nature.
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Dispelling Myths About Kabbalah, Part 13

Why Was The Truth Hidden For So Many Centuries?

Question: Why was the real meaning of the Torah hidden for all these years? Why wasn’t each person taught to understand it correctly in the spiritual sense?

Answer: The people of Israel were deliberately sent into exile. It was clear to Kabbalists that the exile was coming even before the destruction of the Temple, to the loss of the feeling of the Creator and the fall into darkness.

It is written in the Talmud that Rabbi Akiva was laughing at the ruins of the Temple because he was glad that the final correction was approaching. The destruction happened because the people of Israel had to go into exile and connect themselves to the soul of the nations of the world.

While in exile among other nations, the Jews transmitted their bases, their informational genes. A mutual penetration into the desires of each other took place, in which all of humanity becomes ready to study Kabbalah and with its help becomes closer to the revelation of the Creator.

After all each person has to attain the Creator, as it is written, “All will know Me from the smallest of them to the greatest of them,” “My house will be called the house of prayer for all the nations, and all the nations of the world will gather in it.”

Question: So why was the wisdom of Kabbalah been hidden?

Answer: Kabbalah was hidden because the people of Israel had to mingle their desires with the desires of the peoples of the world. And for this, they had to go into exile in a state where they had no connection with spirituality.

Instead of spiritual attainment, Jews received a religion (Judaism) and other nations had their religions. In this way Jews became close to the other nations and were able to mingle with them.
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Israeli Radio Program 103FM, 2/28/16

Every Circumstance Is For A Spiritual Purpose

Question: Why are some of the people destined to be poor and others rich in our world?

Answer: Poverty, wealth, health, illness, everything that theCreator sends, doesn’t depend on us; it is up to us to accept this as a fact.

If you study the wisdom of Kabbalah, then you will understand that all of your characteristics and circumstances in life are very precisely designed for you to carry out your mission, and through mutual connection with friends you will create your soul, a Masach (screen) in which you will feel the Creator.

So when thoughts about how wretched you are dominate you in all kinds of circumstances, you should know that at every given moment the Creator sends you the best possible condition for spiritual advancement.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 3/27/16

Kabbalists Are Not Ascetics

Question: Were there rich and poor Kabbalists, or is the spiritual way conditional on asceticism?

Answer: The spiritual path does not require asceticism.

In the Talmud, there is a story about two famous Kabbalists who were standing and looking at Jerusalem from a distance. One said to the other, “I have enough money to provide heat for this city for three years.”

That was a lot of money, especially 2,500 years ago. The second answered, “I have so much money that I could provide light for three years.” This suggests there were wealthy people among the Kabbalists.

A Kabbalist must work and earn money. At the same time, there is a prohibition against simply giving it away, except for necessary charity. Therefore, people accumulated a lot of money that was mainly donated for education and knowledge.

Jews are the only people who never have been illiterate. Universal education, the opening of schools, was always promoted and was the main concern of the population.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 3/27/16