India Intro Lectures

From My Facebook Page Michael Laitman 8/25/19

Pushkar is a picturesque market town, a magical oasis located in the state of Rajasthan, India. While I was staying on the south side of the subcontinent, some of my students invited people in the area to an introductory lecture on the fundamentals of Kabbalah.

As a result, two introductory lectures were took place—one in Hebrew to Israeli backpackers, and another one in English for tourists from around the world. Both lectures were conducted in the calming atmosphere that is characteristic of India. And so, tourists sat in a circle alongside curious locals, as they were all listening to the simple message of the wisdom of Kabbalah—uniting the hearts as one.

Naturally, everyone understood it differently. However, everyone agreed that we were all one soul. Thank you to everyone who participated, and you can always continue studying online with the click of a button.

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Meeting With Radhanth Swami

From My Facebook Page Michael Laitman 8/25/19

Richard Slavin, an American Jew who was born in the suburbs of Chicago, traveled in his youth for a short vacation in Europe and ended his journey in the Himalayas. From a young seeker, he became a hermit in an ashram, an urban American became a famous guru leading a large devotional community, Richard Slavin became Radhanth Swami.

I was happy to meet him and discover that we are almost the same age, we both come from families who fled the former Soviet Union because of anti-Semitic persecution, and we both reached our destination in the early 1970s: he to India and I to Israel.

I innocently asked him what the Hindu religion was, and he replied that “there are many interpretations, and if you translate from the ancient Indian Sanskrit language, it is a belief in one God, one higher truth, the Father and Mother of all beings and creatures. Although there are many powerful entities, many expressions of the same higher force, in the end we worship a single force,” he said.

“The ultimate goal of life is to live in harmony with this law of nature, this Godly law, and love it,” Swami shares with me the wisdom of devotion, which he teaches to the masses. “When we love God we are like watering the root of the tree, and when we water the tree, the water spreads to all parts of the tree: to the branches, to the flowers, to the fruits. When we awaken love within us, compassion spreads in all created beings.”

I agreed with his ideas, as this is what the wisdom of Kabbalah teaches us: that there is one, unique and unified force, a good and benevolent force and there is none else besides him. This is the approach I teach hundreds of thousands of my students every day around the world. Therefore, I agreed with him even more when he talked about the ego as the main reason preventing a person from discovering the single force.

“Our brain is like a mirror,” says Radhanth Swami; “When you look at the mirror you want to see yourself, but if the mirror is covered in dust and dirt then only they appear to us. The dust and dirt are our selfishness—the self-love, anger, jealousy, greed and arrogance that lead to mistrust between people, dishonesty, cruelty. And when we all want to be in control and enjoy ourselves, we are in conflict. Therefore, only when we realize that the Creator is in control, and that the real pleasure comes from service and giving to the Creator, to the ‘Creator’s children,’ only then can there be peace.”

The essential question I had for the guru was how to attain the single, upper force? How do you rise above the ego? And here, although Swami and I speak the same words and seem to agree on the same principles, our path is different, as is the level of spiritual attainment. Swami sees meditation, yoga, and the use of mantras as a way of purification. He sees various moral practices as a way of life for serving others, a way to clear the mirror in one’s mind.

The purification of the ego—as was common among the Kabbalists thousands of years ago, and expressed in Masechet Avot (6, 4): “Bread with salt you shall eat, water in small measure you shall drink, and upon the ground you shall sleep; live a life of deprivation…”—no longer works in our thick, coarse generation. Therefore, some three thousand years ago, the sages made spiritual corrections and determined that the ego should not be eradicated, but transcended. How? With the help of the “light that reforms”—the positive force that exists in nature and emerges when there is a desire for mutual connection, as taught by the wisdom of Kabbalah.

The meeting was purely friendly and symbolic, so there was no attempt to deeply scrutinize and compare our methods. Swami is a close soul and I felt how the Jew in him speaks through his throat. He is an interesting, eloquent, and simple man with a rolling laugh.

I thank you Swami for the warm welcome, the respect you demonstrated to us, and for escorting us through the city streets, an act that we later discovered you don’t typically do and have never done in the past, but that is what happens when, for a moment, we feel like family.

Radhanath Swami

Evolution Of Desires, Part 12

What does Kabbalah lead us to?

Bluntly speaking, everyone’s nature is to use the life of all creatures in the world for his own benefit. Everything that the person gives to his neighbor is only done forcedly, under compulsion. (Baal HaSulam, “Peace in the World”)

Question: Baal HaSulam writes that each uses the other in different ways. Only about 10% of people have an altruistic orientation. But still, as the Baal HaSulam emphasizes, they are altruistic selfishly, for their own sake.

What does Kabbalah want to lead us to?

Answer: First of all, Kabbalah teaches us what our nature is: we are absolute egoists at all levels. But we do not need to correct ourselves at the inanimate, animate, and vegetative levels because we are unable to do this.

We need to correct ourselves only at the human level, that is, in society. We must create a society in which we will be harmoniously connected with each other, replace each other, support each other.

Only in a network of connection between each other, in the right communication between us, can we rise above egoism. And then all other levels of egoism—inanimate, vegetative, animal—will also join the human level.
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From KabTV’s “Basics of Kabbalah,” 12/3/18

Absolute Interconnection

Question: I came to Kabbalah with a clear internal understanding that everything a person thinks about comes to him from the Creator. I put that into practice when I have a thought about some other person, relative, or acquaintance; I make sure I realize this thought immediately.

What I mean is that I will call him and ask what is going on, and it turns out that at the very same moment this person was thinking about me or was having problems.

Do these thoughts come to us from our egoistic world or arise from the upper worlds?

Answer: Nothing appears by itself. We are all connected by our thoughts and desires. I am not saying that we have to call each other all the time and inquire about what is happening. But if any thoughts or desires surface, they depend on the global picture of souls with whom we are completely interconnected.

Nothing is independent in this world, not the slightest thought or desire. Everything is completely interconnected and mutually defined. We all determine each other’s destinies.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 4/21/19

Evolution Of Desires, Part 11

Obstacle to Unity

Baal HaSulam, “Matan Torah” (The Giving of the Torah) Item 12: “A wild ass shall be turned into man” (Job 11:12), because when one emerges out of the bosom of Creation, one is in utter filth and lowliness, meaning a multitude of self-love that is imprinted in him, whose every movement revolves solely around himself, without a shred of bestowal upon others.”

Question: The person is originally born an egoist. As I understand it, in Kabbalah, it is the egocentric perception that needs to be corrected?

Answer: This is a specific egoism. It requires correction.

This is not about animal egoism when everyone instinctively wants to take a certain posture, to do some kind of calculation so that he is well. This is a natural egoism, there is no need to fight it.

Our natural desires (food, sex, family, etc.) are not considered egoistic at all. People just think that it is egoism and you should fight it. No, that is wrong. We need to fight only with the egoism that disallows our unity, to be together with others in a state of friendship, connection, and love.

Therefore, the forces of opposition that arise when a person attempts to somehow interact with other people are the real egoism.

Question: To enjoy at the expense of other, to use someone—is this also egoism?

Answer: Naturally, because these are also the forces that prevent us from uniting with others.
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From KabTV’s “Basics of Kabbalah,” 12/3/18

Advancement Through Jealousy

Question: Baal HaSulam writes: “One who can wait for tomorrow will obtain his salvation after his years.” How can I develop the aspiration to the upper one at the current moment, and not wait until tomorrow?

Answer: It all depends on how jealous you are of your friends. You should feel jealous that they are moving much faster and more successfully than you. This is a problem.

This approach is recommended even to the teacher. For example, every day I sit in front of my students. Although I wish them to quickly attain everything, I must envy them too; otherwise, I will be unable to learn from them. And I need to learn from the Creator through them.

Good jealousy is the main property that moves us forward. I do not think about them moving more slowly, but about moving more quickly myself. In this way we help each other.

This jealousy must be developed. It is necessary to specifically show the other person how much more you understand, how much smarter you are, how much more effort you put in. Help them in this way!
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian, 4/21/19

Try And See How Beautiful The Upper World Is

Question from Facebook: You talk about spiritual work, but how do we know that the changed values will be better than the previous ones?

Answer: The fact is that all the values we have today are built on the insignificance of our sensations, the insignificance of our world, on the fact that we run away from problems all the time, and we struggle with various difficulties.

In a different state, at the next level of perception of reality, there is a completely different existence—in plus, not in minus. Therefore, the values there are in bestowal, in love, and in fulfillment. In our world, everything is the other way around.

The Book of Zohar says: “Try and see how beautiful the upper world is.”
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From KabTV’s: “Answers to Questions on Facebook,” 3/10/19

Evolution Of Desires, Part 10

What Determines Intentions?

Question: Society controls our desires. It determines with what they will be filled. Can only the upper force change intentions?

Answer: Intentions are also determined by society. But if a person wishes to change his or her intentions contrary to the society in which one is located, meaning that the person does not want to remain in it, but wants to rise above it, then one has practically no opportunity.

Therefore, either one must go beyond the boundaries of this society, physically remove oneself from its influence, or attract the influence of another, upper power upon oneself. Then one can change oneself. Otherwise a person will fail.
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From KabTV’s “Basics of Kabbalah,” 12/3/18