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Kabbalah: The Bnei Baruch Association – Kabbalah Education & Research Institute.
Kabbalah Revealed
Attainment of Unity
of the Universe
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by Rav Michael Laitman, PhD.
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Continuation of lesson given by Rav Michael Laitman PhD
Date: July 13, 2004
Conception is Revealed through Reaching the Goal
We have come here to achieve a certain goal. Therefore, we have to think about this goal all the time; otherwise our study is pointless. What is our goal? We wish to attain the Creator, which means to become similar to Him. It does not matter how clearly we understand this goal; we should think only about it.
Whatever we read, we always read about how we can attain Him or what it means to be similar to Him. In short, we read either about an aspiration to the goal or about advancing towards it. That is all Kabbalah is about. Do not forget about it, otherwise the study brings no results. Always remember the goal!
We continue with the article "Attainment of Unity of the Universe". The Kabbalists who enter the spiritual world discover that nothing exists except the indivisible, unique force that governs, surrounds and consumes everything, including us. “We” are the soul created by this Upper force.
The soul gradually attains this Upper force. Such graded attainments are called worlds (the word “Olam” – world, derives from “Alamah” - concealment). While attaining this Upper force – the Creator, the soul concurrently feels that He is not yet completely revealed, hence, these partial revelations are called worlds – degrees of concealment.
These are the degrees of concealment of unity. Unity is the ultimate, most intense delight that one can possibly feel.
It is said that there is no greater pleasure in our world than settling doubts. After being lost in doubt, after searching and being confused, a person gets confounded in contradictions and is unable to resolve a problem. Then suddenly a person finds a solution. The solution comes because two extremes merge into a single whole and form unity. They complement one another and exist thanks to one another.
This unity which the souls reveal in everything, even in our world, is perceived as the greatest delight.
Therefore, peace is savored after a war. That is to say, first we sense a contradiction, reveal the lack of unity, completeness; realize the evil. Darkness should precede light because otherwise we will attain nothing. The Creator is initially perfect and, unlike us, He has no property that is opposite to Him.
We have to attain all that is opposite to the Creator and from this opposition we attain Him. Therefore, all our sensations, thoughts, and definitions – regardless of what we do, think, attain, or reason about are always based on the unity of two extremes: the Light and the vessel, desire and fulfillment, suffering and joy. Thus, everything is attained in comparison with its antithesis.
Our path to the Creator lies in the gradual revelation of unity of all extremes, from the smallest to the biggest. All the problems that we want to solve, the sensation of deficiency, confusion, and striving constitute our aspiration to unite contrasting states. One contradicts the other, yet later, when there is an opportunity to unite them, we experience immense pleasure.
The attainment of unity of extremes is the apprehension of one, unique, and indivisible force called the Creator.
The attainment takes place within a person and one can never determine what the solution will be by the sensation of the set task, i.e., by feeling contrasts, doubts, and incomprehension. In other words, it is impossible to know what the attainment of unity will be and how I will feel with regard to this indivisible force as two of its opposite manifestations – the Kli and the Light – merge into one.
Therefore, it is said: “There is no wisdom without experience” (“Ein Hacham ke Ba’al Nissayon”). Only the person who has gone through all the preliminary stages of revelation of unity, who summarizes and accumulates them (they become his personal experience), gradually reveals the power of the Creator’s greatness in the rich diversity of these sensations.
One can imagine the Creator’s attainment as a triangle whose apex is directed downward. Man attains the unity of two opposite, gradually diverging forces; hence the revelation of unity is based on the negation of unity of opposites (i.e. the states opposite to the Creator). The more man advances, the stronger he feels how incomprehensive, contradictory, inconsistent, impossible is the idea that there might be a sole governance and that most likely, it is the Creator. Finally he reaches the state of Rabbi Shimon (who felt he was a market trader) before he was about to attain the greatest sensation of the Creator’s unity.
It is said: “Everyone who ascends higher has greater desires (evil, uncorrected desires) because the opposition between the extremes are greater and there is nothing one can do about it: only practice, experience, and the path are of assistance here.
The path of Kabbalah is based on the accumulation of past experience which helps in all situations.
When a person is at the beginning of a level and feels torn between the opposites, when he cannot reconcile them within himself and fails to understand how the Creator can appear in such a horrible and strange state, he believes that there are evil forces that oppose the Creator’s governance.
When a person lives in this darkness, only two factors can help him: the environment, which he prepared for himself in advance while being in a good state; and his experience, which enables him to admit and understand that such states are possible. Although he never experienced a situation like this, he had problems in the past that were resolved in such a way that just the opposition and confusion revealed the Creator’s unity. Hence, it is said: “There is no wisdom without experience.”
From this it follows that, in principle, our path is not very difficult. It consists of simple interactions between the Light and the Kli. When the Kli is revealed (the realization of evil, opposition to Light), we perceive it as incomprehension, unwillingness, detachment, remoteness and all that is opposite to unity, which we sometimes vaguely feel as ecstasy, the sensation of resolved problems, understanding, etc.
Thus, at the initial stage of attaining every level, we realize the contrast between the Light and the Kli.
At the second stage the Kli makes an effort, performs an act aimed at unity in defiance of its knowledge and sensations at the moment. This is called “faith above reason” (Emuna Lemala mi Da’at). By our conscious effort we unify the two opposite notions of Light and Kli and say: “They are one.”
The entire world is pressing on me. Some people harm me and nothing seems to be right. No, it is the Creator who confuses me by hiding behind all of these circumstances and objects.
Every time He makes me feel that there is no unity, that there are many forces that influence me and on which I depend. Our task at every stage is to unite it all within us in defiance of our obvious convictions and in spite of what happens at the moment.
We have nothing but these two states: the lack of unity and incomprehension how it can be, and in contrast to that – our efforts.
We cannot unite them because the Creator fools us all the time into believing it is not Him. At the same time we keep trying to attain His unity: one moment we feel it, the next it is gone. In this partial way He allows us to touch His unity pointwise. Now He is here, now He is gone again.
What is the purpose of this game? Finally, we have to understand that we cannot independently establish real contact and reveal His absolute, eternal and invariant unity.
Our efforts only create within us a prayer, desire to receive this state from the Creator at last. When in the process of attaining this unity we begin to see that we cannot attain it by ourselves, then we also reveal the root of the problem. We discover that it is the Creator Who deliberately does it all to us to make us turn to Him for help.
Thus, we will connect with Him with the help of our request and reveal this unity inside so that this unity does not exist only outside of me. In other words, we have to enter the Creator and inside Him reveal this unity in ourselves.
While trying to solve the problem of unity we cannot unite opposite states, but have to ask the Creator to do that for us. When we ask Him, we really determine this unity, i.e., we enter it, and we say that everything depends only on Him.
Subsequently, we start feeling that the Creator determines everything within me, that He exists not in the external circumstances, but inside me, and all of my thoughts, feelings, and decisions are His.
This way, I gradually enter into Him, and then the true unity means that I dissolve in the Creator and all distinctions between us disappear. My “I” is not eliminated, I do not become a zero; no, I become equal to Him, I myself constitute this unity.
Therefore it is said: “He who aspires for the Creator, the actions that he performs and the Upper force (Creator) turn into One.” They are attained in such a way that all distinctions disappear and the thoughts and actions of both man and the Creator merge into one point. This is the point, from which the Creator’s Light emanates, where only an embryo of a new Kli exists within Him. The entire creation descends and develops from there, and man ascends back to that point, to its root.
There are two paths of attaining this unity: the path of suffering and the path of Kabbalah. All the Kabbalistic materials speak only about this. This science studies one single thing: what actions a person should make to start attaining the Creator’s unity.
It is the same to attain the Creator or His unity. How does one attain the Creator? This attainment is based either on our opposition to Him or on our similarity to Him.
Open the book “Shamati” (“I Heard”), in which the Baal HaSulam gave us the whole theory of the spiritual ascent, and you will see that no other issue is examined there.
Baal HaSulam compares the process of revelation of unity with the development that takes place in live organisms and depends on the final goal.
He explains: “For example, a one-day-old calf already walks, sucks, knows what to do and feels what is good and what is bad for it. All of its natural instincts already function. The stages of its growth are not as contrasting as man’s: a one-day-old baby is a mindless creature that understands nothing. Nature seems to be totally indifferent; but on the contrary, it tries to reveal the state, which is opposite to the final one.”
Two Ways of Development: the Path of Suffering and the Path of Kabbalah
The Upper ruling force has the quality of absolute kindness and that it rules over us purposefully. It stems from its own perfection without any trace of evil. This means that the purposefulness of its governance compels us to accept the order of passing through various states that are connected by the law of cause and effect, until we can receive the desired goodness thus reaching the goal of creation. We are like a splendid fruit at the end of its ripening. This result is guaranteed to all of us without exception.
The thought of creation is simple: the Creator wished to create a creation that would attain Him and become as perfect as He is.
Creation constitutes something that is beyond the Creator and His unity. We all are created in such a way that we feel the lack of unity. Our primordial nature is darkness, the Kli (desire), and the Hissaron (deficiency). All in all, we lack the sensation of unity of all opposites and of their mutual support.
We are created with the lack of unity and our task is to reveal it. Whether we want it or not, everyone without exception is obliged to fulfill that task. Every individual soul and all the souls together will have to do that. So what is our goal then? At every stage of our advancement, in every state of disunion we have to aspire for the revelation of unity. Being separated from the Creator, I feel Him, myself and the distance between us, that is, I feel lack of resemblance between us.
The Baal HaSulam writes that man has to unite the Creator, the means of attaining Him and himself into a single whole. He compares a person who aspires to the Creator with a young man who longs for his beloved so that he could unite with her. Therefore, spiritual merging is compared with sexual union? in our world.
We describe the process of uniting with the Creator as fusion, i.e., the state in which no distinctions can be discerned. How can distinctions be absent if creation is opposite to the Creator? They support and complement each other; there is no Creator without creation and there is no creation without the Creator.
The Upper force’s conception consists in enabling every soul in this world (which is opposite to the upper world) to reveal the unity of all contrasts and contradictions that man experiences in every state, revelation of unity being revelation of indivisible source that purposefully acts upon each soul. It wishes us to acquire its property of absolute love and bestowal. If we become similar to the Upper force, all contradictions between us disappear and we merge into one.
If I solve this problem, I begin to understand the Creator and unite with Him. I can understand Him, only to the extent that my properties resemble His, and then contradictions disappear. The equivalence of our properties is a means of our merging.
Therefore, the work on egoistical desire with the help of a screen is called Zivug de Aka’a (impact merging). By opposing my egoistical desire and wishing to establish contact with the Creator, I merge with Him and this fusion is opposite to the initial state.
This occurs because the Light is initially opposite to the vessel and my task is to defy the vessel and make it similar to the Light. Such a state is called Zivug, penetration of one into the other as in sexual union.
The intent of the Upper force is to bring us to similarity to its quality of absolute good; this goal determines all of its actions.
We have to reveal that all the Creator’s actions (however corrupt and awful they might seem in our perception) are desirable and necessary, inevitable from the part of the Creator, because they are determined by the stages of development through which we are destined to go.
There is no chance of skipping any level, and only if we gradually pass through them one by one, can we achieve the goal. This goal dictates all our actions.
Two paths are prepared to bring us to the goal:
1. The Path of Suffering.
2. The Path of Kabbalah.
But do not think that there are two paths. The path is only one.
To reveal the Creator’s unity a person has to solve this problem in all circumstances and situations that the Creator sends him.
I exist in the world that is full of various forces and opinions. In spite of this influence I have to tell myself: “The Creator creates this picture within me. I need to connect all of these constantly changing states, influences, thoughts, and doubts with one source that stands behind them.”
As a result, I discover that I can accomplish this task neither by myself nor with the help of the group. I turn to the Creator and solve this problem together with Him. Yet this is my solution. I appeal to the Creator, I compel Him to help me, but all the same, I solve this problem together with Him.
If a person forgets that the Creator exists, he falls from the level of the search for unity (the task, which the Creator sets before him) to the lower level. He stops thinking that the Creator exists and draws the picture of this world for him, and plunges into the so-called “state of concealment.” What is concealed from him? He loses sight of the Source that determines all and his contact with the Creator turns into the “path of suffering.”
In reality, this is not a path, but rather a sequence of actions which he will perceive as unpleasant and cruel. They will guide him towards the point from which he will have to find the solution to the problem of unity.
In other words, if I sink below the level of the search for unity (searching for the Creator in this picture, realization of what He wants from me, how can I unite with Him using the picture of the world (unite into one: the Creator, I, and the world that seemingly exists between us) and feel only my own “I” and the world without the Creator, then I have stepped onto the so-called path of suffering.
This path is the order of creation’s natural evolution from one state to another. All the states are interconnected by cause and effect. In this way, we slowly and gradually develop until we realize the need to choose unity. One way or another we come to the same conclusion. After many blows we finally realize the need to reject evil and to establish the purposeful contact with the Upper force. This path is extremely long and painful.
What the Creator is trying to do with us, if we fall? We fall only within our sensations. In fact, there are no falls. When the Creator is left out of the picture, we immediately start perceiving it as suffering.
By slightly rising to the level of realization of the Upper governance, I suddenly remember that the Creator gives me the picture of the world so that from inside it, and by means of it, I will get into contact with Him.
There is reason why world has this name: it is the concealment ("Olam" – Heb. "world" is from the world "Alama" – "concealment") The world is like a curtain between us, and instead of the Creator I see various characters, forces, myself with my thoughts and desires, and believe that I am in control of my life and have freedom of will.
If a person remembers his realization of the Upper force, he sort of shakes himself and breaks free from his exile. Exile is the sensation of the Creator’s absence in one’s world.
When you feel Him, but cannot yet compare yourself with Him, this is not exile anymore. This is the liberation that is similar to the exodus from Egypt, but the path from it leads through wilderness. You look for the Creator and see no way to merge with Him. You encounter many problems and irreconcilable contradictions. The Torah describes man’s search for the formula of his connection with the Creator (the property of Bina) as a historical narrative in which people fight and fall.
40 years of wandering in the wilderness symbolize the attainment of the level of Bina. Bina corresponds to the Hebrew letter Mem (“?”, numerical value of 40), which resembles zero. By ascending that level, man as it were covers, protects himself from the forces that deny the Creator’s unity.
The person who treads on the path of suffering falls from the sensation of the Creator and perceives this world as bad and evil. He forgets about the need to attain the Creator’s unity and about the purpose of this world.
As a result the same laws affect him in a natural way. The Creator does not alter His attitude towards man, but the moment He disappears from man’s view, man starts perceiving this world differently – as meaningless, useless, and full of suffering.
Developing egoism leads us to this perception; hence humankind sees the world in this way.
2. The Path of Kabbalah.
This easy and pleasant path can make us worthy of our predestination quickly and painlessly.
The path of Kabbalah is a conscious quest with the help of a group of like-minded people, books, and work on oneself. Although it is called easy and pleasant, this path is not simple, but if we compare the path of Kabbalah with the path of suffering, which takes thousands of years, we find it can be completed within a lifetime.
It is considered easy and pleasant because if man chooses it, then even if he suffers and works very hard, he sees the goal and his efforts turn into the efforts for the sake of love.
When a person feels that he has to make efforts to get closer to his beloved, these efforts become pleasant because they enable him to feel greater sweetness in the union with the one he loves.
In this case our final goal is predetermined and compulsory; we see it in front of us and there is no way we can evade it because the Upper force firmly rules over us by means of the two paths – of suffering and of Kabbalah.
We think about the goal all the time; but if we forget about it, then the society that we created instantly rushes to our help and directs us to the goal. In other words, as consciously as we can, we always try to look for contact with the Creator.
By looking at the surrounding reality we can see that we are being simultaneously managed in these two ways.
Ideally, we can advance only by the path of Kabbalah (Torah, the Light). In reality, however, by attaining a new, greater level of egoism or, as we say, by expanding the “opposite triangle” (i.e., by feeling the increasingly growing contrast between the surrounding world and the Creator), we realize how powerless we are to see the unity of all. Man tends to forget and starts looking for his own solutions; that is the way things are.
Continue to Page 2
Go to November's Lesson
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Kabbalist Rav Michael Laitman, PhD.,
Kabbalist, Rabbi, & Author
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World leading Kabbalist, Rav Michael Laitman, PhD has an MS in Bio Cybernetics and a PhD in Philosophy and Ontology.
Rav Laitman is the author of 25 internationally selling books on Kabbalah; his books have been translated into nine languages.
His lessons are broadcast live throughout the Internet and cable TV to tens of thousands of students the world over. In recent years he has become a sought-after lecturer in academic and learning circles in the US and Europe
His search for the meaning of life led him to the teachings of Kabbalah in the 1970’s. At first he studied Kabbalah with various teachers in Jerusalem and other parts of Israel. In 1979 he discovered his true teacher, Kabbalist Rav Baruch Shalom Halevi Ashlag (1907-1991).
From the time he met Rav Baruch Ashlag (known as the Rabash), he was never apart from him and spent most of his time in his presence, as his disciple and personal assistant. Up until his death, Rabash passed on to Rav Laitman the wisdom he had acquired from his father, Kabbalist Rav Yehuda Ashlag, known as Baal HaSulam for his Sulam commentary on The zohar (The Book of Radiance).
Rav Dr. Laitman held a successful public meeting in San-Francisco in March 2005 with leading American scientists, participants of the blockbuster hit "What the Bleep Do We Know?" Here are some of the impressions of the scientists after meeting Dr. Laitman:
Fred Alan Wolf, PhD. author of eleven books, among them The Yoga of Time Travel, Matter into Feeling: a new Alchemy of Science and Spirit, and Mind into Matter: "I admire your knowledge. I would love to sit at your feet and study for a long time."
Jeffery Satinover, MD (Psychiatry), MS (Physics) – Author of seven books including The Quantum Brain & Cracking the Bible Code: "The emergence of Kabbalah from its concealment in a genuine form is historically significant and is truly remarkable."
Rav Laitman is the founder and president of the Bnei Baruch Association – Kabbalah Education & Research Institute. Bnei Baruch is an Israeli based non-profit organization that is dedicated to spreading the wisdom of Kabbalah to all of humanity.
Bnei Baruch conducts daily Kabbalah lessons, broadcasted live on the Internet and available for free.
In 1996 Bnei Baruch created, what is now the largest and most popular Internet site on the subject of Kabbalah--www.kabbalah.info. This website provides unlimited access to Kabbalistic texts and media in over twenty languages, and hosts over a million readers every month.
Website: www.kabbalah.info.
Further information is available at www.kabbalah.info.
The following study
e-books, and resources are free,
and available in the formats listed below:
• "Attaining the Worlds Beyond",
by Kabbalist, Rav Michael Laitman, PhD.
Audio book
(MP3 format): www.kabbalah.info/
engkab/
worlds_beyond.htm
PDF:
www.kabbalah.info/
engkab/
book_4/Attaining-Text.pdf
•"Kabbalah for Beginners"
Palm download:
www.kabbalah.info
/engkab/ebook/kab_
for_beginners.htm
•"What the Bleep…"
Video Discussion:
www.kabbalahmedia.info/
~video/KabbalahMeets
ModernScience/Kabbalah
MeetsModernScience_
pilot_eng.mpg
Rav Laitman's Latest Book Releases:
•The Kabbalah Experience
Never has the language of Kabbalah been as clear and accessible as it is here, in this compelling, informative collection. The depth of wisdom revealed in the questions and answers of this book will inspire reflection and contemplation.
•The Path of Kabbalah
“Thou shalt not make unto thee a graven image, nor any manner of likeness” (Exodus 20:3). This commandment from the Bible is the basis of the Kabbalistic wisdom, for Kabbalists know that the only true reality is that of His Essence, the Upper Force.
For more information on obtaining these books and others, visit:
http://www.kabbalah
books.info/default.php
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