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Kabbalah: The Bnei Baruch Association – Kabbalah Education & Research Institute.
Kabbalah Revealed
Correcting Our Approach To Nature And To Society
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by Rav Michael Laitman, PhD.
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Lesson given by Rav Michael Laitmanat the Bnei Baruch Kabbalah Education Center, Israel
Commentary on original text of Baal HaSulam (Rav Yehuda Ashlag)
Lesson #4 in a 10-lesson series of lessons based on Baal HaSulam's article "The Peace"
Our subject of discussion is: The human being and his world—the world in which we live, the “where” and the “why” of our existence. We want to find these things out about ourselves. A person does not have to believe what he is told, nor receive information from anyone; one simply investigates one’s own reality. In trying to understand one’s condition and the reality we call “life in this world,” we have developed a few methods to resolve these issues.
Apart from religious methods, we have also developed several other methods that relate to our relationship with nature, such as:
* nature governs us;
* nature does not govern us;
* nature is blind;
* nature has some form of mind and purpose;
* or the method where nature, the Upper Force, created everything and then abandoned Its creation.
This last method came from the notion that the Upper Force is supposed to be powerful and benevolent, but since we observe quite the opposite in this world, we then conclude that the Upper Force must have abandoned Its creation.
There is another method which states that the Upper Force might not be a single force but is actually made up of many forces. This is because, time and again, we see opposites in our world that seem to be various forces of nature warring with one another.
Or maybe there are only two authorities: a positive one and a negative one, the good and the bad, attraction and rejection, and so on? We find opposing forces in all of life’s details, so it stands to reason that this is how everything works…
Humanity continued developing all kinds of disciplines for relating to these methods. No one knows the truth, but there are, nevertheless, all sorts of methods to date; each one somehow responding to the question about what life really is.
Baal HaSulam says that we have no other choice. He says that the more developed we are, the more we have to familiarize ourselves with nature. Otherwise, we will continue to experience suffering increasingly until we actually reach extermination. He says that our lives could become so terrible that they would be even worse than death itself, and that things might get so bad, that we would not even be able to leave this life.
This is why we have to know the world in which we live. It adds to the fact that the more familiar we are with the laws of nature, the better we become at using them for our benefit, for our survival and for somehow feeling better in this reality.
How then, can we become familiar with our reality after all? Our entire reality consists of a Nature that supervises us and actuates all kinds of forces and laws over us. Our life purpose then, is one: “How do we become familiar with these laws?”
If I study all these laws and become familiar with them, to the extent that they become totally clear to me, I will be able to use them in the most beneficial way. Also, during that process, I might even, through these laws, discover some new horizons, such as what lies beyond death or some other ways to expand life and enjoy it; who knows?
Whatever the case may be, learning about the laws of nature that act upon us, referred to as “Providence,” and studying them in order to utilize them correctly, is in fact, first and foremost, every person’s duty in this world. Failing to comply with this obligation would cause a person great suffering, leaving one with no hopes for the future, not even the kind of hope that anything good could at least come out of his suffering.
“And so from now on I’ll not have to use both tongues, meaning nature and a supervisor,”
Baal HaSulam always questions how he should present nature to us; as “Superior,” “Upper Force,” “Creator,” “Yud-Key-Vav-Key” (“?-?-?-?”), “G-d Almighty,” “blind nature”; he does not know how. The truth is that any term we can apply to this thing that acts upon us, cannot possibly tell us anything.
It is because there are hidden things here, concealed forces that act upon us in such ways that our language cannot accurately define no matter what names we give them.
We do not have any name that can clarify what nature is to everyone, for if it were clear, we would already be in the state of revelation. He thus goes around it in his explanation, for us to be able to somehow familiarize ourselves with the force that acts upon us.
“between which, as I have shown, there is no difference regarding the following of laws,”
In other words, it does not matter by what or whose laws we abide; say it is the Creator, G-d Almighty, the Upper Force, blind nature…but if It acts upon us, then we have no alternative, regardless of who it is coming from. Therefore, if I become familiar with these laws only, then I will be alright.
“between which, as I have shown, there is no difference regarding the following of laws, it is best for us to meet halfway and accept the words of the Kabbalists, that nature (Teva) has the same numerical value (in Hebrew) as the word God (Elokim)—eighty six. Then I’ll be able to call the laws of God the commandments of nature and vise versa, for they are one and the same, and we need discuss it no further.”
This frees us from all of our problems. In Kabbalah, we study that we are a desire to receive, made up of 613 desires, which are all being acted upon by the Upper Force, and that we need to know how to adjust ourselves to this Upper Force.
So if I adapt myself to this Upper Force, if I know how to relate back to It—just like I know how to adjust myself to gravitational forces, electrostatic forces, magnetic forces, heat, cold, pressures and so on—it is thus said that I am performing a Mitzva, a correction.
This correction, this understanding that enables me to perform this act correctly, comes from this force Itself. But I only receive it if I desire to be corrected and to bring myself into a state of equivalence with that Upper Force.
This force is called “Torah” or “The Light that reforms.” What does It reform? It creates equivalence between me and the Upper Force. This equivalence—in corporeal laws, mental laws, humanistic laws or spiritual laws, whichever laws they happen to be—brings the created being, the feeling part, into a state of harmony and balance, a good state of comfort where one feels oneself delighted and fulfilled.
This is all I need to do, and I do not care about who I refer to up here; at least not for now. Whatever the nature of this Upper Force, has currently no importance for me; whether It is a feeling force or not, does It have a will or not, whether It is blind or how many forces there are altogether.
Now, the main thing is for me to adjust myself to It, to attain Equivalence of Form with It, and it is not important to me whether there are religious people, or seculars or believers in all kinds of disciplines and religions. The bottom line is; we have no other choice. We are part of nature, so we must find equivalence of form with It.
Question: Why then, do we say about Him that He angers, or has mercy; we talk about His wrath?
We qualify the Upper Force as good or as bad, depending on what we feel as a result of Its actions upon us. When It acts upon me in some way, I feel Its actions, and I then get to know It through those actions upon me. I thus name It according to the action that I feel upon me. It is like a little child who says, “mommy is bad,” or “mommy is good,” based on what the child feels inside.
We discussed it in our talks about the perception of reality. We said that the entire reality we perceive is not something outside us. We have five senses through which we feel some sort of stimulus that causes us to react; like with all our measuring tools and every other instrument we build. All we do is sense and measure the instrument’s reaction to something that causes pressure against it. It is like the eardrum gets a sensation of something pressing against it, however the resulting sensation depends on the eardrum itself and whatever is behind it. I guess and interpret that pressure into some internal electrical signals that are then converted into words and their meanings, based on specific codes, memory, understanding and comparisons. This is how I supposedly receive whatever is coming toward me from the outside.
In other words, it might even be possible that there is nothing really coming toward me from the outside. It might be, like we say, that this Upper Force is constant in form and pressure, but that I feel this force as changing, since it is I who might be changing on the inside, like we said about the Reshimot (lit. Reminiscences) that keep changing; and this subsequently results in my having an image of the world on my back screen. I perceive the image of the world on this back screen.
This image is a result of my attributes, my strengths, my understanding, my memories, my birth, my education; all of it takes place within me. But I nevertheless denominate all that external influence over me, according to what I am, and to how I perceive myself. In other words, I perceive something and then project that perception outward, onto the Creator.
This is why it is written: “The Torah speaketh in the tongue of Men,” signifying that these are the terms we use to denominate His effect over us; and we never talk about the essence of the Upper Force, the Creator Himself, or of the actual essence of anything else on our exterior, given that we have no grasp in the fundamental nature of things, and “He Himself” indicates His Essence.
Instead, we define His behavior toward us, from our own perspective, as absolute bestowal or absolute love, which we perceive according to our present state of being.
Baal HaSulam says that the Upper Force affects us, but “who He is” and “what He is” is irrelevant to us at the moment. He could be all-knowing and feeling and thinking and Superior in every aspect, His attributes being far superior to ours in abilities and qualities.
In other words, I have feelings and He has feelings, I have intelligence and He has intelligence, I have a mind and He has a mind. I can evaluate it that way, though there is no basis for it. Or I might say: “No. He has nothing. Nature is blind.” Just like the nature that I see around me, from which all kinds of substance compounds originate, engendering, as a result of development, all sorts of things and even all kinds of feelings.
It does not matter to me how I look at Him. All I care about is how I can come to know His purpose, Nature’s purpose; how and why He is pressuring me in this way or another. The main thing is for me to become familiar, not only with the forces of gravity and electricity and so on, but with the ones that operate at the human level within me, at the speaking level.
I need to know all this, because on the inanimate, vegetative and animate levels, I can somehow manage and prevail. For instance, on the animate level, I have medicine and food to keep myself somewhat healthy, and on the vegetative and inanimate levels, I manage as well. My problem, however, is at the speaking level; here I am actually destroying my life.
In other words, out of the four levels of existence in this world—the inanimate, vegetative, animate and speaking—the most important one is the speaking level, and we are (literally) destroying our lives with our lack of understanding of this force at the speaking level; what it is, how it acts upon us and what it wants from us.
If we had the same level of understanding about relationships between people, our relationship with nature, what happens with us before we are born, what happens after we die, and all the other things that pertain to the speaking level, as we have about the inanimate, vegetative and the animate levels, we would be fine and well. That knowledge is the only thing we lack.
In truth, we are also not that familiar with the laws of this world, available for us to discover with our five senses and our instruments. We have plenty left to find out about them, but we somehow manage even though we are not discovering anything about the speaking level.
Our biggest problem, however, is that everything we achieve through our investigations into the inanimate, the vegetative and the animate levels of nature, we subsequently destroy at the speaking level, the highest most influential level of existence; and that level destroys everything we achieve through knowledge, medicine, technology and nature. Instead of using all of that for our benefit, it all results in destruction.
If I am thus able to establish a balanced relationship with the Upper Force, at the speaking level, I will probably be alright in every aspect. Whether there actually is a next world or not, an afterlife or a pre-life, at least in this life, I will definitely manage well. And this is, in fact, what I wish to discover.
Continue to page 2
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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
View these fascinating video clips from Rav Laitman's world lectures !!
The Needed Shift in Human Consciousness
http://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=4Q0NsgtFMhI
05:11
Dr. Michael Laitman's speech at the World Wisdom Council meeting in Tokyo, Japan,
"Creating a New Civilization" - November 2005.
Creating a New Civilization - Tokyo 2005
http://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=WZF2L4CEfZc
06:23
The World Wisdom Council's 3rd meeting "Creating a New Civilization" in Tokyo, November 2005.
Israeli artists meet Rav Michael Laitman, PhD
http://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=-mUumQWnlGM
07:36
Israeli artists meet with Rav Michael Laitman, PhD to talk about the meaning of life, free choice, and life's basic questions.
Attaining the Worlds Beyond
http://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=uUWl8-WPeKk
05:14
A video inspired by text from Rav Michael Laitman's book "Attaining the Worlds Beyond."
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