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Kabbalah: The Bnei Baruch Association – Kabbalah Education & Research Institute.
Kabbalah Revealed
‘Kabbalah On-Air’ Series
The Essence of the Wisdom of Kabbalah,
Lesson 1
Lecturer: Rav Michael Laitman, PhD
September 4, 2005
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by Rav Michael Laitman, PhD.
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The wisdom of Kabbalah appeared more than four thousand years ago. Although its origins are rooted in deep antiquity, the Sumerian-Akkadian history period, the time of ancient Babylon, Kabbalah remained virtually hidden from humanity throughout these millennia.
This concealment supported an undying interest in it. Philosophers and scientists of many countries of the world, such renowned scientists as Newton, Leibniz, Pico Della Mirandola among them, investigated the science of Kabbalah, attempting to understand it. However, to this very day only a few know what Kabbalah really is.
The science of Kabbalah does not talk about our world, and therefore its essence escapes people. It is always particularly hard to comprehend that which is impossible to see, perceive, or experience. Over millennia, all sorts of things were offered to humanity under the name of “Kabbalah;” spells, curses, and even miracles, but not the science of Kabbalah itself. For over four thousand years the science of Kabbalah was cluttered with numerous pseudo-interpretations and pseudo-doctrines. Therefore, first of all I would like to clarify what the science of Kabbalah is. Baal HaSulam writes:
...this wisdom is no more and no less, than a sequence of roots, which hang down by way of cause and consequence, in fixed, determined rules, interweaving to a single, exalted goal described as – “the revelation of His Godliness to His creatures in this world.
Scientific definitions may be complicated and cumbersome. Let us try to examine what is being said here.
There exists the Upper Force or the Creator, and from Him, the governing forces descend into our world. We do not know how many forces there are, but this is not actually important. We are here, in our world. We are created by some Upper Force that we call “the Creator.” We are familiar with gravitational force, electromagnetic force of attraction and repulsion in our world, and we are aware of the power of thought. However, there are forces of a Higher order that act while remaining hidden from us.
In our world, there are still, vegetative, animate, and human levels of nature. The levels of thought and still nature differ from each other as the forces of gravity, electromagnetic forces, atomic forces differ from the power of mind and desires. Power of thought and forces of still nature are forces of different orders.
However, in the Universe there are forces of a Higher order than forces of our world. We call the ultimate, the all-summarizing force “the Creator.” The Creator is the sum of all forces of the world and the ultimate level in the file of the governing forces.
This Upper Force (the sum of forces) gave birth to the Upper worlds, which we will study now. These Upper forces are called: Adam Kadmon (AK)—the prototype of a human being, then Atzilut, Beria, Yetzira, and Assiya. In total, five worlds. The so called Machsom—a separating barrier between the Upper worlds and our world—follows after them. From the Upper force—the Creator or the world of Infinity—the forces descend through all the worlds, giving birth to our world and a human being in it.
The science of Kabbalah does not study our world and humans in it. This is what the sciences of our world do. Kabbalah investigates all that exists beyond the Machsom—the five worlds and the Upper Force itself, the Creator. This constitutes the subject of the science of Kabbalah.
 Drawing No. 1
Baal HaSulam, the renowned Kabbalist of the twentieth century, says: “...this wisdom is no more and no less, than a sequence of roots, which hang down by way of cause and consequence, in fixed, determined rules...” “God’s will” or any other kind of desire that we hear about in various books on faith is absent here. There is nothing else but the forces descending from above downward by exact laws. Moreover, these laws, as Baal HaSulam writes, are fixed, absolute, and interweaving. Ultimately, they are all directed at a human being so that he can reveal the Ultimate governing force while existing in our world.
Until a person fully reveals the Ultimate force for himself, until he knows all the worlds that he has to climb, obeying the same laws as do the forces descending downward, until a person reaches the world of Infinity, he will not leave this world. What does “will not leave” mean? He will be born into our world continuously, again and again, evolving from one life to another, until he reaches the state in which the desire to attain the Upper Force emerges in him.
Drawing No. 2
How does this desire manifest in a person? A person develops over his numerous lifetimes. At the beginning, he resembles a beast interested only in food, shelter, sex, family—all that our body needs (fulfillment of his beastly desires). Later a human being undergoes the next stage of development, in which he is interested in wealth, power, popularity, fame, and then knowledge.
Thus, evolving internally, a person undergoes the following stages of development. First, this is a human being who simply exists in our world, much like an animal that knows the desire coming from within, the desire for food, family, sex, and shelter. These are his only desires. Even if that person existed by himself in the jungle, these desires would nevertheless be born in him, and he would aspire to fulfill, realize them.
Desires conditioned by society’s influence—aspiration for wealth, power, fame—emerge at the next stage.
Then desires of a higher order appear: craving for knowledge, bent for sciences, aspiration to know our roots, to answer the question of where everything comes from. However, these desires still exist within the framework of this world (a sort of scientific curiosity).
Only during the next stage does a human being rise to the desire to know his real root, to discover the meaning of life, his essence: “Where do I come from, who am I, what am I?”
Inherently, a human being is an egoist. Desires rule over us, pressure us, force us to move. All of them are egoistic and crave fulfillment. The highest egoistical desire in our world is the desire to be filled with knowledge about something above us.
What is the source of desires and how do they arise? The source of desires is suffering. Passing from one type of desire to another happens only under the influence of suffering. I am in a balanced state, everything is fine, everything is good, I feel comfortable, I work, I live. Then I feel that something is missing, I want novelty. A new desire appears in me, I start realizing it, and so on. In other words, I run after new pleasures all the time.
We live on the earth, we are born and die, aspiring to satisfy our countless desires, and only after many lives do we reach the state when we have one desire left, to attain our root, the meaning of our lives. When this last, ultimate desire appears in a person, he perceives everything else in this world as absolutely unnecessary, meaningless. A person is depressed, emotionally and spiritually empty. He feels that nothing in this world makes him happy, that there is no purpose, life is empty, something real is missing in it. “What is the purpose of my existence, why do I exist?” With such questions people come to Kabbalah.
If money, power, fame can answer his questions of “where to” and “why,” a person is not ready for Kabbalah. Such people can turn to various so called “kabbalah” centers, where they will be taught how to succeed in life.
The science of Kabbalah does not deal with the questions on how to succeed in the world under the Machsom. It does not talk about this at all. It explains that everybody is obliged to reach their root, their ultimate predestination. People are moving toward this in the course of all their lives. Today this question arose in me. After twenty, thirty, or fifty years it will arise in the others. Ultimately, everybody will come to this.
Kabbalists state that soon the entire earth’s population will ask themselves this question. Our problems, suffering, all kinds of disasters, disrupted ecology lead us toward this. Everything that happens today happens only to show people that everything on this planet is coming to an end. We have to move to another level of existence. The science of Kabbalah was talking about it four thousand years ago already. You can buy books written not only today, but also two, three, four thousand years ago—they also talk about this.
The question about the Source, the meaning of life, the real purpose—“What is the purpose of my existence?”—appears only in a spiritually mature person. At that moment, a desire that descends from above appears in him. It is a so called “point in the heart.”
We have an “egoistical heart” that symbolizes egoistic desires and pleasures of our world. However, we have “a point in the heart” that calls us upwards (this particular point is what descended from above downward into us).
Drawing No. 3
Then a person starts to aspire for the Upper one. It is then that he needs the science of Kabbalah that tells him specifically how to reveal all the worlds and through them reach the ultimate level.
People ask me: “What does it actually give?” Even when one goes just beyond the level of our world into the spiritual world of Assiya, he begins to feel absolutely different space, perceive absolutely different reality. He starts to feel himself as existing eternally. He looks at his earthly existence from above down and begins to understand the reason behind reincarnations, why he was born and exists, why after some time he will come into this world again and live in it once more.
Why does a person return into this world again? After spending a certain period of time in this world and acquiring a certain amount of knowledge, a person ascends upwards and descends into this world again in order to go through the next phase. Knowledge accumulated at this phase pass into his attributes and he is born a new person already. This is why today’s children are smarter than you and I. Children born to us enter this world naturally. For them, it is much simpler and closer than for us.
For me it is much harder to tinker with all sorts of new electronic gadgets than it is for my youngest grandchildren. It is natural for them. Why? It is because they already went through this preparatory period. Previous knowledge became their nature, attributes. Hence we must return to this life over and over again.
So, when a person enters even the world of Assiya, he looks at all his incarnations from above downward and this life seems completely different to him. It is purposeful, clearly marked: why, how, and what for. He understands each event that happened to him: why he was born in such a family, received certain education, why he acts certain way, why he finds himself in a certain environment with particular characteristics. Everything becomes clear to him, and he starts using his inner properties and the surrounding environment as the means for ascending to his final, ultimate point.
And thus, says the wisdom of Kabblah, there are two goals, two approaches—general and particular. On the one hand, each person that has received a point in the heart (a desire to break free from this world, rise above it and reach his root) can accomplish this during this lifetime. This is called “the law of particular.”
In addition, there is “the law of general.” It states that ultimately the entire humanity, all the souls clothed in bodies in our world, regardless of the skin color, origin, gender, sooner or later, still have to ascend into the world of Infinity again, just as they descended from the world of Infinity downward, into our world.
When a person fully returns into the world of Infinity, he no longer needs to descend and clothe in a body in our world. Even if he, so to speak, just “ventured out” beyond the boundaries of Machsom, he nevertheless already feels these worlds, the entire creation, everything that exists in the spiritual dimension, and relates to himself, life, and the world differently.
Drawing No. 4
Question: So it turns out that if I’m not depressed, I shouldn’t listen?
We said that depression, that is, a feeling of emptiness, inquisitiveness (it does not matter in what form you feel it)—is what pushes a person forward. If you feel a desire to reveal the Upper world and what’s more, perceive it with absolute clarity, the way we perceive this world and even more clearly, then in the process of your study you will see that the science of Kabbalah is for you.
However, if you feel that there are still other interests, other pleasures in life, then you will slowly walk away. Nevertheless, knowledge that you will gain here will help you to relate to the world differently. You will start seeing why nature acts this way all around you, why countries, objects, people, and nature interact with each other this way.
After all, in our world we see only the outward shell of reality. We do not see forces that are hidden behind nature, society, a human being or the cosmos and we cannot govern all this. We can liken it to embroidery. Take a look at its reverse side with the links, threads extending among all parts of the picture. They can be seen only on the reverse side. Just the same, we do not see the connection among events in our reality and thus it seems to us that “suddenly, something happened for some reason.”
How can I know what would be the result of my action would be? Suddenly, I receive a blow from somewhere—and I do not understand, why. I do not see what I did wrong, why did I deserve this all of a sudden, and for what.
Thus, even those who will not continue and go deeper, upwards, they will nevertheless start seeing a larger, a more profound picture of our world with all of its inner “filling,” forces, causal development, and so on. In either case, it will help a person, he will no longer have a narrow-minded look at his life.
Baal HaSulam writes; “the science of Kabbalah investigates the ways in which a human being can reach the ultimate purpose—similarity with the Upper force.” Ascending the worlds does not mean walking by feet, moving from one place to another, as it is in our world. Ascending the spiritual worlds means to gradually master the properties of these worlds.
In total, there are five worlds (five big levels), each of which consists of five sub-levels. These sub-degrees are called “Partzufim” (“Parzuf,” singular). Each Partzuf consists of five additional sub-sections called Sefirot. So in total, there are 125 degrees from above down, and we have to master them. These are 125 degrees of similarity to the Creator. Ultimately, when a person attains the highest degree he becomes equal to the Creator, the Upper Force, that summarizes everything else.
Drawing No. 5
One shouldn’t be afraid of this seemingly scary proposition: “to be equal to the Creator.” Absolutely similar and equal.
Many sections of the science of Kabbalah are dedicated to the structure of the spiritual system of governance. However, it mostly studies what is necessary for us in order to elevate and start getting into the concealed dimension, the part of the universe that exists beyond the picture of our world.
How do we perceive the world? Within ourselves. We have five senses that somehow grasp external influences. Nothing from the outside gets inside of us. In our eyes, as in our ears, we have membranes. Beyond them, there are sensors that send signals to the brain, where they are compared with memory and its own data, and afterwards, analyzed, and reflected in our brain in a form of the world’s picture.
The world in front of us is actually unknown to us. We only know our reactions on external influences. If my ear-drum is damaged, I do not hear anything. There can be horrible noise from outside, any kind of sound waves, yet I do not hear this. I perceive only the types of vibrations and only in the range that I am attuned to.
Hence, my perception of the world is completely subjective. It tells absolutely nothing about what is happening outside of me. My perception of the world is a result of self-tuning my inner apparatus and nothing more. That is, we grasp our own reactions to something that allegedly happens outside of us.
Drawing No. 6
In general, does anything happen outside of us? There are many theories on this topic. Until the 20th century people believed that the world is as we see it, the world exists by itself regardless of whether I exist in the world of not. Later, as science developed, research of perception organs in animals and plants began.
Scientists came to the conclusion that other types of creatures perceive the world differently, not as we do: in the form of various spots, or a very complex honeycomb picture as in the case of bees, and so on. Different creatures perceive the world absolutely differently, even in our world. It is impossible to say what the world really is.
Later, various theories (for example, Einstein’s theory) appeared stating that the world is not just as we see it. The world’s picture depends on the state of the person perceiving it. If we move at a certain speed relative to an object, we observe it as completely different. Space gets distorted. It compresses, expands, and time changes.
Subsequently, some theories claimed that I do not simply change and thus my perception of the world transforms. Rather, perception of reality is a result of my influence on the world and its—on me. That is, if I change certain senses of mine, then depending on this, I will perceive the world as being different. This theory emerged somewhere in the middle of the 20th century after scientists began to investigate various possibilities of modifying our sense organs and came to the conclusion that we if changed them, we would perceive whatever is happening completely differently.
Later, they started to suspect that if we changed our senses in general, we would feel the world differently. For instance, what today is clear, transparent for us, would be felt as totally impenetrable and on the contrary, we could have senses that would enable us to see, feel, and pass through something that today is impenetrable for us. Everything depends on our senses. We do not know what the world is, what exists around us, outside of a human being.
The science of Kabbalah does not talk at all about the next level of existence. It explains that we are surrounded by Light, that is, by constant Upper Force, and nothing else. We feel everything that happens because we are created this way. We have five senses and a so called gene, Reshimo that consists from two parameters (m/n). A Reshimo constantly develops in us, and calls forth newer and newer desires. Each time these desires tune us to new perceptions of the Light inside us.
Thus, I see virtually even Light that can be compared to a lamp in a film projector. The rest of the picture around me is formed from my properties and my desires.
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
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