January 8, 2025
Archive for October, 2014
October 13, 2014 at 7:30 pm · Filed under Articles, Books
Why One Soul Makes Up Reality
The structure of creation is a lot simpler than we think: Everything happens within one’s soul. The soul feels within it the Creator, itself, and the connection between them.
The soul is the only thing that was ever created, and it is all that exists besides the Creator. That soul doesn’t feel anything outside itself and is only aware of its inner world. It is called Adam or Adam ha Rishon (first man), and it is divided into many parts. Each part is an organ of the body of the first man. The soul is, in fact, the very same will to receive delight and pleasure. Its parts, called “unique souls,” are desires for reception of pleasure.
Why the First Soul Shattered into Many Parts
Each soul contains the 613 desires that the collective soul of the first man had before it sinned and broke into many pieces. In Kabbalah, a sin means receiving pleasure for our own delight, as opposed to receiving to bring contentment to the Creator. That was also the sin of Adam ha Rishon. As a result of his sin, his soul was divided into 600,000 separate parts, which came to be 600,000 individual souls. Each of these 600,000 souls consisted of 613 parts, also called desires. Those desires fell 125 degrees down from their original status, called the “root of the soul.” The last degree to which they fell is called “this world,” and it is the lowest spiritual degree of the soul. From that low state a person must correct his or her soul until it returns to its highest state, to the root of the soul. It must rise through the 125 degrees by a gradual correction of the 613 desires.
What Sin Really Is and How It Relates to the Soul and Freedom of Choice
Adam’s sin is misunderstood by us, as is the case with all the terms that take on a physical meaning in our world. Although the Torah seems to use the language of people, it really speaks of a different matter altogether, not about the issues between people. That is why there are misconceptions in the interpretation of the term sin.
Read the rest of this entry »
October 12, 2014 at 7:30 pm · Filed under Articles, Books, Israel
Kabbalah: A Practical Science to Arrange Reality Beneficially
Kabbalah is a practical, up-to-date science that answers everything a person looks for in life. It is time to reveal the secret wisdom to everyone. The wisdom of Kabbalah is becoming a practical science that anyone can learn to apply and use for his or her own needs. That is what Kabbalists have always been writing, and that is what The Book of Zohar says as well. Today, we are obliged to recognize the wisdom of the Kabbalah and study it to control reality by ourselves, according to its own instruction.
The Special Role of Jews According to Kabbalah
Kabbalah is a wisdom meant to lead the entire reality, which is meant for all people, not only Jews. However, there is an order of development. We Jews, the “chosen people,” have to be the first to get to know the forces that come from the upper world and use them correctly, in order to convey that knowledge to the rest of the world and thereby conduct the entire reality. That is the Kabbalistic definition of being chosen. We must be the first to study it and pass it on to the rest of humankind. The progress of the Jews determines the progress of all the others.
According to the plan of the upper world, all creatures without exception must rise from their present situation to a much higher degree, and that can be done only through the study of the upper force and the connection with it. We can change our lives while in this world. We can avoid unnecessary pains and attain happiness, wholeness, and eternity. Then, there won’t be any difference between life and a physical death, for we will be living in both worlds at once.
We Jews have a unique role: we have to find the way to rise from the corporeal life to a higher degree, to the spiritual life, and we have to show the world how it is done. That is the only thing that we are chosen for. In the meantime, we are not carrying out our mission, and that is why we look so bad and unworthy in the eyes of the nations. Because we have special souls, we have to be the first to work on attaining that knowledge and accordingly do what we must. We have no advantage over anyone, but only in that we have to start studying about the upper worlds, about the force, which comes from the upper world, immerse ourselves in that work first, and pass it on to all the other nations. This is what all the books of the prophets and Kabbalah say.
Read the rest of this entry »
October 12, 2014 at 9:00 am · Filed under Video
Dr. Michael Laitman discusses what is so unique about Jewish holidays in 2014 as opposed to Jewish holidays in other years with Like a Bundle of Reeds executive editor, Chaim Ratz.
Like a Bundle of Reeds is a TV series originally broadcast on JLTV based on the book of the same title. It deals with the following topics:
- Are we Jews different from other nations?
- Why was I born Jewish?
- Why is there anti-Semitism?
- Could the Holocaust happen again?
- What can I do?
- Why are there Jews?
October 11, 2014 at 10:00 pm · Filed under Torah Portion
Genesis, 1:1 – 6:85This Week’s Torah Portion | October 12 – October 18, 2014 – Tishrei 18 – Tishrei 24, 5774
In A Nutshell
Beresheet (In the Beginning) is the first portion in the Torah (Pentateuch). It tells the story of the creation of the world in six days, and the rest on the seventh day. It talks about the creation of the man, his arrival at the Garden of Eden, and the creation of the woman. The portion also narrates the story of the sin of the tree of knowledge, Cain and Abel, the generations from Cain to Lamech, the ten generations from Adam to Noah, the corruption that engulfed their generations, and the renewed hope that emerged with the birth of Noah.
Commentary by Dr. Michael Laitman
Beresheet contains more stories than any other portion in the Torah. In many ways it is also the deepest of the portions, as it discusses the basis of our being—the creation of the soul.
The common soul was created out of the will to receive delight and pleasure, or simply, “the will to receive.” That will is the soul’s core, and it’s affected by six qualities: Hesed, Gevura, Tifferet, Netzah, Hod, and Yesod. These qualities penetrated the substance—the will to receive—and designed it in synchrony with the upper force, the Creator. The reason why man is called Adam is that the word Adam comes from the word Adamah, from the verse, Adameh la Elyon (“I will be like the most high,” Isaiah, 14:14), since he is similar to the Creator, the sublime bestowal, sublime love, to that upper force that gave birth to it.
Adam is the structure of the soul that is equal in form to the Creator and is in Dvekut [adhesion] with Him in the Garden of Eden. A garden means “desire.” The garden is the part of the creature, Adam’s substance—the will to receive. Eden marks the degree of bestowal, degree of Bina. Adam, who is on the degree of Bina, is in the Garden of Eden.
This does not pertain to our world or to the universe we know, but rather to the common soul that the Creator created. From the very beginning, the common soul undergoes a special preparation, the sin, because at its inception it was adhered to the upper force, which means that it had no authority of its own, nothing to its name, or any sense of independent existence. In a sense it is like an embryo in its mother’s womb—on the one hand it exists, on the other hand it is part of its mother, and each of its actions is ruled by its superior.
Read the rest of this entry »
October 10, 2014 at 7:30 pm · Filed under Articles, Books
What Are “Supernatural Powers?”
It all started with believing in supernatural powers. People believe that there are individuals who are imbued with supernatural powers who can influence others and foresee and control the future. Those people are willing to spend fortunes on healing, defense from the “evil eye,” and fortunetelling. They believe that evil thoughts can harm another person and that the damage can be so great that it will be beyond repair and might haunt a person forever, causing damage in every aspect of life, including business and family.
The Power of Human Thought
When someone comes to me with a complaint about suffering from an “evil eye,” that person is in fact trying to say that someone influenced him or her badly, meaning someone acted in a harmful way through the power of thought. That person also believes that I hold the power to neutralize that evil thought through my own power of thought. If this person asks to neutralize another person’s thoughts, then he or she believes in the power of thought and that thoughts do in fact act and come true in our world.
The Most Powerful Force in the World
The power of thought is the single most powerful force in reality. Our experience tells us that the more subtle and elusive a power is, the stronger and less limited it is. Today, there are even scientists that recognize this. Radio waves, magnetic and electric fields, radioactivity, and gravity are all examples of forces that we know of only by their actions and the phenomena they induce in our world. There are, however, forces such as the power of the thought whose actions we cannot even identify.
Read the rest of this entry »
« Previous entries ·
Next entries »
