Question: There are students who only just finished the very first Education Center course and they’re delving deeper into the material. Toward the end of the first course, they learned that the group is the collection of points in the heart (i.e. people with desires for spirituality), and now you’re saying that the group is humanity as a whole, and that we have to go out and teach them. Can you elaborate on this?

Dr. Michael Laitman: When we study the breaking of the vessels, we learn that through the breaking, all the sparks, the tiny lights, entered all the Kelim (vessels). Afterwards, in our world, out of all these Kelim, only the Kelim that had stronger sparks were sorted out, surfaced, and remained on top.

As the light impacts our entire world, meaning all the souls, only those people in whom there are stronger sparks are waking up. They begin to correct themselves, starting with Adam HaRishon (i.e. the first known Kabbalist, who wrote the book The Angiel Raziel), Noah, and the others we learn about up until Abraham, with Abraham’s group that went out of Babylon.

Then those people in whom these sparks were big, stronger, burning, they rise up, even with a tiny touch of the general light that was illuminating on everyone. So they came out and from them came the people who are called the first Kabbalists, and they started sorting out and scrutinizing this Kli (vessel). That is what happened through history.

Other people came later, over other 1,000s of years. We have had almost 6,000 years now of sorting out of Kelim since the first Kabbalist, Adam HaRishon. Today, it is the year 5774 in the count. So for many years now the Kelim have been sorting out. What’s left is Kelim in which the Reshimot are very dormant. The light from above is not enough to wake them up. So for that there is a crisis from below, and then these Kelim wake up.

There are eras that precede our era, when people would wake up just from the light that illuminated on them from above. Now, we have come to the time that is called “the days of the Messiah,” i.e. the general correction of all the remaining ones. Thus, they awaken through the crisis, from an awakening which pushes them from below.

There is a difference in the method here, because if the souls were to react to the light that illuminated on them, they would then be drawn to the wisdom of Kabbalah, as we are (i.e. as it is for people with points in the heart, desires for spirituality)—to know Godliness, to know the Upper Force. What is important for them is what is beyond this life. The rest of the souls are not waking up because their sparks are inside the will to receive—they did not burst from within the desire outward. For them they awaken only out of troubles that impact the will to receive. It goes like this:

A person has a will to receive, and in the will to receive there’s a spark—either above, in the middle, or below. If the spark is above, then the surrounding light [Ohr Makif – OM in the above diagram] influences the spark. That is number 1 in the diagram. People who have spark number 1, they wake up and they want the wisdom of Kabbalah. These are the first Kabbalists, the ones who lived until our time, meaning from Adam—from years zero to 5774, more or less. Well, maybe not so much in recent years.

Then come us, i.e. those who study the wisdom of Kabbalah, number 2 in the diagram. Our spark is deeper into the will to receive, how do you desire.  We woke up after the first Kabbalists. We come from a different era.

The last ones, number 3 in the diagram, are the rest of humanity, the 7 billion, humanity. So they don’t wake up from the surrounding light that influences them. For them something else has been prepared—the crisis, the negative force, that affects them. That’s where we are.

It depends on which force by which a person is awakened. So we need to understand that by them waking up from the crisis and that’s why we need to reach them with the remedy, because they care about their lives here in this world. They’re not even drawn… the spark is so deep inside that it doesn’t pull them up. They don’t arrive at questions: ‘What am I living for?’ ‘What’s life for?’ ‘What are the forces that act on me?’ “What’s going to happen?’ ‘What is the source of life?’ They don’t ask that. They ask about their lives.

Therefore, instead of the telling them about the wisdom of Kabbalah, about the sparks, about our souls, because the connection between the Upper Light and these sparks is the wisdom of Kabbalah. That’s what we explain here—the world, Partzufim, Sefirot, how this desire wakes up…

…meaning here we explain that there is a desire, and you have a spark, and that spark, through the light that reforms, becomes a Masach [screen]. Then, it is about how the two begin to connect here at the point of unification, the light and the desire, through the Masach [screen]. That is the wisdom of Kabbalah, i.e. it is something entirely different to what we teach. The wisdom of Kabbalah is what those with a clearer spark learn, and the wisdom of connection is what those in whom the spark did not wake up learn.

Basically, we learn the same method, except the approach to them is similar to approaching children. We have to explain to them similarly to how you speak to a child, e.g. “if you are a good student you will be able to buy a big car,” or “if you eat well, you will be strong,” etc. You know these things—the things you say to children—you have to lure them, entice them into something. But then their spark grows clear and they shift into studying the way people with sparks do, and begin to talk about the wisdom of Kabbalah.

I therefore think that in our upcoming ONE Convention, we have to talk about how the wisdom of connection and wisdom of Kabbalah are the same wisdom. There is nothing that separates them, i.e. where they do not belong to each other. It is just two approaches to the correction of the world. The wisdom of connection is what we use for the time being until people become closer. Then, they will gradually understand that it is actually speaking about one desire, one soul, scrutinizing the Upper Force that must now appear among us, and that is where we are going.