The Sure-Fire Cause & Effect Guide to Revelation

Kabbalah teaches about the cause-and-effect connection between spiritual sources that unite according to absolute laws into one exalted goal: the attainment of the Creator by the created beings existing in this world.

According to Kabbalah, all of humanity and every individual must reach this ultimate point to fully attain the goal and program of Creation. Throughout the generations, individuals have attained a certain spiritual level through individual work. These people, called “Kabbalists,” climbed to the top of the spiritual ladder.

Untangling the Web of Forces that Upholds Our Universe

Every material object and its action, from the smallest to the greatest, is operated by spiritual forces that fill our entire universe. It is as if our universe were resting on a net of forces.

Take, for example, the tiniest living organism whose role is merely to reproduce and sustain its species. Think about how many forces and complex systems function within it, and how many of them remain undetected by the human eye. If we multiply them by the number of organisms living today, and by those that once lived in our universe and in the spiritual worlds, we will then have a vague idea of the vast number of forces and connections that control them.  One can depict the spiritual forces as two interconnected and equal systems.

Discover the Magic Ladder to Spiritual Attainment

The difference between these two interconnected systems is that one comes from the Creator and develops from up downward through all the worlds to our world. The other begins in our world and rises according to the laws that were developed in the first system and now function in the second.

Kabbalah defines the first system as “The order of creation of worlds and Sefirot,” and the second as “The attainments or levels of prophecy and spirit.” The second system teaches that people who wish to attain the ultimate degree should follow the laws of the first system, which are the laws studied in Kabbalah. When one ascends in these degrees, the second factor is born within. This is spirituality.

Meet the Owner of the Ladder

The foremost Kabbalist of our time, Dr. Michael Laitman, introduces the owner of the ladder to spiritual attainment:  Rabbi Yehuda Leib HaLevi Ashlag, often called “Baal HaSulam, (meaning: the owner of the ladder) was given permission to disclose the wisdom of Kabbalah to our generation.  No other Kabbalist received such permission.  No one throughout history has written or explained so clearly what we need in order to carry out and to fulfill the end of correction. Without Baal HaSulam we wouldn’t be able to approach the correction that we are starting to actually fulfill now.  His books are the sources that will be used by the next generation as the ladder upward. We only help everyone find this ladder, come close to it, and start climbing.” [Source: A Ladder Upward by Dr. Michael Laitman]

“How to Get Your Hands on the Spiritual Ladder Anyone Can Climb” is based on the book, Basic Concepts in Kabbalah: Expanding Your Inner Vision by Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Image: "Ladder to heaven?" by Susanne Nilsson.

Ask the Right Questions

According to Kabbalah, there are four mandatory kinds of knowledge to attain. Armed with these four kinds of mandatory knowledge provided by authentic Kabbalah, you will have the tools to live fully and well…

Where Are We From? Where Are We Now? Where Are We Headed?

1.  Creation: The study of Creation and the evolution of the worlds, namely:

• The way the Creator created the worlds with the creatures that populate them through consecutive restrictions;
• The interaction laws between the spiritual and material worlds, and their consequences;
• The goal of man’s creation is to form a system with an illusion of the existence of free will by combining the soul with the body, and by controlling them through nature and the apparent factor of chance with the help of two mutually balanced systems of light and dark forces.

How Can We Operate Reality?

2.  Functioning: The study of the human essence – its interconnection and interaction with the spiritual world. Functioning deals with one’s arrival to – and departure from – this world. It also includes the Upper Worlds’ reactions to our world and towards other human beings, caused by man’s actions. It researches everyone’s individual path, from the creation of worlds to the attainment of the ultimate goal.

Is This Life All There Is?

3.  Incarnations of the Soul: The study of every soul’s essence and its incarnations, as well as our actions in this life and their consequences for subsequent lives. The research of incarnations examines how and why a soul descends to a body, and what determines the acceptance of a certain soul within a certain body.

Incarnations of the soul also deals with the mystery of chance, and researches human history as a result of a certain order and cycles of souls. It also follows this path over 6,000 years and studies the connection of the soul with the general governance of the system of worlds and its cycles of life and death. It also states upon what factors our path in this world depends.

Who Is in Control?

4.  Governance:  The study of our world: inanimate, vegetative, and animate levels of nature, their essence, role, and how they are governed by the spiritual world. It studies the Upper Governance and our perception of nature, time, and space. It researches the Upper Forces that move material bodies, and the way one’s inner force pushes all things, animate and inanimate, to the preordained goal.

“4 Things You Should Know to Live Fully and Well” is based on the book, Basic Concepts in Kabbalah: Expanding Your Inner Vision by Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Image: "Connect 4" by Banalities.

How to Avoid Digging for Fool’s Gold

Can one solve this fundamental puzzle of human life without touching upon the question of its source? Every human being encounters this question. The search for the goal and the meaning of existence is the key question around humankind’s spiritual life. Hence, starting with the second half of the 20th century, we are observing a revival of humanity’s spiritual aspirations.

The technical progress and global catastrophes that gave rise to a variety of philosophies have not brought spiritual fulfillment to humanity. As Kabbalah explains, out of all existing pleasures, our world received only a tiny spark – its presence in corporeal objects is what provides all our worldly pleasures.

In other words, all our pleasant sensations, from whatever source, are caused only by the presence of this spark within them. Throughout our lives, we are placed in a forced quest of new objects of delight, hoping to receive greater and greater pleasures; we do not suspect that they might not be anything but shells.

How to Use the Upper Light to Reveal the Spiritual Motherload

To receive absolute fulfillment, we must acknowledge the need for spiritual elevation above matter. There are two paths in our world to reach that goal: the path of the spiritual ascent (Kabbalah), and the path of suffering.

The path of Kabbalah is a path of independent and voluntary realization of the need to gradually terminate egoism, when the Upper Light is used to perceive egoism as evil.

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A Hidden Hand behind Anti-Semitism

When I read the newspapers and listen to the radio, I see that the nations of the world treat me differently because I belong to the Jewish people. The attitude is laden with hostile, anti-Semitic emotions.

Even within Israel and around it there are peoples who wish to destroy, or at the very least, subdue the Jewish people. Our challenge is to treat this situation as one that comes to us from the Creator and that it is happening in our favor, so that we will change our line of thinking and the way we work. It is happening so that we will rise above our normal human reaction, from an instinctive reaction to what our eyes see to questioning the reasons for what is happening around us.

If I do not relate to the phenomenon of anti-Semitism as it is, but to the reason behind it, I will then be operating in the spiritual degree called “humanity.” This is the only way for me to develop an ability to understand the essence of events. Instead of running away from situations, like an animal runs from a hunter, I can actually change external causes.

Kabbalah Unveils the Purpose behind all Human Suffering

There is only one reason for all the pains of this world: to make us wonder at their meaning, to raise us from a level of aimlessly suffering to a level where we think about and analyze the reason and the purpose for the pains. The spreading of the wisdom of Kabbalah brings the purpose and cause of the pains to the public awareness. By doing so, we can shorten the amount of time it takes for every person to understand the cause for suffering and realize that there is no pain without a reason, that it comes from the Creator. The purpose of the operations that the Creator performs on us is to develop in us, through a series of negative situations, a grown-up attitude toward pain. Therefore, we should not escape them, only use them and see them as a gift from the Creator.

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Anyone With a Desire for Spirituality Should Study Kabbalah

The study of Kabbalah was forbidden to the masses for many generations. Kabbalists prohibited the study to women, children, and men under forty (in Kabbalah, age forty signifies intelligence—Bina—when a person already understands that the purpose of life is giving, something the public cannot under- stand because they are still at a beastly level). In other words, this kind of learning was forbidden to those who hadn’t evolved enough to be able to study Kabbalah.

However, as soon as there is a spark, a sensation of the appearance of a soul, one must study Kabbalah. When Rav Kook was asked, “Who can study Kabbalah?” he replied simply, “Anyone who wants to!” Desire is the one and only requirement for the development of the soul.

Baal HaSulam writes that if a person is ready to study Kabbalah, but refrains from doing so, then that person is the reason for all the disasters because he or she did not contribute his or her share to the management of creation. The collective law of reality is built in such a way that if a person must take an active part in the leadership of reality and refrains from doing so, the rough part of nature comes in its place. That switch between the force of humanity and the force of nature is felt in our world as tragedies and pains. As soon as we begin to feel a desire for the Creator, we must learn how to correct ourselves and thus change reality. If we refrain from doing that, we bring about more evil in the world.

Kabbalah Today & the Special Significance of Israel

Throughout history, Kabbalists were the ones to define the edification of the nation. For example, during the British mandate in Israel (1917–1948), Baal HaSulam tried to publish a Kabbalistic magazine. He saw that the time had come when the public wanted to approach the spiritual degree that only a chosen few had reached before. Hence, he tried to explain to the people about the Kabbalah. But there was still a need to convey it in a simple and easily understandable manner.

Why is this edification needed now, while it was not needed a hundred or two hundred years ago? Only after the last deportation in the previous century, and the return to the land of Israel, did a new era begin in the evolution of the souls. When the Creator brought us back to the land of Israel, He also brought us back to the spiritual soil, giving us an opportunity for spiritual operations and sublime attainments. That process is only just beginning; hence the new need to explain Kabbalah to the entire generation today.

In the past there wasn’t a need to study Kabbalah. Baal HaSulam wrote that there were many people who attained high spiritual degrees through the written and oral Torah alone. But Kabbalah books contain a greater illumination of upper light, which can assist one in the correction process. Though all holy books were written from the highest spiritual degree of the “end of correction,” the Kabbalah books that were written for our generation have a unique shine to them, instead of a general illumination, because they were written especially for those who want spiritual elevation in our time.

Why Everybody Will Eventually Study Kabbalah

Kabbalists do not say that we must teach everyone, but in our time in history it must be understood that Kabbalah is a method of development that obligates everyone. People often come, listen, and leave, and by doing so they prepare themselves for the next stage in the correction. Reading the books of Kabbalah is also a correction, and the rest is up to the Creator.

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