October 26, 2014 at 5:30 pm · Filed under Daily Kabbalah Lesson
Question: Do we correct the world at the same time as we correct ourselves?
Dr. Laitman: Yes. We correct ourselves and of course, in the correction of each and every one of us we correct the whole world. This is because it is a closed system, and as such, you can only correct yourself through your participation in every single person. Moreover, through your correction, you already prepare corrections in all of the souls, because you are integrated with everyone.
Therefore, if you correct yourself, then that corrected part of yourself exists in all the other souls and, as a result, they already begin to feel something.
This is because there is no single “I.” “I” is integrated in everyone, and there is no “you”—“you” is integrated in everyone. So if, let’s say, a million people correct themselves, and you are integrated with everyone, you therefore start sensing that same part from those little million people who are incorporated in you. How do you sense it? You suddenly get thoughts and desires about things you’ve never ever dreamed of previously, things you’ve never been attracted to.
That is the interconnectedness. We are in the same system of Adam ha Rishon (The First Man), we can’t escape it, but it’s broken, and that’s why those who correct themselves sentence themselves and the entire world to a scale of merit.
Source: Dr. Michael Laitman, in the lesson on Baal HaSulam’s article The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee): WMV | MP3 (55 min)
Image: "new world-4" by rené van haeften.
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.
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October 7, 2014 at 7:30 pm · Filed under Articles, Books
Kabbalah Unveils the Mystery of What Happens to Your Soul After Your Body Dies
Kabbalah teaches us that our physical body is simply a clothing for or eternal soul, that goes through life cycles as it develops towards its final correction.
What happens to our bodies after death is much like what happens to the wheat seed when it rots in the ground. The physical body disintegrates and we receive a new body. But the soul, the former spiritual potential, still remains in the form of a gene, potential information that transcends from one phase, from the old physical body to the next, through a physical detachment called “death.”
As long as the body has not fully disintegrated, the next cycle cannot start. Only when it disintegrates does the new cycle of evolution begin. That is why Jews bury their dead with- out delay. There are even some practices that enable the new life to begin sooner, such as adding lime to the grave so that the body will rot faster—as though asking for the new phase of correction to begin sooner.
The Secret of Developing Your Soul Without Having to Undergo Death
The transition from life to life requires a complete disintegration, just like the wheat seed, until only the essence remains: a pure power, denied of any physical clothing. This essence is called the reshimo. Between the degrees, between one life cycle and the next, there is a severance, a void. For this reason a person cannot see the transitions from phase to phase. However, a Kabbalist transcends from cycle to cycle thousands of times. He or she controls the transitions, and in each of them leaves behind a reshimo. A Kabbalist doesn’t need to leave the physical body to begin a new life because he or she identifies with the soul, not with the body.
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June 1, 2014 at 7:30 pm · Filed under Articles, Books
The Root of Why a Person Eventually Desires to Want to be Like the Creator
The wisdom of Kabbalah explains that the matter of creation is the desire to receive, and this desire goes through a four phase development, reaching the last phase where it develops it’s own independent desire for the Creator’s status on top of its original fulfillment.
In this last state, the creature receives pleasure from sharing the Creator’s status, and indulges in it. Thus, the creature indulges in two pleasures: the pleasure that comes from the Creator, and the pleasure that comes from sharing the Creator’s status. This state of being is called Ein Sof (No End), and refers to a state where there are no limitations on the desire.
This does not refer to distance, time or space in the physical sense. Rather, this is an observation that pertains to the nature of the desire, meaning that the desire itself is unlimited.
Upon receiving these pleasures, the creature finds once more that there is a source of the pleasure. It discovers that the Giver is the source of the pleasure, and feels itself as the receiver. This time the sensation is valid because the will to receive in this state is the creature’s own, not one that came to it from the Creator.
Consequently, the creature feels that it wants to escape its own desire. It shuns it, and does not want to belong to its own desire any longer. The rejection that it feels toward its own desire induces it to “restrict” it (avoid using it). The desire is still there, but now the creature refrains from using it. Hence, the sensation of fulfillment—the pleasure—ceases.
Have You Ever Wondered How the Soul Comes to Be?
Having remained with a craving, the creature resolves to reach the status of the Creator, the only status that the creature now wishes to have—that of the Giver. It senses that it must give to the Creator without receiving any reward for itself. From this point onward, all its actions will be aimed solely to attain this goal.
To reach this objective, the creature executes a complex series of operations: It builds a chain of concealments (coverings) on the Upper Light, called “worlds” (the Hebrew word for “world” is Olam, which stems from the word Haalama, concealment). At the bottom of the chain of worlds stands “this world.” Because the process that created the creature was comprised of five parts, the lessening of the Upper Light occurs through five degrees of concealment, five worlds whose names are Adam Kadmon, Atzilut, Beria, Yetzira, and Assiya.
In the process of constructing these worlds, the creature builds a surrounding environment for itself. In the world Atzilut, the will to receive is split in two: an inner part—soul–and an outer part—environment (surroundings), in which the soul operates. This stage still does not pertain to our world.
As a result of later events, the soul and its environment will experience a process of shattering, and consequently decline several degrees down to the degree of “this world.” Only now begins the formulation of the matter that makes up our world.
How Spirituality Relates to Our World
From this stage onwards, from the broken will to receive, begins the historic evolution of the material world we are familiar with. Once the universe has been created, the still (inanimate), vegetative, and the animate degrees are made, and following them, the speaking (human) degree is formed (Figure 5).
At its preliminary evolutionary stage, humanity has physical desires for sustenance, reproduction, and family. The body always has these elementary needs to sustain itself; we would need them even if we lived alone on an island.
The second stage in our evolution features a growing desire for wealth, followed by a desire for power and respect. These drives for wealth, power, and respect are considered “social desires,” thus called for two reasons:
A) We absorb these desires from our social environment. Had we lived alone, we would not want them.
B) These desires can only be realized within a social framework.
The final evolutionary stage is the craving for knowledge and erudition. We want more and more knowledge, and want to know and research everything–hence the evolution of science.
Today, as we are nearing the conclusion of this evolution, which has taken us thousands of years, we are beginning to realize that it really did not yield anything. We find ourselves in a unique situation: we want to be filled with pleasures, but can’t find around us any sources of true pleasure. Additionally, we cannot accurately define what it is we want. Thus, we find ourselves perplexed and disoriented, like lost children, not knowing which way to turn. Although we want something, we don’t know what it is or where to find it.
Why a Person Awakens to Want Spirituality
We assign the word, “heart,” to the sum of desires that have evolved in us through our life cycles: physical desires, social desires, and the desire for knowledge. Opposite these desires stands “the point in the heart,” a “speck” of a new desire that evolves above all other desires. In fact, the point in the heart is the awakening desire to know the Upper Force, and it is the awakening of this desire that brings one to the wisdom of Kabbalah as a means to realize this desire.
The awakening of the point in the heart brings confusion, a by-product of this point’s origins in the Upper World. The laws of the Upper World pertain to a reality where time, space, and motion do not apply.
Naturally, our brains are arranged so that we always think in terms of time, space, and motion. But in this new stage, we begin to feel that what determines everything is how we personally sense reality, and that reality in and of itself is unchanging.
Thus, we gradually come to sense that reality is static and that time, space, and motion don’t really exist at all. We begin to realize that all our past experiences happened only within our sensations, that everything depends on how much we have cultivated our abilities to sense.
We need time to adjust to the concept that nothing changes except the measure by which we open our “tools of sensation.” When we have done that, we will begin to sense the world we live in very naturally, simply, without any limitations, preconceptions, rules, oppression, coercion, or exterior pressures.
The point in the heart is the beginning of the desire for spirituality. Today, relatively few people are at this stage, but their numbers are increasing all the time. Eventually, every human being must come to the point where a craving for the Creator is uppermost, a point initiated by the above-mentioned envy, meaning the inherent need in every creature to reach the status of the Creator.
Kabbalah: The Manual for How to Reach the Creator
We must understand that when we said that the Creator is good, we meant that the Creator created us with the intention of bringing us to the best possible state of being, i.e. the Creator’s own state. Hence, this is the state to which we must be brought. Any lesser state than this one will therefore not be considered adequate. It follows that the purpose of Creation is to allow us to reach the status of the Creator.
In order to reach the level of the Creator, however, we must come to feel that our desire is totally opposite that of the Creator, that the Creator wants only to give, and that we want only to receive. This is the emptiness and darkness of the Kli (vessel) as opposed to the Light. Acknowledging this oppositeness builds us as creatures. For us to know the Creator, we must first know the opposite state from his, the “anti-Creator,” a state of unbearable torments that poses a big question mark about our ability to endure these torments.
It is fair to say that we haven’t yet begun the process of knowing the anti-Creator. To feel our complete oppositeness from the Creator, we will have to emotionally decline to much lower degrees. The wisdom of Kabbalah is surfacing now because it is impossible to experience these states physically, and Kabbalah is a means of easing our way through the states of oppositeness from the Creator, to experience them in our consciousness and our minds, not in our bodies.
We can compare this process to a person in pain. That person can either wait until the pain becomes intolerable and then turn to a physician, or turn to the doctor as soon as the pain appears. In the latter case, early diagnosis of the problem will spare one the suffering that comes with the actual breakout of the disease. In other words, a clever person takes medication as soon as symptoms of an illness appear, thus preventing its onset.
By so doing, one can evolve consciously, through reasoning, and thus the Kli (creature) learns to become aware of its oppositeness from the Light. The wisdom of Kabbalah is a method that helps us evolve through knowledge instead of through pain, and it is appearing today to allow humankind to acknowledge the evil that lies in egoism before it fully manifests itself, inflicting horrendous ruin in all aspects of life.
Hence, the wisdom of Kabbalah as the means to achieve both our evolution and the purpose of Creation should reach all of humanity. The more people engage in Kabbalah, and the more we circulate it throughout the world, the better off we will all be.
“Here Is a Method that Is Helping People Attain Spirituality in This Life” is based on the book, Kabbalah, Science and the Meaning of Life by Dr. Michael Laitman.
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April 25, 2014 at 7:30 pm · Filed under Kabbalistic Sources
Firstly, what is a soul? This is a completely separate question. People say that it exists in the body. But what if we change the body, begin changing and replacing all of its organs?
You know that this is already possible today, and if it impossible then we will be able to replace absolutely everything in 50-100 years. We can already transplant the heart; therefore it’s clear that the soul does not relate to the heart. Neither does it relate to the arms, legs or anything else. Well, perhaps it relates to our head? Let’s suppose that in a few dozen years we will be able to replace the head. What then? Will our memory disappear somewhere? It’s probably recorded here, in the head, so if we change the head, will the memory disappear? Maybe they will put a girl’s memory in me and I will have her memory? Or does this not matter?
Maybe memory is also not stored in the head. It only seems to us that it is stored there just as it seems to us that our feelings are located in the heart. The heart simply restricts and reacts to changes in pressure, and it seems to me, “Oh! I feel it in my heart.” But in reality this feeling is not in the heart. All feelings are completely not in the heart. An engine can work instead of the heart, and I will feel all the same. The same thing is true for memory.
What about the soul? Where is it located? Is it in the body?
Let us change the body, change everything, transplant all the organs; will it change then or not? Where is it, this soul? Maybe if I cut a piece of flesh out of me then I will simultaneously remove the soul? I will take another organ from someone else and transplant someone else’s soul, and then will we be able to implant souls? This already becomes interesting. Maybe if I put a couple of souls into myself then I will live longer?
In other words, in principle, if we delve into these questions, we find that we completely do not understand anything about them.
In Baal HaSulam’s article “Introduction to the Book of Zohar,” he tries to slightly explain it to us. Baal HaSulam says that the soul is a part of the Creator in man. What does “a part of the Creator in man” mean? This means that I somehow chop off a piece from the Creator (the quality of love and bestowal) and take it for me, and the same for every one of us, right?
As a result each one of us has a piece of the Creator. Where is this piece located? For some reason I don’t see this piece in any of you. You all don’t look anything like people who contain a piece of the Creator. And the same goes for me. We do not have anything eternal and perfect. Something that’s chopped off from Him is located inside of me? A piece means that it was torn off or somehow separated from Him? And so, the question we have to clarify is: what does “a part” mean, where is it placed in me, why do I need it, where can I discover it, what should I do with it, and so on.
These questions are quite complicated. Baal HaSulam answers them in “Introduction to the Book of Zohar,” and they are also dealt with in an easier, step-by-step manner in the Free Kabbalah Course.
The Free Kabbalah Course is based on the articles of Baal HaSulam and provides step-by-step guided learning from experienced Kabbalah instructors of Kabbalah’s basic concepts based in Baal HaSulam’s articles. Baal HaSulam was the first Kabbalist in history who wrote articles not only for Kabbalists, but for the broad public, in order to explain Kabbalah’s fundamentals, because he understood the need that would emerge in humanity to answer deeper questions about life’s meaning and purpose. Therefore, if you’re interested in such topics, we recommend taking the free course and start learning about the world around you and inside you anew. Click the banner below to sign up for the free course …
