Entries in the 'Philosophy' Category

Use Your Profession In Philosophy To Explain Kabbalah

scientific-theories-cannot-prove-the-existence-of-godThree questions I received about psychology and philosophy as professions:

Question: Today many people work in the fields of psychology, including various techniques for training the mind and soul and for self-improvement. Will these professions be less in demand when the science of Kabbalah becomes revealed? Will all these people be left without work?

My Answer: The profession that will remain is materialistic psychology: the psychology that is founded on real scientific, experimental results.

Question: What is materialistic psychology? I study psychology, but we have not studied anything in this area. Where can I practice and study materialistic psychology?

My Answer: It is the same psychology as what you study, but it is based only on experimental results, without any philosophy and assumptions.

Question: At the Congress you said that you advise people to get a practical profession and you are against all kinds of philosophy. So what should I do if I’m already a student of philosophy and only have to pass the final exams? I live in Israel.

My Answer: You have to find the junction between Kabbalah and philosophy and explain Kabbalah through philosophy. I have some students, including my younger daughter, who have completed studies in philosophy departments. We will find a use for your skills, so go ahead and complete your studies.

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Like Kabbalah, De Chardin’s Philosophy Speaks About Humanity’s Desire To Reunite Into One Soul

Questions on Surrounding LightPierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955, a French theologist and philosopher, one of the developers of the Noosphere theory): His theory is founded on the ideas of Plotinus (205-270) about the emanation of the One (an incognizable Primary Essence, characterized as Goodness) into the Mind and the universal Soul, with the consequent transformation again into the One. According to Plotinus, first the One exudes the universal Mind, which consists of a world of ideas, then the Mind produces a universal Soul, which splits into separate souls and creates a sensitive world. Matter emerges as the lowest degree of the emanation. When the creatures of the sensitive world reach a certain degree of development, they recognize their own incompleteness and strive for a union. Subsequently, they attain adhesion with the One.

According to de Chardin, man strives to enter the sphere of the Mind and to dissolve in God. Evolution did not end with the human being as an individual, but rather proceeds as humanity unites into societies with a growing differentiation of individual functions and as a result, a growing degree of interconnection.

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Kabbalah Is A Science About The Upper World

First Become a Scientist, and Then You Can Speak Against ScienceTwo questions I received on Kabbalah’s relation to other sciences:

Question: When you say Kabbalah is a science, do you mean in the ancient sense of the word? That is, Kabbalah is a body of knowledge (either practical or theoretical wisdom)? Or are you using it in a more modern way: Kabbalah is like chemistry, biology, and geology?

My Answer: Kabbalah reveals the nature of the Upper Light to us. A spark of this Light caused an explosion that created our entire Universe and everything that fills it: the still, vegetative, and animate levels of nature, including the animate part of humans.

By studying the foundations of everything that exists – matter (desire) and the Light (pleasure), we learn the basis of all the objects and phenomena in our world. For more on this, see the article, “Kabbalah as a Root of All Sciences,” and Part 1 of Talmud Eser Sefirot – Inner Observation.

Question: Kabbalah is not philosophy, but is one philosophy more compatible with it than another? Are there any truths found in philosophy even if they only speak of this world?

My Answer: There is no truth in philosophy because it engages in questions that it has invented for itself, or it tries to answer questions based on suppositions that are unrelated to practical experience (it tries to speak about the “abstract form”).

Even when philosophy speaks about our world, it doesn’t reason about it practically. That is to say, it speaks about something as a form or essence that’s separate from matter. Kabbalah, on the other hand, speaks of the form or essence inside matter and about the form of the matter (see the “Introduction to the Book of Zohar”). Therefore, all the philosophical conclusions made throughout all of human history were erroneous at worst, or imprecise at best. See Baal HaSulam’s articles on this topic.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Kabbalah: The Root of All Sciences
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Article: “Kabbalah as a Modern Science”
Chapter from Book Kabbalah Revealed: “The Cradle of Science”
Tal Asher’s Interview with Rav Michael Laitman, PhD
Baal HaSulam Article: “The Wisdom of Kabbalah and Philosophy”

Where to Defend a Dissertation on Kabbalah

Where to Defend a DissertationA question I received: I am one of your students from India. My parents want me to get a PhD, but I’m not sure what to do. When I am not working, I spend my free time studying Kabbalah. If I were to start working on this degree, then I would have to devote my time to something that completely doesn’t interest me.

I thought that perhaps I could compromise with my parents and get a PhD, but on a topic of my choice: “The Application of Kabbalah in Parenting and Education” or something along these lines.

The problem is that our universities in India don’t have a Kabbalah department. They only have philosophy and religion departments. So where can I defend this dissertation?

My Answer: Personally, I defended my dissertation on the topic, “Kabbalah as a Form of Irrational Knowledge,” in IPRAS – the Institute of Philosophy at the Russian Academy of Sciences. You can defend a dissertation on Kabbalah in any philosophy department at any university. Dissertations on Kabbalah are being defended in all Israeli universities at the philosophy departments. We have several Kabbalah doctoral candidates, including my youngest daughter.

In addition, you can find out about defending it in America as well. However, I think that you should be able to come to an agreement on this topic in your university as well. I’m prepared to help you select the topic, choose materials, explain the thesis, and so on. As of today we’ve already published all the principal materials in English.

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Philosophy Has Finally Run Its Course

Philosophy Has Finally Run Its CourseNews Report (translated from www.YNet.co.il): The philosophy department is being closed down! Representatives of the Department of Humanities at Tel Aviv University have announced that they are considering not opening the registration to the Department of Philosophy for the coming school year.

My Comment: We are living in a truly remarkable time! For thousands of years our lives were ruled by human speculation about the essence and meaning of life, and now we are finally reaching the correct conclusion, which coincides with the opinion of Kabbalah – that philosophy has only harmed us all along.

I understand how cruel my words may seem to those who don’t know about the opposition between Kabbalah and philosophy, but I still hope that the closing of the philosophy department at a local university will rouse some interest in you to read Baal HaSulam’s article “The Wisdom of Kabbalah and Philosophy.” To me, an event such as the closing of the philosophy department is a sign from above!

Baal HaSulam. “The Wisdom of Kabbalah and Philosophy” (selected excerpts)

Philosophy has gone through a great deal of trouble to prove that corporeality is the offspring of spirituality and that the soul begets the body – and this is their primary mistake. The meaning of the word “spirituality” has nothing to do with philosophy. How can they discuss something that they have never seen or felt?

Philosophy loves to pride itself in understanding all about His essence. Philosophy has generally worn a mantle that is not its own, for it has pilfered definitions from the wisdom of Kabbalah, and made delicacies with its human understanding. If it had not been for that, they would never have thought of fabricating such acumen.

We will still have to regard only the tangible reality. This erring of separating the operator from the operation comes from the Figurative Philosophy, which insisted on proving that the spiritual act influences the corporeal operation.

The opinion of Kabbalah in this matter is crystal clear, excluding any mixture of philosophy. That is because it is the opinion of the sages of Kabbalah that even the separated spiritual entities, which philosophy denies having any corporeality and displays them as purely conceptual substance, although they are indeed spiritual, more sublime and abstract, consist of a body and soul just like the physical human.

Their thoughts are not our thoughts, for the way of the sages of the Kabbalah is one of finding actual proof of attainment, making its revocation through intellectual pondering impossible.

Philosophy fabricated that the different individuals are not combined materials (Kabbalah believes that everything consists of two forces, the vessel and the Light).

The old philosophy presents three opinions as obstacles before my explanation:
1. Their decision that the power of the human intellect is the eternal soul, man’s essence.
2. Their conjecture that the body is an upshot of the soul.
3. Their saying that spiritual people are simple and not complex.

Not only is it the wrong place to argue with them about their fabricated conjectures, but also their time has already passed and their authority revoked. We should also thank the experts of materialistic psychology for that, having built its plinth on the ruin of the former, winning the public’s favor. Now everyone admits to the nullity of philosophy, for it is not built on concrete foundations.

The old doctrine became a stumbling rock and a deadly thorn to the sages of Kabbalah. Where they should have subdued before the sages of Kabbalah and taken upon themselves abstinence and prudence prior to admittance to even the slightest thing in spirituality, they received what they had wanted easily from the figurative philosophy. Without payment or a price they have watered them from their fountain of wisdom to satiation, and refrained from delving in the wisdom of Kabbalah. As a consequence, the wisdom has almost been forgotten from among Israel.

For that reason we are grateful to materialistic psychology for having beaten it a deadly blow.

Therefore, there was not a salvation for Israel as at the time when the materialistic psychology appeared and struck theological philosophy on its head a lethal blow.

Now, every person who seeks the Lord must bring Kabbalah back to its throne – and restore its past glory.

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