Questions I received on negative experiences along the path:

Question: I often feel as though I was doing better with confidence and connecting with the Creator before I studied Kabbalah - back then I relied on my instincts and followed my gut, and it worked. When I look back, I was doing the “right” things. Now, I analyze things more and find myself more critical than in the past. Please help. Is this part of the process? I feel I need to find more of a balance.

My Answer: You will find information about this in many articles: you are being taken out of your confidence and balance on purpose, in order to reach a need for the Creator’s revelation. See the article, “There is None Else Beside Him.”

Question: One moment I am joyful and the second I feel pain and sorrow. And I feel a burden on my back due to the responsibility I have as a member of the group towards the group and the whole world. What can I do to lessen this pain?

My Answer: Don’t forget that this feeling is awakened in you by the Creator in order to direct you toward correction.

Question: Is it normal that while studying Kabbalah, sometimes I feel hatred toward what I am studying?

My Answer: Sometimes this happens, and it is natural because you are studying how to hate your present qualities. Hence, as an egoist, you begin to hate Kabbalah and myself, who tells you about this.

Question: Massive layoffs are expected due to the global financial crisis. However, in the Bnei Baruch group, if a person wants to study, he has to work. If a student gets fired and is unable to find a new job, will he have to leave the group and completely devote himself to finding a job?

My Answer: No, but he is obligated to devote some amount of time to job hunting. Or, if he receives unemployment aid, like everyone else, then he should spend all day working at Bnei Baruch on materials for dissemination. This way he will be of benefit to people.

Related Material:
Laiman.com Post: We Can Develop Without Waiting for the Suffering to Come
Laitman.com Post: Why Does the Creator Give Us So Much Suffering In This World?
Shamati #4 “What Is the Reason for the Heaviness One Feels when Annulling before the Creator in the Work?”
Attaining the Worlds Beyond: Chapter 4 “Nullifying Our Personal Interests”

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News Report (from Spiegel Online): This year’s winner of the Nobel Prize for Economics, Paul Krugman, has joined the chorus of those criticizing German government inaction in the face of the financial crisis. He spoke to SPIEGEL about the price of doing nothing and why he thinks Berlin has misjudged the severity of the slump.

Krugman: “Europe has a major coordination problem: The trade-off between deficits and output is much less favorable for any country acting unilaterally than for the EU as a whole. So cooperation is essential. But if Germany, the largest economy, refuses to go along, there will be no cooperation. Events have given Germany a strategic policy importance disproportionate to its size.

SPIEGEL: What’s the price of inaction?

Krugman: A very, very severe slump, with worse unemployment than at any time since the 1930s — and quite possibly a Japanese-type lost decade to follow.

My Comment: The European Union must make a fateful decision. If the EU countries will take the path of unification, they will become the world’s largest economy, as well as the cultural center of the world. On the other hand, if every separate country will try to solve the problems on its own, this will bring them all to a collapse so great, none of them will ever recover from it! It’s because this will set them against the law of nature, which is driving all humanity toward globalization.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Will Countries Be Able to Work Together to Save the World from the Crisis?
Laitman.com Post: Why Did America Unite Better Than Europe?

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A question I received: I just read how you were able to defend your dissertation on Kabbalah by writing against something you believe, which is an interesting strategy. I am pursuing my PhD in Education at Walden University and after four years now, I have finally come in contact with a mentor who understands my goal in obtaining this doctoral; I can now approach my research in Education by designing a program of “Metaphysical Education: an Emphasis on Kabbalah Studies.” It is good to know you are so willing to assist those of us on this educational attainment path and should I need your help, I hope you will be there for assistance as well. I must say, your books, the articles, website links, etc., are a tremendous help.

My Answer: In this case, the goal justifies the means. The PhD title gives one the opportunity to give lectures at universities about authentic Kabbalah.

It also took me a long time to find someone who would supervise my dissertation, and I still had to “fix” things according to his instructions. It’s possible that you will also have to make certain “corrections” that your academic director will insist on. But there’s no sense prolonging it, since the dissertation materials will be buried in an archive anyway. Kabbalah is probably the only field where the student pursuing a degree may understand more than his academic director.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Where to Defend a Dissertation on Kabbalah
Laitman.com Post: First Become a Scientist, and Then You Can Speak Against Science
Laitman.com Post: The Irrationality of Kabbalah
The Path of Kabbalah: “About the Study”
Baal HaSulam Article: “Time to Act”
Baal HaSulam Article: “Messiah’s Horn”

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News Report (from The New York Times): “Blind, Yet Seeing: The Brain’s Subconscious Visual Sense” A patient whose visual lobes in the brain were destroyed was able to navigate an obstacle course and recognize fearful faces subconsciously.

“You just had to see it to believe it,” said Beatrice de Gelder, a neuroscientist at Harvard and Tilburg University in the Netherlands, who with an international team of brain researchers reported on the patient on Monday in the journal Current Biology. (A video is online.) The study, which included extensive brain imaging, is the most dramatic demonstration to date of so-called blind sight, the native ability to sense things using the brain’s primitive, subcortical — and entirely subconscious — visual system.

My Comment: As I’ve already said, we actually see and feel everything within ourselves, and there’s nothing on the outside. Hence, a person may have no eyes, but still be able to see. So why do we need eyes? In order to have the illusion that there is something in front of us!

Baal HaSulam writes in item 34 of the “Preface to the Book of Zohar”:

Take our sense of sight for example: we see a great world before us. But in fact, we do not see all that except in our own interior. In other words, there is a sort of a photographic machine in our hindbrain that portrays everything that appears to us, and nothing outside of us. Moreover, the Creator has made for us there, in our brain, a sort of a polished mirror that inverts everything that we see, so that we see it outside of us, outside of our brain, in front of our face.

Despite the fact that what we see outside us is not a real thing, we should still thank His providence for having made that polished mirror in our brain, enabling us to see and perceive every thing outside us. This is because by that, He had given us the power to research every thing with clear perception and knowledge, and to measure every object from within and from without. Without it, we would not have most of our knowledge and perception.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: The Eyes Can Hear (and Smell)
Laitman.com: The Mysteries of Our Perception
Laitman.com Post: All the Pictures We See Are Formed Inside Our Brains
Kabbalah, Science and the Meaning of Life: “Patterns of Perception”

 

 Introduction to Kabbalah [8:49m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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Questions I received on questions and answers:

Question: I am confused about how you can give one answer to many questions asked by different people. You treat them as if they are robots, and you give everyone the same answer: that they have got it all wrong and that their path will clear up with time. I agree that there is a lot of confusion along the way, but how can you assume this kind of authority? After all, every soul is different from the others, and their paths are also different. Just as there cannot be two identical people, there can’t be one answer for everyone. I think that you have to open up to people a bit more.

My Answer: Man is the desire to enjoy. Everything is determined only by the size and quality (type) of the desire. Generally speaking, everyone develops in the same way – just like it happens with children’s physical development. There is only one Law. And just like with children, the differences are insignificant. The method is the same for everyone, and I was not the one who created it. The Teacher (me) explains the method and the rules of spiritual development; he gives answers and advice, and the student applies them to himself. Through the searching and the confusion, called “the Creator’s concealment,” one seeks the opportunity to reveal the Creator by changing himself.

I understand your complaints about me and about the path, but you will have to accept the conditions of spiritual development - “from darkness to the Light.” Continue reading and you will see why it cannot be different.

Question: Sometimes people ask you simple questions on the blog, but your answers are so complicated that it seems as if you’re not answering the questions directly. Instead the answers always come with broad, lengthy and complicated explanations. Is there a reason for this? I sincerely hope that you will have the courage to post this question.

My Answer: It’s because I’m either unable to give a simpler answer, though I do try, or you don’t understand the depth of the question and the answer.

Question: When I have questions, should I look for the answers only through my study? Or should I ask them and make them public? Or can I combine these two alternatives?

My Answer: By making efforts, you evoke the influence of the Correcting Light (Ohr Makif) upon you. As a result of Its influence, you will start understanding and seeing through the matter of our world.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: An Invitation to Ascend - the Purpose of This Blog
Laitman.com Post: Try to Answer Your Own Questions
“Attaining the Unity of the Universe” - Lesson of July 7, 2004

 

 What Is Light in Kabbalah? [4:41m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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Three questions I received on various spiritual practices:

Question: These days we hear many things about secret societies and their influence in our society - societies like the Knights Templar, Rosicrucians and the Freemasons. What does Kabbalah say about these brotherhoods? Are their teachings in accordance with Kabbalah? Are they a good thing to join? Or are they agents who only follow their ego ?

My Answer: I think of them as childish games. All of the secrecy is just for blowing up their importance.

There is a possibility to influence the Creator and thus to govern the world, and it is available to everyone - to the degree one becomes corrected so as to be good toward everyone.

Question: Is there only one school of Kabbalah or several?

My Answer: There are other groups that study Kabbalah. You can probably find them on the Internet.

Question: I am interested in the issue about the red strings. Some say that they have no relation to Kabbalah. Others say that they protect people from “the evil eye.” I understand that this could be explained as a psychological effect, but I heard that the red strings give one a connection with protective energy (due to being produced in a special ritual setting).

My Answer: They are no more than a psychological effect. Kabbalah forbids this because it is a deceit and distracts a person from the goal for which he and this world were created.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: The Illuminati’s Coming to Get You… NOT!
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The Kabbalah Experience: Chapter 7 - “Beliefs, Mysticism and The Supernatural”

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Two questions I received on development through Kabbalah:

Question: It says in a book by Rav Kook that there are two kinds of redemption: redemption that comes in due time (בעיתה - Beito), and redemption that comes in response to a person’s plea (אחישנה - Ahishena). Either way, redemption will come eventually. According to Kabbalah, we have to change from within, and then we’ll attain happiness. And by spreading the wisdom of Kabbalah, we will make everyone happy because they will receive the same Light. But then it would seem that Kabbalah contradicts the notion of the existence of time for correction.

Answer: You’ve mixed it all up! Kabbalah was given to us so that instead of progressing “in due time,” we will speed up time (progress through אחישנה - Ahishena). This means that we can develop without waiting for the suffering to come (without בעיתה- Beito).

Question: What do you mean by the point in the heart? Also, do you mean that fate - or circumstances in our life that might be difficult - push us to this point so we will discover our purpose?

Answer: Suffering and emptiness lead a person to the question about their meaning, cause and purpose. Gradually a person starts feeling that he needs to understand the cause of all that’s happening, and this feeling is a subconscious desire to reveal the Creator. A person then discovers the source of this knowledge (the books, group, and teacher), and reaches the goal.

The point in the heart is the desire to reveal the Creator, and Kabbalah is the method or means to reveal Him. The point in the heart is your soul’s initial desire, and your soul then begins to develop from this point. The point in the heart is similar to a seed: when it’s placed in the environment that’s right for its development (the group, books, and teacher), it begins to develop into a vessel of the soul - a desire in which a person begins to sense the Upper Force, the Creator.

Related Material:
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Interview with the Future: “The Acceleration of the Reshimot”
The Path of Kabbalah: “The Awakening of the Point in the Heart”

 

 Lesson on Shamati #14: "What is the Greatness of the Creator" [45:42m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Kabbalah Revealed, Episode 4: "The Force of Development and the Meaning of Suffering" [25:08m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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Questions I received on parallel universes, the Zeitgeist movie, the year 2012, and Jesus:

Question: On a show called “The Universe,” scientists explain the possibility of parallel universes and that they will soon be able to mathematically prove their existence. I know these worlds aren’t the spiritual ones we learn about in Kabbalah, but is it possible that for every spiritual world that exists, there is a corporeal universe - parallel to this one - that also exists in direct relation to each spiritual world? And if so, and also given the fact that all of creation exists for the purpose of correction, could other corrections be occurring simultaneously on these other parallel corporeal universes?

My Answer: There is nothing in existence besides what is described by Kabbalah: our world and the five spiritual worlds. See Talmud Eser Sefirot and Baal HaSulam’s drawings.

Question: I read your blog post where somebody asked you about the Zeitgeist movie. I watched that movie as well, and I’m shocked because I saw many Kabbalistic ideas in it. I really encourage you to watch it. I would like to know your opinion about it - similar to that about the movie “What the Bleep Do We Know!?”

My Answer: I tried to watch it, but couldn’t keep going after a few minutes…

Question: I have read and watched numerous things that had dealt with the year 2012. 2012 was said to be “the end of the world.” I also read that by December 21st, 2012, it will be a new age and the attainment of the highest individual human potential. Does this have anything to do with Kabbalah?

My Answer: No. Everything depends exclusively on us – and on you!

Question: Some teach that Jesus is the middle line, yet I strongly believe that he does not move like a Kabbalist. I wanted to know if I was right or not to feel this way about Jesus?

My Answer: Kabbalah speaks only about the Creator and man, about how man can attain the Creator.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: There Is No Coercion in Spirituality
Laitman.com Post: Where Is Jesus Christ in Kabbalah?
Kabbalah Today Article: A New Direction
The Path of Kabbalah: “Between Creator and Creature”
Lesson on Shamati #82: “All Worlds”

 

 What the Bleep? In San Francisco [30:13m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Kabbalah, Science and the Perception of Reality [9:56m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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News Report (from Psychological Science): (By Kurt Gray and Daniel M. Wegner of Harvard University) When someone steps on your toe on purpose, it seems to hurt more than when the person does the same thing unintentionally. The physical parameters of the harm may not differ - your toe is flattened in both cases - but the psychological experience of pain is changed nonetheless. Intentional harms are premeditated by another person and have the specific purpose of causing pain. In a sense, intended harms are events initiated by one mind to communicate meaning (malice) to another, and this could shape the recipient’s experience.

My Comment: This comes from the Upper Root of our relationship with the Creator: if we desire to receive without paying attention to Him, the Giver, then we perceive what we receive as this world - bitter, difficult, and temporary. However, if we desire to feel what we receive together with Him, the Giver, then we feel the Upper World, which is eternal and perfect. Then, when our world disappears (when the body dies), our perception - the sensation of the Giver we attained - stays with us forever, as do He and we.

For example, suppose I receive a present. I enjoy it. But then I begin to feel that it has a defect. This helps me to think about the Giver. My egoism cannot stop thinking about Him and asking, “Why isn’t this gift perfect”? As I think about the Giver’s action, I start to scrutinize this action (which is the thought of creation). I examine: what is happening to me from the moment when I started being aware of receiving something from Him, and what is His goal for doing this?

As I reveal His behavior, I begin to understand Him and see that He is kind, good and loving. I start to feel something new: I forget about (and lose the perception of) the gift itself - of our world and our life. What remains is only He and I (without the gift) and our relationship, the sensation of the Upper Life that emerged by virtue of the gift. But we don’t need the gift any longer.

Related Material
Laitman.com Post: Learning to Understand the Creator Is the Key to Happiness
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On Roots and Branches
Article: “The Alternative of Our Life”
Baal HaSulam Article: “The Acting Mind”

 

 Giving and Receiving [04:48m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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Three questions I received on the role of women in Kabbalah:

Question: I know many women who watch the second part of the lesson (Talmud Eser Sefirot). In all the years that I’ve been studying, I’ve been watching just the first and third parts of the lesson, and I do dissemination work during the second part. I’ve heard you say that Talmud Eser Sefirot does not help women correct their souls. But the fact that other women listen to Talmud Eser Sefirot confuses me. Maybe I should start listening to it as well?

My Answer: For women, dissemination work is much more important than studying. Men work on correcting their intention by attracting Ohr Makif during the study of Talmud Eser Sefirot (they “earn a living”), whereas women disseminate (give birth). This is a woman’s role in the world.

Question: During one of your lessons you said that the only free will that exists is when men choose to either unite or not to unite when they are working in a group. The rest is decided by the Creator. Since women don’t and can’t work in a group, where is their free will?

My Answer: In helping the group.

Question: What should I look for in my future husband? He obviously needs to study Kabbalah, but what other qualities are absolutely necessary for him to have?

My Answer: Besides your common interests, you shouldn’t feel repulsed by him.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Men, Women, and the Soul’s Correction
Laitman.com Post: Women On the Path of Kabbalah
Laitman.com Post: Woman = Desire
Unity of Hearts - Creating Strong Families for Advancement

 

 Kabbalah Dissemination [3:03m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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