Ask anything about week 1 lesson and materials and get an answer from a senior Kabbalah instructor.

Hi Simón,

There are 125 degrees of spiritual bestowal. Ranging from bestowal in order to bestow, in which we restrict our egoistic nature and focus only on bestowing. All the way until the highest degrees of bestowal in which we tap into our egoistic nature in order to bestow even more.

Keep in mind that we practice this type of spiritual work primarily in the Kabbalah group. The Kabbalah group is like a lab where we practice manifesting the Creator’s qualities of love and bestowal. In the group we build a strong connection with other points in the heart that are together with us on the spiritual path. This becomes like a nucleus. Once we build that nucleus, we will be able to add to it wider and wider circles of the world, until we’ll come to include the whole world in that connection. But this is gradual work. And until we build that nucleus, we have nothing with which to do any spiritual work towards the world. Meaning that until then, with the rest of the world, just act normal.

Albert @ KabU

Hi Oliver,

Yes, you can say that Judaism, in its modern form, sprang out when Kabbalah became concealed. Let’s put this into perspective:

Kabbalah is the method of correcting our egoistic nature and thereby revealing the Creator, the general force of love and bestowal. The first one to actualize this was Adam. His name gives us a hint at this since Adam comes from the Hebrew word “Dome”, meaning “similar to”. He was not the first one alive, but rather the first one to reveal the Creator by becoming similar to this quality of bestowal.

This wisdom gets passed onward from Adam until Abraham who adapted it to the people of his generation and made the wisdom more practical. Abraham put together a large group of Babylonians who were interested in actualizing this method. These people later on became the Israeli nation. The word Israel comes from the Hebrew words “Yashar” “El” meaning straight to God. These are the people who had an active point in the heart in those days and were interested in revealing the Creator.

These people greatly succeeded in this method. The peak of their success was symbolized in the building of the first and second temple, which reflected the level of unity and bestowal they were able to reach. At a certain point, they lost the spiritual connection between them (the destruction of the 2nd temple) and what remained was just these external symbols of their connection.

At this point the wisdom of Kabbalah became concealed. People still had the holy books, Torah and etc, but they did not know how to use them. Since the Torah is written in the language of roots and branches. Meaning it uses words of our world to describe spiritual phenomena. But if a person does not have this spiritual connection through which he can see this, then he thinks this book is talking about this world, history, morals, commandments, etc. From this emerges the Jewish religion.

From all the above we see that Kabbalah itself is not connected to any religion and that the modern religions came out due to the concealment of Kabbalah. At the same time, Kabbalah is not against religions. In fact we have millions of students worldwide, from many different backgrounds and religions. Many of them do choose to maintain their religion or to perform certain religious customs while studying Kabbalah and there is nothing wrong with that. Just like with any other science, a person can be religious and also be a chemist or physicist. Likewise a person can be religious and also study the science of Kabbalah. Baal HaSulam writes that even after the full spiritual correction people can still keep their religions.

Check out this blog post from Rav Laitman for more details: https://laitman.com/2015/12/the-wisdom-of-kabbalah-and-the-other-religions/

As for Ezekiel’s vision, Psalms and other such Kabbalistic texts in the Tanakh, all of this is written in the language of roots and branches. Meaning it uses words of our world to describe spiritual phenomena. As such, we don’t interpret it literally, as applying to the level of this world. But rather it’s something that we discover within ourselves, in our spiritual development.

Let’s take the story of Passover as an example. This story symbolizes how our point in the heart (symbolized by Moses) help us come out of our egoistic nature (symbolized by Egypt/Pharaoh) and acquire the Creator’s qualities of love and bestowal (symbolized by the land of Israel). So as we develop spiritually, we’ll begin to see how the entire Torah plays out inside of ourselves.

Check out this blog post from Rav Laitman for more details: https://laitman.com/2016/05/dispelling-myths-about-kabbalah-part-4/

Albert @ KabU

Hi Claudio,

Kabbalah is a science because it uses the basic scientific method to research reality. The Kabbalists are the scientists of Kabbalah. Everything we know is based on their research. This is similar to how other sciences work. The Kabbalists are those researchers that have performed a certain experiment and reached a certain result: the correction of our nature, the revelation of the Creator, the force of bestowal, etc. So if we are to replicate their experiment, to follow their procedures we should reach the same results.

But if a person is not yet on the degree of a Kabbalist, how does he relate to everything he’s learning? Like to any other science. For example, when I read a physics textbook, I see different formulas and experiments that research our reality. If I’m reading this textbook in 8th grade, then I have no choice but to accept the things written there since they come from a credible source. If I’m reading this textbook in college, I’m already given some tools with which I can measure and verify some of these things for myself. And yet there are some concepts that are so advanced, that I have no way to verify them until I become a physicist myself and get access to all the tools that will help me research these things.

Same with us here. There are some things I can verify for myself even when I’m just starting in the fundamentals of this wisdom, and then there are things that I can verify only when I myself have reached attainment.

Check out this blog post from Rav Laitman for more details: https://laitman.com/2011/01/kabbalah-and-other-sciences-philosophy-and-religion/

Albert @ KabU

Hi Yelena,

If we aspire to return to a pleasant experience we have in the past, then we simply want to enjoy ourselves egoistically. But if we want spiritual growth, we do that by making more and more efforts in the current state. So our aspirations should always be towards making more efforts and not towards any pleasant results.

Check out this blog post from Rav Laitman for more details: https://laitman.com/2009/12/head-toward-the-creator-and-dont-look-back/

Albert @ KabU

Hi Angel,

1. The whole Tanakh (what you would call the old testament) is a Kabbalistic text.

2. You can say it’s cryptic because it’s written in the language of roots and branches. This is a type of code that uses words of our world to describe spiritual phenomena.

Check out this blog post from Rav Laitman for more details: https://laitman.com/2016/05/dispelling-myths-about-kabbalah-part-4/

3. Kabbalistic writings don’t talk about Jesus. So we could speculate one way or another whether he was a Kabbalist or not, but these would just be speculations. We should keep in mind that Kabbalah is a science. Kabbalah only deals with the correction of our egoistic nature and the revelation of the Creator. It has no connection to faith, religion, or religious leaders.

But ultimately these things are not so opposed. Both talk about the importance of loving others as yourself. Kabbalah goes even further and gives us a method to actualize loving others to such an extent that we can reveal in our lives the Creator, the general force of love and bestowal.

4. Egoism. A higher degree of egoism emerged which was impossible to deal with at that time because it required the participation of the whole world.

We see this in how Kabbalists describe the temple. The temple symbolized the level of love and connection that Kabbalists were able to achieve at that time. When a bigger level of egoism was revealed, they were unable to maintain that level of love and connection. As a result of that, the corporeal temple, the symbol of their love and connection, wound up getting destroyed.

Baal HaSulam writes about this in “Letter 60”, here’s an excerpt:

“this is what our sages meant when they asked about the ruin of the Second Temple, that there was no idolatry there and they were proficient in Torah, so why was it ruined? They said it was for unfounded hatred.”

Keep in mind that the growth of egoism is not a bad thing, but rather a sign of progress. It’s like with exercise, when you master a 5 pound weight, in order to keep progressing, you need to add resistance by going up to a 10 pound weight, etc. Likewise the process of correction works according to the rule of “from light to heavy”. Meaning first the lighter, less egoistic souls reach their correction. They become as the pioneers that start this whole process. And only later on we focus on the heavier, coarser, more egoistic desires.

The people in the days of Abraham were less egoistic and therefore started this whole process. After they corrected the egoism on their level, it opened the door for the rest of the world, the carriers of the heavier, more egoistic desires, to reach their correction.

But the rest of the world was not yet ready for this correction. For this reason Kabbalah had to be temporarily concealed and the people who previously succeeded in this method needed to be scattered throughout the whole world. Then in the process of them integrating with the rest of the world, they sped up the development of the rest of the world to this final state of correction.

So we can see from this whole process that it’s not that something bad happened, on the contrary, those pioneers that started this process finished the correction on their level and then received their next challenge.

Check out this blog post from Rav Laitman for more details: https://laitman.com/2008/08/building-the-third-temple/

Albert @ KabU

Hi Angel,

There is only one Creator. Our job is to become similar to His qualities of bestowal to such an extent that we’ll reach adhesion with Him.

Check out this blog post from Rav Laitman for more details: https://laitman.com/2019/04/the-purpose-of-creation/

Albert @ KabU