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When it is said that we exist in a “totality” of which we currently have a very limited perception of, does that imply that after we die, and the soul is freed from the physical body, that we would have greater perception- specifically, can the soul of a loved one who has died be aware of their loved ones still in their physical bodies?
Hi Nerissa,
Our physical bodies are not preventing us from perceiving the whole of reality (or spirituality), it’s our egoistic nature that is preventing us. This is because perceiving spirituality works according to the law of equivalence of form. Meaning that to perceive spirituality, we need to become similar to it, to the qualities of love and bestowal that reside there. This is just like how a radio can pick up an external wave, when we tune the internal frequency of the radio to that wave.
But as long as we have not achieved this type of change, as long as we have not corrected our egoistic nature, which is opposite to spirituality, then we will continue to return to the level of this world again and again, until we achieve that change.
As for the soul, there are different levels to this thing called a soul. In the beginning, we all have an animalistic soul, meaning a certain force that enlivens our animalistic body, similar to any other animal. But the human level of the soul is not something we have by default, but rather something that we acquire by correcting our egoistic nature. In other words, each one of us has a human soul in potential which we call the point in the heart. If we correct that point, out of it, we can build the full level of the soul. If not, that same potential continues to reincarnate again and again until it gets corrected.
Check out these blog posts from Rav Laitman for more details:
https://laitman.com/2013/04/everything-is-attained-by-the-equivalence-of-form/
https://laitman.com/2015/06/what-happens-to-the-soul-after-death/
Albert @ KabU
I had some questions relating to Kabbalah though not directly related to the preparation materials which I listened to/read them all anyway.
One was from the book ‘Jewish Meditation’by Aryeh Kaplan. The author states at some point, and I am paraphrasing, that the states of mind attained by kabbalistic meditation may cause such elation that the student may not want to return to a normal state, and in fact these ecstatic states are why many other nonjews practice kabbalistic meditation, which turned it to idolatry. What are your thoughts on this? How important is it to maintain a code of discipline or morality, whether derived from judiasm itself or from another source, to success in attainment through this proccess ? I can certainly see where he is coming from, there are many new-age meditation schools that are not rooted in a strong disciplined structure and so there are more opportunities for people to fall astray. One big example is sexual abuse but there are others like indulging in drugs, alcoholism, etc.
Just wanted to add to this, in terms of personal relevance of morality, it’s more important for me to think about things like relationships and family. Much of religion is about getting married, and having children. What if a person just wants to serve community without those things? Does it still make sense to learn Kabbalah for personal reasons or would that be considered selfish?
The second question is: Is intellectual Kabbalah superior to kabbalistic meditation techniques? And why does the emphasis of the Revealing Kabbalah course preparation materials seems so focused on understanding the nature of reality through gaining knowledge. What role do meditation, visualization, and other practices have in Kabbalah?
Hi Dana,
1. I’m not an expert in other methods, even other methods that call themselves “Kabbalah”. So I cannot comment on what they do or teach there.
As for morality, it depends on your goal in life. If your goal is to reach the revelation of the Creator, this is possibly only when we practice connection and bestowal with other points in the heart in the Kabbalistic group.
If you practice this anywhere else, in the best case scenario you’ll build some good relationships, in the worst case, people will think you’re weird or try to take advantage of you. But either way it will not lead to the revelation of the Creator.
So generally, with the rest of the world, it’s best to just act normal, like everyone else. Meaning don’t make a saint of yourself and at the same time don’t cause harm to others or break the law, but just act the way normal people act.
2. The goal of authentic Kabbalah is to correct our egoistic nature in order to become similar to the Creator and reveal Him in practice. Things like meditation help to calm us down, but ultimately don’t correct our egoistic nature, so they are not a part of the authentic Kabbalistic method.
Likewise with knowledge, we do need a certain fundamental amount of knowledge to practice Kabbalah, but beyond that the Kabbalists tell us that “it’s not the wise that learns”. Meaning that we’re not learning this material simply to acquire knowledge, to store it in some box in our brains. After all, if knowledge was the path to spirituality, then a supercomputer loaded with all of the Kabbalistic texts would be the most spiritual being in the world. But obviously this is not the case.
So why do we study if not to gain knowledge? Because through the study, we draw the force of the light. This force has the ability to correct our egoistic nature. As a result of that correction, we reach spiritual attainment in practice.
See my reply 466214 to Aliona below for more details.
Albert @ KabU
Shalom and thank you for answering my question in advance, I have two in fact. My first question is about the ties between Kabbalah and Jewish people. There is emphasis that Kabbalah is not related to religion and is not to be only studied by jewish people, which I understand. However, all the main Kabbalists seem to be also Jewish (varying degrees of religious, but mostly so) and from the research I have independently done, Hassideism, which is a branch of Jewish religious tradition is built on the learnings/ texts of Kabbalah. Can you explain a bit more about this inter-relationship. My second (unrelated) question is about whether Kabbalah teaches us anything about embodiment practices? I mean, if we take the quote – “when we let heaven descent through us, the temple rises” more literally and see that it actually closely correlates with lost teachings of ancient priestesses, who through ritual and descent into the body and surrender were able to reach the Divine. Does Kabbalah have any reference, or practices of the wisdom of the body or is it a mental science (that you contemplate and embody externally with you actions, rather than internally through your body? Thank you and I hope the questions make sense.
Hi Aliona, great questions!
1. Kabbalah and Judaism are two separate things. Let’s put a few things into perspective to understand this:
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/
2. I’m not an expert in other methods, so I cannot comment on what is taught there. As for what we learn in Kabbalah, attaining spirituality works according to the law of equivalence of form. Meaning that to perceive spirituality, we need to become similar to it, to the qualities of love and bestowal that reside there. This is just like how a radio can pick up an external wave, when we tune the internal frequency of the radio to that wave. We’ll learn how to do this in practice in the more advanced lessons.
Check out this blog post from Rav Laitman for more details: https://laitman.com/2013/04/everything-is-attained-by-the-equivalence-of-form/
Albert @ KabU
How did the kabbalists originally find out that there were 125 steps? Were these viewed via theurgical practices, such as referenced in the Hekalot literature?
I have one more question 🙂 so to become like the creator has to be an embodied, experiential experience, rather than a mental exercise. Does Kabbalah have any embodied practices to support those who study it?
Hi Aliona,
First we need to keep in mind that our very nature is egoistic, meaning it’s completely opposite to the Creator. And just like a PC cannot just reprogram itself to run as a Mac, we too cannot just change our own nature. We require outside help to make this change. This help comes to us from the light. The light is a special force that has the ability to change our nature. Our work essentially boils down to extracting more and more of the light, especially during the Kabbalistic studies, and it does all the rest.
So the most practical action that you can do towards reaching equivalence of form with the Creator is to set aside some time to regularly return to the source of the light, meaning to the Kabbalistic sources, videos, lessons, books, etc. Such a habit will help you throughout your entire spiritual development.
And in the more advanced semesters, we’ll learn how to do this type of spiritual work within the Kabbalistic group. The Kabbalistic 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.
We’ll learn about these things in greater detail in the more advanced lessons, in the meantime, check out this blog post from Rav Laitman for more details: http://laitman.com/2013/02/sunbathing-in-the-rays-of-the-reforming-light/
Albert @ KabU
Hi Terry,
Kabbalists are scientists. Everything they discovered comes from their research of spirituality. In order to research spirituality, they first need to reveal it.
Revealing spirituality works according to the law of equivalence of form. Meaning that to perceive spirituality, we need to become similar to it, to the qualities of love and bestowal that reside there. This is just like how a radio can pick up an external wave, when we tune the internal frequency of the radio to that wave.
So to the extent that Kabbalists corrected themselves, made their qualities similar to the spiritual qualities of love and bestowal, to that extent they revealed spirituality in practice and were able to research it.
Check out these blog posts from Rav Laitman for more details:
https://laitman.com/2011/06/kabbalah-without-a-trace-of-mysticism/
https://laitman.com/2013/04/everything-is-attained-by-the-equivalence-of-form/
Albert @ KabU
What is to be achieved in the material world. I believe we living in the material world and we are disconnected from the real world with systems that have been place to keep us busy and exhausted so that we never have time to ask the most important questing. What is my purpose in this world?
Hi Themba Hlaba,
The purpose of life is to reach adhesion with the Creator. Adhering to Him, means adhering to His qualities of love and bestowal. To the extent that we can correct our egoistic nature and make it operate in the direction of pure bestowal, to that extent we become similar to the Creator and reveal Him in practice, in our lives. This follows the law of equivalence of form.
Check out these blog posts from Rav Laitman for more details:
https://laitman.com/2019/04/the-purpose-of-creation/
https://laitman.com/2013/04/everything-is-attained-by-the-equivalence-of-form/
Albert @ KabU
In the first chapter of Kabbalah revealed, it is written that there was a time in the past where people were so unified with nature and with each other that they were able to communicate without words, like telepathy. Then as egoism grew, division was sown, society split into east and west, and along with that came the creation of the different languages, the biblical story of Babel.
Are we to believe these things are literally historically accurate? If so, where can we find proof? There are a number of historical claims made in this first chapter that don’t offer any citations, and I’m finding myself doubting their veracity.
Hi Adam,
We learn from the Kabbalists that the spiritual world is the root to our corporeal world. Meaning that everything that happens in this world is a result of the spiritual forces acting upon it. As such, by connecting to that spiritual root, a Kabbalist can understand why things are the way they are in this world, how these forces shaped our reality in the past, and what awaits us in the future.
So when a Kabbalist is describing the past, they are not doing so based on historical research, but based on the spiritual roots that they attained. At times, it could be they are describing things that modern historians and scientists have not yet discovered. Like the Ari who spoke about evolution and the big bang in the 16th century, long before modern scientists discovered such things.
Check out these blog posts from Rav Laitman for more details:
https://laitman.com/2011/06/a-science-about-the-world/
https://laitman.com/2016/11/time-travel/
Albert @ KabU
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