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If Kabbalah started with Abraham, how is it not Jewish? Additionally, do the books of Kabbalahinclude the Torah and Zohar?
Hi Gates,
Yes, the Torah and Zohar are indeed Kabbalistic books. But 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/
Albert @ KabU
I’d like to better understand the 125 steps that were discussed. When we are born, where are we on this ladder? Are we descending or ascending throughout our life here on earth?
Hi Raquel,
The number 125 comes from the structure of the upper worlds. This structure is just a division of the spiritual desire that we need to correct into sefirot, partzufim, and worlds.
The most basic division of the desire is 1 Sefira. 5 Sefirot compose 1 partzuf. 5 Partzufim compose 1 world. There are 5 worlds in total. So 5 worlds each with 5 partzufim each with 5 sefirot equals 125 (5x5x5) steps on the spiritual ladder, or in other words corrections that need to be performed on the desire.
In the book Kabbalah for the Student, there’s an article called Foreword to the Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah (http://www.kabbalah.info/eng/content/view/full/64187) which lists these 125 steps in the language of sefirot/partzufim/olamot(worlds). For now, these are just technical terms for us, but in the future lessons we’ll dive deeper into these things and learn how to feel and experience them.
In simpler words, the 125 steps represents the difference between us and the Creator. The Creator is a desire to bestow and we are the desire to receive. Adapting our desire to receive to work in order to bestow takes 125 steps. So to the extent that we correct our nature, make it similar to the Creator’s nature, to that extent we’re “climbing” this ladder.
In other words, ascending or descending this ladder is not a physical action, but rather depends on how much we’re similar to the Creator’s quality of bestowal (ascending) or less similar to it and more egoistic (descending).
All of this operates according to the law of equivalence of form. Check out this blog post from Rav Laitman for more details: https://laitman.com/2013/04/everything-is-attained-by-the-equivalence-of-form/
As for us, we’re not yet on any spiritual degree, we’re still in the preparation period prior to the spiritual ladder. But once we start to do real spiritual work, we can measure our progress in our attitude towards other points in the hearts. That I’ll feel how my attitude towards them changes, from complete indifference, all the way until I feel them as pieces of my soul. We’ll learn about this in the more advanced lessons.
Albert @ KabU
One thing that I struggle to reconcile with is the idea that we don’t have a soul yet. All my life I’ve been taught that all human have souls. Please help me understand the disparity of the (.) and the soul. Thank you.
Hi Pablo,
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 this blog post from Rav Laitman for more details: https://laitman.com/2015/06/what-happens-to-the-soul-after-death/
Albert @ KabU
This is what I came to think today when I went to work, sometimes as today was in buss in traffic lights been watching inside energy as everything is energy, watched beyond that energy in traffic lights and it chanced green. That has happened more than once or twice works and just today came to think that if I would be in situations when something like that happens and it feels miracle to someone, then would be easier to say that I have friend working there you get access to traffic lights. It goes beyond normal understanding and people would scare something like that, and would maybe think it as threat and tried kill so that is just opened and wanted tell this story to you and now read it twice and imagine yourself in this story. To get this why how its possible if you believing to it could be and why? If you are visual gifted to see by 3rd eye or with your heard or in any way can make simulation inside your mine, it might helps. And now there is this similar confight that if we are those who create and cant just understand who we actually are.
Hi Niina,
I cannot answer that.
If I was taking a cooking class and a tennis class, I can’t ask the tennis class instructor why my cooking instructor told me what they did.
It’s the same here. If you’re receiving guidance from other sources, you should ask them why they are guiding you that way. If you have questions about what we’re learning here, I’d be happy to answer them.
Albert @ KabU
The only requirement for studying Kabbalah is a sincere desire to discover the meaning of life. Kabbalah studies how our life and our world have been created, and how to achieve connection with our life’s source, the totality of reality.
Never wanted or felt need to get so much well except one thing… to get know god, to get back to that light what I remember. And I did, its actual tantric way of journey the thing and magick in air to make your life to be magical. Trust that inner voice and light to guide, sometimes that inner light been total bitch putting me through desert but if I would not do that I would never met the pyramids, maybe still in desert as metaphor or in deep sea maybe just question of seen same “place” or space in different dimension or frequency or realm even. We have this moment ot make it to set tone of soul to sing and its something what I dont get in human mind why some one want sing and play and dance and praise in light. but unless its place there tone made to manifest what we call as life, then its good to keep that blessed feeling high. From oneness everything is inside the all or one and if that is like track how seen things then how seen world is different than carrying separation with you.
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