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When you say that Kabbalah was “opened” in 1995 – who, or what, opened it? Why 1995? What happened in the world at that time that necessitated opening Kabbalah?
You say that you don’t have to be Jewish to understand Kabbalah, but the teachers you have mentioned so far have Jewish honorifics, and the books you refer to are the Jewish holy books. Is Hebrew the foundation of the language of Kabbalah?
Where did Kabbalah come from?
Hi Barbara, great questions!
1. Although we point to 1995 as to when Kabbalah became revealed, technically the prohibition was lifted much earlier, from the time of the Ari. He was the one to make a very special correction within the entire spiritual system, after which its not only possible, but a must to openly disseminate the wisdom of Kabbalah in order to help the whole world reach its correction.
Check out this blog post from Rav Laitman for more details on the Ari: https://laitman.com/2010/08/the-ari-rav-isaac-luria-the-godly-man/
So why do we say 1995? Let’s put a few things into perspective:
Kabbalah is the method of correction of our egoistic nature, thereby revealing the Creator, the general force of love and bestowal. Why was it necessary to conceal such a wisdom? Because egoism was still not yet fully developed. For example: if you compare Kabbalah to a medicine that can cure a rare disease, obviously you can’t take the medicine before you’re diagnosed with the disease, but once the disease actually manifests, you can take the medicine and be cured of it.
It’s just like the 5 stages development of a disease within a person. First a person is healthy. Then he is sick, but he does not feel it. Then the disease spreads to the point that he starts to feel pain and symptoms of the disease. This then pushes him to go to a doctor to get diagnosed and find the cure, and etc.
2000 years ago, egoism was still on a very low level, there was no need to correct it. Starting from the days of the Ari, egoism already grew to a certain extent (and technically the prohibition on Kabbalah ended there), but humanity still didn’t feel sick, on the contrary the ego was the main driving force of all of our development. Then from around 1995 egoism peaked and began to show itself as bad, like a cancer that begins to kill the host body. This is the peak at which there was a true need for the cure. Which in essence is what the Kabbalists have been waiting for all these years, for the desire, for egoism to fully ripen.
2. Kabbalah and Judaism are two separate things. 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/
3. Hebrew is a language built for passing spiritual meaning, not just the meaning of the words, but every single letter and shape of the letter is a code for a spiritual state. The spiritual state that is represented in each letter is typically lost in translation, so we will learn a few key Hebrew words throughout the courses.
Check out this blog post from Rav Laitman for more details: https://laitman.com/2018/05/spiritual-harmony-of-the-hebrew-language/
4. We call our teacher Rav because Rav means “great” in Hebrew. We’re built in such a way that we cannot learn anything from someone that we consider smaller than ourselves. So we make him greater in our eyes in order to be able to learn more from him.
Albert @ KabU
This is incredible. Truly incredible. There has always been this question I could never satisfactorily answer. I have resisted Kabbalah for years, believing the strange claims that have been circulating about it. Nevertheless, I am so relieved and deeply grateful for this video. Thank you. It resonates with me in a most profound way.
Hi,
how do kabbalists know that there are 5 worlds of consciousness and a 125 steps to ascend back up ?
just curious about the numbers.thanks
Hi Dalia,
Kabbalists are those that attain spirituality while still living in this world. Out of this attainment, they are able to research it.
Check out this blog post from Rav Laitman for more details: https://laitman.com/2015/11/the-great-kabbalists-and-their-works/
As for the numbers, numbers in Kabbalah are less quantitative, and more qualitative. They are used to describe the spiritual state of the desire relative to the light.
Check out this blog post from Rav Laitman for more details: https://laitman.com/2010/11/numbers-indicate-quality-not-quantity/
Albert @ KabU
Hello, I love Jesus, the Great Spiritual Teacher of Humanity. He was a Nazarene and an Essene, I believe, and he must have been a Kabbalist too in heart, Enlightened in the sense of attainment in Kabbalah. Do you agree? If not, who is Jesus for the Kabbalists?
Hi Bib,
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.
Albert @ KabU
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