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I have more than one please forgive me. You say kabbalist, what makes a person a kabbalist? You gave the example of Abraham teaching the men kabbalah. How do you know he was teaching that to them? Did they know they were kabbalists? Did they know that the words they were using were representations of something of another world? The 125 steps…where did the knowledge come from that it is that many? I should probably get those books lol
Hi Blue,
1) A Kabbalist is someone that has corrected his/her egoistic desire into the desire to bestow (at least to some extent). As a result of this correction, a Kabbalist reveals the Creator, the general force of love and bestowal, while they are alive in this world.
2) Regarding Abraham, we know of his work through the writings of Rambam.
3) If a person corrects himself, he attains spirituality, he feels it tangibly. It’s impossible not to know that one has spiritual attainment.
4) Yes, the Kabbalists used the language of roots and branches on purpose in order to convey spiritual phenomena. For those that are in spiritual attainment, this is very clear. For those that are not, these writings seem to them like some kind of stories, history, morals, etc.
5) 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/
Albert @ KabU
Hello,
I am so glad that I can ask questions and get answers from real people. I’ve been watching videos and reading books and honestly it’s so confusing. In the video (week 1 here on KabU) the instructor said something about Machsom. What’s the best way to cross that border and start feeling spiritual worlds? Study in a group the teaching of 10 sefirot? There has to be a structure step by step, is that correct? Or each individual person achiees perception of reality at a different time? Thanks! 🙂
Hi Aaron, great questions!
Spirituality works according to laws. The main law in spirituality is the law of equivalence of form. Meaning that in order to cross that barrier, we need to become similar to the spiritual qualities of love and bestowal that reside there.
It’s similar to how a radio works. That we just need to tune the inner frequency of the radio to match the external wave. Once we tune in to the wave that we want, we right away hear the music that is on that wave. Likewise with us, once we tune ourselves in the direction of bestowal, we will reveal the spiritual world.
Check out this blog post from Rav Laitman for more details: http://laitman.com/2013/04/everything-is-attained-by-the-equivalence-of-form/
And yes, we do this work by studying together in a Kabbalistic group. This is what we’ll be doing in a systemic way throughout the courses on KabU and especially in the advanced semester.
Until then, we’re still in the fundamentals, learning the foundation needed to do this type of work. The best thing you can do for your spiritual advancement now, is to set aside some time to regularly return to the Kabbalistic sources, weekly lessons, videos, books, etc. Such a habit of regularly returning to the source of the light will help you throughout your entire spiritual development.
Albert @ KabU
Hello ,
While I pursue learning Kabbalah here with you, can I still follow the spiritual teachings from my own culture or will there be any conflict of teachings?
Hi Sudhi,
It’s up to you to decide, but if you want to succeed in Kabbalah (or in any spiritual practice really) you should practice it without mixing other things into it. Otherwise it’s like following two different GPS systems. One leads you to the goal through the west highway, while the other through the east highway. If you follow both, you’ll just wind up going in circles.
Albert @ KabU
Hi, what would be the spiritual reason for a bad thing, for example rape and other sexual harassments to repeat many times from different people? Is there something a person can do on a spiritual level?
Hi Selah,
1) If you’re talking about a personal situation, then you need to deal with it in the normal way that society deals with such things: to protect yourself, fight, sue, etc. Studying Kabbalah does not turn us into monks that are removed from this world. Throughout the entire spiritual ladder, we continue to exist in this world so we must continue to operate our lives according to the rules and laws of this world.
2) If you’re talking about the world in general, that you see a lot of evil in the world, in that case we need to say that we see this evil because we ourselves are not corrected. We’ll learn this in the lesson on the perception of reality, that the external world is a reflection of my internal world, of my own uncorrected egoistic state. It’s like I have these dirty glasses through which I see the whole world as dirty. The moment I clean my own glasses, I’ll look at the same world, but now it’s clean and perfect.
Check out these blog posts from Rav Laitman for more details:
https://laitman.com/2014/04/in-neutral-gear/
https://laitman.com/2022/06/how-to-see-good-instead-of-evil/
Albert @ KabU
Or we can use car stealing for example if it is easier for you.
1. This part I understand. But if your car gets stolen 10 times in different places, by different people, people you knew and random people then it makes you wonder.
2. I listened to some Rabbi’s classes, and in one of his classes he says you were a car stealer in the previous reincarnation. In the class I am listening to right now he says if something bad happens to a person (he gave one example) that it will happen again. So how does a person clear the energy either from past or from previous experience?
Hi Selah,
1. It’s the same formula, externally we continue to exist in this world, so if your car gets stolen, the normal thing to do is to file a police report and insurance claim. Internally on the other hand, we need to try to see how EVERYTHING in the world is coming to us directly from a single benevolent force. This is called “there is none else besides Him” and that He is the “good that does good”.
But if everything is coming directly from Him and He is good, why don’t we feel everything that happens as something good, why is there still so much suffering in life?
This is because our world is governed by our egoistic nature. This egoistic nature is opposite to the Creator’s nature. Because of that, it inverts the Creator’s goodness into something bad. It’s just like multiplying numbers, a positive times a negative equals negative.
So as long as we remain within this egoistic nature, we will continue to see and feel more suffering and horrors in the world. But if we correct our nature to be similar to the Creator’s nature, we will reveal the true reality in which only goodness exists and that our previous egoistic state was nothing more than a dream.
We’ll learn more about this in the upcoming lessons, in the meantime, check out this blog post from Rav Laitman for more details: https://laitman.com/2011/06/how-can-we-justify-the-creator/
2. I’m not an expert in other methods, I cannot comment on what they do or teach there. See my reply above to Sudhi about mixing spiritual methods.
Albert @ KabU
Hi, thank you for your answer.
1. I read and listened to it before. It is from a source, I get the oneness concept. But what is the meaning of good in your car getting stolen or being raped? Is it to revert you from something else that is worse or is it to put you on the right path or a different place or something, I am running out of imagination of what good is…
2. A known Rabbi with knowledge of Kabbalah. It is from his classes, not direct communication with him.
I will wait.
Hi Selah,
1. Good is being able to bestow, just like the Creator. Goodness does not exist on the level of our world because our world is completely governed by our opposite egoistic nature, which only wants to receive. As long as we remain within our ego, we won’t find any goodness in this world, quite the contrary, we’ll find worse and worse things, since this is what motivates us to get out of our ego (see the blog post I referenced in my previous post). Only when we finally rise above our ego, will we discover true goodness.
And what about everything that happened to us in the past? It’ll all seem like nothing more than a dream. This is why the Kabbalists call this world “the imaginary world”. Since after we correct ourselves, relative to that corrected state this life would appear as nothing more than a dream.
Check out this blog post from Rav Laitman for more details: https://laitman.com/2010/11/this-life-is-a-dream/
2. I’m not an expert in other methods, even others that seemingly teach “Kabbalah”, so I cannot comment on what they do or teach there. In general, authentic Kabbalah has been around for about 5800 years, but it’s been concealed for the past 2,000 years, so people don’t really know what it’s all about (just picture a 2,000 year old game of telephone). So naturally, many different methods sprang up that are seemingly “Kabbalah”.
Some try to associate themselves with Kabbalah as a way to validate themselves, while others borrowed some principles from Kabbalah and created something else, which is how philosophy emerged and later on turned into science. Or it’s also possible that these methods sprang up as a result of the concealment of Kabbalah, this is how the modern religions emerged. But ultimately, authentic Kabbalah has nothing to do with any other method and for the most part precedes all of the modern religions, sciences, and philosophies.
Authentic Kabbalah is the method by which we correct our egoistic nature and as a result we become similar to and reveal in practice the Creator, the general force of love and bestowal.
This is what we’re learning about here and these materials are the only ones that I can comment on and explain.
Albert @ KabU
Hi Blue,
1) Reincarnation happens on the level of desire. We all have this desire called the point in the heart. This is our spiritual potential. If we realize this potential, this grows into a desire called a soul. If not, this same desire continues to reincarnate again and again until it gets fully realized.
Check out this blog post from Rav Laitman for more details: https://laitman.com/2015/06/what-happens-to-the-soul-after-death/
2) We’ll learn about the process of creation in the upcoming lessons. And in the more advanced semesters, we’ll study the spiritual quality of fear and what it symbolizes in our spiritual work.
3) The book of revelations is not a Kabbalistic book, so I cannot comment on it.
Albert @ KabU
Hi Melanie,
Kabbalistic writings don’t talk about Jesus. So we could speculate one way or another about who he was and 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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