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Hi Flavio,
1. All that was created was a desire to receive pleasure. We perceive reality through that desire. If our desires are egoistic, we perceive this corporeal world. If we correct our desire to operate in the direction of love and bestowal, then accordingly we will perceive the spiritual reality. All of this follows the law of equivalence of form.
Check out this blog post from Rav Laitman for more details: http://laitman.com/2013/04/everything-is-attained-by-the-equivalence-of-form/
2. Kabbalah is a science with clear limits of what we can and cannot measure. One of those limits is that we can only measure things from the thought of creation. We have no way to measure anything before creation, so we cannot talk about it.
Check out this blog post from Rav Laitman for more details: https://laitman.com/2017/01/why-did-the-creator-create-people/
As for the souls, keep in mind that by definition, the soul is the corrected form of the desire to receive, which is aimed fully at bestowal. Given that we’re not yet corrected, none of us have this thing called a soul. Only a soul in potential, which we call the point in the heart. If we develop that point, we can turn it into a soul. If not, this point continues to reincarnate again and again until it gets fully developed.
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
Hi Curtis,
1. The upper light never changes. We change, meaning our desires change, and accordingly we feel the light differently. It’s similar to how electricity is the same electricity but based on what appliance we plug in, we have different uses and results from it. Plug in a heater and you’ll produce warmth, plug in an AC and you’ll get cool air, etc. But the light itself never changes.
As for the arrangements, all that was created was a single desire to receive. This desire develops and is partitioned into worlds, partzufim, sefirot. There are 5 worlds in total, each world contains 5 partzufim, and each partzuf contains 5 sefirot. All in all this structure contains 125 degrees (5x5x5). We’ll learn about this structure in detail in the more advanced lessons.
2. The Kli is the desire. It’s used interchangeably. Kli (vessel) = desire to receive.
Albert @ KabU
Hi Curtis,
In Kabbalah, the Messiah is not a person but a force. Messiah (Mashiach in Hebrew) comes from the verb “to pull” (Moshech in Hebrew). This is the force that has the ability “to pull” us out of our egoistic nature into the Creator’s nature of love and bestowal.
Check out this blog post from Rav Laitman for more details: https://laitman.com/2013/02/what-do-they-expect-from-a-messiah/
Albert @ KabU
Hi Stephen,
That’s normal. We all come to the wisdom of Kabbalah with a certain baggage of past ideas. The main thing is to keep going, keep placing yourself under the influence of the light, especially through the Kabbalistic studies, and it will balance everything out.
1. Adam HaRishon is not referring to a person but rather to a spiritual system to which we all belong. We’ll parts of this system, like cells within a single body.
Check out this blog post from Rav Laitman for more details: https://laitman.com/2014/05/puzzle-adam-harishon/
2. The Creator actually has many names. This is because we reveal Him only by becoming similar to Him, to His qualities of love and bestowal. So every time we correct a part of our egoistic desire, we reveal a different aspect of this thing called the Creator, and thereby name that revelation by a different name.
Check out these blog posts from Rav Laitman for more details:
https://laitman.com/2011/12/the-holy-names-of-bestowal/
https://laitman.com/2017/11/the-concept-of-god-in-kabbalah/
3. The purpose of our lives is not simply to ask for forgiveness and sneak into heaven. Rather the purpose of our lives is to rise to the highest possible state: complete adhesion with the Creator, with his qualities of love and bestowal. This process is broken down into 125 degrees. As long as we have not yet completed this process, we will continue to reincarnate to the level of this world again and again.
As for being judged in the heavenly court, this is not talking about life after death, but rather the internal process by which we judge ourselves in the process of correcting our egoistic nature.
Here’s an excerpt from a Rabash article on this topic:
the judgment that a person is judged in the beginning of the year means that the person judges himself, and he is the arbiter and executor, for man is the arbiter, the litigant, and the knowledgeable one, and witness. It is as our sages said, “There is judgment below, there is no judgment above.”
And a blog post from Rav Laitman for more details: https://laitman.com/2022/03/where-are-hell-and-heaven-revealed/
Albert @ KabU
Hi Curtis,
1. Yes, but keep in mind that spirituality is built upon greater and greater levels of bestowal. So if we just receive, we will not come into equivalence of form with it. But our nature is reception, so how can we ever bridge this gap? We can use our nature to receive with the intention to bestow. In that case, even if the action is one of reception, the intention converts it into an action of bestowal.
Check out the Guest & Host Analogy from Chapter 3 of Attaining the Worlds Beyond for more details.
3. Kabbalah indeed defines these things different than psychology and also different than religion or philosophy, etc. If we just stick to our preconceived notions of these matters, we will not understand Kabbalah at all.
2. Equivalence of form means that we correct our egoistic nature to operate in the direction of bestowal. As a result, we reach the state of complete adhesion between us and the Creator.
Check out this blog post from Rav Laitman for more details: https://laitman.com/2019/04/the-purpose-of-creation/
4. Equivalence of form is a gradual process broken down into 125 degrees. To the extent that we become similar to spirituality, to that extent we reveal it in practice, degree by degree.
5. 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.
Albert @ KabU
Hi Curtis, great questions!
1. Our nature is the desire to receive pleasure. It simply means that every calculation we make is to chase pleasure or avoid pain. This is similar to how any other animal functions. By itself, there is nothing wrong with this nature, it’s simply the program by which we function and preserve ourselves.
Egoism is when this program begins to be used in a way that harms others. Not only do I want to receive pleasure, but I want to receive it at the expense of others, at their detriment. This is the corporeal ego.
There is also a spiritual ego. Spiritual egoism is everything that stands in the way of our connection with the Creator. Normal people don’t have a spiritual ego. This is only something that we discover after doing some serious spiritual work.
Check out this blog post from Rav Laitman for more details: https://laitman.com/2010/10/true-evil/
2. Spiritual perception works according to the law of equivalence of form. Meaning that in order 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.
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, each spiritual degree is felt differently. Just like in our world, the way a newborn perceives the world is different to how a five year old perceives it, and that is different to how a 25 year old perceives it, etc.
3. These terms are interchangeable. Sometimes they are translated from Hebrew as will to receive or sometimes as desire to receive. And sometimes they are called vessels (Kelim) of reception. So these terms can be used interchangeably. (Kli is Hebrew for vessel, Kelim is the plural form, vessels).
Albert @ KabU
