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Hi Thomas,
I’m not an expert in other methods, so I cannot comment on that. But in general, most spiritual methods, religions, philosophies, and even sciences in one way or another stem from the wisdom of Kabbalah. Either as a stepping stone for a person to develop through until his point in the heart awakens (such as many eastern traditions), or from an attempt to copy and implement this wisdom (like what early philosophers tried to do, which later on turned into modern sciences), or as a side effect of the concealment of this wisdom (which is how the modern religions and spiritual paths emerged).
Check out this blog post from Rav Laitman for more details: https://laitman.com/2008/11/the-origin-and-purpose-of-eastern-teachings/
Albert @ KabU
Hi Joseph, great question!
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.
Albert @ KabU
Hi Sarah,
1. A righteous (tsadik in Hebrew) comes from the Hebrew word “to justify” (lehatsdik). Meaning a righteous is someone that is able to fully justify the Creator’s providence over the world.
2. A Kabbalist is one that has made INTERNAL corrections over his egoistic desire and as a result has become similar to the Creator and revealed Him in practice, at least to some extent. All of this is internal.
Externally there is no way to discern if a person is a Kabbalist or not. Meaning such a person can be a man or a woman, lives a very normal life, works, takes care of his/her family, health, etc. Meaning there is no dress code or rituals or anything external by which we can discern that a person is a Kabbalist.
3. We study not in order to learn but as a means to extract the light by which we can correct our egoistic nature. This continues until we correct all 125 degrees and reach the state of Gmar Tikkun (the final correction).
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 Lora,
Yes, it’s possible. Rabash for example would periodically listen to the news on the radio to get a feel for how the world is changing relative to his spiritual work.
Another example is Rav Laitman. We could all see the results of his work because we are all essentially the results of his work. He was just one person who began to widely disseminate the wisdom of Kabbalah and now there are millions of students around the world that are studying it.
Albert @ KabU
Hi Sarah,
1. At the beginning of the spiritual path, there are a lot of tendencies to isolate ourselves from the world. So what you’re feeling is normal. But the more we advance, the more we’ll begin to see that we don’t need to isolate ourselves. Even Baal HaSulam and Rabash were not living in isolation in some Kabbalistic environment, rather they had normal jobs, families, and lived in a typical neighborhood of their time. How then did they attain such high spiritual levels? By tapping into the strength of the spiritual environment.
So if we build for ourselves a strong spiritual environment, then it will influence us even stronger than the corporeal environment that we’re in. But this is not a one time choice. Building and strengthening the spiritual environment is our constant work. As we progress, our ego will grow more and more, and the corporeal environment will pull us more and more. This is done purposefully so that this resistance will force us to build an even stronger connection to the spiritual environment, and thereby reach an even higher spiritual level.
It’s just like with a bodybuilder. If he lifts only a 1 pound weight all the time, he will not get very strong (this is equivalent to us living in isolation). In order to grow, that bodybuilder needs to constantly increase the resistance that he’s lifting. So the more we advance, the more we’ll begin to see how the everyday problems, experiences, work situations, etc we undergo in the regular society are a necessary part of our correction. That we don’t erase these things, but above them we need to stay connected to the spiritual environment. And this will determine the level of our spiritual attainment.
We’ll learn how to do this practically in the more advanced semesters of KabU.
2. We learn that “love your friend as yourself” is a great all encompassing rule of our spiritual work. It is essentially the path through which we come into contact with the Creator. But who is a friend? When Kabbalists use the word “friend” they are not referring to our corporeal buddies. A friend, in the spiritual sense of the word, is someone that is close to me spiritually, someone that shares the same spiritual goal as me. In other words, a friend is someone with an active point in the heart that is together with me on the spiritual path. This is why the spiritual work of “love your friend as yourself” is primarily carried out in a Kabbalistic group.
Furthermore, the spiritual work we do in the Kabbalistic group is the foundation of all of our work. It’s like we’re building here a certain 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.
So until then, how do we behave towards the rest of the world? We behave normally there, just like everyone else. Meaning don’t make a saint of yourself and at the same time don’t cause harm to others, but just act there the way normal people act.
Albert @ KabU
Hi William,
Yes, the world is a reflection of ourselves. Just keep in mind that our attitude of love is an internal matter. Externally we still exist on the level of this world and still need to carry out the normal actions of this world. For example, if someone is trying to hurt me, I still need to stop them, defend myself, and call the cops. If I lose my job, I still need to go out and actually search for a job. If I’m sick, I still need to go to a doctor, take some medicine, etc.
In other words, our internal attitude to what is happening should not cancel out any of the normal actions that we need to take in life. It’s important to maintain this balance in our internal and external work. We’ll learn more about these things throughout our studies.
Albert @ KabU
