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Hi Aaron,
Yes, you can say that.
As for reading TES, when we study it together with Rav Laitman, we generally first read the section with the Ari’s words twice and then we read Baal HaSulam’s commentaries for those words one time.
Keep in mind that more important than reading it, is setting your intention before you even read it. What result do you want to attain from this reading? The closer that intention is to spirituality, the more we extract the force of the light from these books. As a result of that, the light will begin to gradually influence us and correct us until we ourselves will begin to feel spirituality.
Check out this blog post from Rav Laitman for more details: https://laitman.com/2013/02/sunbathing-in-the-rays-of-the-reforming-light/
Albert @ KabU
Hi Amani,
Kabbalah does not deal with such things. We learn in Kabbalah that there is nothing evil in the world except for our own egoistic nature. This is why Kabbalah only deals with the correction of our egoistic nature. As a result of this correction, we become similar to the Creator and reveal this force of love and bestowal in practice, in our lives.
Check out this blog post from Rav Laitman for more details: https://laitman.com/2015/07/a-devil-with-horns-or-our-own-egoism/
Albert @ KabU
Hi Sudhi,
Baal HaSulam writes that “the Thought of Creation was to delight the creatures, in accordance with His abundant generosity.” But why do that at all? There is no answer (yet) to this question. This is because Kabbalah is a science, with clear limits of what we can and cannot measure. One such limit is that we’re unable to research what happened before the thought of Creation, before Creation. This is because our current research tools are incapable of grasping or perceiving such things, so we’re unable to research or talk about them.
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 Creator creating a creature for Himself, for His own pleasure, this is not the case because there is no egoism within the Creator. Egoism is something that was created “existence from absence”. Baal HaSulam writes about it the Introduction to the Book of Zohar, item 7:
“Once we have learned that, we come to a full understanding of the second inquiry, in complete clarity. For we have learned what is the reality that can be clearly determined, which is not a part of His essence, to the extent that we can say that it is a new creation, existence from absence. And now that we know for certain that the Thought of Creation, to delight His creatures, necessarily created a measure of desire to receive from Him all the goodness and pleasantness that He had planned for them, that will to receive was clearly not included in His essence before He had created it in the souls, because from whom could He receive? It follows that He had created something new, which is not in Him.”
Furthermore, although we sometimes use the words that we perform a certain action in order to bestow to the Creator or to bring Him contentment, but in truth it’s just a game to help us to develop. Just like with kids, when we spoon feed them, they see the example from us and want to pick up a spoon and feed us back. Do we really need them to feed us? Of course not. But we still accept this from them, smile, show them how happy they made us by feeding us etc, since we know that through this game, they grow and develop.
So ultimately the Creator is not lacking anything. And all of our attempts to bestow to Him are nothing more than a type of game for our own development.
Albert @ KabU
Hi PVJ,
When a person attains spirituality, he begins to research it, and discovers all these numbers from his research. But what exactly is he researching, what is spirituality?
Essentially we’re always talking about a desire. Our current reality is based on our current nature, the desire to receive. Spirituality on the other hand operates according to a different desire, that of pure bestowal. The different numbers are just a different way to divide up that spiritual desire. This desire can be divided into 613 parts, or 620 parts, or 600,000 pieces, or 125 degrees, or even 10 sefirot.
It’s just like how we can study a person based on his behavior, or based on his anatomy, or based on his external appearance, or his internal chemistry. Ultimately we’re studying the same person, but from different angles. Same with these different divisions, they are all talking about the same spiritual desire but from different angles or a different scale.
So if we are describing the desire as 613 parts, then we’re talking about the number of corrections that need to be placed over the desire. This number is further divided into 248 desires of bestowing in order to bestow and 365 desires that operate on receiving in order to bestow. We’ll learn about this in detail in the more advanced lessons on KabU that deal with the structure of the upper worlds.
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. This number symbolizes the gap, the delta, between our nature and the Creator’s nature.
Regarding 600,000, this is less of a quantitative number and more of a qualitative number. It represents the strength of the spiritual desire after it’s been fully corrected.
Check out this blog post from Rav Laitman to see how this number is derived:
https://laitman.com/2010/09/love-and-hatred-of-600000-souls/
Albert @ KabU
Hi Toni,
Kabbalists typically don’t attribute much importance to dreams or the state of dreaming. They see it simply as a state where the brain summarizes/organizes the daily experiences. Similar to how some computers go through the process of defragmentation.
On the other hand, there is a spiritual state called dreaming which is the process by which we transition from one spiritual degree to another. It’s like the neutral gear on a manual transmission, which requires you to switch to the neutral gear before switching to another gear. In other words, in between every spiritual state is a state called “dream”. But it’s not related to the corporeal dreams that we experience in our physical bodies. Kabbalists don’t ascribe any importance to corporeal dreams.
Check out these blog posts from Rav Laitman for more details:
https://laitman.com/2016/04/an-ordinary-dream/
https://laitman.com/2015/02/we-cannot-live-without-sleep/
Albert @ KabU
Hi Massimo,
Freedom means rising above our egoistic nature. We can do this only through the force of the light that we extract from the spiritual environment. See my reply to Natalie below for more details.
Regarding your corporeal work, I cannot comment on your personal situation. But in general, we shouldn’t mix our corporeal lives with our spiritual work. In corporeality, as long as we’re not harming others or doing anything illegal, then everyone is encouraged to build a normal life for themselves: to work, start a family, take care of one’s health, etc. And in the more advanced phases of our development, we’ll understand how this corporeal system in which we build for ourselves a normal life is also a part of our spiritual correction.
Albert @ KabU
