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Hi Rahul, great questions!
1) The temple symbolized the level of love and connection that this group was able to achieve at that time. When a bigger level of egoism was revealed, they were unable to maintain that level of love and connection. As a result of that, the corporeal temple, the symbol of their love and connection, wound up getting destroyed.
Baal HaSulam writes about this in “Letter 60”, here’s an excerpt:
“this is what our sages meant when they asked about the ruin of the Second Temple, that there was no idolatry there and they were proficient in Torah, so why was it ruined? They said it was for unfounded hatred.”
2) The general level of egoism grew. But this is not a bad thing, but rather a sign of progress. It’s like with exercise, when you master a 5 pound weight, in order to keep progressing, you need to add resistance by going up to a 10 pound weight, etc. Likewise the process of correction works according to the rule of “from light to heavy”. Meaning first the lighter, less egoistic souls reach their correction. They become as the pioneers that start this whole process. And only later on we focus on the heavier, coarser, more egoistic desires.
The people in the days of Abraham were less egoistic and therefore started this whole process. After they corrected the egoism on their level, it opened the door for the rest of the world, the carriers of the heavier, more egoistic desires, to reach their correction.
But the rest of the world was not yet ready for this correction. For this reason Kabbalah had to be temporarily concealed and the people who previously succeeded in this method needed to be scattered throughout the whole world. Then in the process of them integrating with the rest of the world, they sped up the development of the rest of the world to this final state of correction.
So we can see from this whole process that it’s not that something bad happened, on the contrary, those pioneers that started this process finished the correction on their level and then received their next challenge.
3)Â Check out this blog post from Rav Laitman for more details: https://laitman.com/2008/08/building-the-third-temple/
Albert @ KabU
Hi Katel,
There are 4 levels in nature. Still, vegetative, animate, and speaking. Within each level, there are 4 sub levels: the still of the still, the vegetative of the still, the animate of the still, the speaking of the still, etc. Humanity as a whole is currently found on the speaking sub-degree of the animate level. Meaning we have not yet reached the true speaking degree, which is a spiritual degree.
As for global transformation, yes you can say it depends on the spreading of the wisdom of Kabbalah to the world. Baal HaSulam writes about it in the article “The Shofar of the Messiah“. Here’s an excerpt:
“In my assessment, we are in a generation that is standing at the very threshold of redemption, if we only know how to spread the wisdom of the hidden to the masses.”
Albert @ KabU
Hi Katel,
Yes, it is customary to pay a tithe and it does go directly to the “Priests and Levites” as you wrote. In previous generations, they were the ones tasked with educating the nation. So in our days, all of the tithe money that gets collected by us is used only for the purpose of the dissemination of the wisdom of Kabbalah to the world. You can find some general information about the tithe (or maaser in Hebrew) on the donations page: https://www.kabbalah.info/engkab/what-is-kabbalah/nadonations
We’ll learn about the spiritual meaning behind tithing in the more advanced semesters.
Albert @ KabU
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
