[Albert – KabU Instructor]

Hi Philip,

We learn that the Creator is the pure quality of love and bestowal. Every single moment He sends us nothing but goodness. This is called “there is none else besides Him” and “the good that does good”. But why don’t we sense this goodness? It’s because we’re opposite to Him. Our opposite egoistic nature inverts this goodness into something bad. It’s like multiplying numbers: a positive times a negative, equals negative.

So as long as we remain within this egoistic nature, we will continue to suffer and we will continue to see others suffering more and more in life. 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.

In other words, all those “bad” situations are invitations for us to correct our egoistic nature and thereby to come closer to the Creator.

We’ll learn more about this in the next semester, 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/

Albert @ KabU

[Albert – KabU Instructor]

Hi Ann, good question!

Kabbalah actually started around 6000 years ago with Adam. He was not the first one alive, but rather the first one to reveal the Creator by becoming similar to this quality of bestowal. So Adam was indeed the first Kabbalist. The reason why we sometimes attribute this wisdom to Abraham is because Abraham was a major milestone within this wisdom who adapted it to the people of his generation and turned it into a practical method.

Check out this blog post from Rav Laitman for more details: https://laitman.com/2016/10/what-came-first-the-torah-or-the-wisdom-of-kabbalah/

Albert @ KabU

[Albert – KabU Instructor]

Hello Timothy,

I’m not an expert in other spiritual methods, even those that seemingly teach “Kabbalah”, so I cannot comment on what they do or teach there. Regarding feeling spirituality, this works according to the law of equivalence of form. Meaning that if we want to feel spirituality, we need to become similar to it, similar to the 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.

We’ll learn how to do this more practically in the more advanced lessons. In the meantime, check out this blog post from Rav Laitman: http://laitman.com/2013/04/everything-is-attained-by-the-equivalence-of-form/

Albert @ KabU

[Albert – KabU Instructor]

Hi Afc, great question!

Kabbalah and religion are two separate things. Let’s put a few things into perspective to understand this:

Kabbalah is the method for correcting our egoistic nature and thereby revealing the Creator, the general force of love and bestowal. The first one to actualize this was Adam. His name gives us a hint at this since Adam comes from the Hebrew word “Dome”, meaning “similar to”. He was not the first one alive, but rather the first one to reveal the Creator by becoming similar to this quality of bestowal.

This wisdom gets passed on ward from Adam until Abraham who adapted it to the people of his generation and made the wisdom more practical. Abraham put together a large group of Babylonians who were interested in actualizing this method. These people later on became the Israeli nation. The word Israel comes from the Hebrew words “Yashar” “El” meaning straight to God. These are the people who had an active point in the heart in those days and were interested in revealing the Creator.

These people greatly succeeded in this method. The peak of their success was symbolized in the building of the first and second temple, which reflected the level of unity and bestowal they were able to reach. At a certain point, they lost the spiritual connection between them (the destruction of the 2nd temple) and what remained was just these external symbols of their connection.

At this point the wisdom of Kabbalah became concealed. People still had the holy books, Torah and etc, but they did not know how to use them. Since the Torah is written in the language of roots and branches, meaning it uses words of our world to describe spiritual phenomena. But if a person does not have this spiritual connection through which he can see this, then he thinks this book is talking about this world, history, morals, commandments, etc. From this emerges the Jewish religion.

From all the above we see that Kabbalah itself is not connected to any religion and that the modern religions came out due to the concealment of Kabbalah. At the same time, Kabbalah is not against religions. In fact we have millions of students worldwide, from many different backgrounds and religions. Many of them do choose to maintain their religion or to perform certain religious customs while studying Kabbalah and there is nothing wrong with that. Just like with any other science, a person can be religious and also be a chemist or physicist. Likewise a person can be religious and also study the science of Kabbalah. Baal HaSulam writes that even after the full spiritual correction people can still keep their religions.

Check out this blog post from Rav Laitman for more details: https://laitman.com/2008/10/religions-place-in-our-lives/

Albert @ KabU

[Albert – KabU Instructor]

Hi Derek,

There are 613 spiritual desires and corresponding to each desire is a law, an inner process by which extract the reforming light and correct that desire. Keep in mind that 613 is referring to our spiritual desires, that we don’t yet have. Similar to how a single cell in a body only has some basic desires. But when that cell is part of a greater body, it reveals there higher desires which are impossible for the individual cell to have: desires for money, honor, power, etc. Same with us, until we integrate with the general body of Adam HaRishon, we don’t reveal or understand these 613 spiritual desires.

Check out this blog post from Rav Laitman for more details: https://laitman.com/2008/12/all-you-need-to-know-about-the-613-desires/

Albert @ KabU

[Albert – KabU Instructor]

Hi Esther, great questions!

1. The point in the heart is the beginning of this thing called a soul. The soul is the fully developed form of the point in the heart.  See my response below 63205 to Michael for more details.

2. You’re right, we cannot speak about the Creator’s point of view because we never attain such a thing. Everything the Wisdom of Kabbalah talks about is based on what we can research and experience within our desires. We never speak about what exists outside of our desires. See my response below 126154 to Nicole for more details.

3. The purpose of creation is not simply to stuff us full of pleasure like we stuff a turkey, or to take some drug that’ll make us happy for the rest of our lives. The purpose is to elevate us to the highest best possible state, meaning to become similar to the Creator, to his qualities of love and bestowal. In other words, it’s not enough simply to receive, but we need to develop and become similar to Him.

4. 620 is the number of corrections that need to be placed over the spiritual desire. This number is further divided into 248 desires of bestowing in order to bestow, 365 desires that operate on receiving in order to bestow, and 7 additional desires that are corrected only in the final correction. All of these numbers come to us from the structure of the upper worlds and the Kabbalists that attained these things. We’ll learn how this number is derived in the more advanced lessons on KabU that deal with the structure of the upper worlds.

Albert @ KabU

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