[Albert – KabU Instructor]

Hi Marion, great question!
Developing a hatred toward egoism means wanting to be separated from it. Essentially we don’t have the strength to liberate ourselves from our own egoism. Our work is only to develop the desire for this. This desire acts as a type of prayer or request for the Creator to help us accomplish this. And it’s only thanks to His help that we’re able to do this (See pages 35-36 of attaining the worlds beyond for more details).

Also keep in mind that that although we sometimes use the words desire to receive and egoism interchangeably, in truth they are two separate things. 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.  So when we speak about egoism in Kabbalah, we’re specifically referring to the spiritual type of egoism.

Check out this blog post from Rav Laitman for more details: https://laitman.com/2010/10/true-evil/

Albert @ KabU

[Albert – KabU Instructor]

Hi Miryam,

Yes, you can say that the goal is to reach equivalence of form with the Creator. That state is called Gmar Tikkun (final correction).  What happens after that?  Kabbalists hint that there are further degrees of development beyond that point. But it’s still beyond our ability to understand and research such things, so we’ll need to get there and see for ourselves.

Check out this blog post from Rav Laitman for more details: https://laitman.com/2010/10/what-happens-after-the-final-correction/

Albert @ KabU

[Albert – KabU Instructor]

Hi Michael, good question!

On one hand, in the fundamentals of Kabbalah, we do need to study and acquire a certain basic foundation of this wisdom.  On the other hand, there is a rule that “it’s not the wise that learns”. Meaning that reaching spiritual attainment does not depend on our intellect or memorization skills. After all, we can take a computer and load it up with all of the Kabbalistic books as well as all of the knowledge that this entire world has to offer. But this computer will not attain spirituality.

Spiritual attainment depends on one thing and one thing only, the desire. If we build the right desire for it, within that correct desire, we will reveal spiritual sensations. That’s it. And although we spend a lot of time studying, the goal is not to acquire knowledge, but through the study to draw the light, a special force that helps us to build the right desire.

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

[Albert – KabU Instructor]

Hi Miryam, great question!

In contrast to the other levels of nature, humans continuously evolve on the level of desires. At first humans were no different than animals, simply aspiring for the animalistic desires of food, sex, and family. Later on the desire evolved and they began to aspire towards money, and then towards honor, and then towards knowledge. And now in the peak of our evolution, a new spiritual type of desire (the point in the heart) is beginning to awaken within masses of people.  So unlike minerals, plants, and animals, human desires keep evolving.

We’ll learn more about this in the next lesson.

Albert @ KabU

[Albert – KabU Instructor]

Hi Miryam, good question!

You are correct. Both men and women attend the lessons, but they study in separate rooms (this was more relevant prior to the covid-19 days, nowadays everything is virtual, so they study in separate virtual rooms). This is because men are hardwired in such a way that they receive pleasure by looking at women (there is actually a spiritual root to this phenomena). This is a natural inclination for men that quite easily distracts them. But we didn’t gather in groups in order to fulfill our animalistic desires, rather we gather in order to attain spirituality.  And attaining spirituality requires a strong inner concentration, a strong aspiration to attain the qualities of bestowal. So to help the men achieve the goal for which we gather, it’s better for them to study in separate groups.  This will be more relevant for us in the more advanced semesters.

Albert @ KabU

[Albert – KabU Instructor]

Hi Paul, good questions!

There were of course many Kabbalists throughout the generations, but we only highlighted the ones that made major changes in the method.  Furthermore, since the method gets adapted in each generation, we usually don’t study much from past Kabbalists.

Let’s put this into perspective: Kabbalah is the method by which we correct our egoistic nature and as a result, we become similar to and reveal the Creator, the general force of love and bestowal. Since egoism grows from generation to generation, so the method for its correction needs to get adapted in each generation for that level of egoism.

For example it’s like in medicine, if a person has a headache he can just drink a tylenol and that’s enough to fix him. But if it’s not just a little headache but something cancerous, then that tylenol won’t do anything for him but he needs a completely different regime to heal himself.

This is why Kabbalah gets adapted in each generation to the level of egoism that is currently found in that generation. So although there were many different Kabbalists and Kabbalistic books throughout the generations, nowadays it’s impossible to correct our level of egoism through the methods of the past generations. This is why nowadays we mainly learn from the writings of Baal HaSulam and Rabash, since their writings contains the light that is most suitable to correct the egoism that is found in our generation.

Check out this blog post from Rav Laitman for more details on Baal HaSulam and Rabash: https://laitman.com/2015/11/the-great-kabbalists-and-their-works/

Albert @ KabU

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