[Albert – KabU Instructor]

Hi Philip,

Those books were written by Kabbalists, so for sure each one of them is priceless. But whether they will have the same effect on a person as the writings of Baal HaSulam and Rabash, I cannot say. The writings of Baal HaSulam and Rabash were written specifically for our generation, so they would of course have the strongest effect on us, on the level of egoism that we’re working with.

See my reply 375236 to Rade below for more details.

Albert @ KabU

[Albert – KabU Instructor]

Hi Philip,

First, we need to understand what is the ego that we’re talking about.

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.

We’ll learn how to work practically with the spiritual ego in the more advanced semesters. In the meantime, check out this blog post from Rav Laitman for more details: https://laitman.com/2010/10/true-evil/

Albert @ KabU

[Albert – KabU Instructor]

Hi Philip,

No, we don’t work on growing the ego. Our aspirations should always be towards something positive, towards acquiring the Creator’s qualities of love and bestowal. If as a result of that work we reveal our opposite egoistic nature, that’s fine. But that’s a side effect and not something we aspire for directly.

Albert @ KabU

[Albert – KabU Instructor]

Hi Alexander,

Yes, you can say that the general level of egoism has truly peaked in our days. But it’s not in order to get rid of it, rather it’s in order to use it to ascend spiritually. In Kabbalah, we don’t work on eradicating egoism, but only on rising above it. This is because we cannot attain high levels of spirituality without the ego. In fact the more we advance, the more our egoistic desires grow. They turn into a type of mountain that we climb over. The bigger the desires, the higher we can climb, and the higher the spiritual degree that we can attain. On the other hand, if we were to eliminate our egoistic desires, then accordingly, we would only be able to attain a tiny degree of spiritual attainment.

Check out this blog post from Rav Laitman for more details: https://laitman.com/2011/02/the-worse-the-better/

Albert @ KabU

[Albert – KabU Instructor]

Hi Rade,

You can say that, but we need to put these things into perspective. There have been many Kabbalists and Kabbalistic books written throughout the generations. Although some of those writings still exist today, we don’t really study them directly in our days. In our days we mainly study from the writings of Baal HaSulam and Rabash. This is because egoism grows from generation to generation, so Kabbalah, 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 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: https://laitman.com/2015/11/the-great-kabbalists-and-their-works/

Albert @ KabU

[Albert – KabU Instructor]

Hi Zulma,

The destiny of each and every single person is preset in the thought of creation: to reach complete adhesion with the Creator. The only choice we have in the matter is the path we take to get there: whether by the path of light of the path of suffering.

Check out this blog post from Rav Laitman for more details: https://laitman.com/2011/01/lets-go-with-the-light/

Albert @ KabU

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