Unity Among People Is Unique In Nature

Why can’t our human society reach the state of mutual guarantee naturally, while staying on the animate level like cells in a body?

My Answer: A human being is far too complicated a creature to connect with others this way. Here’s why.

Egoism becomes qualitatively bigger on each level of nature, going from the still level, to the vegetative, to the animate, and the human. The bigger an object’s egoism, the more individualistic it is, and the more incapable it is of uniting with others. Therefore, as one develops, one feels more separate from others.

Nowadays, it’s not only the psychologists and sociologists, but also the economists and the politicians who are discovering that the world has become interconnected and therefore we - humanity - must unite. However, they believe that they are able to do this using a corporeal method, and that everything will settle down if only we create a world bank, a world government, a world upbringing, and a world-wide connection.

However, after having a few more meetings like the recent G20 summit, they will begin to understand that they lack the method to unite. Unfortunately, before they realize this, people may have to go through great suffering, including a lack of safety, a feeling of disorientation, total powerlessness, and universal grief. People cannot bear to be in a state of uncertainty, since constant alarm is worse than death. Our minds cannot function under such circumstances. Yet all of this may happen in order for us to realize that the only way to achieve unification among us is to rise above our egoistic nature.

This is not so on the still, vegetative, and animate levels, where all of nature and its parts are instinctively, naturally interconnected. They supplement each other and interact with each other harmoniously, without any freedom of choice or any decision-making.

Unification between people, however, can only be achieved when each person does it consciously. Unlike the other levels of nature, the Creator did not just make us unite by giving us instincts for this. Our unification is possible only if we acquire the quality of bestowal and love, where everyone participates and joins with everyone. To do this, we have to rise above ourselves and our egoism, and achieve the Biblical commandment of “love your neighbor as yourself.”

This is how the quality of the Creator will be revealed among us, and we will become similar to Him. We will then understand why He acted this way in regard to us.

Friends Are The Key To A Long, Healthy Life

”What Are Friends For? A Longer Life” Researchers are only now starting to pay attention to the importance of friendship and social networks in overall health. A 10-year Australian study found that older people with a large circle of friends were 22 percent less likely to die during the study period than those with fewer friends. A large 2007 study showed an increase of nearly 60 percent in the risk for obesity among people whose friends gained weight. And last year, Harvard researchers reported that strong social ties could promote brain health as we age.

My Comment: This is because the energy of life lies in the unification of individuals. To the extent people unite as one whole, in spite of the egoism that pushes them away from each other, they become similar to the Unified Upper Force, the Creator, who is the Source of Life.

Let Us Open The Faucet Of Love For Each Other

You say that if a person has a natural inclination to help the needy, this is not the same as loving others. Can you please explain what “loving others” means then?

My Answer: “Love of others” is a special quality that comes to a person during the correct study of Kabbalah. This quality enables a person to sense the interdependence between everyone and the need to fulfill others through himself. It is similar to a lover who wants to fill the object of his desire.

“Love of others” begins from its opposite – the revelation of hatred, rejection and separation from others. This is how one first feels when he reveals his complete dependence on others. It is as though the faucet that dispenses the air you breathe is under someone else’s control. One reveals that he is completely and utterly dependent on the whole world, and everyone is dependent on his kind behavior toward them. He reveals that he is the only one who determines his state by having good or bad relationships with the world.

Every day, this sensation of dependence grows and one becomes more reliant on others in order to receive basic necessities such as water, bread, work and security. This is how the global, integral system is revealed to us, and we start seeing the Butterfly Effect in action. At the same time, we also reveal our hatred toward each other and that our egoism produces this hatred in all people of this world!

The image of utter interdependence among all people that is being revealed to a person makes him desire to “open the faucet” for everyone. And this is what “love of others” is.

Conditions for Women's Spiritual Advancement

Women need fewer conditions to advance spiritually than men do.

Kabbalah states that if a man wants to advance spiritually, he is obliged to marry and have a family. It is his responsibility to fulfill these obligations. Otherwise, he cannot advance spiritually.

A woman, on the other hand, can advance spiritually even if she is not a mother or a wife. Moreover, if she has the means for existence, she may also choose not to work. That is, in comparison to a man, a woman is relatively self-sufficient and can grow spiritually without many external conditions that apply to men. Thus, from the spiritual point of view, she is a considerably more perfect creature than a man.

A man has to overcome himself, to constantly convince himself that it's worth staying on the spiritual path. He is less susceptible to spiritual advancement than a woman, who naturally aspires toward everything spiritual. She is ready to accept, feel and understand all of the spiritual transformations that are happening in her. She yearns for this.

The need for the spiritual ascent is manifested much more in a woman. She feels unsatisfied with our world, disappointed in family and work. A man looks for foolish passions, such as football, beer, friends and so on, and then gets lost in them. He lives pursuing false goals. A woman is unable do this. She perceives emptiness more internally and acutely. She cannot appease herself with such petty goals and temporary painkillers. More often she embarks on a spiritual search and comes to study Kabbalah.

We see this happening all over the world. More than half of the 1.3 million students studying within the framework of the Kabbalah Institute are women.

Eve - Just a Tool in the Creator's Hands

Adam and Eve are two forces of nature that were tricked by the Creator to perform the sin.

In the book of Genesis, Eve is depicted as treacherous, seducing and cunning, as breaking the laws. And Adam is a kind of martyr who is being led and tempted by a woman. Can we learn something from this about a man and a woman in our world?

As tempting as it is to say 'yes,' Adam and Eve do not describe a man and a woman of our world. They refer to spiritual forces which bestow (man) and receive (woman), meaning two forces of nature. This is, in fact, the Creator and the created being. The Bible talks about the connection between them, how the created being derives pleasure from the Creator, is filled by it and then becomes an egoist. This is the sin, the fall of the souls into this world and so on.

In other words, the story of Adam and Eve is about our highest spiritual roots and it isn't about a man and a woman. We are descendents of Adam and Eve, but they are the spiritual forces that gradually materialized and reached this world after thousands of steps.

In Eden, the female part called Eve wanted to become even more sanctified and to rise even more. Therefore, it wished to copulate with the male part and to ascend to the level of the Creator. This is what is written and that is what these forces - these souls - understood. In this manner, they become close to the Creator, to bestowal.

Eve didn't do anything wrong. She brought everything into development. Adam himself wasn't able to perform this sin, but with her help it was done. They were tricked into it by the Creator so that they would sin, because the whole chain of events has to come down into this material world. And from it, we have to reach the highest spiritual level once again.

Kabbalah Chronicles

The Rambam (Maimonides) wrote that when the whole of humanity was deep in idol worship, one man could not go with the flow. His name was Abraham. He pondered and searched until he found the truth: that the world has only one leader. When he discovered this, he realized he had discovered life’s eternal truth and ran to tell the world. Since then, the world has had a method that reveals this truth. Today this method has a different name—“Kabbalah”—but it is essentially the same. If we open our hearts to it, it will teach us why things happen, and how to make them happen better.

Past
In Chapter One of The Mighty Hand, The Rambam (Maimonides) describes how there was a time when people knew that there was only one force governing the world. He explained that once they all forgot it, no one knew this truth, and people believed that there were many forces in the world, each with their own responsibilities—for food, reproduction, wealth, health, etc. But one man just couldn’t grasp how all these forces followed the same cycle and obeyed the same rules of appearance and disappearance, life and death. Through his research of nature, this man, whom we now know as Abraham, discovered that there was really only one force, and all other things are partial manifestations of it.

Once he discovered this, he began to spread the word. Challenged by having to explain a concept that contradicted everything his contemporaries believed, Abraham was forced to develop a teaching method that would help him reveal it to them. This was the prototype of the teaching method we now call “Kabbalah” (from the Hebrew word Lekabel, to receive). Today, Kabbalah teaches us how to discover the single guiding force, and by doing so, receive infinite joy and pleasure.

But Abraham's discovery was no coincidence; it was perfectly timed to counter an outbreak of egoism and selfishness that threatened to destroy the state of love and unity that humanity had been living in up to that point. This is what the Bible means by the words, “And the whole earth was of one language and of one speech” (Genesis 11:1).

Unity, or altruism, is a powerful force—it can make its users invincible. Up to the time of the Tower of Babel, this was the natural way of life. Everyone knew about the one force and were united with it. People experienced it as part of their lives, and didn’t need to work on their unity because they had no egoism separating them. This is what the Bible means by “one language” and “one speech.”

But as soon as they began to develop egoism, they wanted to use their most powerful tool—unity—for their own benefit. This prompted the Creator’s concern: “The Lord said, ‘Behold, they are one people, and they all have the same language. …and now nothing which they purpose to do will be impossible for them’” (Genesis 11:6).

To save humanity from its own egoism, the Creator, the single force discovered by Abraham, could do one of two things: disperse humanity and thus prevent a catastrophic clash of self-interest, or teach people how to overcome their egoism.

The latter option had an important benefit: by learning how to unite despite their growing egoism, people would gain deeper awareness of both themselves and their Creator. They would have to study the Creator because their present level of unity had collapsed under their new egoism. Therefore, they would have to obtain a greater “portion” of bonding straight from the source—the united force of nature, or the Creator. And to do that, they would have to enhance their knowledge of Him.

This is why the Creator revealed Himself to Abraham. This is also why Abraham was such an enthusiastic disseminator of his method. He knew that time was of the essence: either he taught his people how to unite, or they would be dispersed.

As we learn from both the Bible and the ancient Hebrew text, Midrash Raba, Parasha 38, the Babylonians spurned Abraham's offer. He then fled from Babylon and began to teach while roaming “from town to town and from kingdom to kingdom, until he arrived at the Land of Israel” (Maimonides, The Mighty Hand, Idolatry Rules, Chapter 1).

Despite many hardships and challenges, Abraham’s teachings gained some support, and those who supported him helped him share the knowledge with others, filling the ranks with “new recruits.” In time, one lone fighter for truth had grown into a nation whose name symbolizes the one thing they had in common: “the nation of Israel.” Israel, as the great Kabbalist Ramchal explains in his Commentary on the Writings, is a combination of two words: Yashar (straight) and El (God). The people of Israel are those who have one desire in their hearts: to be like the Creator, united by altruism, as opposed to their Babylonian contemporaries.

The collapse of the Tower of Babel was not, however, the end of the story, but only the beginning. Humanity’s egoism continued to grow because the Creator still wanted people to overcome it, and thus gain a deeper awareness of themselves and the Creator. For those who wanted to remain egoists, this would mean even greater alienation. New nations formed and new technologies created new weapons. These were intended to guard nations from each other or to subjugate them. But for those who wanted to overcome their egoism and unite despite it, an upgrade of their method was necessary.

This was Moses’ cue. As in the case of Babel, the solution to the intensifying egoism was to escape it. But Pharaoh wasn’t simply an evil king. He actually brought Israel (those who want the Creator) closer to the Creator. In Kabbalah, Pharaoh is the epitome of egoism, and the only way to escape him is to unite since, as we’ve seen before, unity makes you invincible because it makes you closer to the Creator. To defeat Pharaoh, Moses returned to Egypt after his escape, united the people around the same idea that Abraham promoted many years previously, and once again helped the people to escape.

But this time, Israel defeated a much more powerful egoism. Pharaoh was not like Nimrod, King of Babel; he could not be defeated by one determined man. Defeating Pharaoh would require a whole, united nation to overcome him. And because this would require a systematic teaching for a whole nation, Moses wrote five new books (The Pentateuch), which are basically an adaptation of Abraham’s teachings for an entire nation.

But this did not complete the Creator’s will. He wanted the whole world to know that there was only one force; this is why he taught it to Abraham, who then brought it to his fellow Babylonians. While Moses’ Torah was a big step forward, since it elevated a whole nation into contact with the Creator, it was not the end of the road. The end of the road will only come when the whole world is in touch with the Creator, experiencing the unity that the ancient Babylonians did, before the first outbreak of egoism. Put differently, the end of the road will arrive when all of humanity reclaims what it once had, and then lost. This reclamation is very important, since you can only reclaim something when you know what it is. This is indeed the goal of creation: to teach us who/what the Creator is, and to have us reclaim Him/It.

Present
The “present” started about two thousand years ago, when The Book of Zohar was written and then concealed, and Israel went into its last exile. Just like Abraham and Moses in the “past” stage, the “present” stage had two giants of its own: Rabbi Shimon Bar-Yochai (Rashbi) and The Holy Ari (Rabbi Isaac Luria). Rashbi’s Book of Zohar is, as the book itself states, a commentary on the Torah. Just as Moses explained Abraham's words to the entire nation, The Book of Zohar is intended to explain Moses’ words to the entire world. This is why it is written in so many places that The Book of Zohar is destined to appear in the time of the Messiah, at the “end of days.” This is also why Rabbi Yehuda Ashlag, the great twentieth-century Kabbalist, wrote that the rediscovery of The Book of Zohar is proof that the days of the Messiah are here.

As always, the only antidote to intensifying egoism is unity. And the greater the egoism, the more important it is for people to unite. While, at first, uniting Abraham's family was enough, when Moses fled from Egypt, he then had to unite a whole nation in order to succeed. Today, we need to unite the whole of humanity. Egoism has reached such an intensity that without uniting the whole of humankind, there will be no salvation for humanity.

The middle stage in the process of humanity’s recognition of the Creator was very different from the first. It was a time of subtle growth, when the tool to unite humanity—the wisdom of Kabbalah—was being refined and improved in dimly lit rooms and in small, inconspicuous groups. This is why the two most significant works of that period, Rashbi’s Zohar and the Ari’s Tree of Life, were hidden as soon as they had been completed. They resurfaced many years later, and in the case of The Zohar, even centuries later.

Future
The “future” started in the 1990s. In 1945, Rabbi Yehuda Ashlag, also known as Baal HaSulam (Owner of the Ladder) for his authoritative Sulam (Ladder) commentary on The Book of Zohar, predicted that the last stage in the spiritual evolution of humanity would begin in 1995. Similarly, the Vilna Gaon (GRA) wrote in his book, The Voice of the Turtledove, that this stage would begin in 1990. Many other Kabbalists made similar predictions, leading to the conclusion that the future is already here, and now is the time to finally defeat egoism and unite as one.

Humanity’s entire history consists of battles against egoism and attempts to unite despite it. Today, most scientists agree that man’s self-centeredness and misunderstanding of nature’s rules are the causes of all that is wrong with our world. Baal HaSulam wrote about it in the 1930s and 40s, but in those days, he was a voice in the wilderness. In recent years it has become evident that without changing ourselves, the world will not change for the better. In fact, we are ruining our planet and our society in so many ways that solving the problems separately will not be possible. To solve our problems, we need an inclusive solution, and such a solution can only be found when we transform human egoism into altruism.

In his article, “Peace in the World,” Baal HaSulam writes that if we unite, every single member of humankind will personally experience the Creator in the deepest sense of the word, for it is written that, “they shall all know Me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them” (Jeremiah 31:33). The wisdom of Kabbalah has been prepared as a method that can do just that: unite, and experience the Creator. In his “Introduction to the Book of Zohar,” Baal HaSulam wrote that if we integrate Kabbalah in our day-to-day lives, we will complete the goal of our creation, and we will be “of one language and of one speech” and at one with the Creator, never to part again.

The Origin of Kabbalah

The science of Kabbalah is unique in the way it talks about you and me, about all of us. It doesn’t deal with anything abstract, only with the way we are created and how we function at higher levels of existence.

Many Kabbalistic books have been written about it, starting with Abraham the Patriarch four thousand years ago, who wrote a book called Sefer Yetzira (The Book of Creation). The next important work is The Book of Zohar, written in the second century CE. The Zohar is followed by the works of the Ari, a renowned 16th century Kabbalist. And the twentieth century saw the appearance of the works of Kabbalist Yehuda Ashlag.

Ashlag’s texts are best suited for our generation. They, as well as other Kabbalistic sources, describe the structure of the upper worlds, how they descend and how our universe, with everything that’s in it, came into existence.

Yehuda Ashlag’s textbook Talmud Eser Sefirot (The Study of the Ten Sefirot) is designed as a study aid with questions, answers, materials for repetition and explanations. This is, if you will, the physics of the upper worlds, describing the laws and forces governing the universe on the spiritual realm.

This material gradually transforms the students, because when searching how to experience the spiritual world, one gradually adapts oneself to the spiritual laws described in the textbook.

The science of Kabbalah does not deal with life in this world. Instead, by studying this system we re-attain the level we possessed before we descended. During this ascent, the study of Kabbalah builds within the student a system equal to the spiritual system.

To ensure the spiritual benefit from the text, we at Bnei Baruch study only authentic sources, focusing on those that have been written for the purpose of assisting the spiritual progress of the student. These sources are

Why Spirituality?

Kabbalists discovered that our desires for pleasure evolve by five stages:

The first, and most basic desire, is the desire for food, health, sex, and family. These are necessary desires for our survival.
The second stage is the aspiration for wealth. Here we think that money guarantees survival and a good quality of life.
The third is the craving for honor and power. Here we enjoy controlling others, as well as ourselves.
In the fourth stage appears the desire for knowledge. Here we think that having knowledge will make us happy.
But only when the fifth, and last stage of desire appears, we become attracted to an unknown "something" that is beyond us. Here we feel that connecting to this unknown "something" can bring us greater and lasting enjoyment, and we search for ways to make this connection. This desire for something higher is called "the desire for spirituality."

The Spiritual Root of Medicine

If we convince the whole world to play a game for one day where everyone will do nothing but bestow, then humanity would feel the flavor of bestowal. Would this action draw enough Light to correct us?

My Answer: Any doctor knows that there is almost no medicine that can cure a person immediately. This can only happen by virtue of a miracle, but not a man-made medicine.

A person could drink a drop of poison and die, or he can use it to create a medicine. It is no coincidence that the symbol of medicine is a snake. It is a known fact that every medicine is poison, but not every poison is medicine. When poison is used as medicine, it is taken in very small dosages and over the course of a long time, until a person is cured. This is the law of correcting the animate body, and the same law holds for correcting the soul.

Why is it that a person can die instantly from taking a drop of poison, but he has to take it for months in order to be cured? This is the consequence of a spiritual process: the breaking of the unified soul into parts. This breaking was carried out from above, and therefore it is instant, whereas the correction, the re-unification, and the cure occurs slowly, depending on us.

Why did the breaking of our souls and the need for correction occur even before we came to this world? It happened so that in the process of our correction we would elucidate the cause, the process and the goal of creation, thereby forming ourselves in similarity to the Creator, the Upper Force of Nature.

And since a person had to reach similarity to the Creator (who is called in Hebrew Bore = Bo - come, and Re - see), this process takes so much time, namely 6000 years, from the first attainment made by Adam, to the last one.

The World We See Is A Picture In Our Brain

You saying that everything we perceive is the picture that our brain depicts against the background of white Light, from Reshimot that constantly emerge from our memory into our consciousness like links in a chain. Therefore, what we take for external occurrences are actually pictures that are played in our mind.

I agree with this, but there is one thing that confuses me: what happens in case of an accident, when a car (a picture in my brain) can physically damage the brain itself, and even cause my whole body to die?

My Answer: Your problem is that you perceive part of the picture as taking place outside of you, and part of it – as happening inside. This is what causes the confusion.