Why the Books of Kabbalah Are Essential for Spiritual Development

Kabbalistic books are not like ordinary books we buy in a bookstore, or like the ones we study in university. They are not even like the ones we study from in Yeshivot (rabbinical colleges). The special thing about the genuine books of Kabbalah is that reading them improves the readers, makes them feel something new, and helps them to develop their sixth sense. It is with that sixth sense that a person begins to discover spirituality, to see what is beyond our world. With it, he or she begins to see the forces behind the objects of our world.

Kabbalah Gives a Person Tools to Benefit Themselves and Others

The minute we are able to go beyond this outer shell before us, we will begin to feel the forces that control our reality. Then we will be able to connect with those forces, influence them, see what exactly we are doing right and what we’re doing wrong. With this understanding in hand, we will discover how we should behave in order to match ourselves with a supreme and mighty force that surrounds the entire reality. This way we will be able to live consciously in a better world for all of us.

I do not mean to say that Kabbalah teaches us how to improve our lives at the expense of others. On the contrary: the contact with the upper world teaches us how to refrain from hurting others, how to attain the true desire to give. The laws of the upper worlds are the only laws that exist in reality; they raise humanity to the degree of MAN. We currently have no contact with them, and because of that we break them and thus inflict harm on others and ourselves.

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Did You Know that Everything You Do Is in Order to Receive Pleasure?

Our happiness or unhappiness is contingent upon the satisfaction of our desires. Satisfaction of desire is defined as pleasure and may appear in various forms. Fulfilling our desires requires effort. In that regard, Rabbi Ashlag states the following: “It is well known to researchers of nature that one cannot perform even the slightest movement without motivation, meaning without somehow benefiting oneself. When, for example, one moves one’s hand from the chair to the table it is because one thinks that by putting one’s hand on the table one will thus receive greater pleasure. If one would not think so, one would leave one’s hand on the chair for the rest of one’s life.”

Why Sensation of Pleasure Depends on Desire

The intensity of the pleasure depends on the intensity of the desire, but as satisfaction increases, the desire decreases respectively, and in consequence, the pleasure too. If we look into our pleasures, any kind of pleasure, we will see that they all diminish as soon as fulfillment begins. The maximum pleasure is experienced with the first encounter between the desire and its fulfillment. For example, the greater the hunger, the greater the pleasure derived from its satisfaction. However, if we are given food when we are no longer hungry, we will be unable to feel any pleasure and will probably even feel repelled.

Thus, pleasure from something depends on the desire for that something; there is no pleasure in the desired thing itself. As the sensations of fulfillment and pleasure fade, we are prompted to pursue new pleasures.

2 Approaches towards Dissatisfaction in Life

Humanity normally deals with the problem of the dissatissfied will to receive in one of two ways: the first is acquiring habits, and the second is diminishing the will to receive. The first way relies on “taming” desires through conditioning. First, one is taught that every action yields a certain reward. After performing the required task, one is rewarded with the appreci- ation of teachers and the environment. Gradually, the rewards are withdrawn, but the person labels the act as rewarding. The performing itself yields pleasure, since “habit turns to second nature.” We feel satisfied when our execution of the act improves. The second way is primarily used by Eastern teachings and relies on diminishing the will to receive, since it is easier to not want than to want and not have.

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Introducing the Pyramid of Your Desires

A pyramid of souls exists, based on the desire to receive. At the base of the pyramid are many souls with small, earthly desires, looking for a comfortable life in an animal-like manner: their focus is food, sex, and sleep. The next layer comprises fewer souls, those with the urge to acquire wealth. These are people who are willing to invest their entire lives in making money and who sacrifice themselves for the sake of being rich. Next are those who will do anything to control others, to govern and reach positions of power. An even greater desire, felt by even fewer souls, is for knowledge; these are scientists and academics, people who spend their lives engaged in discovering some- thing specific. They are interested in nothing but their all-important discovery. Located at the zenith of the pyramid is the strongest desire, developed by only a small number of souls, for the attainment of the spiritual world.

How to Enlarge the Importance of Your Best Desire

We all have this pyramid of desires within us, which we must turn upside-down so that the sheer weight of the top will compel us to aim for the purest desire, the infinite desire for truth. We must reject and discard all our earthly, egoistic desires and put every effort and energy into increasing the desire for spirituality. This is achieved through the proper way of studying.

When people truly wish to increase their longing for spirituality, then the light around them, the spiritual world hidden from them, starts to reflect back on them, making them long for it even more. At this stage, group study under a Kabbalist’s guidance is crucial. A major change in the souls descending today is that they have a definite desire to achieve spirituality. Even ordinary people are seeking something spiritual, something beyond our world.

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Reincarnation According to Kabbalah

In each generation over the past six thousand years, souls have descended that were here on previous occasions. None of us is a new soul; we have all accumulated experiences from previous lives in other incarnations.

Souls descend to earth in a special cyclical order. The number of souls is not infinite; they return again and again, progressing toward correction. The same souls are encased in a series of physical bodies that are more or less the same, but the types of souls that descend are different from one another. This is referred to nowadays as “reincarnation,” but Kabbalists use the term “development of generations.”

The Purpose of Reincarnation and Why Each Generation Is Unique

This intertwining, the connection of the soul and body, assists in the correction of the soul. The human being is referred to as soul, not body. The body itself can be replaced, just as organs can now be replaced. The body is useful only in that it serves as an encasement through which the soul can work. Each generation physically resembles the previous one, but they are different from one another, because each time the souls descend they are imbued with the added experience of their previous lives here. They arrive with renewed strength obtained while they were in heaven.

Thus, each generation possesses different desires and goals from the previous one. This leads to the specific development of each generation. Even a generation that does not reach the desire to know the true reality or a God-like recognition accomplishes the task by the suffering it endures. That is its way of making progress toward the true reality.

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Deuteronomy, 32:1-32:52
This Week’s Torah Portion | September 21 – September 27, 2014 – Elul 26, 5774 – Tishrei 3, 5775

In A Nutshell

The portion, Haazinu (Give Ear), deals with the entrance to the land of Israel. Moses begins with a song that serves as a reminder to the people when they abandon the work of the Creator in the future. The song praises the guidance of the Creator and His choice of the people of Israel, and presents the people of Israel as stiff-necked and one that has turned to idol worship.

Afterward there is an explanation of the punishment in the case of committing idolatry, and a statement that the Creator will not help Israel against their enemies in such a case. However, to the extent that Israel repents, the Creator will save them from all their enemies.

When Moses concludes reading his song, the Creator commands him to climb up Mount Nevo and look from there at the land of Israel. He tells Moses that he will die and will not be awarded entrance to the land of Israel.

 Commentary by Dr. Michael Laitman

The Torah contains all the secrets of the world. The Torah means instruction; it guides us on how we should conduct ourselves in order to advance. The Torah speaks of the whole of creation; it helps us cope with difficulties and shows us what to do.

The big question is why the Torah ends before the entrance to the land of Israel. In truth, the struggles, problems, the great dilemmas, and the difficulties of coping with all that awaits the people henceforth— especially in this portion,—are already in us.

The people has reached a state where it is ready to advance and enter the land of Israel, to cope with all the problems, and to rise above them. It is precisely through this war that the people acquires the land of Israel. The story speaks of our desires, our forces, which have become corrected through the light, through everything that we have done and went through in the desert in order to be ready to enter the land of Israel.

The song, Haazinu, praises the Creator, the force of bestowal. It stresses that we must always remember to interpret what is happening accurately, and extol the force of bestowal, the value of love of others, which is the great rule of the Torah, and for which we do all that we do. “Love your neighbor as yourself” is more just than a maxim; it is the purpose of each and every action, a rule that includes all our efforts. Read the rest of this entry »