Kabbalah Revealed
Rav Michael Laitman PhD

Published with permission 09/2005

• Forword
• What am I living for? What is the subject of Kabbalah?
• Stages of development of desires
• Emergence of a new kind of desire
• Searching for satisfaction and the process of filling
• Spiritual desire — what is it?
• Spiritual space
• Man’s death — What dies the body or the soul?
• Soul, screen and delight
• What data is Kabbalah based on?
• The history and the language of Kabbalah
• Material and spiritual senses
• Gematria of the soul
• Then absolute attainment is achieved
• Why is Kabbalah a science about reception of pleasure?

Foreword

Kabbalah is known to be a secret wisdom. It is precisely this secrecy surrounding Kabbalah that gave rise to numerous legends, falsifications, gossip, ignorant arguments and wrong conclusions. Only at the end of the 20^th century was the wisdom of Kabbalah allowed to be revealed to all and even circulated around the world. Therefore, addressing the reader at the beginning of this book, I feel obliged to tear age-old layers off this ancient wisdom that is common to all mankind.

The wisdom of Kabbalah has nothing to do with religion, meaning it is no more related to it than physics, chemistry or mathematics. It is not a religion and this becomes obvious from the fact that religious people know nothing about it and do not understand a word in it.

The most profound knowledge about the laws of the Universe, the method of apprehending the world, the achievement of the Purpose of Creation was originally kept away from the religious masses in the first place. Kabbalah was waiting for the time when mankind matured sufficiently to accept this wisdom and to use it correctly.

Kabbalah allows man to control his destiny; it is the knowledge that was passed to all peoples of the world. It deals with the realm hidden from our five senses. It operates only with spiritual notions, meaning with things that happen above the material level, beyond our perception in the upper world.

Kabbalah describes the upper world by using the language of metaphor or the scientific language.

The metaphorical description: Kabbalah borrows the names of spiritual objects, forces and actions from the language of our world. This is necessary, because we have no words at our disposal that can describe unearthly phenomena. But since a certain force descends from each object in the upper world to form a corresponding object in ours, a Kabbalist living in both worlds sees this connection and describes the spiritual reality by using the names of our world.

However, Kabbalists’ descriptions seem like accounts of earthly actions to those who have not yet attained the spiritual realm. Kabbalah speaks exclusively of what happens in the upper world. The use of familiar words and definitions leads to false conceptions and erroneous conclusions. Hence, Kabbalah forbids imagining a connection between the names of our world and their spiritual roots. This is considered the grossest error in Kabbalah. That is why it was forbidden for so many years up to this time: man’s development was insufficient, we imagined all sorts of demons and angels where something totally different is meant.

The scientific description: Starting from the 90-s of the 20^th century one is allowed to study Kabbalah and is encouraged to disseminate this wisdom. Why is that so? It is because people stopped thinking of natural forces as manlike creatures, mermaids, centaurs etc. They are now ready to conceive of the upper world as a domain of forces, force fields: the world above matter. Starting from the 16^th century, from the period of the Lurian Kabbalah this wisdom began to describe the upper world by using strictly scientific definitions and methods.

What am I living for?

What is the subject of Kabbalah?

Kabbalah deals with the question about the purpose of life. From a very young age man starts asking this question, but then forgets about it in the course of his life. Man cannot traumatize himself indefinitely with this unanswered question. The answer can be found only in one source — the wisdom of Kabbalah, which was available only to a chosen few throughout the centuries. Generations have come and gone, but only the representatives of the last generations can receive the irrefragable answer to the most important question.

But even today when Kabbalah has emerged from a secret doctrine to become accessible to practically all our contemporaries, it is intended directly for those who, having matured and even grown old, do not cease to ask themselves this childlike question - what is the point of my life and the life of all mankind?

People who feel this question very sharply come to Kabbalah. They do not feel satisfied and filled in their daily life. They suffer neither manias, nor depressions - they simply cannot reach peace of mind in this life. Why? Kabbalah answers this question.

Stages of development of desires

The development of mankind over thousands of years of its existence is a development and realization of different levels of desire. The search for ways of fulfilling these emerging desires determine this or that level of civilization’s evolution and everything we define as technological and scientific progress.

Owing to the fact that desires constantly improve, i.e. vary from smaller to bigger, mankind advances.

Kabbalah divides the entire complex of human desires into five stages:

• Primary desires — for sex, food (it is said: "Love and famine rule the world"…);
• The second stage of development of desire — striving after riches;
• The third stage of development of desire — craving for power and fame;
• The fourth stage of development of desire - thirst for knowledge;
• The fifth stage of development of desire - aspiration to spirituality, to the Creator.

The need for sex and food are animal desires, because animals have them as well. Even being in full isolation man feels hunger and the urge to reproduce, i.e. to have sexual relations.

Desires for wealth, power, fame and knowledge are the beginning of human desires, since to satisfy them man must be surrounded by other people.

Man is born, his animal and human desires develop, and then he finds out that their realization does not satisfy him, since his secret but true aspiration which he cannot yet realize and formulate, falls outside the limits of this world.

Man receives this desire from above. It is neither given by nature as animal desire, nor does it develop under the influence of a society as do human desires.

Kabbalah calls this level of desire — the desire of spiritual light or man’s soul.

Kabbalah studies the spiritual construction named the general soul or Adam. This construction consists of 600.000 parts, each of them in turn splitting into a multitude of fragments which are located inside earthly desires.

According to Kabbalah, the Creator is a universal force governing the entire creation, which includes all the individual forces of the universe.

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