Humanity and the Wisdom of Kabbalah
Man has always sought ways to be happy. Numerous teachings, old and new, try to provide it. However, humanity continues to suffer. None of the methods that mankind has developed throughout history yielded the craved happiness; hence, today people are losing interest in them.
It is at this time of bewilderment that a hitherto hidden method is now surfacing. Throughout history, its possessors have kept it hidden from the public eye. Nor was the general public attracted to it. But today it is bursting onto the center stage of the public agenda, and people throughout the world, from all nations, races, and nationalities are following it. This teaching is the wisdom of Kabbalah.
Millions around the world have the sense that by utilizing this method, they will receive the answers they have been seeking as to how they can be happy. This builds a strong attraction for people today. And, although most people still do not understand the essence of the method, they feel deep within that it will provide the answer. Thus, they are willing to explore what Kabbalah has to offer.
To understand what has made the wisdom of Kabbalah expand worldwide, we must go back to the cradle of humanity, to ancient Babylon, Mesopotamia. This is the beginning of the process that is being completed these days, a process that is attracting people to Kabbalah.
The wisdom of Kabbalah explains that the evolution of humanity is essentially the evolution of the desire to enjoy. This desire evolves from generation to generation and prompts us to fulfill it.
The first time a desire for something beyond the desire to exist appeared in a human being was 5767 years ago (according to the Hebrew calendar and to the date of writing these lines in 2006). Although many generations preceded Adam, he was the first person in whom the desire to comprehend the collective Nature appeared. It is not a coincidence that his name was Adam, because it comes from the words Adamme la Elyon, “I will be like the most High” (Isaiah 14:14). Adam was named after his desire to transcend his qualities and become similar to Nature’s quality of altruism. Adam passed on what he had discovered to his offspring. Also, the book, Raziel ha Malaach(The Angel Raziel), is ascribed to him.
The day Adam discovered the spiritual world is called “the day of the creation of the world.” This was the day on which humanity made its first contact with the spiritual world, and this is why the Hebrew calendar begins on this day.
According to Nature’s plan, humanity will achieve balance with the inclusive Nature, the final correction of the human ego, within 6,000 years of this day. This is why it was written that “the world exists for six thousand years” (Talmud Bavli, Sanhedrin, 97:71). During those years, the human ego will gradually grow and bring humanity to the realization that it must be mended. It will also show humanity the method of correction, and how to implement it.
A few generations after Adam, humanity was centered around ancient Babylon, and that is where the first outbreak of egoism occurred. As a result, people began to want to dominate Nature and the world, and to exploit everything to their own benefit.
This outbreak of egoism was allegorically described as the building of The Tower of Babel: “Come, let us build us a city, and a tower, with its top in heaven” (Genesis, 11:4). However, the Babylonians’ plot failed because it is impossible to satisfy the ego directly.
As their egos grew, it separated them from one another. Previously, the people of Babel had lived as one people. But now, when the ego began to “speak” in them, they stopped understanding each other. This moment is described as “the evolution of different languages.” Thus, hatred drew them apart, and they were scattered all over the world.
Yet, in one of those Babylonians, a man named Abraham, there surfaced a desire to know the secret of life, along with the growth of the ego. It was the same desire that had first appeared in Adam.
Until that point, Abraham had been helping his father build idols and sell them. But once he began to feel that the idols no longer satisfied his growing desire, he began to search for higher forces. This story symbolizes Abraham’s sensation that he was idolizing every egoistic desire he’d had, bowing before his desire and surrendering to its domination.
Thus, Abraham began to feel that such a life leads nowhere. He felt that if he wanted to transcend to a more highly evolved life, he would have to “break the idols” and to try to escape the ego’s domination.
When he did, he discovered Nature’s inclusive force and called it “God,” which, in Gimatria (a method of using Hebrew letters as numbers), is equal to “the Nature.”
Abraham realized that Nature’s force necessitates all people to come into balance with it, and that the imbalance is the source of all suffering.
As Abraham continued to search, he discovered that the ego comprises 613 desires, each of which must be adapted to Nature’s general law of altruism. In other words, in all one’s desires, one must reach the state of “Love thy neighbor as thyself,” the service of others.
When we correct each of the desires by using them altruistically instead of egoistically, Kabbalah calls this “performing Mitzvot” (keeping Commandments). This refers to changing the intention with which we use our desires, not to any physical actions.
The method for achieving equilibrium with Nature, beyond the ego, was discovered by Abraham. It is called “the wisdom of Kabbalah.” Sefer Yetzira (The Book of Creation) is also ascribed to Abraham.
Abraham began to teach this wisdom to his people, the ancient Babylonians. It was written that “Abraham the Patriarch would bring them into his home, give them food and drink, and would bring them closer” (Bereshit Raba 84:4). However, most of the people did not take interest in correcting their egos.
But after Abraham and his wife, Sarah, made considerable efforts to teach the correction method, they managed to organize a group of people that became the first group of Kabbalists in human history. This group later received the name, “Israel” [20].
From that point on, humanity has been divided into two paths: Kabbalists and the rest of humanity. As the ego continued to grow, both among the Kabbalists and in the rest of humanity, it evolved very differently in each of these groups. The Kabbalists strained to maintain balance with Nature atop the growing ego, while the rest of humanity searched for new ways to satisfy their egos.
From generation to generation, humanity reached greater achievements. People kept believing that very soon they would reach their ultimate fulfillment. Yet they remained emptier than before the new hope had emerged. Today, the ego has reached its final degree; hence, many are sensing that millennia of the evolving ego have yielded only helplessness and a general, global crisis.
Realizing this puts humanity in the same position it occupied in Babylon. But this time humanity, which has spread across the globe and proliferated into billions of people, is ready to listen. Now, the time is ripe to absorb the method founded by Abraham, intended to teach everyone how to use their egos correctly, how to achieve balance with Nature, and how to feel like the whole of Nature: eternal and whole.
Until recently, Kabbalists were compelled to conceal this method from humanity. They had to wait until the final degree of the ego appeared, a level that humanity would despair of fulfilling. They waited for a time when people needed a correction method, and would feel that of all teachings, the cure for all ailments could be found specifically within the wisdom of Kabbalah. But now that these conditions have been met, Kabbalists, who carefully hid the method in the past, are opening it to all. This completes the historic cycle, and all of humanity as one body can now achieve equilibrium with Nature.
In a manifesto called “Messiah’s Horn,” Baal HaSulam says that redeeming the world from its plights depends solely on disseminating the correction method: “We are in a generation that is standing at the very threshold of redemption, if we will only know how to spread the wisdom of the hidden in the masses.”
He emphasizes that the wisdom of Kabbalah must be brought to everyone in the world, and compares it to the voice of the Shofar (a ram’s horn blown on Jewish holidays): “And the dissemination of the wisdom in the masses is called “a Shofar.” Like the Shofar, whose voice travels a great distance, the echo of the wisdom will spread throughout the world…”
[20] In that regard, it is recommended to read Rambam’s description of this process in The Mighty Hand, Laws of Idolatry, Chapter One, item 3.