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1. What
is the purpose of Kabbalah?
A: The sole purpose of Kabbalah is to
guide man on his spiritual progression and to show him how to orient his intention toward
the Creator.
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2.
Is Kabbalah for healing or protection from evil?
A: Kabbalah offers no help to those who
try to adapt spiritual forces to their own ends. Some people expect conjurer’s tricks,
healing, and protection from Kabbalah instead of seeking to work on their own selves so
that they can learn to give without hoping for anything in return. But Kabbalah has
nothing to do with tricks and miracles.
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3. Can Kabbalah be
used for divination or fortune-telling?
A: The Torah prohibits fortune-tellers,
wizards and magicians because they deter man from doing what he has to do in this world,
which is constructing himself and rising up to the level of the Creator. Man should not
try to escape from what the Creator gives him, escape from what he is meant to do, as his
performing of an activity in this world is the very process that enables him to work on
his own self and correct himself and rise spiritually. If it were necessary for man to
know what the next moment held in store for him, then he would know it. The future becomes
perceptible to him only when the wish to know is no longer motivated by selfish impulses.
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4. Is
Kabbalah an occult science?
A: Those who
promote occult sciences have a limited knowledge of Kabbalah. They
use what they have learned of it in order to support and enrich
their own theories. We insist on the necessity to study only primary
sources, authentic sources like the Torah, the Zohar, the writings
of the Ari, Yehuda Ashlag, and Baruch Ashlag.
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5. What is the connection between Kabbalah and
parapsychology?
A: There is
no connection whatsoever between Kabbalah and parapsychology. The
psychic experiments man conducts will never take him beyond the
limits of conventional psychology.
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6. Can Kabbalah help us to contact UFO’s or beings on
other worlds?
A: As far as
other worlds and UFO’s are concerned, Kabbalah does not mention
forms of life in other places. Man would love to find other beings
in this universe. But Kabbalah only deals with finding our way to
the Creator. Apart from ourselves we can only find the Creator.
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7.
Is Kabbalah some form of meditation?
A: Kabbalah
teaches man how to orient his intention toward the Creator at all
times in spite of the incessant flow of thoughts and desires that
assail him. The intention is a receptacle that enables man to feel
the Creator. It has nothing to do with meditation.
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8.Who can tell us about the spiritual worlds?
A: Only he who possesses
unearthly qualities can judge the unearthly. If at the same time he
possesses earthly qualities as well, then he can at least describe
the unearthly to us. Such a person can only be a Kabbalist - a
person of our world, created with the same qualities as each of us
and at the same time given from the heavens other qualities that
enable him to tell us about what is going on in that other world.
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9.Is the kabbalist allowed to tell us about the
upper worlds?
A: The Creator allowed some
of the Kabbalists to reveal their knowledge to wide strata of
society, in order to help others to communicate with Him. Kabbalists
explain to us in terms we can comprehend that the structure and
functioning of the mind in the spiritual, unearthly world are based
on laws that are contrary to ours.
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10. The basic law of the spiritual world is absolute
altruism. How can man acquire this quality?
A: Kabbalists suggest that we
make a transformation within ourselves. It is only this inner act
that enables man to perceive the spiritual world and start living in
both worlds simultaneously. This act is called "faith above reason".
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11. What
is "faith within reason"?
A: In our world we are guided
only by our reason in everything we do. Only reason, i.e. purely
egocentric, "reasonable" calculation, is the basis for all our
desires and acts. Our reason calculates the amount of pleasure we
experience and matches it against the amount of pain caused by the
efforts made to achieve that pleasure, subtracts one from the other
and produces the resulting wish: whether to strive towards pleasure
or prefer peace. Such "reasonable" approach to our surroundings is
called "faith within reason", when reason determines faith.
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12. What
is "faith beneath reason" ?
A: Man often acts without any
calculation of benefit or effort, like, for example, a fanatic or a
person conditioned to act in a certain way. Such "blind" acts are
called acts in "faith beneath reason", for they are determined by
blindly following the decisions made by someone else, rather than by
reason or calculation. Or else, man's acts are dictated by his
upbringing that has become his second nature, to such an extent,
that he has to make an effort to keep himself from acting the way he
was conditioned to, and therefore automatically acts from force of
habit. Each of us does a lot of things for a similar reason.
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13. What are the conditions that must be satisfied for man could acquire altruistic
qualities?
A: The transition from living
in accordance with the laws of our world to living in accordance
with the laws of the spiritual world requires that two conditions
should be met. Completely disregarding the arguments of reason, man
is, as it were, devoid of the basis for his actions, lacking all
support. as if he is suspended in the air, he grabs at the Creator
with both hands - only the Creator's will determines man's actions.
In a manner of speaking, man replaces his own mind with the
Creator's, he acts contrary to his own reason, he places the
Creator's will above his own. That is why his behaviour is called
"faith above reason".
Having accomplished this, man begins
perceiving both our and the spiritual world and discovers that both
function according to the same spiritual law of "faith above
reason".
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14. What
is a spiritual vessel?
A: The desire on man's part
to suppress his reason and be guided only by his desire to give for
the Creator is the spiritual vessel in which he receives all
spiritual sensations and realizations. The "capacity" of that
vessel, i.e. the capacity of man's spiritual reason, is determined
by the capacity of his earthly, egocentric reason that he is trying
to suppress.
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15. How
can the vessel be increased?
A: In order to increase the
capacity of man's spiritual vessel, the Creator constantly generates
him bigger and bigger obstacles in the way of "faith above reason",
gradually intensifying his egocentric desires and doubts as to the
Creator's rule. This allows man to gradually overcome those
obstacles, thus developing more and more powerful altruistic
desires, increasing the capacity of his spiritual vessel and better
and better perceiving the Creator in the world of his likeness to
Him.
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16. Do knowledge and intelligence ease the way of
faith above reason?
A: All of man's suffering
stems from the fact that he is compelled from above to completely
reject all common sense and proceed blindly, placing faith above
reason.
The more reason and knowledge he
possesses, the stronger and more intelligent he is, the more
difficult it is for him to tread the path of faith, and accordingly,
the worse he suffers on account of rejecting his common sense.
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17. Once man has chosen the way of spiritual
development , Does he agree with all he is going through?
A: By no means can he, who
has chosen this particular way of spiritual development, agree with
the Creator. In his heart he curses the necessity of such a way, and
by no self-persuasion can he justify the Creator. And he cannot
endure such a condition of having no support whatsoever, until the
Creator helps him and reveals the whole picture of creation to him.
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18. When it is a good time for man to understand
the hidden part of the way to spirituality(kabbalah)?
A: When man feels that he is
in a state of spiritual elevation, that all his desires are focused
only on the Creator, then it is the best time to delve into proper
books on the Kabbalah in order to try to understand their inner
meaning. Although he might feel that he cannot understand anything
despite his efforts, it is necessary anyway to delve into the
Kabbalah again and again, hundreds of times, and not give way to
despair at one's failure to understand anything.
The meaning of these endeavours lies
in the fact that man's efforts to comprehend the mysteries of the
Torah are his prayer for the Creator's manifestations to be revealed
to him, for the Creator to satisfy these yearnings. The strength of
the prayer is determined by the strength of his yearnings.
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19. How can man reach to a state of prayer?
A: There is a rule: the
effort spent on attaining something increases the desire to attain
it, and the strength of that desire is determined by the suffering
caused by the unavailability of what we desire. The prayer is the
suffering itself, not expressed in words but only felt within the
heart.
Proceeding from this, we can
understand that only after strenuous effort to attain what is
desired can man pray so sincerely that he will receive it.
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20. What man must do in order to have his prayer
be accepted by the creator?
A: In order for the Creator
to hear the prayer, it should come from the very heart of hearts,
i.e. all one's desires must be concentrated in that prayer. And this
is why one must delve into the text hundreds of times, even without
understanding anything, just to achieve a true desire, so that the
Creator could hear him.
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21. What is a
true desire?
A: True desire is such that
it leaves no room for any other desires.
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