Description

Kabbalah is not religion. Revelation of the spiritual world (in Kabbalah) and belief in a spiritual world (i.e. religion) are two separate issues. Rav Michael Laitman, PhD discusses the difference between Kabbalah and religion in this interview with European MTV host Eden Harel.

Transcript

Eden Harel: So what’s the difference, Kabbalah isn't really religion, right?

Rav Michael Laitman, PhD: Kabbalah is not religion. Religion is what humanity invented for itself to make our life a little bit sweeter, and Kabbalah is attainment of the spiritual world—attainment of the reality that exists, but that we don't feel for the time being.

Eden Harel: Yeah, but Kabbalah was also written by a man, it wasn't written by…

Rav Laitman: That’s right. Kabbalah was written by people who attained this reality, like Abraham. Because he started asking: what is creation? What are the stars? Why does everything spin around? What is the operating force that activates everything? Where is it, what is it?

And as a result he became a Kabbalist. He is, in fact, the first known researcher who founded the wisdom of Kabbalah. This is why he is called "the Father of the Nation." Actually, he was a Bedouin, he was not a Jew. From him onward, those who began this quest for the revelation of Godliness called themselves Jews.

Eden Harel: So it actually started there and then?

Rav Laitman: Then it all began and this whole chain of Abraham, Moses, Rabbi Shimon, the ARI and the latest Kabbalists—this is the chain of people who reveal the Upper Reality and tell us about it, so that we will also be able to attain the same thing and get to know it.

But it has nothing to do with all the actions people perform out of religion. Revelation and religion are two separate issues.

Eden Harel: But still, most people that I’ve met who study Kabbalah, do at some point or another also adopt religion.

Rav Laitman: Humanity has placed itself in a religious framework in order to have just that: a framework in this world. Within this framework is the nation, let's say, and in the nation there are people who already deal with the internal quest. The internal quest is not part of the physical actions that a religious person performs, but internal actions that one performs with special efforts using one’s own vessel and a special system called the wisdom of Kabbalah that the masses actually don't know.

Eden Harel: Okay, so what you are actually saying is that it is possible to…

Rav Laitman: That's why I say that these two things are completely unrelated. The fact that a Kabbalist studies the Upper World and begins to know, identify with and draw closer to Godliness, while acquiring spiritual attributes—this has nothing to do with observing the Torah and Mitzvot as all the religious people of Israel do.