Description

Rav Michael Laitman, PhD explains that charms and blessings have no place in Kabbalah.

Transcript

Guy Gudes: Today you go to many Kabbalists and they map something out for you according to Gematria.

Rav Michael Laitman, PhD: This does not belong to the method of Kabbalah. The fact that they have The Zohar in front of them and make all kinds of calculations according to Gematrias, this has nothing to do with Kabbalah. The method of Kabbalah is designed to raise one above this world and to see the Upper World within it. Only with this insight will one improve oneself.

Guy Gudes: Many people now know this.

Rav Laitman: If you do not do this action alone and on your own, no matter how much you pay anyone, it will not help.
I studied with the greatest Kabbalist of our days, the Rav Ashlag, and this never ever took place throughout his life. And I was always with him, I was his student and his helper. And never in his life did he give someone a blessing. He received no money from anyone and did not do anyone, as if a favor, as if he was helping someone in some way.

You cannot pass these things from one side to the other. This only acts as a psychological support among people. Now I’ll tell you: “I will pray for you, maybe it’ll help,” and you accept this as some kind of support in your life. But there is nothing in this whereby I influence your soul through a higher system where I save you from some trouble, from some higher forces—no. It is all in the hands of a person, who affects his correction with free choice.

Guy Gudes: Everyone is with his control in his head, beginning with the psychology and the soul.

Rav Laitman: We certainly see that it does not make any more of a difference than this. If later we see that after the blessing things go well in his life—on the one hand, things take care of themselves as they are, and on the other hand, one already sees in a different way—he looks at life differently, that it did help.

Guy Gudes: You have just broken the thesis of many people who believe in this first and foremost.

Rav Laitman: About all the charms and all these things, it was already written at the time of the Ari, that one may not use them. There is nothing real in these things because they hold one back from one’s correction. I'd put it like this: in a popular way, it’s a good thing, because one is strengthened by thinking that people are good, that they have wisdom.

Guy Gudes: They believe in something.

Rav Laitman: It sustains the masses in some frame. It allows them to be a little more connected to the wise ones. It’s a psychological support that must be given to the masses. But I would say that it’s a sociological endeavor that has to exist within human society, but that it's nothing more than this. The Higher Forces can influence us in the measure that each one, on his own, attracts them.