Humans have existed for tens of thousands of years. 5700 years ago, a point of aspiration to reach the Divine, to come to its original state emerged in humans. It is called a point in a heart. A heart is all our desires, and a point in the heart is an aspiration to a higher state. That is why man who lived at that time wrote the first book on Kabbalah called “The Secret Angel”. Then these aspirations began to develop.

If we take this moment (5700 years ago) as a starting point, we are now in the year 5764. The 6000 year term is a final one. During this period, mankind will receive its entire egoistic charge and will have to fully realize it.
We have 236 years left.

We should not force ourselves into suffering. We can realize where we are heading to before that and admit that the situation is worsening each year, and that it will not get any better. It is because our egoism is demanding ever bigger fulfillment, while it is impossible to receive it without the screen. 6000 years is an ultimate term, during which mankind unfolds all stages of manifestation of its egoism and has to realize that it needs to change itself.

Question: In other words, this is the amount of time given to our egoism and by the end of this term mankind will make a transition into a different state?

This term is given for the recognition of evil.

Question: In your book "Principles in Simple Style" you always use the term “Creator” instead of “Light”. Is it the same thing? Is the Creator some intellectual supreme being or is it some abstract principle?

We picture everything our own way. I picture you the way I do, whereas I do not know you, I don't know who you are. The same holds for the Creator and anything else that is attained. I can talk only about things that I attain through my sense organs; this is how I perceive it. The same also applies to physics.

Question: You write that by going through all these levels we are coming closer to the attainment of the Creator. Is the process of attainment individual or are we all approaching the Creator equally?

Each of us is a part of a common desire with specific qualitative and quantitative characteristics, just like in our world. You and I have an absolutely identical set of all kinds of qualities, but they are interconnected, aligned in a different way. This is why people differ from one another.

The same goes for attainment: I grasp my piece of desire, you grasp yours, but we can both talk about commonality like we talk about it in our world. However, these revelations still remain individual.

Question: We live in a physical world known to all of us, where everyone finds black and white, or finds some uniform laws…

That is, we perceive certain influences on us in the same manner. It is not black and white; we may call it differently, as we like.

Question: You say that we influence the physical world in time which has direction. Was there a beginning of this directed time? If yes, will there be an end of the existing physical world? This is my first question.

My second question: In your book you maintain that the Creator is some perfect spiritual principle while mankind is deficient. If the Creator is perfect, why should he need to create such a complicated structure, a vessel that He must fill so that after it is filled with light it comes back to Him?

And finally, about Aristotle who asked: “What can God love?” He can only love that which is of utmost perfection, that is, Himself, so He can only love Himself.”

Let us agree on what our research field is. Kabbalah maintains that all that I perceive, I perceive through my senses, but I do not perceive an objective reality. Moreover, if we acquire a screen (and we will talk about it later) we see that an objective reality does not exist. All we observe, see, feel and imagine as existing outside us only exists inside of us, that is, in our senses. We cannot discuss anything that is beyond our senses, we do not have a right to, because we can never sense anything outside of us, only inside.

We exist surrounded by a single, simple light. What we picture as the world in which we exist is merely a projection of this single, simple light into our senses. Nothing else.

Our egoism and our senses desire to absorb, to take up. If they change, we also sense changes and it seems to us that the surrounding world suddenly looks different. If these parameters don’t change, it seems to us that the world doesn't change either. If these parameters were to change, we would enrich ourselves with using different senses and we would see a completely different world. In other words, we would receive additional projections of the field in which we exist.

According to Kabbalah, we cannot discuss anything that is beyond us objectively, regardless of our existence, because all that I attain is what I attain. Furthermore, even basic research demonstrates how contingent our perception is. Looking at the world through the eyes of a bee or hearing through some animal’s ears (even though their senses, regardless of their different structure, are similar to those of humans) we would perceive the world completely differently. For instance, we could perceive the world as fields of flavors like dogs do, or maybe as fields of different wave-lengths like other animals do. Therefore, everything is contingent in relation to us.

The same applies to time. Kabbalah states that time does not exist. Egoistical changes inside of us trigger corresponding changes in how we sense a different degree of fulfillment of our desire to receive pleasure, our egoism. We perceive all of these changes as time, as a temporal process. The same applies to movements. To sum up, all these parameters we designate as our world do not really exist. They are merely an aspect of our inner sensations.

This does not undermine existence of science and any other human activity. It just establishes a framework in which everything exists. I hear nowadays science also starts to pay attention to these parameters – the relativity of time, and movement etc.

Question: So each of us has his own frame of reference and we perceive the world in accordance with it? I am trying to translate this to a language of physics …

Rav’s student comments: In 1971, Fock wrote a very interesting article that was published in the “Achievements of Physical Science” Magazine, where he applied the principle of relativity to the means of observation. In fact, he presented a philosophical summary of the results of his discussions with Bohr. This was a generalization of the subsidiarity principle. From what Michael Laitman explained, we see that everyone lives in his own world.

In order to describe the process of perception, let's distinguish three conditional components: man, a perceiving subject; an aggregate subject with an internal hierarchy; and a method of perception. It would be more accurate to draw arrows to both sides because the interaction with the subject can also affect the subject and irrecoverably change it.

Let me use scientific basis to explain what was said earlier. Kabbalah researches the correlation, the connection between the absolute and the relative. Each manifestation of such correlation can be seen in the theory of relativity, in the quantum mechanics, as well as in classical mechanics of Newton where relativity is attributed to a frame of reference, as we assume that measuring by itself does not affect an object we study.

We can put it this way: there is something we call Light, or the Creator, or something absolute, infinite and eternal. For some reason this absolute, infinite and eternal (we can call it “fluctuation” or “surplus of pleasure” and use many languages to describe it) transforms into something that we define as relatively terminal, and variable.

The first phase is a formation of this sum total. The system here is in a degraded state, if I may use such an analogy, it carries some factor of degradation, i.e., the system contains a certain number of souls that exist here as one soul, as a single association.

In the next stage the system begins to degenerate. Nominally, we can express it as follows: there is a certain energy level, which for some reason disintegrates to multiplicity of sublevels, and each of them, in turn, disintegrates further. Each such particle is a part of a common soul, it is each of us.

The system will become one only when we unite all our sublevels into one. This quite obviously follows from Bohr’s relativity principle. We know that, having comprehended basic laws of development of our macro world, or a classical world, we encountered an effect which was very difficult to grasp and explain, especially to people who developed in this macro world.

Question: I would add here that the system receives information from outside, and having received it, it advances to some other levels. Accumulators of information are designed similarly, that is, a transition to a higher state occurs. Thus, can we fill ever so higher levels. Will this be the same as filling of your “Vessel”?

Yes.

Question: Your system works like a laser crystal. When you are unable to receive information further you can only dump it, right?

However, after dumping it out, it rises to a next level.

Rav’s student comments: What happens here? Let us say there is the Absolute, or the Creator, or the Light, whatever you call it, and there is the Creation, us. After consecutive stages of development, this Absolute, Infinite and Eternal for some reason gradually transforms into something relative, finite and variable.

We may call this process a process of formation or evolution. Humankind goes through certain stages of development until it reaches a full degeneration, so to say. Certain amount of souls are split into pieces and everyone occupies its own cell. Invariably, after we reach this stage, a bottom, so to say, a reverse ascent begins.

Hence, we must again pass a series of stages (conditionally we can call this process evolution) until we all gather together into one Vessel and return to an absolute, infinite and eternal state. There are several phase shifts (or "changes of paradigms") before we return to a starting point where it all began. This is the cycle we are talking about.

Question: I became totally convinced that Kabbalah is a science, and undoubtedly is an experimental one. On the one hand it is a science, and on the other it is a mystical teaching in a sense that it reveals concealed things.

If we take eastern empirical doctrines, where everything is also quite straightened out, we find that one of their goals is to reach a continuous awareness, because sleep is a little death, and death is, bluntly speaking, a deep dream. Some of our fine, eternal structures take a rest, and then awareness manifests itself again, acquires new body etc.

An entire array of eastern teachings’ adepts seemingly realized this, and reached immortality as conscious entities, however, spiritually, not physically. The question for you as a Kabbalah adept is this: Have you established by way of experiment that you are awareness, and your mind accepts your awareness? And secondly, what is your opinion regarding their ultimate goal of reaching continuous awareness?

The fundamental difference between Kabbalah and all other practices is that other practices are based on the suppression of egoism and personality. You should breathe less, eat less, move less, and so on. That is, a person is downgraded to the vegetative level, or even turned into something inanimate. In addition, this process is followed by various sensations that are given out for spiritual ones. But it is isolation, not ascent. This is the method of all eastern practices.

Why is this effective? It is because reducing egoism, a person naturally reduces sensation of suffering. This is why such practice is useful in life, but no more than that.

Kabbalah, on the contrary, maintains that a person must not be suppressed; egoism must not be destroyed or even reduced. In general, one can educate only by way of example and not by any other method, especially coercive. Attainment does not occur in the reason, which is merely an accomplice to our egoistical desires, but above the reason, when a person acquires a screen.

This is a different technique. You don't have to immerse into something. There is no such concept as meditation, when you “travel” to another place, thus losing control of yourself, when it seems to you that maybe you are getting somewhere. A Kabbalist is a person living in our real world. With the help of this method, the Kabbalist starts mastering his egoism and all of his properties, thereby sensing and investigating some finer structures, as any researcher of our world.

Unlike you, I did not study eastern cultures. If you take the real Kabbalah books – the five basic sources mentioned above - you will see formulas, drawings, pictures, tables, flow charts, relationships between forces and so on. Kabbalah is an experimental science. This experiment implies development and application of all the desires of a person, instead of their suppression, and this is different.

Question: I have a question about the experimental nature of this science. Can you tell us more about what methods are used?

How do you all know what is the subject of your specialty? It is a pure experiment carried out over thousands of years. The same goes for Kabbalah – it is science based on experimental data.

Question: Can you bring examples of such experiments? This is first question. Second question: How can we verify this science? A person really discovered something, or maybe it just seems to him that he did. How can a person verify that this discovery is truth?

The answer of Rav’s student: Let me try to answer your question. We just heard the final result. We cannot prove to you that what is written on a board is true. Instead, we can offer it to you as a working hypothesis. Perhaps, instead of presenting the final result, it would be better to begin our conversation by introducing scientific method by which this result has been achieved.

If we take a closer look at the Kabbalah method, we will see that it meets absolutely all criteria for scientific methods used in physics, chemistry, and in any experimental science. What we mean is this: the structure of the scientific method itself is hypothetic-deductive. We have our five sense organs through which we receive information on the world around us. These are essentially the only “bricks” that we will be working with.

Also, we believe that there is a certain reality which manifests itself in certain concurrences of space and time. At some point in time I enter some point of space, and I perceive a signal there, my brain records a certain sequence of signals, and I want to find out how they correspond among themselves. That is, I want to find out whether there is any law behind this sequence of signals. In fact, by and large, if one event follows the other, it does not mean that the former is the cause of the latter.

So, we put forward a working hypothesis about the structure of the world and its internal links, and we want to test it. We conduct experiments and if we see that our hypothesis is proven experimentally, we conclude that our statement is true. Then our hypothesis turns into the true theory.

Kabbalah uses an identical approach. There is the experience of great Kabbalists of this world, prophets who somehow received certain information on the structure of the world, tried to answer eternal questions which, to some extent, each of us tries to answer. For instance, why we came into this world, what will happen in the future, where we are going, and so on. They found a way to bring these truths to us, and being experimenters and diligent researchers, gave us the methods of research.

The method of Kabbalah involves three basic things: the first – certain books need to be available; the second - there should be a group of people who study these books together; and the third - a group needs to have a leader - a person who attained these truths himself, and who can direct the group.

Comment from the audience: Here one can see an analogy with Makh's approach. He defined science's purpose as analysis and classification of sensations perceived by a person. What we have now heard is close to what Makh was saying in his time.

Studying of authentic sources of Kabbalah in the way described by researchers builds the screen in a person. That is all. A person acquires an additional sense of perception, an inner understanding. It is not intuition or visions. It is impossible to experimentally research something that one cannot sense, manage, see, or control. But one can study this, and thereby develop an ability to sense it and investigate it ex facto.

Question: Do you advocate only deductive method of perception and exclude inductive, or is inductive method represented by books, a teacher and so on?

You can put it like this. This practice is very simple. If a person studies true Kabbalistic sources, then in the course of three to five years he starts acquiring what we call a screen, that is, he starts feeling internally that he senses, perceives, and researches finer layers of reality.

Based on my practical experience, I would say that the person starts to see the grid that holds the matter – our entire world and all the links that connect objects of our world into a single system. It is just like seeing all knots on an underside of an embroidered picture.

Question: By deductive method we mean that reason can understand and deduce from experience, making generalizations from specific to general. Inductive method, as I understand it, is when we come to the point that we can’t understand or grasp, and say “It is given by the Creator…” and so on. Do you know what I'm referring to?

No. What do you mean by “given from above”?

Question: Here we deal with metaphysical concepts which do not follow directly from experience - they are above experience.

This is not the case in Kabbalah. Moreover, the Upper World is revealed to a person only to the extent that a person is spiritually, that is, morally prepared for the information.

Why does such a ban exist? Why can't I sense the Upper World? If I was able to, I would harm myself irreversibly. If mankind knew how objects are interconnected, how our egoistical qualities influence the entire universe, we would see an absolutely different and beautiful picture.

Therefore the person first acquires a screen, that is, an anti-egoistical property, which gives a person an ability to constrain oneself. To the extent that he can constrain his egoism, he starts attaining the Upper matter.

Question: It is not quite clear - it looks somewhat turned upside down.

It is not turned upside down. Moreover, Baal HaSulam quotes Aristotle’s letter in which Aristotle says that science cannot be revealed to people who are not at a corresponding level of morale. In regular science this rule was broken a long time ago. In Kabbalah it is a natural process – one can sense the Upper world only after acquiring a screen.

We see that this is how everyone develops. Let's take a look at children in our world: we will notice that a child is getting stronger physically only to the extent that he gains knowledge, otherwise a child would harm himself.

Question: Since we talk about refinement of the spirit and aspiration for attainment and merging with the Absolute, then the Absolute is ascribed a certain spiritual perfection, no matter whether it is infinite or not. Can a human language describe the spiritual perfection in this infinite Absolute? This is my first question.

And the second question: Why is there “something” and not “nothing”? Physicists are familiar with this question: Some Absolute exists indefinitely, but why did this outburst occur and return back to the Absolute? Is it the only outburst in its entire existence or can there be numerous outbursts like this?

By the Absolute we mean properties that are opposite to our egoism – absolute altruism, bestowal. This is the only property of the Upper level, the Light that emanates from the Creator. We have to attain this property after becoming convinced how vicious and low our current state or life is.

What other outbursts might occur here, that is, what options do we have? I did not reflect upon this here. There is the second restriction, there is work in three lines when a person finds him or herself between egoism and altruism and has to opt for one of them; there are formulas and graphs showing correlation between attainment of the Upper World and the screen, i.e., person's moral qualities – his properties.

This process does not involve time as time does not exist. Kabbalah defines time as causal dependency. It does not exist in a time framework. What matters is only a sequence of events, not how much time has elapsed between them.

Question: Is the creation unique? In other words, is the act of creation unique?

Yes, it is unique. Because the Upper Power, the Creator, or the Light has only one desire – to bring contentment, it created only one desire - to receive pleasure. By virtue of a screen this desire to receive pleasure not only reaches its initial level, but it also goes the level above itself, i.e. ascends to the level of the Creator.

Question: Are there any other trends in Kabbalah?

There is either Kabbalah or people who have not received the true knowledge from a Kabbalist, or a teacher, and who study it unsystematically, reading books that are not truly Kabbalistic.

Egoism has been growing through the course of millennia, and Kabbalah is designed to handle a ripe egoism which only now begins to emerge in humankind. Kabbalah was hidden during these millennia, it did not advertise itself. It was not offered to people because they were at such levels of desires that Kabbalah was not needed yet.

Humankind is developing evolutionally starting from animal desires. Animal desires are desires of our body: for food, shelter, family, and sex. They all pertain to our body, and should we live outside of any society, or in the forest, we would still have these desires. The next stage of the development of the egoism is aspiration for wealth. Following this stage is the desire is for power, glory, and fame (combination of these). And finally, the desire that is the highest in our world, the desire for knowledge.

After having tried all these desires in the course of thousands of incarnations, after descending into our world thousands of times, a person reaches a state called recognition of Evil. In other words, each of us accumulates inner record which convinces us that nothing we do will give us pleasure.

Humankind is interconnected; internally we are all connected. It does not matter that in this world we are separated, - we are still connected with each other because we are one common vessel. Therefore, no one, not even a person from the least developed culture, needs to become Rothschild or Einstein or anyone else in order to become convinced that this will not bring him fulfillment. We exchange information, we are interconnected, we see it today and this is why Kabbalah is out in the open now.

There are just a few books that are studied by Kabbalah researchers. These are just five books that I mentioned earlier. In some way these five books embody the five levels of egoism, and, accordingly, are written by special people. Generally, there are thousands of books on Kabbalah. But these books are written by people who did not study with those few true Kabbalists that existed in the course of history. Rather, authors of these books tried to discover something by themselves. Unfortunately, there are a lot of them. The same is true for today: there are plenty of such authors, and some of them have become widely popular.

Question: How was it established that we are given 6000 years for a spiritual ascent?

We study this. Generally this question concerns everything in Kabbalah – “How do you know it is true?”

There is a controlling block in the world of Atzilut that supervises our entire world. Its structure, its parts, its subsystems and the interaction between them determine everything in our world. And this is broken down into movement, time and place, and this is why we have the appropriate sensations of this world, our world.

When we study this block we study virtually everything that occurs beneath it, because everything descends from it. The main part that governs us consists of 6000 parts that we sense as years, and 600,000 parts that we sense inside are certain gradations.

You should not take anything on faith – I can explain everything to you. Analyzing the world of Atzilut I can tell you what consequences its entire structure has in our world.

Question: So can you create a mathematic algorithm or some method that will show how to get the 6000 figure?

Not just that. The Study of Ten Sefirot containing six volumes that Baal HaSulam wrote in twentieth century is more than 2000 pages where at least 1500 pages are devoted to this block. There are about 50 graphs in my books, and all of them have to do with this governing block in the world of Atzilut.

Question: So it follows that at first there was the Absolute that manifests absolute altruism, bestowal, and then all these phases occur, and at the final stage a person, let's call him a vessel, begins to bestow in addition to receiving. The Absolute becomes an object for bestowal from the part of the c reation.

So the Absolute only bestowed at an initial phase, but here egoism is kind of imposed upon it. By saying this, do we not downgrade the Absolute?

When I research the Absolute, it is I who does it, this is how I imagine and sense it. In reality, I cannot establish whether it exists or not.

Question: But at least it is clear to you that initially the Absolute was not able to receive anything from me since I did not bestow. This implies certain downgrading.

No, no, this is absolutely wrong.

But the Absolute was not able to receive because I did not bestow.

We can put it this way: the Absolute could not receive because it only wanted to bestow. Desire to bestow is a desire in its own right.

But the Absolute did not receive anything.

Then it also indicates the state of imperfection, or a lack of fulfillment. If I can give you something but you do not want to take it I feel bad as I want to give but cannot make it happen.

But at this moment I do not receive anything, and you are downgraded by this, so to say.

That is correct.

Question: Can the Absolute be downgraded or is it only my understanding?

This is lack of understanding. It is the desire of the Absolute to make the creation equal to itself. Imagine that you have means to bestow. How can you make something equal to yourself? - Only if you create something opposite to you and give it an opportunity to reach the equality with you with its own efforts.

Question: How can you explain that there are absolute altruistic creatures in the animal world such as bees?

Everything is egoistic in our world, absolutely egoistic, and we can’t imagine to what extent this is so. Even if it seems to us that we act as altruists, our action is still based on some internal calculation, and it is subconscious and unperceived. A human being is made of only one material - desire to receive pleasure, and he can’t perform any action without receiving benefit from it. A human being would not have energy for any movement - internal or external.

This is true both for man as well as any other creature. Energy for any action - mental, physical, it doesn’t matter what kind – is only derived from receiving something. I must receive, and then I will be able to move, to do something. We are not talking about altruism at a level where I give you something and you receive it. I'm talking about altruism in its pure form. It is impossible.

It is only possible if a person acquires a screen (I don’t know how to explain to you what it is). Only then he or she starts to sense how to go above everything. We have heard about it from those who have been in a comatose state: such people say that they feel they are altruists and hover towards light and so on. A person experiences similar sensations when he or she breaks away from egoism and ascends to the Supreme.

Kabbalah gives us a real tool to master our own nature. Below this level we can’t talk about altruism. Any cell – anything - can’t exist if it does not receive. This is nature.

Question: What does Kabbalah say about Taro cards?

Taro cards and all these speculations around Kabbalah… I do not know much about it, I have only heard about it, but this is not Kabbalah. Kabbalah has nothing to do with any attributes, religious or not. Kabbalah is not stones, or fortune-telling, or holy water, or cards, or astrology.

Kabbalah is a completely pure, clear, and internal attainment of the Upper Worlds, and nothing else. This attainment does not manifest externally, nor can it be sensed. No external tools or means are needed for it. What one needs is the books that simply describe (in real terms understandable for ordinary people) the structure of any of these worlds, how they interrelate, how they interact with our world, how a person effects these worlds and is affected by them, what sparks a person who receives from it and so on. This is Kabbalah.

How does Kabbalah relate to everything else that is named Kabbalah? It does not. What can I do to the people who use all sorts of tricks in order to sell? They think they are getting somewhere, and that they are doing something interesting. There are plenty of people like this. True Kabbalah sources are well known, but it is impossible to fight with people who are trying to sell something that looks nice. They have got something to sell, you know…

In my case, I have nothing to sell, I can’t offer anything. I can’t offer a better life, luck, winning on a horse race, becoming rich or accomplishing something – I cannot offer this to you. What I am offering you is the way to attain the Upper World, and this a difficult way. You need to study and so on. But you are ready, you are able to study. How can I offer this to a man on the street? That is why Kabbalah remains as it is, and it will stay like this until mankind feels a real need for it.

There are about 800,000 people in the world that study within a framework of our Kabbalah academy. We have recently had a Congress which was attended by people from 34 countries – people with different mentalities, social levels, etc. However, they were all united by the desire to really understand the world we live in, and this can be done only from Above, because roots are there, all events are born there and then descend to our world.

When I tell this to scientists, some of them become interested and immediately find in Kabbalah common correlations, and draw interesting generalizations. Of course, this is nice, but it depends on the level of the scientist himself. It could be interesting for physicians or maybe biologists.

Question: Please tell us more about the level of Atzilut. Is there an ominous phenomenon that we call “Satan” or “Tainted Forces” that triggers in people “the fall from grace?” Do certain souls that represent evil forces come from there?

Evil in action… In an ideal world, not in our objectified type, there is no evil. There is no evil, there is only one single directing altruistic power, which created man, and its task is to bring man to the state of ultimate perfection. Therefore, evil exists only to reveal itself as opposite to this absolute perfection, and for nothing more than that, and only in this way. Therefore, we can’t talk about evil as something independent.

The cause of evil is that we don't rule over this world. In other words, the problem is that we don’t have the governance in our own hands; we don’t advance independently towards this highest level of attainment. This causes a reverse reaction from the Light. This is the manifestation of light perceived by us as a little evil. Therefore it is no use cursing some negative personalities or some forces in our world. You might just as well curse the law of gravitation when someone falls from the roof and gets injured. The same thing applies here.

You might say that to the extent that we correct our growing egoism, we will not let it work as evil. Evil is us, our uncorrected nature, there is no other evil in the world.

Question: I was always interested in such mysterious things as the famous Tree of Life, and the ten Sefirot. I also read that there is an eleventh Sefira, or a magic mirror. Is there a representation of the eleventh Sefira in the ancient sources that you have mastered? This is my first question. The second question is does each Sefira of the Tree of Life have a specific corresponding planet?

There is a block in the world of Atzilut that represents all these ten Sefirot. It is designed as a source of everything that exists in our world. Therefore everything is dividable into three, seven and ten. There are notes, planets, and certain levels within a person etc. In our world this block dissipates at all levels of egoism – still, vegetative, animated and human.

Question: Is this a technological additive?

This is not an additive; this is a consequence at all levels. And the magic mirror is a screen.
I thank everyone for their attention and for the honor of speaking before you.