Rav Michael Laitman PhD
Kabbalah Revealed
part - 1 -
Foreword
Kabbalah is known to be a secret wisdom. It is precisely this secrecy surrounding Kabbalah that gave rise to numerous legends, falsifications, gossip, ignorant arguments and wrong conclusions. Only at the end of the 20 th century was the wisdom of Kabbalah allowed to be revealed to all and even circulated around the world. Therefore, addressing the reader at the beginning of this book, I feel obliged to tear age- old layers off this ancient wisdom that is common to all mankind.
The wisdom of Kabbalah has nothing to do with religion, meaning it is no more related to it than physics, chemistry or mathematics. It is not a religion and this becomes obvious from the fact that religious people know nothing about it and do not understand a word in it.
The most profound knowledge about the laws of the Universe, the method of apprehending the world, the achievement of the Purpose of Creation was originally kept away from the religious masses in the first place. Kabbalah was waiting for the time when mankind matured sufficiently to accept this wisdom and to use it correctly.
Kabbalah allows man to control his destiny; it is the knowledge that was passed to all peopl es of the world. It deals with the realm hidden from our five senses. It operates only with spiritual notions, meaning with things that happen above the material level, beyond our perception in the upper world.
Kabbalah describes the upper world by using the language of metaphor or the scientific language.
The metaphorical description : Kabbalah borrows the names of spiritual objects, forces and actions from the language of our world. This is necessary, because we have no words at our disposal that can describe unearthly phenomena. But since a certain force descends from each object in the upper world to form a corresponding object in ours, a Kabbalist living in both worlds sees this connection and describes the spiritual reality by using the names of our world.
However, Kabbalists' descriptions seem like accounts of earthly actions to those who have not yet attained the spiritual realm. Kabbalah speaks exclusively of what happens in the upper world. The use of familiar words and definitions leads to false conceptions and erroneous conclusions. Hence, Kabbalah forbids imagining a connection between the names of our world and their spiritual roots. This is considered the grossest error in Kabbalah. That is why it was forbidden for so many years up to this time: man's development was insufficient, we imagined all sorts of demons and angels where something totally different is meant.
The scientific description :
Starting from the 90-s of the 20 th century one is allowed to study Kabbalah and is encouraged to disseminate this wisdom. Why is that so?
It is because people stopped thinking of natural forces as manlike creatures, mermaids, centaurs etc. They are now ready to conceive of the upper world as a domain of forces, force fields: the world above matter.
Starting from the 16 th century, from the period of the Lurian Kabbalah this wisdom began to describe the upper world by using strictly scientific definitions and methods.
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