The following Q&A with Rav Michael Laitman, PhD, focuses on Kabbalah in today's world, and why such an incorporation is happening.
Question 1: How is Kabbalah practiced and incorporated into everyday life?
Rav Michael Laitman, PhD: You don’t practice Kabbalah; you study it. It is just like any science. By studying it, you open up your sensation of the world, the environment, yourself, and how to get along better with everything. You start feeling things you’ve never felt. The wisdom of Kabbalah develops another sense in you, which gives you this ability to better cope with your environment. It brings you to a better state in general.
Question 2: Kabbalah has been studied in secret for thousands of years. What was the reason for its secrecy during this time? Why did people study it in secret? And why is it suddenly becoming so popular today?
Rav Michael Laitman, PhD: Kabbalah indeed started thousands of years ago and was known to humanity back then. Its primary book is The Book of Zohar (The Book of Radiance), written in the 2nd century CE. Since then, and until our time, Kabbalah has been hidden. It is written in The Book of Zohar that until the end of the 20th century, the wisdom of Kabbalah would remain waiting for humanity to come to a global crisis and develop a need for Kabbalah. At this stage, we would suddenly discover that we would need to know how to cope with the world. From the simplest person to the whole of humanity, we would need to know what manages us. When such a need would arise, the wisdom of Kabbalah would become disclosed. There had been no need for it until today, and that is why it had never been disclosed or known about. From generation to generation, only a chosen few had engaged in it, and it came into our time where everybody is interested in it. This is why, today, Kabbalists are disclosing it to everyone.
Question 3: You called Kabbalah “a science.” What makes Kabbalah a science and not a religion? And does Kabbalah being a science mean that people who follow religions can also study Kabbalah?
Rav Michael Laitman, PhD: First of all, anyone can engage in the wisdom of Kabbalah, just like in any science. You can belong to any faith, religion, gender or race, and engage in science, and it’s the same with Kabbalah.
Kabbalah is like a continuation of physics. We’re talking about the hidden realm, which is closed from our five senses. Using the wisdom of Kabbalah, we develop another sense—the sensation of the hidden realm—and we discover more and more things. That’s why it is a science. It uses the same approach as science, in discovering things and passing them on. You have no need to believe in or practice anything. I myself grew up as a scientist. When I came to the wisdom of Kabbalah, I continued with it like a scientist. There are all kinds of people from all around the world who engage in Kabbalah.
Rav Michael Laitman, PhD is the author of over thirty books on the wisdom of Kabbalah, and is the principal teacher and founder of the Bnei Baruch Kabbalah Education & Research Institute
