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Abrahams Immortal Wisdom on How to Best Understand God
How the Wisdom of
Kabbalah Originated
Let us, for a moment, journey back
through time to ancient Mesopotamia,
the cradle of civilization. Roughly 4,000
years ago, situated within a vast and
fertile stretch of land between the Tigris
and Euphrates rivers in what today is
Iraq, a city-state called Babel played
host to a flourishing civilization. Bustling
with life and action, it was the trade
center of the entire ancient world.
Babel, the heart of the dynamic
civilization we now call ancient
Babylon, was a melting pot and the
ideal setting for numerous belief
systems and teachings. Its people practiced idol worship of many kinds, and among the most revered people in
Babel was a priest named Abraham, who was a local authority in the practice of idol worship, as was his father,
Terah.
However, Abraham had a very special quality: he was unusually perceptive, and like all great scientists, he had a zeal
for the truth. The great 12th century scholar, Maimonides (also known as the RAMBAM), described Abrahams
determination and efforts to discover lifes truths in his book, The Mighty Hand:
Ever since this firm one was weaned, he began to wonder. He began to ponder day and night, and he wondered
how it was possible for this wheel to always turn without a driver? Who is turning it, for it cannot turn itself? And he
had neither a teacher nor a tutor. Instead, he was wedged in Ur of the Chaldeans among illiterate idol worshippers,
with his mother and father and all the people worshipping stars, and heworshipping with them.
In his quest, Abraham learned what lies beyond the borderland that William Crookes described so many centuries
later. He found the unity, the oneness of reality that Heisenberg, Schrdinger, Einstein, Leibniz, and others intuitively
sensed. In Maimonides words, He [Abraham] attained the path of truth and understood the line of justice with his
own correct wisdom. And he knew that there is one God there who leads, and that He has created everything, and
that in all that there is, there is no other God but Him.
(To interpret these excerpts correctly, it is important to note that when Kabbalists speak of God, they do not mean it in
the religious sense of the wordas an almighty being that you must worship, please, and appease, which in return
rewards devout believers with health, wealth, long life, or all of the above. Instead, Kabbalists identify God with
Nature, the whole of Nature. The most unequivocal statements on the meaning of the term, God, were made by
Baal HaSulam, whose writings explain that God is synonymous with Nature.
For example, in his essay, The Peace, he writes, To avoid having to use both tongues from now onNature and a
Supervisorbetween which, as I have shown, there is no differenceit is best for us toaccept the words of the
Kabbalists that HaTeva (The Nature) is the sameas Elokim (God). Then, I will be able to call the laws of God
Natures commandments, and vice-versa, for they are one and the same, and we need not discuss it further.)

At forty years of age, writes Maimonides, Abraham came to know his Maker, the single law of Nature, which
creates all things. But Abraham did not keep it to himself: he began to provide answers to the people of Ur of the
Chaldeans and to converse with them and to tell them that the path on which they were walking was not the path of
truth. Alas, like Galileo after him, and many other great forerunners throughout history, Abraham was confronted by
the establishment, which in his case was Nimrod, king of Babel.
He [Nimrod] told him, Worship the fire. Abraham responded, Should I worship the water, which quenches the fire?
Nimrod replied, Worship the water! He told him: Then, should I worship the cloud, which carries the water? He told
him, Worship the cloud!
He [Abraham] told him: In that case, should I worship the wind, which disperses the clouds? He told him, Worship
the wind! He [Abraham] told him, And should we worship man, who suffers the wind? He [Nimrod] told him: You
speak too much; I worship only the fire. I will throw you in it, and let the God that you worship come and save you
from it! Abraham was thrown into a furnace, but he miraculously survived.
Thus, Abraham successfully withstood Nimrod, but was expelled from Babylon and left for the land of Haran. But
Abraham, the harbinger from Babylon, did not stop circulating his discovery just because he was exiled from
Babylon. Maimonides elaborate descriptions tell us, He began to call out to the whole world, to alert them that there
is one God to the whole world He was calling out, wandering from town to town and from kingdom to kingdom, until
he arrived in the land of Canaan
And since they [people in the places he wandered to] gathered around him and asked him about his words, he taught
everyoneuntil he brought them back to the path of truth. Finally, tens of thousands assembled around him, and they
are the people of the house of Abraham. He planted this tenet in their hearts, composed books on it, and taught his
son, Isaac. And Isaac sat and taught and warned, and informed Jacob and appointed him a teacher, to sit and
teach And Jacob the Patriarch taught all his sons, and separated Levi and appointed him as the head, and had him
sit and learn the way of God
To guarantee that the truth would carry through the generations, Abraham commanded his sons not to stop
appointing appointee after appointee from among the sons of Levi, so the knowledge would not be forgotten. This
continued and expanded in the children of Jacob and in those accompanying them.
The astounding result of Abrahams efforts was the birth of a nation that knew the deepest laws of life, the ultimate
Theory of Everything: And a nation that knows the Creator was made in the world.
Indeed, Israel is not merely a name of a people. In Hebrew, the word, Israel ( Ysrael) consists of two words: Yashar
(straight), and El (God). Israel designates a mindset of wanting to discover lifes law, the Creator. Put differently, Israel
is not a genetic ascription or attribution; it is rather the name, or direction of the desire that drove Abraham to his
discoveries. Genetically, the first Israelites were mostly Babylonians, as well as members of other nations who joined
Abrahams group. This was obvious to the ancient Israelites. As Maimonides wrote, they had their teachers, the Levis,
and they were taught to follow lifes essential laws.
Today, however, we are unaware of the fact that Israel refers to the desire to know lifes basic law, the Creator, and
not to a genetic lineage. Nearly 2,000 years of concealment of the truth, since the ruin of the Second Temple, has
practically obliterated the truth that Kabbalahthe science that teaches Natures (Gods) unityis for all the people
in the world, just as Abraham intended it for all the people in Babel, and later Began to call out to the whole world,
as described by Maimonides.

Heres a Quick Way to See How the Same Law Governs Abraham, Napolean and
China
Moreover, the need to discover this force is as pertinent today as ever. Nothing has changed in Nature since
Abrahams time, and the law of unity and oneness is still the one force that creates, governs, and sustains life.
In fact, today, our need to know it is more pertinent than ever because in Abrahams time, humanity had numerous
roads from which to disperse, and ample land to inhabit. Today, however, we have a global community, and every
crisis is on a global scale. The mistakes we make take their toll on the whole world. Abrahams discovery helps us
add lifes force into our calculations and plans, which makes it paramount, life-saving information.
The force that Abraham discovered and described to his students is the very force that drove Napoleon to conquer
more than he could rule, and which is still driving China to globalize, instead of isolate. Yet, this force is also behind
the voices that hail protectionism and separation. In a global world, protectionism could spell the end of our
civilization. Our only hope is to unite, because unity is the direction of the force that drives all of life. our challenge,
therefore, is to learn how to unite. It is possible and plausible, but in a time of crisis, it will require recognizing lifes
force and generating a mutual effort to cooperate and collaborate, to live by this laws dictates.
Abrahams Immortal Wisdom on How to Best Understand God is based on the
book, Self Interest vs. Altruism in the Global Era: How Society Can Turn Self Interests
into Mutual Benefit by Dr. Michael Laitman.
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