Abraham’s Wisdom of Happiness
“The greatest among giants.” This is how Abraham is described by the sages. What insights did he attain in his lifetime? What did he discover that we still fail to grasp today?
Animals have no questions. They act instinctively. As human beings developed and emerged from the animate level, questions about the essence of existence began to awaken within them. What about me? What is my life like? Is it good for me? Is it bad? Is there some force governing me? Perhaps I can adapt myself to it? Is the suffering or pleasure I experience now actually a punishment or reward for the past? Will I receive some kind of payment in the future for my actions? And ultimately, what is the greater meaning of it all? What am I living for?
From these questions, all kinds of beliefs emerged. In different cultures, people worshiped the forces of nature, prayed to the wind, rain, earth, sun, moon, stars, and constellations, offered sacrifices to statues of mythological figures, wore special garments, tattooed mystical images and symbols on their bodies, danced around fires, and performed countless other rituals and practices.
All of this was done in an attempt to appease the upper forces they believed in, improve their fate, bring blessings, gain protection, reduce their fear of tomorrow, and ease their insecurity and uncertainty about what was going to happen.
Abraham was the son of Terah, one of the great priests of ancient Babylon. People would come to Terah, who made and sold idols, seeking healing and guidance, and Abraham was expected to continue the family business. But at some point, a profound transformation took place within him.
We do not need to worship nature. We do not need to give gifts to God. We do not need to fear Him as we have until now. All of these are “idols,” Abraham explained, that is, fundamentally mistaken perceptions. We must break and shatter them because there is no reality in them. All the images we have created for ourselves regarding the unknown, life and death, heaven and hell, this world and some supposed upper world, we would do well to erase them. All of these phenomena that run through our imagination simply do not exist.
What does exist within nature’s system is one general force, opposite to the egoistic nature of the human being. It is a force of positive bestowal, an upper quality of giving and pure love. This is the quality we need to work toward. It governs all of reality, both the reality we experience now and the reality we are destined to discover as we develop. This quality influences us with the purpose of bringing us to its awareness. Such awareness is possible according to the “law of equivalence of form,” which states that in order to perceive something, you must first build within yourself a quality similar to it.
Abraham discovered that human beings are naturally governed by an egoistic force of reception, a desire to receive everything into themselves solely for their own benefit. This is how we are built and how we operate, consciously and subconsciously, in every field and at every level. However, there is a special method, the wisdom of Kabbalah, which enables us to transform our nature into its opposite form: anti-egoistic, above nature, a form of love and giving like the quality of the single general upper force of nature.
This force is omnipresent, but we do not perceive it. It is concealed from us because our qualities are opposite to its qualities. It is the foundation of nature, and the more we discover it, the more we come to understand and feel what was, what is, and what will be, what the cause of everything is, and what everything ultimately leads to. This force alone acts upon all that exists, i.e., upon the still, vegetative, animate, and human matter.
Abraham discovered that perceiving nature’s general force depends upon a special connection between people, and therefore the first quality that must be developed is the quality of Hesed, i.e., mercy or loving-kindness. This is the origin of the expression “Abraham’s Hesed (mercy).” The quality of Hesed is aimed at participating in the inner world of every person as though we were feeling ourselves. It means trying to feel and understand both their weaknesses and their strengths, accepting them as they are, and drawing as close to them as possible while bringing them closer to us.
Abraham explained all this and more to anyone willing to listen. Those who felt an inner inclination to connect in order to discover the one force gathered around his method and became his students. The sources call them “the people of Abraham’s house,” and according to Maimonides in The Book of Knowledge, they numbered in the thousands.
Abraham taught them to connect with one another through Hesed (mercy) and love. This process of development is defined as spiritual because the inner spirit of a person is transformed: from reception to giving, from self-love to love of others, from ego and destructive competition to connection and mutual complementarity.
The more the egoistic force grows, while we make efforts to rise above it toward giving and even love, the more strongly we awaken upon ourselves the influence of that upper force. This follows the law of equivalence of form mentioned earlier. This force is also called “light,” and it operates like a force field, radiating upon people according to the extent of their efforts to become similar to it, i.e., to become increasingly included in one another, support one another, and be mutually responsible for one another, until they reach the level of feeling everyone as one.
Later, the level of ego within Abraham’s group increased, reaching its peak in the days of Moses. The inner meaning concealed behind the biblical story of slavery in Egypt describes the feeling of those people that their great ego had enslaved them. It drove them into constant clashes and thereby disconnected them from the single upper force. This time, it was Moses who taught them how to rise above all the separation created by the ego and nevertheless draw closer emotionally, heart to heart. In spiritual terms, this is called the “exodus from Egypt.”
From this point onward, the group was called “Israel,” after its direction, Yashar-El, i.e., straight to the revelation of the concealed force. Their willingness to connect as one man with one heart and for all of Israel to be mutually responsible for one another caused that upper force to act upon them with greater intensity and become revealed in their connections. As this occurred, people felt themselves existing in a broader world, above egoistic matter. An entirely new reality opened before them, governed by a force of giving and love. They lived on a different level from all the other nations, able to experience true happiness.
Why? It is because they did not experience lack, suffering, or the feeling of missing out on something, that we do not have enough, that we have less than someone else, that perhaps they will be better off than us, perhaps their children will be more successful than ours, and so on. What makes our lives bitter is the destructive competition between us. It takes place constantly, even subconsciously. Because of it, we are unable to see another person except through egoistic lenses. In fact, our entire picture of the world is portrayed within us in a particular way because of our egoistic nature. This is why the world feels dark and narrow, life is filled with worries, there is no tranquility or satisfaction, let alone happiness.
In addition, there is the persistent feeling that life is short, limited, and ends in death. From this arises people’s need to construct all kinds of images about what will happen to them after they finish their journey here. What will those who remain here think of them? How will they be received in whatever place they presumably arrive at? Endless imaginings, fantasies, and confusion.
Through attaining the upper force, however, we develop an entirely different approach. Concepts such as this world and the next world, heaven and hell, reward and punishment, Creator and created being acquire fundamentally new definitions. Rising above the egoistic force opens the complete picture before us. We no longer need protective devices such as amulets or red strings, nor do we need external symbols. All of our work is internal, in correcting our attitude toward others.
The great sages called this “work in the heart”: prayer, a request to receive the force of love and giving. The sources also state, “I have created the evil inclination; I have created the Torah as a spice for it, for the light in it reforms it.” In other words, the light is the only force capable of transforming the evil inclination into a good inclination, the ego into love. The entire wisdom lies in learning how to awaken its influence upon us with full intensity.
This was the people of Israel in its original form, but development requires all of humanity to eventually acquire a similar form. Therefore, through a special action of the upper governing system, also called the “thought of creation,” the people of Israel underwent destruction, a great shattering. The egoistic force erupted with such intensity that it produced unfounded hatred. Their equivalence with the upper force was lost, and therefore that force disappeared from their perception. The people were dispersed among the nations of the world and, during two thousand years of exile, became intermingled with them all.
During this period of concealment, Judaism developed in its popular, external form, followed by Christianity and Islam. The religions fought among themselves and internally divided into different denominations and schools, as everyone knows. Nevertheless, they advanced human awareness and prepared it for the perception of the truth.
If today we return to Abraham’s wisdom and learn from it the method of connecting with love above the great ego, we will be able to lead the world toward the desired correction. All the problems intensifying in our time—in relationships, family, education, culture, society, economics, security, international relations, and ecology—all the pressures, fears, and anxieties will be resolved at their root when human beings acquire the quality of love and giving.
This will be an ascent to the level of the upper force, the revelation of eternal and perfect happiness.
Based on "New Life 239 – The Wisdom of Abraham's Happiness" with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.