A Complete Guide for No Idiots

It probably isn’t the first setting you’d consider for revealing such ancient wisdoms, but The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Kabbalah is a pleasant surprise: comprehensive and easygoing at the same time

Rav Laitman isn’t quite the sort of person you would pick to write a book for the Idiots series. His background as a scientist and researcher showed no promise of him becoming an “easy writer.” But the combination of a man of “hard facts” with the easy going style of Collin Canright proved successful, and the outcome is an easy-going, authentic Kabbalah book.

And don’t be fooled for a minute by the flowing writing style, the facts and the knowledge are all there. By the time you have finished reading this book, you will have traversed millennia of spiritual evolution that began in Babylon, and that (according to Kabbalah) is culminating today. You will also learn about the dos and don’ts of Kabbalists, which teach you how to become one of them, should you want to.

The book is divided into four parts, adhering to the CIG series traditional structure. However, in this case the division is very helpful, because it helps focus your mind on the key message of each part.

Part One deals primarily with the rapid expansion of Kabbalah in the past ten years or so. But this part does more than that: it explains the gist of Kabbalah, the difference between authentic Kabbalah and “Kabbalah-inspired” offshoots, which are not Kabbalah. In the words of the authors, “Kabbalah has always had a reputation of possessing insight into the highest forces of nature, of the spiritual worlds, and of the nature of God. As a result, people have always wanted to connect Kabbalistic terms with all kinds of teachings... The problem with such connections is that they trivialize Kabbalah and undermine its power to help us better understand our human and spiritual natures. This, after all, is at the heart of today’s interest in this teaching, and the reason Kabbalah was developed in the first place.”

Part Two provides diluted “hardcore” Kabbalah knowledge. It talks about how the spiritual worlds are built, and their structure reflects on our souls.

Part Three is the gist of the personal Kabbalistic knowledge. If you want to become serious about it, this part will give you the know-how of fast advancement in Kabbalah. The concepts of spirituality explained there, and how they integrate with our perception of reality (presented in Part One) are truly remarkable, if not revolutionary. For most of us, most of the concepts presented in this part will be new.

Part Four takes a sharp turn from the inner world of a Kabbalist to the global issues we are facing today. According to Kabbalah, climate change, depression, divorce, wars and every other problem you can think of is connected to Kabbalah, or to the fact that we are not realizing life’s goal of “possessing insight into the highest forces of nature, of the spiritual worlds, and of the nature of God.”

In a word, this book quite smoothly traverses the challenging terrain of authentic Kabbalah and is a true guide for those who want to know the real deal concerning Kabbalah. It is a complete guide for no idiots.