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Guy Spiro: Karen, I read your book, God Wears Lipstick. I found it very interesting. I also found that while it appears to be written for women, there are good reasons for men to read it as well.

Karen Berg: The reason for the title was that most people believe the figure that we call the Creator, or God, is male—masculine, but to truly have circuitry and energy you have to have male and female energy. There is the feminine aspect, not as we understand feminine, but the feminine aspect is creative force; hence God Wears Lipstick.

GS: I don’t really think of God as being male or female, but it’s true that most people do. Neither do I think of people, at essence, as being male or female. I’m in a male body this lifetime and you’re in a female body. So when men are subjugating women, they are harming themselves.

KB: That’s right.

GS: I liked your light bulb illustration; could you talk about that and elaborate on it?

KB: The idea of the circuitry and energy?

GS: Yes.

KB: Anything in this world that operates by any kind of energy has to have aspects of negative and positive energy, and in between, a filter. The filter determines how much voltage there will be. In life, we talk about polarity, we talk about the idea that there are male and female aspects. We believe that life itself doesn’t throw us more than we actually can accomplish, than we can handle. Therefore, the more negative things that happen in our lives, the more opportunity we have to create light, and the light bulb expresses that because it shows the balance between positive and negative, male and female, and they’re “shielded” by the filter. The filter is the balance between the two, that creates a symmetry that causes energy to operate, and life works the same way.

GS: So how would you apply that to life?

KB: We should try to find partners that are equal to us in the amount of energy they can produce. If I am looking for the perfect relationship, I can’t look for a relationship that has a dependent. I would like a partner to be equal to me. It needs to be like, let’s say, a North Pole, which is very powerful but has its own draw and its own pull. Equally so, the South Pole has its own pull and its own draw. These are independent energy channels, but by them working together in interchange, you get the total circuitry. When you have two independent channels that are together interdependent, doing the same role, that’s what a true and really good relationship should be about. Two people that are stable in who they are, that know what they want out of life, can together create something that will be both for them and for the world. Spiritually speaking, there must be an aspect of sharing in the relationship in order for it to work.

GS: But of course, it’s not always the case that equals get together, and so accommodations have to be made. You talk a lot about that in the book.

KB: Right, exactly. If you have the ideal relationship, you have two powers that are equal and understand what they want to do with their lives, and it’s to go forward and produce something. Probably like you and your wife, to produce something that shares with the world. And that would make the relationship, because the thing that creates the relationship, the bonding, is the idea of that aspect of sharing.

GS: It hasn’t always been a bed of roses, but I have always considered Jeanne and I to be roughly equal.

     It took a lot of courage to make Kabbalah available to the world. I mean, it’s well known that traditionally you had to be Jewish, male and over forty.

KB: Because we’ve done something that’s little understood, it’s good that I have the opportunity here to explain it. What we have done is created a gateway. We have said to people, look we’re not going to make you a Kabbalist in six easy lessons, the same as you can’t make an astrologer in six easy lessons. What we are going to give you is an opportunity through the classes to learn about consciousness, to learn about the life force of God, to understand how the function works on a spiritual level. We will be your gateway regardless of your religion or your spiritual teachings. After that, the two percent of the people that study with us who actually remain, they can take those tools and go to whatever church, synagogue, mosque, or wherever they go, and apply and use those tools to make them a better whatever.

     We simply want to be a gateway. We want to be the place where people can come, take, and leave. But of course there is the other aspect. The learning of the ancient texts of the Zohar, the teaching of the sephiroths, is not something that happens within the first six months or a year of learning. That process means that you decided to stay in the teaching of Kabbalah and then become closely involved in the true aspects of the teaching.

GS: Did you say two percent?

KB: Two percent.

GS: Two percent stay and 98 percent move on to ...

KB: Move on to other things, which is great. I don’t really care how you get to the understanding, just so you get there.

GS: I think what you have done is very much in keeping with my understanding of the New Age. It’s because we’re moving into Aquarius that we have access to all the world’s religions. You can walk into a bookstore today and find thousands of books that would have got you burned at the stake 400 years ago.

KB: Even forty years ago, a physician I know personally who practiced alternative medicine was put in jail.

GS: You took a risk by going public with formerly secret material, and you were actually attacked with a baseball bat?

KB: That was in the very beginning. The ultra orthodox thought that what we were doing was heresy. I’ve always taken the road less traveled if I thought it was right, just because that is my nature. When I met Rav, and started to learn the Kabbalah I said, we need the people to have this knowledge. We need to get it out there. And then all hell broke loose. But that’s how we started. A basic of Kabbalistic principle is to question. The why must be answered. We say that if you can not answer the why, then you shouldn’t be doing it.

GS: What would you say the more essential teachings are?

KB: The idea that you and I and each person in this world have a fraction of the creative force. We say that each person in this world is part of that. If I truly want to be connected, then my connection has to be by me acting as that creative force. This means that if I meet someone and I don’t like them for whatever reason, or they have aspects that go against my grain, well I don’t necessarily have to be their best friend, but I do have to respect them. In other words, I have no right to judge that person. I have to understand that they have the equal right to be who they are. How they do and create and fix in their lives is their business, not my business.

     Also there are no victims, because if I allow myself into an abusive relationship, then I am abusing that part of God that’s inside of me, and therefore, I’m not being true to those aspects of myself. The only reason that I would be put in that situation is to enhance that life form, so that I can grow out of it. Therefore I’m not a victim, but every place that I am is a process by which I can either grow or fall, and we believe that everything that happens in our lives are opportunities for growth. Even in the worst scenarios that we can have in our lives—

GS: Especially in the worst.

KB: —especially in the worst is when the most growth can happen, unless we decide that we’re a victim. If we decide that we are victims, then we are not on the side of the light. Then we’re not motivating, activating that part of us which is light.

GS: I have said at times that I’d like to have a word with whoever it was that set it up that we learn the most through the most trying circumstances. You know, whose idea was that?

KB: Well, when people are at their best and things are fine and everything’s happening, we don’t, most often in those times, take recourse. We just let everything flow. We don’t really say to ourselves, wow, that’s a beautiful painting, or wow, isn’t that a beautiful scene? How many of us turn around and say, thank you God for giving me the eyes to see that beautiful painting? It’s only at a time when it stops happening that we say, wait a minute, what’s happening here? What did I do? What didn’t I do or where did I fail—or what is my next move?

GS: Would you say that to the extent that we’re able to identify with the little God spark within us, that that’s who we really are?

KB: Right.

GS: Then we’re moving in the right direction.

KB: That’s correct. It’s very simple. What’s the difference between the moment before and the moment after one dies? That spark is the only thing that leaves.

GS: You raised something in your book that piqued my interest quite a bit because I put a lot of time into studying the Ages. When you spoke of the golden calf as being a defining moment, and I really think it was, the way that I look at it is that that was symbolizing those who left Egypt’s desire to stay within the Age of Taurus paradigm, when they were clearly being led into the Age of Aries paradigm. The golden calf represents Taurus the Bull.

KB: Right.

GS: And when Joshua fought the Battle of Jericho and the walls came tumbling down, what kind of horn did he blow? It was a ram’s horn.

KB: Exactly right.

GS: The symbolism is so obvious when you look at it.

KB: At the time of the golden calf, the men took their own gold to make the idol, but when they asked the women to give their gold, they refused. Those are the women that now in this time—we call it coming to the Age of Aquarius—these women have come back to apply that power, and that’s why today there are more women in power than ever before. When have we had presidents that were female? I think we have three of them today.

GS: That’s very interesting. Astrology, Kabbalah and metaphysics in general are very poorly understood. I find most of the detractors know two things about them, the first being “Jack.”

KB: It’s easy to attack something that you know zip about. We always say the same thing when we talk to people: you know what, all the things you’re saying may be true. We invite you to a class. We invite you to an open forum. We invite you to be a part of us for a day and then go out and say whatever you want. But come on in first and see what we are and then you decide.

     We use astrology as a tool. There’s a book called The Bible of Medicine in which it says which days to gather herbs, at what time and how the sun should be setting. The Book of Formation, which was a book accredited to Abraham the Prophet, talks about the constellations. This is something that’s gone on down through the Ages and it’s not a new concept. There’s the teaching that talks about the face. It talks about the different signs, the different lines on the face, the hands, et cetera. Unfortunately, some people take a look at Kabbalah, as they look at anything else, and say, well, if you got a long nose it means this; its like if you’re born Aries you’ve got to be this, you know what I mean? They don’t take in the total aspect because its sort of like the blind men and the elephant. So you need not only to have the first basics of whatever it is that you want to learn, but you have to stay in it long enough to accumulate a foundation and only then can you make up your mind if one study or the other is for you.

GS: Well, people have to understand that the planets are not causative, they’re reflective.

KB: They’re reflective, exactly.

GS: Without getting into names, you’ve attracted some famous people to the teaching.

KB: Well, anything that grows big enough gets people that are on different levels and we do have some celebrities. But you know, a celebrity is just a person with a higher profile.

GS: Have you found that it’s been a combination blessing and curse?

KB: Normally it is because there are people that don’t like that and they say, well, how can this be anything real if “X” is there, you know? But the point is, we were country before country was cool. We didn’t just start yesterday; we’ve been here since 1922. We became more involved in the States in 1983, but that’s still 23 years. So it isn’t a fad.

GS: As we move further into Aquarius, people are being attracted to all kinds of teachings. Do you find that it’s all pretty much the same? It is said that any Initiate from any system can speak to an Initiate from any other system and, getting past language, agree on almost everything.

KB: That’s the thing. There is only one Essence of Truth in this world which we call Light. The minute one says, I’m this and you are that, therefore you can’t be this, then it’s not Truth anymore; then it’s something that can only cause separation.

GS: One big split going on in the world today is between religion and spirituality. Religion will fly airplanes into buildings; spirituality won’t.

KB: That’s exactly right. We don’t have that aspect cause we’re all part of the same soul. It’s very important that people understand that we can get rid of victim consciousness; that’s an important issue, that we indeed are the captains of our lives.

GS: I say that we sit at the center of our own universe. What else would you like to communicate to our readers?

KB: I would like people to understand that I didn’t write this book to become an author. I wrote this book after thirty years of tutoring and working and counseling with people. I thought it was important to put into a book what I’ve gleaned from that through the years, and that’s what this is about. That’s why I wrote this book. But we’re not the message, we’re simply messengers. We should always try to keep in touch with that which is inside of ourselves, and we should always be a part of that, that language that everybody can understand, and to sit quietly and listen to that special voice, that special language.

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