Baal HaSulam says that when we start looking at the world through the point of the soul, we develop a different perception of reality. This is a new sense, in addition to our five corporeal senses (sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste).

Within this new sense, I perceive an image that I call “the Upper World,” or another dimension. I then perceive both myself and this world inside this new, different sensation.

When you start perceiving the true, Upper Reality, you start seeing that your former perception is relative, that it is just one possible reality, and not the only existing reality, the way it seemed to you before. You start looking at the former reality in a detached way, and you see that this it is relative: it may exist, or, if your body dies, it may not.

However, when we switch from one perception of reality to the other, the new perception of reality does not annul the former. You begin perceiving them together and you see one of them as originating from the other.

But then you embark on yet another journey to an ever-expanding, true, eternal and absolute reality of the Creator.

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There are moments in life when a person is suddenly overtaken by an unusual inspiration. He feels that the world around him is being permeated by some special force, that the air “thickens” around him and is filled with a new essence. He is surrounded by thoughts and intentions that are directed towards him and he feels they govern him. It seems that everything all around is suffused with love.

This happens very rarely, when a person has attracted the Light and it has lifted him onto the hands of the Upper One. From there he sees the same thing as the Upper One. However, he sees it with his own eyes, which have opened up just slightly.

When this happens, the most important thing is to come away from it with a clear impression that “This was the spiritual world to the extent of my limited perception.” In reality, however, it is eternal and its power is a billion times greater for those who ascend to the first, smallest spiritual degree.

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We need to search for similarity to the Creator, to imagine this quality, called “the Creator.” I want to come and see Him. After all, in Hebrew the word “Creator” (Bore) breaks down into two words: “come and see” (Bo-Re).

In essence, we are talking about the Sefirot, which are between Keter and Malchut. Keter, the highest Sefira, is only attained in the end, while Malchut, the lowest Sefira, remains an unformed desire, until we attain the eight Sefirot between them.

We always need to look for equivalence of form with the bestowal of Keter, which we try to imagine. In virtue of this, we pass through the equivalence of form and reveal the knowledge, power, and understanding of what we need to do.

In order to not get confused and to stay in the middle line, we strive for bestowal, which the Creator shows in His regard for us.

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What is the result of all our material development, which people value so highly? What have we achieved with all of our hard work, our “Egyptian labor with clay and bricks,” as one Kabbalistic text says about the Egyptian slavery, the exile from spirituality? The result is that we are now nearing the revelation of the spiritual world and are opening our eyes to the fact that people have been doing absolutely nothing of value in this world! People are doing things that are absolutely unnecessary to anyone! Yes, they invent all sorts of crafty gadgets, but could we really not live without all these things?

The more people develop, the more time they spend on useless activities, and the more they go beyond the bare minimum necessary for life. Today, if we reverted to spending time only on the things that are vitally necessary, most of us would be left with nothing to do. Only five percent of the population would have to work in order to provide all of humanity with the necessities. Alternatively, each one of us could allocate five percent of his time to provide for his livelihood.

All the leftover time would be dedicated to our spiritual development. And why not? You don’t get any benefit from spending all your time on material things. In fact, all you are doing by this is damaging the environment.

There is nothing more for a person to do in this world other than to work on his spiritual correction. Otherwise we would have the problem of what to do with the elderly who need to be provided for.  What would be the point of taking care of them if we believe that only the actively working people are of any benefit?

Indeed, our lives must follow the opposite principle. All we need is to give every person the method for his internal correction, and then there will be a place for everyone. Every person will carry out work for the sake of infinity, because the soul has no age. And it is precisely the elderly who will make some of the biggest corrections.

The more time we spend on “clay and bricks,” the more we advance toward reaching the realization that we are in slavery. And the weight of this realization will make people cry out to the Creator and thus rise to the “human” level. And that is the only benefit that we will get out of all our material development.

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Symptoms: America is in agony. All people can think about is healthcare reform.

Medical history: Everything began with the money factor being introduced into the doctor-patient relationship, which threw greed into full gear. Now every player in the health care system is looking to save money. This is how the law of mandatory insurance came about.

The system is tried and tested: the first several thousand dollars must be paid out of one’s own pocket, and then an additional $20-30 for each visit (besides the insurance). Drugs are ridiculously expensive, and doctors are prescribing them by the dozen.

Doctors pay one third of their salary for insurance, in case their patients decide to sue them. And why shouldn’t the patients sue when there’s good money to be had? You don’t even need start up capital to sue a doctor. All you need is a lawyer who will sue and retain 30-50% from the award as his fee. And so the wheels keep turning on this well-oiled machine known as “The Healthcare System.”

Prescription: We must change our relationships with one another. If the pharmaceutical companies were to think about curing people, rather than maximizing profits by pushing drugs, if the insurance companies were to concern themselves with maintaining the public’s health, rather than expanding the business of being sick, if the doctors were to stop being afraid of insurance companies and of their patients, and start treating them according to the accumulated knowledge and experience of their profession, and if the patients were to regain faith in their doctors… well, there simply wouldn’t be any need for reforms!

But in order for that to happen we must recognize the evil and greed of our highly developed egoism. 51 million dollars have already been spent just on advertising for this reform. The greed clouds our vision and prevents us from thinking of our neighbors. But gradually, we will begin to understand that unless we change our attitude to others, we are bringing ourselves closer and closer to our collective demise.

(Sent to me by Dr. A. Angelov, from the Bnei Baruch group in Boston, Massachusetts)

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A question I received: In our world, we are used to knowing that progress is always expressed through some kind of proactive actions. But the activity you speak of seems to be more like an inner reflection, similar to meditation, where all I have to do is perceive the world differently. In that case, how do I express any activity?

My Answer: Your activity is expressed in your desires. After all, there is nothing in existence aside from desires. Our body is nothing but an animal which grazes in a field in order to remain alive. The more actions you carry out above and beyond what is necessary for this animal to survive, the more you will impair your internal efforts to understand who you are, where you are, the reason for your existence, and what is happening around you in the world. This is what internal reflection really is.

If instead of going deep into yourself in this way, you will spend your time on various mechanical actions, then you will be stealing from your internal efforts and as a result, bringing harm to yourself. Moreover, you will be harming the whole world. The only thing a person has to do in this world is to make actions that are vitally necessary for his body, while devoting all the rest of his time to inner development. This is exactly how all of the harmony in Nature is achieved, and Nature will compel us to maintain the same harmony.

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The only way to achieve anything is to unify. Still, countries continue to behave as if they don’t care what will happen to the rest, although it’s clear that the same trouble will befall them tomorrow. But who cares about tomorrow!

We are not talking about a single individual, helpless and vulnerable, but about whole countries, and even the entire humanity. It isn’t just individuals, but the entire collective that has suddenly lost the sense of responsibility and reality.

This is the Upper Force showing us our global egoism. The whole world agrees to live the moment, closing its eyes to the future consequences.

Kabbalah warns people that in view of the impending suffering, it’s a fatal mistake to think: “Let’s drink and rejoice, for we will die tomorrow!” The current circumstances are deliberately programmed by Nature in order to elevate us to a new dimension. For more on this, see Item 122 of the “Introduction to Talmud Eser Sefirot.”

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A question I received: It is written that nature will continue to develop according to the Creator’s conditions until His plan is successfully carried out. So what are the conditions that the Creator gives us?

My Answer: Everything must reach adhesion with Him. The Creator created nothing aside from a single point of desire, in which we exist. This point exists in an ocean of Light within the Creator. All we have to do is to feel all this power, fulfillment and oneness with the Creator, which exists in this single created state. Everything that follows occurs in that same point which was created “out of nothing.”

All our experiences and sensations take place within that point. All the experiences we go through take place while we imagine the world as us and the surrounding nature and people. But in reality, all of this is contained in that one point, which undergoes all sorts of changes within in order to reveal its true state.

The Creator wishes for that point to go through this entire path consciously, with understanding, by means of our efforts. That is how we will come to attain what is the Light and the Creator, which created this point out of nothing. We must come to know what “out of nothing” means, what the “point” is and what the “Light” is, and why He created everything the way He did.

We don’t know what will happen to us after we reach this realization, but apparently some new, additional horizons will become revealed to us after we reach perfection.

But this doesn’t really matter. After all, we advance step by step, and each previous step is just a preparatory phase for the next. We cannot skip steps. But nevertheless, we must always aim for Infinity, because that is the place to which we raise our prayer (MAN) and from which we receive our answer (MAD). This is the only way we can attain the correct attitude, make the right actions, and merit a result. It’s because everything aspires toward Infinity and descends to us from there; and it doesn’t matter that there are many degrees separating us from that state. All these degrees are your future states which are hidden from you for the time being. The degree immediately ahead of you is what you deem to be Infinity.

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A question I received: Say I am carrying out an inner action, rather than an external, mechanical one. What is the inner driving force of this action? And what is its meaning?

My Answer: The whole meaning of our actions is to reveal reality by means of very hard efforts. This is what constitutes a person’s work in this world. A person comes into this world in order to reach the realization of his own evil, the evil of his existence. Granted, this realization comes gradually, whether to each person individually or to entire nations or even civilizations. It occurs in due time, according to the pyramid that constitutes the structure of humanity.

But eventually, every person needs to come to the realization of evil; that is, to understand that mankind’s material existence is good for nothing, and we are incapable of correcting it even if just to live like corrected animals that feel well.

And even if we could correct our corporeal existence and make our bodies feel well, we would be like cows standing before an endless green meadow. The cow has sunlight, water, and everything it could possibly want, but the grass and the cow’s life will come to an end one day! Our lives also will end someday and that’s it… And this thought, which the cow doesn’t have, suddenly begins to torment every person, once he reaches a certain level of development.

Most people don’t think about this, or they try to forget about it. But in the end, a person develops to such an extent that he begins to ask about this. He wonders: Why is this so? What for!? Moreover, if he sees an inevitable end ahead of him, and pictures it clearly, he feels sick from all the green grass around him. It fails to give him any pleasure if he knows that one day it will all end.

At that point, a person doesn’t want to live the moment. And that is when a very complex inner battle and discernments begin to take place in him. Does he want to continue enjoying the pleasures that he can receive today, tuning himself out from the next moment, or does he live for the future and exist only for the future’s sake?

This constitutes a person’s decision: to live for today and not think about the future, as though it doesn’t exist, or to live for the future and not worry about the present moment. It is one of the two. If I only think about the present moment, I am called an animal, and if I think about the future, I am called a human being. When a person begins to feel this sensation, he turns to the science of Kabbalah. He does it out of despair, due to being unable to find any meaning in mankind’s material development. That is when Kabbalah steps in and explains to the person why everything was created and how he can continue to advance.

The other sciences, too, confirm that man’s activity in this world is inherently flawed, and that we are destroying the world. We need to take from the world only as much as animals take. After all, our body is just an animal. And the rest of our efforts should be devoted to spiritual development, in order to rise to the “human” degree. This is where Nature is pushing us: to reach the human level.

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Two questions I received about how to deal with the erroneous ideas and imprints we receive in life:

Question: When people begin to study Kabbalah, they often bring their baggage of erroneous ideas, and they can get lost in the authentic concepts. What is the quickest and best way to sort out this inner mess?

My Answer: We must accept the student the way he is. The only thing that affects spiritual progress is the inspiration received from one’s environment, which is then aimed at the Creator. Besides, we don’t understand the value contained in false methods, as per the law “the rind protects the fruit.” This will be revealed to us at a later time.

We come to Kabbalah burdened with a myriad of misconceptions and stereotypes received in childhood and over the course of our lives. Everything we heard in childhood forms the foundation of “facts” within us. Then, the person is guided by these “facts” and unable to rise above them.

Until he acquires new qualities, which act within him with the same force as those “slogans and facts” that he naively heard and believed in as a child, he will not be able to feel the Upper world. But he is unable to rid himself of the old conceptions on his own, because they need to be replaced by the new – and this can only be done by the Light, which descends from the next degree of attainment.

Question: To what degree does everything we took in as children limit us?

My Answer: When a person receives the spiritual power of bestowal and rises above the corporeal, and begins to see his corporeal self from the side, he is astonished by the incredible amount of utterly baseless stereotypes that he is filled with. These are just things he had once taken on faith. It had entered his childish mind and left a non-erasable imprint, which he couldn’t do anything about.

That is why anyone can come and start studying. And only as time goes by, gradually, i.e. under the influence of the studied material, will he rid himself of false stereotypes and beliefs. The conceptions one had acquired later in his life are easier to part with; it’s the things that he had absorbed in his childhood that are the most difficult. Nevertheless, step by step, man peels himself of all this “rind,” until he begins to use the spiritual fruit when it truly becomes ripe.

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