Question: Can you describe in more detail the right direction that is mentioned in the verse, “If the desire is directed correctly, this is the key to success”?

Answer: A person in our world is always in motion. At every moment we desire something, are directed somewhere, and are doing something.

If my direction at every moment of my existence corresponds to the motion of nature, if I don’t digress to the side but move in exactly the same direction, without any angular transgression, then my motion is optimal and I attain the goal to the maximum and in the best possible way.

Therefore, I must constantly control myself by checking: Am I moving correctly in my thoughts, desires, and actions, according to the direction that the upper force, nature, desires for me to move in? This is the key to success.
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From the 2nd lesson at the Moscow Convention, 6/10/11

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We should never perceive the relationship between men and women as antagonistic. On the contrary, we have to see each other as help. If we are talking about the unity of the world, then first of all this is the mutual support of its two parts—male and female.

These parts come from the common root of creation: the Creator or Light, and the desire or the vessel filled with Light. In addition, this vessel goes through all sorts of forms as it changes. And inside of this vessel, both of us— the male and the female parts—have to work together integrally, like in an ideal family.

The common, collective image of the man has to work together with the common, collective image of the woman. They must work together conjointly, mutually, and clearly, each understanding the nature of both of us. A man understands himself and the female nature, while a woman understand herself and the male nature, and together we act sensibly and wisely, as educated, serious adults who aspire toward a common goal.

The goal is attained through the connection between us. It is written, “Man and woman, and the Creator between them.” That is to say, the Creator’s revelation takes place precisely in the right connection between them, on the screen that appears between the Light and the desire. That is how we must complete one another, mutually and constantly. There is no part, no tiny detail, not one phenomenon in nature, in our relationships, in our world and the spiritual worlds, that does not have mutual supplementation, unification, and adhesion of the male and female parts.

In our world this is not apparent at all. We do not even imagine this mutual supplementation, unification, and adhesion. But in the spiritual world this is a necessary condition. And depending on what levels we are on, these levels are determined precisely by the mutual supplementation and unification, until we unite together.

Therefore, the right understanding of our mutual work is the most important condition of our success. I would say that there is no problem that could be solved separately by men or by women. They are always solved one through the other, meaning that women’s problems are solved through men, and men’s problems are solved through women. This lack of understanding, the belief that it is possible to exist separately, “What do I care about them!” (usually, this is how men feel about women), and “We will solve everything on our own and will do everything ourselves!” This attitude that men tend to have is completely incorrect. And naturally, on the part of women it is also incorrect to think that “Men will do something, will solve everything, and everything will be OK, and we will receive something by being next to them.”

Initially, from the very first step, there has to be clear, inner contact. It shouldn’t be external, physical, visual, or even verbal, but precisely inner contact, which occurs through the upper force, through the next level, instead of directly between us. Then this upper degree will be expressed inside of this unity. It’s like a minus and a plus, and some kind of resistor or device between them that starts working precisely in this way, by virtue of the poles that are connected to it.
From the 2nd lesson at the Moscow Convention 6/10/11

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Kabbalah explains that in the beginning only desire was created, and it was filled with pleasure, the Light. Then, to make the foundation for the future human, this desire was broken into pieces. It remained the same desire but was shattered into numerous fragments, not resembling each other at all. These parts are completely different and do not perceive themselves as being together, do not feel each other. What one wants is not understandable to the other.

The first state is called “the world of Infinity” (∞), and the second, “the breaking of the vessels.” As a result, we have seven billion scattered, broken pieces. On the drawing, they are close together, but in reality, they are internally divided, separated by such walls that they cannot tolerate each other. Everyone feels only oneself, thinks only about oneself, and nobody remembers that once they were one single desire. These are us in our world, in division, to which we were intentionally brought.

The vessels that used to be one whole are completely alienated from each other; they do not even touch each other in their sensations. One of them is me, and the other is you. And if we want to form a soul between us (it is built exactly between us), we must create resistance (R) in the middle.

Why is it needed? The fact is that everybody wants to enjoy but just for himself, nobody thinks about others, and rejection reigns between us. But if we begin to extend the threads of unity to each other, if at least we do not wish evil to each other, then we will rise from our egoistic degree to that of Bina, where I will no longer want to hurt you. This is already the neutralization of egoism.

If I also wish to bring you good that you anticipate in accordance to your ego, then I begin to work on your ego in order to fulfill it. This is the degree of Keter, the degree of love.

This is the process we have to go through, rising first from the degree of egoism to the degree of Bina, in order not to bring the other harm, and then onto the degree of love.
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From Lesson 1, Convention in Spain, 6/3/2011

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The representatives of Ashlag Research Institute (ARI) Rachel Laitman and Norma Livne took part in the 27th International Women Leaders Conference on “Science, Technology and Innovation: Education and Training for Women and Girls.” The conference was hosted in Haifa, Israel.The event was organized by UNESCO, Israel’s Agency for International Development Cooperation of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MASHAV), and the Golda Meir Mount Carmel International Training Center.

Delegates from more than 50 countries attended the conference, at which Mrs. Irina Bokova, Director-General of UNESCO, and Dr. Asha-Rose Migiro, the UN Deputy Secretary-General of the UN, were present. During the conference, our representatives had an opportunity to hold further discussions with UNESCO in relation to the joint projects in the area of global education.
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How can the method of Kabbalah be put into practice and run as a lab experiment? After all, Kabbalah is a purely practical science; it doesn’t philosophize, nor does it tell us how many angels govern the heavens and where a person goes after he or she dies. No, a person receives a chance to reveal his next state of existence here and now.

How do we achieve it? How do we find equilibrium between the forces of reception and bestowal in order to uncover the upper world, spiritual life, our soul? We have an opportunity to put it into practice. Even if I have only one friend, together we can construct a system of mutual connection between us that will allow us to attain the human degree, which is higher than the animate level of development at which I presently exist.

What makes me feel alive today? I was born from a mother of an animate degree as well, and I was raised in the “animate setting.” As a baby, I suckled milk; then I started to walk, grew in size, and stepped into the world. What are the criteria of human, not animate, growth?

When my friend and I, despite our egoism that pushes us apart, rise above it, the level we pass through while doing so is regarded as the Machsom (Hebrew for “barrier”), which enables me to stop thinking about and be free from myself. This is when I stop being a slave to my desires who keep chasing the bait, unable to resist.

This ascent is regarded as “spiritual birth.” It is then followed by the periods of nurturing, childhood, and maturity, all of which are stages of spiritual growth. Today we view ourselves as mature, important, and “right,” but such a view is purely corporeal. If we look through the glasses that filter all but the spiritual picture, it would look blank. Spiritually, we don’t yet exist. We are yet to enter the stage of spiritual conception and be born into the spiritual world.
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From Lesson 1, Convention in Spain, 6/3/2011

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The interview that I gave to EFE News Agency in Spain was published on international portals in several countries. EFE is the leading Spanish language news agency and the fourth largest news agency in the world.

The list of international portals and sites that placed the interview includes Yahoo News, MSN Latino (USA), Terra (News  and Science sections), Yahoo Brasil, UOL, Globo, and others. The interview was published on several Internet sites in Mexico, Bolivia, Columbia, Argentina, and Spain.
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Dear Friends, please ask questions about these passages from the great Kabbalists. The commentaries in brackets are mine.

Love of Others Is the Means to Attain the Love of the Creator

There is no other cure for humanity but the acceptance of the commandment of the upper governance: bestowal upon others for the sake of the Creator, which consists of two stages:

1. “Love thy friend as thyself,” which…means that the measure of work to bestow upon others for the happiness of society should be no less than the measure imprinted in man to care for his own needs.
2. “And you shall love the Creator with all thy heart and soul….” This is the goal that must be before everyone’s eyes when laboring for one’s friend’s needs. This means that he labors and toils only to be liked by the Creator.
   – Baal HaSulam, “The Peace”
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Baal HaSulam, “The Peace”: The prophet conditions peace in the whole world with the filling of the whole world with the knowledge of God.

Thus, the solution to problems in the world is “the knowledge of the Creator.” Until the whole world, from the smallest to the greatest, according to their fully disclosed desires, is filled with the knowledge of the Creator, it will not reach perfection, peace, and contentment. Till then, there will always be forces that agitate, shake up, and push the world to be filled with the knowledge of the Creator, a state where the Creator fulfills His creation.

Our eyes can see how the unhappy patient writhes and squirms from the unbearable human  pains. After all, humanity has already thrown itself to the extreme right, as in Germany, or to the extreme left, as in Russia, but not only did they not ease the situation for themselves, they have worsened the malady and agony, and the voices rise up to the sky, as we all know.

What our mind suggests is not going to help at this point since we always deflect to the right or left. At times, we keep holding on to the middle line, but usually only while moving from one extreme to the other. Consequently, we end up in one trouble after another, and there is no way out until we know the Creator.

The “knowledge of the Creator” points at the correction of our desires so that they are fit to become the vessel for knowledge (Daat), meaning to become filled with the Light of Hassadim (Mercy) with the illumination of Hochma (Wisdom), as Sefirot Hochma (“wisdom”), Bina (“understanding”), and Daat (“knowledge”), HBD.

Question: How is the world going to get filled with the knowledge of the Creator?

Answer: People will start learning how to bestow to all, while existing with everyone together in a global, integral, and analog system, where we yield to each other, are bonded and integrated into each other, where mutual bestowal and even love rule.

Until we unify into this kind of system where everyone feels the collective desire of all and strives to fulfill and service it, like a cell in the body, we won’t come to perfection. Till then, misfortunes will keep increasing and pushing us toward this perfection.

This is what we call “the knowledge of the Creator”: Each of us becomes a vessel of knowledge. Zeir Anpin and Nukva ascend to Hochma and Bina and receive from them fulfillment, according to the desire they have raised. Hence, they are regarded as “the vessel of knowledge.” They reach the degree of “adulthood” and, together with the parental Partzuf of Aba ve Ima, transform into HBD.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/30/2011, “The Peace”

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The only thing we need to do is to constantly clear up space inside of our hearts for everyone. My heart is a piece of meat. And I have to find a point inside of it that I could turn into emptiness, that I could create a place from. This is the point from which our universe seems to have developed.

In reality, our universe does not exist and there are no worlds. All of this exists only in our sensation.

Thus, if this emptiness starts expanding inside our heart, that will be the emergence of a new world, similar to how our universe was created in the desire. This is what we have to do.

Let every person feel this point inside of him, inside of his heart, and try to create emptiness around it so everyone would enter there.
From the closing ceremony at the Moscow Convention 6/12/11

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The theme of our Convention is “Unity – the Future of the World.” I am very moved because after many years of studying Kabbalah, the unity of the world and the need for it are finally starting to become apparent.

Over the course of billions of years of our world’s development, as well as in the process of many events before its conception, everything progressed precisely towards this point—the point of realizing the need for unity. It is only now starting to awaken, to be expressed, and to show its necessity. And you and I are at the center of this realization.

Everything began when the single force of nature, the force of bestowal, or the Creator, which is the same thing, began acting, emanating, and creating matter. First it made the spiritual matter, meaning desire: the desire to be filled, the desire to develop, the desire to feel oneself and everything around.

This desire develops under the influence of the initial force, the force of nature. The phases of its development are called “the four phases of the expansion of the Direct Light.”
The entire purpose of developing creation, or desire, lies in making it similar to all of nature, in having it reach wholesome harmony, or in other words, reaching equivalence and adhesion with the Creator because adhesion is attained through equivalence of form. It is necessary for matter, meaning the desire that’s opposite to the Light, opposite to the quality of bestowal, to eventually go through all the phases of its development and to realize that the highest, best state is similarity to the Light, similarity to the perfect nature, harmony with it, and unity with it.

However, in order to achieve this state, it is necessary to first feel that you are totally opposite to it, meaning to experience yourself in a quality that is completely opposite to the Light, to experience egoism, cruelty, the desire to think only about yourself, the sensation of just yourself, the inability to feel someone else or to think about someone else unless it is for your own sake, unless it brings you personal benefit, unless it means using others. That is how qualities that are the most opposite to the Light have to be expressed in creation.

In our world this creation is man, who goes through an enormous number of developmental phases throughout the course of history until he attains the sensation, and most importantly, the realization that he is completely opposite to the force of nature. This is a very difficult and lengthy process. Over hundreds of thousands of years we moved forward, and egoism gradually grew stronger inside of us. Externally we see how man has developed in his social formation until he attained the current state. As a whole, this egoism, this desire, constantly pushed us forward until the present moment.

And now, as of late, we are starting to be convinced that this egoism, this nature we have is actually our enemy, and our only enemy. By separating us from one another, it literally deprives us of the opportunity to exist normally, even on the level of this material world.

We are becoming more and more closed in, cruel, separated, and frightened, and are taking on a defensive stance, thus depriving ourselves of a normal life and losing the meaning of existence. And indeed: Why should we live? Only in order to defend and protect ourselves? Only in order to place ourselves in some kind of boundaries and exist in them for a certain amount of time with a certain level of comfort and safety? And that’s all?

That is how man in this world feels as he becomes crueler and crueler by nature with time. We make him that way. Our egoism pushes us to this.

In the end, all of this is being expressed as a huge crisis. In some countries the crisis is felt more, and in others, less, but it is drawing to a head. No matter how much we conceal it, we cannot do anything about it. It is becoming expressed in the economy, in social structure, in the decrease of the family’s role, and in all of the problems that emerge in our society, such as the crisis of upbringing, drugs, terrorism, and so on.

In all areas of man’s activity he is coming up against numerous crises, but in the end it is all a crisis of our opposition to nature. And naturally, it can only be corrected at this essence.

We cannot correct it in any other way. We see how government leaders are trying, how the authorities are unable to do anything, and even tyrants, who use the money and armies that are at their disposal, are unable to change anything. The world is unrelentlessly moving towards a great rupture. Force and power are still trying to hold the world in the previous boundaries, but are no longer able to do that.
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From the 1st lesson at the Moscow Convention 6/10/11

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