Baal HaSulam, “The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee)”: …each member of Israel became responsible that nothing shall be missing from any other member of the nation. Only then did they become worthy of receiving the Torah, and not before.

With this collective responsibility, each member of the nation was liberated from worrying about the needs of his own body and could keep the Mitzva, “Love thy friend as thyself” in the fullest measure, and give all that he had to any needy person, since he no longer cared for the existence of his own body, as he knew for certain that he was surrounded by six hundred thousand loyal lovers, who were standing ready to provide for him.

If we can connect and through this come to mutual guarantee, no one will be able to shake it. You see, the power of Arvut influences everyone and if each feels that his ego has been neutralized, he will stop being concerned for himself and simply will not be ready to be an egoist. The power of Arvut necessarily neutralizes narcissism in everyone, and in this kind of an environment no one can remain uncorrected, this is to say, without self-nullification toward others. The environment nullifies the egoistic needs of the person supplying him with everything he needs.

With sufficient thoughtful support from the environment, my concerns for myself disappear. That is how the network that connects us works and it is impossible to get rid of it. I am linked with them all through thousands of bonds and innumerable threads. The environment activates me. It makes no difference if I want this or not. The mechanisms of the network are a fact, and therefore, since the group supplies my needs, it eliminates my egoistic desire. So, I am free.

Therefore, if the person is connected with the group, he must receive all the strength that he needs from it in order to relax himself. He no longer has concerns about himself. He simply is not prepared to “make” them because the group extinguishes them immediately.

Even today I am in a collective network, but I feel that I am not receiving anything from it like this or anything else that I need. All of my apprehensions are derived from this. We are totally linked. Within the network of threads that link us if I feel that I lack something, then I become apprehensive. I fear for myself, thinking, “What will happen to me?”

However, in the right group, after I arrange connections between us, I find that I am absolutely secure. This neutralizes all my fears and I will be free beyond the limitations of our world.

After all, “our world” is the reality where we feel linked, more or less, dependent on each other and influencing each other negatively. Seemingly, everyone here is not found in his place. This mutual negative connection in this shared spider web is our egoistic world.

To the contrary, when I enter a group of Kabbalists, I build the right connection with the closest components of the system. It is not by chance that I am brought to a group, rather, because I am truly linked to the friends I am not just spending time with a society of people who are like me. Now that I am attracted to the Source, this directs me to connect with someone close to me in the spiritual network, and even if they live thousands of kilometers away from me in the physical network, in spite of all this, I find them.

So, according to the degree of closeness, a system of relationships is developed between us until this supplies me with a state where I feel free of worries about myself. This is the first stage of self-nullification. In the second stage, the friends raise the upper One in my eyes: the group, the Creator, the Giver.

Therefore, the influence of the group is divided into two parts: The first is that it neutralizes the egoistic desire within me. The friends give me a feeling that they are concerned for me all the time no matter what may happen. In the past, my concerns for myself formed a terrifying future for me. Now, the friends give me a secure future. Only a group is ready to do this. It supplies me with Surrounding Light that matches my desires directed at the future. Only the friends can extinguish that and then the sensation of tomorrow disappears so much so I feel beyond time. This is the first condition. The group neutralizes the egoistic concern about the present and the future in me.

Second, I also need a force that will attract me toward the upper. In the name of this, with all their strength, the friends raise the importance of the goal, the Creator, the teacher, the group in my eyes, in other words, the importance of all the means to which I must hold.

In this way, through the collective network that we develop in the group, I reach self-nullification.
[106358]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/30/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam “The Mutual Guarantee”

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Preparation to the Lesson

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Writings of Rabash “Shlavei HaSulam,” “A Prayer of Many“

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The Book of Zohar – Introduction

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Talmud Eser Sefirot, Vol. 1, Part 1

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Question: If everyone in the group of ten wants to annul himself, why do they reach a feeling of hate?

Answer: If everyone annuls himself, we begin to rise, and then we are added extra ego. Suppose we are together, having achieved a certain connection, and through that, everyone receives the power to annul himself before the friends.

In the previous circle, we all were equal, and as a result of our mutual work we rise and create a new circle in which we all become greater and higher than we were before. Each of us seems to remain in the same place, but he raises the whole circle and looks at it from below. All the friends are above, and only I am left below. I don’t see myself in the upper circle, but rather down below. Thus, everyone sees the group as higher than him.

We all have annulled ourselves before the others and thus have received a great collective power. We have ascended and corrected ourselves. This means that we have attained our total self-annulment in this new state, but how can we keep on growing? Here, each of us is added an extra ego so that we can grow, like an embryo to whom is added flesh, and then this flesh must take on a certain form. The embryo receives his mother’s blood that clots and turns into flesh by which he grows.

This additional ego generates hate in us, and we feel it on every level. If we ascend and annul ourselves, we are ready to ascend to the next level, and then we receive an additional, uncorrected desire to receive from the shattering. We were on the root level of Aviut (coarseness), but in the new state, we already need the Aviut of phase one. Since we need to receive this gap between the levels, the additional ego is revealed as hate. This is actually what helps us grow.
[108324]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/24/13, Writings of Rabash

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Question: I live in Peru. This is a big country. In just the capital city, Lima, around eight-million people live, but we haven’t succeeded in building a group. Why?

Answer: I understand and feel your pain very well, but the idea is that there is a higher program and we cannot understand why it is realized exactly in this manner. As long as we have not reached the root, as long as we don’t see the entire system, the entire soul, where each is located and why he needs to experience this fate or another, until then, we will not understand and will not justify the Creator. We always will have claims against him.

I have been disseminating the wisdom of Kabbalah since 1983. At that time I wrote my first three books, just thirty years ago. And I began to study six to seven years before that. In the years that have passed, great work has been done throughout the world. Many groups have invested enormous effort in the creation and distribution of materials through a variety of channels.

However, the results are disproportionately small. We see that only few have a desire to attain the truth.

Really, there never will be many people like this. That is how the world is built. Such special people are in the minority and it should not be otherwise for all the rest follow them.

At the moment, we—a few hundred thousand people throughout the world—prepare ourselves correctly. The world will wake up and follow us. In principle, one shepherd is enough for all to reach the goal. Therefore, it is forbidden to judge according to quantity because spirituality is built fully on quality and one person can be equivalent not only to millions, but billions.

Thus, continue to invest effort. Join the American groups through the Internet, and ultimately, we will see as you will come to the conventions with many other people. The main thing here is not to complain. We don’t see the entire “map”; we are not aware of the entire program. It is necessary to accept the result as it is and to act independently of the circumstances. Even when there is emptiness all around, I must turn to the entire world as if everyone is listening to me.

Specifically in this way, I direct myself, turning toward everyone as if all seven billion are listening to me, eager to understand and to find out, to absorb every word. This is my duty, and how many among them will the Creator awaken and to what degree is His business.

I recommend this approach for everyone involved in dissemination. For then I am “pure”; the Creator establishes the time for the world to awaken, and I accept this with equanimity.
[107401]
From the Convention in New Jersey 5/10/13, Lesson 1

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Question: Do we need to begin to prepare now to become one group of ten at the convention?

Answer: It’s impossible to achieve anything serious without preparation. If success came without preparation, then it was given from Above: You were pushed and you ran forward and did what you have been awakened to do. This success is not added to your account.

Any serious progress of the lower one takes place only due to preparation and is determined by its size. The action that took me ten seconds to complete could take ten years of my preparation. This preparation will determine the power of action.

So, we need to think about preparation. We continue to work in groups of ten to prepare ourselves for the convention: to one big group of ten. Otherwise, you will find yourself at the convention, in the crowd of a thousand, and just exit the boundaries of your group of ten. But you need to become integrated in the convention with your group of ten and see everyone as one group of ten.

You should not go beyond the circle boundaries, but at the convention, everyone is included in this circle. The whole place and all the people are the limits of our circle. Afterwards, you will work on how to connect virtually with other groups so that distance does not separate them.

Then we will work so that time does not separate us. We will begin to connect with Kabbalists who lived at all times since there is no time! We understand how it is possible that there is no distance because we can virtually connect to any point in the world. But time does not exist either. Even our world brings us closer to the border beyond which time does not exist. We need to work to make the concept of time, space, and movement disappear.
[108575]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/28/13, Writings of Rabash

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The Creator is revealed as the one force that operates in all of our reality inside a person and on the outside. This leaves us—those in whom the point in the heart has awakened—a point of freewill from which we can study and understand the Creator who operates on us and who surrounds us on all sides. All the other people who think that they are independent simply don’t notice that they are operated by nature or the Creator (which are the same thing) in every step they make, every thought, every word, and every action.

When we think about the meaning of life, about the cause, the source; our questions stem from our dissatisfaction with life. This is how the Creator awakens us and pushes us to search. Therefore, in the “Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot,” item 42, Baal HaSulam says that the reason for all the suffering in this world is our lack of understanding of the upper Providence. “…And I tell you that that preliminary reason is none other than the ‘lack of our understanding in His Providence over His creations,’ that we do not understand Him properly.”

We don’t understand the Creator, and the blows come in order to awaken us to search for Him, discover Him, and see that He is the only one who operates on us. Thus, we rise to the same level where He is revealed to us, where he controls all of reality.

From this perspective, we begin to understand what He does. Our entire history opens up before us, the entire “map,” the entire process that each of us goes through for many reincarnations. We see where we come from, where we are headed, and why everything is arranged the way it is. Everything opens up before us, and although we can point at the past, the future, and the present, we feel that it is the same thing. It is as if we look at the picture of reality that is spread before us in order to raise us and bring us to the full feeling of the Creator.

If a person feels this way toward everything that happens to him—if he understands that everything comes from the only force so that he will discover, understand, and feel Him so that he will be able to see all of reality like Him—then he relates to all the events in his life practically and doesn’t confuse anything personal with what he feels. Something else is important to him: To correctly understand why the Creator sends him the states he goes through and what the benefit in them is.

In the article “There is None Else Besides Him” in the book Shamati, Baal HaSulam says that there is no other force but the Creator. However, in the meantime, a person sees different opposite forces. There are forces that threaten him and forces that support him. The former are friendly and the latter are enemies.

On the whole, I perceive everything that happens as good or bad. It is as if I am between the good force and the evil force since that’s how they are depicted in my imagination.

However, I must know that everything comes from one force that intentionally shows me two sides and wants to bestow upon us by two opposite forms: the rejecting force and the attracting force. If I rise above it and understand that the rejecting force also can spur me to connection, it isn’t felt as good or bad anymore. After all, I ask myself why I feel rejection and I gather my powers to overcome it. The good force, however, can confuse and weaken me, and repulse me from the desire to connect, to advance, and to keep the inner intention.

Thus, I can measure the Creator’s bestowal according to my good and bad feelings or according to my understanding of the role He plays in rejecting me and bringing me closer. These two parameters can be opposite from one another.

The Creator bestows upon us by these four forces in order to confuse us so that we will not understand where we are and what is happening to us, like a child who is lost and confused. Then, like children, we need a grownup, the upper. We need His help and we need to hold his hand to discover Him and to force Him to take care of us since otherwise we feel that we are lost. This is actually the best state we can be in.

Here, we need a good supportive environment so that we will not escape and go off-track because of our confusion and so that we won’t begin looking for other methods that allow us to find peace and security. We don’t need such means since we reach the Creator differently: A person remains confused, helpless, and doesn’t understand what is going on, and still doesn’t leave. Only by this path does he reach the right outcry when he demands that the Creator be revealed to him and that He should take care of him. Then, he finally discovers that there is none else besides Him. That one force has created all these states for him. This is exactly what we do with our kids so that they will feel that they need us.

This one force controls all of the reality that He has created. He has created us so that we will become entangled in the complexities of this world and through that come close to Him and need Him. He bestows upon us by revelation and concealment through which all of creation advances back to this force: first man and then the still, vegetative, and animate levels of nature. They all are incorporated in man and they all reach the same one root from which they came.

Whoever is rewarded with this revelation immediately sees the future of all of reality. You haven’t reached it yet, but you will be able to see everything from the root. When I drive, I don’t see what is hundreds of kilometers ahead, but I can clearly see the entire road network from a satellite. We must only rise and then everything appears before us.

My connection with the future depends on the height of this ascent so that if I am totally adhered to the Creator, the future and the present become the same for me. I feel the states I must go through and the final state, and so I advance.

Then, I discover that all the concealments were meant only to reveal the Creator. He conceals Himself on purpose in different states, behind evil actions and scary states, behind great confusion, so that I will hold onto Him and won’t let go, like a child for whom the father’s hand is the protection from all the troubles. This is how we also must imagine our relationship with the Creator.

When we unite with Him, we reach Ibur (gestation). We want to be in Him first because of fear, because we want to hide. Later, when we grow in Him a little, He begins to teach us His wisdom, His knowledge, and how He actually operates.

Thus, we grow during the nine months of the spiritual Ibur, until we are born into the world. Then, we go through the states of Yenika (suckling), smallness, and greatness when we already understand all of creation from the beginning to the end. We have not discovered it yet, but we are going to.

This revelation comes only out of helplessness. Otherwise, we will never want to come close to the Creator in our egoistic desire. On the contrary, we create such conditions for ourselves that will help us hide from the upper force. Everything that we do in life is meant to protect us from the Creator: a home, money, insurance, a pension fund, a health care system. Thus, we create the protective shield so that we will not need anyone. We do need social services, a state, and humanity, but not the upper force. Thanks to such systems, we have abandoned the different religions since we don’t feel that we need them anymore. A person doesn’t feel so weak anymore that he must pray to someone and depend on someone.

What does the Creator do? He sends us troubles. After we build such a strong, comfortable and safe world, hoping for eternal prosperity, we suddenly see that everything falls apart and nothing is safe, and that not only tomorrow but even the next moment is doubtful. The Creator evokes these negative forces in the form of terror, plagues, natural disasters, the breakup of the family, of society, of economy, and so on.

All this is so that we will rely less on our own powers and will feel how weak we are to a greater extent. It turns out that we have no control over our lives. If we begin to discover the upper force, we fill all our deficiencies by Him. Then, our corporal life also works out since we don’t need the negative external stimuli anymore if we see the importance of the good force and yearn for it.

So, the wisdom of Kabbalah turns to all of humanity, either in its original form or as the method of integral education, and explains that we should come closer to the force of nature that operates in all of reality. The word “Creator” equals the word “Nature” in Gematria. In the future, we will suffer even more, and no technological, scientific, or economic progress or in any other area for that matter will help us. We are very weak.

It turns out that the Creator is the only force that operates in reality. It is like a huge field that covers all of reality on all sides. Our main work is to discover this network that manages everything.
[107259]
From the Convention in New Jersey 5/11/13, Lesson 3

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Baal HaSulam, “The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee)”: And you evidently find that the giving of the Torah had to be delayed until they came out of Egypt and became a nation of their own, so that all their needs were provided for by themselves, without dependence on others. This qualified them to receive the above Arvut, and then they were given the Torah.

Freewill is required to be independent of anything and I must feel it as mine. It is a desire that requires me to be connected with others, but not for achievements and other such results as happens with a commando, sports teams, and so forth. I want to be linked with others to discover the higher force. I require a precise and clear desire to discover mutual bestowal and mutual love of friends so that the Creator will be revealed among us and in this form, we will feel that we are giving Him satisfaction.

All this is “depicted” and realized between us specifically if we really have this as a deficiency. This comes not from someone on the outside. No one forces me about anything. I have no personal benefit. It is only for the common good.

What we want is that through love of the people, we reach love of the Creator. This desire will bring us to “reception of the Torah.” In other words, we have an opportunity to realize this, not all at once, but gradually, of course. I discover this need more and more clearly. I get the power to develop it. Accordingly, through my link with the group, the Creator is discovered in its center. This is how we advance.

Question: How can a desire be independent of anything?

Answer: The idea is that I choose the way by myself. It is not just that the reception of Torah is delayed until the “departure from Egypt.” I was always dominated by an ego that is unaware of the spiritual world. This is not about slavery to a landlord; it is not about working from dawn to dusk to provide food for my family. In that, I am not free. Rather, I must be free in my desire to choose the right way. Pharaoh still holds me, is still revealed during the exile in the wilderness, but I already have the power to be directed toward the Creator, toward bestowal, and my desire is free.

How can this be? Have I corrected myself already? How is it possible to be free of the ego? However, in spite of all this, my desire to be directed toward the Creator in the right way is truly independent.

Question: On what does the strength of this desire depend? There are people in whom it burns, and there are those in whom it barely simmers.

Answer: Of course, awakening comes from above, and the question is, will the person realize this with the right choice? The right choice is really the right environment, a group of friends. As long as I have not entered a group, the Creator chooses for me, like we choose for an infant what he needs to eat and what he will do. However, as a child matures, we leave a little room for him, allow him to choose games, offer him the choice of an omelet or porridge. We understand that individuality is awakened in him according to his degree of maturity.

Also, on the spiritual path, according to the degree of maturity, a more conscious choice is formed. They give him this choice very simply: through adding some evil, a bad feeling. As it is written, “I created the evil inclination.” The Creator says, “If you want, I will transform it into good. You only need to ask for it.” So, it follows that, for me, the question is, should I ask Him or shouldn’t I?

In general, the higher power controls everything. All the evil forces, all the disturbances, all the external factors, everything is in His hands. All good states, all the forces of Light, also come from Him. I stand in the middle. For me, the main thing is to understand that I am linked with the higher power, and It controls me, embraces, and encloses me on all sides. So how, in all the states with which He confuses me, will I be able to want the connection with Him?

The problem is found at the edge of my perception, at the threshold of my consciousness. If I feel a faint pain, I can agree that it comes from the Creator and stimulates me to turn to Him. It is said that the Creator is “jealous.” It seems that He is jealous if I turn my attention to someone else. The moment that I forget about Him, He immediately reminds me about Himself, giving me an opportunity to choose.

So, here, there is a need to understand where to find the boundary of separation: What kind of pain or what kind of pleasure must I feel to be separated from the Creator? With this, the human being in me is measured. How much I will put the restriction and the screen on myself so that nothing will separate us?
[106519]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/2/13, “The Mutual Guarantee”

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Question: We unite in order to correct. How exactly do we achieve the goal of our unity? How do we arrive to a correct connection?

Answer: We have to build the group in a way that is completely compatible with the upper system. The upper system is all about mutual bestowal and kind relationships. Everybody is equal; each one is lower than others so that one can receive from others what they want to give him; each one is higher, bigger, and stronger than others for the sake of giving to them what one thinks is beneficial for them.

Everybody is equal within the entire system; everybody is “blended” into one; each one empathizes with others’ desires and strives to fulfill them. This is how we form a general circle in accordance with the technological laws and analog systems with which we are familiar.

For example, our body is an analog system in which various processes take place. The goal of these processes is to maintain all parts and subsystems in balance. This is what is called “health”: blood pressure, sugar level, and all other parameters are well-adjusted. This kind of balance of bodily systems is the major law of nature.

So, if we want to see our groups balanced, we should take care of making all our friends equal and have them included into one another in bestowal and receiving. The system has to act in a way that each of our friends loses his “I-ness” and together with others builds something in the middle, a “raspberry sphere” of our unity (WE).

Then, instead of sensing just our personal life in a physical body, we start recognizing unity and all phenomena associated with unity through a spiritual man’s (Adam’s) emotions and intellect, because we become similar to Him. “Adam” is called a “Man,” not each of us individually.

If we happen to acquire a sensation of the integral analog network, we find ourselves at the speaking level, yet we still remain present at the animate level. All our desires and aspirations are directed to provide for our physical body, the same as animals that look for shelter and food and create families in order to reproduce their species. Of course our demands are a little bit higher than theirs and we are trying to satisfy them as well. However, only when we take care of “Adam” will we attain the human level of development.

Accordingly, we have to build our relationships in the group. There is a list of mandatory conditions that reflect the laws of the spiritual system that influence us. The roots that govern us descend from the upper world into this world. If we want to be in good shape, all we need is to rise from our level to the spiritual level. This is where the forces of Nature are oriented nowadays.

So we should follow the Kabbalists’ advice and apply efforts to achieve this state. Technical achievements are useless at this point. All is carried out in human society in our relationships. If we change them in a way that humanity lives up to the laws of unity (WE) and becomes compatible with the contemporary world that is becoming integral and completely interconnected, if we understand that Nature (or the Creator) obligates us to establish connection, we’ll find out why we as of yet cannot receive any answers to the calls of integrality. Only then will we rise to a new level of existence and will feel good.

So, we have to follow the patterns that are accepted in the groups since they are defined by spiritual laws. The group is meant to become a spiritual system. Each group’s task is to implement principles of integrality… When we begin connecting into one system, the world starts feeling it. It sets up an example of a correct interconnection among people. Then, the world will come to a better place.

This process seems to be pretty far away as of now, but you will see that it will come to life very soon. The developmental speed is exponential, so the world will come to this point quicky because there is no other choice.
[107527]
From the New Jersey Convention 5/11/13, Lesson 3

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Question: Why is it that when we talk about the integral network, about integral cooperation, it fades somehow, evades our human consciousness?

Answer: The concept of “integral network” isn’t grasped by a person because it’s opposed to his ego. It’s very difficult for him to invest personal efforts in integral work. How can he exit his ego and begin to think about others? Actually, it’s impossible.

It’s only when problems come to him that are above his egoism: fears, worries, and threats, and then he thinks about the benefits of society. For example, this is what happens at the time of war since the benefit and good of the society and of man become one thing. And even more than that; the benefit of the society is the determining factor, and it’s as if a person is a secondary part included in society itself.

How is it possible that a person will be included within the society as one complete whole without any threats or shocks? For this, public pressure is needed, opinion, a social orientation. But if we leave a person alone without any social pressure, then he won’t be able to do it, since this is his nature.

And that is the level of a real united integral society. This is the same level that is found above the present society.
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From KabTV’s “The Wisdom of the Crowd” 5/14/13

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