I had a conversation that was recorded on the topic “Preparing for Childbirth,” as part of a series called “Family and Children.” I spoke with:

Dr. Yoel Shofaro – a specialist in treating infertility,

Hagit Telem – project manager at “Beit Kabbalah L’Am,”

Niv Navon – manager of the department responsible for disseminating our materials on the Internet.

We compared the processes of conception and the embryo’s development in the mother’s womb that take place in the root – the soul’s development in the spiritual world, with the branch – what happens in our world. Dr. Yoel Shofaro is one of the leading practicing specialists in the field of infertility treatment, and he explained what modern science knows about the conception of life and the main problems of infertility today. We compared this with cases of infertility in the Torah and the conception of our souls. Why did we talk about this? Because the most important event in our lives is when the Upper Parztuf – called “mother” (Ima) – is pregnant with us – with our soul!

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Question: You say that the Creator is the quality and act of giving or bestowing. However, if we are able to attain this quality, to attain the Creator, doesn’t this make us greater than Him? We are able to incorporate both egoism and its opposite, but the Creator is only a part of this antinomy. So how can He be superior to us? Maybe we just can’t categorize Him as superior but only as Different?

My Answer: One reveals the Creator’s status only after he attains the Creator’s quality. Then he is able to see where his qualities really stand in relation to the Creator, and what the purpose of creation is. Until this happens, all our words are empty because we don’t know what stands behind them.

This is why Kabbalah hates philosophy and considers it empty talk about things that philosophers don’t attain. Philosophy is opposite to Kabbalah – see the article “The Wisdom of Kabbalah and Philosophy.” Kabbalah prefers to deal with actual attainment and it talks only from the level of attainment. This is the meaning of the verse, “The judge knows no more than what his eyes see,” and, “If we don’t see something, we don’t talk about it.”

Question: Is the main intention behind the Mitzva of Yirat Hashem (fearing God) the perception of God? Thank you, Rabbi Jose.

My Answer: Absolutely, since the perception of the Creator is what enables man to rise above his egoistic nature and to use it (the Aviut) in the opposite way – as bestowal and love, according to how the Creator reveals this to him.

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I had a conversation that was recorded on the topic of love. I spoke with Oren Levi, manager of our Hebrew publishing department.

We analyzed how the spiritual property of the Creator, “love for creation,” is expressed in action – “bestowal and fulfillment.” However, since creation is egoistic and opposite to the Creator, it interprets this as love for fulfillment and reception. Creation aspires to use and humiliate others, in order to feel more fulfilled than them. In other words, its love manifests in a completely opposite form than the spiritual quality of “love,” yet we refer to both of them with the same word, according to the law of “root and consequence.”

However, when creation attains equivalence of form with the Creator (when it acquires the aspiration toward the property – “Love thy neighbor as thyself,” which is attained only through the influence of the Upper Light that descends during the study of Kabbalah), it begins to comprehend the true meaning of the Torah’s words and of Kabbalistic notions, including “bestowal” and “love.”

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Questions I received on how to work in a Kabbalistic group

Question: In one of your lessons you said that the people in the group are sent to me by the Creator, and if I will love them, then the Creator will love me. This is clear with regard to the spiritual, Kabbalistic group of friends. But in my daily life I’m surrounded by other groups – my family, neighbors, coworkers, and others. Are the people in these groups there by coincidence, or must I have the same attitude to them as to my spiritual brothers?

My Answer: In these other groups, you have to behave just like everyone else – function like a regular person, and conceal your spiritual questions and attainments. Otherwise people will feel that you are an “alien from another world,” that you are different from them, because you have different thoughts, decisions, and qualities – anti-egoistic ones. This will make them feel repulsed by you. So conceal yourself!

Question: I don’t understand what this means: “Lower and nullify yourself before the group, but not before other people, so you could firmly feel that you are worse and lower than all the people in the world.”

My Answer: All your spiritual discernments take place in your spiritual world, in the single soul, or in other words – only relative your friends in the group. As for the rest of the world – consider it just a place where your body exists.

Question: Is it correct to say that spiritual development is when you constantly try to feel “What is the force of bestowal?” through your connection with the group?

My Answer: That’s absolutely correct. There is only one creation – the common soul. To the degree you perceive it, and inside of it, you perceive the force that created it and enlivens it – the Creator. With every action you make, you must first define the objective of the action, and there is only one objective to all actions (whether they are unconscious actions taking place in all of nature, or conscious actions that we make) – to reveal the Creator in us.

Question: Baal HaSulam says that the only choice we can make is to choose the correct environment, in order for it to influence us. What happens once I’ve chosen the environment and I study in it? What should I do next? Where is my daily free choice then?

My Answer: The choice is the daily effort you make to be a part of the group. You’re incorrect in thinking that you made the choice when you came to the group. It was the Creator who brought you to the group (see the “Introduction to Talmud Eser Sefirot,” items 3 and 4), and now you have the freedom of will to participate in it by making daily efforts, in spite of your desire.

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Questions I received on making life choices, understanding Baal HaSulam’s Letters, and preparing for the future

Question: I have a problem on my hands: I’ve been studying Kabbalah for two years and now I’m supposed to go to the army for a year. I can get out of it by paying money (without violating the law!), which will also take about a year of work. If I go to the army, then I won’t be able to watch lessons or disseminate Kabbalah, but if I work for a year, then I’ll have time to disseminate and go to lessons. What’s better?

My Answer: If you will be working as you’re supposed to, studying Kabbalah, and working on inner correction and dissemination, then you will be more useful to the world as a Kabbalah student. So if it’s legal, choose this route.

Question: In reference to Baal HaSulam’s Letters (Igrot) that are included in the kabbalah.info Library section, to whom was Rav Ashlag addressing them?

My Answer: To you! Even though these letters contain some personal answers and comments, mainly they talk about things that are experienced by every person who’s going toward the Creator.

Question: You have disseminated Kabbalah to thousands of people, and I’m one of them. (Thank you. I’m an example of the benefit that comes from dissemination work, which unfortunately I don’t do yet.) I’d like to know: Are you preparing someone to be your successor, to continue the lineage of the wisdom? Or is there no need for a leader in the new era of Kabbalah’s revelation?

My Answer: The leader will be the group that is now learning to resolve the management issues. They are growing right beside me – and you are one of them. Every person who learns the wisdom of Kabbalah at least to some degree, will have to serve others, in order to help them learn and actualize the degrees of man’s transformation until the level of the Creator. This work of attaining equivalence to the Creator has already begun, and the leaders of the new spiritual upbringing of the common worldwide civilization will be determined from above.

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I had a conversation that was recorded on the topic of pregnancy and birth, as part of a series called “Family and Children.” I spoke with:

Rovit Shtern – midwife, birth preparation instructor, and head of the “Pregnancy and Birth” forum on YNet;

Hagit Telem – project manager at The Bnei Baruch Kabbalah Education Center.

Niv Navon – manager of the department responsible for disseminating our materials on the Internet.

If we knew the laws of nature and followed them, we would avoid many mistakes. The wisdom of Kabbalah tells us about the forces that operate during the spiritual pregnancy, when our souls are like embryos in the Upper System, and about the forces operating during the birth of our souls. By learning about this, we can understand that when we neglect these forces, we make a newborn predisposed to many problems.

Throughout the entire time of the fetus’s development, and especially during the birth process, up until the very last moment of the newborn’s separation from the mother, while he is still connected to her, precisely during the final moments of birth, the mother passes an enormous amount of information (hormones) to the child. Therefore, any interference with the natural processes of childbirth, for example – relieving pain without any special need for it and other auxiliary actions, are harmful for the child. I am glad that medical science is beginning to realize this.

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Questions I received about Reshimot

Question: I’d like to ask about Reshimot: The point in the heart is a Reshimo, and Klipot are also Reshimot, but broken ones. What other kinds of Reshimot are “registered” in Kabbalah? There are probably more of them than elements in the periodic table!

My Answer: Reshimot accumulated during the common soul’s descent from its spiritual level of love and bestowal into reception and love for oneself. Altogether there are Reshimot from 125 levels of descent, and we have to correct them in the reverse order. By realizing these Reshimot in order, we ascend along their levels and reveal our spiritual senses, which feel the Upper Light, the Creator.

Question: How can a person tell what level are the Reshimot coming from, according to the special qualities of his individual soul? Do the Reshimot always come to help us grow and develop? And what about the Reshimot of the Klipot – why do they come to a person?

My Answer: Reshimot surface in us one after another, from below upwards, and they always become expressed in the form of broken levels (Klipot, the ego). By correcting them, we build our soul – the vessel in which we perceive ourselves, our spiritual life.

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I had a conversation that was recorded titled “Between the Lines,” about words and letters. I spoke with:

Dr. Maxim Sokolov – an otolaryngologist specializing in voice and speech,

Shlomi Buhana – a doctorate student at Bar Ilan University,

Ben-Tzion Gertz – a writer and the host of the program.

Language or speech is what separates humans from animals. Our throat is a special organ where all the forces of the body and soul come together. The five parts of the lungs supply air through the vocal chords into the five parts of the mouth, and the latter divides all sounds into five groups. A letter’s sound corresponds to its outline, numerical value (Gematria), and the section of the brain that sends out commands to the vocal apparatus. And all this happens according to the five parts of creation and the four-letter name of the Creator. In short, there is still a lot more to talk about!

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Questions I received on possible dangers of disseminating Kabbalah

Question: Is there a danger that widespread Kabbalah dissemination will lead to another catastrophe for Israel, because Israel will be the source of Kabbalistic knowledge?

My Answer: No catastrophe was ever caused by Kabbalistic knowledge, but just the other way around: the catastrophes were caused by a lack of Kabbalistic knowledge – including the last one, the Holocaust. They took place because people didn’t want to introduce the study of Kabbalah when it was already time to reveal it, when the period of darkness and exile (from spirituality) ended. Kabbalists prohibited the study of Kabbalah only during the period of the exile.

Question: Are you sure that the time for revealing Kabbalah has really come?

My Answer: The only thing that I’m sure of is that great Kabbalists like Baal HaSulam, Rav Kook, and others know the design of the world better than all the “blind” non-Kabbalists who try to object to them. The great Kabbalists know the Creator’s desire, and I am just a small student of theirs, carrying out their decree.

Besides, you should know that our words don’t change anything, and the world will keep following its path regardless. All of Kabbalah’s opponents will disappear, and real Kabbalists and their students will remain. The only reason for struggling against Kabbalah’s enemies is in order to attain correction faster and with less bloodshed.

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I had a conversation that was recorded on the topic of happiness. I spoke with Oren Levi, manager of our Hebrew publishing department.

Happiness is fulfillment, because all of creation is the desire to be filled. The sensation of being filled is happiness. But when the desire becomes filled, the fulfillment nullifies the desire and the pleasure, and the person stops feeling the joy of fulfillment. So there’s no happiness in life, since we constantly pursue ways to satisfy our desire, but we only feel the sensation of happiness for a brief moment, before it disappears.

So it isn’t surprising that after all our life experience, many people no longer want to pursue such illusory happiness. Yet the sensation of life is the sensation of “desire and fulfillment,” and this goes on non-stop. So in the end, the only thing left to do is to limit yourself with religion or to fall into depression or drugs.

Kabbalah offers another, original solution, enabling a person to attain happiness that’s eternal and unbounded. It’s because he combines the desire and the fulfillment inside him, and the two don’t nullify each other once they are combined, but on the contrary, they only make each other bigger.

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