A question I received: Dear Rav., When I turned thirty, I stopped feeling anything. My life became gray, worthless, and empty. I thought that this is what old age feels like and just accepted it. The years went by, and then one day I “accidentally” saw a program where you spoke about Kabbalah. It touched me, so I went to your website and spent three years studying materials there on my own. But a year ago I was so “shaken up” that I couldn’t remain alone anymore, so I started looking for other people who were interested in Kabbalah. And the ball started rolling! In the past year we formed a group, rented a study hall, went to a congress, and held a book fair that brought more people to Kabbalah. Now when men and women come to our center for the Sunday lesson, I feel responsible for making sure that everything goes smoothly. And all of this is happening after just one year!

Time seems to have gone by incredibly fast. More things happened during this one year than in my entire lifetime. My states change so fast that I don’t have the time to think about what is happening. My question is: Am I going through my reincarnations faster, or am I feeling this reincarnation more strongly, or am I making up for lost time, for the things I needed to do but didn’t?

My Answer: There is no “fast” path, there is no speed limit, and there are no speeding tickets. However, you must always check:

1. What is your goal? Is it to attain absolute bestowal by connecting into one whole with your friends, through the mutual guarantee?

2. Is this the goal you’re racing to attain? You have to gradually attain the property of bestowal, the opposite of your present state.

3. Where do you get the strength to advance? If you get it from yourself, then you are being pushed by your natural egoism – and it’s not pushing you toward the goal. However, if you are receiving your energy from the group, then you are advancing toward the right goal.

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I had a meeting that was recorded with Dan Kaner, the anchorman of radio Kol Israel and a popular Television host in Israel.

Dan Kaner is a true master of the Hebrew language, with extraordinary knowledge of its intricacies, origin, history and evolution. Therefore, it was a real pleasure speaking to him about the Hebrew language as used in Kabbalah.

By origin, Hebrew is a symbol for the forces operating in the universe. It harmoniously expresses the essence of man and nature through letters and symbols (TANTA). Combining and ordering the letters to form words and sentences is a means to describe the order of the creature’s creation and correction, all the way until the full correction – similarity to the Creator or Light. The Torah exemplifies this order. Knowing what forces and actions are indicated by the letters enables one to move all along the process of creation, to become incorporated in it at different stages, and to thereby gain a better understanding of the Creator’s plan.

Dan was very impressed with the wealth that the language of Kabbalah offers in describing the Hebrew language, the sensations that every letter evokes when interpreted Kabbalistically, and the music of feelings that plays in the combination of letters. He understood that Kabbalah enables one to enter the world of letters, symbols, forces and desires – to feel them and their filling with the Light.

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A question I received: I have a question about the moral norms of people who study Kabbalah. You have explained that there is no time or space in spirituality, and our actions in the physical realm are insignificant. What matters is only our mental connection with one another and our thoughts about the Creator. Are you saying that a person who studies Kabbalah in a group can do anything he wants to in the corporeal world, without observing any moral norms, but turn into a wonderful friend as soon as he shows up to the lesson?

My Answer: We are dealing with people who are in the process of development and correction. Their egoism is developing quickly, and only later this is followed by slow and gradual correction. I have been observing this for thirty years already. How many years does a child have to spend getting his diapers dirty and getting help from others until he grows up? In other words, we have to remain patient for many years while the Upper Light does its work, and then the person becomes different! What else can you do, if “man is evil from birth?” It is forbidden to force him to conceal his evil. This will stop his correction, since he won’t be aware of his own evil.

In addition, when one studies Kabbalah one’s evil grows until reaching a state when one cannot tolerate it anymore. This is a wonderful moment because then one is ready to ask the Creator to help him get rid of the evil.

Observing moral norms looks good on the outside, but it is harmful if it prevents one from seeing his flaws. The only solution is to give people the method of correction and the environment for actualizing this method.

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A question I received: In the “Introduction to the Book Tree of Life” Rabbi Chaim Vital describes many aspects of the Kabbalah of the Ari. He writes the following about the Ari: “He was able to speak with reincarnated souls. He knew all the secrets of all people, the roots of their souls and all the details of their past lives. He was able to speak with the dybbuks (translator’s comment: this probably refers to evil spirits that possess people and need to be exorcised), as well as to correct them and drive them out of the bodies of the people whom they possessed.” My question is: What are the “dybbuks”? I couldn’t find this word in any of the study materials available today. It probably refers to one’s inner forces, doesn’t it?

My Answer: That is absolutely correct. This refers to man’s inner forces, since everything that exists is inside us in the form of forces, desires, and thoughts. See Baal HaSulam’s “Introduction to the Book of Zohar,” item 34. Nothing exists outside of man. We perceive the world as being outside of us, but in fact it is only a projection of our properties onto the white Light. It says in The Book of Zohar, “All the worlds are inside man,” but man perceives them on the outside in order to feel the Creator as being outside him and to attain similarity to the Creator. To the degree that he attains similarity to HIm, he will start perceiving everything that happens “outside him” as happening “inside him.” Today in our world we are beginning to attain the fact that our perception is absolutely subjective – that it happens inside us.

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A question I received: In reference to your blog entry, Interview With Canadian Television, I am not surprised that people’s egoism is growing primarily in Israel and Canada. I see this egoism every day, and regrettably only 0.01% of the people actually ask themselves about it. Looking at this from a purely human position, it’s a pitiful state. Does Kabbalah explain why this is happening, and why don’t the world’s religions deal with this question?

My Answer: Egoism has to keep growing until people will realize that it is evil. So let it grow faster! It grows fastest in people who start studying Kabbalah. Their growth of egoism accelerates and reaches its maximum quickly, and then they see that it is evil and they have to get rid of it.

This is why Kabbalah welcomes the growth of egoism, while religions and all the “spiritual” methods strive to suppress it, since they don’t have the method to correct it. However, one way or another, egoism has to grow to the maximum, and therefore all the methods will prove to be incompetent. We’ll be left with egoism at its peak and Kabbalah as the method of correcting it and using it correctly, that is – filling it with the Creator!

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Questions I received on perceiving the common soul and the Upper World:

Question: Everyone and everything is inside of me. The Creator is all around me and inside me. Once you understand that everything is inside you, you start desiring to unite with everything that “surrounds” you. So far so good. However, this means that I will be doing everything only for myself, since even a chance passerby is actually inside me. So in reality I actually want to correct everything for myself and not for others?

My Answer: A person certainly discovers that everything around him is part of him, and is incorporated in his egoism. However, this only happens when one aspires to come out of his egoism and be inside others – inside the environment. First he acquires the property of Bina, bestowal, “not for one’s own sake”; and then, once he is above this property (Tshuva mi Iraa, Hafetz Hesed), he attaches everything to himself and makes everything a part of him. Then he perceives all the souls as his own (Tshuva mi Ahava) and receives the entire Upper Light into this united Kli.

Question: How do we know that the Upper Force is the only one, and that what we will feel after the Upper Worlds are revealed is not our imagination or an illusion?

My Answer: We will know this by revealing the Upper World in our soul and comparing the two worlds. Everything in spirituality is attained inside us – just like we attain this world. We draw our conclusions only from our attainment of the Upper World. The science of Kabbalah is based exclusively on Kabbalists’ practical experience.

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News Report (translated from www.YNet.co.il): The philosophy department is being closed down! Representatives of the Department of Humanities at Tel Aviv University have announced that they are considering not opening the registration to the Department of Philosophy for the coming school year.

My Comment: We are living in a truly remarkable time! For thousands of years our lives were ruled by human speculation about the essence and meaning of life, and now we are finally reaching the correct conclusion, which coincides with the opinion of Kabbalah – that philosophy has only harmed us all along.

I understand how cruel my words may seem to those who don’t know about the opposition between Kabbalah and philosophy, but I still hope that the closing of the philosophy department at a local university will rouse some interest in you to read Baal HaSulam’s article “The Wisdom of Kabbalah and Philosophy.” To me, an event such as the closing of the philosophy department is a sign from above!

Baal HaSulam. “The Wisdom of Kabbalah and Philosophy” (selected excerpts)

Philosophy has gone through a great deal of trouble to prove that corporeality is the offspring of spirituality and that the soul begets the body – and this is their primary mistake. The meaning of the word “spirituality” has nothing to do with philosophy. How can they discuss something that they have never seen or felt?

Philosophy loves to pride itself in understanding all about His essence. Philosophy has generally worn a mantle that is not its own, for it has pilfered definitions from the wisdom of Kabbalah, and made delicacies with its human understanding. If it had not been for that, they would never have thought of fabricating such acumen.

We will still have to regard only the tangible reality. This erring of separating the operator from the operation comes from the Figurative Philosophy, which insisted on proving that the spiritual act influences the corporeal operation.

The opinion of Kabbalah in this matter is crystal clear, excluding any mixture of philosophy. That is because it is the opinion of the sages of Kabbalah that even the separated spiritual entities, which philosophy denies having any corporeality and displays them as purely conceptual substance, although they are indeed spiritual, more sublime and abstract, consist of a body and soul just like the physical human.

Their thoughts are not our thoughts, for the way of the sages of the Kabbalah is one of finding actual proof of attainment, making its revocation through intellectual pondering impossible.

Philosophy fabricated that the different individuals are not combined materials (Kabbalah believes that everything consists of two forces, the vessel and the Light).

The old philosophy presents three opinions as obstacles before my explanation:
1. Their decision that the power of the human intellect is the eternal soul, man’s essence.
2. Their conjecture that the body is an upshot of the soul.
3. Their saying that spiritual people are simple and not complex.

Not only is it the wrong place to argue with them about their fabricated conjectures, but also their time has already passed and their authority revoked. We should also thank the experts of materialistic psychology for that, having built its plinth on the ruin of the former, winning the public’s favor. Now everyone admits to the nullity of philosophy, for it is not built on concrete foundations.

The old doctrine became a stumbling rock and a deadly thorn to the sages of Kabbalah. Where they should have subdued before the sages of Kabbalah and taken upon themselves abstinence and prudence prior to admittance to even the slightest thing in spirituality, they received what they had wanted easily from the figurative philosophy. Without payment or a price they have watered them from their fountain of wisdom to satiation, and refrained from delving in the wisdom of Kabbalah. As a consequence, the wisdom has almost been forgotten from among Israel.

For that reason we are grateful to materialistic psychology for having beaten it a deadly blow.

Therefore, there was not a salvation for Israel as at the time when the materialistic psychology appeared and struck theological philosophy on its head a lethal blow.

Now, every person who seeks the Lord must bring Kabbalah back to its throne – and restore its past glory.

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Questions I received on how the physical commandments of Judaism relate to spiritual correction:

Question: You explained that the 613 commandments of Judaism are actually 613 desires. However, isn’t there a danger that people will then prefer spiritual development to observance of physical actions, and then they will fall into the other extreme? Previously people neglected the inner part of the Torah and performed only the physical actions, but now they will do the opposite – drop the outer observance and focus only on the inner meaning. What will happen then?

I used to observe the commandments and could not find the harmony in it. One day I came across www.kab.tv and it made me realize that my hunch was correct – that I was doing only the outer actions just like I was taught as a child. It is very difficult to observe the commandments without feeling the truth in them. Nevertheless, the holy Ari passionately observed all of the commandments relating to the Sabbath. Can you comment on the harmony between inner and outer observance of the commandments?

My Answer: Your personal search will bring you to the right answer. You have to find it on your own. Every person creates his own environment, comprised of physical actions and spiritual aspirations. It may range anywhere from observing the physical actions to the fullest, to not observing them at all. In any case, the most important thing is – “The entire correction is carried out only in thought” (HaKol be Mahshava Itbareru).

Question: In one of your books it says that before the fall of second Temple, our contact with the spiritual forces was more significant and closer because of the Temple and the services held there. To me, this indicates that the rituals in our world play a major role in attaining the spiritual world.

My Answer: This means that back then people performed the action of love and bestowal in all of its manifestations, in every way possible, both on the outside and the inside.

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Questions I received on the role of Israel in the world and how Europe compares to the United States:

Question: You speak a lot of how Israel has to reveal the wisdom of Kabbalah to the ‘nations of the world’ but currently is not doing this. My question is: What happens if Israel does not do this sooner rather than later – does my spiritual development as a gentile become sacrificed? What happens if the point in the heart arises in others before it does in Jews?

My Answer: Then the nations of the world will use force and pressure to make the Jews reveal Kabbalah to them.

Question: How can it be that the economy of the nation of Israel is prospering unlike the rest of the world, considering that the people living there are responsible for the horrible crisis that the world is in?

My Answer: In our time the blows aren’t measured by hunger or money, but by inner problems and the sensation of emptiness – an unfulfilled Kli! The developed and wealthy countries top the charts when it comes to depression, drugs, and suicide.

Question: My question is about the European Union. Why hasn’t Europe succeeded in unifying as well as the United States? Is Europe more egoistic than the US?

My Answer: The problem of creating something new is that you first have to the destroy the old. We can abandon the old state and create a new one only when we recognize that the current state is so evil that it becomes impossible for us to remain in it. Europe hasn’t reached this realization yet. As for America, it was created out of nothing and by combined efforts, since people didn’t have any other choice.

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A question I received: You said that Kabbalah is a science without axioms. Yet in Shamati Baal HaSulam says that there is only Atzmuto (the Unattainable), Ein Sof and the Souls. Aren’t these the axioms upon which Kabbalah is based? Everything else can be derived from these notions.

My Answer: No, these aren’t axioms, but revelations made by Kabbalists. You simply don’t understand how one can say that Atzmuto exists if it is unattainable. But the fact is – one clearly attains its unattainability! The rest you’ll have to reveal for yourself.

There is a rule in Kabbalah: We only talk about what we attain. So when a Kabbalist says that something is “unattainable,” this denotes a particular attainment. The same applies to all Kabbalistic notions – they all come from clear attainment and scientific research. They were perceived in feelings that one can control, and are based on a Kabbalist’s comprehension of the connections by way of analysis and mental synthesis. However, this wasn’t done with the regular mind. Kabbalists develop an “unearthly” mind or brain, because one’s mind develops alongside one’s desires, in order to ensure their actualization.

If one’s desires are at the level of this world, then one’s mind can never step out of its boundaries, because it is produced by one’s desires. Hence, you must first correct yourself, and then, as a result of the change in your properties, you will become smarter and acquire a mind that isn’t corporeal, but is different, higher – a mind that can understand opposites as one whole, can comprehend that time doesn’t exist, and that motion means changing one’s properties in similarity to the Creator.

One then reveals an entirely different worldview (see the material on the perception of spiritual reality). One reveals the souls and the governing forces, as well as the cause and purpose of this world. In addition, one sees all of this together, as a single picture that is stationary yet moving toward revealing this state of rest.

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