A question I received: Let’s say that a blow befell me. I was fired from my job – I feel horrible. Should I still adhere to the Creator?

My Answer: This is precisely what is happening to the world today – the world is receiving blows, and there will be many such blows. All of this is necessary in order for man to reach a state where he will agree to reject his egoism.

By annulling his egoism, a person discovers that he needs to receive only a little bit from the Creator – that which is necessary for life.  This is similar to the cells and other parts of the body which exist for the sake of the whole body and hence feel its general existence. In much the same way, we feel the common eternal and perfect life of the infinite and unbounded Universe.

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In the News (from The Guardian): “Young, jobless, broke: today’s lost generation” – A recent survey by Post Office financial services found that most 16- to 24-year-olds believe that it will take a decade for their living standards to return to pre-crisis levels. On the wider labour market survey measure, an alarming 18.3% of 16-to 25-year-olds are unemployed. David Blanchflower, the labour market expert, said, “The danger is that we have a lost generation.”

My Comment: This means that their children will be just like them.

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Kabbalah is the method for revealing the Creator to a person (see Baal HaSulam’s article, “The Essence of the Wisdom of Kabbalah”).

Regardless of the fact that the science of Kabbalah was hidden from humanity over the course of thousands of years, by manifesting itself through sciences and social relations in an opposite, egoistic form, it prepared humanity for perceiving it (Kabbalah) as a necessary method in order for everyone to achieve a perfect existence.

However, under the influence of his natural desires and his natural mind, a person must first realize the erroneous course of his independent development. Precisely by moving through the stages of technological, scientific, religious, and social development, and becoming disappointed with them, a person gains the ability to understand the Upper wisdom and mind (higher than those given to him naturally). Having gone through all the methods and realizing their limitations and inability to correct the world, a person comes to reject them and chooses Kabbalah as the only true method of his development.

The reason for such a path of development is related to how the Creator is concealed from a person in order to give him an opportunity to develop on his own and realize the truth. In the same manner that the Creator is concealed in our surroundings, Kabbalah, the method to reveal Him, is concealed in the sciences of our world.

Similar to the development of sciences that lead to the revelation of the science of Kabbalah hidden within them, human development in our world leads to the revelation of the Creator. A person reveals our world through science, and later, with the help of Kabbalah, he reveals the Creator.

Therefore, just as the Creator’s concealment is the cause of all our misfortunes and suffering, to the same extent the concealment of Kabbalah is the reason for all of our suffering.

The science of Kabbalah is the method of revealing the Upper Light, the Light of Hochma which is revealed in the Light of Hassadim (the quality of bestowal) in the corrected egoistic desires. However, the penetration of a considerably weak emanation of Hochma directly into egoistic desires without first being clothed into the Light of Hassadim, gives rise to the sciences of our world.

Since the Light of Hochma that descends into our world (some revelation of the Creator in the sciences of our world, in egoistic desires), descends from revelation of the Creator in the Upper world (the clothing of the Light of Hochma in the Light of Hassadim), it is clear that all the discoveries of Nature that descend into our world are no more than a lesser revelation of the Creator in the science of Kabbalah in the Upper world.

In other words, a very insignificant portion of the truth descends to the sciences of our world from the science of Kabbalah, which is the Upper root of the corporeal sciences, in the same way that our whole world receives only the “Ner Dakik” (a spark of Light) of the Upper Light.

However, specifically from below upwards, meaning from the sciences of our world, can we come to the science of Kabbalah. This is the reason for the revival of all the sciences and, hence, the preparation of the world for revelation of the Creator.

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A question I received: What is the difference between the attainment of mutual guarantee and the reception of the Torah?

My Answer: Mutual Guarantee is a state of oneness. The Torah (Kabbalah) is the means by which one can come to the quality of bestowal; it allows one to reach oneness because it reveals the Creator.

In accordance with the law of equivalence of form, if I reach the desire to “bestow”, the Creator is revealed to me within it. This is because the only quality of the Creator is bestowal and love. While my desire remains uncorrected in similarity with Him, I don’t have anything with which to discover and reveal Him. But without the revelation of the Creator I am not able to correct myself. It’s a catch-22:

• Without having corrected myself, I cannot reveal the Creator

• Without having revealed the Creator, I cannot correct myself!

This is why a method exists which allows one to attract a force which corrects ones desires from reception to bestowal. This method is called Kabbalah and it allows one to attract the Light that reforms while still remaining uncorrected and not having the same qualities as the Light.

This force is called the Surrounding Light. This is the Creator influencing us in a concealed manner. This is why it’s called the Surrounding Light, and not the explicit Direct Light.

From afar, the Surrounding Light can influence something that is removed and opposite to it (egoism) in accordance with a person’s yearning for correction.

The Creator is called  Bore. BO-RE means “come” and “see.”  When I unite with others in our common quality of bestowal, we develop the conditions for the revelation of the Creator. The entire method of correction (Kabbalah) consists of attracting the Surrounding (correcting) Light towards oneself.

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Questions I received about the study of Gematria, characters from ancient texts, and the two forms of desire:

Question: Is the study of Gematria related to Kabbalah? What is the goal of this science? What do we have to learn from it?

My Answer: Gematria is a method for recording the relationships between spiritual properties and different souls. It is similar to modern methods of recording information. Letters represent properties descending from the ruling system of signals. If we depict the sequence of letters as words, then we do not read the actual words but rather the program, which runs our world.

What Gematria gives us is an example of how we should be. Our entire work is to come to be similar to the Creator. This similarity can be achieved only by copying His actions, just as a child learns from adults in this world.

Question: Kabbalah speaks of Adam, Eve and other characters from ancient texts. I would like to know who these people were.

My Answer: They are internal forces of the root of the soul: the giving male source and the receiving female one. In Kabbalah, these are the systems of Z”A and Malchut. For more information, read The Book of Zohar.

Question: Can we say that there are two forms of desire? The first one is the desire to please oneself and the second – to please others. The first is very limited, and the second is eternal and infinite.

My Answer: This is true!

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A person lives in his own reality and suddenly begins to understand that this entire reality simply unfolds in front of him and that he has absolutely no freedom of choice. It is as if he sits in a theater and watches a movie that shows him sitting in a theater, watching a movie, and so on into infinity.

Where then is true reality? With this question, the internal search begins. This search brings one to the point where he starts to see that there is nothing external to him: everything happens inside of him. As long as he has a body and emotions, he receives some internal picture which he perceives as his reality.

Rabash describes this in the story of the coachman. The coachman had a house, a wife, children, a horse and a carriage and was very happy with his life. All of a sudden, he loses everything: his family, his wife, children, and even the horse died. In the end, grief-stricken, he also dies.

He arrives in Paradise and because of all his suffering, it is decided that he will be granted a gift. He receives that which he most desires: the sensation that he has a house, a wife, children, a carriage and several horses! So he imagines that he is riding in his carriage led by strong horses, is successful with work; all in all, he is enjoying life!

Maybe we also are in such a state? How can we determine this? How can we exit ourselves and see what is really happening? It could be that we are sleep-walking. Or perhaps we are being controlled by aliens who placed us in formaldehyde and are showing us a movie, while in reality we exist in glass bottles and have been sleeping for millions of years. And this we consider to be our world…?

But there is a method which allows us to rise above this entire reality and see it from the perspective of the Upper Force, the Creator. It’s like fish that suddenly start to wonder: “Who changes the aquarium water?”

And thus begins a different path that leads a person toward his Creator. This happens when one attains this system and by using it, ascends toward Him.

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In the News (from VOA): “More Than a Billion People Hungry in the World” – A new report found more than one billion people around the world are going hungry. …we can eliminate hunger in the world, we have the resources: the food is there. It’s not a lack of food …it is lack of access to food…

My Comment: Nature has everything in abundance, except human brainpower!

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In the News (from Project Syndicate): “America’s Socialism for the Rich” With all the talk of “green shoots” of economic recovery, America’s banks are pushing back on efforts to regulate them. The old system worked well for the bankers (if not for their shareholders), so why should they embrace change? Indeed, the efforts to rescue them devoted so little thought to the kind of post-crisis financial system we want that we will end up with a banking system that is less competitive, with the large banks that were too big to fail even larger.

My Comment: The system will become even worse because it has to serve ever-growing egoism. Banks will become larger, their monopoly will exploit the ordinary client and the government will not be able to dictate its conditions to them. As a result, conflicts will be on the rise!

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Questions I received concerning women studying Kabbalah, sensing eternity, the drinking of alcohol at Congresses and the legalization of marijuana:

Question: Yesterday a friend of mine said to me that we, women, should not study Kabbalah, because when we study, we draw demons (negative forces) instead of the Upper Light.

My Answer: Utter nonsense! Women, as well as men, must correct their egoism, connect their desire “to give and love the neighbor” into one common desire, and to reveal the Creator in this desire!

Question: Why is it that when I study Kabbalah, The  Zohar, or the Torah, I begin to cry involuntarily?

My Answer: It’s because you feel a connection with eternity and perfection.

Question: During meals and various events, such as Kabbalah Congresses, we always raise toasts with alcohol, as though it is not unhealthy and is permitted in the spiritual world.

My Answer: This was the custom with my teacher Rabash: to drink moderately, up to 50 grams.

Question: There are hard drugs and soft drugs. Marijuana is considered a soft drug. Do you have anything against its legalization?

My Answer: I am against it! That would lead to harder drugs.

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To be in the egoistic desire is to lack the instrument to turn this quality of egoism into the quality of the Creator. The Upper Light, the very quality of the Creator, is that special force that reforms us.

But it only does so in conjunction with our desire to change our qualities from egoistic to altruistic. It must be a true desire, i.e. it must come from the heart, and not by way of words or tears.

To reach such a genuine desire to change constitutes our entire work on ourselves in this life. Those who have undergone this process of transformation of their egoistic desire into the desire to bestow tell us about it in their books.

Just as in our world, parents provide all the necessary conditions for babies and their development, so have the Kabbalists prepared for us all that is necessary for our spiritual development. They have already united into one great soul over the course of centuries and have prepared our future world – and they are waiting there for us.

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