Question: Do we need a women’s group? What is the role of women’s groups?

Answer: In principle, there is no such connection among women as there is among men. A man should be united into a single vector with his friends, so much so that there is no difference between them. That is, on the earthly level, they must try to achieve an absolute fusion with each other in their feelings and thoughts.

This quality, this ability to connect is inherent in men; they simply must work on this. Only egoism separates them, and they have to unite above it. If there are two friends and between them there is mutual egoism that pushes them apart, they still have to make contact.

This is the duty of men. The woman’s part cannot do that.

The men’s part includes the objects that carry in themselves the potential quality of being able to connect with each other. Potential! They must create this network of connection among themselves. They can do this. This is their correction.

The woman’s part is created in such a way that each woman is on her own like a queen. She cannot be connected with other women by ties, like the men are among themselves. However, together with other women, she can create one common desire to reach the goal.

This is the women’s task. This desire has to be directed, as if passed, to the men’s part and through them, to the Creator.
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From the 2nd lesson at the Moscow Convention 6/10/11

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Question: You have mentioned many times that people who have been studying Kabbalah for many years look just like everyone else and cannot be told apart. At the same time, people whose desires have been corrected change the reality around them and possess a completely different power of attraction. Are there any external signs that distinguish a Kabbalist?

Answer: I have met and spent some time with several students of Baal HaSulam. I was 35 years old, and they were 75. I felt like an infant in their arms. I never saw them do any miracles nor did I hear any special conversations. They all tried to be very regular people, and they actually were.

A Kabbalist does not spread any waves around him. A person who begins to listen to a Kabbalist, to understand him, to correctly adapt his words and thoughts, and to realize his suggestions within him begins to perceive himself and the world in a different way. This is not because there is a Kabbalist influencing him. Kabbalists do not influence other people. It is not permitted! This would kill another person’s freedom of will.

How do we teach a child? We constantly provide him with exercises and tell him how things are done, but he must do it on his own. Otherwise, he will not grow. This is why Kabbalists never change and can never change anything around them. There are no tricks. Nothing can change if man does not change.

I have many relatives, friends, and beloved students, and there is no way I can help them besides explaining it to them one more time, telling it in some other way. There is no other way. And when a person turns away from me, there is no way for me to turn him around. I also leave him. That is it. There is nothing I can do, even though it hurts.

Do not think that a Kabbalist is capable of something supernatural that a regular person cannot do. No, he cannot. Of course, he reveals this world to a greater extent as his desire becomes corrected, but he only reveals it for himself.

Over the course of history, there were many Kabbalists who were unable to teach. They attained spirituality, performed corrections in the upper world in the network of souls between us, and prepared this entire system to be closer to humanity, but not more than that. It’s the same way that we prepare the current world for our children and grandchildren, and no other way.

Do not look for tricks in Kabbalah. There are no miracles. This is an enormous, difficult job for each one of us to correct ourselves against our nature. This is what all of humanity must realize in our time.
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From the 3rd lesson at the Moscow Convention 6/11/11

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Question: I have a question about the upper and lower degrees. What does it mean in our state to take a desire from the lower one? What can I do with it, and where can I direct it? How can I take this desire sooner and advance without wasting time?

Answer: In truth, we are between the upper world and humanity. If we want to get desires from all of humanity in order to raise them and receive the upper Light from Above to carry it down, then this scheme will work. To do that, we must disseminate to the wide public knowledge about the solution to the problem of our general crisis from which humanity is only beginning to suffer. There are many problems ahead.

Hence, we have to take the following steps: 1) We need to give humanity knowledge about the crisis, that it is purposeful and not random. 2) In order to raise us up, we have to get from humanity their desires to ascend, to get out of this crisis. 3) We have to raise these desires in order to realize them within ourselves, 4) receive general fulfillment in them, and 5) pass it down. Thus, we work: the upper and the lower one.
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From the 6th lesson at the Moscow Convention 6/12/11

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My Good Environment – Dr. Laitman’s Advice for the Week

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Question: What efforts should a woman make so the Light would correct her?

Answer: She should make all other women and men participate in the movement towards the Light. And she has to do that with her desire! Not by yelling or throwing tantrums, or by making any kind of movements, but only by the inner desire.

Nothing exists besides desire. It is the only thing that operates. If you are not acting with your desire, from the inside, then by making physical, external actions, you won’t really correct anything.
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From the 2nd lesson at the Moscow Convention 6/10/11

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We have just completed a very good convention, and it was good in the true sense of the word. Some conventions just go by very warmly and nicely, leaving behind a warm patch, like a hot trail. But at this convention we created something bigger. It was a gathering of people who felt Light and warmth in their mutual action. Naturally, we will hold many more conventions like this and will work from one to the next, and will see how much we will change.

But if we want to really advance forward, then we must constantly search for the following, better state instead of just trying to hold on to this warmth, this level, this sensation or attainment. We cannot look back. That would be like Lot’s wife who turned into a pillar of salt. We cannot take an example from the past. We have to look forward. I hope that you and I will do just that.

I am sure that this spiritual Kli or vessel is growing inside each of us. I felt this. But these vessels still have to unite and achieve that necessary connection between one another so they would be on the minimal, 125th level, so they would be as one, meaning unite together to the 125th degree. We are still lacking this, but are close to it and will definitely achieve it.

Therefore, even though we are parting, we have to understand that everything existing in our world—in the coordinates of time, space, and action—is all there to bring us to the goal. Therefore, we have to understand that all of these conditions are necessary for us to become closer. And if we add our unification and mutual guarantee to all of these conditions, then these conditions will be sufficient. This is what I wish for you.
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From the 7th lesson at the Moscow Convention 6/12/11

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Question: What is the correct environment for women, and how can we use it when it is difficult to work with joy and enthusiasm?

Answer: The correct women’s environment facilitates in a woman an aspiration to calmly, constantly analyze and synthesize the correct desire: What it should be; how we, the male and female parts of our family, unite and give birth to a spiritual degree.

We produce it between ourselves by uniting with each other correctly. Our correct contact brings forth the next degree. This is what the women have to think first. Then, the men will perceive everything in the right way and will act.
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From the 2nd lesson at the Moscow Convention 6/10/11

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The wisdom of Kabbalah is not disclosed by itself because people reveal it in their development. It states that according to the structure of the universe, we must come to our starting point again.

Initially, one desire was created, and this first state is called the world of Infinity. In this state, the desire and the Light that created the desire exist in absolute similarity, fusion, and mutual complementarity. Here, the desire is filled with the Light, but this is only the conceived state of the future creature. It still feels nothing.

Thus, at the beginning, it has to become opposite to the Creator, opposite to the Light. To detach itself completely from the source, the creature passes through five special stages of development called worlds. Thus, the descent of that desire takes place, that is its consistent distancing from its original state.

The first world is called Adam Kadmon. Adam is the prototype of a future human. Then comes the world of Atzilut, the world of creation, followed by Beria, the world of emanation,Yetzira, the world of formation, and Assiya, the world of action. These are the five worlds, five consecutive descents, coarsening, concealment, and departure of the Light from the desire which it fills. Each next state is like the world of Infinity except that the Light there exists in a more concealed form.

Even now, we are in the world of Infinity because there is nothing else. It’s only that this state is hidden from us behind many inner screens. We have to open them, peel them off, and then, gradually, we will begin to feel ourselves in the true form.

This is similar to the state of a person who lies unconscious. This is our state number two, here in this world. We are in complete concealment here, as if we have lost consciousness and exist in some internal fluctuations, imagining something.

If we exert ourselves in a particular way and regain consciousness,we will rise to our initial state. This is called the third state. This is also the world of Infinity. We reach it by ascending exactly the same steps of the worlds, which we passed in our descent when we were losing a sense of perfection, the complete presence of the Light. In gradually climbing the same steps, we will experience attainment, the transition from our unconscious state to the conscious one.

The first exit from the unconscious state into consciousness is called the barrier, Machsom. The most important thing for us is to cross this Machsom, to exit the state of complete detachment from the perception of global nature.

Now, we feel nature only in the form of our world and do not perceive it through spiritual desires. We experience the world while being in a totally disconnected state, not using the tools which we have at our full disposal.

We feel ourselves through our five sense organs: smell, touch, sight, hearing, taste, and tactile sensation. Thus, our sense of self is passed through our animate body. Then, inside, a specific picture appears in our mind. At the back of our brain, we have a kind of  “screen” on which everything we perceive is projected. All that adds up to a single picture of the world.

This is not what we see during the exit from the unconscious state. As soon as we have crossed the Machsom, we start feeling completely different states. We begin to sense the Light within. Our desire receives the pleasure of fulfillment, knowledge about the real world, and then a precise picture is drawn inside us.

Thus, the plan of the Creator, the original intention of the Light, is to create desire (the Light is primary, desire is secondary) so that this desire, meaning the creature becomes equal to the Light in status, power, and sensations. Naturally, this state is above our world, that is, above time, space, motion, and above the division into life, birth, and death. It is above all of that.

By discovering this new feeling inside us, we will sense ourselves existing eternally like all of nature. We will stop identifying ourselves with an “animal” that exists here in this world. It as if disappears from our perception like the smallest of our sensations.

Thus regaining consciousness, a person can somehow imagine and recall what happened to him. This sensation remains somewhere, but it is so small, so insignificant, so low in power that it is suppressed by the awareness of the existence in a great new world, infinite, eternal, and perfect. This is the Machsom that we must cross.
[45353]
From the 1st lesson at the Moscow Convention 6/10/11

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Question: I see not only evil but also good in the world. I have to find the evil inside myself and correct it. And what can I do with the good?

Answer: In fact, there is no good in the external world. This is a picture of my egoism. If I aim at the goal correctly, I begin to notice the good root in everything that surrounds me because I start seeing it as the manifestation of the Light, the Creator. And this is revealed only to the extent of my striving to reach the goal through this world.

I do not think that you should pay particular attention to this world or analyze it. Begin to aspire to the goal through it, and this world will pull itself up, will change its form.

You will discover that there is nothing good if you do not connect your correct intention to it. There is no good in and of itself. There is one huge corrupted desire which turns into good with the intention to bestow, with the intention to work for the benefit of others.
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From the 7th lesson at the Moscow Convention 6/10/11

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Dear Friends, please ask questions about these passages from the great Kabbalists. The commentaries in brackets are mine.

Man’s Essence Is the Will to Receive

The primary innovation, from the perspective of Creation, which He has created as existence from absence, applies to one aspect only defined as the “will to receive.” All other matters in the whole of Creation are not innovations at all; they are not existence from absence, but existence from existence. [They are imposed on the desire to receive by the Creator’s desire to bestow. For this reason everything consists of only these two desires: the creature’s desire to receive, the Creator’s desire to bestow, and their combination called a “human.”]
– Baal HaSulam, “The Freedom”

All the corporeal entities in our world, that is, everything within that space, be it still, vegetative, animate, a spiritual object or a corporeal object, if we want to distinguish the unique, self aspect of each of them, how they differentiate from one another even in the smallest of particles, it amounts to no more than a “desire to receive” [and hence is felt in this world].
– Baal HaSulam, “The Freedom”
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