Question: Why is it so difficult to imagine the next level?

Answer: It’s not a lack of imagination, but a lack of interaction between people. If we were playing in the yard with friends, we would imagine everything clearly since there is mutual interaction between us. One person says something, another adds something, and in this way, a game is created.

Whereas here, we can’t get together yet; we can’t imagine the next degree. We are missing the mutual help. I still don’t feel the support of the friends in this. It isn’t your fault or mine. For this, we need training sessions that will gradually give rise to the next degree.

This level doesn’t exist within us yet. We are not to blame for this. We simply need to put in effort, and the upper Light will begin to form it within us. It already is building it within us, but this takes time.

We constantly yearn for the next level like children; we don’t understand, play, and make mistakes—but we want it! It doesn’t matter what we want because it just might not be what we need. However, these efforts invite the upper Light that gradually forms the next level within us: At first, it does it in our imagination and then in cloudy sensations. Afterward, the upper Light forms together both the sensations and thoughts, certain understanding of what should happen. And then what we learn, feel, and hear from other friends adds together. We suddenly begin to receive their thoughts and desires, and all this connects together.

If it’s difficult for us to imagine the next level, it’s a sign that we haven’t attracted enough of the upper Light so that it can give us as least some kind of impression, some format of the next degree. However, I am sure that we will overcome this.
[75793]
From the Vilnius Convention 3/23/2012, Workshop 1

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Rabash, Shlavey HaSulam, (Steps of the Ladder), “The Need for Love of Friends”: There are many merits to it: 1) It brings one out of self-love and to love of others… since by that he can come to love the Creator. However, we should know that loving others or working for the benefit of others is not the purpose of creation, as the secular understand it…. Saying that we must work to benefit others is only the correction of creation, not the purpose of creation.

A person begins to study the wisdom of Kabbalah in order to be smarter and to find out what goes on in the upper world. He dreams about seeing, revealing, and feeling the upper force and governance, to attain his past, present, and future, and the system that manages the whole world, including us.

He perceives everything through his ego, the desire to receive pleasure, and so he hears selectively: only what can do him good or harm him personally. Concepts like “love of friends” and the “need of the love of others” just pass by his ear.

It takes a long time until thanks to the study, dissemination, and connection to the group, a person finally begins to understand that love of friends doesn’t mean to be good kids like in the kindergarten, but that it is a spiritual principle of a totally different level.

This principle stems from the shattering of the vessels, that is, from the unified soul that was shattered into pieces and by that laid the foundations for our whole world. And this is why we have to connect all the pieces of that one soul. To the extent that we manage to connect them, we begin to feel the upper world.

A person is willing to hear about love of friends only after many years. Therefore, beginners cannot understand Rabash’s articles about the group. The more advanced students will perceive them as a real, necessary, and desirable tool because they already understand how important and beneficial it is to attain connection by virtue of which we attain the whole world of Infinity.
[75909]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/20/2012, Writings of Rabash

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Question: What is the role of the group on our way to a true question?

Answer: A person who is in a complete isolation from the laws of an integral system can approach building this system and learning its lessons due to the group. Kabbalah is an integral science about a common nature. There is nothing artificial or alleged in it. In order to learn the general law of equilibrium of all nature’s parts, we have to create a laboratory and try building the system’s simulator. The same way things are done in other sciences as well. Even though our model is not real, we’ll begin understanding some laws of Nature and relationships among its parts to some extent.

The group is such a laboratory. Kabbalistic books are instructions to work with. And we are researchers, scientists, who do experiments not on themselves, but on the group to the extent of being united. What efforts are required from us? Under what conditions? What for? All our experimental activities are for this research and are concentrated just on the point of unity.

We are not different from other scientists who explore nature. Thus Baal HaSulam writes that materialistic psychology lays a practical basis for the popularization of the science of Kabbalah in the masses. Psychologists also deal with groups learning a human nature and a nature of society based on them. Thus, we also can formulate and explain our guidelines for working with the society, the whole of humanity, using the same terms. It is just necessary to find the right words clear to the wide audience.

Anyway, this approach is consistent with approaches of scientists and psychologists. We study higher, deeper, and at the same time, hidden laws of nature which a regular person can’t reach.

Physicists, for example, study elementary particles without having any knowledge of their weight. The massive Hadron Collider required investments of billions of dollars, tens of thousands of specialists, and the construction of a huge technological complex taking into consideration it being used for studying the foundations of the universe and not some immediate tangible benefits. Scientists want to learn what happened in the universe billions of years ago even though we don’t know what tomorrow will bring us and the situation in the world is getting worse day by day. Where is the logic? But still, the project keeps moving forward.

We deal with the most important and high science capable of saving the humanity. The subject of its research is the basis of the Creation, in nature itself, which commissions this “experiment,” because all our good future depends on it. Thus we have to find new words and new examples for people to understand what we are talking about. And it will happen—the point of contact between the science of Kabbalah and the masses is very close.
[76036]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/10/12, Wiritngs of Rabash

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In our world, the spark of spirituality, the point in the heart, has not awakened in very many people. They are in the minority as compared to the rest of humanity who are attracted only toward the corporeal delights of this world. However, people who yearn to reveal the Creator have qualitative strength, and if they unite, they can attain a force greater than the force of the rest of humanity.

It is possible to be great in terms of quantity and in terms of quality. Quality is more important than quantity. Thus, if ten people, who scrutinize the goal and want to attain it, unite, a force created by them is greater than the external force of humanity, of all the billions of people around the world.

It is so much more meaningful that they are unaffected by the influence of broad society and its quantitative strength. Thus, by creating a not-so-large group, they can advance. A person falls under the influence of the environment—and his only free choice is to choose a suitable environment for himself.

If he constantly annuls himself before this small group more and more, he can be sure that he will reach the goal this way. To the extent of his annulment and connection with the friends in greater and greater concentration, he will constantly come closer to the goal. After all, the goal is found in the center of this small group.
[75906]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/20/2012, Writings of Rabash

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From Rabash’s lesson: A person must study on the basis that faith obliges him, not because others say that he is righteous, thus giving him strength and inspiring him to work. It’s because then this strength is based on pride and honor, not on faith, meaning on egoism instead of holiness.

Thus, one needs to be very careful not to receive any external endorsement. It is just the opposite: If the environment ignores the person, it is really a gift from Above because he is being given the opportunity to continue to work for the sake of bestowal.

And if one is honored, he thereby is given energy to work egoistically, for the sake of respect. And no matter how much you try to explain it to the person, nothing will help—this is the way our body, our ego, works.

Thus, it is not easy to detach from reward or punishment that comes from the environment, working only in one line directed straight to the goal of creation. But without this detachment, all of our work will benefit the impure forces, Pharaoh, our ego.

According to how influenced a person is by the world’s good or bad attitude toward him, by feedback he receives from the external world, we can see clearly where he is. If he doesn’t pay attention to this and continues on his way, he receives all sorts of criticism as help from Above. The more he is attacked from all the sides, the more they help him.  
[75854]
From the Preparation for the Lesson 4/20/2012

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We cannot imagine how much the distance between me and the Creator and the distance between me and my neighbor are the same. We call one who is close to us “neighbor,” while he is the same distance away as the Creator. At the same distance!

Try to reach the neighbor not physically but internally, and you will discover the same abyss. That is why we underestimate what has been given to us. “Well, why do we need the neighbor? All sorts of figures are walking around here. …” We cannot imagine that this is the absolutely accurate indication of our attitude towards the hidden in nature. Just as the Creator is concealed from me, so is my friend hidden from me.

Imagine, how much of this chasm we have not yet revealed between us. All the time we gloss over it, fill it with something superficial, but we don’t even see this huge black abyss.

However, if you seriously work in the group, then to the extent of your work, you begin to understand that you have to strike precisely at this point; here you’ll reveal everything. Just don’t forget that by working out the relationship with the friends, you work out the relationship with the Creator. The end of the action must be in Him; then we will get the upper Light.

This is the difference between the method of Kabbalah and any other method, because when we reach the end of the action, pointing at the upper force, we receive the upper Light that changes us. The main thing is not to forget that all our actions are aimed at getting closer to Him, to this upper force, at becoming similar to it, dissolving into it, acting like It, attaining at Its level, understanding, and connecting so that my entire inner part is absolutely equal to it.
[76025]
From the Vilnius Convention 3/25/2012, Lesson 5

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Preparation to the Lesson

Writings of Rabash “A True Prayer Is Over a True Deficiency”

Zohar for All – Passover, “Shemot (Exodus),” “He Neither Ate Bread nor Drank Water,” Item 251

Talmud Eser Sefirot, Part 15, Item 42

Writings of Rabash “Dargot HaSulam,” “A Matter of Exodus of Egypt”

Writings of Rabash “Pri Chaham,” “Davar Emet (Words of Truth)”

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