Question: Baal HaSulam says in the “Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot,” Item 155, that even if we don’t understand Kabbalistic texts, we draw the power of correction, the Surrounding Light, by reading it. So why don’t people who know these texts by heart ever reach attainment?

Answer: They don’t draw the power of correction because the Surrounding Light should turn into the Inner Light when you acquire a Masach (screen), which means the intention to bestow. The question is do you yearn to attain a Masach? Are you drawn to correction? Do you want to reveal the evil inclination? Are you ready to go through this although it is unpleasant? Do you see this as an obligation and a necessity? Do you invest all your energy in the society in order to be under the influence of the friends? Only then will they lift you from your desires and pull you out of this swamp.

When you hate someone you have to make an effort so that you will love him. It is as if he did you wrong and you rise above that although the feeling of hate remains, and you work only for love by wanting to give him more than you give to your own baby.

Do you do that and hold on to this inclination regarding these corrections? If so, you are drawing the Surrounding Light that operates on you and provides you with necessary attribute.

At the same time you are diverted from the path, and you are thwarted by more interruptions, but you still have to advance by subduing yourself before the friends and asking for their help. Thus you evoke the Surrounding Light upon you, yearning for that attribute—for bestowal and love—above hate and rejection. Even if you are absolutely right in all your claims regarding the friends, you still try to advance “above reason.”

As for those you are asking about, they deal with the wisdom and not with the Torah, not with the method of correction in which the Reforming Light is concealed. They read the texts without any connection with the evil inclination that will be revealed or that is already revealed. They don’t come to the lesson in order to correct themselves, and they don’t study the Torah, but wisdom. Therefore it says: “wisdom among the nations, believe.” The “nations” refers to those who don’t want to correct themselves. However, those who want to reach unity are called “Jews,” and this is the whole difference.

Abraham gave “gifts” to the children of the concubines, meaning intermediate methods. They studied for pleasure, received a slight illumination, but didn’t fulfill the correction and didn’t ascend the ladder of the spiritual degrees. Such people study the material by heart, discuss it, argue….

We don’t argue and don’t discuss anything, for us only the Reforming Light is important. It doesn’t matter how much a person knows, what’s important is to keep in contact with the text that brings him the power of correction.

Eventually, however, the correction is everyone’s share, and I don’t underestimate anyone. If a person opens Kabbalah books, even if he walks in the dark, he is still moving forward.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/23/12, “Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot”

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The Book of Zohar, Weekly Torah Portion “Bamidbar” Selected Excerpts

The Book of Zohar, Weekly Torah Portion “Naso” Selected Excerpts

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Opinion (Bhaskar Patel, USA, General Director of Cybersoft Technologies, Inc., from the international research paper Models of Post-Crisis Development): “If we learn to cooperate and co-exist, all other progress is possible and becomes easier; it will also be easier to deal with natural calamities; otherwise we will consume unnecessary energy and resources for internal fights.”

Mustafa Badawy, Columbia, entrepreneur and founder of the company Colacom: “I believe the 21st century will be the spiritual century – to consume less, to live more happily. This earth can no longer take our consumption rhythm, I mean the consumption rhythm of the USA, China and the EU.”

Adriano Benayon, Brazil, professor of economics at the University of Brasilia, author of “Globalization versus Development”: “Spiritual values, if they correspond with the common good and are independent from established religions, seem most important to me, since technology is neither good nor bad in itself: it all depends on what technology is developed and employed for.”
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In the News (from Daily Mail): “More than a hundred years after noted historian Baron John Acton coined the phrase ‘power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely’ scientists claim the saying is biologically true.

“The feeling of power has been found to have a similar effect on the brain to cocaine by increasing the levels of testosterone and its by-product 3-androstanediol in both men and women.

“This in turn leads to raised levels of dopamine, the brain’s reward system called the nucleus accumbens, which can be very addictive.

“Cocaine works in a similar way, which can have varied effects from increasing alertness, confidence, energy, feelings of well-being and euphoria, but also anxiety, paranoia and restlessness.

“Power has almost identical effects to cocaine and too much of it can produce too much dopamine leading to more negative effects such as arrogance and impatience.

“The claims by Dr Ian Robertson may go some way to explain the outlandish and impulsive behaviour of city fatcats, tycoons and celebrities.

“Writing in the Daily Telegraph today, he said: ‘Baboons low down in the dominance hierarchy have lower levels of dopamine in key brain areas, but if they get ‘promoted’ to a higher position, then dopamine rises accordingly. This makes them more aggressive and sexually active, and in humans similar changes happen when people are given power.

“’Conversely, demotion in a hierarchy decreases dopamine levels, increases stress and reduces cognitive function.’

“He added that power has also been found to make people smarter because dopamine improves the functioning of the brain’s frontal lobes.

“Submissiveness and dominance also give similar effects through the same reward circuits of the brain as power and cocaine.”

My Comment: If, as Kabbalah says, the entire matter is a desire to receive the desired content, behavior, addiction, and human development can be explained in this way. Except for knowledge, the fulfillment by power is the greatest source of pleasure in the hierarchy of desires. Above knowledge, there is only the striving to know the Creator, not by means of the mind, but by means of the soul, the corrected desire.
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Question: While educating tens of thousands of people according to the integral method, it is necessary to have many organizers to watch over discipline, to make sure people do not play cards, drink, and do other things in the back rows.

How do you do this on a factory that is being closed down, after all, strict discipline and pressure do not complement the integral method?

Answer: We are dealing with a necessary process of educating masses that will suffer a lot in the worst case scenario. We must understand that we must not educate through hard pressure and through serious organization of their discipline. They must see this, understand it consciously, and try to support our efforts in this.

Question: We must prepare organizers?

Answer: Absolutely! First of all we need to prepare organizers.

They must feel this new spirit that is being born here; after all, we are going towards the integration of the population, their interconnection, mutual support, and complementing each other.

In this case, there can be no question about hierarchy here. Hierarchy is good for the process of organization. But once the study space is organized, inside there must be friendship instead of discipline.
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From KabTV’s “Experimental City: Education” 3/3/12

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Question: How can we make integral learning, introduced by businesses, a creative and constructive process?

Answer: First of all, it’s simply necessary to occupy all the employees of the firm with integral upbringing and education. With time, they can gradually be prepared to participate in an event such as a voluntary “work day” to clean up, to make nature ecologically clean, to fix and tidy up the entire town where we live.

In other words, integral upbringing and education must bring us to common constructive work, to ensure we are receiving inner fulfillment from it, and the realization of the ideas. The city must breathe it, and it will be contagious.
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From KabTV’s “Experimental City: Education” 3/3/12

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The Zohar tells us about the ways we connect, which create the vessel of perception. By our connection in different manners, we discover the Creator. The Creator has no form and no image. His form is the extent and the manner of our connection. If we connect, we acquire the attribute of the Creator, His form.

At first the Creator was revealed in the starting point of the creation—Malchut of Ein Sof (Infinity). There was no connection there but just a point, one desire. Then this desire developed under the influence of the Light and received all its attributes. But it was still one, until the oppositeness of the Light in all its opposite attributes appeared in it.

By connecting, we discover the forms of the Light, the forms of the Creator. Therefore, to be connected also means to be adhered to the Creator with the attribute of love and bestowal.

The way we connect is the form of the Creator we discover. The intensity of our connection is the level on which we discover the Creator. The Creator is revealed in the connection among us.

The desire remains the same desire that was created at first, as a specific desire. The Light shattered it into many separated desires. By connecting them we discover the Light 620 times stronger in quality than before: We discover the thought, the mind, the thought of creation.
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From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/23/12, The Zohar

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Man feels the desires, which arise in him, and based only on them he perceives reality, feels it and lives in it. The perception of the world depends on the informational data (Reshimot) revealed in a person, and that is why people don’t understand each other. Indeed, each person sees, feels, perceives, and interprets what’s going on according to his own needs.

Besides this, there are no two similar moments since new desires emerge in us all the time and in accordance with them so do thoughts. That is, the perception of reality changes constantly: A person never remains that same person. From this, one needs to understand that we have no possibility to judge ourselves in our own states, or even more so to judge others.

This is because each person is controlled by that sprout of desire that awakens in him at that moment. The only decision is to learn how to aim towards commonness and unity, above all of these desires. And if all of us are mutually connecting into each other, then we can reach the “common denominator,” which is called the center of the group, unity, the point of connection, Malchut, the collection of all of the souls, longing for the Creator.

It is impossible to judge particular qualities and perceptions of each person at a given moment since this is predetermined from Above. There are people who come to study because they want to receive knowledge and automatically memorize what is written. There are those who are searching for new perceptions and possibilities to discover the upper Light, angels, and spirits.

There are people who by their nature are closer to this method and instinctively long towards unity, while others, having perfectly studied all of the articles about the group, nevertheless, cannot understand that it relates to them and that they need to realize this on themselves. Alternatively, they agree to realize it, but purely externally, like religious rites, instead of investing their heart into this.

All people are different, and based on this, we cannot judge a person. His behavior is derived from the root of his soul and there are many roads which lead to the Creator. That is why only longing is needed for each person to be under the maximum influence of the correct environment, which will help him move on his own path at his own pace, and what will happen, will happen.

We need to be more patient and tolerant of each other regarding the things that have to do with spiritual development. For here a person possesses the freedom of choice only in joining the correct environment. And this depends on the kind of Reshimot that will be revealed in them and which kind of Light that will be influencing him. And the pace and order in moving forward in joining the group are very different from person to person.

There are people who grasp these principles very quickly and are ready for unity. However, this may be because they have a weak desire, which does not cover up the value of unity from them. While in others there may be a very large and rigid egoistic desire, and that is why it is so difficult for them to accept that the whole spiritual goal is revealed inside unity with others.

They are not able to attach importance to commonality and that is why they move forward in another way, the larger part of it in darkness, in concealment, with much hardship. However, at a later time, suddenly, a leap forward happens.
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From the preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/23/12

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If we could attain the true greatness of nature, it wouldn’t be difficult at all for us to give up our egoism and become as bestowing and loving as nature.

The difficulty is that assessment of the greatness of nature that gives birth to everything and governs everything does not depend on an individual, but on their environment. If their environment is imbued with the greatness of nature’s forces, the individual senses in himself enough power to overcome his egoism.

However, when man sees how carelessly his environment treats nature, its laws and goals to bring man to equivalence with it, he too disregards this knowledge and ceases to feel it as important, and later ceases to sense it altogether.

Hence, receiving importance of the goal (achieving equivalence with nature’s quality of bestowal and love) from the environment is an indispensable condition for advancement. For this, man needs to:

– always listen to and cherish the environment in every way possible; to do this, he must feel himself as the smallest of his friends since only the lower receives from the upper,

– strive to increase the environment, quantity or quality-wise, in his own eyes, to be impressed with the greatness of the goal; for this, he must extol his friends’ virtues and honour them as the greatest in the generation. Then the environment will influence him, as the greater, since quality is more important than quantity.

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From Baal HaSulam’s “A Speech for the Completion of The Zohar”

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Preparation to the Lesson

Lesson: Special Lesson for the American Students: Writings of Rabash “Concerning the Importance of Friends“

The Book of Zohar – Selected Excerpts “Beresheet (Genesis),” Let The Waters Swarm,” Item 405, Lesson 104

Writings of Rabash, “Igrot,” Letter 52

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