Preparation to the Lesson
| [media 1] | [media 2] |
Shamati #76, “With All Thy Offerings Thou Shalt Offer Salt”
| [media 3] | [media 4] |
The Book of Zohar – Selected Excerpts “Beresheet Bet (Genesis 2),” Lesson 123
| [media 5] | [media 6] |
Talmud Eser Sefirot, Part 2, “Histaklut Pnimit,” Item 19, Lesson 14
| [media 7] | [media 8] |
“Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” Item 4, Lesson 2
| [media 9] | [media 10] |
Listen to an Audio Version of the Blog
Download: MP3 Audio
[audio:http://files.kabbalahmedia.info/audio/eng_o_rav_2012-06-16_declamation_blog-rav_full.mp3 title=’16.6.12′]
Question: Today, our planet is swept with an unconscious instinctive need for destruction. How can we stop this? For example, a person who is destroying himself with alcohol reaches a certain point where he either perishes or changes radically and begins to lead a normal life.
Answer: I hope that a turn for the better will happen here in the near future too. I hope that it will happen before we have completely depleted the entire planet and annihilated most of its population, after which not even the skeleton of the ruins will remain, like in science fiction movies about the future where people roam the Earth like primal creatures, feeding on some roots, after having survived this catastrophe, the bifurcation.
To make this positive turn take place as soon as possible, we’re trying to disseminate the method of integral education and upbringing. But, frankly, we haven’t found sufficient support among the general public; we have little strength. So I cannot say that I feel a deep sense of satisfaction.
However, I don’t believe that humanity will die out, because this isn’t nature’s intent or its course: This entire chain is built on very rational cause-and-effect constants, laws, and degrees. Therefore we won’t bring ourselves to a complete annihilation.
But we can bring ourselves to a state where the remaining tiny fraction of people that survive after all the disasters (both natural and world wars), which we ourselves will evoke, these people will nevertheless come to a balance with nature and reveal the upper nature as absolute harmony, integrality, unity, and wholeness, and they will exist on this level.
This is not an earthly degree. It’s now a degree where a person attains not the universe that we see today through our individual egoism, but a completely different picture, the full stereo image of nature. We don’t see a flat picture of creation but its depth, along with the forces that evoke this picture and govern it, and all of us together.
We will see everything that stands behind this screen, behind this theater. After all, we don’t know the forces that govern us. We don’t know what will happen in the next moment. We need to get acquainted with these forces, to reveal them. I hope that all of this will manifest itself. But it will only manifest when man will become in at least in some way similar to the integrality and wholeness of nature.
[80349]
From a “Talk About Integral Education” 5/21/2012
Related Material:
Shifting The Bifurcation Point
Preventing The Impending Threat
Our Fear Of The Future Is Our Helper
Question: What are a deficiency of the individual and a deficiency of the general?
Answer: A deficiency of the individual doesn’t exist in spirituality because it isn’t about the ordinary corporeal desires. In spiritual desires, a person has only one point in the heart, which he still hasn’t realized.
A general deficiency is the ability to detach from oneself and to connect to the general. This means that a person already understands and feels from studying, from being part of the group, and from disseminating that the spiritual world is revealed only in a whole deficiency.
A whole deficiency means that it is connected, at least minimally, which enables a person to perceive several spiritual discernments. Until then, one doesn’t see anything, like in the evening at twilight when everything becomes blurred.
There is a saying that it is evening time when you cannot recognize the face of your friend from a certain distance (four Amot) as everything blends together. However, if I can recognize my friend, it isn’t evening yet.
Evening symbolizes the fact that I can see something, but that I don’t understand exactly what it is. Thus, we gradually begin to come to the understanding that, instead of a revelation, there are several discernments in which we can recognize, similarly to the way we recognize a friend’s face from a distance of four Amot, which means in the four minimal phases of the desire to receive.
In order to do that, I need to connect my desire with the desires of several other friends so that there will be a connection among us, and, from that, I will be able to discern good and evil, light and darkness. I need to clarify what receiving and bestowal means for myself and for others, or for everyone together, among us.
In the connection between us, I already begin to see these discernments: what “in order to receive” means and what “in order to bestow means.” In this place, built by me, in the deficiency by incorporating with others, I already understand to some extent what in order to receive and in order to bestow mean. This is an initial, minimal understanding, but I already can see the difference between the two.
A deficiency is formed in me, a vessel of perceiving by which I can see the spiritual world, to feel it and to see different discernments. Thus, my spiritual introspection opens up, which is different from the external perspective that I have in this world now, where we imagine that we see something.
[80469]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/13/12, “The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee)”
Related Material:
Four Steps To Keter
Everything Depends Upon You
Kabbalists On Perception Of Reality, Part 1
Good education is when people receive knowledge together with an explanation that they are ready to accept, because many facts that we receive without explanations, especially during our childhood years, remain in us like viruses, and it becomes impossible to get rid of them. We subconsciously use this baggage of facts and consider them to be true, even though in reality they are wrong and often get in our way.
All this happens because as children and adolescents, we were stuffed with different “irrefutable” truths without explanations. Since then, they have been imprinted within and there is nowhere to hide from them. No matter what you do, you are not in control of the things that have been imprinted in you.
And this is why everything needs to be accompanied by an explanation. There is no need to confuse people with ornate constructions based on higher mathematics—people need to receive a clear, accessible explanation, because otherwise knowledge becomes slogans or axioms, and do not advance people forward. A person needs to develop through common sense when one learns good explanations. Moreover, it is necessary to maintain adequate speed, so an excess of information would not block a person’s ability to absorb information.
Correct education is devoid of unsubstantiated facts. This is because people will not be able to use them in the right way, and it will be very difficult to rid them of this unnecessary load. It is impossible to work with facts when you do not know their causes and consequences. In this case they will not allow a person to create a common picture of reality. Instead, a person treats them as strict laws.
Meanwhile, there are no laws at all in reality: We create them ourselves. Once I am born, necessity pushes me to begin to form a picture of the world, connecting its parts together. This is because we come from a breaking, and our entire reality consists of putting together a mosaic of its parts on all the levels, as deep as it goes, from this world to the world of Infinity, constantly adding new quality and quantity of traits. After all, this picture is multidimensional.
So, when I give a person an ultimatum regarding the way he should put together certain parts, I send him down the wrong path, and he continues to follow directions since he does not know how to make analyses and draw analogies. Instead of giving him prepared answers and naked facts, I need to give him a study technique, a method, a guide for action.
This is why modern education is collapsing. This is because we are molding “soldiers,” skilled “workers,” rather than creative people who know how to put together pieces of a mosaic.
Question: You cannot just confine yourself to facts, even if they are true?
Answer: The facts are not the problem. A person needs more than knowledge: He needs to develop his mind, put together things that no one has put together before. He needs to have an approach, a new program instilled in him, which allows him to independently form a picture of reality in him.
A child will not learn through forced actions: This gives a very limited effect. When I tell him something, I must explain why this is the way it is. Otherwise I introduce another “virus” into him, and he will not be able to rationally use this “truth” that is imprinted in him. Caused by a certain context, it will keep emerging in his subconscious until the end of his life, and only the death of the body will put an end to this.
Question: During the period of concealment, we also use slogans that we do not understand. Why are these not “viral” to us?
Answer: That is true, Kabbalah has its own “mottos”: “There is none else beside Him,” “Good who does good,” “Love thy neighbor as thyself,” etc. However, they come from a higher degree and cannot come to us in any other form. We “swallow” these viruses, artificially try to shape ourselves in accordance with them, and thus we attract Reforming Light. And it corrects and lifts us, providing us with a new understanding of the world, a new mind and a new feeling.
On the other hand, in our world, we swallow false facts instead of acquiring common sense, and this does not allow us to move forward by combining all the parts, studying the right picture of the world, and developing on its basis.
After all, I can be independent in our world, while I will never be able to enter spirituality on my own. On the contrary, I must try to realize the laws of the spiritual world in me, connect to them to the extent of my abilities, and then the upper Light will lift me there.
This way, positive instead of negative “viruses” operate in the spiritual world: Be near great people, exalt your friends in your eyes, and constantly strive towards the Light, which you know nothing about. All these things are not facts in my perception; nevertheless, receiving them from the spiritual world is beneficial.
In our perception, even Kabbalah books are “viruses.” They speak of things that we cannot feel, see, or hear. However, I study these texts in order to want to rise with their help. Let these “viruses” strike me so I would become infected with love. And then I will come to it.
[80379]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/12/12, “The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee)”
Related Material:
A Journey To The Foundations Of Creation
The Stenciled Education
From Grades To Values
Listen to an Audio Version of the Blog
Download: MP3 Audio
[audio:http://files.kabbalahmedia.info/audio/eng_o_rav_2012-06-15_declamation_blog-rav_full.mp3 title=’15.6.12′]
Baal HaSulam lists five questions in the beginning of the “Introduction to The Book of Zohar“:
1. What is our essence?
2. What is our role in the long chain of reality, where we are small links?
3. We feel low and defective, but should not the Creator, who created us, only emit perfect actions?
4. How could the Creator doom His creatures to such suffering?
5. How could something Eternal, which neither has a beginning nor an end, produce perishable, temporal, and inferior creatures?
Many have thought about it over the course of many centuries since mankind has come to know itself. And our generation has the same questions before it. We have not managed to reach understanding, while this is regarding fundamental questions that refer to the very essence of our existence: What are we living for? What is the purpose of life? What is its reason? What kind of process is contained in it? Do we have freedom of will? What is the purpose before us? Is nature blind or does it follow a certain program? Can it be changed?
Moreover, there are questions that have to do with scriptures: If the Creator is kind, then where is His kindness? Is it in a certain other world? But who has seen it?
Briefly speaking, these questions comprise the entire reality, except for the animate degree where we must provide for our daily needs.
Comment: Not many people ask themselves these questions.
Answer: This is a separate problem; people do not know how to think about things that matter. However, these things definitely bother them on the subconscious level. And especially today.
And in general, has there really been a single person in history, who did not ask himself?
– Why do I suffer?
But at the same time, what is so surprising here?
– You suffer because you feel bad.
– But why do I feel bad?
– And why should you feel good? You assume that good is a normal state, and anything worse is not normal? Where do you get this? Maybe you believe in the Creator? But how can you know that He exists and that He is kind? So why do you feel surprised when you feel bad? Maybe bad is a normal state of the world.
Thus, any question a person asks, when he rises above his concerns over his daily life, necessarily contains all these basic, essential complications, even if they are disguised. Let us slightly uncover them.
1. Naturally, a person does not ask: “What is our essence?” He phrases it in another way: “Who am I? Why and what for?” Children think about these things and then they forget. However, questions remain: What is our role? Where is the historic process of development taking us? Does it have a purpose? Is evolution accidental or does it follow a certain plan?
2. We discover that all parts of nature are tightly interconnected; moreover, their interconnection is not spontaneous, it is reasonable, and this reason is above our reasoning. But in the end, we are consequences of nature, and we barely comprehend even a tiny fragment of its common picture.
And this is why a person asks questions: If we are observing a consecutive process, which follows nature’s deep wisdom, and which naturally leads to a certain goal, then who am I and what am I? Where am I going? Where should I be going? Where does my life come from? Does it come from another planet? And if so, how did it get there? Some people worry that the sun will be extinguished in billions of years or that a certain celestial body might collide with planet Earth. “Even if it does not happen to me, what will happen to mankind?” Don’t laugh about these concerns.
3. We are incredibly limited, and we still want to know everything. But on the other hand, when we look at ourselves, we see our own deficiency. And this is correct, if we draw a comparison to the greatness of Nature, its power, beauty, and perfection, the beautiful landscapes that have not yet been ruined by man with a starry sky above us. Look deep into the magnificence of Nature, delve into the structure of DNA or an atom and you will be amazed by what you see. We are small, very pretentious fools. Everything that matters to us is nothing but a tiny crumb scraped off the great canvas.
Anywhere we look, we see immense wisdom and inseparable interconnection. It is astonishing that all parts of nature maintain one another, while we only lead to their extinction, failing to understand that this leads to our own destruction. Because no matter how proud we are, in reality nature feeds us and provides for us. Nothing appears out of thin air. Food, water, clothes, all this we receive from it, and we respond to kindness with destruction. This only testifies to our foolishness.
And thus it follows that everything in nature is perfect and only we are defective. But how can it be that only we are defective out of all the elements of nature? We do not only destroy the world, we are destroying our near future, and we refuse to think about it. Even when a person knows that he is to die tomorrow, he still will not stop, he will not resist, and will still travel the rest of the way to the unavoidable scaffold.
Nature undividedly governs over the still, vegetative, and animate levels, but its power is not absolute over us, it has given us freedom of will. So why do we use this freedom to ruin ourselves even more? Instead of using our independence for the good, becoming Human with a capital letter, wonderful and beneficent to themselves and others, I destroy everything I can. Why do I need this freedom?
4. Why do we suffer, when the perfect Nature has prepared a wonderful goal for us?
5. And finally, how could the perfect Creator produce perishable, temporal, and inferior creatures, born in pain, living in suffering, and dying in agony? A person’s entire life is passed in pursuit of pleasure, which he never manages to grasp. Because the second he fails to grasp something, he immediately concerns himself with his next pleasure. We are never fully satisfied, and even if little things are enough for us, it does not last forever. Every pleasure is followed by emptiness, and we constantly pursue a mirage.
Thus, the questions Baal HaSulam has listed, concern everyone to a certain degree, and we will have to find the answers to these questions.
[80528]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/14/12, Introduction to the Book of Zohar
Related Material:
Two Paths To Attaining The Level Of “Adam”
Minimum Suffering, Maximum Pleasure
Spiritual Search
Baal HaSulam, Introduction to the Book of Zohar, Item 4: To understand these questions and inquiries, the only tactic is to examine the end of the act, that is, the purpose of Creation. For nothing can be understood in the middle of the process, but only at its end.
For now, our questions remain questions. In the beginning of the work we don’t yet understand it and don’t see where it comes from. One must first comprehend creation in its entirety, and most importantly, see the end. That is when we’ll understand the beginning stage.
Indeed, we don’t determine the work; rather, we actualize it and are its consequences. Therefore, we shall know the beginning only from its end.
In contrast to us, the Creator doesn’t need a process that leads from a starting point to an end point. For Him, the beginning of the path, the path itself, and the end comprise an indivisible reality. Whereas we must go through all the stages of our development, and only after we have completed our work will we understand the path we’ve traveled and the purpose behind it.
This is why Baal HaSulam wrote that we must study the entire process to the end. Indeed, while on the path the coveted fruit always seems unripe, spoiled, corrupted, just as with any other thing that has not yet reached its final state.
We will not receive true answers to our questions until we reach the goal, the end of correction. Every question we have is a void, a vessel, into which we must receive fulfillment, which is really the answer. Therefore, questions about the meaning and purpose of our existence become filled with answers only after we have achieved the final goal.
[80526]
From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/14/12, The Zohar
Related Material:
Details About The Creator’s Portrait
Thoughts About Bestowal
Only A Miracle Will Melt The Stony Heart
In the article “Matan Torah (The Giving of the Torah),” Baal HaSulam tells us under what conditions the Torah was given to people. First, it must be a group of people who want to be as one man in one heart. The sufferings they have been through leave them no choice and they see that they must escape, but they must escape consciously. It isn’t a blind escape from pain, because the sufferings come from a special force, from the Creator, according to His plan, and within it there is a specific goal.
The Creator brought about the sufferings on purpose. It says “I have created the evil inclination,” which means I have created Pharaoh who brings the children of Israel closer to the Creator. The evil inclination is called “help against,” since it evokes and pushes a person to know the force that manages him. A person asks himself: “Where does all this evil come from? Why am I suffering?” Eventually the searching brings him to the main question: “What is the meaning of my life?” And further: “What is the meaning of life?” Then a person reaches the wisdom of Kabbalah.
So he comes to receive the Torah and begins to understand that there is a need to change something. Instead of changing the world by trying to “bend” it by himself, a person understands that the world is a replica of his internal attributes. Change yourself and the world will change.
This is what we say to everyone: We should correct the person and not the world. Of course, we don’t talk about the perception of reality, about the fact that the external picture is determined by our internality. This cannot be explained at the moment, although there is already some scientific evidence for that. On the whole, a person already understands that today he has to correct himself. Then he is ready to receive the Torah as a spice “to spice” the evil inclination by this method so that it will taste good.
Eventually we have to put the form of bestowal on the original desire to receive. If a person is ready for that, he receives the Torah, meaning the method of correction, and begins to work. Then he understands the essence of the condition that he was given: what mutual guarantee means, what general unity is, and what the final goal of “Love thy friend as thyself” symbolizes. On the way to reaching this goal, a person discovers his mission, which is defined as “a kingdom of priests” and a “holy nation.” In other words, he has to fulfill what it says not only regarding himself, but also being responsible for the whole world. By judging oneself and the whole world to a scale of merit, a person applies his potential correctly for the good of others by doing what he has to do, which means to disseminate the method of correction all over the world.
Then he corrects himself, since he has no need for anything but that. It is enough to live by working for the general correction, which is called “a kingdom of priests.” Priests have no corporeal estate, “God is their estate,” which means the pure level of Bina. A person should also see himself on this sublime level where the good of others is his only concern above all the other concerns, and the only goal above all the other goals. Although different unwanted desires come up and although the interruptions are global, it is all so that above them he can be responsible for the whole world. Otherwise he will have nothing to work on.
By fulfilling the mission of a “kingdom of priests” and “a holy nation,” a person fulfills the idea of mutual guarantee. The point isn’t that we will be responsible for each other and hold on to each other on the way to correction. No, we are advancing towards mutual guarantee with the whole world, we are responsible for everyone, and unless we correct them, our work cannot be complete.
[80475]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/13/12, “The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee)”
Related Material:
From The Giving Of The Torah To The Giver Of The Torah
We Demand Arvut (Mutual Guarantee)!
Why Abraham?
The Book of Zohar, Weekly Torah Portion “Korah” Selected Excerpts
| [media 1] | [media 2] |
Daily Audio Version-MP3
Get the Weekly eNewsletter
Follow on Twitter
