Question: We only need to reach an equivalence of form with the Creator. So why do we need all the books and all the talk about self-annulment and about unity? We must simply demand the equivalence of form and that’s it.

Answer: Go ahead, demand it. But how? Kabbalists wrote books only so that we can advance. On the whole we study two types of books:

– There are books that bring us the Light that Reforms—which are mainly the writings of Baal HaSulam.

– The other books, the books of Rabash, teach us how to approach the writings of Baal HaSulam: in unity, with the group, with the right intention.

Without this guidance you would not attain anything. You need someone to guide you.

Question: Still, why didn’t Baal HaSulam write a book about how to reach equivalence of form with the Creator?

Answer: It is forbidden. I have to look for equivalence of form by myself; I have to feel my way around and find it. Then I will understand what it is and that it’s exactly what I need and exactly what I aspire to.

And I would also understand how to ask for the power to do it. The desires can’t come from the outside; I have to arrange them internally. In our world everything is the opposite: I open a physics, mathematics, or mechanics textbook and study it. I have the necessary basis for that. In the spiritual preparation there is no such basis, no such tools or desires. Even if Kabbalists wrote a book like that, I wouldn’t understand what they want from me. What does it mean to raise the NHY to HGT?

This means that first I need to extract new levels of perception from the books, new powers, and new inner responses, to develop my mind, and to expand my feelings. First I have to develop internally, and in order to do that, the book has to perform certain actions on me, to “sculpt” something of me, to knead my matter and to stretch it by direct and by opposite bestowal. It’s only then that I acquire enough gentleness and sensitivity so that in a second reading I will already understand what it’s about.

After several years a person doesn’t read “Shamati“ as he did in the beginning. But how can this be explained to a beginner? This means that it’s impossible to manage without guidance and training…
[99511]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/3/13, “A Speech for the Completion of The Zohar”

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Baal HaSulam, “A Speech for the Completion of The Zohar“:If one’s intention in the Torah and Mitzvot is not to benefit the Creator but oneself, not only will the nature of the will to receive in him not be inverted, but rather, the will to receive in him will be much more than what he was given by the nature of his creation.

Question: Is Baal HaSulam speaking about us here?

Answer: Yes and no. First the desire to receive must be revealed to its fullest. This is because a person can only correct the flaws that are in him. But until one acquires a Masach (screen), the desire grows in different manners: either by pleasure or by pain. In the second case, it grows wanting to avoid pain, and this pressure directs its growth in a certain direction, in the direction that is “anti-sufferings.” As for the pleasure, it grows by “swallowing” them and always remains in a double deficiency.

Then, during the time of preparation, when we yearn for connection and love, the desire grows in an opposite direction in order to constantly supply material for correction. On the whole, the growing of the desire doesn’t stop or retreat, it always moves forward.

Question: What is the difference between desire that grows opposite to the goal and desire that grows in a goal oriented manner?

Answer: Suppose that there is a nice place where everyone is given presents. There is a railroad that reaches this place and I can get there by train.

I may be moving backward while I believe that it is good (!) until I hit something and discover that I have chosen the wrong way. By discovering a minus (-), I am left with a question (?): So what should I do now? Then I gradually begin to move forward. This is the long path of suffering. After all, I make a detour before discovering that I have been going in the wrong direction. Yet in the process, my desire to receive grows.

I may be drawn forward meter by meter through the 125 degrees; again my desire to receive grows making the road increasingly harder. Let’s say that it isn’t a flat rail track anymore but an ascent up a mountain that becomes increasingly steeper. There, at the top of the mountain, is the King’s palace, and the road to it may be difficult, but it moves straight to it without any detours.

Question: So with what parameters do I check myself? How do I know that I am heading up the mountain and not in the opposite direction?

Answer: The parameters are the group, and, within it, self-annulment and connection. Practically speaking, there are no other means by which you can surely check and measure your steps.
[99504]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/3/13, “A Speech for the Completion of The Zohar”

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Question: Baal HaSulam says in the article “A Speech for the Completion of The Zohar” that the soul is dressed in the body in this world. What does that mean?

Answer: A “body in this world” means the desire to receive for one’s self. It fills all the space here (see drawing), and there is also a point in the heart (•), the posterior of Nefesh of Kedusha. It is shattered, which means that it also wants to receive for itself, but it can be turned into the opposite state.

Question: Where is the desire with the point in the heart?

Answer: First you feel that the desire exists and begin to notice the fact that the desire has no corporeal place. This desire is the essence of the spiritual creation.

Today you see before you the still, vegetative, and animate levels of nature, as well as people. All this is the imaginary world. Don’t look at it, put it aside, it isn’t the main thing.

Besides that, there is a desire to receive in which there is a spark. We have to take care of these sparks. Give the imaginary world the basic necessities and you are not obligated to do anything more than that since it’s all an illusion. You should provide everything for your main part.

This means that you have to isolate the point in the heart from everything that is in the desire to receive. We should differentiate it from within the desire and bring it out as much as we can, separate it from the desire to receive, and develop it. The desire itself should be restricted and annulled. Then there will be a connection that will help it and then several other steps…

[99500]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/3/13, “A Speech for the Completion of The Zohar”

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In the News (from Inside Science): “When ants are confronted with information overload and face too many decisions – about where to live, for instance – they revert to the wisdom of the crowd.

“The colonies themselves are not very big, usually a few hundred workers, associate professor of biology Stephen C. Pratt said, and if an animal knocks a colony over, the roof falls in, or if they need more space, the ants have to move.

“But the ants live in areas in which the potential number of possible nest sites is overwhelming. One ant can’t cope with making the decision. No one is in charge in an ant nest.

“They distribute the task among colony members. That’s where the crowdsourcing comes in.

“According to Pratt and Sasaki, the ants send scouts to check out some potential home sites. The scouts look at such things as the size of the entrance and how big the cavity is. If the ant likes what she sees, she returns to the colony.

“She sends out a pheromone message, ‘Follow me,’ and another ant will join her in what is called tandem running. She takes her colleague out to view the potential site.

“If the second ant likes what she sees, she goes back and repeats the process, bringing back another ant. If she doesn’t like it, she merely returns to the colony. If enough ants like a site, the colony reaches a quorum, essentially choosing the new home.

“The scouts pick up their nest mates and carry them to their new homes, usually taking the nest queen along with them.

“Sasaki built an experiment in which one ant had to make the decision from two potential sites and then from eight. Half the potential sites were unsuitable in both experiments. He was forcing the ants in the laboratory to do what ants in the wild would not, send one ant to make the decision for the colony, Pratt said.

Individual ants, confronted with two choices, had no problems picking the most suitable site. When faced with choosing among eight, however, an ant often selected the wrong place.

“The two researchers tested a whole colony with the same choices, letting them send out more than one scout. The colonies, acting as a crowd, did equally well in both experiments, picking suitable sites 90 percent of the time. …

“Part of the advantage of the colony system, Sasaki and Pratt hypothesized, is that each scout visited only a few potential sites, minimizing the information it must process, while an individual ant, assigned to do it alone, had to visit them all and was the victim of cognitive overload. …

“‘Cognitive overload is a growing issue for human decision making, as unprecedented access to data poses new challenges to individual processing abilities,’ Pratt and Sasaki wrote in their journal article. ‘Human groups also solve difficult problems better when each group member has only limited access to information.’”

My Comment: The individual mind of “flocking” birds and “herding” animals exists in a minimum capacity and strength, and collective intelligence is used for all occasions, the power of the collective. Thus, nature holds together “in itself” the still, vegetative, and animate.

The human being must consciously, by the perceived need and against his individualistic nature, make a collective and unified whole out of himself and other egoists, and then he will rise to the degree of “Adam” (human), will feel and understand oneness and integrality of the system of nature, and will be able to intelligently and actively exist at the level of Adam. He will not need the animal body because it is only necessary to rise from the level of the animate (completely controlled nature) to the level of Adam (who controls nature himself, instead of the Creator).
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We receive the force of bestowal from Above not knowing what it is since it belongs to the existence in another dimension. By ascents and descents we reach a state in which we begin to understand that we should ask to exist in another force, in the force of bestowal. I don’t want to depend on my mood, on whether I feel that something is pleasant or not, but rather I want to be above all that.

First the egoistic desire motivates me, but gradually, by the Light that Reforms, as a result of an increasingly greater influence of the upper force that changes me, I begin to want to rise because of what I feel. Each time when I feel the sweetness of my getting closer to the Creator, as a result of my work in order to bestow, of connection, in all manifestations of spiritual states, I “catch” myself and ask to be allowed to be in this state not because it’s sweet, pleasant, and comfortable, or warms me with the Creator’s greatness, the importance of the goal, the importance of my unique upper mission.

I would rather feel my lowliness, although the feeling of lowliness can also be felt in different ways and sometimes stems from great pride. But I feel such lowliness that enables me not to be bribed by pleasure, by fillings in the mind and heart; I would rather be driven by another force, which I don’t understand and only know that it’s the force of faith. It enables me to be independent of my own reason, which is called being above reason.

If I really demand to be above the fulfillment in my heart and mind, the result is something that transcends the limits of this world, some empty space. Then I pray and ask for faith, which means the force of bestowal that the Light should bring me in order to free me from the connection to myself, from the dependency on any most entrancing taste, from all of Malchut of Ein Sof (Infinity) that is full of pleasures.

I want to be above all that, in the force of bestowal, in order not to see and not to ask to see the Creator’s greatness, in order to not be dependent on any pleasures, fillings, and knowledge. I am above that and do not rely on anything. And the sign for this state is joy.
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From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/4/13

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Opinion (Ian Bremmer, President of the Eurasia Group): “You know, we’re in my view, what we call a G0 world, not a G7 or G20, but a G0 – a place that has an absence of global leadership and puts nobody as number one I think really does reflect the fact that there is a vacuum of power.

“Before the financial crisis, the US was really leading all of the world institutions, you certainly saw that in trade, you think about the IMF, you think about the World Bank, the UN. I mean these are all institutions created by the US with their allies, their priorities, their capital. The US is no longer leading global institutions, but this doesn’t mean there’s no leading going on. It’s just that leading hasn’t been done globally. And you will see in 2013 the US working hard to push through, for example a very big trade deal the TransPacific Partnership. If it happens, it will involve forty percent of the world’s GDP, that’s not 100 or 80 percent – that’s 40. But it’s effectively the coalition of the willing on the economic side.”

My Comment: The development of society has led us to leveling everything and everyone. True, this is a long process, but it is already underway. It could not be otherwise because the world is moving toward full integration, unification, and unity, against its will through suffering, or consciously and willingly. Moreover, these two paths, although they lead to the same goal, are different for us: the long path through war, destruction, and starvation, or the fast path, easy, happy, peaceful. Choosing the path means accepting or not accepting integral education for everyone as a means to achieve the same goal through the good path.
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Question: How many classes will it take to shape the integral vision within a person?

Answer: I am sure that a sensation of the new attitude toward the world is formed within a person during the very first class. It can be a one and a half or two hour training directed towards connection and interaction with others.

Usually during the first class a person begins to feel that he already looks differently at people, at the world, and at himself. Suddenly he senses that there is not only “I individually,” but there is something else besides that. He becomes very attracted by this “besides me individually.” Suddenly he senses warmth. Through his interaction with others he feels confidence and relaxation as if he is in his mother’s womb.

Comment: But there is a lot of this type of training…

Answer: This is not psychology. It is impossible to confuse it with anything else because here a person obtains a totally different means of connection—outside oneself. He begins to feel the world outside himself, beyond his properties. It doesn’t matter what properties I was born with and what upbringing I received. Now I begin to rise above my original properties and above the properties I have acquired to date, and I begin to sense others, what they really are.

The integral environment inevitably gives a person additional senses. He begins to sense the world in a much broader way.
[98910]
From KabTV’s “Integral World,” 11/27/12

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Preparation to the Lesson

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Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Igrot,” Letter 17

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The Book of Zohar – Selected Excerpt, Parashat “Shlah Leha,” Item 238, Lesson 21

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Talmud Eser Sefirot, Vol 3, Part 9, Question 150, Lesson 31

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“A Speech for the Completion of The Zohar”

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Baal HaSulam, “A Speech for the Completion of The Zohar“: At that time you will achieve equivalence of form with the Creator—as all His actions are to bestow and to benefit others, so you, all your actions will be only to bestow and to benefit others. This is the complete Dvekut.

Question: What is equivalence of form? How can I be equal in form if I am a desire to receive?

Answer: Suppose you want to resemble me. I play with you, I present myself to you in some form, and then you try to be like me: You do what I do, think like me and talk like me. The next day I present to you an upgraded form and you have to adapt yourself to me even more, both in your speech and in your actions and thoughts. I give you examples and you have to follow them; this is called an equivalence of form.

Here you may ask: “But how can I resemble the Creator if I don’t see Him?” It says: ‘Return to the Lord, your God.’ How can I return to Him, how can I become increasingly more like Him? At least, give me some example…”

Ask. Ask the Creator to give you an example, to show you who He is and what He is, so that you could be like Him. If you don’t ask, it means that you don’t want to be like Him. When all you really need is an example, you will receive it.

Question: I have a cat, I can teach it everything that I know, but will it eventually be like me?

Answer: A cat doesn’t have a point in the heart. You cannot teach it, you can only tame it. You can make something out of it, but you cannot make a human being out of it, since a human being,  Adam, means “Domeh – similar” to the Creator. A cat doesn’t have the starting point for that, it doesn’t have the initial spark; it doesn’t have a point in the heart.

If it weren’t for the point in the heart that entered the desire to receive during the shattering of the vessels, then we too would develop up to the level of the animate. But when we complete this phase, the point of the speaking level erupts in us. This is what is happening today to humanity: It has reached the end of its development on the “animate” level.

Everything began from scratch, from chaos. Then the level of the still nature appeared, then the level of the vegetative, and then the level of the animate. If there weren’t the point of the speaking in the animate level, the human being that belongs to the level of the speaking, then there would be nowhere to develop to, everything would end here.

This is the surprise and problem in our world: People don’t understand that they are facing a new level. They don’t understand because they don’t see it; it isn’t tangible, it is spiritual. All the previous levels were concrete, while the level of the speaking is not.

If I am on the level of still nature, I cannot identify levels that are higher than mine: the vegetative and the animate levels. There is a connection between them that is visible both to the lower and the upper, but I have no idea what the human level is, and to rise to it is a big mystery for me. What can I do, if I have no way to hold on to it, no examples, but only one great unknown?

This is the reason that the whole world doesn’t understand what is going on and cannot accept the message of the future ascent.

Initially, the desire created by the Creator was the part that serves as the point in the heart (•), Galgalta ve Eynaim (GE). This is called “Israel” which means “Yashar-El” (straight to the Creator). Abraham took the people who belong to this part out of ancient Babel, while the other Babylonians without a point in the heart remained.

Then by the shattering, the destruction, the points of Israel fell and were mixed with the matter of the desire. This is the exile of the people of Israel, the mutual incorporation of the attributes resulting in every person having a point in the heart today.

Still, it is very hard for people to see that there is another phase in their development before them, another level that is of a higher quality and is more essential and powerful than the “animate” level. Imagine that you could only see plants on the surface of the earth. How different would this picture be from the next level, with the animals, birds, fish, and people with their civilization.

Now, when we are facing a new level, no one understands it and no one can perceive the need to rise to it.

Question: If the point in the heart determines everything, can I be compared to Pinocchio today?

Answer: Without the point in the heart you would be a “log,” but in this log there is something else, and so when Geppetto begins to cut it with his axe, it cries out; this is “the point in the heart” that raises the voice of man. Everything else in us is indeed only a “log.”

The next level cannot be formed from nothing. So the people who feel a need to develop come to us, to Bnei Baruch, in order to advance by love, with an inclination upward. Others will have to develop by the path of suffering in order to reach this level.

If the point in the heart doesn’t stand out and doesn’t remind people that it exists, only sufferings will push them forward. The point draws people forward while the sufferings push them from behind. It is like a dipole and everything depends on what moves you—whether it is Torah or suffering.

[99418]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/3/13, “A Speech for the Completion of The Zohar”

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