We are now revealing the broken world. In other words, in our world we have descended nearly to the very bottom of the application of our egoism. If even one deeper layer were revealed, we would not get out of it. After all, there are truly horrific conditions awaiting us in which we lose the human form.

It is said in the Prophets that this is possible if we follow the path of time, and everything occurs in its time. In general, the Tanakh (the Torah, Prophets, and Writings) describe the path which awaits us if we do not “cooperate,” if we do not adhere to its guidelines. In particular, the Prophets write about terrible, unspeakable disasters.

Baal HaSulam also indicates that in the worst case, we would become a global village filled with weapons of mass destruction.

What is the essence of the fall that we are experiencing today? In fact, it brings us closer to this darkness which needs the greatest Light for correction.

But how can light and dark be combined?

For this we need the group, the teacher, and the sources in the center of course. However, there is still something missing.

Here, the Sulam (Ladder) commentary to The Book of Zohar comes to our rescue. It provides the group, everyone who wants this, with the connection to the Light. It describes our inner state along with the external one, which is described in The Zohar. As a result, we can connect the two worlds with each other: the internal parts of perception with the external images. This allows us to cling closer to the text, not forgetting that it ties us with spirituality, and explains what is inside of us. Gradually, this understanding is manifested inside a person.

That means that we cannot do without either The Book of Zohar or the Sulam commentary because together they connect us with the greatest Light which corrects the entire human egoism.

In reality, The Zohar is capable of much more. In our world, in the depth our egoism, we do not show the spiritual desire, just the “animal” desire. By ascending the spiritual degrees, we reveal increasingly deeper desires each time. This world is in the middle point of all the worlds, and in order to rise, we must first descend. So, The Zohar is intended for those high degrees that are preceded by descents. And this world is just a grain of sand in comparison with them.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/23/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Baal HaSulam, “A Speech for the Completion of The Zohar”: And since the degree of the authors of The Zohar is at the full level of the 125 degrees, they cannot be attained prior to the days of the Messiah. It follows that there will be no common attainment with the authors of The Zohar in the generations preceding the days of the Messiah. Hence, The Zohar could not be revealed in the generations before the generation of the Messiah.

That explains why Kabbalists hid The Book of Zohar. After all, there was no need in it for all the generations before ours. To give them this book would be like giving school children or even students the materials at the level of Nobel laureates. This would only confuse people. For example, if we tried to teach children the theory of relativity or other complex concepts, they would not be able to digest it and perhaps it could even damage their minds.

A person gradually acquires the essential means to approach difficult materials. It’s not easy. Some frontiers of science are available only to a few people in the world to understand, and not all of them are also able to work with the material, meaning to develop it further. Not everyone’s mind can withstand it.

Therefore, people should not be given an unripe fruit, or rather the fruit for which they are not yet ripe. Everything needs to be learned gradually. It’s said: “Don’t put a stumbling block before a blind person” because he will fall. Give him a chance to develop in stages.

The authors of The Zohar knew what they were doing. They were on the spiritual level inherited from the Temple, on the degree of love for the other as for oneself, and due to love, they attained the Creator concealed in it. They describe their attainment in The Book of Zohar, explain how they are organized between themselves, and they reveal the Creator in accordance with it.

However, others still could not work in this way because then they were entering a period of two thousand years of exile. That is why the Kabbalists hid The Zohar until the present day. But nowadays, this book is revealed to everyone.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/23/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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In the News (from Business Spectator): “A Pew Research Center opinion survey, conducted in 39 countries this spring, asked: ‘Will children in your country be better off than their parents?’ Only 33 per cent of Americans believed their children would live better, while 62 per cent said they would live worse. Europeans were even gloomier. Just 28 per cent of Germans, 17 per cent of Brits, 14 per cent of Italians and 9 per cent of French thought their children would be better off than previous generations. This Western pessimism contrasts strongly with optimism in the developing world: 82 per cent of Chinese, 59 per cent of Indians and 65 per cent of Nigerians believe in a more prosperous future.”

My Comment: Do we really need to wait until the deadlock is right before our eyes and there will be no escape from the deadly clash with it? Human egoism does not allow him to really see the future.

It is said that the angel of death offers a person a knife with a drop of poison on its tip, and a person inevitably opens his mouth and swallows the poison because he cannot refuse the egoistic pleasure contained in it. There is no other way to escape death but to obey the wisdom of those who foresee the future.
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In general, a person eats himself up over his past and present, not realizing that everything was already predetermined from the start and everything had to happen. The two principles: “If I am not for myself, who will be for me?” and “There is none else besides Him” must be integrated and not just alternate one after the other like a day of work and night of resting.

Every time you need to integrate these two principles before each effort and also after it. After the fleeting moment it’s absorbed in the world of Infinity and it’s forbidden to take anything into account concerning it. All the accounting is now only with the Creator.

Baal HaSulam writes in the article, “Thou Hast Hemmed Me In Behind and Before,” that if a minister doesn’t do the right actions with a letter, then the Creator brings it down and puts another letter in its place. We still don’t understand exactly how this works, but we need to understand unambiguously that we shouldn’t be sorry about the past and the present! We only need to be in fear of the future: Will I be able to prepare myself for the discovery of the next Reshimo in order to satisfy the Creator?

The past and the present are completely under the control of “There is none else besides Him” and so I have nothing to clarify except my relationship to what was done. This is the one thing that we need to do. We don’t change the reality itself, the reality is changed regarding my relationship to it. Everything depends on my angle of viewing a particular object; however, the object itself is unchanged. Only my comprehension is changed. Is my comprehension egoistic or altruistic? And from this each and every thing in reality is changed.

I change my senses. Those ten Sefirot are revealed but everything depends on this: Is my desire equipped and shielded with a “screen” against the egoistic pleasure? This completely changes the entire picture.

If I think that what happened in some way depended on me and that I myself chose how to behave, it follows that there is one other authority besides the Creator: my own self. So does it follow that I myself determined how everything is supposed to happen?

If I sit and eat myself up over what I could have done yesterday and didn’t do, or I am sorry that I didn’t come today to the lesson, then it follows that I determined my actions myself and decided not to come. This is to say, that besides the Creator there is another force that is acting in reality: my own self. About this the Creator says: “I and he cannot dwell in the same abode.” If I want to dwell together with the Creator in one dwelling, I must absolutely nullify myself. Then I will be together with Him.

Therefore, about the entire past that happened up until a moment ago, I must say that everything came from the Creator and so it had to be. For that is how the Creator thought and arranged everything from the start, and I must be thankful for this, as for a very great prize, about all the failures and the things that I did that were not okay. For this, the Creator now obligates me to sit and be sorry about everything that was done, so that I will say that everything was done according to the desire of the Creator with the goal of teaching me to behave otherwise in the future.
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From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/18/13

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Question: I don’t understand how we can change the intention of corporeal desire. How can I eat for someone else? Should I change it in the first place? I often hear that we shouldn’t touch our corporeal desires…

Answer: You shouldn’t change your desires in any way, but you should change your intentions.

Why not? Because I dedicate my life to attaining the upper state and being immersed in our world is only in order to change our intentions.

The Reshimot (reminiscences) descend into our world so that we can operate in it. At the same time our intention is a minus while an action can only be a combination of a minus and a plus.

You are saying: “I love to eat, I love a girl, I love to sit with friends in a bar or to watch a football game, etc.” That’s true, you love all that. These are your desires, so why can’t you use them with the right intention in order to rise to the goal, to return to this world but not from the same level you fell into the Reshimot, but in order to rise until the world of Ein Sof (Infinity) on the spiritual ladder.

Why do you think you can’t do that? By ascending from one level of Reshimo to another level, you are already completing a good reincarnation and not living your life in vain. You may reach the end of correction in this life, and it is possible in our times.

But even if you go through another round, next time you will already be in a different state, on another level. In our time we are actually in such states that we can reach the end of correction. This is the goal!

So we shouldn’t think that “a thousand enter a room and only one comes to the Light.” This isn’t true anymore; you shouldn’t worry that you have certain negative urges, as it may seem to you. If you engage in correcting the intentions, at the same time you shouldn’t worry about a thing. Just keep on asking yourself whether you do whatever you do for yourself or for the one you perform the action with, is it in mutual cooperation with the friends, a woman, etc. If it is mutual, then it is good.
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From the Moscow Virtual Convention “Unity Without Boundaries” Day One 12/13/13, Lesson 1

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Baal HaSulam, “A Speech for the Completion of the Zohar”: Throughout the generations, those who ascended and were rewarded with Dvekut were few, as our sages wrote about the verse, “I have found one person in a thousand; a thousand enter the room and one comes to the Light,” meaning to Dvekut and attainment.

Thus, in our days, in the generation of the Messiah, every thousand people who enter can come out to the Light, to attainment. Of course, this takes great effort since otherwise we will not have spiritual vessels. However, from above there are no limitations anymore and everyone can receive the support of many people along the way who yearn for the same thing.

Besides, the world is deteriorating and is heading toward an abyss and annihilation, which also provides reasons that justify the spiritual process in our eyes. Even the ego itself agrees to and supports it, hoping to make a great profit.

So the door to the spiritual dimension is really open for everyone in the generation of the Messiah. It is because the Reshimot (reminiscences) that are revealed in us are so corrupt that we are totally opposite from the spiritual world and are at the most distant point from it. So there are no more limitations here, everyone who sets off along this path is promised from above that “if you make an effort, you will receive.”

Before even great efforts were not a guarantee for success. A person could have made great efforts and still not attained anything, but someone else could have entered thanks to his help. However, his contribution was preserved. Thus the system has not reached the final stages of correction.

On the other hand, the time of the final state has come. We are correcting such a deep layer of the system that the previous accounts are nullified. Everyone who makes an effort will receive the reward in his hands, in the spiritual vessel.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/22/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Preparation to the Lesson

Writings of Rabash, “Shlavei HaSulam,” “Purpose of Society – 1“

The Book of Zohar — Selected Excerpts, “VaYikahel” (And Moses Assembled)

Writings of Baal HaSulam “Introduction to The Book of Zohar“

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The commandment that “you shall not have other gods in the work” means that it is forbidden to think that there are other forces that operate on you. There is only one force that man is standing against, the Creator. The difference between a person, which is a special level of the desire to receive, and all the other previous levels of development is that a person calculates things and can see himself from the side: Who am I, what am I, why did I act in a certain way and why do others act in another way, who is influencing me, how am I operated? A person has a point of observation from which he can appreciate things as if from the outside.

It is as if he is divided into two parts and can look at himself either from inside his ego, when he operates in agreement with his nature, or from the side. Then he sees that all his work is to attribute everything to one force. This force operates on him internally and externally and determines everything that he does and thinks at the moment. There is only one point of clarification, and if he sees things through it, he can assess himself correctly if he understands that both the internal and the external reality: he, his perspective, and feelings are all arranged by the Creator.

This point of clarification is centered on one thing only, on whether he really attributes everything to one cause. At this point there is nothing but this discernment, this condition, attributing everything to one force that created the desire that manages it and fills it. This means that what the desire to receive feels and understands also come from the same force. The point that examines everything and focuses a person on attributing everything to the upper providence is also managed by that one force.

All of what is happening to a person and his feelings that he cannot attribute to one cause is called “other gods.”
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/19/13, Shamati #15 “What Is Other Gods in the Work”

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Science is the revelation of the Creator, the sole force that acts on us. There is nothing else to discover. A scientific approach is to measure revealed phenomenon and describe it in formulas.

That is to find out the cause and effect, to describe patterns in the parameters of time, motion, space: either spiritual or material, to determine the correlation of forces, actions and results. We reveal how everything is connected with each other.

In addition, we have to figure out the elements themselves, between which this connection exists: what the actual force is, what the material on which it acts is, the object of influence, and what happens as a result of this interaction with the force and the material: what is the reaction and its result. In essence, this is a scientific study; it doesn’t matter at what level it occurs, the usual Newtonian or quantum physics, or the microcosm of the macrocosm.

But the science of Kabbalah brings everything under one base and speaks about the two forces acting on each other: the desire to receive and the desire to bestow. It explains that with the correct perception of reality, everything that happens inside and around us in fact is our inner feelings inside a single material. Only this material is divided relative to my feelings into external and internal parts.

The science that studies our internality we call psychology. Those sciences that study the material that we feel supposedly outside of us, as if it does not belong to us, is not called psychology, but physics, chemistry, and biology, depending on the level of material and its proximity to us.

Kabbalah is called an inner science and conventional sciences are called external because we do not feel that they belong to what lies within us. All their actions, instruments, seemingly belong to what we consider as the external world. But the problem is only in us.

We study the desires of this world, which we do not perceive as our own, on the still level and call this physics. The studies of the desires of the vegetative world, we call botany and biology, of the animate world, zoology, etc. In fact, we divide our perception into several levels: still, vegetative, and animate, and considering them external, we develop sciences with respect to them. Thus, we can study only the material of this world only on this primitive, lower level, provided that we feel it as external.

But if I start to correct my perception, I will see that the entire reality is inside me, and only one force acts in it. I feel that all this reality in which “There is none else besides Him,” I comprehend in one single desire. Then all the sciences are absorbed by the science of Kabbalah. Why should I study physics, biology, zoology, botany, etc., including psychology, education, culture? All these are partial knowledge, fragments of knowledge, developed by humanity. They create a very limited and shaky picture, unstable, and often changing.

There is no firm basis under all this. As we are approaching the unity of our perception, all the sciences are going through crisis and are absorbed into the science of Kabbalah, which provides a universal, single foundation for all the phenomena, occurring in the material of the desire to enjoy under the influence of the Light.

Today, humanity has thousands of different formulas in different sciences. But all this ultimately boils down to a desire, pleasure, and the restricting screen between them; the confrontation of two forces reconciled through the middle line. That’s all!
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/19/13, Shamati #15 “What Is Other Gods in the Work”

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