“And the LORD spoke unto Moses, saying: ‘Thou shalt also make a laver of brass, and the base thereof of brass, whereat to wash; and thou shalt put it between the tent of meeting and the altar, and thou shalt put water therein. And Aaron and his sons shall wash their hands and their feet thereat; when they go into the tent of meeting, they shall wash with water, that they die not; or when they come near to the altar to minister, to cause an offering made by fire to smoke unto the LORD….’” (Exodus 30:17-20)

In spiritual work a person must purify himself in all of his desires.

This speaks about the spiritual structure of our desires. The desires, like our bodies, are composed of a head and a body.

The main thing is our hands and feet, what we take and towards what we are going. Therefore it is necessary to wash them, for they constitute an instrument for our advancement, of our mutual cooperation with each other.

And the body itself is only the Sefira of Tifferet, which is passive relative to the hands and feet. For where your feet carry you and what you take in your hands is the responsibility of the head. But previously the head must take stock, and only after this is it possible to wash the hands and the feet, meaning, to purify the desires from an egoistic intention.

“They shall wash with water, that they die not” symbolizes that after purification of the desires, the person is no longer detached from the Upper Light; he doesn’t receive for his own sake, because this is spiritual death.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 2/9/13

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Question: It is said in the Koran: “The Almighty does not need helpers.” Why then does Kabbalah teach us that we have to become the Creator’s partners and assistants?

Answer: Religions originate from the right, left, and middle lines. Islam derives from the right line relative to the Creator; Christianity comes from the left line; whereas Judaism originates from the middle line. That is why the Muslim calendar is based on the lunar movement, the Christian calendar is based on solar cycles, and the Judaic calendar is based on both of them and is built in accordance with the middle line.

It is true that Koran says: “the Lord does not need helpers.” This is because human participation is impossible in both the right and left lines. People start taking part only when the middle line is built out of the right and left lines. Thus, we ascend to becoming partners with the Creator by becoming similar to Him.

This is why Kabbalah speaks about partnership between a man and the Creator. This is not the usual practice in Judaism as it emerged after destruction of the Temple and the people of Israel fell from their spiritual level. Today, after two thousand years of exile, we begin correcting the devastation that happened after the collapse of the First and the Second Temples. We have to establish a middle line inside us, i.e., we should ascend above our ego.

Religions are built in a way that they don’t require people to get rid of their egos. On the contrary, religions use the ego to attract us, involve us, calm us down, and promise a tranquil life, health, success, and wellbeing. Religions are a structure associated with exile; they are totally suitable for exile. We don’t reject this phenomenon at all!

However, now we live in an era when people of all faiths start rising above their religions and strive to attain the Creator. On one hand, they don’t have any other choice because their lives are so unpredictable! Our internal desire advances and demands that we know and reveal the Lord. In each of us there is a spark: in the sons of Israel, the spark is a consequence of their prior spiritual step; in the nations of the world, it is a result of a mutual penetration with the children of Israel during the period of exile.

That’s why today so many people begin awakening. When one is ready to attain the Creator, one doesn’t need a religion, but has to study Kabbalah since Kabbalah is the wisdom of the revelation of the Creator to the creations in this material world. This is the difference between all religions (the right, left, and middle lines) and the authentic “religion” (Kabbalah) as Baal HaSulam defines it in his writings. In his article “The Essence of Religion and Its Purpose,” Baal HaSulam writes that there is only one authentic religion:  the wisdom of Kabbalah that brings us to attainment of the Creator by obtaining His properties.

All other religions were active during the exile. Their goal was to lead us to our time so that from now on we start the process of self-correction. During the exile, the purpose of religions was to educate people, support them in a civilized manner, and provide them with knowledge, morality, and ethics. Religions have fulfilled their roles. They acted inside humanity, thus letting us advance. Religions served human interests.

However, today their role expires; this phenomenon is obvious in all religions. Soon, we will witness huge transformations, increased resistance and big fights. The epoch of correction has been launched. Nothing can stop it. The world is degrading day after day, like a cart rolling downhill with tremendous speed. That’s why nowadays all religions will have to comply with and adjust to the wisdom of Kabbalah. Let’s hope that it will happen in a mild, civilized way and that religions will eventually accept their new roles and places.

Religions are important for our self-correction in so far as they begin to implement the principle of “loving our neighbors as ourselves.” All of them have this principle “on paper.” All they have to do is start practically implementing this doctrine; there is nothing more we can expect from them. As a result, they will revise themselves and then they will come to support the wisdom of Kabbalah, thus giving it a chance to correct everybody without exception.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/23/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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In Preparation for the Integral Convention

The Good Future of the World

The reality in which we are found is portrayed under the influence of the Light on the desire. We can change the relationship between the Light and desire, consciously or unconsciously, consistently, in stages, intelligently, with our own powers, through shared work, or as if by chance, as is written: “The Creator will accomplish that which concerneth me” (Psalm 138:8).

However, in every circumstance, the reality that we perceive, both the physical and the spiritual, is portrayed through the action of the Light on the desire. And when we reach the equivalence of the Light and the desire, complementing them, making peace between them, we bring peace to the whole world.

Therefore even people without a point in the heart who are not prepared to create a connection between the Light and the Kli and to equate their form by means of the Masach and Ohr Hozer, see the world differently. They don’t see it as the spiritual world because there are no spiritual components to their sensitivities. Yet since they also aspire to unity through various desires, whether speaking of a desire for money, security, education, honor, or control, they will be released from all the problems in their lives.

Of course, gradually other problems will be discovered in order to advance them further, but they will see that the world is coming closer to the good all the time. And this is already the good way, the path of Torah, and not the path of suffering. As a result of the unity from the unconscious influence of the Light upon them, they will see the changes for the better. They will discover the operating system of reality, meaning they will feel that thanks to good relations between them, the world is changing, changing their perception, their internal reaction to what is happening.

Will they be healthier? Yes. Will they discover other positive phenomena? Yes. Will there be fewer natural disasters? Yes. We will yet see how a person will activate the inner forces connected to the nature of the still, the vegetative, and the animate.

It’s up to us to understand that we have the strongest weapon that can be. All the forces of nature are for us, and even the Creator, in fact, wants to say to us: “Please use Me. Everything is in your hands.”

When we bring peace to the world, people will be involved only in a circular connection. Perhaps part of them will work about an hour per day; and with the rest of the time everyone will be involved with thoughts about how to resemble the Creator and will feel pleasure in doing so.

We still don’t understand how this could be, but that’s what will be. This will become the center of life. Besides the necessities, people will be involved only with connection to others, in bringing the connection between them to a greater depth, greater sensitivity, until the physical body and the material world are discovered as imaginary.

Another world will begin to unfold; connections beyond this world will be discovered, and we will see that all of these “spider webs” are interdependent. And as a result, people will begin to understand the wisdom, the thought of creation that is latent in all of its parts. This is called the glow of Divinity, the revelation of Divinity, meaning everything breathes, one thing depends upon another.
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Preparation for the Integral Convention, Nine Stages On The Path To Unity, Point 8

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Preparation to the Lesson

Workshop

The Book of Zohar — Selected Excerpts

Talmud Eser Sefirot, Vol. 1, Part 3, Chapter 7, Item 1

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

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The Torah, Exodus, “Tetzaveh,” 29:43-29:46: There I will arrange meetings with the children of Israel, and it will be sanctified by My glory. I will sanctify the Tent of Meeting and the altar, and I will sanctify Aaron and his sons to serve Me [as Kohanim]. I will dwell in the midst of the children of Israel and I will be their God. They will know that I, the Lord, am their God, Who brought them out of the land of Egypt in order that I may dwell in their midst; I am the Lord, their God. In the presence of the Upper force (the Creator), the Light dresses in a corrected Kli, vessel, then modified desires “saturate” the entire universe with the higher Light of spirituality.

Question: In general, everything that is written in the Torah can be understood as follows: “Act as written, and the Lord will appear in you as an imprint.” Is that right?

Answer: If you regard what’s written in the Torah literally, you’ll see extremely harsh and bloody pictures. It’s really hard to understand how everybody can consider these images sacred and worship them if all they describe is a very primitive life of “savages” who lived several thousand years ago.

Even today we see people killing each other and regarding murders as some sort of “sacrifice.” This is a huge dissonance with the greatness of bestowal and love! These images are simply not sublime or spiritual!

I am not astonished by the content of the Torah (after all, people who wrote it understood what it was about). Rather, I am amazed people today continue perceiving these pictures as “sanctity” or “special deeds” that the Creator commands us to follow.

How can something written in the Torah not encourage us to at least clarify the essence of the words of the Torah? It contradicts our intellect, life…everything! And yet, people live “happily” and consider it a Holy Scriptures.

How is it sacred? If we realize that it’s about bestowal, love, the connection among us, and correction of our egoism, then it is sanctity. If we perceive everything literally, let’s say, burning a bull, then what is sacred about it?!

It is in total dissonance with what is happening in materiality and spirituality, and thus has to raise multiple questions. And yet, we don’t ask these questions. It looks as if humanity is in a state of deep hypnosis.

Even today all world religions preserve certain ancient pagan rituals to which people attribute higher properties. Because of their ignorance and lack of understanding, they are like small children playing games laid before them, and their collective participation and collective ignorance support each other.

For those who wrote the Torah, these “scenarios” were just symbols, a specific language that described the process of human correction. People had a clear vision of what it described. That’s why we should always keep in mind that “loving our neighbors” is the general essence of the Torah. It’s the main thought that permeates it.

There are no other actions whatsoever! If we burn a bull or build a Temple nothing will change! All we can expect is appearance of new religions that will feud with each other and use “sacred” slogans to kill one another, thus acting directly opposite to the Torah that teaches us to “love our neighbors.”

I feel sorry for humanity when I read the Torah portions. People are unable to correctly understand and accept them. I hope that in the nearest future this situation will change and people will understand that only spiritual actions that lead to self-correction are the content of the Torah.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 8/28/13

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From the book, Light of the Sun, Hints of Rosh HaShana: It is necessary to adhere and be connected with each other and be closed within one another in the hearts of everyone, so that we will be one union, serving the Creator wholeheartedly.

There is no partial in spirituality, meaning three, seven or nine Sefirot. There must be ten Sefirot because we don’t feel less than ten, we feel only a complete measure. This is like a machine within which data gathers and then suddenly the meter jumps. Like a watch that counts seconds inside, and when a whole minute is gathered, the pointer suddenly jumps to the following division.

That is exactly how our work happens too. This is because until we reach Malchut, we can work and pass through various states unconsciously. A person can go around and begin to do a multitude of things, but he must wait until he “gets it.” This is to say, he must pass through a particular number of actions, until it becomes difficult for him and he doesn’t know what to do with himself, and after this, he suddenly “gets it” and understands what he is doing! This is to say, he must reach saturation, a complete measure.

So when we gather, we must “adhere and be connected with each other and be closed within one another in the hearts of everyone, so that we will be one union, serving the Creator wholeheartedly,” meaning that it is necessary to discover a complete measure of desire. And this is a problem, because we seem to climb a mountain, and every time we fall, again and again. And so it is until a quantity of effort accumulates, a number of experiences are gathered, into a complete amount. As Baal HaSulam writes in Letter 19: “However, ‘time will do what the mind does not do.’ The Creator counts all the stimuli and collects them into the complete measure, which is the measure of hardness for the intended day.”
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From the Preparatory Lesson for the Arava Convention, 1/30/14

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Opinion (Jag Bhalla, entrepreneur and writer): “’Competition creates efficiency,’ is preached as if it were a law of nature. But nature itself teaches a different lesson. Biological competition can create foolish costs, and collective doom. ‘Darwin’s Wedge’ shows why and reminds us of the point of being human. Our competitions, and the myopic logic of free markets, needn’t be dumb as trees.

“Robert Frank coined ‘Darwin’s Wedge’ to describe situations where individual incentives diverge from collective goals (sometimes even risking collective doom). Darwin’s Wedge applies to an entire class of problems wherein supposedly locally rational decisions aggregate badly (see the market fallacy of composition). These include the tragedy of the commons, Prisoner’s Dilemma games, and Nash equilibria. In them using myopic self-maximizing logic ends badly for each and all. But tackled as coordinated action problems, with monitoring and enforcement, outcomes can be guided to everybody’s benefit. Free markets aren’t suited to such simultaneous complex cross-agent coordinated change.

“Competition’s benefits arise from the constraints it creates. Intelligent constraints, and creative responses to them, can work better than what emerges from mindless ‘natural’ competition. The human trick isn’t self-organizing, it’s other-organizing. We’ve coordinated team survival for 10,000 generations. Our choices now are either to let the power of markets be dumb as trees, or to guide their competitions for better outcomes.”

My Comment: The world is becoming integrally interconnected. It is impossible to develop a plan according to our discrete abilities. It is impossible to plan all communication services, society, industry, etc., calculating everything, and managing everything as a single organism. This was an unreachable goal for Communists because they related to society as to a single system, they created by their singularly enforced methods.

Now the human community is becoming integral, not through our choice or enforced unification as in a socialist camp, but as a result of our natural development. The solution to the problem of the interconnected society could be only in bringing it to a predetermined integral form.

First, we must realize that we are not free: we are in the system of the upper management of nature. In its development, humanity advances along the path of unconscious development, like a child. This phase ends in our time. The phase of conscious human development ended in our time. Since the end of the 20^th century has come the stage where we have to study the law of nature and follow it. Nature is manifested as a global integral system and requires us, humankind, to match it.

We can fulfill this condition only if we re-educate people, through changing our egoistic relations to altruistic.
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Integral Education Convention, Workshop 1: What is mutual guarantee? Why is mutual guarantee the means for attaining the Creator, for the revelation of the Creator, for ascending to Him? Why is this the only way on all the 125 levels by which our ego develops? Our ego ascends and we ascend above it by the mutual guarantee between us.

The ego keeps ascending and we ascend even higher above it by the mutual guarantee between us. This means that there is no other means, no other state that we have to attain except for mutual guarantee.

It is the mutual guarantee between us that includes all the conditions according to which we reach an equivalence of form with the Creator. Mutual guarantee leads us to equivalence of form with Him, and then He is revealed.

When we become detached from ourselves and reach the feeling of “us,” of mutual guarantee, we find ourselves in a totally different volume, on a different level, in a different dimension. There is nothing personal anymore, and the feeling of the body and this world disappear. It is as if I move to a new empty space in which there is only my concern for the group, and there I meet the desires and the aspirations of my friends.

Thus we reach true mutual guarantee: a feeling of the common dome above us, the feeling of a new space in which we discover everyone’s aspirations that are focused on the group, on unity, on what is between us. Then, if this mutual guarantee is formed correctly, a need to turn to the upper force, to be in contact with it, awakens in it. It is in the mutual guarantee that we discover the desire to rise to this force and to allow it to delight us and to be in contact with us.

This happens naturally according to the progression downward. Everything is born from the top down, and it is in the same order that the movement from the bottom up is evoked in us. The Reshimot (informational genes) that are on each and every level are gradually revealed and we suddenly feel such a big space that we have to add our aspiration for mutuality with the upper force.

So the right balance, the right relations between us, on the level of mutual guarantee when we ascend above our ego, generate the desire for the upper force in us: to delight it, to allow it to be revealed in us, to be connected to it. When we are connected, the mutual guarantee between us and this force are formed.

But it is a gradual process. We either attain a certain level of mutual guarantee or not: we may have stalled, we may have left it, perhaps one of us has fallen and we don’t feel it. On the whole, the moment we reach this state, or not, as we stall in fulfilling the mutual guarantee since something interrupts us, a new level of ego, which is lower than the one we are on, immediately rises in us.

But we have to ascend according to the descent. We fall again and rise once more. The level of the ego that is revealed makes us feel the need to tighten the mutual guarantee between us. We have probably not been sensitive enough in fulfilling it, or we may have not fulfilled it completely. Perhaps we have fulfilled it completely, which means that we have to ascend even higher.

The ascent takes place in two ways:

• By the path of suffering when the additional ego is revealed before we have actually fulfilled the mutual guarantee between us because we have stalled, have stopped fulfilling it, or for any other reason.
• By the path of I shall hasten it, when we have fulfilled the mutual guarantee between us and have to ascend to the next level according to our attainment.

But in any case, the new level of ego that is revealed in us, the new egoistic desires, the repulsion, the weakness, and the descents are all it order to spur us and to raise us to a higher level.

How do we operate in a state of descent by using the mutual guarantee between us? How does the state of mutual guarantee help us fulfill the descent correctly?

If we have signed an agreement of mutual guarantee, have risen above the ego, if we have begun to feel even for a short while that we are connected on a higher level, above our world, feeling awe and aspiring forward, and suddenly one of our friends falls, we must understand that it isn’t just he that fell, but we have received a sign that we have to start this new ascent together with him.

In other words, the friend himself isn’t the issue, but the fact is that a new egoistic desire has awoken in the mutual guarantee between us and it helps us rise even higher.

What should we do if one of us falls? We have to descend to him, to his level, speak to him in his language as if we agree with him. We have to keep the level between us and at the same time descend to him and connect to him. After all, when we connect to him, we can raise him.

Then, when we surpass the level we were on, we can continue to ascend. Thanks to our descent to the friend, we can ascend even higher than the state we were on before we descended to him. This means that we have to regard any descent of a friend as an opportunity given to us from Above to a new ascent to mutual guarantee.

When we reach such a state above us, connect to it, ascending and descending together, breathing together, we build a Masach (screen). We are like a piston that ascends and descends as we pump more and more and more desire from our egoistic attributes to our altruistic attributes.

This is how we work. When a friend falls, we ascend and descend with him. The same thing happens when the whole group goes through a similar state. This is our continuous action.

If we manage to hold on to the intention to delight the Creator by our connection, like good children in relation to their mother, a state in which we connect and work together is called a raspberry ball, and perhaps we can also call it a “float.”

We have to constantly be in this state. Constantly! To float forward, backward, no matter where we move; we have to constantly be connected; we have to fall and to rise together. What is more, we must constantly be with the Creator both in our lowest state and in our highest state.

On the whole, this is the method. Everything else are individual cases of this method. The moment we connect and find the connection with the Creator at least to some extent, the moment we ascend and descend together, is the basis for everything.

So what does it mean to float above the water? How can we be on this float no matter which ways we are moving? This float is called Noah’s Ark. It is where the spiritual ascent begins. The moment you create this, the rest will follow.
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From the World Zohar Week “Integral Education Convention” Day One 2/02/14, Workshop 1

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In Preparation for the Integral Convention

The Importance of Our Mission to the World

1. All of humanity, all of nature, after the shattering is heading toward unity. And we are the ones who are studying the science of unity, the wisdom about how to attract other alternative power to help us to hasten the unity.

All of Integral Education amounts to this, teaching a person to connect with others as quickly as possible. Until now there was no need for this method, and now it is beginning to be in demand.

We are like a wick, all of humanity below us is like oil, and above is the Light of Infinity.

Accordingly, if we make ourselves into a conduit, everything will be okay. It is yet to be revealed to us that if we don’t connect the higher, the middle, and the lower in three lines, we cannot act.

We need connection with the upper force so that it will pass through us to others, to those who are passing through development for the purpose of raising the lowest to the discovery of the highest. And that is how we work; we are going around in this closed circle all the time: from below the desire is renewed, and from above the Light arrives.

2. In work with those who are further down it is important to make sure that feeling precedes intellect. Theoretically it is impossible to teach the wisdom of unity to the broader public; it is impossible to impart wisdom to people before the feeling. They will flee.

We ourselves are ready to tolerate this wisdom because we have a desire, a point in the heart. Without this desire we would also flee.

It is necessary to employ and activate the participants, to provide them with impressions, to gather them for workshops, to develop and expand their perception, understanding, and feeling to awaken them to clarification so that they will be expanded within and will discover a space within them that will begin to be filled with all kinds of details: “group,” “I,” and so on.

When we gather participants to discuss questions in a workshop, they gradually format themselves according to the integral model of the world and make decisions integrally, through nullification of the self, through the raspberry ball. They construct a general shared mini-reality in a group where there is a central point and Kelim, desires, want to connect in self-nullification, in reciprocity, in mutual guarantee (Arvut), in order to discover the Creator. In this group of ten there exists a model of all of reality.
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Preparation for the Integral Convention, Nine Stages On The Path To Unity, Point 7

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