Question: Do you suppose that we already have the possibility of bringing everything to the center of the group and solving all our questions there?

Answer: If you are thinking of advancing spiritually, meaning toward the characteristic of bestowal, then you simply have no other choice. The center of the group is the point of departure for a channel that leads us by way of all the worlds to world of Infinity. Nothing else is given to us.

The center of the group is a place in which we balance each other. Everyone is different, but all are equal. All help each other even though all are different. In that, we completely nullify ourselves and absorb the desires of the others in order to realize them. Afterward, we present one complete and unified desire, and in this manner enter into this conduit through which we rise to the world of Infinity.

Question: Is it possible to bring material questions to the center of the group?

Answer: It is possible for a group to come with all kinds of material questions and to try to solve them with your friends. In every case, this will be much closer to the truth than what you would decide by yourself.

If all of your friends would be on a particular spiritual level, mutually balanced (this is talking about a group that is more or less correct), then in such a manner, you will be able to solve the problems in your lives.
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Question: Can we create a practical device based on the workshops that will help us after we disperse and go back to our homes?

Answer: I have already spoken about this practical device. Continue to hold yourself in that state in which we hold ourselves during the conventions.

It is necessary to try that the journey back home does not influence us. Nothing more is necessary, and even if the journey back is influential, we hold onto the connection. So then you cannot imagine how much our opposition will elevate us.

We need to hold onto that rope that raises us up during that later time when the environment—the entire world with its thoughts, deficiencies, and goals—pulls us back. Therefore, we need to hold more strongly to the group that is going forward so that those thoughts that pull us down will not tear us from it. Imagine a picture like this. Even if we hold onto a position for a short time, in spite of it all, we rise higher.

Precisely now, this movement forward will be realized in those people who will hold onto the group. I performed some work on you, and now it is your turn to work. Connect yourselves to the “fueling station,” and you will be filled with inspiration. Now, with the help of this inspiration that you received in potential, you need to realize it at least a little. Otherwise, it will dissolve with negative consequences.
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Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to the Book, Panim Meirot uMasbirot,” Item 1: Who would dare extract it from the heart of the masses and scrutinize their ways, when their attainment is incomplete in both parts of the Torah called Peshat (literal) and Drush (interpretation)? In their view, the order of the four parts of the Torah (PARDESS) begins with the Peshat, then the Drush, then Remez (insinuated), and in the end the Sod (secret) is understood.

However, it is written in the Vilna Gaon prayer book that the attainment begins with the Sod…”

In fact, nothing is as simple as it seems. Attainment of Torah is divided into four parts and even they are arranged in an opposite order in comparison to what is accepted by the common folk. People think that they are learning Peshat while, in fact, the Torah is hidden from them and at best is conveyed in the form of Sod.

Vilna Gaon writes that we begin learning from Sod since in the beginning we don’t yet know anything. The Torah describes the arrangement of the worlds; their management by the Creator is intended to reveal the Creator to the creatures. This is, in essence, the goal of Torah, and to do this is possible only through correction of the creature to the condition of “and you shall love your friend as yourself.”

The Torah was given as a means for spiritual realization and its learning is practical, and in this way, the person goes along according to the order of the levels of Sod, Drush, Remez, Peshat.

In other words, first I grasp only a few small hints from the great secret, the darkness that envelops me and prevents me from understanding anything.

Then, the first thread connects me with the Light, with the Creator, with the higher management, and then I begin to understand and to feel a little.

That is how development passes through four stages with four levels of Aviut, and as long as we haven’t absorbed them, this is not called that we have acquired and understood the Torah, for the Torah clothes the Creator and through it the person corrects himself. In that, he turned around the corrected vessel by the Light. He needs to dedicate his entire life to this process. For this, he lives here in this life, and only in this way does he continue in the right direction, the way of the four levels of attaining the system which includes the vessel and the Light.

People think they are learning Peshat even though they remain in the “superficiality” of the text and prefer to understand it “as it is” and not go into it deeper. However, in fact, everything is the opposite for through this approach a person doesn’t understand anything of what is written and the truth is hidden from him.

Peshat symbolizes the removal of the “clothing” from the Torah, from the system of worlds, when I discover them completely. Their uncovering means the removal of the Masachim, the clothing, and the concealments.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/5/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” Item 69: When one increases one’s toil in the internality of the Torah and its secrets, to that extent, one makes the virtue of the internality of the world—which are Israel—soar high above the externality of the world, which are the nations of the World.

So everything depends on preferring internality to externality. These two parts are essential in the Torah, in our actions, in our intention, in our desire, in everything. We should always distinguish between what is more internal and what is more external and prefer one to the other.

Thus a person focuses himself on the right goal and advances. In fact there is nothing else we should do but to prefer internality to externality all the time, to clarify what is internality and what is externality, and to prefer one to the other.

A person is like a dipole, or like the needle of a compass. I prefer that the needle would constantly point at spirituality as a result of placing it on top of corporeality. Whatever is closer to bestowal, to the internality of the group, to the internality of the world, to concentrating my efforts, should always be above anything corporeal. This clarification is actually the only thing I am required to do at any given moment, and nothing but that.

Question: How is the thought of creation integrated in this division into internality and externality?

Answer: How could the thought of creation be fulfilled if we didn’t have the freewill to prefer internality to externality? This is how we fulfill it.

The thought of creation is to do good to His created beings, to bring man to the Creator’s level so that he will be independent and will also resemble the Creator. This is already two opposites: How can you be independent and at the same time resemble the Creator? This is a paradox. So we always work in faith above reason, in bestowal above receiving.

The externality is close to my ego, it is my life; I want that my self-love, my desire to receive, will always be full and that it will feel good. I want to feel good and comfortable in it, that everything would be nice and peaceful. The internality is bestowal: It’s worrying about others, adhesion to the society and the teacher, and through them, adhesion to the Creator.

If I don’t prefer one to the other, how will I choose? How can I form myself? This is all my work. Without this I will not be able to form myself in any way.

When a person wants to acquire a form, he summons the Light that Reforms and it does the work. But without a person’s yearning there is no independence and there is no attainment of the Creator since there is no vessel, there is no desire.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/3/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Preparation for the Lesson

Workshop

The Book of Zohar — Selected Excerpts 

Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah”   

Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to the Book, Panim Meirot uMasbirot” 

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Question: I cannot do anything when I see hatred, pretense, and fraud in the way the friends behave.

Answer: Of course. Nobody is perfect. We are all spiritually defected. We all want to be corrected. When we ascend even a bit towards the Creator from this state, our actions are very desirable to Him.

It’s absolutely natural that I see that the friends are also as filthy as I am in their thoughts, in their feelings, in their evil plans, and in the different negative urges that they have. If I correct all that, I immediately fall into these defects over and over again. At least we acknowledge the fact that we are in one great sewage hole and that all our flawed thoughts and desires are our initial state.

Your tears are wonderful tears of the recognition of our state. It already indicates that the Upper Light influences you and helps you understand where you are in relation to it. It’s already the recognition of evil and not just some low level, but a state from which you can advance and leap forward.

So we have to turn these tears into tears of joy and to thank the Creator for giving you this recognition of your state and such support! You are not isolated on some Finnish farm weeping over your fate.

You are in a big group that provides you with support. You have a whole healthy system and you know that you are part of it, how it operates on you, and how you should use it in order to reach the center, the absolute balance. You have all that! So your tears are just the beginning, only the recognition of your state. I would even say that you are crying over yourselves. You should at least attribute it to yourselves and shed tears of joy since you understand who is managing you, and whose path you are following. It will come. Hold on to us and everything will be all right.
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Question: Why does it say that a person should judge himself to the scale of merit? Does he do it by himself? Isn’t it the Upper Light that operates on him?

Answer: We don’t say that the upper force operates here, although it does everything. When it says that “a person should correct” it means that a person demands that the Upper Light correct him.

It is the same in our world when we speak about a house that was built by a great architect. Did the architect actually build the house? He planned it and there were hundreds of people who built the house. But we say that the house was built by the architect and sometimes even hang up a plaque with his name.

We also don’t speak about the forces that we operate. There is the Creator who is good and benevolent, “There is none else besides Him,” He gave a law that cannot be broken: the law of equivalence of form that determines all the levels on the spiritual ladder. But all our appeals, all our work, depends only on us. If we activate ourselves by feeling the right yearning, we will receive the Light.

It is a constant supply that never ends and never changes. Everything depends only on our equivalence of form with the Light. So we don’t say that the Light corrects us. If everything is ready and He is good and benevolent, everything is determined by my desire for positive changes, and the Light immediately operates in full power.

Actually I don’t even have to ask it to do so. Therefore we don’t say “to beg” but “to pray” to the Creator because I have to beg myself and activate myself and not Him. I am the one who has to reveal my desires, and all the actions are meant to ignite our heart. The Upper Light is in a state of absolute rest and the problem is only in our heart.
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From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/5/14

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Question: Why does it say that the soul is absolutely separate from the Creator and at the same time that it is similar to Him in its attributes? According to spiritual laws shouldn’t they be one whole if they have identical attributes?

Answer: A soul is a desire to receive and not a desire to bestow. So why is it called spiritual or one that bestows? Since, although it is a desire to receive, it performs an action by which it resembles the desire to bestow; even though there is a wolf inside, it seems like a lamb on the outside. Now it all depends on the extent to which this wolf will wear the lamb’s skin or take it off, according to his freewill and his desire.

In the world of Atzilut, everything is white; it is totally a lamb. In the world of Beria we already begin to discern that it is a wolf but one that wants to be a lamb. He actually behaves like a lamb, but we still see that there is a wolf inside.

This means that it is still the spiritual world, that it is still a soul, but there is already the discernment that the soul isn’t in adhesion with the Creator. There is something that separates them here, and that is the wolf inside, the ego.

In the world of Yetzira it is even more so; there the desire to receive doesn’t control itself any more. There, the fact that I am connected to the Creator, that I depend on Him, and am totally under His domination is the only thing left of the positive attribute. The Creator determines everything that happens and I cannot determine anything. I have no powers, I am weak, and I am completely in His hands. The wolf acknowledges that he is a wolf more and more and he feels an increasingly greater inner resistance, but holds himself.

If we look at this from the opposite direction, from the bottom up, and we ascend to the world of Yetzira, which corresponds to the state of smallness (Katnut), I perceive that I am small. There are greater and better levels than I am in, and in the meantime, I am in this state. It turns out that there are positive moments and there are negative ones.

In the world of Assiya the recognition that I am incapable of anything brings me to a state of an embryo. I only close myself and place myself completely under the domination of the upper, and I have no way to identify with him except in the form of a single point.
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From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/4/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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