Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar”: All these worlds and everything in them are included in the holy name HaVaYaH, Yod-Hey-Vav-Hey, and the tip of the Yod. We have no perception in the first world, Adam Kadmon. Hence, it is only implied in the tip of the Yod of the name. This is why we do not speak of it and always mention only the four worlds ABYA. Yod is the world of Atzilut, Hey – the world of Beria, Vav – the world of Yetzira, and the bottom Hey – the world of Assiya.

Question: Why are we using different words for the same things?

Answer: Let’s assume I’m expecting guests and I go to a market to buy meat for a barbeque. There are twenty different sorts of meat, different cuts of meat from various animals. All of them are just meat, but various kinds of meat are named differently since each of them has a taste of its own.

The same applies to spirituality where everything has its own “flavor” – ten Sefirot of their own with a screen and the Light that fulfills them; each of them is a separate reality.

The same applies to the different names of the same entity. You are not familiar with them at this time and that’s why you are confused and perplexed. You haven’t yet tasted them or felt their “edges,” nuances, shades, or forms in this world.

Without having the slightest impression of spiritual details, you see different names just as duplications. But as soon as you taste the “spiritual barbeque” comprised of numerous kinds of the Light, you will discover their “flavors” and will recognize their names; you will understand why they are called this way and not another.

In this world, we describe flavors using words that are a part of our language: let’s say chips flavored with paprika or onion. In spirituality, you will see the essence of each name and realize why this particular flavor is called “onion” (batzal – בָּצָל). The word stands for “in the shadow” (be-tzel – בְּצֵל) – a certain type of concealment or revelation. When one starts distinguishing the essence of names, one won’t have to memorize them by heart. They will turn into spiritual vessels that are obvious in one’s sensations.

Now you don’t feel any taste. Like a sick person who has no appetite, everything seems bland. Different dishes can be prepared for him, but he eats without distinguishing any flavors and only does so because his doctor demands him to.

Here, as we approach spirituality we are “sick,” but we have “eat” in order to get well. Later, when we recover and become healthy we’ll find huge differences and wonderful tastes in food that seem so tasteless to us today.

So there is a process, “tasting” a new level, you yourself define its name, the names of the Lights that fill it and the vessels. Where do we get them? From our sensations. If we compare the names that we assigned to various objects and phenomena with the original sources, we’ll see that they coincide. It means that we don’t have to read a description of a phenomenon in books; everything emerges from within.

It is said that Adam gave names to everything in this world. After all, he was the first one to reveal the spiritual world and attain spiritual roots of everything, the source of all their properties and hence their names.

“Attainment” of something means that we penetrate to the very root of creation as if we attain Infinity, from which an object of our material world derives. And then you have no problem with names. After all, they stem from the Lights and vessels, and you yourself will determine their names.

The power of ten Sefirot with a screen and the inner Light forms the name of a Partzuf, the amount included in each set of forces. That’s why we label a Partzuf not as we usually name a newly born child according to our choice, but rather in accordance with the internal structure of the object. We can’t just give it a different name. This also applies to each of us; when we change, our names also change.

Consequently, a vessel, the Light that opposes a vessel, and a screen that connects them together allow us to perceive the entire reality without referring to any books. We don’t just name the details. Their names are a revelation, the spiritual attainment of a person.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/28/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Question: What is the right intention we should have when we open The Book of Zohar?

Answer: The Book of Zohar was written as a result of the connection between souls and so it operates and influences us in the right way if we connect. Even if I read it by myself, it will affect me by pushing me to connect. But it is impossible to understand this book unless you are connected with other people.

It isn’t just an intellectual understanding, but a revelation.  I feel how I overcome my ego and begin to feel the others in my connection with others. I feel new powers and new attributes in the connection with others, and so I discover the upper world.

The Book of Zohar gives me the feeling of the others by revealing a force field of love and bestowal between us which is the spiritual world. This is the right outcome that we should expect from studying The Book of Zohar.
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From the World Zohar Week “World Zohar Convention,” Day One 2/5/14, Lesson 1

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

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Opinion (Sergey V. Kovalyov, PhD, psychologist, Head of the Institute of Innovative Psychotechnologies and Centre for Practical Psychotherapy): “We can survive only if we radically change our outlook. Certain hubs of force should develop within us, the mental force that will set a different picture of the world: optimistic, joyful, unselfish, moral, and spiritual. …

“When Harvard researchers conducted a study about why we have such a low life expectancy, they were surprised to discover that we are dying not because we drink and smoke. It turned out that we are dying of boredom and lack of meaning in life.”

My Comment: Thus, scientists’ opinions gradually approach the opinion of Kabbalah. Yet we should not wait for when they open their eyes themselves, but we need to implement the method of integral education and work with scientists as well.
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In the News (from GlobalScience.ru): Humanity is a living mechanism. Its regulation is based on the principle of output signals, meaning on the results of human activity. The regulator role belongs to criminal law. But criminal law is belated regulation; the work has already been done, a mistake has been made, an offense has been committed.

The essence of the innovative project “The Future of Humanity” is to change the model of the mechanism. The regulator is integral morality. This regulation is based not on the result, the output, but on the principle of social input. In this case, errors and crimes are eliminated.

My Comment: It’s all correct, but we will not manage without integral education for the general population in order to achieve integral morality.
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Question: Through service to his Rav (teacher), a student is linked to his Rav, to the Elyon (upper), and receives from him. What happens if there is a situation where the student does something against the desire of his Rav for whatever reason? How does this influence the link between them and the advancement of the student?

Answer: This indicates total detachment. If it is clear to a student that he is acting against the desire of his Rav, then how can he behave like this? The main spiritual law is the law of equivalence of form. Therefore, for the needs of Dvekut (adhesion), it is at least necessary not to oppose, but to be in some kind of agreement. Even if you are not ready to carry something out, you cannot act in opposition.

If the student acts in opposition to the desire of his Rav, then he has no chance of receiving something from him. We also need to understand that spiritual equivalence or lack of equivalence is much more intense than physical equivalence, and therefore it influences the physical world. In other words, it will lead to a great distance of the student from the Rav. He has no chance of remaining near him.

Certainly, for a student, there is the possibility of approach and correction, for the Rav sees him as a little child who is capable of doing something foolish. The Rav can be angry at the student as at a child, but in spite of all this, he thinks of him as his son, and so he forgives him. However, he cannot agree and allow the child to act against his spiritual development.

In the physical world, sometimes we have no choice but to look with forgiveness at the mischief of children. However, in spirituality, it is impossible to tolerate this. This is because behavior like this leads to a lack of equivalence of form that is the main law of reality.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/27/14, Topic of Lesson: “Teacher”

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Question: How can the lower hasten his own development and compel the upper to constantly operate on him?

Answer: On one hand, everything that happens to the lower comes from the upper, as it says “I am the first and I am the last.” If He is the first and He is the last, then what do I have to do? How can I bestow upon Him?

The only way to bestow upon the upper is through the group and not by oneself. I cannot do it by myself. The group is my upper and if I awaken the friends, I also awaken the Creator this way. This is our only work. If I want to hasten my advancement, my development, and improve my state, I can only do it through the group.

As long as I am by myself, there is no way I can bestow upon the Creator. When I am by myself I remain passive in my relationship with the Creator, just like the still, vegetative, and animate parts of nature. If I try to connect to the Creator by myself and study the wisdom of Kabbalah in order to do so, I still remain on the level of the still, vegetative, and animate.

If I want to awaken the Creator and force Him to take care of me, I have to do it through the group because the vessel of bestowal upon the Creator is in the connection between people. The same thing happens in the transition from one level to another. On the next level, I will have to attain a connection with everyone “squared” compared to the previous level. On additional levels the connection grows in the third degree, fourth degree, etc.

This means that each time I have to awaken the Creator by my own power, which is more tightly connected to the group. If I don’t increase it each time, I remain by myself, and then I am completely operated by the Creator, by different illuminations, which is the level of the still, vegetative, and animate, just as He operates all of nature and the people in this world.
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From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/21/14, Talmud Eser Sefirot

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If you want to feel the spiritual state a little, you can imagine that you are drowning in a sea of Light and that you are left without oxygen, like a fish swimming in the water. The Upper Light wraps me on all sides and immediately responds automatically to my every move. I barely lift a “hand’ or “foot,” i.e., the slightest movement in my heart, and I immediately summon the response of the Upper Light.

This is how I should live all the time, from morning till night, from the night until the morning, and feel that I am in a sea of the Upper Light that fills all of reality. This is the only force, “There is none else besides Him.” He is good and benevolent and responds to every move I make in order to bring me to the goal in the best possible way.

I am in this Light in any movement of my desires: in the still, vegetative, animate, and speaking, and so I immediately summon a response from the Light, I have to take this into account.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/21/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Question: Is the process of the descent of the generations still going on or is it already over?

Answer: The process isn’t over until we begin the correction. But there is another question: Is it possible to start the correction if there is still room to decline? After all, we know that the ascent and the correction have to start from the bottom.

The point is that we correct the last part of the desire by hastening the process. This is the uniqueness of the “days of the Messiah” that we can use the drawing force and correct these vessels during our ascent. By raising a request, MAN, for correction, we discover a deficiency, the necessity, since in order to correct ourselves we need to feel the same deficiency, and this is possible only by the Light.

Suppose I have to feel a blow in order to appreciate the greatness of the Creator. This blow can be revealed in very difficult states in which I try to overcome troubles and do something. I build and destroy, delve into problems and fight them for a long time so that eventually I will give up and surrender and say: “That’s it, I can’t go on any longer; it’s impossible to advance this way.” This is how we learn by suffering.

But I can go through the same suffering and the same study and reach the same outcome much faster if I learn how to connect and to draw the Light that Reforms. Then I also feel sorrow, but it stems from the lack of connection, from the fact that I am not in vessels of bestowal. It’s a much more qualitative sorrow. In the first case, the sorrow belongs to the corporeal physical bodies with all their problems, including hunger, murder, etc., but now I choose another sorrow instead. We cannot do without sorrow; we have to feel a deficiency, a need, since otherwise the Light will not be revealed, but this is a sweet deficiency when I lack the love of the Creator, the love of the created being, the attraction, and the urge to attain a general connection among everyone.

These sorrows and suffering are on a spiritual level and not on a corporeal one. It’s one thing when millions of people suffered for a hundred years and another when I raise it to a spiritual height, and then a small group is enough. I hasten time this way, and now there is no need for a hundred years and for millions of people to suffer. Instead, this small group does it in a short time. Thus we change the corporeal clarification to a spiritual one.

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