Preparation to the Lesson

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1st part of the Lesson — Writings of Rabash, “What Does It Mean that One Who Was On a Far Off Way Is Postponed to a Second Passover, in the Work?”

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2nd part of the Lesson — Writings of Rabash, Article 584 “The Face of the Lord Is in Evildoers”

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3rd part of the Lesson — Writings of Rabash, Article 915 “I and Not A Messenger”

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Selected Highlights

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Question: How do we come to the timely understanding of the wickedness of the evil inclination both in actions and intentions in order to ask the Creator for correction and to be worthy of His love?

Answer: Regarding this, you should agree within your ten to constantly think that you are in exile from the desire to bestow and you need to exit the desire to receive, which is called Egypt. Then you will see and receive everything there is, except exile.

Question: What should be done to show the Creator our desire to build a connection with Him and be rewarded with true love for Him?

Answer: To do this, first of all, it is necessary to unite with your friends in the ten. And then turn to the Creator and ask Him to raise you from this state to Him.

Question: Does it need to be done more internally or externally, at meetings and common events?

Answer: The most important is internally, but externally is also necessary.
[328169]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/17/24, Writings of Rabash “Faith Within Reason”

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Question: We always feel like there is a struggle within us between the Egyptians and Israel. The “Egyptian” point within us is very active and wants to receive light for itself; the “Israel” point is passive and lacks a strong desire to break free from this.

Does Israel receive any part of this energy from the Egyptians as an impulse, or is it given to them only by the Creator?

Answer: Why does Israel seem passive compared to others? Because all the others work from egoistic desire, but it is their desire. Israel does not work from its own desire; therefore, they are so small and weak compared to other nations. Each nation stands on its own and has its roots and its convictions, but Israel has neither.

Only its future destiny gives it the strength to break free from where it is. But, fundamentally, Israel has no strength of its own, nothing to hope for in this world, and nothing to be sure of. Before other nations, it is weak and cannot show that this is its world, its land, like it is tethered to heaven by a thread.

Question: Where does this thread come from? How do we not lose and keep it before us all the time?

Answer: The thread by which the people of Israel are tied to heaven is very strong and is held by the Creator. It is based solely on the desire to bestow and love and leads directly to the Creator.

But in the eyes of our world, it is nothing. Therefore, the nations of the world think about how to destroy Israel. After all, what does it have in this world? Nothing. In every generation, someone among the ill-wishers wakes up and calls for the eradication of the people of Israel from the world. That is how they act.
[327636]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/5/24, Writings of Rabash “Love of Friends – 1”

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Question: How are the small daily exits from exile connected to one big exit into spiritual space?

Answer: After many small exiles, if you succeed in overcoming them, long exiles come. You need to overcome them as well. Eventually, you will quickly come to a state of high ascent, which will give you a feeling of the spiritual world.

Question: What determines one person’s sensitivity to another? How can we help each other awaken this sensitivity?

Answer: Sensitivity surfaces in how important each person is to others. The feeling of importance lies in the fact that you cannot reach the purpose of creation without others. No matter how much effort you put in, you will not reach spirituality.

Question: We have already realized that we are in slavery in Egypt and are trying to break free. Where are we now?

Answer: Each of you must answer this question for yourselves.

Question: When a friend leaves the life of the ten and at the same time does not exit the chat, but also does not return, does this indicate that we are not praying enough for him, or is it the Creator’s plan?

Answer: It does not matter. You must continue your work, unite, ask the Creator, and ascend to Him so the friend feels his place among you.
[327758]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/7/24, Writings of Rabash “The Meaning of Exile”

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There are four types of service to the Creator. The most important of them is what the Torah requires of us: And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. In all other types of service, there is an addition of the desire to receive; it is when a person agrees to work for the Creator but not in every state. That is, his actions, like in our world, depend on how much he receives.

Question: What does it mean that I am move from the intention to receive to the intention for selfless service? What kind of state is this for the sake of bestowal?

Answer: You begin to feel to whom you are giving, why you are giving, and for what. This gives you the strength to continue your spiritual work.

Question: How can I get out of the constant intention to receive for myself and join the Creator in order to give to Him?

Answer: As the Creator gives you thoughts “for one’s own sake,” you must ask Him to save you from them.
[327621]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/5/24, Writings of Rabash “Love of Friends – 1”

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Question: A knight stood at a crossroads, looked at three ominous signs, and went home to learn to read. First the question arises: how many roads do we actually have before us? Each one has something written on it. Can you tell me what is written on them that we do not understand? We, who have finished school, are PhDs, Doctors of Science, we do not understand what is written. We need to go back and somehow learn to read. What is written there?

Answer: It says: “Do not seek happiness, but uncover it within yourself.”

Question: And somehow we cannot read it. What is it about it that I do not want to agree with and go down this path? Or even read it.

Answer: Because there is no road actually. There is no road. It is just a stone that stops you. And now you have to learn how to achieve that inner freedom where you stand. In principle, you do not need to go anywhere. Standing before this stone now, you must find the truth. That is, a person must go inside himself. And then it will work out for him.

Question: What will I find there within myself?

Answer: You will find yourself: who I am, what I am, what for, why, and what I want to find. You will find all that only within yourself.

Question: We say that the nature of a person is largely understood. It is the desire to receive—egoism. What will I find there besides that?

Answer: Everything starts with egoism.

Question: So the starting point will somehow be there. I will understand that this is my nature; is that it?

Answer: Yes, and how I can control it, this nature of mine.

Comment: So, I feel that it does not lead me to great happiness.

My Response: It does not lead me to happiness. It has led me onto this road, and I must continue along it. Where? What? Nothing is known, and there is no point. And I will search for it during all my miserable remaining years until I return to the same stone, at the same crossroads, only now tired, gray-haired, like Don Quixote on a dead horse. And that is it.

Question: And that is it? And is it my nature that has spun this for me?

Answer: Yes.

Question: This contemplation, is it better to happen sooner rather than later?

Answer: Of course!

Question: Is this the road that I must scrutinize?

Answer: Yes.

Question: Is it every person’s destiny to come to the “stone” and stand before it like this?

Answer: Everyone has such an opportunity. But to what extent one is willing to be content with this, to stop at this, I do not know.

Question: So, you think that many of those who set out on those roads, go down those roads, it is all wrong?

Answer: Yes.

Comment: Our ego leads us, demands, and we run along the roads? But we should stop, not rush anywhere.

My Response: We should stop, think, and turn back.

Question: And turn back home?

Answer: Yes.

Question: It says here: “Return home, learn literacy.” Learn literacy. What does it mean to learn literacy?

Answer: To learn literacy means to correctly decipher the questions that arise in your heart. These are actually the questions. And literacy, I would say it is like what your heart tells you. Learn to listen to it, to talk to it, and to be satisfied with what your heart suggests to you.

Question: The heart, what is it?

Answer: The heart is my “self.”

Question: It is not the mind?

Answer:: No, the heart is me. And I want to feel myself, know myself, uncover myself as if I am speaking to myself and standing before myself. It means to speak with your heart.

Question: So I need to truly stand before myself? And all this time I am running away from this “self” of mine?

Answer: Yes, we are running away from ourselves. I always stand before myself, and I run away from it.

Comment: There must be something there that we do not want to know.

My Response: I do not want to talk to it.

Question: Is that literacy? To learn literacy is it to speak directly with myself?

Answer: Yes.
[325996]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 1/15/24

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Question: There were two books on the bookshelf, one was expensive with beautiful binding and the other in a cheap, poor binding. The owner read the expensive, pretty book and said: “This is neither for the mind nor for the heart.” He read the inexpensive one, cried, and said: “I have never read anything more useful for the soul.”

He still left both books on the shelf, one for the soul and the other, beautiful one, for people.

Why, after the owner found the truth, does he think so poorly of others?

Answer: He does not think poorly. First, he has no right to take away their freedom of choice or impose anything.

Second, only in this way, when you have two sides of the same coin can you show a person which path leads him where. Therefore, we must leave both books.

Comment: He found the truth. He wants others to slowly get closer to it too.

My Response: Certainly.

Question: Still, can one live only through inner work, only through this unsightly book that contains the truth?

Answer: No, this work must be combined with practice. Practice is a struggle. It is a physical fight with those who oppose it. That is why we returned to this country, to this land, and why the Creator prepared what for us to do in advance, these trials.

Question: If we reach the truth, will these trials seem to dissipate? Isn’t that why they exist, to push us?

Answer: Certainly, trials exist so that we can build ourselves and this truth to enter us.

Question: Do we still meet a person based on our soul or appearance?

Answer: I do not know. It depends.

Question: I will ask it even more simply: Is love at first sight based on one’s soul or appearance?

Answer: At first sight, something that is brighter catches your eye.

Question: What about love at first sight when, for example, one can no longer live and walks around thinking only about it?

Answer: If this is already becoming awareness, the first glance will not help.

Question: So the look is still external?

Answer: Yes, it is simply blinding. And then, when you begin to look closer, it is no longer love and not the first glance. It is already a feeling of similarity, closeness, understanding, devotion, etc.

Question: Does the similarity of properties allow people who live 50 and 60 years together to continue like this?

Answer: Certainly, those people who have lived together for more than 10 years, even just 10 years, already live on what they have acquired—those common feelings, properties, understandings, and so on.

Question: Grigory Perelman, a famous mathematician, refused a million-dollar prize and did not want to move anywhere. He lives, or lived, with his mother, alone, and so on. He has nothing external; he is always dressed the same. He lives internally. What is it? Or is this a natural state for scientists?

Answer: This is the natural state of life for people like him who live to understand creation. Feeling the image of creation within himself is the most important thing for him. He is disconnected from everything.
He is not interested in politics, war, or anything else, only in his cerebral uneasiness, which does not give him peace.

Question: What kind of world do such scientists live in? It isn’t in this one, is it?

Answer: No, not in this one of course, not the world of today. Most of the scientists live in some kind of interstellar space.

Question: Is this world enough for him? What is enough for him? Sandals, trousers, shirt, and off you go?

Answer: Yes, that is how he appears.

Question: His world is different. Is it a rich world?

Answer: It is a world in which he feels rich and sufficient. There is nothing else.

Question: I will ask you as a scientist, how does he perceive all of us, everyone around him who make films about him, talk about him, and so on?

Answer: Indifferent.

Question: As if we do not exist?

Answer: Yes, for him, it does not exist.

Question: Great scientists, were they like that?

Answer: There are very few of them. Each of them has its little devil inside.

Question: Kabbalah is the science of inner experiences and desires. Even though we are disseminating Kabbalah, are we still making it external to people and gradually attracting them? Or what are we doing?

Answer: We want to attract people to the inner state of Kabbalah that speaks about the revelation of the Creator to man in our world.

Question: Do we make it attractive to them for this? Is this right?

Answer: How else will you do it?

Question: So, do we have to spruce it up for them?

Answer: Of course, all people are like children. When we approach something or someone, we approach from afar, gradually.

Question: Is it possible to take complex texts and popularize them gradually?

Answer: Of course, yes. Baal HaSulam did what the Ari and other great Kabbalists before him did. They devoted a lot of time and attention to this.

Question: To bring this science to people?

Answer: Yes, it is very challenging. Although their highest texts are high for us. And for them, it was descending to people like us.

Question: So this is the correct process: do not rise to me, I will go down to you and raise you?

Answer: What else can you do? Otherwise, we will never have contact with those souls who have reached the Creator and are at that level.
[326956]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 2/26/24

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Question: A computer program has been launched in Denmark that quite accurately calculates the approximate year of a person’s death. There is no mysticism here, the creators of artificial intelligence say. It processes a huge amount of database data on each of the six million inhabitants of the country.

The life story of any person is a chain of events that happen to him, which includes education, chronic diseases, and genetics. And it is calculates it all out, calculates, and calculates. This machine is trusted because it has made pretty accurate predictions.

Do you think we need all these calculations, these machines? They will show with some accuracy when a person will die.

Answer: But before that, I probably also want to know something about myself: when I will become rich and healthy? When will I get married for the third, fourth, or fifth time? And so on.

Comment: That is, how I will live, not when will I die.

My Response: When I will die, everyone can say that.

Question: But it calculates for you when, by what date you need to prepare everything, hand over all your work, and so on. Do we need this?

Answer: I do not need it.

Question: You do not need it. And people do not seem to really need it either?

Answer: I do not know. There are people who care very much about leaving everything in order for after their death, putting all their affairs in order, and so on.

Question: The creation of such machines does not mean that we are as if putting our hands into the plans of the Creator?

Answer: No, a person just wants to end his life in a normal way without entering into any conflicts with anyone, and that is why he wants to know the day of his death.

Question: That is, he wants to prepare all the papers?

Answer: Yes, many people are doing this.

Comment: You once told me that when you came to Canada to bury your father and wanted to support your mother at that hour, you saw that your mother was more or less calm. Then you asked her: “What is the matter?” And she told you that she met a man who accurately told her the day of your father’s death.

Answer: Yes.

Question: She also asked you to call this person, and you talked to him. When a person is given such abilities as this psychic to predict the day of death, does this obligate him to something? Does it mean something, or is it just some kind of animalistic ability?

Answer: I did not see anything special in him; although, in principle, not everyone can predict such dates either.

Question: Did he predict exactly?

Answer: Yes, and when I called him, he said, “Oh, it is the son of so-and-so calling me.” Just by my voice alone.

Question: So you did not introduce yourself?

Answer: I did not introduce myself, not at all. And he immediately told me who and what, and how, when, and that I can come to him.

Question: When and why are such abilities given to a person?

Answer: He himself does not know. He does not know, and others do not know.

Question: So, basically, this artificial intelligence, there is nothing special about it either except for all these earthly things of ours?

Answer: Yes.

Question: Now about the Creator, who knows the root of the human soul and what guides it from the beginning to the end. Isn’t He supposed to guide a person from something to something?

Answer: Yes, of course.

Question: From what to what does the Creator guide a person?

Answer: From a small selfish desire to a larger, corrected one, maybe not final. Well, on and on and on.

Question: So one way or another, a person’s path is a feeling that I am an egoist and toward correction. Is this the whole human journey?

Answer: Yes.

Question: And it is not given to us to know the day of the death of egoism, shall we say?

Answer: No.

Question: We cannot create such a machine or meet such a psychic: when can I end this path with the death of my egoism?

Answer: No. You have to yearn until the last minute of your life for this egoism to disappear from you.

Question: And I would be corrected. And what do I gain then?

Answer: Then you will feel the Creator with all your heart and with all your feelings one to one.
[326071]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 1/15/24

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Question: Once a man found an eagle’s egg and placed it with some chickens. The eaglet grew up together with the chicks. Like them it clucked and scratched the ground, searched for worms, flapped its wings, and tried to fly. And one day, the grown eagle saw a proud bird in the sky. The bird was soaring, flapping its large wings.

Enchanted, the eagle asked, “Who is that?” “That’s an eagle, the king of all birds,” a fellow bird replied. “It belongs to the sky. But we chickens belong to the earth.” So, the eagle lived like a chicken and died like a chicken because it believed in its chicken origin.

Please tell me, who are we, humans? Are we eaglets tossed among chickens, or are we truly chickens who cannot fly?

Answer: In principle, we are indeed eagles. Not just eaglets, but eagles. However, we cannot play this role, even though we are clucked at from all sides.

Question: So are we eagles placed among chickens after all? Or do you believe that all of humanity can be eagles?

Answer: For now, it is still just chickens.

Question: What does whether I’m a chicken or an eagle depend on?

Answer: It depends on self-awareness.

Question: So, I must realize that I am an eagle. Who should tell me this or whisper it to me?

Answer: The higher purpose. You must feel it within yourself and understand that otherwise, it is not life.

Comment: So life is not being a chicken, but being an eagle.

My Response: For you, yes.

Question: What does it mean that I am an eagle?

Answer: To be an eagle means to strive for order in the world because otherwise it would not be life, but just a mere chicken coop.

Therefore, we have no other choice. We, generation after generation of failures, must, no matter how inferior, insignificant, small, or tangled we feel, still lift ourselves up and try to soar.

Question: So, basically, someday, one way or another, it will show that I am an eagle?

Answer: Yes, then it will show.

Question: Here it says that a man took an eagle’s egg and placed it with chickens. Similarly, the Creator took and placed us on this earth, as if saying you cannot fly, you can only walk on the earth. And you say we can still fly. Did the Creator instill in us that we can fly? Is it placed from above?

Answer: Yes, this feeling arises in us. And this question arises within us. And most importantly, all people on earth drive us toward this. Although, of course, they don’t encourage us explicitly to take such a place, such a role, but overall, it is so.

Question: So, we have this eagle’s point within us?

Answer: Yes. Look, although, throughout history, we were suppressed, burned, and whatnot, still, in the end, in each generation there are individuals, albeit few, who rise and move forward.

Question: Does the choice of environment depend on me or not?

Answer: It depends on you.

Question: So I choose the environment?

Answer: Yes. Having received spiritual inheritance, written sources from our great teachers, we can clearly and loudly say to everyone that we have it in our hands, and we must realize it.

Question: And can we fly?

Answer: Yes.

Question: At the level of the mundane, sometimes we hear one is told, “Sit and don’t make noise, you’re a chicken.” And another would be told, “You’re the king of the jungle, you’re an eagle, the king of birds.” When someone is put down in this way and someone is uplifted, what does it say?

Answer: It says that each person must choose for himself what destiny he chooses.

Comment: And the fact that they say so is…

My Response: And who’s saying it? “Who are the judges?”

Question: So in any case, it’s the individual’s decision?

Answer: Only!

Question: Despite being oppressed and so on, you must still make this decision?

Answer: It does not matter, yes.
[326610]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 2/12/24

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Question: Is it possible to reveal the Creator in the desire to reach perfection?

Answer: No, we cannot aspire to see that perfection already exists. We must ourselves reveal what is lacking in us to reach it. Then we need to ask the Creator to correct this imperfection so that it is added to perfection. That is when we will see the final correction (Gmar Tikun).

Question: To reach final correction, we need to bring the whole world to the Creator and raise a request for correction of the entire creation. We see that the whole world is constantly pulling us back. How do we correctly engage in prayer?

Answer: First of all, we need to understand that the correction of the world depends on us. Therefore, the fact that the whole world is against us is the case when we are responsible for the entire world.

Question: What is your opinion about how we are progressing toward the exalted purpose?

Answer: I believe that we are approaching it and will be able to achieve it, perhaps even this year, from this Purim to the next Purim. It is quite possible the upper Kli and upper fulfillment, that is, the upper world, will at least begin to open up for us.
[327691]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/24/24, Writings of Baal HaSulam “Haman Pockets”

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