Audio Version Of The Blog – 9/18/25
Posted on September 18th, 2025
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Question: We understand how to use time in the material sense. But how is this concept used in spirituality? Why does Baal HaSulam give us the concept of time?
Answer: Baal HaSulam gives us this concept so that we can see ourselves unfolding within time, and thereby change ourselves in accordance with it.
Time is entirely an invented, artificial notion. There is nothing in it that truly exists in nature. It is given to a person only so that he may realize the possibility of changing his life.
[348167]
From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/14/25, “The Study of the Ten Sefirot“
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Question: What are these three categories of the Creator: One, Unique, and Unified?
Answer: The categories One, Unique, and Unified emphasize that there is only one force in the world: the Creator’s force, the force of bestowal and love. Only He, One, Unique, and Unified governs absolutely everything. Even those forces and qualities that He deliberately creates in order to contrast Himself against them are also under His control.
Question: Why does one and the same force act on different people in different ways?
Answer: The force is one, but people are different. Depending on their similarity to this force or, conversely, their opposition to it, we either draw closer to it or move further away from it.
Question: When you say “people are different,” do you mean only the egoistic level of a person?
Answer: Yes, they differ only in their accordance with the Creator. Everything else does not matter.
[225305]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian, 1/21/2018
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Question: There are many songs created about love, and many wonderful romance novels written throughout the history of humanity. On the other hand, love has led to a great number of tragedies and wars. So much has been said about love. Perhaps it is a person’s most sublime feeling. What is love?
Answer: Love is a special attitude of a person to someone or something. I love the sea, music, pleasant smells, etc. This is also called that I love.
Why do I love? Because it gives me pleasure. I enjoy the sea, the music, the smells, the skies. I love what gives me pleasure. Conversely, I hate what causes me suffering or problems. This is how love or hate that arises to people and animals.
It is “egoistic love” when I love something that gives me pleasure and hate what causes me suffering. We are like animals; we love what is good for us and move away from things that are bad for us. This is called love. Meaning, it is not love toward some object, but rather love for what it awakens within me.
For example, I run into a friend and he tells me that he has divorced. “What has happened?!” “Love has gone.” It means that love exists up to the moment where we can receive pleasure from one another. Even today doctors say that love between partners disappears in 2 to 3 years.
This is not the love that the wisdom of Kabbalah is talking about. The wisdom of Kabbalah talks about love as something that is above a person’s ego, which enjoys using someone or something. Love is something we build on two levels.
There is a level of relationship between us which may involve arguments and even hate, i.e., disagreement with one another. At the same time, above these disagreements, we build a special connection called “love.”
We work a lot on this, make efforts, and invest time building it. This is called “love will cover all transgressions.” It means that we build love precisely above transgressions, above disagreements that exist between us.
Only in this way can two people connect one with the other so their mutual connection would be good, strong, healthy, and truly human. This connection is between people who understand that they are egoists and that again tomorrow they can have a dispute but they will still continue working to make their connection beautiful and kind, and it is called “love.”
This is not love that is built on sexual attraction, habit, or something that is good for me today but tomorrow may be the opposite.
On the contrary, it is love between people: a man and a woman, children, within a nation, or within a group of people. But with all this we do not treat each other based on receiving pleasure one from another, where I receive pleasure from the other one and therefore I love. After all, this would be the animal level.
At the human level we create connections of love between us above everything that we receive one from another—pleasures or the opposite—up to the point that I can hate the other for his habits that I do not like. Still I have to love him, for example, for the reason that we belong to the same nation.
Then we will work on how we can also become closer one to another in the habits at the level of this world—physical, national, and so forth.
In other words, love is the highest value in relationship between people who are going to connect with each other since they are obliged to be tied and they chose this connection. Then they constantly work on this.
Therefore it is said that “love will cover all transgressions.” There are “transgressions” between us, various disagreements, and above them we are constantly building love. Even more, the more disagreements, the stronger love should be above them.
This is the way we have to educate people. Then we will be able to come to the state where we will be able to open an umbrella of love above the entire world, above all of humanity. This is precisely what love is. Otherwise, it is just a physiological love where you love something that is good for your body; this is love of animals, whereas human love is built above all that makes me unhappy about the other one. There is some reason, a higher value, that obliges me to be in connection with the other one.
We both understand that at the regular level we have all kinds of disagreements with regard to the country, life, and everything else, but in any case we come to the decision that we have to be connected despite that we are different and our structure is different.
We build this connection, our love, slowly, step by step, based on our superior goal which we together have to reach in connection between us and above our physical bodies.
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From the Program on Radio Station 103FM, 2/14/2016
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Question: What is an intention worthy of action?
Answer: Our world is a world of action. All our earthly deeds are based on action itself. It is only by action and not by intention that our deeds are counted. In our world, we cannot be certain whether we have recognized, reproduced, evaluated, and weighed the intention correctly, whereas actions can be seen, measured, and compared because they leave behind a clear material result.
Intentions are our inner motivations, which are incomprehensible both to others and to ourselves, and are forgotten within a minute. Nothing can be done with that.
The science of Kabbalah says that we are special beings that consist of both actions and intentions. The more developed a person is, the further removed from mere animal existence, the stronger his intention is, and it is the intention that determines the action. That is, the action itself may be insignificant, but the intention behind it is great. In such cases, the person carrying out the action pays attention precisely to the intention.
For example, if I give someone a small gift or perform some deed that was very difficult for me but into which I put my whole soul, then the person receiving the outcome of my action measures it not by the action itself but by the effort and the good intention.
How can we measure intention? That is a problem because the world is becoming increasingly global. We must build a single system of relationships between us. But we cannot evaluate this only through actions.
After all, I am not working like a machinist in a factory whose contribution is measured by a thousand units of production that determines his pay and how others treat him. In our time, more and more professions arise where intentions are measured. We try to measure the relationships between people: how I influence them, how they awaken because of me, how we exchange services, and so on. That is, intention is acquiring ever-greater significance.
And so, our world faces a great problem. The more we develop, the more we move away from an animate state, the greater becomes the need to measure intentions. Yet, we cannot measure them.
Thus, the attitude of a person defines the world. The world itself becomes a consequence of our intentions.
And here a problem arises: the world falls into crisis not because of overproduction nor because we cannot get along with one another, but because our intentions are incorrect. But how to make them correct, how to evaluate and weigh them, we do not know.
Suddenly, quite unexpectedly for us, we find ourselves in an immaterial world because countless emotional, spiritual, and soulful connections arise between us that we cannot measure or account for. Intentions turn out to be more important than actions, and the world becomes awkward and unfit for human life. It begins to “push us out of itself” because it was created only for the animate state of humans.
At present we are like animals. Animals are not embarrassed by each other: I want to eat you; if you manage to escape, you escape, if not, I will eat you. Everything is based not on intentions but on clear actions. And intentions are absolutely obvious because action and intention coincide.
But when we rise above the animate state to the human level, we are obliged to begin taking our intentions into account. And they can only be evaluated with the help of the science of Kabbalah.
Question: Can you give us an example of intention in its pure form? What is it?
Answer: Suppose I have a certain intention toward you. You neither see it nor know it. I must determine it within myself, recognize it, and test it. If I wish to harm you with my intention, then by that, I will harm myself.
On the other hand, the world of intentions is much simpler. When we enter it, we as if erase all actions, “delete” our entire world, and only points remain along with intentions of those points toward one another. This is the spiritual world.
Try to imagine 7 to 8 billion points each of which, at least in some radius around itself, relates to others with a certain intention: either evil or good, plus or minus. The intention is directed either toward making another feel good according to how he understands it, not you, or toward making another feel bad according to how you understand it, not him.
Question: Can there really be only two intentions?
Answer: Only two, nothing else. And each of them can be graded in magnitude. Our attitudes toward others determine our world and our passage into the upper world.
We sort all the possible intentions people may have and take into account only those that exist between them. If they are positive toward others, they are called spiritual; if negative, they are called earthly.
All intentions of our earthly level are only for oneself and to the detriment of others.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian, 3/25/2018
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Intention And Its Influence On Reality
All The Difference Is In Intention
Preparation to the Lesson
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1st part of the Lesson — Writings of Baal HaSulam, Shamati #49 “The Most Important Are the Mind and the Heart” (12.4.2021)
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2nd part of the Lesson — Writings of Baal HaSulam, Shamati #75 “There Is a Discernment of the Next World, and There Is a Discernment of This World” (12.4.2021)
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3rd part of the Lesson — Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Study of the Ten Sefirot,” Vol. 1, Part 1, “Inner Observation”
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4th part of the Lesson — Writings of Baal HaSulam, Introduction to The Book of Zohar, “The Commandments of the Torah, the First Commandment”
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