Cling to the Upper
Comment: Any system, any hierarchy, is built on a leader.
My Response: No. In Kabbalah, the leaders are different. Our leader will be the one who completely annuls himself in relation to me. People still do not understand how strict the hierarchy is in the spiritual world.
In any corporeal sciences or in any corporeal achievements, you can surpass your teacher, move forward and further, as, for example, in the development of sciences. The same applies to children: We want them to develop even more and deeper.
But in Kabbalah a very interesting process takes place. There are two paths in it—from top to bottom and from bottom to top, from the world of infinity to us and from our world to the world of infinity.
Receiving information and spiritual instruction occurs from the top down, and therefore it goes through Adam, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Aaron, Joseph, David, and so on, that is, through all Kabbalists, and ultimately through my teacher and me to those who are my students and even those who are not.
Suppose people listened to us for a bit, picked up this contact, and they disappeared to who knows where; it does not matter. Even if they live somewhere else and study with someone else, it is not important. As a result, they will come to the same result and then, as if, return back.
What do I want to say? In receiving information from above, a student must annul himself before me. This is called the condition of learning from me “mouth to mouth” (“peh el peh“) on the common level of the screen. This is very important! Baal HaSulam writes about this in many of his works.
I cannot say this to the students, because, first of all, there are those who will think that I need their worship, or that they should completely “erase themselves.” The student must gradually understand what it means to cling to the upper, and on the other hand, he must try to be independent all the time.
Any spiritual state consists of two opposites, and the problem lies in our adapting us to it. Therefore, I am very sorry that sometimes such rejections of students from me occur. But nothing can be done.
Either they do such stupid things themselves that can only be compensated later by many years of searching and by other alternative actions of correction instead of those that they should have done earlier.
It was the same for me with my teacher. There is no such thing as going through it absolutely smoothly. There were many small, stupid distances from him: disobedience, even neglect, depending on the level at which all this is evaluated, measured, weighed.
I am absolutely certain that there has never been a student in history who could completely, from the first moment to the last, annul himself before the teacher, so that information would flow into him from top to bottom in the same way with as a fetus in the mother’s womb, when it completely annuls and therefore becomes an integral part of her body and thus develops.
I see that what happened to me happens very often to my students. I was not the most compliant student; on the contrary, there was something in me…
Question: Is it better for a student’s advancement when he is compliant or rebellious?
Answer: It depends on the root of the soul.
Comment: You know that there are students who do everything without question. On the other hand, there are those who resist.
My Response: This is not the kind of resistance and this is not the kind of submission. Submission can stem from pride, while resistance, on the contrary, from the desire to feel as quickly as possible at the junction of contact, in contradictions, where a person must change himself.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Pyramid” 9/18/10
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Passing On The Wisdom Of Kabbalah From Mouth To Mouth
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