A good environment consists of the Rav and the friends. If a student does not adhere to the teacher like the lower’s GE (Galgalta ve Eynaim) to the upper’s AHP, if one does not annul oneself in one’s most refined point, which one has discovered within oneself, the point in the heart, and does not attach this point to the teacher, meaning to the teacher’s views and spirit, then one has no place from which to receive the spirit of life. The person will lack the force that develops the Reshimo, the spiritual gene.

This matter is very straightforward: either there is such a connection or there isn’t. And much of it depends on help from above and spiritual luck. It is determined, not by external circumstances, but by the internal efforts made by a person, along with various factors related to the root of one’s soul and the judgment that this soul is going through.

If there is no connection with the teacher, then, as it is written in Shamati 25, “Things that Come from the Heart,” As long as he has no power to sentence the world to the side of merit, they subdue him, he mingles with their desires, and he is led like sheep to the slaughter. He has no choice; he is compelled to think, want, crave, and demand everything that the majority demands.

There is nothing a person can do against this. Even if he is physically close to the teacher, who is like the end of a spiritual conduit for him that descends from the world of infinity through the chain of Kabbalists, if he doesn’t connect to this pipeline, he receives no spiritual nourishment and therefore he does not develop.

In the past there were cases where a teacher would raise a single student. But in general, the teacher tends to his students through the group, connecting to its center.

The group, for the teacher, is the lower spiritual entity. The student who can connect to the center of the group, after having fulfilled two essential conditions of annulment in relation to the group and connection with the friends, will be able to connect to the teacher through that center.

The teacher is called Rav (great) because he is the upper Partzuf, the upper degree, in relation to the students. To the extent that a student annuls himself toward the group’s center, he receives, via the connection with the others, a vessel into which he can absorb the teacher’s thought and spiritual attainment.

But this annulment must be total from the depth of the heart and soul in everything that pertains to the spiritual path and authority over one’s egoism.
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From Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/10/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam “Things that Come from the Heart”

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