Question: We see that each generation that comes into this world is more egoistic and cruder than the previous one. It denies the values of the previous generation. Why?

Answer: It does not deny. It just needs new values.

It seems to us that the next generation should break the previous one. Yet, it does not deal with the destruction of the old one, it just deals with itself and builds a new one. Whereas revolutionaries here and there wanted to destroy everything old, this is what was bad.

However, if it happens not through revolution, but as development in itself, then it involves growth, not destruction.
[282050]
From KabTV’s “Close-up. Generation” 8/24/09

Related Material:
Do Not Impose Оld World Values
Who Should Be Educated First?
How Do Generations Differ From Each Other?

Filed under: Children, Education, Egoism | Add Comment / Ask Question →

Comment: Baal HaSulam was a revolutionary who performed a dramatic change in the wisdom of Kabbalah. He was strongly hated by some and strongly loved by others, and there was no average attitude toward him.

My Response: Yes, this is true. People who understood him loved him, and those who did not understand him naturally hated him very much. There were even people who used to come to his grave and step on it after he passed away.

Question: Do you think that Baal HaSulam was a revolutionary?

Answer: When I first began to read texts by Baal HaSulam it opened my eyes. I read a lot before that, including the writings of Ramhal, Ramak, the Gaon from Vilnius, and other serious Kabbalists who were popular. They were really great Kabbalists, but I didn’t feel that I received anything from them.

I did not enter their flow and did not understand their language. They did not tell me anything, although I seemingly listened and read books, but it was not the same system of expression that was supposed to clothe unto me.

When I discovered Baal HaSulam, however, I was very impressed by the way he expressed the text, by his system, his revelation, and how he guides the reader by telling him “Look here, look there, now you see the difference, this way or that way,” although I cannot say that I understood everything. It was a feeling of a teacher who studies with you and guides you, plays with you, and answers your questions.

Baal HaSulam’s writings are based mainly on questions and answers. In his articles he first asks questions and then answers them. This is the right thing to do methodically.

Question: You were looking for not a mystical or emotional, but actually for a scientific presentation.

Answer: Yes, of course, only scientific. Everything else was wrong and not true for me, and I thought that I had no need for it and that it was totally unimportant.

Question: How is Baal HaSulam’s modern language expressed scientifically?

Answer: At least in what he said, “In this article I would like to scrutinize these and those questions,” and then listed about 20 questions. Then he gradually clarifies one question after another and arrives at a clear and accurate outcome, and then sums it all up, “to sum up, what we have is this and that.”

As a university graduate and a beginning researcher, this approach was certainly the closest to me and best understood. I understood that he is a serious person and not just some religious person who believes in something and wants to impose his views on me by confusing me. As a methodologist, Baal HaSulam accurately builds a logical chain and a scientific approach.
[247601]
From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah” 3/10/19

Related Material:
The End Of “The Prophecy Of Baal HaSulam”
Baal HaSulam’s Mission
Attaining The Greatness Of Baal HaSulam

Filed under: Baal HaSulam, Kabbalah Study | Add Comment / Ask Question →

Each Develops on Their Own

Question: What do a husband and wife need to take into account if they begin to study Kabbalah together? How should they help each other and what should they avoid?

Answer: I don’t think that when they study Kabbalah they will immediately want to help each other. Each of them will experience their own states.

It takes a very long time, months, and even years before they begin to understand the possibility of studying together, of putting their spiritual forces into it together. It will take years before they feel that they both have one soul. It is no simple matter.

It will not happen in a day. We are just beginning this path so it is best not to disturb one another. In the beginning each one develops on their own.

Children, for example, cannot play with each other before the age of three. They play on their own, each with their own toys, and if you offer a child to play with someone else, he will not understand it. They don’t have the perception of society yet.

It is the same when we study Kabbalah. When we begin to study Kabbalah, we do not feel others. It overtakes us and seizes each one separately. So we should not disturb each other during this time, but instead try to allow each one to develop independently until we reach a certain level of maturity.
[247566]
From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah” 3/3/19

Related Material:
The Mystery Of The Unification Of The Masculine And Feminine, Part 11
The Mystery Of The Unification Of The Masculine And Feminine, Part 10
The Mystery Of The Unification Of The Masculine And Feminine, Part 9

Filed under: Man and Woman, Women's Spirituality | Add Comment / Ask Question →

Zohar for All, VaYetze, 15: The reason that the book begins with the words, “The sun rises and the sun sets” is that it is the Hevel that sustains the world, to bring man into the high faith of the Creator.

All this we need to translate into Kabbalistic language. “The sun rises, and the sun sets” speaks about the fact that the upper light shines upon a person, and by its rising and setting, by its alternating influence, it causes the appearance of new desires in a person.

“The sun rises” means that I begin to desire something, the light causes a certain excitement in me. When it disappears, I am left with an empty desire. This is the best condition: I begin to yearn for the light that I have felt and do not know how to reach it. Here a person has the opportunity of freewill: to yearn by himself to be similar to the light.

Now the light will not come to me by itself. It showed me some good condition and disappeared. What to do? I cannot live without it anymore.

Then I come to the conclusion, through a very long path of suffering (or through Kabbalah very concisely and quickly), that I myself need to be like the light. There is no need to wait for it to come and fill me up. It will not come again! It just showed me an example of how I can be happy, eternal, and perfect. Now I have to reach this state by myself. It is possible.

It already depends on me. I do not need to wait for mercy from nature, from the Creator.

Kabbalah only says that after I have received the light or felt the emptiness that we feel in the world today, I can still come to fulfillment.
[281921]
From KabTV’s “The Power of The Book of Zohar” #13

Related Material:
The Two Great Lights
The Sun Never Ceases To Shine
Absolute Rest In Infinite Motion

Filed under: Spiritual Work, Zohar | Add Comment / Ask Question →

Preparation to the Lesson

Lesson on the Topic “Work with Intention”

Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Study of the Ten Sefirot, Vol. 1, Part 1, Chapter 2, Item 1″

Selected Highlights

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson | Add Comment / Ask Question →

Listen to an Audio Version of the Blog
Download:MP3 Audio

Filed under: Audio Version of the Blog | Add Comment / Ask Question →

The holiday of Shavuot does not require one to keep any special traditions and lasts for only one day, and therefore passes almost unnoticed. But in fact, this is a very important holiday because it is the basis on which humanity received the method of correction, the way to achieve eternal and perfect life for all mankind.

Therefore, Kabbalists greatly honor the holiday of Shavuot, which symbolizes the reception of the upper force, the method of correcting the world, called “Torah.”

The name “Shavuot” is due to the fact that this holiday comes seven weeks (Shavuot) after Passover, that is, the liberation of a person from his egoism, which is called the exodus from Egypt. After leaving Egypt, he goes through correction for 49 days and on the 50^th day, reaches a special degree in his corrections, and becomes worthy to receive the Torah, to reveal the upper light that purifies and fills him.

Shavuot is also called the festival of first fruits because it is celebrated at a time when field work ends and you can already enjoy the harvest.

This means that we have achieved the correction of our desires, and after the holiday of Shavuot we can use them to receive the upper light, to reveal the Creator within them for the sake of bestowal. The revelation of the Creator in the desires of creation and the equivalence to Him in quality—all this symbolizes the holiday of Shavuot.

When celebrating Shavuot, the gift of the Torah, it is customary to eat dairy food, because the Torah symbolizes the bestowal of the upper power to humanity. Milk is a symbol of giving one to another, like a mother feeding a baby with milk. There is no more vivid and natural manifestation of bestowal than mother’s milk.

Shavuot symbolizes the Creator’s bestowal to His creations, revealing His feeling, understanding, attitude, and love to us as if through the mother’s milk. In honor of this, we eat only dairy food on this holiday.

Receiving the Torah means that the Creator gives us a method of correction so that we can change from a state that is opposite to the Creator and become like Him in qualities. In this way, we approach the Creator and can receive from Him the inner fulfillment, the upper light, which is a very joyful event, which is called the holiday of the gift of the Torah.

Every person on earth is able to use the Torah to correct himself and achieve love for his neighbor and love for the Creator, to open his spiritual vision and feel himself inside the eternal flow of life along the infinite axis of time.

To do this, we only need to learn from the science of Kabbalah how we can get closer to each other and through this rapprochement form a place for the revelation of the positive force between us, mutual bestowal, love, and unity. And so we will come to the correction of the world, so that it does not look, unfortunately, as it appears to us today.

Every person who wants to achieve a happy, eternal life must use the inner, practical part of the Torah, which is called the science of Kabbalah. With it, he will be able to correct himself so that he can see himself living in a perfect and eternal world and find eternal life for himself. If he uses the Torah correctly, it will raise him to the level of eternity.

I greet you all on the holiday of Shavuot and wish everyone to get at least a little from the science of Kabbalah in order to see that the upper force this way wants to give us its “milk,” a sense of maternal warmth and eternity. We will feel that the Creator cares for us as a loving mother cares for her infant.

I wish everyone success in this!
[282375]
From KabTV’s “The Peace” 5/11/21

Related Material:
Shavuot—The Holiday Of Unity
Shavuot—Receiving The Method Of Correction
Shavuot—The Holiday Of Finding A Connection With The Creator

Filed under: Holidays, Spiritual Work | Add Comment / Ask Question →

“And I Will Reveal Myself In My Greatness”

The Prophets, Ezekiel, 38: 18, 38:23: And it will come to pass on that day, when Gog comes against the land of Israel, declares the Lord God, that My blazing indignation will flame in My nostrils.

And I will reveal Myself in My greatness and in My holiness and will be recognized in the eyes of many nations, and they will know that I am the Lord.

Question: This somehow sounds strange. It turns out that the Creator brings this power in order for everyone to recognize Him?

Answer: If you think from the point of view of our egoistic nature, then of course, it looks like some kind of childishness.

But in reality, this is not the case. We know how it happens from the science of Kabbalah and from our own personal experience, which every Kabbalist has. Each of us more or less goes through this form of war between the right and the left side of nature—receiving and giving.

So our whole life is spent in studying these opposite properties and how to connect them in the middle line called Israel because including both sides, it directs their owner directly to the Creator
[282149]
From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 4/30/21

Related Material:
The War Of Gog And Magog, Part 2
The War Of Gog And Magog, Part 1
The War Of Gog And Magog: In Or Outside The Soul?

Filed under: Spiritual Work | Add Comment / Ask Question →

What feature is there in the spiritual root of Jerusalem that has been attracting different empires, currents, and people for many years to this city?

Our world operates under the control of the higher forces of nature, and Jerusalem is the place of connection between the higher spiritual forces of the higher nature with the earthly forces of our lower material world.

Jerusalem is the very place that connects the spiritual with the material.

In the place where the highest spiritual Sefirot and their consequence, the material Malchut, meet, there appears a transition, a channel, from the spiritual world to the material one through which the spiritual light can pass into this world. And then calmness, abundance, fulfillment, and correction will come to this world.

But while this is not the case, this place that connects the spiritual with the material, which is located in Jerusalem, is very problematic. And we see to this day that there is constant unrest and commotion.

But it all depends on the people of Israel. If we behave correctly and fulfill our destiny, our duty, and become one people in which love of our neighbor as ourselves reigns, then these forces will spread from the people of Israel to the land of Israel and Jerusalem. The power of good will begin to dominate and fill all these material properties with what is present in the spiritual, and then Jerusalem will become the city of the world.

There are eight gates in the wall surrounding the old city, which correspond to the seven entrances that should exist in relation to the seven Sefirot, Hesed, Gevura, Tifferet, Netzach, Hod, Yesod, and Malchut, and one more opposite the Sefira Daat that symbolize a connection with the upper force.

The most famous gates are called “Golden Gate,” “Gate of Mercy,” or “Gate of Eternal Life” and they have remained locked since 1541 after Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent walled them up to prevent the arrival of the Messiah.

These gates symbolize that until we acquire the property of mercy, we do not deserve to open the golden gates and accept the Mashiach, which opens an exit for us and pulls us into the spiritual world. How can this special power of bestowal and love come to us from above if we ourselves are not like that? Therefore, these gates are walled up and no one is trying to open them yet.

Opening the material gates is not difficult, but the question is how much excitement and problems this would cause, from spiritual to material. Complete deliverance is by the people of Israel  achieving the quality of mercy, love for one’s neighbor as for oneself. And then these good forces spread from it, attracted from the spiritual world to the material one.

The people of Israel should serve as a transition from the spiritual world to the material one, and if we manage to become such a transition for everyone, then the forces of the highest abundance will pour down on this world, and this will open all the gates for us. The gates of heaven will open and we will see the upper light filling the Temple Mount, Jerusalem, all of this place.
[282121]
From KabTV’s “The Peace” 4/27/21

Related Material:
Jerusalem – The Heart Of The World
Jerusalem, Built From Our Hearts
Jerusalem: Not Stones But The Spirit

Filed under: Holidays, Israel, Nations of the World | Add Comment / Ask Question →

The goal of man’s work in this world is to achieve complete unification of all people to the point of loving one’s neighbor as oneself. By this, man restores his soul, the common spiritual vessel created by the Creator.

To the extent that in this spiritual vessel (Kli) two opposite forces unite—separation and connection, reception and bestowal—a person reveals the Creator as the advantage of light over darkness. The Creator (Bore) means come and see (Bo-Re), that is, the concept that unfolds as light from darkness.

Alone, no one is able to reach the correction because initially only one common soul was created, Adam HaRishon, which was afterward shattered to the smallest particle, to the smallest spiritual spark in each of us. We exist in this world in order to unite the spiritual points, the sparks of light, that exist in everyone.

Although, this point does not indicate any direction of development, which way to advance, and what to do with it. It only awakens a smallest need for something spiritual that is above this world. But to what exactly, a person does not understand. And that is why people who come to study Kabbalah do not realize what has brought them, what exactly they lack, and where they are drawn to.

And even in our everyday life in this world, in a continuous race for some achievements and replacing one hobby after another, people also do not really understand what attracts and pushes them. But in fact, the same spark that wants to lead us to final correction forces a person to do this work, to give it the opportunity to unite with other sparks and thus collect the first Kli called the ten.

And then other particles will join this ten, other tens, and we will come to a complete correction in the end. Only then will we discover the eternal and perfect life, the full knowledge and feeling of the true reality, called the Creator. Thus, we will reach the realization of the point that led us from the very beginning, pulled and pushed us forward.

For this work, we organize physical tens. Our world exists in order to give us this opportunity to start from something accessible located in front of our eyes. Even before spiritual correction, we have the opportunity to create a material system and work within it according to the advice of Kabbalists: to organize physical tens and add spiritual qualities to them as much as possible.

Even without feeling the upper light and the Creator, we can work inside a small physical group of ten people, awaken the upper light that gradually unites us and reveals spiritual qualities, ascents, and descents inside the ten.

We go through all these changes multiple times: from light to darkness and from darkness to light, through swings of light and dark moods. And afterward, we rise above the moods and evaluate ascents and descents by our closeness or alienation from others and the Creator, our commitment to bestowal or reception. That is how we gradually acquire new values—not from this world but from the spiritual one.

We learn what actions can attract the reforming light, that is, the force of the general light that will affect us and connect us more. Connection is the only correction that is necessary to revive the common soul, which was deliberately shattered to allow us to collect it.

By trying to connect together the conflicting, opposite, and distant parts of the soul, we study what the quality of bestowal is and who the Creator is, and reveal perfect and eternal life.
[281499]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/25/21, “The Importance of Dissemination”

Related Material:
The 600,000 Faces Of The Common Soul
The Goal Of Creation Is To Reach Love
See How Tasty It Is!

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Spiritual Work, The Tens | Add Comment / Ask Question →