Question: Were there Kabbalists who violated the rule against touching the secrets of the Torah prematurely, before they had completed their own corrections?

Answer: I do not want to go into this because we are not yet capable of discussing such topics. Questions will immediately arise: “How did they do it? For what reason? Why did the Creator allow this? Where was the general and individual governance? Was it a mistake or to the contrary?” There are many stories, and it is not for us from our degree to analyze them.

Why do we go above reason in order to ascend from degree to degree? Because the mind of the higher degree is literally opposite to my mind. I am simply incapable of discussing such degrees. We can only, so to speak, console ourselves with the formulations, and make some understanding in order to continue on the path.

In the same way, children are told fairy tales and fables so that they will grow. And when they become adults, they see that everything is somewhat different. However, they cannot yet grasp with their minds the full complexity of human relationships and world processes, and that is why they are presented with these things in a simple form corresponding to their understanding, and thanks to this they grow.

It is the same for us. It is impossible to take such questions seriously. It is good that they exist, but we must understand that every question is a Hisaron, the fulfillment of which can be seen not at our degree, but many degrees higher. Therefore, the question is different: how can a Hisaron (lack) arise in me, the fulfillment of which lies, say, ten degrees higher? What does its present revelation mean?

Actually, this is not even a question, because from this I must derive the understanding that I actually need to possess a yearning to reach the highest degree—even if an unconscious need.

I will put it differently. There must be a Hisaron, a need for a state of infinity within the limits of my current level, but a need for the state of infinity. Because at every degree it is precisely infinity that is revealed, only to a different extent, first a little, then a little more, then even more.

It is perfectly normal that I have questions about the highest degree because I must strive for infinity. In essence, I am already in it now, but only a very, very small measure of infinity is revealed to me, although it is revealed in every detail. In every detail, but in a very, very limited way. Limited, but equally present in all those details.

And if the smallest degree of infinity is revealed to me, then it will be revealed in all the details that exist in infinity. However, in my eyes it will appear so unclear that it will seem very small, very vague, but infinite to me.

Therefore questions will arise throughout the entire path up to the final goal, even at the smallest degree.
[360481]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/16/26, Rabash, “What Is, ‘Return, O Israel, Unto the Lord Your God,’ in the Work?”

Related Material:
Hiding the Secrets of the Torah
Secrets Of The Torah
From the Flavors of the Torah to the Secrets of the Torah

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

You cannot make happiness out of unhappiness. From unhappiness, you should only understand that you need to attain happiness.

Question: So, are you saying that all that is required of us is simply the effort to attain happiness?

Answer: Yes!

Question: Just the effort? To build this state of happiness and try to attain it?

Answer: Yes.

Question: I have a somewhat cautious question. The utopians once aspired to this. What is the difference between what you are proposing and what those utopians proposed? The City of the Sun, for example?

Answer: The utopians did not base their ideas on nature, the real nature in which we exist.

Question: What do you mean by nature?

Answer: The egoism in which we exist. They believed that you could simply take it and raise it, want to change it, and make this happen.

Question: Just take a person and place him in the City of the Sun?

Answer: But you have to actually create that City of the Sun yourself! It does not just grow out of our fantasies.

Question: And when you say that we need to imagine happiness, what stages do we need to go through to do this?

Answer: I mean that, standing on the foundation of all the suffering that exists, relying on it, we must realize that the only way to create something opposite to it is to change our relationships with one another. Therefore, we need to take care of our education: personal, social, group, and family, education at every level.

Question: Is this what you call “building a happy society”?

Answer: Of course. It depends solely on people’s attitude toward one another, and on nothing else.

Comment: Stones, technologies—all of that…

My Response: No, none of those matter.

Question: To sum it up, you are saying that if I am currently suffering, in pain, and at a dead end, then in order to get out of it, I need to picture, to imagine…?

Answer: The opposite state. The cause of suffering lies in my own “self,” in the fact that we are opposite to one another, that we hate, that we do not love, repel one another, and seek to profit from one another. If we want happiness, we must free ourselves from personal self-interest and, instead, raise the interest of society as a whole.

Comment: So I should wish happiness for another person, and then I myself…

Answer: For everyone!

Comment: Even for everyone. And then it will, as it were, return to me as the same happiness.

My Response: Yes. I myself will exist within all of this.
[359991]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman,” 7/30/26

Related Material:
How to Sculpt Your Happiness
Changing Your Attitude Toward The World
Who Will Mold Happiness For Us?

Filed under: Happiness, News | Add Comment / Ask Question →

Question: It is written that a person should sell everything he owns and marry a daughter of a sage. Why must one marry the daughter of a wise man?

Answer: The “wise man” or “sage” is the Creator. One who studies His wisdom is called a “disciple of the sage.” The vessel, the desire for this, is called the “daughter of the wise disciple.”

We have a desire to receive. In its corrected sate it is called “male” and “woman” in the uncorrected form. There are various designations, but by marrying the daughter of a wise disciple, i.e., acquiring the desire to receive and correcting it into an intention for the sake of giving, in an effort to become a disciple of the wise, with the help of this desire, a person comes to work for the Creator, to become like the Creator.

Question: What is this special Kli of a wise disciples daughter? After all, every vessel is a desire to receive.

Answer: Indeed, in the end, all desires will turn into proper vessels to the degree they are corrected. However, this is not yet so during the process of correction. During the process of correction, there are many desires that a person must conceal one should not to work with all them, but rather filter out the few that can be brought to an intention for the sake of bestowal, to work for the Creator.

Question: When does it start? Once people come to “religion,” that is, to the right intention?

Answer: Before a person became “religious,” a material desire to receive already formed within them. What I mean is that before a person began to correct himself, he was already walking in the middle line (Daat, Tifferet, and Yesod), yet his desire to receive was aimed at himself with the intention to receive. When he starts working for the sake of givinbestowing, he brings everything in line with this intention and screen, which is called becoming “religious.”

Then a different kind of work begins: a person filters out his desires, selecting the right ones he can work with. Some desires are impossible to work with at all; for example, the stony heart (Lev Ha Even), the prohibitive commandments speak about it.

A person takes the desires he can work with, according to the extent and form it is possible and how they can be combined, and begins to refocus them on the intention for the sake of giving. This is how he builds his middle line.
[360292]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/12/26, Rabash, “One Should Always Sell Everything He Has and Marry a Wise Disciple’s Daughter”

Related Material:
“A Wise Disciple’s Daughter”
A Woman Is A Cup Of Blessing
The Priest’s Wife

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

Question: Why did a person have more strength for giving before they came to “religion,” that is, before they acquired the right intention?

Answer: When the desire to receive is revealed to a person in the ordinary way, as it happens with everyone, the person sees that in one part of this desire they can receive, and in another part give.

In some cases, I derive pleasure from giving, and in others from receiving. In each person, these qualities are mixed in their own way; based on these we can tell whether a person is good or bad, whether their actions are wonderful or repulsive. However, all of a person’s desires, both giving and receiving, are directed toward their own benefit.

When a person begins to compare themselves with the true properties of bestowing, which are devoid of any intention for self-benefit, they evaluate everything very differently. Then, both acts of receiving and giving appear to one as essentially the same from the start, for they all serve the single intention: to receive. Consequently, they are all flawed. The person sees a twofold evil in themselves.

First, he previously thought receiving was normal and natural; now he realizes it is bad. Secondly, in the past, when he gave, he thought he was performing good deeds, he had motivation and a sense of self-importance; he felt like a worthy human being.

Indeed, we derive pleasure from giving; it boosts our self‑esteem, feeds our pride, and so on. Even the lowest, most terrible person experiences such feelings; it seems to them that they are giving up something for the sake of others. Now, however, he sees that what he deemed to be to his merit—acts of giving or expressions of his own humanity, was also for the sake of receiving something in return. Thus, a person becomes a villain twice over in their own eyes.

They feel that all their actions are bad, awful, and the urge to give something to someone feels even worse, which plunges a person into despair. Furthermore, beyond the all-encompassing intention to receive, even stronger desires are revealed to them. The person suddenly realizes they do not care about anything: let their children perish, let the whole world disappear, it makes no difference. Their ego is so locked within itself that it takes nothing outside the boundaries of his own body into account.

Then the desire to receive presents an even grimmer picture: they do not care about anything outside themself nor about what will happen a moment later. Let me perish in a second, I am alive until the next second and that is enough. The desire to receive focuses so intensely on this particular point—the present moment and only within itself—that this point becomes its absolute limit. A limit in both time and space.

Therefore, we reveal not how great our desire to receive is, but the extent to which it is locked within itself. It is endlessly absorbed in itself, indifferent to everything else! It is immense precisely because of this terrible quality of inwardly directed self‑sufficiency.

Then a person finds themselves in a state where they do not know how to escape this condition. They feel very bad. If they had simply acknowledged this within themselves without the accompanying realization of its nature, they would not feel anything negative; they would accept that is just how I am. We see that many people in the world commit terrible things, and they even feel better than those who seem to be doing good.

The problem is that when a person is about to “return to religion,” i.e., to acquire a middle line, to work in Daat, Tiferet, and Yesod, they see themselves as bad in relation to the surrounding light. They become split, experiencing a terrible feeling from comparing themselves to the standard, to the properties of the surrounding light. They simply go crazy; such moments are so intense. This is the beginning of the recognition of evil.
[360297]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/12/26, Rabash, “One Should Always Sell Everything He Has and Marry a Wise Disciple’s Daughter”

Related Material:
Look at Corporeality Through Spirituality
Both in the Particular and the General
Movement toward the Recognition of Evil

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

Comment: Rabash writes a lot about the different states a person goes through.

My Response: When you read or listen to articles or read my books, you cannot determine how it will affect you; you cannot determine the direction of your thoughts. And why would you? You just have to accept it, listen to it, pass it through yourself like through a grinder, and that is it. It enters through your ears, but what it does there is not important. It does not matter at all! It is not your job to determine how this should work.

This is exactly what I was asked online: “How does one attain a particular property?”

I wrote: “How can a person determine which property they should attain? How do you know you are meant to reach that point? Perhaps your turn to reach it won’t come for another year? In the meantime, you have to go through other things. Do you know your soul’s structure? Do you know what you should be thinking right now? You only obligation is: “What is in your power to do, do.” You attract the light onto yourself and it acts on your structure.

Chemists know that a large molecule has billions of parts, and they are all interconnected. In the spiritual molecule, everyone is connected to everyone. In material life, this presents a problem. However, in the material world, we want to simplify everything. But each has its own character within the same structure: one is bigger, the other is smaller, and the connections between things change.

The structure is the same, but each part has different mass, and each connects to the others in its own way. It is like us all having the same skeleton, but the difference is between the inner parts, inside the bones.

So how can I, in such a complex system where I do not feel or know, or can barely hear anything at first, determine what is more or less corrected in me? What nonsense!

So what can I do? I can only bring a powerful light, and the more it shines on this large molecule, the more it will develop. I can only increase this light’s glow with the help of the science of Kabbalah. That is it! There is nothing else we can do here. We can only intensify the light shining on the structure of the soul. Adding a bit more and more effort.

You start thinking and comparing things because you work with your head and your heart. But your work is already the result of how the surrounding light has affected you and prepared your head and heart for work. There is no way for you to have done it first.

But if you want the light to do something faster next time, by all means. This acceleration may not be so pleasant: falling, flying off, getting up. But you cannot escape this; you can only accelerate your development. When you act in this development, your attitude toward it brings you a different sense of development. That is, even bad things seem good to you. You perceive them as such because they appear to your senses in a good way.
[360239]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/10/26, Rabash, “What Is the Gift that a Person Asks of the Creator?”

Related Material:
How to Accelerate Development
The Advantage of the Accelerated Path
Hastening Our Spiritual Development

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

Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 247

Why Is It Said That We Should Ask for the Revelation of the Creator, and That Through This the Recognition of Evil Will Come?

It is constantly said that we should ask for the revelation of the Creator, for the importance of the Creator, for the greatness of the Lord, and that from this the recognition of evil will come. But when we are immersed in evil, we cannot ask from within it for the greatness and importance of the Creator. We are incapable of doing so because we are immersed in evil. We can emerge from this evil if we look at it from the outside and recognize it as evil in relation to the Creator. The more we emerge from the evil, the more we can recognize how opposite that evil is to the Creator. How do we emerge from the evil? By bringing our “I” closer to the Creator while our body remains where it is.

We begin to see how far we are from the Creator when we rise above the body toward the Creator, from the point of the “I,” the point of awareness. It is as though a certain point emerges from within us, from our body and from this pain, a point called “the point of our awareness,” and it draws closer to the Creator. As it draws closer to the Creator, it can already observe the body and see how far it is from the Creator, according to the extent that it feels the body’s distance from Him. It cannot measure how far away the Creator is. It can only measure how far the body is from the place from which that point emerged.

Related Material:
Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 246
Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 245
Talks about the Steps of the Ladder, Part 244

Filed under: Talks about the Steps of the Ladder | Add Comment / Ask Question →

Preparation to the Lesson

Video: Play Now | Download

Audio: Play Now | Download

1st part of the Lesson — Sukkot 2003, Hoshana Rabbah (10.16.2003)

Video: Play Now | Download

Audio: Play Now | Download

2nd part of the Lesson — Hoshana Rabbah

Video: Play Now | Download

Audio: Play Now | Download

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

Listen to an Audio Version of the Blog
Download:MP3AudioAudio

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

Comment: We say that the group is the most significant factor that drives a person forward.

My Response: The group gives a person an understanding of many different things, both positive and negative. Perhaps you are asking whether I can buy friends with money.

Let us say that I am a rich and have a lot of money. Then I can buy ten, or even better, a million people who will constantly tell me about the importance of the goal.

Will this work or not? Yes, it will. After all, right now I am in my desire to receive, in a state of animalistic urgency, and that is what gets impressed by what it hears and sees. If I could buy a million people with money, people who would tell me about the importance of working for the Creator, and perform in front of me as if they were one with the Creator, and so on…

That is, I direct a grand production, and I immerse myself in the action. And even though I myself paid for it and gave the order to act, and I know that all the actors are acting for the sake of earning money (the desire to receive), nevertheless, a minute later I am already under their influence. They give me strength, impressions, and elevation, and I advance and gain spiritual value. And they receive their salary.

This is because I must be under their influence, based on my desire to receive. And there is nothing wrong with this desire. It receives from this impression. This is exactly what we demand from the group. Otherwise, I will need a different kind of society, people like Rabbi Shimon, Baal HaSulam, and others like them.

And here they say: “No, be in a group with ordinary people just like you, people who just want to move toward their goal, and make efforts in the game together.”
[359958]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/24/26, Rabash, “What ‘Israel Do the Creator’s Will’ Means in the Work”

Related Material:
Start Playing!
The Most Important Game
Playing For The New Truth

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

Question: What does it meant when it is written about the notion of sin?

Answer: Sin or transgression is when a person uses his desire to receive in order to receive. A person is given some pleasure, but cannot overcome it. It could be a pleasure in something that is a transgression, and yielding to it.

So, it is written, “He committed a transgression and repeated it, it became something permitted to him.” What does “permitted” mean? It means the person has already descended to this degree where this sin is, and he is there.

This could happen not only toward the Mitzvot of “You shall not do,” but also towards the Mitzvot that “You shall do.” Let’s say you are in a state where you put on the Tefillin every day, and one day you receive a state of such laziness and indifference, such a descent that you cannot put Tefillin on. So, you do not do it one day. The second day you also do not do it. Then you have descended to the degree in which you are under the pleasure of the rest, where you are resting from not doing this work.

This could happen towards animalistic, beastly pleasures that are in this world. It can also be unrelated to pleasures, but rather as a result of laziness. Meaning, both, towards doing, where you should do and should benefit and also in relation to “do not do” and you will benefit.

Meaning, either you deter from good deeds, or you are going to go and do bad deeds. Both of them lead a person to descent if he does not overcome them.

If it happened for the first time, it is not necessarily considered that you committed a transgression, because the first time this obstacle comes from above. This is what happened to Adam when he first tasted the forbidden fruit from the Tree of Knowledge, and then a second time. We need to learn this example.

The first time, you are played with, and what needs to be done upon you from above is done. But the second time, what is demanded of you is preparation and ability to face the given situation and to balance your mind (Mocha) and heart (Liba).
[360031]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/4/26, Rabash, “The Klipa [Shell/Peel] that Precedes the Fruit”

Related Material:
Getting to Know One’s Kelim
Purification From Sin
Fulfill the Kelim

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