Question: You said that we get up, join the lesson, leave the lesson, and go home, and that all these things should be literally like chapters of the book that we are going through. What kind of book is this? How should we write it?

Answer: We must indeed write the book of our actions inside ourselves.

This is a book of a person’s intentions: how he draws closer to the Creator and achieves unity with Him.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/18/25, Writings of Baal HaSulam “Inheritance of the Land”

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Comment: You say that you are an ordinary person. But at the same time, you are prominent. Many people know you and many admire you.

My Response: But I hope they do not attribute this to me because I do not feel like that at all. In Kabbalah, the main actor is the Creator, not the one who represents Him. In some way, I am like His representative, but nothing more than that, let’s say a clerk, a representative of the office of the Creator.

So look at me, and I don’t think people will look at me closely for long. After all, through me (I would, of course, like it to be this way) they will be observing the one who stands behind me. I tell them about someone, not about myself; I show someone, not myself. I constantly direct them toward Him, and I step aside so that they can see Him, so to speak.

I am not an actor who exhibits himself: “Look how I am dressed! Look how I performed!” On the contrary! Maybe that is why I lack the sense of personal importance; I am always looking at the Creator and inviting you to do the same. We are always talking about Him!

Comment: But many people look at you with misty eyes, almost as if looking at God.

My Response: This is a temporary phenomenon. Every person has such a period when he is very “small” and looks at someone higher with deification. And then it passes.

At least with my behavior, my communication, and my external appearances, I try to erase the feeling of personal importance or exclusivity, and show that spirituality can be achieved by each and every one.
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From KabTV’s “I Got A Call. Important person” 6/28/10

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Comment: When a person is in a group, he relaxes and it seems to him that he has already achieved everything. But when he goes outside the group, for some reason he gets a lot more trepidation.

My Response: Naturally, because he is no longer in a safe place where the group supports him. He understands that he is internally arranged in the same way as others. This feeling of herd mentality is required by a person at any level.

Question: Which condition is more important for a person?

Answer: To feel that you are in a group and at the same time outside of it and you need to constantly enter it. That’s the best part.

Comment: But you said that it’s better when a person feels worse than others. Everyone is organized, everyone is working great, but he does not measure up to them.

My Response: Everyone should have a subjective feeling that I’m worse than the others, all the others are in spiritual greatness, the whole group is a system of infinity and perfection, and I’m in it like some kind of underdeveloped organ that happened to be in it, and I have to quickly correct myself, and connect with everyone else.

I need to curry favor with my friends so that they don’t throw me out; I must please them in every possible way so that they accept me as one of their own. Moreover, I do it consciously. I’m really trying, I want and need to feel that way.

Comment: But it is impossible for a person to exist like this for a long time.

My Response: Why? Constantly. At the same time, he feels his perfection, perfection not at the expense of himself, but due to the fact that he belongs to the group, due to its greatness.

Question: When does a person begin to feel that they are in safe hands?

Answer: Only by annulling himself and dissolving into his friends does he feel that he is in safe hands and feels great on the account of the group, because he was able to annul himself before it. That is, we constantly have two opposite feelings in our spiritual state, when one determines the other.
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From KabTV’s “I Got A Call, The Greatness of the Group” 6/19/10

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Comment: It seems to me that you have a different attitude toward those you studied with and your students.

My Response: A student is a student. And with those with whom I studied with Rabash, we were more equal, even though there was no friendship between us. Unlike the others, I was always exclusively next to Rabash.

Of course, I treated them somehow differently, but I neither exalted nor belittled them. They knew something, but unfortunately, they did not implement it. That’s why I distanced myself from them without getting closer.

I am much closer to my students than to those who once studied with Rabash. I treat my students much better, with love.

Question: But couldn’t this be detrimental to the students? Or are you simply distancing yourself from them?

Answer: I am not distancing myself from anything. My work is my life, my world, I live within myself. I believe I should behave this way. Why should I act differently?

If you saw Rabash, he never embraced anyone. It was very rare to see him even shaking hands with his students or close ones. If a stranger approached him, of course, he would greet them with the usual human courtesy. But with the closed ones, he was absolutely ordinary. Moreover, with his students he was quite strict, even somewhat dry.

I subconsciously copy him in many ways, it happens involuntarily.

Question: And whom did he copy?

Answer: I don’t know if he copied anyone. In principle, the internal and spiritual qualities that form within you shape the way you relate to others in a certain way. You must behave this way and not otherwise because your inner traits hold you within these boundaries.

I don’t think I behave arrogantly. I just have my inner life, and I live in it. Externally, I act as I deem necessary for my spiritual existence. Basically, everything I do sets the goal, from pleasant to maybe outwardly unpleasant actions.
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From KabTV’s “I Got A Call, Teacher and Student” 6/25/10

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Question: What is the root of the dissemination of the wisdom of Kabbalah?

Answer: The connection of souls! After they were shattered and torn apart by mutual egoism, they must reunite. This is the Lego we need to assemble in order to attain the Creator who created this single soul.

Question: Why do other religious denominations also seek to disseminate their knowledge?

Answer: Every movement wants to expand, to be strong, influential, and powerful, and to absorb all the others. This is the natural egoistic desire of any teaching.

Question: How does Kabbalistic teaching differ from the egoistic expansion you just described?

Answer: The difference is that we do not specifically recruit anyone. We don’t need to! We only want a person to discover their purpose, how they can make their life good, even eternal and perfect. That’s all.

And how should they identify themselves? Not at all! They do not need to be called Jewish, Christian, Muslim, or a follower of anything. They will simply be kind and loving toward everyone.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Soul Connection” 4/19/10

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Preparation to the Lesson

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1st part of the Lesson — Writings of Rabash, Article 19, “Come Unto Pharaoh – 1”

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2nd part of the Lesson — Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Study of the Ten Sefirot,” Vol. 1, Part 2, “Inner Observation,” Chapter 3, Item 30

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Question: During the recording of our conversations, we are constantly interrupted by people who come to you with various questions. How can we transform this situation into “There is none else besides Him”? What is the purpose of these disturbances?

Answer: First of all, there is nothing wrong with the fact that every twenty or thirty minutes, someone inevitably comes to me for advice or with a question. I don’t see anything unusual about it. Everything flows naturally, in a steady rhythm.

Secondly, it gives me the opportunity to take a step back and look at the topic from a different angle, whether it should be continued or not. I accept everything as necessary for further development. Why criticize everything? Everything has its place in the world, even the worst things. Everything needs correction, not destruction.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. When the Creator is Revealed” 5/4/10

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We constantly forget that there is none else besides the Creator. This is done intentionally by the Creator, the one who governs everything. He changes the pictures that appear before us, and we forget that all of this is an imaginary world. It is called an imaginary world because it conceals the Creator from us.

The Creator hides behind the world we see around us. The inanimate, plant, and animal nature, and people, and a person himself with his inner world—all conceal the Creator from people. We must not forget this. And therein lies the problem. As Baal HaSulam writes, the greatest punishment for a person is when he disconnects from the Creator, i.e., the Creator Himself disconnects him, because the person does nothing on his own.

Therefore all our work consists of constantly remembering that there are the Creator and the person, and between them is this picture of the imaginary world. A person should not erase this picture, but should relate it to the Creator. The Creator creates all these images before him, and the person must forcefully connect them to Him. The Creator does this so that the person can transform all these forms of concealment into revelations, and nothing more.

We have no other work. In all our lives, in everything that exists, we must turn concealment, when the world hides the Creator from me, into revelation. This concealment comes only from the Creator, and I must relate all these images to Him.

The inanimate, vegetative, and animate nature, and especially humans are all just puppets, marionettes, various images that have no freewill in relation to me, and they have no independent reality.

In the end, they are all just a wrapper in which the Creator is wrapped so that I may reveal Him precisely through it. If I manage to penetrate through this wrapper, to each time relate it to Him, to understand that it is Him who is playing with me, and it is Him who is doing all this, then this wrapper transforms from concealment into revelation.

We must constantly hold on to this and strengthen each other in such perception of reality. This is our main work. And then we will see that we are already directly working with the Creator, always trying to reveal “There is none else besides Him” and “The good who does good” in every obstacle He places between Himself and us.

We need to constantly live with this picture, with this perception, with the reality, we envision. And our work must always be in this direction. The pictures of the world should not enslave us and play with us so that we follow them. On the contrary, we always focus on the Creator, and the pictures of the world serve only to strengthen the connection between us and Him.

This is both a person’s individual work and his work through the group. The individual work is preparatory, and the work through the group is truly blessed; there, responsibility and mutual support are required.

Because after a person tries to recognize the Creator behind every obstacle, he encounters such diverse and complex obstacles that only with the help of the group does he acquire the correct approach to the Creator, who is within it. Then he begins to build within the group a system that reveals the Creator as acting in diverse forms on all the qualities, feelings, mind, and heart of the person.

There is a difference in “There is none else besides Him” in relation to an individual and in relation to a group. At the lower level, personal revelation is possible for an individual, but at the main levels, a person already feels that he needs the group, and it is the instrument through which he reveals the Creator in all His manifestations, i.e., in the ten Sefirot.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Purim

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Question: What actions should the clarification of truth and lies lead me to?

Answer: Figuring out the truth and lie leads me to the only action—annulling myself before the upper. After all, the truth is in the upper, while in me, given that I am the lowest, it is always a lie. To reveal the upper, I must accept Him by faith above reason. All the conditions the upper gives me, I must recognize as the truth, and all my inner impulses as lies.

It turns out I want to come out of myself and stick to the upper, to receive His values and try to follow them according to His mind. It is like a child who wants to use his father’s mind, and due to this, he grows up, acquiring the mind of an adult.

Due to our annulment before the upper, we gain additional opportunities. This is not how it works in our world. If I annul myself before you in this world, it means I give up one of my opinions and accept yours because I consider you to be more intelligent, cultured, educated, or a better scientist. I am annulling myself on a specific issue so I can learn from you.

But in the spiritual world, I have to annul myself before the upper in everything, so that nothing of my own remains in me. Not even like a child before adults, but much more. I need to annul myself as if I do not exist at all: annulment in thoughts and feelings. But I do it rationally and with great wisdom. Special psychological work is required here. I examine myself and observe how I annul myself before the upper to clothe in Him and adopt His state.

This form of annulling myself before the upper allows me to rise to His level. First, there is my complete self-annulment before the upper, which is called the “embryo” (Ibur). Then, there is an even greater self-annulment, which is called feeding (Yenika). And then, even greater self-annulment, called adulthood (Mochin).

Initially, it is a very simple self-annulment, although it is not easy for us to resolve ourselves. I annul myself as if I simply do not exist and turn into a single point, a drop of seed in the womb of the upper. This is just the beginning of my self-annulment. But then, to master this degree, I need to take all my previous thoughts and desires and transform them to match the upper.

They will always be the opposite because Malchut of the upper has turned into Keter of the lower; therefore, the dregs of the upper were food for me—sweetness and truth. What was garbage at the upper level (in Malchut of the upper), waste I did not want to use, turned into food, sweetness, and truth for the lower.

If I want to do other work, I have to turn all the bitterness I feel now into sweetness, and everything I thought was sweet should become bitter at the degree of the upper. All my truth, when transferred to the level of the upper, must turn into a lie, and all my lies must become the truth of the upper. This means that Malchut of the upper turns into Keter of the lower. If I want to rise, I have to do the inverse work.

But first, I just annul myself without figuring out where the truth or lie is. No matter what happens, all I care about is annulling myself before the upper as if I do not exist, and turn into a point, a drop of seed. But then I start analyzing myself and turn bitterness into sweetness and lies into truth, and so I climb the degrees.

In the nine months of embryo development, I am constantly growing due to the fact that I am annulling myself more and more, turning all my lies into truth, all the bitter tastes of giving into sweetness. It is a vast and continuous work to transform yourself into your opposite in all your desires and thoughts, turning them all to giving, bestowal, and feeling the sweetness in all this.

Clearly, this change occurs due to the light coming to me. But I must constantly annul myself at an ever higher level for the light to work on me. The light that comes to me during these 9 months of growth of the embryo is called “blood” (Dam), from the word “inanimate” (Domem), which gradually corrects me. Then, I go through the stage of “feeding” and become an “adult.”

The whole ascent from the lower to the upper consists of the work of self-annulment. Therefore, through disseminating this knowledge and reaching out to the general public, we realize our self-annulment. After all, by annulling ourselves before the people, before this world, by serving it, we annul ourselves before the Creator in it. Because it was the Creator who placed this whole world before us.
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From Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/30/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam “The Scrutiny of Bitter and Sweet, True and False”

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