We are beginning to be disappointed by modern science. No matter how many discoveries science has made, ultimately we discover that we are not supported by it.

Science has given us a multitude of medicines, but on the other hand, medicine has become a global industry that doesn’t always set the healing of the sick as its goal.

Science has made it possible for us to produce an abundance of food, but in spite of all this, half of the world is malnourished.

Science has created a whole army of machines that are ready to replace a person in just about all areas of life, but millions of miserable people are forced to invest hours at work, sometimes for pennies, and the unemployed, in contrast, are left lacking everything and are gradually drop out of life.

We are not okay. In fact, all of the current achievements are concluding some kind of historical cycle. And today, at the beginning of the 21^st century, it will become clear that this cycle was only so that we would discover and understand that it is not through science, technology, nor the modern philosophy of life that we reach a good and successful life.

I have no chance for a good life, and most importantly, we stop looking sanctimoniously at our own end. But` I don’t just want to disappear at the end of my life, rather I would like to discover eternal life for myself. But no. The best that I can do is to be less distressed at the current moment, using different “bait.” That is all of our lives.

Today humanity is doing some soul-searching: Why is all of this here and for what? And so the time has arrived to reveal the wisdom of Kabbalah. After all, only knowledge of the general system, and only this science that speaks about the general plan and about the method for realizing it, only this wisdom is truly worthwhile. And without the wisdom of Kabbalah, we will not find the real answer to any question.

Scrutiny of the way through which we have gone brings us to this. Since Adam, 5,774 years have passed. The human species has existed for hundreds of thousands of years. And what’s next? What have we attained with our human development? Have people become happier, more secure? Are we living a better life in this world? Do we know at all what we are living for, or do we simply exist to hold onto this beastly biological life, so that the body will suffer less?

How miserable a person is under the dominance of his “beast,” under his corporeal needs, serving them all the time: Now I let it lie down to sleep, now I feed it, now I wash it, and so on. This means that throughout all his life he is concerned about his “beast,” which in spite of it all, will finally die.

Is this what we are living for? Are all of our wisdoms and personal resources going to this? Is the Adam (man) in me living for this, to placate the “beast?”

And so now, a person has the opportunity to discover the wisdom of Kabbalah, and then he will understand what he has acquired.
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From the 5^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/18/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Israel is at war. There has never been such war before. For the first time, rockets of Israel-haters almost cover our whole country. Today in the firing range are five million Israelis. Previously, Israel was divided into climatic zones; but today, minutes and seconds were added into this division. It’s the time allotted to us and to our children to hide from incoming missiles.

We are fighting and we will be fighting until we win, but that is not the reason. Hatred motivates our enemy: How can we overcome it? We supply them with food, electricity, treat their wounded and we exchange the body of our soldiers for hundreds of live terrorists. We agree to a “humanitarian” ceasefire. And what do we get in return? Only hatred and anger.

And if it were just our neighbors. What about the internal enemies? Riots in Jerusalem, as well as the demonstrations in Judea and Samaria last week, are vivid examples.

How does the world respond to what is happening? Brazil and Ecuador are withdrawing their ambassadors. Anti-Israel demonstrations are taking place in  Germany, France, England, Italy, and other countries. They unanimously require that we get out of Gaza. In other words, they want us to not interfere with Hamas who are digging tunnels and firing rockets at us.

The whole world, not saying a word, is united against us, and us: “Where is our unity!?”

When missiles are falling on Tel Aviv, some of our people go to the streets with demonstrations against our combat with Hamas. When rioters in Paris burn shops of French Jews, American Jews protest in Manhattan with signs “Boycott Israeli Apartheid.”

HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF

History repeats itself in a horrible way. Haters of Jews are united among themselves, and the Jews are either passive, or, on the contrary, show examples of self-destructive indifference.

Before the looming Holocaust, the eminent Kabbalist of the 20^th century, Baal HaSulam asked, even begged, the Jewish people to unite, but no one listened to him. Here is what he wrote in the editorial of the first and, at the same time, last issue of HaUma (The Nation) published on June 5, 1940:

If we don’t hope for a miracle, it becomes clear that our existence—both individually and as a nation—is teetering on the scales of life and death.

If we lose time and do not rise together as one man in order to apply tremendous effort needed in the hour of danger, saving for ourselves the remaining part of Israel, then the events, happening now, will turn rampant, as the situation unfolds according to the will of our enemies, who intend to wipe us from the face of Earth.

It is also clear that the enormous efforts on the path, which lies before us and containing abundant obstacles, will require unity, firm and unbreakable as steel, of every part of our people without exception.

HOW TO UNITE

Unfortunately, few people know that Kabbalah is primarily a method of unity. Throughout history, Kabbalists united people, but there were always external and more often, internal forces that prevented this. When the idea of unity prevailed among the nation, it won, and when the nation was torn by internal contradictions, its enemies defeated it.

Today, Kabbalists are again make every effort to unite the people of Israel, and the best opportunity to experience the real power of unity are in the discussion circles that are held across the country.

With the help of the Kabbalistic method of unity, it is possible to overcome any barrier: mentality, origin, age, political views, or any other. Common efforts can overcome rejection, disagreement, and misunderstanding. We are all different, but we can become “as one man with one heart!”
Our website: http://www.kabbalah.info/
Our phone: 1-700-509-209 [Israel]
For Yes and No – Free Channel 66  [Israel]
From Sunday to Monday – 18:00-20:00: special reports dedicated to the operation “Indestructible Rock.”
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Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to The Study of the Ten Sefirot“, Item 119: This is also why the great privilege, when one is awarded sentencing himself to a scale of merit, is still not enough for one to attain whole love, meaning the fourth discernment. This is so because now he does not attain His merit as being good who does good to the good and to the bad, but only His Providence over him.

Yet, he still does not know of His Providence in this sublime and wonderful manner with the rest of the people in the world. Thus, we learned above that as long as one does not know the dealings of the loved one with others, until none of them is missing, the love is still not eternal. Hence, one must also sentence the entire world to a scale of merit, and only then does the eternal love appear to him.

On the way to complete adhesion and attaining the goal of creation, we attain all our deficiencies and all of the Creator’s actions on us during the whole process we have been through when the upper Providence was concealed. Then a person sees how in all the stages, in everything he has been through, the Creator was good and benevolent to him in absolute love.

As a result, a person feels that he loves the Creator back. But this isn’t enough, since he also has to work on the future, so that he will keep the same attitude. This means that he has to develop vessels inside himself that are called faith and confidence, so that in every stage in the future he will not lose faith in the Creator’s love for him.

Even this is not enough in order to determine that the Creator is good and benevolent, since it is all true only with regard to a person himself, and now he has to determine the same thing in regard to everyone else.

This means that at the end of correction, he attains everyone’s end of correction, and from this point he sees the whole human history and the entire path all the souls have gone through in the process of their correction.

These separate souls discover the connections between them above the sea of hatred in which they are immersed that separates them and keeps them apart. Through these connections of love, they feel how the sea of the ego separates them, and thus discover that the Creator constantly takes care of them in the best possible way, and that all the sufferings, the blows, and the problems that they have been through during all of human history and the ascent of the souls through all the worlds until the world of Ein Sof (infinity) were all out of the Creator’s great love.

When a person ascends the spiritual ladder, he becomes detached from his ego as he ascends, and then he sees that it was only in the ego that he felt the afflictions. If it weren’t for the ego and the desire to receive for himself at the expense of others, he would always feel only the love and great care of the Creator for him.

This means that he sees and understands that all the negative feelings don’t come from the Creator, but rather stem from his connection to his egoistic desires. Thus he determines that he is in contact, in a covenant with the good and the benevolent, and that this connection, this covenant, is full of love.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/18/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Question: What is “Judgment and Mercy” in spirituality? What does it have in common with regular morality?

Answer: Baal HaSulam writes that many people think that the Torah speaks about morality, but in fact it is a huge and unfortunate misinterpretation.

Morality is based on life experience. A person accumulates essential knowledge from various life situations. But the science of Kabbalah is not associated with our bodily life experiences. We follow the advice of Kabbalists who pull us “by the ear” into the upper reality, where ear refers to the level of Bina (bestowal). In other words, I don’t learn from my ordinary life; on the contrary, I rise above its experience!

In this world, all I deal with is my egoism. I give advice that is based on my ego and serves to benefit it. We warn a child not to get close to an angry dog or he’ll bite. All I am capable of is differentiating things that are good or bad for me; and that’s all that morality does.

But the wisdom of Kabbalah doesn’t operate out of fright and punishment. It teaches us to change our desires and expose them to the Light.

In other words, it teaches us how to internally correct ourselves, rather than reprimanding or scaring us.It doesn’t threaten us with an “angry dog” or an “abusive” Creator.

Kabbalah doesn’t intimidate us, nor does it guarantee any reward in the future worlds. It doesn’t manipulate our egoism; rather it corrects it with the Light that Reforms.

The combination of judgment and mercy in spirituality is a mix of Bina (bestowal) and Malchut (reception), a degree of inclusion of Bina into Malchut and vice versa, as well as their ability to support each other.

Malchut enters Bina and a drop of judgment penetrates mercy and lessens it. In other words, Malchut’s inability to match Bina triggers a contraction of the latter, but at the same time it discloses Bina to a degree of Malchut’s adequacy to it.

Hence, inclusion of Bina into Malchut occurs and Bina brings a portion of mercy into Malchut. At this point, Malchut enters Bina and contributes a portion of judgment into the latter thus defining how much Bina allows Malchut to bestow and receive and identifies the degree of their connection.

It means that when a measure of mercy connects with a portion of judgment, they start working together from both ends. The upper part contracts and utilizes a portion of judgment, although it would prefer to reveal itself through exposing mercy.

The lower part strives to attain a measure of mercy, which is why it contributes a property of judgment to the upper part and pronounces: “Don’t bestow to me! I will shut you down!”

Or it says: “You can reveal yourself completely! I won’t receive anything from you anyway. I will use my screen and will receive from you only to the extent of my similarity to you!”

This has nothing to do with threats or morality. On the contrary, it is about absolute liberty of exploration and the only freedom of will there is.
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From the lesson on “Beit Shaar a Kavanot” 10/21/10

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Baal HaSulam newspaper, “The Nation”: In that sense, we are like a pile of nuts, united into a single body from the outside by the sack that envelops and unites them. Their measure of unity does not make them a united body, and each movement applied to the sack produces in them tumult and separation. Thus, they consistently arrive at new unions and partial aggregations. The fault is that they lack the inner unity, and their whole force of unity comes through an outside incident. To us, this is very painful to the heart.

Someone who supposes that we can unite the people and build a nation according to the usual pattern is greatly mistaken. Without understanding our nature, he thinks that we can act like other peoples who go back home after a forced expulsion, such as in the days of Stalin. The people who were expelled returned and re-organized their lives. But we have not succeeded in doing this because we have lost our original roots. We were once united and were brothers to each other, not brothers in misfortune like today, but brothers in mutual bestowal. Abraham initially gathered people from all corners of Babylon who were ready to go toward connection with him, unlike the rest of humanity.

This unity that Abraham gave was reinforced at Mount Sinai when the people who fled from Egypt became as one man with one heart and received the Torah. But later the connection was broken and the love became unfounded hatred; as a result of this, we went into exile. This hatred passed in part to the nations of the world as well.

As of today, we are not ready to be reborn as a people and a nation without reaching a correction of each one separately and a collective correction between us. If we don’t reach this, then only an artificial “collection” of people who do not correspond to the higher laws of nature or the laws of the lower nature that operate here.

We are not ready to build something according to the laws of this world because we originally didn’t belong to this world, and we cannot be built according to the higher laws because we have not as yet connected to the higher level. Aa a result, we are not here nor there, not this way nor that way.

What is amazing is that we were always strangers and foreigners in this world. And the 66 years of the existence of the nation of Israel are not proof of anything. I am not asserting this for anti-Zionistic reasons but from the spiritual standpoint: We undoubtedly have lost the natural power of unity, which is inherent to all the rest of the peoples on a physical level.

For us it was a spiritual force that united us. So now we are not a people, and our current consolidation is not a nation until we understand and agree that we only have one simple constitution, which is, “And you shall love your friend as yourself,” Arvut (mutual guarantee), “as one man with one heart.” We have no other constitution. And if we maintain this condition, we can restore the people and the nation.

We must build our lives according to this constitution, for it isn’t just plucked out of the air. Rather it was received from above, and this is the difference between it and the beautiful words that can be found in the fundamental laws of every nation. Clearly this will not be immediate, but we must realize this law gradually, and bring a spiritual life on earth. And it is also up to us to be a “light to the nations” in its full meaning.

Yes, it’s hard work, but without it we will not succeed in anything. Otherwise we can be fellow sufferers at best, like nuts in a sack, and nothing better will happen with us.

This is the current situation, and it may continue for another number of years until one of two things will happen:. Either we will carry out the correction or we will not be able tolerate the situation any longer.
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From the 5^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/23/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Question: If it is necessary to apply the spiritual law of Arvut (mutual guarantee) twenty-four hours per day, why were we given this entire world with all of these concerns—work, family, and children—that take up 95% of our time?

Answer: Everything is arranged such that, from all these conditions, you will reach the realization of the goal. If it takes 95% of the time, then 5% of the time is probably enough for spiritual work.

Ninety-five percent (95%) of the time you must work in the material world, and 5% is left to you for inner work and dissemination. This means that you are under conditions where the Creator says, “I will take upon myself 95% of your spiritual work!” Instead, you go to work, the market, the bank, the family, and so forth, and all that comprises this 95% of your time will be considered as if you were engaged in spiritual work.

However, during the 5%, you must be involved with spiritual work with all your might. If you do that, then 100% of your life will be dedicated to attaining the spiritual goal and correction.
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From the 5^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/13/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Question: Baal HaSulam wrote in the newspaper The Nation about the threat of the Holocaust almost eighty years ago. Is our situation today better than it was then, or does it only seem that way to us since hatred and anti-Semitism have just kept going and growing everywhere?

Answer: The situation today is much worse than what it was before the Second World War. This is because the threatening situation that is being created today is everywhere and not just for one nation and some of its allies.

This was a small area in relation to the entire world, and the Jews could rely on the help of other people and nations. Today, there is nobody and nothing to rely upon. Even the United Nations, which is the representative of all the nations, is against Israel. So, we have nowhere to flee.

Besides this, the situation today is much worse than before because it was founded on and has grown on the basis of a general breakdown, the global crisis, in everything and in all aspects. Humanity is going to lose all rational direction and lose everything. When it finds itself in such a bad state, it will blame the Jews for all of its problems and failures. We hear about these accusations from everyone because the crisis is global.

This is such a terrible situation that in comparison Hitler will seem like a little child playing pranks in his backyard. The present Holocaust could spread around the entire globe.

Question: We see that many European nations who supported us before are now united with our enemies, and so we need to mobilize all of our forces, and it could be that we are doing this, but I don’t see true understanding among the public. Everyone is more concerned about money and property, and doesn’t want to hear us that much. How do we awaken people and explain that the situation today is similar to the situation that existed before the Holocaust?

Answer: Try to bring this to people. Baal HaSulam didn’t succeed, but we must succeed in doing this. He did everything possible, and he published a newspaper when everyone was afraid of saying a word. The haters broke his windows with stones many times.

We are facing dissemination operations that are broad and powerful in scope, but we must prepare ourselves for them by searching and finding points of contact with people and influential points both in Israel and the entire world. We are succeeding every day in making our explanations more accessible. It might also be worthwhile for us to publish a newspaper and distribute it both on the street and on the Internet.

It is necessary to try to do everything possible. I am looking at the future optimistically. I see the great rate with which we now have begun dissemination. The main thing is not to reduce the rate or pressure and to organize workshops in circles and  roundtables. Then we surely will succeed and can advance people towards the goal of creation more rapidly than the troubles that come at us and overtake us from behind.

If we advance even more rapidly, then these troubles will become helpful and will serve us as a support. In the beginning, we only run away from them, and after that, we completely turn them around. We yearn for a state of “bestowal for the sake of bestowal,” and after that, a state of “reception for the sake of bestowal,” and then we use the troubles and problems for our own good.
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From the 5^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/20/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Question: In 1940 Baal HaSulam wrote about the danger looming over us. But today we see that this danger is no longer in potential if we don’t connect, we see it in reality in our children being kidnapped (in Israel).

Answer: It depends on how you look at things. Most people don’t think this way and go on with their life as if nothing happened. They may be ready to participate in some actions for the kidnapped boys, and here too, it isn’t everyone. Everyone has very egoistic calculations, so in the meantime we are forced to advance along the path of suffering, along the path of in its time.

In order to switch from in its time to I shall hasten it, we need a powerful system of education so that people will understand that they can change things and gain something by it.

It has to be a wide system of clarification that includes the whole nation. It shouldn’t be a result of the sufferings, the blows, and the troubles. We should not wait for the moment that people will be ready to listen to us. We shouldn’t wait for the blows, but rather we want to reach them when they feel good and bring them to an even better state. We have to establish a gradual system of education that will increasingly influence people.

We are going through a difficult practical learning process with the public. We learn what people accept, what they don’t, how we should better approach them, how to talk to them, and what our message should actually be. Thus we teach ourselves how to learn from others.

Comment: It is scary to think about what may happen if we don’t manage to carry out our work and prevent the war of Armageddon that the prophets wrote about.

Answer: There is nothing to be scared of! If we do whatever we can and try to convey the method of correction to people and draw them to the goal of creation, it is enough. Even if we don’t see that we succeed, it still works. We open a passage for the surrounding Light (Ohr Makif) and allow it to reform everything.

It is like a baby who in one day advances in learning about the world much more than an adult may advance in a year. But a baby doesn’t understand that and acts unknowingly.

This is what happens to us. We act without understanding, trying one way or another, and it seems that we don’t succeed. But such states are actually the most beneficial for advancing. Thus we don’t create a barrier for the Light since we are too confused and this is actually a good thing!

Question: Can we prevent the war of Armageddon if we carry on this way?

Answer: We are already at war. If we continue to work this way and other parts of the nation join us in order to fulfill this mission, this goal, then there is no doubt that everything will be alright and things will quickly improve. I don’t foresee any disasters in that case.

But we have to try to stay ahead of the blows so they will not catch up with us. We have to run faster than the whip that is about to hit us. We are able to do this thanks to the importance of the goal, so that we will not have to escape the whip but will yearn forward because we value the connection and the goal.
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From the 5^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/19/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam 

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Question: You explained that through a connection between two, a third completely new thing is born, and those two things disappear. But why doesn’t this happen in our world? A father and mother produce a child together, but they continue to live along with the child.

Answer: Connection is not a link between physical bodies but a union of desires. The physical bodies don’t connect because it is possible to take gametes from a father and mother and make a child in vitro.

But this is not called connection; connection happens with desires. Each one works with his desire, and then from two opposite desires, a third is born that includes both of them within it.

Connection is a shared existence of both desires on a higher level. Concession and nullification of the self within the connection doesn’t cause harm, rather the opposite, it adds fulfillment and makes it possible to rise even higher.

The desire to receive itself doesn’t ever disappear; this is the substance of creation. In the meantime, we temporarily nullify those desires that cannot be used for the sake of bestowal. With the desires that can be used in order to bestow, we combine in such a way that they create a third body called Adam (man/human), which includes both male and female within it.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/08/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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The word “Klal” (collective/rule) indicates a sum of details that, when put together, form the above collective. Thus, when he says about the Mitzva, “love thy friend as thyself,” that it is a great Klal in the Torah, we must understand that the rest of the 612 Mitzvot (precepts) in the Torah, with all their interpretations, are no more and no less than the sum of the details inserted and contained in that single Mitzva (singular for Mitzvot), “love thy friend as thyself. (Baal HaSulam, “Matan Torah” –  “The Giving of the Torah”).

This means that the entire Torah is given in order to attain the general rule of loving our neighbors as ourselves. The rest that is written in the Torah except this one concept “Love thy neighbor as thyself” is just a clarification of this rule.

Everything is included in this one rule. That’s why when we forget this rule, no spiritual path is possible for us, nor are we connected with the spiritual process or continue pursuing the spiritual goals any longer. If we attempt encompassing this principle, we can even stop checking the level we are at or trying to find out where we actually are.

The whole Torah was given to us and is meant to help us to attain connection that is called love in our lives. There are two ways of doing it: One is by following a long road full of affliction that represents the natural developmental way, and the other is a pleasant shortcut that is ensured by the Torah. One way or the other,  the entire humanity, from the very beginning to the very end, is engaged in advancement that leads us to loving our neighbors.

If we understand and acknowledge that we are now just practicing and playing games, we follow a relatively easy and comfortable way of reaching the goal. Still, we’ll have to go through some troubles and problems, resolve and explore them so that we get a better feeling of their essence and origin. We will have to resolve various situations in our minds and sensations because this process lets us to better understand and feel things.

In order to make this path easier and more pleasant for us, there is the Torah with the help of which we reach the state of loving our neighbors. From this phase on, we eventually will come to loving the Creator. However, there is nothing we can achieve by just following the path of suffering. Everything depends on the awakening on our side.
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From the 5^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/14/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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