Question: What can I do if nothing helps me wake up and we are totally surrounded by indifference?

Answer: We should understand that even if I can’t wake up internally I can still act it externally, and thus I awaken the friends internally. If we speak about the Creator’s greatness, we will be ignited and awaken ourselves. That’s the way it is in every action. It would be enough to hire foreign actors to act before us their awe and excitement regarding the spiritual goal so that we would be impressed by it.

There is a story about a Kabbalist who lived in a remote village in Europe, who used to invite Klezmer street musicians to play for him. His wife used to yell at him for giving them the last pennies since they wouldn’t have enough for food, and he would answer he had to do it to revive his soul.

The wife wondered how he could be impressed by them. After all, he was such a great man, a respected Rabbi, and they were just drunk vagrants who would use the money to buy vodka and to get drunk. But he answered that it didn’t matter. They played for the money since they wanted to drink and he listened since he wanted to be spurred to the spiritual work.
So you too have to find friends who will play before you, even if it is for their self-benefit, as long as you will be impressed.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/14/12, Writings of Rabash

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In his article “Body and Soul,” Baal HaSulam explains a very common confusion about body and soul. The topic concerns everyone. What am “I” in this realm? What will happen to me after I die?

Animals do not worry about such things. They never have thoughts like that since they do not sense time outside their nature, nor do they ever rise above their nature, whereas on top of human sensations of life, there is an additional feeling of detachment that causes questions. What happens outside of this life?

In fact, we belong to eternity, and to the degree of our personal connectedness with eternality, we raise different kinds of questions. Our quest varies in intensity and strength, but everyone deals with these questions one way or another.

As a result of this quest, people have come up with multiple theories and concepts. There are several thousand religions, beliefs, customs, and so on that Baal HaSulam divides into the following categories:

• Some think that there is no soul whatsoever and that a body is a machine, a sack of chemical combinations, and that it is driven by electric impulses.
• Others think of a body as something that possesses a soul that enters a body at the time of birth and exits it at death.
• Some think that, even though a soul does exist, still a body can live without it. We know how to attach bodily parts that were torn apart and learned to implant new organs, sometimes even artificial ones. In the future, we possibly will create our own bodies from a set of body parts.

To make a long story short, people are very confused about this issue. Is there a soul or not? Is it inside or outside a body? No one knows the precise answer, nor does anyone have any scientific explanation of this matter.

Therefore, people chose theories according to their tastes. Numerous hypotheses were created during the last century that brought a lot of money to their authors. However, so far, none of those theories provide a true answer to the question since they do not disclose the topic in full.

Here, the wisdom of Kabbalah steps in. It divulges reality to its full capacity: the Creator, the soul, and so on—in other words, everything! Nothing is hidden from us here.

That’s why Kabbalah is called a “secret wisdom.” It studies things that are concealed from us and makes them obvious to those who study this science. Of course, one must invest lots of effort, but he will be rewarded according to his exertion. It’s a place where veracity can be discovered, although we should remember that revelation in Kabbalah is conditioned by internal changes of a student.

The wisdom of Kabbalah doesn’t deal with external activities such as rituals, amulets, or secret ceremonies. In a very accurate and clear way, it demands a person to change internally.

The demand is very rigid. Being controlled by our desires to receive, we always think to take care of ourselves. This makes us “egoistic animals.” Think about it, check it out, realize your evil inclination, and transform it into its opposite: the intention for the sake of bestowal. There is a special power that implements the correction when we work in the group.

One way or the other, the implementation of Kabbalah principles should be very clear and easy for everyone who wants to know them. The problem is, let’s say, in being lazy. Hence, there are not too many people who have managed to reveal the truth so far.

The wisdom of Kabbalah states that there is no soul that dwells in the body. There is a vessel of the soul that also is called the “body of the soul,” a desire to receive that is totally oriented toward bestowal. It is a corrected vessel for the soul, that is, for the Light that fills it according to the law of similarity of properties and which is called the “Light of the soul.”

Thus, if a person transforms himself into a vessel that receives the Light, then the Light enters him. Afterward, one obtains a soul that belongs to him and that reflects the level of the desires with which he has worked.

There are five levels of the Light of the soul: Nefesh, Ruach, Neshama, Haya, and Yechida. In general, a person must attain a big, common soul and recognize his spiritual attainment in everything around him.

As for material values, they disappear, cease to exist, since material sensors are imaginary. They were given to us temporarily so that we escape this reality and exit to spirituality.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/7/12, “Body and Soul”

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Question: How does the Returning Light expand Malchut?

Answer: The vessel of Malchut is a tiny grain in which there is nothing. It is the smallest desire, an elementary particle with Reshimot (informational gene) inside. It is like a lifeless seed that only has the hope to come to life and that’s all.

But when Malchut within this tiny grain, when the “microprocessor” begins to calculate how to react to the Creator, creating Returning Light in it, its reaction to the Creator, and in the Returning Light it begins to feel the Creator Himself. The Creator is revealed within this reaction.

Then this Returning Light, the attitude of the created being towards the Creator, together with the attitude of the Creator towards him, which is now revealed above this grain, returns into the grain and expands it. Thus Malchut expands, and not only does it expand, but also takes on the form of the Creator. This form is dressed in the attitude of the created being towards the Creator. The two forms that are dressed in the desire expand it and give the desire the form called adhesion.

So when a student wants to ask a question his own way and stay with it by getting an answer, it works well in an ordinary university where the professor lectures from the podium. You may or may not agree with his method of teaching, you may accept it or not accept it, but in studying the wisdom of Kabbalah it doesn’t work, because the teacher “formats” the student. The student takes on the form of the teacher, just as I received it from my teacher. This is the holy study.

You can agree to that or not, but you won’t advance unless you receive it from me, even though you don’t like it now and it seems bad and distorted to you. Everything you receive from me can only be in my form and it must be dressed in you. This is the nature of the spiritual world, and there is nothing we can do about it; one form is dressed in another. This is why I insist that my students ask questions my way.

It is the “formatting” of the soul; it is the mutual work of the teacher and the student with the upper help.
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From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/3/12, The Study of the Ten

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Question: Current studies show that the neurons in the brain become flexible when they connect. The “matter” remains the same, but the mutual connections in it change. Is it possible to draw an analogy between the “matter” of the brain and the “matter” of the desire to receive?

Answer: We will never be able to understand the way the brain operates by using the standard “corporeal” scientific tools. I suppose that scientists already understand this. The brain depends on its current state, and so the data in this field hardly allows researchers to arrive at any statistical rules, or to find some consistency. The brain isn’t just “a kilo and half of gray matter.” It constantly changes and although we classify the functions of all its parts, they can still perform totally different functions.

At the “head” of the spiritual Partzuf, where the decisions are made, there is a Direct Light and a Returning Light, the connection between the Creator and the created being. It is the same in our brain, but on a different level. So if we don’t discover the Creator part in us, we will not be able to discover the principles of the brain’s work. This is because half of the picture can hardly be seen in the fog and we don’t know what operates it.

On the whole, we can compare our brain to a detector, to a receiver that receives signals from space around us. So there is no great significance to examine it detached from this space. If we study only the brain itself and leave its connection with the source of the data out of the picture, we will never know anything. This is because our brain perceives important external information from some field.

We are built in a definite way: Our nature is divided into the still, vegetative, animate, and speaking levels, we divide ourselves into Partzufim, Sefirot, to parts according to the thickness of the desire and the purity of the Masach (screen), but actually in spirituality it is all one, and everything is one wholeness where we exist. It is where the past, the present, and the future are, the three stages of our development, everything is there.

The brain activity is like a receiver or a mutual activity within a system, which I perceive only to the extent of my own bestowal. We may say that the brain is part of the general system. But actually the brain, the mind, is spread over all of Ein Sof (Infinity), which a person has to actually attain. In the meantime we only feel bits of it.

I don’t think that science will continue to follow the old approach. There will come a time when scientists will stop, change their approach, and begin to discover an upper level, just as in the past humanity moved from using a steam engine to using an internal combustion engine. Brain researchers will want to rise to the “layer of information” that is above our world. It is only from there that they will be able to carry on with their studies, whereas the current approach will lead to nothing.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/16/12, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar”

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After all the preparation from above, the shattering and the descents, our desire to receive pleasure is divided into three parts: the inner part suitable for correction and the two external parts that can be corrected if we stop using them. These two parts are called the “shell of Noga” and the “serpent’s skin.” But, the inner part is called the “inner body.”

The entire correction a person has to perform takes place in the thought. If one thinks about it, he is outside his body, which means that he aspires to bestow upon others—the friends, the group, and the world, as it is written, “From the love of man to the love of the Creator; from the love of the creatures to the love of the Creator,”—then he doesn’t nourish his ego, and, as a result, his egoistic desire dies. After all, it cannot exist without food, so it disappears!

However, a person must constantly guard himself since the temptations from the “serpent’s skin” and from the “shell of Noga” constantly will draw him, trying to hold onto him, to hold onto thoughts of envy, ambition, and dominance. They do it cunningly, and, thanks to that, each time a person can decide that he doesn’t want these thoughts, but that he wants to work outside his own interests without any self-benefit, but only in order to bestow.

If he clarifies things enough, through a certain number of such actions, he separates the inner body, the soul of holiness, and the external body in which no intention to bestow can be dressed. If he stops thinking about them, then the soul of holiness is dressed in the inner body about which it is written: “From my flesh shall I see God.” This means that a person begins to discover the Light, the Creator, Divinity, and the revelation of the Creator, in his flesh, in his body, in his skin.

It is all thanks to the fact that he managed to keep himself in thoughts and clarifications that were outside his body, which means outside his self-benefit. He tied himself to the Creator so that he could be sure that everything comes from Him and that there is none else besides Him. The Creator arranged all of this so that he will be able to clarify the three bodies after the sin of the Tree of Knowledge.

As a result of the persistent clarifications, a person gradually deprives his two external bodies, the shell of Noga and the serpent’s skin, of their food, and they depart from him and vanish. When the difference between the internal body and the two external bodies becomes evident enough, the Light on the very first level can be dressed in his inner body, which means being born in the spiritual world.

If a person constantly aspires for bestowal upon others—the friends, the group, and the Creator, which means that he wants to be “outside his skin,” outside his desire to enjoy—then it is in this desire that the upper Light is dressed, as it is written, “From my flesh shall I see God.”
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/29/12, Shamati #36

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Question: Does the world have a chance to reach correction in the 228 years we have left until the end of the 6,000 years we were given for that, and how will we feel it?

Answer: No one can say how much time we have left until Gmar Tikkun (the end of correction). This was spoken of much by the prophets who spoke about it in hidden allusions. This means that they also didn’t know when it would happen because it relates to our free will. Baal HaSulam thought that Gmar Tikkun would come tomorrow if not today since everything is ready for it from Above!

We also think that it will happen soon. We can base our belief on what is happening in the world today, although no one knows anything for sure. It says that the correction will take 6,000 years, which means that there are 228 years left. But is it really during this length of time that we have to reach Gmar Tikkun, in a good way or in a bad way?

In a good way we can reach correction tomorrow, or even today. There are no limits here. If we want to be corrected, our desire will immediately summon upon us the influence of the upper field. No special arrangement on the Creator’s part is necessary. Our desire is enough in order to evoke it. We are the masters of the states we find ourselves in.

We cannot know when it will happen, but as we near Gmar Tikkun, after the revelation of the upper world, which is called a spiritual birth, we still feel this world in all the 125 degrees of the spiritual ascent. The moment we reach the general correction and everyone is corrected, there is a connection of all the vessels, of all the individual spiritual desires, then our world disappears, since there is one general vessel for all the desires to receive.

When its last particle moves on to bestowal, there isn’t one desire left that is not corrected and in order to bestow. Therefore, the feeling of this world that exists only within the egoistic desire without a Masach (screen) disappears! And only the upper world remains!

Since all the desires are connected, all the worlds unite and become one general upper world, in the level of Ein Sof (Infinity). So by attaining Gmar Tikkun together with the whole world, you cease to feel this world. You will not need it! And besides, you will have no vessels to perceive it, since you have corrected your last egoistic desire. Then this reality will disappear from your feeling.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/21/12, Shamati #30

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Question: How can we make a covenant among friends?

Answer: A covenant among friends is possible only if there is an upper party ensuring its preservation. A covenant can be kept only when we all connect with the upper force, which provides the union.

There is no chance that we will be able to keep this covenant by ourselves, but if we connect, we can demand this from the Creator—if we do it for Him.

The result is that “Israel,” the people who yearn for the Creator, the Light that Reforms, the Torah, and the Creator are joined together, and then the Creator keeps the covenant according to our request.

When darkness, separation, and conflicts come, this covenant is revealed and exists among us. But as long as everything is fine, it is impossible to test it. The test is only when we feel bad.

When we feel good, we don’t need any covenant; as long as there is the Light, it connects all the parts. The difficult part is to do so when the Light disappears, to keep these parts together then. This is called a covenant.

But how can you draw the Light in a time of darkness? It is impossible. But we want to reach a state in which even when we don’t feel the Light in our receiving vessels, we will feel the Light in our Masach (screen) and the Returning Light—a fulfillment in the vessels of bestowal instead of an egoistic fulfillment.

Today, I am a loyal slave of my desire to receive, and I want to serve in order to fill someone else in the same way. This will be a pleasure for me. This means that I want to make a covenant.

The covenant is tested only in the dark, when I get no fulfillment but I still want to keep the same good relations that I had before. Instead of my egoistic pleasure, I want to restrict my ego: a Masach and the Returning Light.

This is called a covenant; it is a state in which I don’t work for myself anymore but rather in order to bestow. This means that I keep the same attitude not only when I feel good, but when I feel bad too. When the good state returns, I don’t want to be confused and be enslaved by the desire to receive over and over again, and so I make a covenant for that purpose.

I want to feel pleasure in the vessels of bestowal; I want to restrict my desire to receive and work with the pleasure by building a Masach (screen) and the Returning Light above this restriction. I turn to the friend with this Returning Light and connect with him. This is called a covenant.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/17/12, Shamati #76

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When time after time a man is rejected from unity and he is yearning for it again, he is going through a chain of situations that are called “exile.” He begins to feel more and more that this is exile. Exile from what?

Here there is a whole series of clarifications: exile from the good state, exile from understanding, and exile from what can fulfill my ego. But I begin to receive everything in spite of all this. It is not important to me what I should feel. Even if I will not feel anything, the main thing is that I will rise above this state so the exile for me will be the lack of the quality of bestowal is in me.

When I annul myself, I stop feeling my state. If I annul my “I” (my personality): I do not exist, only the Creator exists and I as if disappear in Him, then I do not feel myself. The only thing I want is to enter to the quality of bestowal, this love that fulfills everything around me. If I make such an effort, I begin to feel that I really work with Him in harmony. And this movement is already conscious and is expressed as the correct exile.

I begin to change my values. If before I felt the fulfillment, the understanding, the good feeling, and all the personal things were sublime, I no longer do now.

Now, the most important and primary thing for me is the yearning for the quality of bestowal. Even better, if I strive to it above imperfect situations because this gives me full confidence that it is not my ego that pushes me forward.

It weakens me, I feel bad, I feel out of place, but in spite of these situations, I am attracted to the quality of bestowal, to the Creator, to this field that fulfills everything that is around. By annulling myself, I become transparent toward this field and the upper Light passes through me.

And then suddenly it is revealed that the Creator accompanies me, as if saying to Moses, (to my point in the heart) “Come to Pharaoh.” It means, I begin to see when He awakens the ego in me He at the same time helps me to be connected to Him. Why? Because when he awakens my ego, He awakens great suffering. And I now, if I can be attracted to the quality of bestowal, it is not for the fulfillment because it is against my ego: so, he helps me to make my first restriction (Tzimtzum) and so I go forward all the while increasing my efforts in the direction of the quality of bestowal despite what I myself feel.

The main thing here is to annul ourselves and to be attracted to the quality of bestowal. In this case I’m already building above the vessel, the desire, a screen and Reflected light. This is the first spiritual stage.

After I direct myself, I exit to such a level that I rise above the “Pharaoh.” This state is what is called the “escape from Egypt.” I rose above my ego; certainly I don’t run away from it to any place, it exists in me, but under the “screen,” and I above it. This is the meaning of the “Exodus from Egypt” when I, in my feeling, am not in the slavery of my ego.
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From KabTV’s “Foundations of the Integral Society” 4/1/12

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Why did the Creator create everything so strangely? He built a palace, invited all His beloved guests, and then placed guards and policemen around the palace who are testing and checking the guests, not letting them pass and causing them pain and suffering. Didn’t the Creator know in advance who would be loyal to Him, who loves Him and who doesn’t? Why does the Creator reject us all? Is it so that only those who can overcome all the obstacles will pass, in order to prove their loyalty and readiness?

The point is that it is in this struggle that our desire is formed; a vessel for receiving the filling in the King’s palace is built and stabilized. Otherwise, how would we be able to build this vessel? After all, it wasn’t given to us readymade from Above. If we were not allowed to pass without a reason, would that be justified? It is as if I yearn for the Creator with all my heart, and here some guard throws me down the mountain.

The point is that I am totally opposite to the attributes required to reach the top of the mountain. I am not the person I should be to become a guest at the King’s palace. It is only thanks to the guards that I constantly change by becoming more and more adapted.

These forces, of course, are depicted in my ego as vicious, cruel guards who don’t let me pass. The Creator is the cruelest of them all because He is the one who posted all these guards and policemen. He created my evil inclination and all the problems and suffering that relate to it. It is as if he gave birth to a poor, sick child and instead of feeling sorry for him, He even beats him, as if the child is guilty of something.

Apparently, all our complaints are justified, but the point is that the only way to build the right vessel is with the help of the right attributes that we receive, which we don’t have from the start. So the right approach is to divide myself into two. From one perspective you see what there is in your egoistic desire. From a second perspective, you see what there is in your desire to bestow, in your yearning to resemble the Creator, which means according to the ascent up the mountain, on top of which there is the King’s palace.

Following these two perspectives is called the “middle line.” With regard to your desire to receive this is the most terrible way in which there is no justice but actually only the opposite! You will not be able to justify the desire to bestow or to support it so much. This is because we should exert ourselves on both sides, both from the side of the ego and from the side of the yearning for bestowal.

What’s important is that you are looking at these two points independently from a neutral zone. It is as if you rose to Keter and from there you are watching this machine, like the Creator. It doesn’t belong to you, but it is yours only if it helps you resemble Him. Thanks to it, you can become like Him, reach adhesion with Him, and look at everything else as a means to attain that.

Thus you can justify, understand, and go through all these trials “above reason”: both as the egoist and as the one that bestows. This is because this bestowal is also totally based on receiving.

You want to adhere to the Creator instead of being connected to your desire to receive. The desire to receive is merely a tool for you to attain the Creator. With the help of the Torah, (the Reforming Light), you have to turn this evil inclination into the good inclination with which you will adhere to the Creator.

In order to adhere to the Creator, you need the good inclination, but in order for this good inclination to be able to help you adhere to it, you should approach it from the side of the evil inclination by using the Torah. All of creation was created in order to reach adhesion with the Creator. From this point of adhesion, which we want to attain, we have to look at the whole process we are going through. Then you will cut yourself off the egoistic perspective and not look at yourself through your desire to receive, through your ego. You will constantly be above it and look at it from the side, as at a means for achieving a goal.

This is why it is so important to constantly raise the greatness of the goal, the Creator, the group, and the friends. Because this will help you relate to everything else as to tools.
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From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/15/12, The Study of the Ten Sefirot

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Question: Can a physical desire, for example, sexual desire stand in my way on the spiritual path?

Answer: Physical desires for food, sex, family, money, honor, power, and knowledge cannot stand in a person’s spiritual advancement. We shouldn’t deal with what belongs to the body separately.

We should only be worried about the hatred we feel towards the friends and then toward the whole world.

If you want to eat five servings instead of one, it is harmful for the body, but it doesn’t interfere with the spiritual path. The same goes for sex.

So think only about the connection with the Creator through the friends, and you can stop worrying about all the rest.
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From the Brazil Convention 5/06/12, Lesson 5

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