Question: How do we reach the quality of bestowal in such a short lifespan?

Answer: Your life depends completely on how much closer you get to the quality of bestowal. If you get closer to it, your life will be extended to allow you to reach that state. If you don’t, why suffer for no reason? You will have to be born one more time, and maybe then you’ll get lucky.

That’s why it is said: “Against your will were you created, against your will were you born, against your will do you live, against your will will you die,” meaning not by our own choice. However, if you have an invitation to rise to the next level, into the Creator’s castle, try to realize that.
[61837]
From the Sunday Virtual Lesson Series 11/6/2011

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A person stops experiencing death on the level of universal integration. It dissolves internally in his desires, thoughts, and feelings in the one, common, enormous thought, the single desire that we all create, and he transitions into a different state in a smooth, quiet, and nice manner.

This takes place before the death of his body because he becomes something general, something that exists in one general idea, something that shares a unified existence with nature and society. His spirit is referred to as the “human within us,” and everything else is the physical body that exists on the animate level of development.

Man the level inside us that can connect into a single unified system with others. When you begin to experience that you are locked into this system together with everyone else in your thoughts and feelings, mind and heart, then you stop feeling your body, and you feel as if you were “floating” above it. You exist in it, but you do not feel it, like in the moments of euphoria or some special sensations when one slightly “comes out of his body.”

Mutual guarantee takes a person to the next level of existence. At the same time, we connect to the collective mind, the collective feelings, when the mind and feelings become one whole, closed in together with the unified mind and feelings of the entire universe, all of nature, the entire mechanism which drives the universe and controls it.

This is the law of the evolution of the universe. We enter this law and become its active part. The attainment of this unity between us is the “human” in us. We become one with nature, and this way we rise above everything that pertains to our body.
[61206]
From a TV Program “The Integral World” 10/30/2011

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To develop our spiritual sensation, we unite and connect. We have to attain the kind of unity that is called, “mutual guarantee.” Essentially, this is the vessel for feeling the spiritual, eternal and perfect life that is outside the body.

For that we have to do what Kabbalists, who are people that have already gone through this path, advise us to. They are our teachers and are therefore called “Rabbanim” in Hebrew, which is the plural of Rav, meaning a “great” person before whom I bend down my head like before an experienced instructor that is worthwhile to listen to.

He accomplished the transition from the sensation of just this world to the sensation of the upper world, and moreover, he went through many states and levels there. Therefore he can help me with advice throughout the whole path, until I complete my development in the true world. By virtue of Kabbalists, I reveal the gates to the world, enter it, and advance.

Kabbalits advise us to unite, and in that unity, by making great efforts in spite of our egoism and natural disregard, to look precisely for the feelings we disregard. I reject the neighbor and hate him, I am unable to even think about how we can be truly close to one another. But Kabbalists tell us that we have to be as one man with one heart, uniting in the mind and feeling to such an extent that no boundaries will remain between us in thoughts or desires.

This is all painfully opposite to our nature. We are being offered such conditions that we would be willing to trade them for anything else. We are nauseous from this and are thrown away from it at every moment in different directions—anything but unity. We just want to cover ourselves up with half-hearted advice and actions, lie to ourselves and others that everything is normal…But we can’t.

What can help us here are demands imposed by physical unity: We act all together and no one can evade his responsibilities. That is exactly why we are in this world of actions that are not defined by intention. In spirituality, the thought is the action, but in corporeality they are divided: I can think about one thing, desire another, and do a third.

This is the wonderful quality of our world: Here we can start the path to spirituality without even yet thinking about it for real or wishing for it sincerely. We are able to make actions that pride, passion, ambition, envy, and shame incite us to do—everything that is inherent to our egoism.

Therefore, being in the group, at the end of the day, I must carry out what it obligates each of its members to do. After that, by virtue of that, I advance involuntarily. I must only push myself into the group, take on obligations, and sign a “unified agreement” with the friends that under any circumstances, they have obliged me and I have obliged them to need one another. That is how we advance, using our egoism.

Thus, in our world we have the opportunity to start the spiritual path from zero, from pure ambition. We activate its negative qualities, connecting with one another by the unity of mutual help, and use all the negative qualities just to observe this unity. In this case, you obligate the friend and he obligates you, and you both advance, having no other choice.

This is exactly what we saw when we went to the convention in the Arava desert. We found ourselves together without external influences and discovered that the group can obligate every person to rise and come closer to the sensation outside the body, where a person begins to discern details hitherto unknown, a different existence “outside of the skin of his body.” It turns out that “outside of us” is really possible. That is how we advance.

Today we can unite with one another in this world by means of the right egoistic actions. However, now every one of us has to “jump out of his skin,” rise above his personal egoism, above his entire being, and unite with friends into a single whole. Stated differently, every person must rise above himself and go from the material group to the spiritual one.

Then the common vessel will form, the common soul, the holy Shechina where we will reveal the Creator on the first spiritual level. We made a big step toward this and acquired a common sensation, and now we must strengthen ourselves.

Thus, we build the vessel of mutual guarantee: We pledge not to forget one another and all together we take care of our spiritual life. After all, this is the purpose of our current existence in the material world, the goal of all people and this whole reality. Only by virtue of mutual care will we rise to the level of spiritual unity.
[61241]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson on 11/20/11, “Mutual Guarantee”

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Question: What’s the use of the group’s seclusion at the Convention in the Arava desert?

Answer: We have gathered here to lay the foundation for a new society, whose purpose is to attain adhesion with the Creator. In order to attain adhesion with Him, we have to attain adhesion among us. And in order to attain adhesion among us, we have to unite, disconnecting from the disturbances of the outside world. After all, we’re small and we have to strengthen one another, so let the world not interfere with our doing so. That is why we are going to the desert.

In the past, groups of Kabbalists took much more extraordinary measures to isolate themselves from the external environment. A person has to allow himself a bit more freedom from this confused and senseless world, to collect himself inside a bit more and understand what his predestination is.

In the whirlwind of life, under the roar of the radio and television, you can’t make out the fine voice of your soul or attain the fragile inner inspiration. You simply don’t have the energy for it. Even Kabbalists living hundreds and thousands of years ago in a completely different world, which did not know the “wonders” of mass media, still secluded themselves, barring themselves from their habitual environment, and even “going into exile,” leaving home without taking anything with them and going off to wander for years, getting by with occasional earnings and food.

You don’t even know what you are losing in the modern world, which is stuffing and miring you with its filth. Do you want to attain something exalted? If you do, then what efforts are you making to break away from the lowlands?

It’s worthwhile for us to find time for this kind of seclusion where we will feel only our own forces, without the disturbances of the outside world. Let’s separate a day in life to feel who we are instead of who they are.

Obviously, we don’t force anyone to participate and we don’t make lists of participants or deserters. We don’t put check-marks for the future. Whoever doesn’t want to or can’t come just doesn’t come. In this sense, everything is very liberal and open. But on the other hand, if a person comes there, he has to participate in the actions that the group has assigned to help us detach from everything and feel only ourselves.

Don’t you sometimes wish to be alone with yourself? That is how the group wants to be alone with itself, to feel itself. You enter a room, close the door, and remain with your own thoughts. That is how we want to remain with our thoughts. In reality, this is clear and commonly accepted. But for us it’s not just a minute of rest, but a detachment from “the degree of women and children” and an ascent to the “men’s level.”

In the article, “The importance of the group,” Rabash writes, “When a person works on the true path, he needs to seclude himself from other people. After all, the path of truth requires fortification because it contradicts common notions. The world’s opinions are built upon knowledge and reception, whereas the Torah’s opinions are built upon faith and bestowal. And if a person is distracted, then he immediately forgets about all work on the path of the truth and falls into the world of self-love. Only in the group do the friends help one another, and therefore every person receives forces from it to fight the commonly accepted notions.”

The upper world is our inner world. We have to shift our gaze from externality to internality. Therefore, with the help of the friends, I try to go inside, to look inward, to acquire a deep wisdom, to attain the inner meaning of the Torah. There is no other choice—I need this.

A person must constantly immerse himself inward, penetrate into his depths—and precisely there he reveals the true world. The external world deliberately confuses us so through the conflict with it, upon the resistance, we would build our direction inward. Our struggle is to penetrate deeper and deeper on the background of this world’s reality, which pulls us outward.
[60927]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/16/11, “The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee)”

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Baal HaSulam, “Mutual Guarantee” (abridged version): Once the whole nation agreed, they became guarantors…

What is the meaning of this nation-wide agreement? Did every person just shout out like a child, “I want!” Or do we have to understand where we are going and how far?

That is why this world was given to us, showing us all the clear examples of caring for the neighbor. I see how repulsive all of this is to me, yet I unite with others because I have to, not having any other solution in a time of peril or when I really need them.

Once the entire nation agreed, they became guarantors that no citizen will be deprived of what he needs.

Mutual guarantee by itself gives us energy. By the same principle, at the end of correction we increase the Light’s abundance by 620 times compared to what was there at the beginning of creation. Stated differently, instead of a very fine line that was filled only by the tiny Light of Hochma, we receive an entire circle in which the Light of Hochma pours, clothed in the Light of Hassadim, infinitely filling everyone to the depth and breadth of the mutual unification. When this happens, every person adds his part to others and becomes included in everyone himself.

So where does this miraculous addition come from? It comes from the fact that we involve the force of mutual guarantee, the force of mutual inclusion. By virtue of the breaking, the vessels were prepared to become included in one another, and now, in spite of our egoism, we must evoke this inclusion, this mutual guarantee, in practice. The resistance of our egoism and our ability to overcome by means of the Light that reforms, which leads to unity, create an inner pressure inside the vessel, a resistance, like in a resistor. The force of egoism inside of us constantly resists unity, while we stand above it and become tightly locked in all of the connecting points.

Eventually, the negative and positive forces that separate and connect us come together in one channel. That is how we attain a 620-fold increase of power.

Today we barely provide enough food for half of humanity. About a third of it has limited food, and another third is starving. But there is no doubt that by realizing the mutual guarantee, we will end up with the same abundance that the spies discovered when they were first sent to Israel and discovered a “land flowing with milk and honey.” It will suddenly become clear that there is no need for material investment because fulfillment is provided by the Light. Vitamins, minerals, calories, and everything else are vestments of the Light, which disappear to the extent we clear them away.

We always aspire to extract the maximum energy conversion efficiency from the energy resources. But here, what we have at our disposal is the Light, without any material vestment. That is an energy incomparably more powerful, which supports all of matter. Instead of fairy-tales about an eternal engine, we truly acquire an eternal energy resource.
[60548]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/13/11, “The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee)”

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There is a desire to receive and there is a desire to bestow. The whole creation is nothing but an opposition of one to the other. The desire to bestow manages the desire to receive in order to bring it to the identification of itself and to make it equivalent to the desire to receive.  That is the initial program of the desire to bestow.

The nature of the good, according to the science of Kabbalah, is benevolence (doing good). As the Creator is perfect, to that extent he has a program of improving the creation. And there exists just one path toward perfection: The creation has to feel the Creator’s state. He created the creation as opposite to Himself, separated from Himself, and He guides the creation through a sequence of states through which the creation attains the wisdom of the Creator and feels what there is in the Creator.

But it is not enough just to understand and feel, the creation attains the Creator’s nature by itself including everything that is in the creation and its management. So, the force of giving is called “Light” and the force of reception “a vessel”. Similarity in their qualities is called “an intention of bestowal” or “a screen“. Due to the altruistic intention and by the nature of its action, the desire to receive becomes the one of bestowal. If it receives to please somebody, it, in fact, commits an act of bestowal using reception as a means: It doesn’t have any other way to establish contact and give anything to anybody.

How can we participate in the process? How do we gain more understanding? How do we reach the degree of the Creator? How do we feel His actions? In short, how do we become like Him? After all, this is the goal—to become like Him.

We still don’t understand what it means “to bring pleasure to the Creator,” but “equivalence to the Creator” is closer to our current egoistic understanding. To be like Him means to bestow, to understand bestowal, to take upon oneself, to govern the creation… Everything is in that.

But in fact, to be like Him is to understand the whole program and the complete course of actions assumed by it from the beginning to the very end in the first place. Such an understanding requires the whole to be disassembled and then put back together. In this way, we reveal the gap between the Creator and the creation together with the connection that brings them into equivalence. In that, Light and darkness, plus and minus, positive and negative connect on every level.

In the process of our development, under constant influence of the Light, a vessel acquires various shapes until it reaches the “final stop”—complete equivalence of qualities with the Creator. But the vessel has to go through these states of sequential changes with understanding, in agreement, by desiring them, and even acting independently.

Thus, we need to realize our oppositeness to the Creator, want to change and become like Him, understand the program that will change us, enact it by our own desire, and carry out the whole chain of sequential actions ourselves, upon ourselves and at the same time upon all the levels of the creation under us: inanimate, vegetative, and animate.

This ascent from the breaking to the correction, we must realize with our full personal participation. According to the changes required at the moment, we have to gain mind and feeling, become included into the common program, and make the actions to invoke and guide the necessary forces.

Only in this way will we reach equivalence of form with the Creator and become like Him in force, understanding, and everything else. That is the highest degree of our development.
[60065]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/7/11,  “Matan Torah (The Giving of the Torah)”

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Question: Where exactly should a person start in order to feel the whole system of the universe inside?

Answer: Start only from our joint inclusion into a single group. Men or women, irrespective of who, where, and how, if everyone tries to unite into one system, a system of a mutual guarantee, we will begin to represent a closed system. We will start to feel a common pleasure in the form of spiritual Light that will circulate between us.

It is an everlasting sensation of an eternal perfect life that exists above our present existence and has nothing to do with our animate body. In other words, when you begin to feel this enormous circulating pleasure, our life will cease to be felt as the only one that exists. Even the death of the body will not be perceived as death anymore. It will just be a departure from the lowest and most insignificant part of you.
[58613]
From the Sunday Virtual Lesson Series 10/16/2011

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Question: People tend to think that mutual guarantee and unification is a threat to their exclusivity, that it erases their individuality. Every person feels special and does not want to give up this feeling for the sake of unity….

Answer: A person will always keep his exclusivity. No one will have to give up his initial, unique qualities. We unite on a level higher, above them.

Suppose I join a creative association of workers in the television industry: artists, screenwriters, authors, and other creative people who work to create a large-scale piece of art together. Should each of them stand out with his own individuality? Or on the contrary, should each be equally mediocre? Clearly, we need outstanding individuals with unique talents who put forth their best effort for the common endeavor.

We do not lose our exclusivity, but we lower our heads before the goal, before our brainchild. This is exactly what enables every person to reveal himself.

Today nature is placing us in conditions where we will involuntarily have to give up the animate excesses, which actually bring us nothing but harm. We have to build our lives based on what is good for the body, and not exceed this norm by an ounce. After all, anything beyond that leads to diseases and problems.

On the other hand, all of our successive movement, all of our development and flourishing, and the entire abundance of personal qualities will be realized in the spiritual dimension. Stated differently, in society I can find opportunities for self-expression, for personal contribution and participation as a person who is creative and influential. I can do many things in society and I do not demand anything in return besides a normal, sufficient, safe material life. The environment provides for the needs of my animate body, and in all other regards I want to be part of everyone, and there, in the common whole, to find my happiness, pleasure, and vital forces.

That is precisely where I acquire unlimited opportunities. No one limits me, I do not lack anything, and I do not compete with anyone or try to get ahead of those who seem more successful. Like a painter or composer, I realize and express myself fully in my art—in the creative work for the common good. I feel like a creator, and this sensation fills all of my desires.
[58428]
From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/23/11, “Peace in the World”

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In the past, Kabbalists who wished to reveal the spiritual world had to start in our world and work through it, through various sciences, with enormous efforts and suffering, meaning they had to pull themselves directly from matter itself to the revelation of the spiritual world and reveal the correct system of connections between people.

But then the compositions of the Ari were revealed, in which he explains about the inner connections that unite us through various special systems of relationships: ZON, YESHSUT, Aba ve Ima, Arich Anpin, and so on. By that he explains to us what forms of connection we can be in, how their different connections influence us, and how we can influence them ourselves and awaken these forms of connection. What happens there is the same thing as in our world, but in the quality of bestowal.

Just like in our world where we are able to activate certain types of connections so they would in turn begin influencing us, the same net of relationships connects us in the spiritual world as well, except that it is more internal. Thus, we go from materialistic psychology to the spiritual one, and then we reveal the true connection between the souls, the people living now and the people who lived before. It does not matter whether a person exists in this world right now or not. What’s important is to tune into this net. Then it’s as if our world evaporates, loses its importance because it is just an external imprint through which we have to enter inside.

The Ari described all of this, and the Baal Shem Tov taught how to work with all of the soul’s loyalty (Mesirut Nefesh), saying, “The Creator is your shadow.” And now, after all of this, by working in the group (which was restored by Baal Shem Tov anew, after Rashbi) we can draw the Light that reforms from this net. We do not simply attain it with our desires and forces, but attract an illumination called the Light that reforms, the Light of the Torah, the Surrounding Light, to ourselves from above, from this net.

After all, if we study the structure of this system and aspire to it all together, wishing to organize the same forms of connection among us, then it doesn’t even matter whether we understand it or not—our effort will awaken the influence of this force upon us.

It’s just like in our world: If we want to attain any system, then we become part of it, study it in various forms, and gradually begin to feel it. Suddenly, a picture of this system comes together inside of us and we understand what this is and how it is possible to connect and work with it. The same thing happens in the spiritual world: Only a person’s intention changes. When he becomes included in the upper system, he does it for the sake of bestowing himself to this system. The more he becomes included in it, the further he advances toward revealing it.

This requires great work with the teacher, the friends, the whole world, and the studies. All of this connects together.
[56245]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/2/11, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Question: Is there a special trick I can use so that the society will constantly direct me despite the disturbances of my ego?

Answer: It is a very interesting point. We see that throughout history, up until our time, man becomes more clever with each generation. And this wisdom gets accumulated in each generation rather than in a person himself.

For example, a person lived for seventy years and was reborn in the next generation. But why is he born without all the knowledge and experience he had acquired in his previous life? On the other hand, why does he need to die? Why can’t he carry all the accumulated wisdom from generation to generation?

Animals operate by instincts that are programmed in them. After they are born, they don’t need to learn. They already have the natural instincts required for life. But this doesn’t exist in humans. So how can I pass all my achievements, my knowledge, and the experience I have accumulated from one generation to another?

The Creator has prepared a special method for us. If we developed like animals, only on the physical level, we wouldn’t be able to pass any of the knowledge we have acquired as humans (as corporeal beings, meaning the still, vegetative, and animate levels of the human degree).

Now when we enter the fourth and last level of our human development (which is the reason for the social global crisis), we feel that we are not adapted to this globalization, that we are not connected to society on a global level, and we don’t use it in order to develop ourselves.

Nature demands that we start developing in a very interesting manner: If I am connected to the environment and develop with its help, internally I create new levels of attaining my connection with this environment. Thus, I become a “human” since I acquire the desire to bestow. Then all my work, all my knowledge, and everything that I have acquired during the seventy years of my life remain in the environment.

When I die and am born again, beginning a new life, I connect to all the knowledge that I have left, like to a treasury, and continue! This means that from now on, to the extent that we connect to the environment correctly, every level will be like building a higher level.

I don’t have to reinvent the multiplication table and all the other rules. If I connect to the environment naturally, I receive from it all the knowledge I had acquired previously and left in it. I actually stayed there because I connected with them and established a contact.

So we see how we complete all the defects, all the empty spaces that humans have compared to animals. This is a wonderful method of advancing which the Creator has prepared for us. Similarly, for several years and perhaps several reincarnations, I can ascend to the highest level without losing anything, not even the smallest things that I have learned in this corporeal world.

When a baby is born, we teach him how to be in contact with the environment since a newborn exists only in the still, vegetative, and animate levels and needs to quickly go through all of them. But after society develops to the human level in man, he will develop like babies did in the time of the Temple, when all the people of Israel were at the level of spiritual attainment, as it is said: “There was no child from Dan to Beer Sheba who did not know the laws of impurity and purity by the age of six.”

All the attainments are preserved in the environment. I connect to it during my lifetime and become part of it. This is where all my attainments are, all my spirituality. The corporeal body lives and dies over and over again for it is only the external form of who I am.

This is all very relevant today. After all we don’t know yet the height of the degree to which we are destined to ascend.
[55586]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/23/2011, Writings of Rabash

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