Question: How can people who don’t feel any aspiration for spirituality be able to reach it if this requires a latent memory about it, a forgotten taste? Why do they suffer uselessly?

Answer: People do suffer uselessly, and that is why we have to bring to them the method of development without the blows. Then even if a person does not have spiritual genes (information about previous states), he will receive them from others thanks to the mutual inclusion.

It’s like in our world when you are resting in an armchair in front of the TV with a cup of coffee, watching a soccer game, and you think that you don’t need anything more. But suddenly they show you some commercial that convinces you that you absolutely need some object. You immediately forget all about soccer and start thinking about how to buy that thing. The advertisement takes away your sense of tranquility and awakens your desires.

We do not understand just how dependent we are on the influence of the environment. If we did not have that influence, we would be like animals in a forest. After all, according to the desires of our bodies, we don’t need anything besides the vital necessities.

Everything that is beyond the boundaries of necessity are things we wish for only due to the influence of society, which pressures me and convinces me that I need one thing, and another, and a third, and then I feel like I have to obtain those things.

If from every direction, via all the means of mass information, society now starts telling me that I need spirituality, then besides the simple necessities of this animate body, all I will need is spirituality. This is all we have to do—place ourselves under the influence of the right environment. And I don’t need anything else! It’s not necessary for the spiritual gene to awaken in me because the external environment will perform all of that work.

Spiritual genes awaken in special people who suddenly receive that kind of infusion from above and dash forward. This is special care from above. But others have to develop only by virtue of the environment.

Therefore, if we don’t build the right environment around all of humanity, if we don’t disseminate this knowledge across the whole world, then the world will have to advance only by the price of enormous suffering.
From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/24/11, “General Introduction to the Book, Panim Meirot uMasbirot”

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Question: It is written that we must feel spirituality to such an extent that “all bones will speak.” But if a person died and no bones are left, how will he feel spirituality then?

Answer: This passage speaks about man’s spiritual vessels regarded as “brain-bones-tendons-flesh-skin,” the five spiritual degrees. We have to come to a spiritual state which can be described as “all bones will speak.”

This is a revelation in a very powerful, internal spiritual vessel of the “bones,” the vessel for the Light of Hochma (Wisdom), which already contains “marrow” (the Light of Hochma). “All bones will speak” is an action when the spiritual vessel, “bones,” which contains the Light of Hochma in it, eventually reveals this Light in the “tendons,” Bina, an even more external vessel.

I wish you this kind of revelation! As to the corporeal bones, don’t worry about them; we know exactly how they end.

Try to perceive the materials we read not in their corporeal, but authentic sense. We read books that talk about the soul, not about our biological body. The body is regarded as “matter” or “a donkey” (Homer), and its fate is the same as that of all other animals who live and die.

But for as long as it lives, we ought to manage to revive our spiritual body: to resurrect it from the dead. If the soul is dead at the moment, revive it! Draw the Light to it that will breathe life into it.
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From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah World 6/24/2011, General Introduction to the Book, Panim Meirot uMasbirot

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Baal HaSulam “The Freedom”: It is said: “Harut (carved) on the stones”; do not pronounce it Harut (carved), but rather Herut (freedom), to show that they are liberated from the angel of death.

It is said: “I created the evil inclination, and I created the Torah as a spice.” What is the Torah? It is the tool that contains the Light that Reforms.

Thus, we can attract the upper Light, and it brings us back to the Source so that from the evil inclination we turn ourselves into the good inclination. In this way, we change from the receiving desire called “the angel of death” to the giving desire called “the angel of life.” This is freedom from the angel of death.

Indeed, in our receiving desire, we can perceive nothing but this world, that is, an animate existence. We live, suffer, and eventually die. We cannot even imagine how low and defective this life is.

Until we reach bestowal, all our life here is an escape from suffering for the sake of  such meager pleasures that they have no place in the spiritual world. The smallest spiritual degree is myriad times greater, fuller, and more whole than all the pleasures of this world at all times. It is impossible to imagine.

To sustain such a great spiritual pleasure, it is necessary to prepare the vessel with the intention to bestow. Be that as it may, we will be able to rise above the angel of death only in the property of bestowal.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/24/2011, “The Freedom”

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Question: How can we explain to people why love is necessary?

Answer: You can love to eat fish for lunch, you can love your little son, or you can love your neighbor or the Creator. The same words designate completely different notions.

Is it worthwhile to praise love for the neighbor to a person who loves fish? How can you describe to him the pleasure from bestowal? What will he understand? That he has to give his fish to someone else? Is this love?

What does it mean to love the neighbor? It has a completely different meaning. Loving the neighbor means attaching his desire to yourself and working with your desire in order to fulfill his desire. Then we both meld together into one whole, where I fulfill him and he becomes fulfilled. In what does he become fulfilled? In his desire. His desire in relation to mine is like Malchut in relation to Zeir Anpin. I am like the Creator, and he—the creation. That is what my work is.

Thus, “love” is the relationship between the Creator and creation. Only this is love—the creation’s attitude to the Creator. If I can build this kind of attitude to others, or in other words, if I acquire the quality of the Creator, the quality of bestowal, and by means of it I relate to the neighbor’s desire just like the Creator does, it turns out that the Creator is inside of me, and I make the necessary action in relation to the neighbor. This means that I love the neighbor.

We don’t have the right to use the word “love” in any other sense, context, or case. Otherwise we will confuse it with our “love of fish.”

We are talking about the extent to which the Creator, the quality of bestowal, dresses into me. First of all we have to carry out the principle, “Do not do to another what you yourself hate.” That is how I become neutral. After that, I have to acquire his desire instead of my own. Another person’s desire becomes more important for me and therefore he becomes higher than me. I am ready to do everything for him, just like I would for my sick child in our world. I am entirely “short-circuited” on his desire; it is what makes me act.

That is exactly why I am similar to the Creator, like Zeir Anpin who receives a request from Malchut. The more another person’s desire is able to activate me to bestow, the higher I am than him. This is love. Do you see how different this is from our current notions?

The more I can bestow to another person, the more I provide him with the Light of correction. After all, there is mutual guarantee between us. I do not fill his egoistic desire, but I reveal inside of him the desire to be in one system with me so the Shechina would reign between us. So what should I provide for him? I give him my support of the mutual guarantee, which he also provides for me by revealing it in his desire. This is love.

No one is indulging the other’s egoism. I don’t reveal the egoistic desire in the other person, but the desire for mutual support in order to reveal the Creator in the relationship between us. The Creator cannot be revealed in any individual or just in my attitude to another person, unless it’s fortified by the same attitude from him. Love does not work in one direction. It is a two way street. It requires a connecting net through which impulses of bestowal are flowing, a net permeated by feelings of love, relationships of mutual guarantee and mutuality by which we strengthen one another.

In the meantime, egoism remains below, without making any calculations to fulfill it. After all, we rise above it, connected by our mutual intention for the sake of bestowal. And when it reaches a specific level of unity, creating a net above us, then we reveal the Creator, the mutual quality of bestowal and love between us.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/20/11, “Matan Torah (The Giving of the Torah)”

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Question: Can you explain the connection between a person, his or her soul, and the Creator? Are you saying that a person does not have a soul until he develops it?

Answer: Every person has a point of the soul, similar to a drop of semen. We need the strength to develop it. Just as a drop of semen attaches itself to the uterus, receives nutrition from the mother, and begins to grow, we also need to attach ourselves to society and cancel ourselves in relation to a suitable group, as if it were the mother’s womb.

If I were to cancel myself, I would not be a foreign body within the group, just like a drop of semen is not being perceived as something foreign. This is why the body does not reject it, and the embryo can grow.

Similarly, I cancel myself before the group and receive its strength. Then, my spiritual point, the beginning of my soul, begins to grow. In its growth, it follows exactly the same stages as an embryo inside a mother. This is explained across thousands of pages in Kabbalistic books. These stages of our soul are named accordingly, such as “conception, nursing, and maturing” (Ibur, Yenika, and Mochin).

If a person does not begin this process, in other words, if he does not reveal the upper dimension which exists outside of him one way or another through his connection with others, then his body dies, and this point of the soul merely remains a point. Once again, it clothes in a body and accompanies him, giving him the opportunity to grow.

However, when a person attains even the smallest, the first spiritual degree, he already feels that he belongs to another dimension, a spiritual and eternal one. It is eternal because it exists above our corporeal, beastly egoism that pertains to our body. Then, the body can die and decompose; the person no longer associates himself or herself with it, but rather with the spiritual state he has attained.

We must attain at least the very first degree. Then it becomes much easier to advance because the person begins to see the steps he needs to take.
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From the Lecture in Rome 5/20/2011

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Baal HaSulam said that he was glad to be born in the generation when it was possible to divulge the wisdom of Kabbalah. Kabbalah teaches us how to combine the two forces of bestowal and reception into one, how to add them to each other so their sum (Σ) becomes a “human.”

This is really a science, a wisdom. This is not easy; it is difficult. We are used to going with the flow, and suddenly another force appears, taking us somewhere. Where to?

The integration of two forces leads to a unique result. In our world that we see and feel, there are forms of the still, vegetative, and animate natures. We belong to the animate level and have not yet achieved anything higher. The human level that we begin to discover within ourselves is a spiritual degree opening a new world in front of us.

In nature, one level gives life to another. Animals feed on plants, and plants take strength from the still nature. However, the still level does not know what it means to grow, develop, live, consume and excrete, and to feel the environment. The vegetative level, in turn, does not understand what it means to be an animal, move, bear offspring, and stay in the pack, not to speak of the subtleties of existence for “developed animals,” people who live very complicated lives.

A lower degree is not able to understand a higher one; it is a completely different world. For the time being, we exist at the animate degree and are ruled by our desires. We do not understand what the human degree is. It is impossible to show or demonstrate it, just as an animal cannot demonstrate its view of the world to a plant.

Moreover, a person who has integrated the two forces, the point in the heart and the heart, the desire for pleasure and the desire to bestow, and ascended to the human degree of development cannot convey his sensation to those who have not yet reached it. It is possible to say one thing: He feels beyond all the limitations of the corporeal body because he rose to a different level. He exists in connection with all the previous levels and is nourished by them; however, he himself is on his degree.

So will we, having ascended to the human level (let us hope, as soon as possible), preserve the connection with this world, with all forms of life in it. However, in addition, we will have completely different sensations and intentions. We will feel eternity and perfection on the first spiritual degree.

Our entire problem is that we want to receive the pleasure, the upper Light, while it cannot exist in us, and it immediately disappears due to a “short circuit” when the plus and the minus cancel each other. Thus, we have to work correctly in the third line between these two forces.

We create a correct combination: We put a kind of “resistance” (R) in the middle, through which the plus and the minus operate properly. This gives us the results of their work, and we get force from them. In the language of Kabbalah, the resistance between the point in the heart and egoism is called a “screen” (Masach). Namely in this place we receive and sense a new life at the human degree, Adam.

Then, we become free from death. Every time I want to receive the Light, I cannot adapt myself to it. Pleasure with desire disappears, and I taste a bit of death. I have nothing else to enjoy, and I fall into despair. I do not want anything and retreat. In the end, a person “dries out” because of this work, and he sees that he is not successful. He begins to “fade.” The animate, vegetative, and still natures gradually decrease in him until the person dies.

However, if we understand how to unite the force of bestowal and the force of reception correctly within ourselves, the plus and the minus, we will attain a sense of life at the human degree, an eternal and perfect life.
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From Lesson 1, Convention in Spain, 6/3/2011

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As we rise above egoism, besides everything else, we make a wonderful discovery: We begin to discern that essentially, the entire world exists within us, and not outside of us. And this is logical because I really don’t know what exists on the outside.

A person only perceives what enters his senses and through the nervous system reaches his brain, which processes the final “image.” This is the way we perceive the world. It is enough to sever a nerve to make a part of our reality disappear from our senses.

Thus, as a person rises above himself, he sees that his perception is not at all on the outside, but fully depends on his senses, desire, thought, sensations, and mind. And when we know how to change these parameters, we can expand our perception and rise above the limits of the five senses.

This is where the name “the wisdom of Kabbalah” comes from, which literally means the wisdom of  “reception.” A person uses it to gradually come out from the physical senses of his animalistic body and expand the sensations to the point of infinity. While living in our world, he advances to the level where he no longer associates himself with a corporeal body since he sees a much greater reality above it.

Now he no longer conditions his life to perception in the five senses. And even after the body dies, the person remains in the reality he has acquired above it. He does not feel death since a new dimension has entered his perception before the death of the body.

This way a person lives on two levels: the corporeal degree, like all of us, and the “incorporeal” degree that rises above egoism.
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From the Lecture in Rome 5/20/2011

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The science of Kabbalah is special because it allows us to reveal how to control the two forces of nature: the force of reception and the force of bestowal. All of nature is comprised of these two forces. We see them everywhere: plus and minus, bestowal and reception. Their combination is what creates the essence of our lives.

On the still level they build atoms and molecules, dipoles, crystalline patterns, and so on. On the vegetative level the combination of a plus and minus produces life: a plus provides useful things whereas a minus excretes waste, which enables a body to live and develop.

On the animate level a plus and minus become even greater and their interconnection not only causes useful things to be absorbed and harmful things excreted, but also brings about movement, reproduction, and the individual life of a separate animal. This is already a special sum of two influences.

However, as paradoxical as it may be, on the human level only one of two forces was operating to this day. As a result, any pleasure that entered us immediately waned. That’s because our desire is egoistic and we did not have any chance to oppose it, to add a second force against it so we could excrete the harmful things from our desires and thoughts, from our hearts and minds, which belong to the human level.

Now a second force is being revealed in us—the point in the heart, which stands opposite to egoism. It enables us to form ourselves, to decide which thoughts and desires to bring inside and which to take outside. As a result, out of thousands of thoughts and desires, we can gather a new structure and build a special level inside of us called “human” (Adam) or ”soul.” It consists of ten Sefirot and is also called “Partzuf”—a spiritual structure.

This is what we form inside of us by virtue of the fact that two forces have finally begun developing in us. For hundreds of thousands of years, only one force operated in us on the human level. We were constantly activated by the desires and thoughts that awakened in us. That is how we lived.

But now, together with several million people from the whole world, we have received a true gift from above—the bestowing desire in addition to the receiving desire. And now we are forming a new creation inside of us. We must build the human in us ourselves. This is the entire purpose of man’s existence in this world. Otherwise, why does he exist here? What can he possibly do here?

Today we are advancing together with all humanity. We are the first, and others will come after us. From one day to the next new people are awakening and joining this process of building a person inside of each one of us. You and I are learning how to become human in the true sense of the word.
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From the 1st lesson at the Madrid Convention 4/6/11

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Question: You have said that in order to solve the global crisis it is necessary to reduce consumption. How does minimal consumption differ from vital consumption? For example, can a watch costing a thousand Euros be considered a vital necessity?

Answer: This question is not simple. I would even say there’s a catch to it. Let me explain it by way of a Kabbalistic parable that’s 2000 years old.

Once upon a time there were two friends. One was rich and the other was average, but they were both on the spiritual level. One day the rich man went bankrupt and then his friend started serving him like a servant, wishing to provide him with the necessary level of existence that he was used to. That’s because previously his friend had serrvants, so when he lost them, he felt like he lost something that was necessary.

This is an interesting example, but it is not suitable for out times because nature obligates us otherwise. We have no choice but to restrict our consumption since otherwise we will devastate the planet earth. It’s not just that we have to reduce our necessities, but we have to reach a state where we would be happy to get rid of our necessities, but are obligated to receive them because we have to exist in our bodies in this world.

I have a big desire, which includes the level of my regular life where I have physical necessities as well as social necessities, such as education, culture, vacations, and trips. No one says you have to give them up. You need an apartment, everything necessary for it, a wife, children, and so on.

The problem is our consumption above the norm. If you study the science of Kabbalah, you will involuntarily consume only what is necessary because the most important thing to you is spiritual fulfillment. Therefore, you are happy that you do not reveal these excessive desires inside of you and you would be happy even to get rid of the normal desires, but you need them in order to support your existence. This is called necessity.
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From the 1st lesson at the Madrid Convention 6/4/11

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Question: Once a person rises above all his material interests and connects with the upper nature, the Creator, does physical death no longer have meaning for him?

Answer: This is true. When I asked my teacher about this at the very beginning of my path, he said that a person studying Kabbalah has to reach a state when he starts to treat the life of his material body like a shirt: It’s as if he takes a dirty shirt off at the end of the day and throws it into the laundry and tomorrow puts on a new one. Our body is exactly like this.

These are real things. They stem from the study of “Self” when I exit the perception of my life inside my bodily desires. Right now, we live for our material body! But if I exit this sensation and connect with the upper reality above it, I immediately begin to feel the eternal flow of life.
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From the Lecture in Rome 5/20/2011

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