Question: We see that man is a predator. The entire meaning of his existence is to devour his neighbor and reach his own goal. If we attain mutual guarantee and the earth’s population will increase to 20 or 25 billion, how will all of this actually take place?

Answer: What’s the problem with having twenty billion people? Imagine that they are all your relatives and you feel like one whole with them. It completely doesn’t bother you that they are together with you. On the contrary, you change your attitude to them: You feel good when all of them are as close to you as possible.

Question cont’d: But what will happen if there are no limits?

Answer: Every person makes a limit on himself. Imagine a mother who has twenty billion children. Does this number bother her if she has everything they need? She exists in the world of Infinity, meaning in the world of absolute Light, satisfaction, fulfillment, and abundance.

Of course, it’s difficult to imagine how a person changes. But if you are next to your beloved and you really love him without any calculation, then you want to be with him all the time. You always want to be next to him and as close as possible.

Then what would be the problem with having twenty billion beloved? You won’t feel that there are twenty billion people. You will feel that they are all together with you. This state is the most desirable and comfortable one.

In reality you do not split them up into twenty billion, but there is just one you. This is called inclusion.

Our obstacle is a psychological problem. We cannot imagine how this will happen. We imagine that we exist in bodies, but when we reach mutual guarantee, then instead of the bodies, we will feel every person’s inner potential.
From the 2nd lesson of the Berlin Convention on 1/28/11

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Question: Can Kabbalah help a person find mutual understanding between a man and woman or fix relationships in the family or at work?

Answer: No, you will not be able to create a good life for yourself in this world with the help of the science of Kabbalah. A good life will come as a result of your using all of the evil that becomes revealed in order to attain love for the neighbor and love for the Creator. Then the desires in which you feel bad will no longer emerge in you. The science of Kabbalah does not lie to a person! This is not psychology or charlatanism; it is not mysticism or a magical means to improve our lives!

Kabbalah says that the evil which becomes revealed to you is goal-oriented. It is intended to push you toward correction. You do not have to nullify the desire in which you feel bad, but rather, you have to admit that the desire is bad because of your hatred to the neighbor, and when you correct your hatred to love, you will be able to enjoy love for the neighbor and then the bad desires will no longer become revealed in you.

If you want to create a family or you are already married and a disagreement, animosity, or a misunderstanding comes up between you, that misunderstanding is impossible to correct without correcting your attitude to creation and the Creator. The Creator is between you: “Husband and wife—and the Shechina between them.”

For now the Shechina is still in exile. It becomes revealed as an evil, harmful force, the force of mutual hatred which sets you one against the other. The Creator does this deliberately so you wouldn’t connect on the previous, animate level, the way a female animal unites with a male animal in order to produce offspring, but in order for you to merge with one another as two souls into one soul and reveal the common force of bestowal that will connect you together.

If you are able to correct the relationship between you in this way, you will really become a family. Otherwise you won’t be able to do it. Kabbalah does not give you hints, solutions, or medicine for your current state, but elevates you to a new state where you will be able to be happy, successful, and perfect.

All of the suffering, problems, and blows become revealed in our world not in order to bring peace and perfection into the world, but in order to elevate us above our world. Otherwise it is similar to building communism in Russia. If you do something not for the sake of the Creator, meaning not in order to reach absolute bestowal, then you won’t achieve anything.

I feel bad, I have problems with my family, at work, with my children, and with my health, and I want to succeed in all of these areas. Kabbalah says I will feel good? Then fine, I agree to study Kabbalah! To do that I have to bestow to others? Then I’m even willing to bestow to others—anything to feel good myself.

This is called Lo Lishma (not for the Creator’s sake). This means that you know the method and you want to bring it to life for the sake of everyone so that you would also feel good. Now everything depends on what proportion you are willing to bestow to others in order to improve your state.

At first it is 1% for others and 99% for yourself. Then it’s the opposite: 99% for others and 1% for yourself until you acquire the force enabling you not to want anything for yourself. “I don’t care about what happens to me, I want to bestow to others.” This is called “bestowal for the sake of bestowal.”

However, we will never be able to return to a successful and corrected material life. All the methods that say that they can achieve this are lying, and Kabbalah tells you from the onset that this is impossible because all the evil in this life exists in order to elevate you to a new level.

Therefore, if you apply the science of Kabbalah to improve this life and you begin selling holy water or red strings, then it becomes a deadly poison. We have to understand that the reason for the general state of the world is the need to elevate us, but not to improve our situation. This is the difference between Kabbalah and other methods.

Therefore, if someone promises you a good life in this world, or health and happiness in your personal life, don’t believe it—it’s a lie and goes against nature! Nature wishes to elevate us to the “human” level. And when you aspire to this state, everything falls into place in the most wondrous way!
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/24/11, “The Essence of the Wisdom of Kabbalah”

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By coming out of my sensations and trying to be in someone else, I don’t step into his or her egoistic properties, but rather come into contact with what they aren’t yet: with their soul, with their spiritual potential. I don’t fulfill their egoistic, corporeal part, but instead I form in them myself, my spiritual image (Partzuf).

In truth, my soul is all I can fill in the others. A soul does not reside in the person. “A soul” is desire, and desire is not matter; it cannot be weighed on a scale. It is a field, a force, a force of desire that I direct to the others while it links with and remains in them as a record, as information that I enter into them, wishing to fulfill them.

My desire is scattered among all souls, all individual and common desires of people. At first, I am not even aware of it, and only later when I ascend to high spiritual degrees, do I start actively fulfilling them. Thus, such yearning outwardly forms a human soul.

The body dies since it is a mere animate organism which has no substance. What matters is how much of myself I managed to transfer into others with my desires. It is not actions which are required here, neither is it money or forces, but only desires. After all, desire is the greatest force in the world. It is the only thing that makes one person interact with another.

Hence, the friend’s role in the group is defined by what each of them will deposit into the others. Whether I like it or not, what the others plant in me starts influencing me. The global crisis reveals our egoistic interconnection; in the same manner, we are intertwined in our souls.

Generally speaking, a soul is something collective. There is one soul, one human, one Adam. And we, his particles, don’t yet comprehend that we are completely tied to one another, like parts of its spiritual organism, a spiritual system.

Therefore, everybody’s impact on all the others is direct and natural, exposed from one straight to the other. If we understand this, we gain a remarkable opportunity to selectively influence people and each other: pull, push, elevate, and help everybody. If we did employ this principle, we would definitely make a tremendous leap forth.

If each member of the group, man and woman alike, realizes this, then with their inner yearnings they can elevate us all right now. This depends solely on our internal desires, or rather, intention. Intention is an unfulfilled desire which is yet to come true. It is the most powerful force in the universe.

We see with the example of our world: The greater the physical force is, the less tangible it is. Who can feel the force of atomic interaction? And nonetheless, it can produce an explosion of enormous power from two pounds of matter. Intangible waves and emanations play a tremendous role in our life. And the force of thought, the force of desire, is the greatest of all.

Therefore, the key on our path is our intentions: How correctly we can form and connect them with one another. This means that each of us strives to live in the others, step out of oneself, their body, and start sensing the soul.

It is an incredible feeling when a person isn’t tied to their material body. Having stepped out of it, they start treating it as an “animate consort”: a horse, a donkey, a cow, a dog, and so on. They look after their body but absolutely don’t associate themselves with the life inside the “mammal.” They already feel that life goes on outside of them, in the enormous force field of the supreme mind.
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From Lesson 4 Berlin Convention 1/29/2011

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The group must continuously work with every friend, and friends must work with the group. This is what is required of a person. When we arrange everything correctly, we accelerate time, and then we really feel the development.

But when we don’t, the development drags very slowly. We lose hold of the cause and the purpose, we are unable to distinguish the stages on the path, and everything happens without inner strength, an inner action, which needs to spur our advancement.

And this is why we must count the states, degrees, stages, and actions that we realize. We need to make sure our desire depends on us: not on the individual, but the environment.

Spirituality only exists in the Kelim (vessels, desires) that are “situated” between people. Suppose we have a special filter that helps us see the desires of people. Then we put another filter and instead of seeing their personal desires, we uncover their common desires which extend between them. These desires are the spiritual Kli.

The desires cannot exist separately in any individual person; they can only be awakened through a common action, a mutual guarantee, the principle of, “Do not do unto others what you don’t want others do unto you,”and “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” Essentially, we build the Kli by moving these desires from one stage to another. This is the “half of the work” that is the responsibility of the creature.

Even this does not refer to actual desires. When we turn to the group, we see that nobody has a desire directed towards the spiritual goal. However, we can awaken ourselves towards an appeal, a common prayer, and this will evoke the Light which shapes our Kli.

And then, to the measure of its desire, the Kli begins to demand correction in a collective, group-like form and becomes a soul (Neshama). A “soul” is not one’s personal, individual inner sensation; it is a shared sensation that lives among all.

In the corporeal world, we think that each one of us is a Kli. But in spirituality, it is the other way around: A Kli is that which is common between us. Corporeality is the receiving Kli which absorbs everything, while spirituality is a bestowing Kli which emits bestowal outwardly.

Measurements are always done on the outside, and this is why we are unable to recognize the spiritual world; we are unable to explain, reveal, and perceive it. This is because there, everything is evaluated only according to collectivity, the mutual strength.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/25/2011, Writings of Rabash

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Question: We work with egoism on the human level. But how should we relate to desires on the still, vegetative, and animate levels?

Answer: By the principle of vital necessity. Take only as much as you need. Everything else only bothers you. It is written, “The more property you have, the more worries you have.” If you are thinking about the human level, then on the rest of the levels you only have enough energy left for the vital necessities.

For example, some people keep a dog at home. The dog barks loudly in the morning, demanding to be taken out for a walk. The two of them walk together: the master and the dog on a leash. I walk with my “dog” inside, while his dog is outside.

Indeed, this “animal” needs to be taken care of. I feed it, walk it, wash it, put it to sleep, and do everything necessary so it would let me work spiritually.

This healthy attitude makes life much easier. You have to put your material existence into simple, “mechanical” boundaries, subjecting it to the needs of the system like cogwheels in the mechanism of a watch. I have to get along with everyone and maintain a certain material balance in my family, at work, and so on, while devoting the bulk of my energy to the thing that matters most.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/10/11, Writings of Rabash

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A person has to take care to provide himself with the vital necessities according to the normal living standards customary in our day. It is customary to have some kind of insurance (such as medical insurance and a pension fund), although it is impossible to insure yourself for everything in life.

Obtain a small insurance at the "upper registry" from the Creator, and to this degree you will feel how you should realistically relate to this life. It’s not simple to understand the meaning of "vital necessity," but humanity will have to gradually start attaining this.

Otherwise, we won’t attain balance with nature, the Creator. The Creator gave us life where a part of it is called "material" and takes place in an "imaginary" world. But we have to play as if we are living real lives in this imaginary world.

You cannot say that the Creator will take care of everything and you do not need any insurance or health fund. The Creator has set up this entire game for us and I have to accept it with full seriousness and carry out all its conditions.

Of course, the Creator is responsible for everything, including my upbringing and safety, and He has to provide total coverage for me. But no matter what, I have to play according to the rules He has established and take care of the vital necessities.

It’s as if the Creator has removed Himself from this material life and tells us: "Take care of this yourself, and I will take care of everything else." And obviously, that is not true. But He wants me to play this game and provide for myself in the material world. That is how I correct myself.

First of all, you have to take care of the vital necessities: obtain a profession and a salary, and create a family. After that you can study Kabbalah and correct your soul. Until then, you do not have the necessary foundation.

However, if you start to worry about the material things more than the necessary, you will receive such great problems and burdening of the heart that they will completely obstruct the sky, the Creator, for you. You will no longer be able to think about spiritual work. On the other hand, if you provide for yourself on the normal, rational level, then this work helps you to advance.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah lesson 1/4/11, “The Wisdom of Kabbalah and Philosophy”

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If we looked at ourselves from the outside, from beyond our world, we would see that the “life” in it isn’t really life. We are completely detached from the true understanding of life. Spiritually, we are dead, and our reality is an illusion in an unconscious condition, a short lived spark that sustains this entire world.

A person truly lives when he receives the Light and holds it above himself, not allowing this enjoyment to expire and, at the same time, not letting it enter his will to receive directly. The Light and desire don’t cancel each other out; moreover, they don’t lose the connection either. They are like a candle, oil, and flame, bonded by the wick.

The oil is our matter, the will to receive; the wick is the screen (Masach); and the candle’s flame is the Light. I hold the flame above me and draw a line between the flame and the desire so that I don’t push the Light away completely, but rather keep it in order to bestow.

I constantly calculate how much oil and desire to add in order to make the flame burn in the optimal manner. Then, my candle doesn’t die out.

If we succeed in this, we experience life, eternal and complete. An opportunity to do so is laid before us.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/24/10, “Perfection in Life”

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Desire gives taste to fulfillment. Every sip of water is agonizingly sweet when I am dying of thirst. The fulfillment may be only partial, but the desire is great, and the discrepancy between them creates a sensation of life.

Hence, life can be measured not by desire or the pleasure as such, but by the struggle between them. The higher the tension or the interval between them, the more life and energy I possess.

The trouble begins when my vessel is empty or when it’s filled, either way. The key is to bring the empty vessel to being filled and catch the moment of their contact.

How do I hold on to this moment? After all, even the greatest pleasures from food, sex, and recognition, having reached their peak, diminish and die. I live from instant to instant. My life barely twinkles, breaking away from the void and sinking back into it.

As the song says, “Only an instant separates the past and the future,” an instant between the Light that flashed before my eyes and the dark void that is about to consume it. Before the current pleasure expires, I must seek the next one already so that I don’t lose the feeling of being alive.

However, desires constantly grow, and desperation overtakes the world. The promise of future pleasures is no longer there, “transient” rewards do not dissipate the pressuring darkness, and life becomes pointless.

Our life diminishes because we cannot hold on to the brief experience of pleasure. This needs to be learned. That is, we have to learn to live above our egoism, to work against it. Then, a person undergoes ten “Egyptian plagues,” leaves his desires below, and steps out to “Mount Sinai,” the Light that can give him a screen.

Spiritual attainment is built in a special vessel (Kli) that allows you to hold yourself above desire, in bestowal. Having arranged a Kli of bestowal, a person acquires an opportunity to constantly be in contact with pleasure, and, at the same time, to not put the desire out since it isn’t the desire which is being filled, but the intention for bestowal that rises above it.

A person obtains perfection when he bestows, when he steps out of himself and lives in the pleasure that he returns to the others. His life, eternal life, lies not in his personal desire, but in the Reflected Light that fills their desires and delights the Creator.
[30718]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/24/10, “Perfection in Life”

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Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to the Book, Panim Meirot uMasbirot”: Now we can understand the severity of the punishment of the Tree of Knowledge, for which all people are put to death. This death extends from eating it, as the Creator had warned him, “in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.”

… Hence, that eternal breath of life, expressed in the verse, “and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life,” had to leave there and depend on a slice of bread for its transient sustenance.

This life is not an eternal life as before, when it was for himself. It is rather similar to a sweat of life, a life that has been divided into tiny drops, where each drop is a fragment of his previous life. And this is the meaning of the sparks of souls that were spread throughout his progeny. Thus, in all his progeny, all the people in the world in all the generations, through the last generation, which concludes the purpose of creation, are one long chain.

Obviously, it is not talking about the ordinary life and death of a person in this world. It is speaking about life cycles of the desire to receive pleasure. Each time it is revealed in us anew, and we correct it further. This is what the wisdom of Kabbalah calls “a new life cycle.” However, if we live an ordinary “animal” life, we do not correct anything and do not go through “life cycles.”

Due to the sin of the Tree of Knowledge, a new and enormous void became revealed called shame. This is what we need to correct, but it requires a lot of life cycles. If a person changes, the entire world changes together with him. And if the person does not change, the world cannot change either.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/29/10, “Introduction to the Book, Panim Meirot uMasbirot”

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Question: It is unclear how I can enjoy bestowal and giving when I do not have anything myself?

Answer: We are not talking about material bestowal, meaning the still, vegetative, and animate levels of desire (although it is also important if done correctly). First of all, in order to bestow, we have to correct our desire and intention so that they are aimed at this form.

Bestowal doesn’t mean that I start stuffing you with all kinds of pleasures that you don’t need. To bestow, I have to first develop myself to such a degree that I will start feeling your desire as my own.

Your desire is next to me, and I have to attach it to myself as if it is my own. Then, I begin fulfilling your desire as my own, thereby turning it into mine. This is what wisdom of Kabbalah is all about (it means “the wisdom of reception” in Hebrew). Look at the sophisticated game here!

At first, I thought that it was someone else’s desire. Then, I crossed over this “psychological barrier” (Machsom), attached this desire to myself, and now I feel your desire as my own. You became more important to me than I am, like a baby to its mother, who sees the purpose of her life in it and is willing to bestow to it endlessly, thinking solely about her baby.

In the same fashion, I attached myself to you; your desires became more important to me than my own, and all I do is work for your benefit! This means that I relate to you in complete bestowal. And since your desire became mine, I feel pleasure in it. It is I who feels pleasure by fulfilling it.

In this way, I gradually re-attach all souls to myself. After all, they used to be part of my “self.” But I was suddenly cut off from all these parts, and instead, my mind was implanted with some “microchip” that makes me hate the parts of my own soul. And I start despising and hating them instead of loving them.

Now I need to rise above this confusion and overcome this psychological rejection. And as soon as I start treating them as my own authentic, integral parts that are inseparable in their connection with me, I will bestow to them and enjoy it!

I did this work, corrected myself, and now feel pleased. We are not expected to do anything else but overcome this psychological barrier and repulsion so that love may replace hate. Then, we will be truly enjoying ourselves.

You will feel that these specific parts, alien to you for now, are the foundation for the root of your soul. You will reveal the Creator in them in particular. And the part of the still, vegetative, and animate degree, which you previously thought of as yourself and your world, has nothing to do with you at all. It is the lowest level in relation to you. Who is interested if they live or die? And they do indeed die, and you are left to live with your soul!

Therefore, before you leave this material world, it would be better to reach at least the first degree of the soul. Then, you won’t regret parting with the body.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/17/10, “The Freedom”

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