Question: What do we need to keep in mind so that the group doesn’t turn into a bunch of mockers?

Answer: Each time, we deliberately fall under the influence of the Creator who taunts us and shakes us like babies so much He as if simply “shakes it all out” of us. Today we are so nice and “cute,” ready to love everyone and everything. But tomorrow we will once again be completely opposite. How can we forget that our path is made of ascents and descents? We can’t remember it if we forget about the Creator.

Why is it said: “Israel, the Torah, and the Creator are one”? Israel means “yearning for the Creator.” Hence the remedy for correction: our studies, the group, where all of this gets realized, and the Creator Himself have to be as one, in one place. There are the Creator, the group, and me.

We have to constantly link it all together into one unified whole; there can’t be any other view of the world! In order to focus and properly look at what is happening, I need these three points: the eye, the sight, and the target. Otherwise, I won’t be able to do anything.

Therefore, if we wish to keep the group in the right intention, it is our responsibility to keep in mind that our goal is adhesion with the Creator. Otherwise, what is going to motivate us, our egoism? Today I am willing; tomorrow I am not.

Here the Creator appears as the definer, the first to act, or the one who initiates our actions, who forms the group and everything that is happening to us, who gives us everything. All that we have in our hearts and mind right now, all that we hear and feel, all of it is His doing.

How should we, together, respond to it, based on the fact that we felt something coming from Him? From this moment on, our work begins. This is exactly the moment when all of us clearly felt that it was He who brought us together right now; He connects us all in one desire, one intention, and the same thought. It is He who arranged everything for us, so that we all together started to ascend to and strive for Him.

So how can we rise to Him so that we could consciously fortify among ourselves what He has created? What does it mean: “I now link myself with the group?” I link myself along with the others and the Creator into the common desire, one common goal, and common aspiration. If the effort that each of us exerts links all the others and the Creator together, this is precisely our active response. This is how we must act. If we envision that everything derives from the Creator and know how we should respond to it, then it will be very effective work, a very effective move.
[95564]
From the Novosibirsk Convention 12/8/12, Lesson 4

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Question: What does it mean to delight the Creator?

Answer: To delight, to bring pleasure to, the Creator, to love the Creator—these are all very beautiful words. But how can we love a force, even if it is eternal and governs everything there is? All these words are told to a person so that he can adjust himself in some way.

We come to love for the Creator only through love for others. In the article, “One Commandment,” there is an instruction: to come to love for the Creator. But how can we be ordered, obliged to love? It is possible when we work on love of another, make a common mass of our yearnings toward each other, build a common connection above our egoism, and cover it with mutual love. It is written: “Love will cover all transgressions.” When we build a collective property of common mutual connection and yearn toward everyone while cultivating love within, then in our internal egoism there arises a completely new structure: mutual adhesion, mutual inclusion.

Love means that I assume all your desires and care for them, thinking solely of how to fulfill them, while you think about mine, and so on. Love means to fulfill desires of another instead of my own, using them for this purpose. If I arrange such conditions within myself, then by doing so I grow a vessel there that works for the sake of bestowal. And this common vessel that all of us are creating together contains our collective component called “love for the Creator.”

We begin to experience not only the common vessel, our attitude towards the others, love for them, bestowing to them, but also we begin sensing what fills me along the way. This sensation is called the Creator, Boreh in Hebrew (“Bo” – come, “Reh” – see). When we create one collective spiritual vessel, the Creator is revealed there as a result.

Hence, the main Mitzva is very simple: “Love your neighbor.” Through love for another, in the vessel that you created, you will feel love for the Creator and, respectively, His love for you.

Question: What is the final goal of this work?

Answer: It is in the fact that you come to a complete likeness and adhesion with Him in our own reformed egoism. This is how you rise to the level of the Creator. This is the final goal of creation. You begin to experience a sensation that you are in total adhesion with Him, but you don’t dissolve in it, because your entire vessel stays with you.

In other words, the sensation of being opposite doesn’t get annihilated since adhesion with the Creator occurs above it; otherwise, mutual annihilation would occur. Hence, we must view our egoism as the matter with the help of which we move forth. We should treat it with respect since it is the reverse image of the Creator. Conversely, our whole world is His reverse image at our level.
[95561]
From the Novosibirsk Convention 12/8/12, Lesson 4

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Question: Do we draw the Creator by actions that are aimed at the revelation of spirituality? In other words, do we raise the actions or do we lower the Creator?

Answer: There are no such terms as “up” or “down” in spirituality in the simple sense of the words. We can divide them according to quality: Up means a higher quality and down means a lower quality.

I want to be connected to the Creator in all my actions; I want to feel how He manages me from the inside, I want to feel that all my thoughts, feelings, and decisions stem from Him. He is inside me, as the hand wearing the glove of the puppet, the puppeteer.

No matter what I do, it is Him, but everything depends on the extent to which I discover that “there is none else besides Him.” Therefore I ask and yearn for it in order to discover Him in me.

But I can do it only when I am with the group, because it is impossible to discover the attributes of bestowal alone. I am an egoist, an individualist, which means that I have to be with a group and to adhere to it.

I am included in a group, connect to the friends, and try to be with them in one desire, one inclination. Through them I ask for all of us, because I cannot ask for myself, since it will be egoism again. I ask for all of humanity—that the Creator will be revealed in us and that we will all feel Him and feel how He operates in us. This is how I want to see what joy and contentment we are bringing Him.

This is fulfilled by the law of “the end result is in the initial thought,” since in spirituality there is no time and no sequential actions. There is a static state, and it is only with regard to us that it is revealed this way, so that we will perceive it gradually.

We must understand the whole formula of creation from the beginning to the end, since otherwise it won’t work. We have to be moderately involved in it, since even our slightest participation is made of the same ten Sefirot according to the law of “the general and the individual are equal.” So we have to feel ourselves deeply, the group, humanity, and the Creator together in one general picture and to complete it.

Question: What is the Creator’s joy?

Answer: The Creator’s joy is the state in which we are all connected, adhered inside Him, enjoying the same wholeness that is actually the Creator Himself.
[95574]
From the Novosibirsk Convention 12/9/12, Lesson 5

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Question: How is awe of the Creator demonstrated in our work with the world?

Answer: Awe of the Creator is expressed in awe before the world, whether we can correct it. I really should be afraid of whether I am doing everything to make the world not only avoid suffering (although this is the initial stage of awe), but also to come to the Creator the easy way. After all, the Creator is not interested in having someone suffer for even a moment, and the suffering of the world depends only on how I will lead it to the Creator. I am responsible for it. This will gradually appear before us like a great mission with great responsibility.
[95571]
From the Novosibirsk Convention 12/9/12, Lesson 5

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Question: If each of us is making efforts and takes his point outside, at what moment does the adhesion of these points occur between us?

Answer: Be always prepared for duality. If I intentionally seek to measure something, to feel, then, on the one hand, I will be pushed away from this, and on the other hand, I have to build attraction in me. On one hand, I will not understand, and on the other hand, I might understand something. And all this will exist in me in equal proportion. If I work for the group, on the one hand, I have to look at it as something absolute, a unit that is in perfection, in the world of Infinity. Each of the friends is an angel who has completed all his corrections. All the friends are united. There is an ideal in front of me, and the Creator is inside of it.

This is how I should imagine everything that is outside of me. Then I will have something for which to strive, for unity with friends, to be included in them. I see them as great; I develop envy, jealousy, and the desire to integrate with them.

On the other hand, this group influences me, and I have to see and feel it as it usually happens in this world. In this case, I have to communicate with them as with equals, and perhaps sometimes as a teacher to students, and so does every one of us. I have to excite, organize, and motivate them towards the goal, make comments about shared work, about unity, etc.

Thus, there is a kind of “scissors.” On one hand, I relate to the friends as great, perfect, and connected to each other. On the other hand, I relate to them as those whom I can point out, I can cheer; I have to organize someone whom I can influence.

I must be prepared to treat the group in two ways, and it should not disturb me. In spiritual work duality always emerges. But in any case, one does not cancel the other; there is time for one and for the other. Because of this, you need to learn to bifurcate, to look at things more “slanted,” and then between these two oblique directions, you will find out how to see the higher system.
[95568]
From the Novosibirsk Convention 12/9/12, Lesson 5

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Question: One of our friends from the virtual group was going to come to the congress but at the last minute he returned his ticket. How should we support friends in such groups?

Answer: This should be regarded simply: The Creator wants to show him whether or not he chose the right path. Let him check.

You have to treat him as a friend: There are ascents as well as descents, and they both come from the Creator. You have to truly be helpful and supportive of a friend and the rest is up to him.

It is said that one should be lifted twice. If you see your friend with his “donkey” (egoism) and this “donkey” is weighted down by his load, meaning that the egoistic desire of a friend didn’t withstand the load and fell, then you must help the “donkey” to free himself of this load, to lift him back up, and load him again. If the “donkey” falls again, then you have to repeat this action. However, if he falls for the third time then you can leave him.
[95516]
From the Novosibirsk Convention 12/8/12, Lesson 4

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I hope we will tighten our connections so much that we will reach the level where we really feel one another. Today we have a couple of million people around the world, but many of them we don’t know. If we could see all of those who watch or listen to us…

When we begin to mutually feel one another like a mother feels her child at a distance, and even much greater than that, then there will simply be one permanent worldwide convention.
[95510]
From the Novosibirsk Convention 12/8/12, Lesson 4

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Question: You said that a person should turn to the Creator through the group. What does that mean? Do we have to read Shamati together or have a workshop: what should we do?

Answer: I think that a person should behave very simply: First to take a short course in the wisdom of Kabbalah and then to study in a group. He has to participate in our lessons as much as he can, at least in the third part of the lesson, and to participate in workshops several times a week—that’s the least he can do.

Besides, we have a huge library, an archive of lessons and talks translated to many languages. It shouldn’t be a problem to find something to do.

A person should dedicate a certain amount of time to dissemination, since by that we not only bring our message to the world, but also join the next level.

We have to bring humanity the information about the correction, the advancement, and the attainment of the next state. Otherwise how can we erase the deficiency that is now being revealed in people?

We speak about the fact that there is none else besides Him. So what is humanity’s problem? How can it correct itself?

We have now reached a “round” state, in which we totally depend on one another. The third phase is now being revealed and we are beginning to ascend to it from our current state; this is called a crisis.

The truth is that a “crisis” in Greek means “birth”—the birth of something new.

So we have to show humanity that we are on the border of a new world now and this new world is integrality.

The first spiritual level, the world of Assiya, is now being revealed only in its external outline, integrally, since the spiritual world is integral. We are starting to see that with our properties, we are unable to cope in this system. A network of absolute mutual connections is descending upon us, and we cannot do anything here. This is precisely how today’s crisis is expressed in education, in science, in economy, in every aspect.

So we first have to tell people about this, and second, to teach them the method of how to ascend internally to the next qualitative level, which means to change towards integrality, towards a mutual connection.
[95269]
From the Novosibirsk Convention 12/8/12, Lesson 3

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Question: If “there is none else besides Him,” where is the point of applying our efforts and how do we not sink into the temptation to explain the reluctance to make efforts by the fact that everything comes from the Creator? From time to time, this motivation appears in the group.

Answer: This happens because people forget that one half comes from the Creator and the other half from us. From top to bottom, we get everything from the Creator. He shapes our attitudes, thoughts, connections between us, as well as everyone’s character and education, absolutely everything. Now consider what we do with it in order to strive for the Creator because He can be felt only through the connection with the rest of humanity because it’s the same mass in which He is revealed.
[95441]
From the Novosibirsk Convention 12/8/12, Lesson 4

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Why is our world special? On the one hand, it’s the last and worst of all the worlds. On the other hand, it’s necessary since here we are in a totally still state, which means breathless, and we can begin to advance as we “play” with each other, with the bodies and not with the forces, which we still don’t know how to manage.

This is why our world is called “the imaginary world.” It doesn’t actually exist, but is only felt that way in our egoistic desires. The moment we rise above it, we begin to feel that it’s an absolute replica that is opposite from the upper level, and then this world simply loses its meaning for us. This is what we have to attain.

First we have to internalize the fact that the soul is the general vessel, which is the only thing that was created and which is constantly in contact and in adhesion with the Light. We are in that state, in that vessel, in that desire. Imagine that it has layers, we are on the most “coarse,” darkest layer, and above us there are 125 layers until the real state. We have to go through these 125 layers gradually by rejecting our ego, which is inside us, in the gradual, constant connection between us.

Do the plants, animals and the still nature have a soul? Every small desire that exists in nature is already part of the general soul, but without freewill. It totally depends on us, on those who fulfill the correction of the soul.

There are many different levels in the soul. There are people who are on the human level, who have started their correction ages before us, who have attained where they really are, and saw that everything is one soul, one Light. There are people who carried on this mission, and there are people like us who are reaching this level now.

But we are special. The development of our world is the development of the same ego on the lowest level. Throughout the ages it developed egoistically and eventually has reached a “round” form, its maximum size, and at the same time, it is global and integral (∫) in its quality.

Now, too, this ego is the state we are in. It cannot grow any further, and it has become global and closed. So we don’t understand what is happening to us. Being egoistic and individualists, we cannot understand this “round” state.

We have always grown and aspired forward. Each of us was pushed forward by an egoistic force and we tried to fulfill it. We felt good. Even 50-60 years ago we used to praise the consumerist society, the benefit of competition, and we called it “general democracy.”

Now the same ego, that has reached huge dimensions on the last level of its existence, has “exploded.” It doesn’t work as it used to, and we are trapped. The only way out is if we understand how the integral system of the general soul operates.

What does humanity feel today in the general system that is becoming evident? It actually feels the first level of the general soul that hasn’t been revealed yet and that should illuminate upon us here, the level at which we have to acknowledge the fact that we are connected.

On the whole, there are 125 levels in this ascent and now the very first level seems to illuminate upon us from a distance. This is the reason that we feel that the world is global and integral and we cannot do anything about it.

We study about this in the wisdom of Kabbalah: When two Partzufim are made of ten Sefirot, from Keter (K) to Malchut (M), and are one under the other, this illumination flows from one to the other. When one Partzuf “dresses” in another that is next to it, it illuminates through it.

On the one hand, we receive factual data about our world that is in a crisis today and can’t do anything about it. After all, it’s an upper level that illuminates upon us, the first level of my soul, which means of the general vessel.

On the other hand, we suddenly find ourselves tied to one another, connected through the whole world: What people think in one place, people also know in a second and third place and so on. We are mutually interdependent. We suddenly discover that we can’t get rid of any part in the chain, whether we like it or not. On the whole, this mutual network is expressed in the states being one on top of the other or one below the other.

In any case, it’s a special state: We are now experiencing the solution phase of the general soul.
[95243]
From the Novosibirsk Convention 12/7/12, Lesson 2

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