Every person experiences his or her individual desires that they try to fulfill. There are people who oppose and resist them, but they, too, are governed by the Creator. He moves us all around like figures on a chessboard.

We don’t have any free will, so there is no point in labeling a person as good or bad. And he shouldn’t expect any consequences or feedback regarding his actions: neither heaven, nor hell, nor anything else. It is written in The Book of Zohar: “We are all like animals.”

Indeed, where is your free will? Even if you have an illusion of it, it is because you don’t clearly realize what you want. The Creator intentionally injects you with such instructions, such specific control signals that create an illusion of free actions, and nothing more. Therefore, to realize that “there is none else besides Him” is to realize that we are, first of all, cogwheels in an enormous mechanism.

Where then does a human begin? A human starts with free will. And in order to achieve it, he must evolve to it. That is why first, over the course of millennia, man is developing in his egoism controlled from Above by the Creator, and then he feels how the “point in the heart” emerges within. In other words, another desire comes to life: an additional one, opposite to all the others. It breaks a person in pieces, taunts, and twists him.

Naturally, this desire also comes from the Creator. There is no other place where it may originate from since it doesn’t appear out of thin air. After all, man is a created being. Therefore, even the formation of the point in the heart doesn’t make us autonomous, independent from the Creator, yet.

What else can one be “free” from? If there is only one singular force that governs everything from Above, then my freedom may lie only in my ability to neutralize it.

How can I accomplish that? Moreover, if I do neutralize it, what will be left for me? What forces will I possess, what mind? How will I choose? What will be governing me? It is totally unclear. If there were two forces, I would be choosing between them. But if there is only one, then there is no free will is there? Why then does everything exist, what for? To control these “insects”?

No, there is a purpose to it. The created being, man, has to master both opposing forces and by maneuvering between them, learn by the Creator’s example, imitate His characteristics, and copy Him in himself. Sequentially, step by step, property by property, he gradually transfers greater and greater amounts of information from the Creator onto himself and, as a result, can completely equalize himself with Him.

In that case, in the degree of his equivalence to the Creator, a person starts autonomously regulating himself, in the same manner as the Creator would, and even much better. A person discovers a desire intentionally created in him: He wishes to be opposite to the Creator. But instead, man learns the program, the management techniques from the Creator, and despite his egoism, starts to govern himself in the correct manner.

It turns out that the Creator created man evil. And so it is written: “I created the evil inclination. And at the same time, I gave you a method to transform this evil into good. Then, you become similar to Me and free; you can work on yourself independently.

You hold two reins in your hands: your evil egoistic nature and your good altruistic one. Imitate, copy Me, and apply it to yourself. Then, you will be named Adam, from the word “Domeh,” similar to the Creator.

Thus, we do have an opportunity to graduate from the upper management, to cease being puppets, and stop saying “there is none else besides Him.” There is one more force beside Him: It is the force of that human who copies the Creator and does everything instead of Him. And that’s where free will lies because then we work with two opposite properties of the creature: egoism and the property of bestowal.
[34273]
From Lesson 4 Berlin Convention 1/28/2011

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Question: Throughout our lives we often suffer. How can we work with it? Why do we feel suffering? What should we do with it?

Answer: It’s impossible to advance without suffering. Until we reach our final goal, we keep advancing by the force of suffering.

Suffering is when I feel that something is lacking. Actual suffering isn’t necessary; I can derive pleasure from suffering. If I know that a special meal is awaiting me and I’m getting closer to it, if I know that I’m about to meet someone I love, a friend, and something good is about to happen, then it isn’t suffering any more. The feeling of hunger and emptiness stirs in me the anticipation of future enjoyment and fulfillment.

Therefore, our entire problem is not in sensing a lack at the present moment, but whether that lack has fulfillment, an answer in the future. If it does, then for me it’s as sweet as a feeling of hunger before a good meal. I can feel that satisfaction is coming. Suppose, you have a date with a loved one tonight, and you look forward to the meeting. Is there a chance that you will be miserable?!

In other words, the problem is not in my condition, but rather in if there is a pleasure that beckons me ahead or not. The problem is that people can’t see a proper, good future ahead of them and, therefore, feel suffering. If we felt that all the problems we have today would be successfully resolved tomorrow, we wouldn’t feel the hardships as suffering. Rather, it will be like an overture, a necessary preparation that precedes fulfillment.

Hence, our entire problem is in revealing the future in our current state, the one where everything will be fine. But it has to “shine” to us like a pleasant date.

This will be the answer to all our afflictions. We will agree to pass through all the unpleasant states—ascents and descents, all sorts of confusions in feelings and in mind—as necessary for our spiritual correction.

If, however, through support from our environment, we know that a bright future lies ahead, then any of our current states would not appear as suffering. We would perceive them as a necessary sensation, a wholesome hunger before cherished satisfaction from the meal.
[34144]
From the 1st lesson of the Berlin Convention on 1/28/11

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One of the books written during the time of ancient Babylon describes that Abraham set his tent with treats and started inviting everyone who was interested. This is how he explained his teaching to others since back then people did not have all these modern ways of communication.

Many people stayed to continue their studies. He formed a group from them. RAMBAM (a great Kabbalist of the 12th century) wrote that Abraham took a few thousand people with him when he left ancient Babylon.

In the end, together with them, he revealed Kabbalah. He was the first one who outlined Kabbalah and gave us the understanding of it in his work The Book of Creation. He attained great heights, but he did not attain them in detail.

The whole problem in attaining the world is that the first Kabbalists were attaining the upper world in general, on a high level, while we attain it in detail. Back then egoism was underdeveloped, but today it has developed so much that it allows us to enter and research every fine part of myself and through myself, the entire spiritual space. That is, the difference in the generations’ attainment is that they were attaining in general while we attain in details. However, the Light of our attainment passes through their souls and becomes revealed in them through greater Light.

Thus, they have been always revealing Kabbalah based upon the same single principle: attracting the Light to the common desire through the group. This is the way it was during the time of Adam and through the 20 generations of Kabbalists from Adam to Abraham, which are all listed and known to us. And it has continued in the same way.

There was not a single Kabbalist who would have attained spirituality alone, suddenly realizing it and then jumping like Archimedes out of his bath tub, running and screaming about his attainment. This is impossible. This can only happen in external science, but not in Kabbalah.
[34345]
From Lesson 3 Berlin Convention 1/28/2011

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Kabbalah is a system of knowledge and a method of revelation of the upper force in all of its manifestations, in all generations until the end of our existence in this world. It not only explains to us the purpose of creation, what is happening, and what will happen; it elevates us!

No other science changes us in any way, they only explain how we can benefit ourselves with their help, to somehow improve the world around us; whereas, the wisdom of Kabbalah is a method of raising a person from our world into the upper one.

By studying Kabbalah, you begin to ascend, to change your inner shape, and to alter your essence. You begin to open your eyes to yourself and the entire world, and truly ascend to your next level. It is no ordinary science where you stay on the “outside” detached from it; it is a method of self-transformation, ascension. This is perhaps the most fundamental part of it.

Let’s hope that, eventually, through our circulation, we will reach a state when people will know what kind of a method it is, and all of science will once again re-unite. How clearly and concisely Paracelsus expressed this in his treatise “Paragranum” [Das Buch Paragranum]: “Study Kabbalah (artem cabbalisticam), it will explain everything to you!”

Today each science exists in its narrow scope, and in each there are thousands of different niches occupied by scientists who don’t how to talk to each other. Kabbalah, however, is intended to re-unite all of these sciences together, to serve as a common basis for them, and to elevate everything to the single purpose and one common knowledge. That’s what makes it so special.

Ultimately, a person understands that the world he or she is living in is unified, whole, global, and integral, which is what all of us should be aspiring for today.
[34262]
From Lesson 3 Berlin Convention 1/28/2011

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Excerpt from the speech at the 3rd World Spirit Forum “Toward Integral Consciousness” in Arosa (Switzerland), January 23, 2006:

If the cell of a living organism starts acting egoistically with regard to other cells, it becomes cancerous, kills the entire body, and, as a result, itself. A cancerous cell is continuously dividing. It devours all around it, having no obligations to them and no reactions to the organism’s commands.

As a matter of fact, this is the key to all the problems, not only the cancerous ailments. Our egoism develops such characteristics, although balance where everything lives according to the principle of equilibrium, harmony, and striving toward a comfortable state is instilled in Nature at all levels, be it the still, vegetative, or animate one. One way or the other, everything exists solely to maintain balance and grow toward it.

However, we don’t understand the problem correctly, and our view on the imbalance of forces is erroneous as well. The lack of balance in Nature is necessary in order to bring it to even greater harmony. We always advance by way of two states: balanced and imbalanced.

Initially, we existed in a perfect balanced state between minus and plus. All systems of our organism were working fine, Then, nature created in us an imbalanced state, and the negative outweighed the positive.

Why was it made so? It was done so that we would bring ourselves to a better state. How can we possibly bring ourselves to a balanced state? The negative is given to us from Above, by Nature, while we must balance it with a greater positive force, equal to it. This action is produced specifically by us.

Thus, Nature forces us to compensate ourselves, intentionally making us imbalanced. As soon as we have brought ourselves to equilibrium, it again creates in us an additional minus, from Above, and we must bring this minus to plus, to a balanced state, on our own.

Thus, we advance if we understand correctly that in this manner Nature wishes to elevate us from one degree to the next. At first, our egoism was valued at zero. Then, it acquired value minus one. Next, it gained an altruistic value plus one, and again, minus two egoistic degrees, then plus two altruistic ones, and so forth. This is how Nature makes grow.

If we understand this principle, then we pass through the “minus” states of descent very easily and come out to the states of ascent. Everyone who walks on the spiritual path feels this.

“Yesterday I felt so good. I understood and knew everything, experienced the subtlest sensations. Everything became nice and easy in my head, but today I feel a block. Nothing is clear; I feel nothing, and I hate everything. This is all so stupid. What am I doing? All of these so-called friends….”

For us, right now, it is exactly so. That’s why we should record our states. It will clarify what we are like and how we pass through them. Later, we will gradually realize that descents are given to us so we may compensate for them with ascents. By going through such step-by-step actions, we do advance, but only if we understand what needs to be done.

Unfortunately, people usually do the opposite. Instead of enhancing the plus, they want to annihilate the minus. This is where Kabbalah warns: “Don’t do it!”

Minus is all our energy, all our understanding, all our awareness. The greater a person is in his desire, the higher he stands. He can do more, good or bad, it doesn’t matter. The key is a great desire. Do not ever destroy it or lower it to a vegetative degree.

After all, egoism is our vehicle, our instrument, which helps us move forward. We must not eliminate it, we can’t anyway. We are constantly growing egoistically and have come to an egoistic crisis today, precisely so that we now could start using and realizing our desire correctly.
[34209]
From Lesson 2 Berlin Convention 1/28/2011

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Question: What is the connection between depression and our nature?

Answer: Depression is a sensation of emptiness in desire. There are desires but no fulfillment. It is the most vivid manifestation of our nature. After all, the Creator created desire, and this desire yearns to be fulfilled. This is our essence.

The collective desire where we all reside or every individual, little desire it is comprised of requires fulfillment. When desire lacks inner fulfillment, the question is where the fulfillment is. If it is somewhere near and the desire feels that it is close but not inside, then depression occurs.

If this fulfillment never existed in the first place, there would be no depression. Who knows what kind of emptiness I feel? How does some African peasant know that he lacks a laptop or a washing machine? But if future fulfillment, which could be but isn’t in you yet, appears in your vision, your sensation, it gives rise to depression.

Thus, depression characterizes not a primitive person, but rather someone advanced. And the farther we move forth, the more depression there will be since desires mature and so does the awareness of the lack of their fulfillment.

It is evident how for the last forty years depression has been getting more wide-spread in humanity. Today it is one of the top problems. Moreover, it has also become an illness. It will keep growing, and there will be no way to stop it.

In the nearest future, they will have to legalize and sell drugs to anyone who wants them. Basically, we will be glad to take anything to not feel this depression. But we won’t be able to overcome it anyway. It will come to the point where a person will see the “fix” before him or her but won’t be able to use the drug. Why? Because they will feel that it is not the answer to their question, not the “fix” to their internal void.

Therefore, the battle with depression is the major battle of man with his emptiness that is precisely what pushes him forth. Hence, by the number of those who are depressed, we can judge how close humanity is to becoming aware of its evil.

Nothing will help a person except a decisive, firm, and dynamic engagement in the correct society. Only there will he be able to suppress his or her depression, and very intensively at that: by switching themselves off, by turning off their feelings, and thrusting themselves into the environment as if flinging themselves into the water. There is no other medicine but the influence of the environment. And as a result, fulfillment will come and immediately eliminate one’s depression.
[34202]
From the 2nd lesson at the Berlin Convention on 1/28/11

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Question: You have said that we shouldn’t suppress the ego, but rather increase the positive. What do you mean by that?

Answer: This refers to a person walking the path of spirituality and engaged in a Kabbalistic group. How then can one increase the positive when he falls?

When I feel sick I take a pill, and when I’m in a bad mood I go dancing. But by doing these things, I don’t suppress or negate my ego in the slightest degree. If you feel ill, acknowledge it as a fact, but don’t beat yourself up. It isn’t you! It is just a little more of your egoism being shown to you. Don’t take it personally.

The negative constantly evolves in a person in order to develop the positive. What is this positive then? It isn’t the annihilation of egoism or balancing it on the corporeal level. In no way should I compensate a minus with some earthly plus. No matter how dreadful my sensation may be, I wish to compensate the minus solely with a spiritual plus. Otherwise, I will be similar to the “reformers” of the world.

Whatever the case may be, I don’t compensate for the negative by reducing it. After all, it is deliberately given to me since nothing is accidental in life. So what should I do? I need to increase my positive relations with the group, the right environment. Why? It is because my entire future depends on our mutual inclusion in one integral system.

If egoism is evolving in me, then this is the only correct decision. My plus lies on my path to the group. If in my entire emerging egoism, I increase my positive connection with the environment, then it is really an altruistic force with which I balance the egoistic force. And it turns out that I rise to the next level through compensating the minus.

Then, needless to say, a new minus emerges in me, and I must become rooted in the group again. But at that point the group seems to even worse to me: “Idiots, hard-hearted dummies. I don’t want any of this anyway, let me go chill out.”

And thus, gradually a person lowers his head, over and over again, and turns to the environment until he reaches a complete connection. Nature encourages us to do the same so that we are together as one integral whole. Hence, the global crisis and complete dependence on one another shows us in what direction we need to correct ourselves.

So, we have agreed not to work against egoism, but to work in order to use it properly. As a result of the minus, we transform it into a plus. Otherwise, we would never have it.

My “I” is a resistor, like the resistance necessary for producing current from a power source. Minus and plus create the tension that draws and forms my reality. Therefore, having reached a certain potential between minus and plus, I begin to see the picture of the upper world on my “screen.”
[34205]
From the 2nd lesson at the Berlin Convention on 1/28/11

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A letter I received:

Hello Dear Group! This letter is from the “Gulf Service” sailors. We want to share our common joy: Our small group consisting of three people was together with you during the Berlin convention. We watched lessons (we downloaded them as we were unable to watch them live) and tried to connect our desires to the one common desire “Yashar-El.”

After the end of every lesson, we discussed the lesson, asked questions of one another, shared our opinions, feelings, expectations. The convention had a great effect on a friend who has recently joined us: He showered us with questions and shared how impressed he was with such an enormous gathering of friends.

We conducted the same seminars that the groups had; we discussed the same questions. And, of course, we arrived at the same conclusion that European and world unity can only be attained from the current state of lack of connectivity through the circulation of Kabbalah. To do this, we need to use all the means that exist, all the connections, all the media, and “infect” with it as many people around the world as possible.

We were together with you throughout the entire convention; we sang and raised L’Chaims with you. And we have received an enormous inner fulfillment and joy, just like the entire World Kli.

Wishing you all the best,
Sergey, Yura, Maxim,
“Gulf Service,” the Atlantic Ocean, the Angola shore
[34098]

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Shamati #1, “There is none else beside Him” Not only does he not progress in his [spiritual] work [and does not see any clearance ahead], but [it seems to him that] he regresses, that is, he lacks the strength to observe [the Creator’s will] even “for his own sake,” [while it is the Creator who pushes him forward].

We don’t create a real egoistic desire that is able to overcome anything. Instead, we start experiencing weakness, indifference, and our operation by automatic pilot. “Let happen whatever will.” We just go with the flow. Sometimes things are a bit better and sometimes a bit worse.

That only by genuinely overcoming all the obstacles, above reason, can he [advance forward]. What does “genuinely overcoming above reason” mean? It’s when in spite of one’s desire and thoughts, without having any predisposition to do so, a person begins to connect to the teacher, the group, and the books. Altogether this is all called “the environment” or the surroundings.

But even in this case, when he begins to connect to them, he is still thrown about, up and down and in relation to the teacher, the group, and the sources or books. Sometimes he wants to and sometimes he doesn’t. Sometimes he believes it and sometimes he doesn’t. Sometimes he’s sick and tired of it, and sometimes he strives forward, and so on.

As the difficulties mount, a person starts to feel that there is nothing attractive or special on this path, and nothing motivates him to advance. There is no spark, nothing really worth giving up his life, career, and success for.

As a result, a person falls. His fall is serious, real, deep, and pretty lengthy. Thus, he reaches the final decision that not the group, nor the teacher, nor the books, nor exertion—nothing will help him in the world besides the only governing force, the Creator.

All the times that a person fell and rose, all the states that passed over him were all in order for him to feel total and absolute dependence on no one but the Creator. Imagine how much a person has to be beaten from all sides, shaken up, pushed away and attracted, and shown the existence of a great number of forces and various causes for his states so that in the end he would become convinced that there is nothing besides the one, single Force. If it doesn’t help me, then no one will. Only it will come to my rescue if I demand it.

That is when the following need arises in a person: for the Creator to definitely help him. The formation of this demand is also very not simple. It does not happen in one moment, but it gradually surges up in a person, becoming vividly expressed, fierce, and persistent. Like a child who demands what he wants no matter what—just give him what he wants, and you can’t convince him any other way. That is the kind of state we must reach. And in this state the Creator really does help us.

Only those people who truly want to draw near the Creator, so they will not settle for little, meaning remain as senseless children, they are therefore given help from Above, so they will not be able to say that I have everything and what else do I need?
From the 4th lesson at the Berlin Convention on 1/29/11

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Kabbalah, the method of attaining the upper world, includes two parts:

1. The first part tells us about how to unite with each other, or how to try to connect and unite;
2. The second part tells us about how to evoke the influence or effect of the upper Light upon us.

Before we begin to study we have to be perforated by the aspiration to unite our desires. Then every person will have a much greater desire than his own. He will begin to be permeated by thoughts, qualities, and desires of other people who also aspire to the same result and the same goal as he. This should be our main intention before the study.

A person who hasn’t prepared for the study in this way misses practically everything because the influence of the upper Light does not come upon the desire of each person, but upon the aspiration that each of us has toward others, meaning on our mutual aspirations to unite with one another, with everyone all together into one common desire.

If I imagine this one common desire and wish to be included in it “as one man,”as before the breaking of Adam into separate souls, then my aspiration receives the influence of the upper Light. Then I really gain spiritual attainment as a result of these efforts.

However, if I come there and listen without these efforts, without making attempts to be included in the common desire, then the upper Light does not have anything it can influence inside of me. I did not provide a surface or basis that it can influence and therefore all of my actions will only elicit purely formal knowledge. That is, I will hear and memorize what is written in the book, but no more.

Therefore, it must be crystal clear to us that the upper Light comes only to our mutual efforts. They have to be mutual! Therefore, the condition for attracting the Light to us is the same condition as was required during the reception of the Torah: “To be as one man with one heart.” Only in this case does the Light come.

So let us try to think this way.
[34265]
From the 3rd lesson of the Berlin Convention on 1/28/11

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