Question: What is a group?

Answer: A group is the desire of each one of us to find oneself united with others and the Creator. It is written: “Israel, the Torah, and the Creator are one.” A group is those who strive to connect with one another for the purpose of revealing the force that fills them in this connection.

“I” is my spiritual movement ahead; it is just this movement, nothing else counts. My “I” can be egoistic, set against: “I do not want to connect,” or on the contrary: “I want to connect.” I only take this into consideration.

A group is all the others who want to be together with the same movements, even though they could possibly be set against. And here we are trying to do this together in order to reveal the Creator in our desire, according to the law of the equivalence of form.

We can never reveal Him any other way, but only as the property that we will create between us. This “tool” of ours will elicit what is happening outside of us. We are creating a detector that discovers the Creator to the extent of the sensitivity that we have attained between us.
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From Lesson 2 in Moscow 1/16/10, “A Prayer of Many”

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Question: How do we accelerate our advancement?

Answer: It is very difficult. I know through my own experience. I think the only possibility is through luck

. The mind does not work here, and nothing will help. Here, what is needed is called “good fortune” or luck, “Mazal” in Hebrew.

Or more simply, cancel yourself, turn yourself into a small cogwheel, a mechanism within the group: “I will do everything like my friends say; I do everything they want, with less of my own thoughts.” Take some kind of work and perform it automatically, without activating your feelings or thoughts, just invest yourself in it, and cling to your friends. That helps.

But overall, it is very difficult. Properly incorporating yourself in the group is the passport to success. You do not need anything else. Once you tune yourself into the group, you discover that it is completely corrected, that all the worlds exist in it, and the Creator is inside it.

Your friends do not even feel this, but once you cancel yourself in relation to them, you begin to discover it among them. And suddenly you see: “Holy smoke, where am I? Our world turns out to be the world of Infinity? Where did all the negativity go? There is none of it here! Everything is beautiful, in absolute perfection.”

This is how you see the world once you correct yourself. This is why in Hebrew “world” is “Olam,” from the word “Nehelam” (disappearing). It is relative. Just like the theory of relativity, everything depends on the “user,” the observer.
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From Lesson 2 in Moscow 1/16/10, “A Prayer of Many”

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Question: As we progress, we discover tiny, pitiful “selves,” low despicable characters within ourselves. How do we recognize them? And how does the other “self” emerge?

Answer: I discover such a low, unworthy character within only relative to the Creator. As to everything else, my character doesn’t matter.

What do we reveal evil in? Suppose I love to eat. Is it evil, egoism? No, it isn’t! I love to party. Is it good or bad? Is it egoism? No, it isn’t! Egoism surfaces where I must unite with the others in order to reveal the Creator, while I don’t wish to do it. Egoism is the rejection of friends in the group. Therefore, to reveal it is not a simple thing to accomplish; one needs to sweat to come to that.

This is exactly what we stumble on! Whatever gives us pleasure that is not connected to this type of egoism isn’t harmful. But as soon as a problem with egoism, which we need to work on, arises within a group, that’s where it comes to a halt and gets stuck. This is the type of characteristic that must be corrected.

Nothing else needs to be fixed. Keep partying, eating two or three portions during dinner, sleep ten hours a day. It doesn’t matter. What does matter is only your relationship with the friends. Such is the specific and selective way to filter my nature:

• What connects me with the group needs to be corrected.
• What lies outside the relationships within a group and between the groups concerns only myself. One person needs to sleep ten hours, another one needs to eat five meals a day, and so on. It doesn’t matter.

So, egoism can be only between the friends. It can show all its faces only there. This is the only thing to pay attention to. The friends, too, can be evaluated only by how they work among us. But until a person develops such an awareness, such understanding, and hears and accepts it, years may pass. He may hear about it, but still doesn’t adjust internally, register it, or perceive this.
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From Lesson 2 in Moscow 1/16/10, “A Prayer of Many”

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In our work, there should be a clear division of categories:

1. Relationships between the friends in the group itself.

2. Relationships between the groups. We are physically connected within our group, and virtually with the other groups. This difference exists to this day. It won’t disappear until we find the inner connection between us, not virtual, not through the Internet, and not through other channels.

3. A person’s connection to family and the surrounding world.

First of all, we should pay attention to our interconnection in the group. If the group doesn’t achieve the correct interconnection, everything else fails.

Furthermore, we are people with families. Within the group, we should practice the following policy: It is desirable that each of the friends look after the others so that all of them have a normal, comfortable existence. In other words, I should make sure that my friends have decent family relations, as much as it is possible. After all, we live in a transition period, and a husband and wife may not share each other’s interests.

If a person falls into a descent, we must support him. But we should merely support, while he has to take care of himself. If he doesn’t, but rather falls to the hands of his friends: “Do with me as you please” (so to speak), then this is not a true member of the group.

Besides, we must ensure disciplined attendance of the lessons. If anyone has an opportunity, I advise visiting us for a week to see how it is done. An hour and a half before the lesson, students on duty start calling all the others to get them out of bed.

Some have to be personally delivered to the lesson. It can be very difficult to get up, almost impossible. During the time I was my teacher’s student, we had a few students who, before going to bed, tied a rope to their leg and threw the other end over the balcony so I could tug on it until the person woke up.

This kind of reciprocity is simply necessary! And only if a person is adamant, if he writes a statement refusing to comply, then you can leave him alone for a while. Yet later on, still remind him, bring him over, invite him to a dinner, and so forth.

We should understand human nature. A person is as he was made by the Creator. Hence, we should act accordingly.
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From Lesson 2 in Moscow 1/16/10, “A Prayer of Many”

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Kabbalah describes sensing desires and the Light that fills them. Their gradual manifestation in relation to us builds spiritual worlds. The first in line is the world of Assiya with it being a small sensation. We perceive our mutual state not as dynamic; it is rather stationary and hence, it is called “still” nature.

Subsequently, we start to slowly realize that the states are mutable. It turns out they have their own dialectics and development. Thus, we transition to the vegetative degree which is characterized by consumption, secretion, and growth. We begin to feel the dynamics, our participation in the process. While sharing the same space with all the other desires (souls) and the Light that fills them, we can already exercise our influence.

Then, we feel the states at the animate level within this space. Now we can act autonomously and move from place to place. A plant, despite the fact that it can grow, is stationary, whereas an animal grows, moves, and bears living offspring. Thereby, we practically reach a condition similar to our world. Suddenly, we start feeling alive, existing in our world, but only in the property of bestowal.

Later on, the time comes for the next property. It unfolds when we learn this entire space so well that we start sensing its entire plan, Nature’s plan, from beginning to end and engage in it. That is the point when we get truly familiar with the primary thought regarded as “the Creator.”

We study all this in the wisdom of Kabbalah. The worlds of Assiya, Yetzira, Beria, Atzilut, Adam Kadmon, and the world of Infinity, all of them are the attainment of the space in which we exist. As we attain the spiritual worlds, our world with its corporeal affairs remains in our perception. It exists until we have reached complete and absolute knowledge, wisdom, and oneness with all desires and the force that fills them. Afterward, when we reach the last level, the world of Infinity, everything in it starts to interconnect and falls together; the space folds up.

And all of this is based on the prayer of the many. This means I never stop at a personal perception of what is happening with me. Having caught myself at the initial, egoistic analysis, I must straighten myself up and place myself in the right position.

To accomplish that, I make a preliminary analysis of any spiritual action: I realize that I am within all the others and that the Creator evokes hate in me, in the group, toward the others on purpose so that I can rise above it and with His help arrange everything correctly and well. I perform a calculation: Why do I need everything to be structured well?

I draw the Creator and evoke Him to appear and reveal Himself, up to a state when there is absolute peace between us, when we are as one man with one heart. We need the Creator not to install peace between us like a mother who is supposed to show up so the children don’t harass each other. He instills quarrels in us so we may call on Him and force Him to reveal Himself among us.

And when we finally achieve peace between us, it signifies that the Creator has really revealed Himself between us. And if we are still experiencing some tensions, it means that we haven’t yet revealed Him enough between us. In this way, we climb the 125 rungs until we fully achieve this.
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From Lesson 2 in Moscow 1/16/10, “A Prayer of Many”

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Everything depends upon the environment. It has to make me more sensitive to the challenges that the upper force, which exists between us and motivates each of us toward integral unity, constantly sets before me.

On one hand, I can be very keenly, very perceptually tuned to its finest vibrations. On the other, under the influence of the surrounding environment, the society that I belong to, the group, I can comprehend how to react to its influence correctly. This is how we should act all the time.

The Creator changes me to a certain degree, so I start to feel the environment and myself a little differently, and I harmonize to it accordingly. And then it is He again, then I; His action, my action again. It becomes like ascending using two legs. This is how we move forward by way of the inner attuning of our “instrument” to a dialogue with the Creator.

If we perceive Him correctly, we start working in sync, which is exactly what is regarded as “the work of the Creator” since it is He who works. As to us, we just need to react and tune ourselves in correctly. We don’t have to do anything except to build a correct environment for ourselves: the Creator on one side, the group on the other, and me in the middle, automatically reacting to everything.

I myself cannot influence me, just as I cannot work on myself; hence, what is needed here is the collective prayer. Don’t focus on yourself. Who am I to focus on myself? I cannot do anything with myself, can I? All of our life demonstrates that we ourselves cannot change, no matter what we do.

What we are is what we will be unless we start changing ourselves under the influence of two reasons:

1. The Creator, the integral force that fills all space between us.
2. The group, all the others except for me. They form particles filled with the Creator, inside which I reside.

Essentially, I have to find harmony with the other particles. They are harmonized with each other and the Creator, and only I in relation to them am not in balance, in the correct state, or integrated. This is what a person’s job, his attuning himself to the group, is.

While I am moving closer to it, I start feeling the upper world. I feel the Creator’s presence not somewhere “out there,” but between us. In the void between us, where all these “elementary particles” (our desires) are, I start feeling everyone’s desires, while the Light is between them.

The force that fills us, the integral desire consisting of individual interconnected desires, is called a Kli, vessel, or Malchut. And the Light that is revealed between us in our shared aspirations toward spirituality is what we call the Upper Light or the Creator. That is what we feel, and that is what the upper world is.
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From Lesson 2 in Moscow 1/16/10, “A Prayer of Many”

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Question: What is so unique about the Berlin Convention? What do we have to do there? What should each of us and all of us together do, as well as among the groups?

Answer: Right now whether you want it or not you are under the impression of the things I say. It’s as if you are slightly suppressed and included by me into one single desire, a unified thought. And that unites us.

All of these qualities, means, desires, thoughts, the things we have already gone through, the things we desire, our aspirations, the huge amount of people and groups—all of this comes together into one. The result is that it works on us, giving us a very powerful, progressive impulse.

But we have a “small problem”: It seems to us that we have a small egoism and must only overcome it, turn some small knob, press some button, and by that we will have finished the job. We don’t understand that there is a great system at work here. It’s not just a “tumbler” that someone on top wants or doesn’t want to switch. We are in a system of two opposite forces: bestowal and reception. And until this system does not work by its dialectic, by its motion forward, by the law of the unity of parts, this won’t happen.

We only accelerate the time with our efforts, but we will never be able to make a jump. This is impossible due to the nature of things. Everything is done by way of gradual, sequential, and strictly determined movement, step by step. And through this step by step movement forward we constantly come closer to success, the moment when it will “shoot out.” The transition will happen! And it will be sudden.

Our conventions greatly accelerate the movement and therefore they are very important. During the several days that we are together and around us there are also many people around the world, during that time a very serious processing takes place in the degrees of our inner development.

One way or another a million states have to pass over us. We have to go through them. And every convention occurs differently, having new aspects, new forms, and feelings.

Therefore, the Berlin Convention is bound to be special because it will be a meeting of people who are permeated by the desire and qualities of the environment where they live. That environment is very bad; Europe is a very problematic continent, the source of all problems and wars, and having extremely great egoism, although it is already dwindling now, along with our entire civilization of the past. Still, it’s a tough nut to crack. That is why this convention is extremely not simple, and in fact, the most difficult.

The easiest Convention is one held in Latin America. The people there are fiery, open-hearted, and sincere. I have never met people like that anywhere. After that comes Russia. But in Europe things are most difficult, and the more difficult things are, the more interesting, and the more spectacular is the result and effective the work.

Therefore, I hope to have your support, both physical and virtual, so that we will “work on” Europe all together.
From the lesson in Moscow on 1/16/11, Writings of Rabash

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Question: How does a Kabbalistic prayer differ from a religious one?

Answer: Kabbalah fundamentally differs from all other methods and from everything there is in our world. In short, Kabbalah is one thing, and everything else another.

What is the difference then? It is in the fact that Kabbalah is based on changing a person himself rather than something outside of him, his surroundings; neither is it built on asking some “dear God” to start treating me better or to change other people’s attitude toward me. I do not ask Him to change my state of health or fate, nothing of the sort. I ask Him to transform my egoism, only that!

The entire method of Kabbalah is arranged so that a person can transform himself. On the other hand, all other methods and religions are founded on the idea that the Creator should change His attitude to a person: I ask Him to be more merciful and kind to me while I bribe Him.

Kabbalah doesn’t allow anything of the sort. In connection to the Creator, I am like man that changes in the face of the Absolute. And this Absolute is unchangeable. If the Creator is a primordial cause, the beginning of all, and if He is absolutely good, absolute, eternal, and perfect, then He cannot change. Only that which is imperfect can change. He cannot change.

Therefore, all changes occur solely in man. In other words, depending on my strengths, internal states, and properties, I feel more or less comfortable. But it is just me because I can change. The Creator never changes; He is a constant, omnipotent force of Nature.

Accordingly, all the prayers Kabbalah describes constitute man’s plea to be transformed. Who does one address these to, a wall? If the Creator is constant, eternal, and complete, then He doesn’t react to you in any way.

However, when you appeal to Him, you become different and receive a different response because you increase your sensitivity while doing so. You are still present in the same constant field regarded as the “Creator,” in the same constant force. Yet you are praying while wishing to change, and as a result, this field affects you with greater intensity. This is what we call a “prayer.”

The word “to pray” in Hebrew (Lehitpalel) means self-imposed judgment. “To pray” means to judge, evaluate, and rebuke oneself. It isn’t an appeal to someone, in order to be shown mercy or favored. No, it is self re-evaluation. This is what a prayer is.

Hence, although religions use the same word, in Kabbalah it has an opposite meaning, much like everything else.
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From Lesson 2 in Moscow 1/16/2011, “A Prayer of Many”

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Question: There are only several days left until the convention in Berlin. We already want to feel it now; we want to feel that the entire world Kli is in one state. How can we do this?

Answer: First of all, we need to realize how we can keep increasing the connection between us and make our dissemination around the world more intense. Our spiritual state depends specifically on this.

Our next spiritual degree depends on how much we will be able to expand around the world since the Light will correct and lift us accordingly. This is because we do not exist for us, for our ascent; we exist so Kabbalah will spread.

In “Messiah’s Horn,” Baal HaSulam writes that the dissemination of Kabbalah around the worlds is called a horn or the Messiah’s call. Messiah is a property that pulls man out of egoism (the world “Messiah” or “Mashiach” in Hebrew comes from the word “Moshech,” to pull). So this is what we need to do. If we assist the world a little more so it will come closer to the correction of its egoism, we will be lifted as much as the world needs. But if the world does not need it, we will not be lifted.

What did the ARI say on his deathbed? Chaim Vital, the ARI’s main student to whom he gave the ways of this wisdom, was not there at that moment. Baal HaSulam writes about this in his letter: “Isaac Cohen, one of the ARI’s students…came in at the moment of his passing and cried because their hope to see the world full of good, wisdom, and the Light of the Creator, which they had during their teacher’s life, was leaving.

And the ARI said to him: ‘If there was just one absolutely righteous man among you, I would not have been taken from this world prematurely….’ And the student cried: ‘So we do not have any hope?’ And the ARI answered: ‘I will come to you and teach you if you will merit it.’ And the student objected: ‘How will you come to teach us if you are leaving this world?’ And the ARI answered: ‘What do you understand in hidden secrets and the ways of my return to you!’ After these words he immediately passed away to live in the future world….”

Baal HaSulam has said the same. He died because his students were insufficient for him to continue the study with them. There are no other calculations here. When a person is needed, he is kept with this mission, and when he is not needed, he is taken. There is other work for him to do.

This is why we need to understand that we need to strive to circulate Kabbalah with all our might, and then we will be lifted. One absolutely and precisely depends upon the other! It is not that just one of us will not be able to ascend (this is out of the question!); the entire group will not rise in their unity if it will not properly participate in the dissemination of Kabbalah in the world.

Let us hope that this year we will change everything that depends upon us, and then we will really merit entrance into the upper world.
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From the Lesson 1 in Moscow 1/14/2011, “Introduction of the Book of Zohar”

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Question: Has there ever been a couple, a husband and wife, in the history of Kabbalah who revealed the Creator specifically in their connection with one another? And have they left any sources behind?

Answer: Couples like this have existed throughout history: Adam and Eve, Abraham and Sarah, Isaac, Jacob, and Esau with their wives, and so on. The female part is always in the picture because without it, there is no contact, no adhesion (Zivug de Hakaa), no connection between the Creator and the creature.

The only purpose of the male part within us is to correct the female part within us. For this reason, from the point of correcting creation, it is the female part that needs correction. The object of correction is woman. The force of correction is man. The Light of correction comes through the man with the purpose of correcting the female part. When the female part is corrected, it births the next state from the male part.
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From Lesson 1 in Moscow 1/14/2011, “Introduction of the Book of Zohar”

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