Rabash, Shlavei HaSulam (Steps of the Ladder), 1986, “Come unto Pharaoh – 2”: Also, we were given the Mitzva [commandment/good deed] of “love thy friend as thyself,” and Rabbi Akiva said, “This is the great rule of the Torah” (Beresheet Rabba, Parasha 24). In other words, by working in love of friends, a person accustoms himself to exit self-love and achieve love of others.

At first it is hard for a person to agree with the idea of working in a group. It is hard for him to tie it to his spiritual advancement and the understanding of the Creator, which is the general force operating in reality, in the whole universe, the stars, the galaxies, and other phenomena studied by scientists like physics, chemistry, geology, astronomy, etc. There are immense forces operating in our reality. What does that have to do with good mutual relations with other people? Why do I have to live with them in agreement and in love?

It takes a long time to accept this. We agree and accept this burden just like “Upper grace.” Until then, by reading about love, we wait impatiently for someone to explain to us how to reach the hidden forces so that we will be able to understand what is going on and will be able to attain greatness.

A person is attracted to control, but here he is told otherwise: “You should be good and love others, and serve them, they are great and you are small…”; It doesn’t fit his self-image at all. A person wants greatness, control, attainment, passion, and respect; he feels envy; he develops his selfhood and his independence. But the “good ego” pushes him forward in order to arrange his life in the best possible way. “Let me understand how this is done. Show me something,” in response he hears: “Annul your mind, abandon all your expectations and aspirations, and start working in the group.”

We are not prepared for this; we have no clue about it and no need for it. Today when we speak about the love of others and the friends, we probably don’t understand it or we accept the words of the Kabbalists out of a habit. But in fact, it is a great process, which every person in the world should go through one way or the other, before he hears about the message of love, unity, and bestowal. Many are attracted more easily to that, being much more egoistic than we are.

We, on the other hand, do not emphasize enough what belongs to perception, habit, and adaptability. People gradually get used to the thought of bestowal, love, and connection since they don’t see an egoistic benefit in it any more, but a tool that leads to something much more sublime. In the past a person heard explanations about love and at the same time went on with his daily dealings, and one didn’t interfere with the other. But now it isn’t only about a person’s moral improvement, but also about the correction of the world.

We still don’t understand that our “slogans” are quite easy to digest, but they are actually aimed at the economists, the businessmen, the politicians, etc. because the bottom line of what we are saying is: “You are behaving badly, you are destroying the world, while its correction should be of a different nature. You don’t understand what needs to be done. In the meantime everything has to be turned 180 degrees, and we should look at the world through connection and love. Then you will see the correct system and understand how to run the world in goodness and by the dominion of love.”

This is a delicate moment, which is about to clash in the future. On the whole there is a Gog and Magog war going on here. We are talking about an approach to managing life without settling for the modern education system to which everyone agrees. But when it comes to something bigger, like high officials who are in charge of important funds, who are in control, they feel that we are bringing them a totally different system.

These aren’t just some comforting changes that we offer the people and which answer their needs, it is a condemnation of the way they operate.

So we should be gentle, soften our message, and be very careful so that our message will not seem threatening. We speak about love and this satisfies everyone, but they are not aware that they have to change themselves and their managing system yet.
[75522]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/17/12, Writings of Rabash

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Everything depends on a person’s attributes, on the state he is in. It is said: “A student who was exiled, his teacher is exiled with him.” Everything is measured only with regard to the receiver: “It takes one to know one” and “love will cover all the sins.”

This is what makes a Kabbalist’s perception different from an ordinary person’s. A Kabbalist understands that he receives the upper Providence and sees one picture out of endless pictures that are revealed to him. All this is revealed according to the upper plan and the efforts that he makes below.

Accordingly, the point where the plan of a person’s development and a person’s exertion meet is the picture of the phenomena he sees and feels.

The perception can be internal and external. Externally a person receives everything that is revealed to him as facts, the laws of this world. He understands that everything comes from the Creator, and that this is how the Creator shows him the world. This is the “landlord’s'” perspective.

The perspective of the Torah is the understanding that the Creator is showing me the whole picture that I see, but it is revealed in my desire to receive according to my attributes. Two different behaviors and perceptions stem from this, as it says, “the opinion of the Torah is opposite from the opinion of the landlords.”

So in the group we have to treat the friends, the Rav, the environment, and the books with respect, despite the disrespect that we feel towards them internally. If a person wants to advance, he is constantly in this struggle because his ego constantly grows, showing him the baseness of everything that is not part of his self-interest.

We have to preserve the internal feeling of the greatness of the Creator and the faith in the Rav, to treat the friends as the greatest in our generation, and to appreciate the quality of the group more than the quantity. We have to do all that in order to calibrate our vessel correctly.

If everything is revealed inside me according to my present attributes, I have to relate accordingly to the reality that shows me how I should change my attributes, so that I will constantly be able to advance by that.
[75510]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/17/12, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Although the method of uniting into the group and attaining the upper reality through it has existed for more than 5000 years, it has never been described in any of the sources. People just had no need for this since our ego hadn’t developed enough for us to demand change within us and in the world. Egoism had to discover its insolvency by itself; it had to realize that it has reached the dead end in its development, when we together, globally, on the entire planet, began to feel that it’s impossible to continue this life.

Despite the fact that a lot of people and societies believe that we still have a future to aspire towards and something to attain in our development, no one thinks about this seriously. In the meantime, the movement continues by inertia. The governments and economists are helpless but continue to maintain that everything will be over soon and life will be normal again. But actually, everyone knows that there is no way out.

We need to find this way out, to realize it, and become an example for everyone. Since nowadays there is such a need, the method is being revealed as well, which in the past was transferred only from teacher to student, through a chain of separate individuals in each generation up until our times. Therefore, my teacher was the first in history to write about the group in his articles. No one ever wrote about the work in the group before him. It’s possible to find only a few phrases and sections in the ancient sources of 300 to 500 or even 1000 years ago, but they are only small commentaries and nothing more.

My teacher Rabash was the person who first described the systemic work in the group, clarifying how to connect between us in order to create a sensory organ for feeling the upper state. Everything began from that famous piece of silver foil from the cigarette pack on which he wrote the first article that begins with the words: “We have gathered here to establish a society for all who wish to follow the path and method of Baal HaSulam, the way by which to climb the degrees of man, and not remain as a beast….” And this is what we do.
[75091]
From the Vilnius Convention 3/23/12, Lesson 2

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Question: How should we work so that an action will be above our desire to receive?

Answer: It is hard to imagine this at the moment because for us even an action of bestowal is because of the desire to receive. But this is also good and it is called “Lo Lishma,” (not for His sake).

If I bestow in order to gain more, then it is a big and developed ego in our world. An undeveloped egoist simply takes for himself, like a robber who threatens you with a gun and takes everything for himself like the simplest naïve egoist operates.

If the bank steals from you by seemingly helping you by giving you a loan, you later see that they made a big profit at your expense, but this is already a higher more developed ego. Even throughout human history there were many wars and stealing at first and people had to hide behind city walls.

But later people got wiser and learned to lie to one another and to steal cleverly, legally. People already calculate things and see that there is no point using weapons and shedding so much blood if it can be done differently by making deals that will bring greater and safer profits. However, all these calculations stem from the same desire to receive.

But when I attain a desire to bestow, my actions are called “Lo Lishma,” because although I do them egoistically, for myself, I try to do it not for myself. I simply have no choice because I am in exile, enslaved to my ego, and so I have to listen to it and to think about myself.

Sometimes I want to bestow so much, to connect with others, but later I see that I did everything for myself. If it weren’t in my interest to do so, I couldn’t do anything, not even think about it. But I already disagree with that and try to do at least something in order to bestow, this is why it is called “Lo Lishma.” It is 100% spiritual work because it isn’t a person’s fault that he is in exile, under the domination of his desire to receive.

He has no choice, and he must go through this process, by building up a high enough speed in order to attain a full deficiency, a whole vessel for bestowal. We still have to operate in “Lo Lishma” by trying to imagine all the states in which bestowal itself is fulfilled “Lishma,” (for His sake), to actually try physically, mentally, internally, with all our heart (desire) to take part in this action, by forcing ourselves to be included in it.

Even if I succeed to some extent to think about bestowal and everything else is egoistic, I still tried. Therefore, it is called “spiritual work,” because even if I know that I am working for myself, at least externally, I do everything in my power to act in order to bestow. This is why it is called “Lo Lishma.” It is already spiritual work and not just false altruism as we see in our world.
[75389]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/15/12, Writings of Rabash

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The Book of Zohar is the main tool that enables us to exit this world into the upper world. We should expect and hope that this will happen any moment.

The Zohar operates like a special mechanism. We can be ready to enter spirituality, but unable to draw the Light upon ourselves. Or we may seemingly draw the Light, but not be ready for it. This book is a system that creates the correspondence between the group, in which we first hate one another and then connect. But this also takes place only under the influence of the Light. Even to feel hatred, we need to sit together in front of the book.

If the Light didn’t influence us, we wouldn’t feel such hate towards one another. But when the Light is first revealed, we suddenly understand how deeply we hate one another. And as a result of working on ourselves and using the Light correctly, we turn the hate into love and connection, and then we discover what is written in the book.

To study the Torah means to discover all this hate and our inability to connect, our helplessness, and, in the beginning, even a lack of desire. We should discover all the stages, all the attributes, and then change them and find out for what we should yearn. All this is done only with the help of the book.

It doesn’t mean that we have to learn the text by heart and to know what is written there. The degrees should connect correctly into one ladder so that AHP of the upper one will sink into GE of the lower one, and the connection between them will open up the route for the requests that rise upward and for the filling that descends from Above, which is the route to the upper force. All this is done by a system called “a book”: with the help of a book, a writer, and a story.

Those who read the book together and want to attain something must feel that they are equal. The sages of the Talmud made the study easier for us, and now in order to succeed we don’t need any corporeal restrictions, as it says: “Live on bread and water, sleep on the ground, and feel lucky.” Instead, they prepared this study for us by which we draw the Light that Reforms.

They have inserted into their books an influence upon us that brings us closer to the “pillar” by which it is customary to pray. This is the special, middle line that connects and balances the forces of receiving in us and the forces of bestowal that we want to acquire, by connecting all this to our request.

They managed to make things easier for us by building the system by their souls, to complete the initial spiritual system of the forefathers. And now we can connect to them through our teachers: Rabash, Baal HaSulam, and all the other Kabbalists throughout the ages, until we attain the sages of the Talmud and then the forefathers. Thus we will connect to the spiritual “pillar.”

The Book of Zohar enables us to connect to the space organized into a line (Kav). But in order to receive from this line, we have to build a circle. Part 2 of The Study of the Ten Sefirot is dedicated to this topic and tells us how the upper Providence passes from the circles to the line, and from the line it is possible to connect to the circles.

If we want to join the line of the great Kabbalists of the past, there is no other way but to form circles. It’s just like a baby who is in his mother’s arms. A mother treats him like a line: carefully and thoughtfully, by knowing exactly what happens to him. While the baby totally annuls himself and exists “in circles,” unable to appreciate her actions or differentiate that something is coming from above or from below. And this allows them to connect.

We have to act in the same way. This is possible only if we mutually annul ourselves in the group and organize the group correctly, as per instructions of Rabash. Then through the book, the system of the line that was formed by the great Kabbalists who pass the spiritual energy on to us, we will be able to receive this force, even if we don’t know how it operates. Let the upper Light do its job, and we will see the result.

We’ll see it in the same way a growing child feels the result of his development, not knowing where it comes from and how he develops. All that is required from him is the desire to grow up. We too have to demand only the right desire, meaning to constantly yearn for greater connection. This will indicate that we have annulled ourselves before the upper one and that we’ve connected to the line.
[74875]
From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/8/2012, The Zohar

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Preparation to the Lesson
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Writings of Baal HaSulam “Igrot,” Letter 54
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Zohar for All – Passover “Bo (Come Unto Pharaoh),” “Matzot (Unleavened Bread) of Din,” Item 174
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Talmud Eser Sefirot, Part 15, Item 34
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Writings of Rabash “Come Unto Pharaoh-2,” (Starting with: “Also, we were given the Mitzva” To: “Now we can understand what the Creator said”), Lesson 2
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Writings of Rabash, Igrot, Letter 66: So, even if a person deals with the Torah and Mitzvot, if it is not for Heaven’s sake, it is like a person who has no God because, if he did have a feeling of Godliness, he would surely do it for Heaven’s sake. So, a person should do his best to find the power to overcome his attributes in order to turn them in favor of others.

When a person is in trouble, he tries to find a way out. There are different kinds of troubles, both corporeal and spiritual. One way or another, a person feels pain and sorrow.

However, if, at the same time, he begins to study the Torah and even the wisdom of Kabbalah, he is in great danger because the Torah can be the “potion of life” or the “potion of death.” The snake reveals this tool to us, which eventually will either destroy the person or help him escape it and control it.

Baal HaSulam says that it is possible to catch the snake by the head or by the tail. When we study, we encounter several dangers.

First, we can be satisfied in studying the text technically and dryly in order to understand all the detail about the spiritual worlds that Kabbalists describe. This is very appealing because while you read the book you seem to understand and feel these details. You come to know the material; you have a “map” and a list of definitions. This false feeling of control is the first danger. There are those who are satisfied in the study itself, even without any real understanding.

Later, if we study in order to reach correction, there are more dangers along the way. I may want to acquire the power of bestowal to adhere to the Creator. There are other options, but a wrong direction may divert a person. If we go off the track of “Israel, the Torah, and the Creator,” we will draw further away from the goal with every step we take.

Therefore, the principle of “first think, then act” is very important here. I feel the entire world as part of me, and I lead it toward adhesion with the Creator.

Our world cannot be perfect if we do not want to include all of humanity, all of reality, within us. It is only then that we will attain the true attribute of bestowal in the correct intention of in order to bestow, and not in any other manner.

In contrast to the ten discernments of holiness, there are ten discernments of the “shell,” and they are very different. In every form of bestowal and in every form of receiving there is a special method, a special philosophy.

There is an entire world concealed in every attribute of holiness and in every attribute of the shell that is opposite to it. This is the origin of all religions and beliefs, all confusions, and all the justifications that a person finds in life,

We should understand that the love of others should be based on the principle of unity: Israel, the Torah, and the Creator. There are no separate “others.” Everything is one; everything is part of the upper force.

We must pay attention to everything, including dissemination and the necessity to reach the most remote parts of humanity. If we implement selection, the general vessel will not be whole, and we will lack the intention of “in order to bestow.”
[75418]
From the 5^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/16/12, Writings of Rabash

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Question: Why does the Light need me? Am I really that important?

Answer: We lack the deficiency, the desire, to discover the upper, whole, spiritual world. The Light doesn’t need you; it is you who needs the Light so that it will build the right deficiency within you. When you really want bestowal, you will discover it.

We are in a sea of Light right now, but we don’t feel anything because we don’t have a deficiency. However, if I were to summon upon me the influence of the Light, it would build this deficiency within me. Then, I finally would feel what I lack.

As a simple example, let us say that I don’t want anything in life. I am indifferent. However, a friend comes over and invites me to go on a trip.

I agree reluctantly, and on the way, we go by a restaurant. I smell the scents and become a little hungry. We go inside the restaurant, and, as we eat, as it usually happens, the appetite comes with the meal. Then, I really have a true appetite.

So, we must open the curtain gradually. First, we only “smell” the Light by summoning it from a distance. Then, we taste it. Thus, the vessel is created within us.

I say to a child, “Taste this, you will like it.” The child asserts, “No, I don’t want to! I won’t taste it!” I respond, “Do it for me.”

This is how the Light creates the vessel.
[75415]
From the 5^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/16/12, Writings of Rabash

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Question: The more I study the Creator, His nature, and the principles of unity, the stronger I feel that I am opposite to all of this and that I am confused. Why does this happen and what does it mean?

Answer:Imagine: there is a person, who is hospitalized. If we were to speak with a physician observing this patient, he would tell us about a rare disease, different methods of treatment for this disease, and about his assumptions regarding this case. Now let us question the nurse: She knows all the illnesses and all the medicines, in general and in particular. And finally, talk to the hospital janitor: She knows all the illnesses and all medications, in general and in particular.

The moral: the deeper a person penetrates the essence of things, the greater the complications he finds in them. For him, every detail goes to extremes and divides into a multitude of components. Things are difficult for a person like this, he always hesitates; many things are questionable to him. The same way sages have doubts where things are clear as day to regular people.

As we work on attaining the upper force and we constantly encounter confusion and analyze things; we must enjoy one and the other. There are two sides of the same process, which leads to the realization, understanding, and attainment. It is written that there is no greater joy than elimination of doubts. Many contradictions overtake you, you are not able to tie anything together—and suddenly everything becomes clear, thus greatly pleasing you.

When the Light of wisdom, the Light of Hochma, enters the Light of Hasadim and fills the desire, you experience a state of perfection, which comes from our Source. The following is always just: “And there was evening, and there was morning, one day.” Again and again Light dispels the darkness. Thus we advance.

The feeling of night usually weighs upon new students, and unable to control themselves, they capitulate. I remember myself lying, unable to rise; I did not see a gleam of light before me. But then the next stage comes: You begin to understand where this comes from and why, you gather experience by opposing these waves, you gain feeling and reason: You first gain feeling, and then you transition to the stage of understanding.

This is the journey, and the main thing is to continue it. Changes will come. Naturally, it is hard for a person in the beginning: He is subject to his state and is not yet able to rise above it. This is why we must be delicate with new students, when they lose it under the pressure of circumstances or become lost as in a fog. This is the way a new additional realization affects a person once he gains it. We are made of desire and sensations are our life. There are different states, and time heals us when the mind is powerless. This is the period of preparation.
[75382]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/12/12, Shamati #190

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Question: The convention in Brazil is approaching. What can it give those who will physically participate in it?

Answer: If a person has already taken part in our conventions and cannot make it this time, it may not be so critical. On the other hand, these people already understand that the convention is worth the effort. As for people who have never been to a convention, they should do their best to be there.

Today our conventions are first and foremost about connection. People don’t just come to hear me lecture. The convention springs me into action so that I form a vessel, a desire, together with everyone. Then I feel the difference between my private thoughts and the thoughts of the general circle. These are two totally different levels of thinking and feeling.

The convention enables a person to feel the taste of unity a bit, which is essentially the “posterior” of the Creator. When unity takes hold of a person a little, he discovers that there is a special hidden sensation here, the “point of unity” that Baal HaSulam talks about. If a person discovers charm in the unity with the group, he reaches the path that leads to the Creator.

Thus, the convention is a rare opportunity thanks to which a person can continue marching safely onwards because he already has the right impressions. I don’t think it is possible to attain this without an actual, physical connection.

Therefore, it is very important to arrive in person. A person who has already been to a convention generally understands that he should go—at any reasonable price. But if you’ve never felt that, then listen to some advice: Come and that’s all. In a country like Brazil, the next convention will probably be in another two or three years. It is even worthwhile to take a loan and to repay it later in several monthly payments. By this you are buying yourselves a true asset, and if you miss it, you will regret it later. A reasonable debt isn’t so bad. Don’t postpone the main thing in life for later. I strongly recommend that you come.
[75412]
From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/16/2012, Writings of Rabash

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