The condition for receiving the Torah is the need to become as one man with one heart, to enter mutual guarantee. This is talking about a spiritual Kli.

Until we understand this, the states will keep ruling over us because we do not use the group to accelerate them. Every state has to be desirable as a preparation phase for the next state. All the stages are necessary and we shouldn’t focus on the states as such, but only on the aspiration forward.

The Kli is evaluated by its desire, where a desire is an aspiration forward, and never for what I already have now. A spiritual vessel is evaluated by its pull to the next state. As soon as that pull disappears, there is no vessel.

Thus, a spiritual vessel exists only in the aspiration and yearning forward. If a person stops, loses this vector, and turns to what he has, then the spiritual world disappears for him. That’s because spirituality is not generated by the actual desire, but by its coefficient; not by the speed, but the acceleration.

It’s the same in Einstein’s theory: A body moving with constant speed is like it is at absolute rest. Only increasing the speed is taken into consideration and felt as a spiritual desire.

This desire can only be common for everyone and it only comes to a person as a result of everyone’s influence. Therefore, we have to leave the old approach according to which I exist, I receive inside, and I feel, and realize that my “I” is actually outside of me or above me, by the principle of the screen and Reflected Light.

Only inside of this interconnected net will I reveal the Upper World. All of its 125 levels are degrees of connection and unification of the parts of the common Kli, the pressure of the common field, which is what determines the power of the vessel.
[33636]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/25/11, Writings of Rabash

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Question: In a few days I will come to the convention where I will meet people whom I have never seen before, who speak different languages, and belong to other cultures. What do I have to convey to them and what do I have to receive from them in order to hold on to the thread that leads into spirituality?

Answer: You have to give each other mutual support, the understanding that if we inspire each other, then we will attain the goal. Don’t count on the Creator or some “kind God.” We see that the whole world cries out to Him, but did this ever help anybody? You can only turn to the group.

When you turn to the group and desire to reveal love and unity among all of you, that will mean that you have revealed the Creator. The Tabernacle, the Holy of Holies, or the Temple is the common Kli, the common soul of the group, the nation, or the whole world. It is our unification. The Creator does not exist outside of the creatures. He is called the Creator (Boreh) because you reveal Him (“Come and See,”  Bo–Reh) inside of the common, integral, connected Kli or desire.

With this intention I come to the group or travel to the convention where I want to tell everyone, “Guys, do we want to reveal the Creator? Then where can we see Him? Where is our unity!? How does each one of us inspire and get inspired by the unity between us, meaning from the Creator, from spirituality? Can every person receive such a force from our common unification that he will fortify himself and become included back in it even stronger!?”

This will mean that we have made contact with the Creator. The Creator is our common force, the force that consolidates us!

Say there are ten of us and each one has a force of 100 pounds. Do you think that we have a common force of 100×10, meaning 1000 pounds? That is not so. Because we have united together and canceled our ego in order to come closer and unite, instead of a thousand pounds of force, we have received a million! That’s because we worked against egoism, against hatred for others, and have attained love for everyone. This effort had to go somewhere. We didn’t just add or sum up our pounds because we had to exert a great amount of effort to achieve this.

Suppose we are collecting money for some shared activity in dissemination. I don’t just throw money into the common pot, but I work against my ego and various calculations. If I simply spent that money, I wouldn’t even notice it. But I cannot force myself to pay it to the group, to the common affair. Anything but this! I am ready to burn it, to spend it so tomorrow I won’t even remember where it went, yet I will know that I still did something for my own enjoyment.

But when I give money to the group, it costs me 100 times more, so it’s as if I’m not giving $500, but $50,000! That’s the kind of effort I make. Therefore, if unification is created for the sake of revealing the Creator, mutual bestowal, then inside of it I reveal enormous forces. This isn’t just us “pitching in” to the common fund because besides our personal contributions that fund contains one more additional, “consolidating” component.

There is one more “bonus” or addition to the account whose might is a billion times greater than the sum of the contributions. This is the force that each person receives from the group because it divides into everyone, but does not get any smaller!

That is why we get together at conventions and other meetings: in order to extract that common, “consolidating” component. Each one of us receives it for himself, for his own correction.
[33698]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/25/11, “The Essence of the Wisdom of Kabbalah”

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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.
[33196]
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.
[33199]
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.
[33202]
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.
[33207]
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.
[33211]
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.
[33214]
From Lesson 2 in Moscow 1/16/10, “A Prayer of Many”

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The Zohar, Introduction, Article “Two Points,” Item 121: This is why the forces of separation are called “locks,” since they block the gates of approaching and drive us away from the Creator. But if we overcome them so they do not affect us, cooling His love from our hearts, the locks become doors, the darkness becomes light, and the bitter becomes sweet.

Question: What does it mean, “cooling His love from our hearts?”

Answer: If a person initially prepares himself for the fact that he plans to acquire love for the Creator, meaning for the quality of bestowal to become loved, accepted, and desirable to him so that he will feel the quality of bestowal that comes to him as a great value and reward for all the efforts he made, that means he prepares himself for the right actions.

Then by virtue of the right preparation, he looks differently at all the disturbances that seem to come in order to cool him down, to push him away from love for the Creator, from coming closer to the quality of bestowal. He views them as help because precisely by overcoming them he becomes stronger, more understanding, braver, and more learned, and through the greater understanding, sensations, and strength he ascends to the quality of bestowal.

For example, if I want to be physically strong, then all of my work with weights, jumping, and running is training for me that will enable me to become stronger. Everything depends on the preparation. If I don’t desire to be strong, if this does not worry me, then any obstacle that arises on my path will deprive me of the desire to advance. I will circumvent it and not be happy that it has come.

Do I see the obstacles as help sent to me from Above in order to make me grow and raise me to the Creator’s level, or not? This depends on my aspiration, preparation, and the support from the environment. This is the only way that we can advance.

Everything depends on the preparation. Before I open up a book, come to the group, start studying or thinking about anything, I have to ask the question, “Why am I doing this? And what should I be thinking about?” The only thing I should think about is how to make a calculation according to the analysis “true versus false,” rather than the sensations, “sweet versus bitter.” Then I immediately try to build my discernments based on the analysis, “true versus false.” And if that is so, then I at least know that I am not there, I don’t want it, and so on. Yet I nevertheless discern the truth: Who am I right now, and what is happening inside of me and outside of me?

This is necessary! In this regard everything depends on the environment, or the preparation from the surrounding environment. A grain cannot grow unless the environment provides it with everything it needs to grow. By itself it will simply dry up. There has to be an environment that awakens a person and works on him.

Imagine that you are in an environment where everyone aspires to be physically strong. Then you learn from them and together with them participate in all of the training. They jump and lift weights from morning until night! Why? Because that is their goal. And you start doing the same thing whether you want it or not because you receive the importance of the goal from them. You see every obstacle, every weight that you have to lift, every exercise you have to make as an opportunity given to you for growth. That’s all. There is no other opportunity.
From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/25/11, The Zohar

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