Question: There are two principles: “faith above reason” and “judge only according to what you see.” Don’t they contradict each other?

Answer: A person only needs to judge according to what he sees. This means that I must check everything in accordance with criteria subject to verification and analysis.

Faith above reason is a degree of bestowal, which I precisely measure over my receiving desires. To believe above reason does not mean to have my head in the clouds. We measure and organize the quality of faith according to the property of reception being revealed. In my effort to rise above it, I make precise measurements; this is my only accurate test. And then, I acquire faith above reason to the extent of my success with turning reception into bestowal.

Suppose that I checked and calculated that I am able to turn 20% of my receiving Kli (vessel, desire) into bestowal. I perform a restriction over the entire 100% of my Kli, and I’m only able to utilize 20% from reception into bestowal. Thus, I precisely verify and calculate this action.

Knowledge helps construct faith above reason. And this is why there can be nothing unmeasured in it, nothing unseen by me, which would prevent me from making a precise judgment.

We simply do not understand that the property of bestowal can only appear from opposites. The receiving vessels turn into bestowal through very diligent work and meticulously regulated, specific efforts. Moreover, measurements here are even more precise than in the actual vessels. This is because I measure and test their resistance, which costs me a lot of effort.

When doing this, my efforts are 620 times more precise than when receiving. When I receive, I simply “open my mouth,” but in order to bestow, I need to check my desire and the desire of another, compare all the data, and perform many different actions.

This is specifically why the property of bestowal represents the limit of accuracy, whereas the property of reception exists without any control in us and is left to its own devices.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/20/2011, “The Matter of Tu Bishvat”

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Question: Is there a margin when patience on the spiritual path begins to cause harm?

Answer: “Patience” does not mean that I sit and let the grass grow under my feet. It is written: “A fool sits on his hands and eats his heart out.” “Patience” means that I constantly, non-stop, try to attain unity.

I keep discovering time after time that I am very far from it, and I keep trying. I fall off again, and once again I return to the path; I keep climbing the mountain as I am being pushed down, over and over again. The higher I get, the less merciful the “guards” become, but I still do not give up.

I only care for my perseverance: I persistently perform a correct evaluation of my actions; I persistently grab on to the goal every second; I am adamant in my decision to attain it. I have nothing in life but this.

And as a consequence of my perseverance, my comprehension of evil and good, my understanding of the purpose of creation constantly changes. I keep getting inspired, as I keep revealing something new in it. Whatever I saw yesterday as bestowal, the Creator, and the evil today acquire new, completely different shapes. In this way, perseverance constantly renews my inner definitions, my connection.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/20/2011, “The Matter of Tu Bishvat”

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The true evil inclination correlates with the good inclination, which is revealed to us from Above. It is written that the purpose of creation is to delight the created beings. And to do this we need to become like the Creator, to bestow like Him. Once we acquire the opportunity to bestow, we will discover that this is His benevolence.

There is no better gift than the opportunity to bestow. From it, we will enjoy like the Creator enjoys when He bestows to His creatures.

This means that I must come to the exact state when it will be goodness to me: to delight in bestowal to my neighbor. And my “neighbor” is someone I extremely hate. When I bestow to him and enjoy it tremendously, it means I have realized the principle of loving my neighbor as myself. In this case, my pleasure is similar to the Creator’s, and between us there is adhesion, correspondence, and similarity.

This must be the criteria of goodness for me. But if I’m unable to see it on this level, then I lower it. Let’s say that goodness is an ascent above my current egoism. No matter what I want, I verify this desire according to my proximity to the purpose of creation, bestowal, and spirituality, instead of the fulfillment of my Kelim (vessels, desires). And if it is unknown to me, then the most reliable thing to do is to check how this desire brings me closer to the books, the teacher, and my friends.

Our eternal problem is to measure correctly. We always deviate to the side. A bribe from our egoism blinds us. We say: “What can we do,” forgive ourselves, and continue to measure incorrectly. And this is why we fail to reveal the evil. But how are we to correct the evil if we fail to reveal it? This error always remains with us.

It is necessary to combine three things: books, teacher, and group. If a person is able to connect them and begin to test himself in relation to them, then he has a chance to reveal the evil. These three factors can help a person begin to form a point of unity with Israel, Torah, and the Creator so that the books, the teacher, and the group would direct him towards the property of bestowal, the Creator.

And as a person passes further in the correct direction, he will see that both the means and the outcome, the tree and the fruit, are truly one.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/20/2011, “The Matter of Tu Bishevat”

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Question: When The Zohar speaks about man, does it refer to the desires?

Answer: According to The Zohar, “man” is a property similar to the Creator. Clearly, this only refers to the desires. This is because the image of man standing before us does not exist in reality. This is a trick of the imagination.

Let’s say that you see an image on the computer screen. Does it exist in reality? Something exists in the computer’s memory, and all the actions happen there. But in order for you to see what happens in the memory (which is there only for your knowledge and for the connection with you), there is a screen where you see a certain demonstration of something that exists in the memory. But the actual original image is there, inside, in the form of electric signals, forces that exist in different combinations with each other.

You see the external symbols of these combinations which are very limited and strictly specific because you are unable to perceive them otherwise. After all, you cannot live in a computer’s memory, understand, and see whatever exists there.

It is the same with The Zohar. Its authors convey to us a certain spiritual impression, which at this point we are able to hear only externally, imagining it somehow in our uncorrected, limited perception. But this vision has nothing to do with the actual spiritual image, concealed on the inside, behind the external forms of the letters, words, and images, which arise in your imagination. The authors of The Zohar have something completely different in mind.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/20/2011, “Introduction of The Book of Zohar,” Article “The Donkey Driver”

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Question: What does it mean to realize the informational genes, the Reshimot, within the group?

Answer: There is no other type of realization of each person’s Reshimot except by completing his engagement in the group to the absolute state of perfection. This is how Reshimot are actualized.

The group is the only place and way to realize them: I must enter the group with all the desires, properties, and informational data unfolding in me, and until I start seeing it as perfect, under all of its conditions, I cannot say that I have realized a particular Reshimo.

The moment I see all the friends as perfect, that is, connected, bonded, and loving (according to my degree), it means I have finished processing a given Reshimo and have realized it completely. And immediately the next step unfolds before me: as hatred, rejection, envy, lust, and ambition.

Now, yet again, I must bring my present condition to perfection. This is the only way I can actualize my Reshimot and achieve a complete state, a state when there are no more Reshimot which I need to correct with love of others and bring to eternal wholeness and perfection.

And at each more exalted rung, you are definitely going to face greater hatred and rejection, calculations you can’t avoid. You are led by an endless flood of hate and egoistic calculations involving others, while thinking only about how to deceive, take advantage, and place yourself above them.

You think about it every instant until your head cracks. And if you are also arranging a plan to carry it out, you break your heart as well. And then you understand that you can work only in the group. A person is cast into such states when all the problems are focused around only this. This is the way it is until the very end of correction (Gmar Tikkun).

These calculations are not going to leave you alone; they look like some kind of nonsense, and you think you’re done with it. But in an instant, they re-appear all over again! And it keeps repeating time after time, without an end! All we can do is exercise patience and keep returning to the same thing endlessly, until the breakthrough finally occurs.

Rabash used to share how a physician prohibited him from drinking whiskey, but he would soak a piece of pie in it and little by little ate it. It looked like he was eating a pie, while there was less and less whiskey in his glass.

We are unable to receive the Light of Hochma (Wisdom): We can only keep absorbing it in our desire drop by drop, until after an enormous number of actions we absorb all of it. How does a computer work? It doesn’t understand anything but “0” and “1,” while everything else is done through multiple actions.

This is how all of nature is structured: quantum physics, chemistry, and other sciences. There is nothing but “plus,” “minus,” and a tremendous number of acts. The whole trick lies in this multiplying of actions. Each action, no matter what equation it is defined by, comes down to “plus” and “minus,” connection and separation.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/20/2011, “The Quality of the Hidden Wisdom – in General”

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Kabbalah is everything. There is nothing beyond its boundaries. It includes man and his entire world, no matter where he is. All of this exists none other than in man’s perception, whereas our study of plants and animals through zoology, biology, and botany is only a study of how man perceives them. In fact, these are all certain forces which are expressed this way in relation to me.

Even the Creator, I study only the way He becomes revealed in relation to me. Through all reality I reveal Him as the root. The attainment of this root is the goal of the entire research. The entire universe developed precisely in order for man to reveal the Root. All of reality is the means to establish a connection between man and the Root, the Creator.

The Creator is not some religious symbol, but the root of everything, the One who controls everything, the primary cause and source of everything that exists, as well as the goal. It is written, “I am the first and I am the last.”

The root means that everything begins from Him and He determines how every event will occur. And everything will eventually conclude with Him as well. It is written about Him, “The One, Single, and Singular” and “There is none else besides Him,” who is good and does good.

But it is impossible to research reality with the help of the science of Kabbalah without first changing oneself. Only a Kabbalist can be a researcher in this science because he reveals it upon himself. It is impossible to research it as an external observer, the way other sciences do.

For example, I once studied metallurgy where we used to take metal samples. We would heat a sample, cool it, test it under pressure, and check the influence of different additions and alloys. Yet I remained the same person who researches the metal. And I would throw out the sample and take a different one the next day.

However, in Kabbalah you have to be inside of the test sample yourself! You have to take on its qualities. You don’t just learn to understand them a little and feel them from outside, the way we usually experience the things we research. In Kabbalah you have to be inside matter itself, take on the same form, and according to this correspondence you will be able to understand it.

When you build its full model inside yourself, only then will you be able to check and research it. You research yourself! The Creator (Boreh) means “Come and See” (Bo – Reh). I do not see anything on the outside. The Creator is inside of me. To the degree of our equivalence, which I have attained, I say, “This is the Creator! This is my God.”

Every person has to come to know Him, “From the smallest of them to the greatest.” But to do that, one must be willing to change his nature and replace it with the Creator’s nature.
[33953]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/23/11, “The Essence of the Wisdom of Kabbalah”

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Question: If my egoism is crying because it feels bad, how can I remain in the thought that this state is where the truth lies?

Answer: We focus on things which essentially are not up to us. We need to go through the entire chain of spiritual states, but if we focus on them too much, start analyzing them, and “writing a dissertation” on them, we don’t move on. We do not advance.

True, a person has to understand his condition in order to complete it. But to do so, he has to move on to the next state and once there, make a conclusion about the previous one. Our work is to hasten the time, and this depends on the influence of the environment. The more I absorb from it, the faster I will move on. Any procrastination brings harm.

A certain state may be good, but I if I sit there and start analyzing my ascent piece by piece, then the very first extra moment spent there becomes Klipa, impurity. That’s because I stopped due to feeling comfortable, pleased, and good there.

It follows that we have to beware not to submerge too deeply into ourselves and constantly look forward. This is very important. Sometimes people procrastinate, unable to move on, thus turning their condition into a subject of their “scientific research.” This is not good.

I have to allow only an instant to feel the state I have found myself in. I barely touch it, and then immediately, with the help of the group, I move on to the next state, not delaying it for another second. And while you are at it, don’t forget that the work is done by the Creator, whereas our job is to prepare MAN for Him, a plea for correction. We must prepare ourselves in order for Him to do the necessary work upon us.

Similar to the feminine part in creation, we look up from below, while the Creator, the male part, turns to us and acts from above downward. All we need to do is just bring ourselves to Him.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/23/11, Writings of Rabash

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Question: What is an unfolding Reshimo (a informational gene or record)? What exactly gets revealed to us?

Answer: It is impossible to explain because a Reshimo is a complete picture of the future which unfolds within me. At the end of this entire chain of Reshimot, there is my one last Reshimo that represents the world of Infinity.

Now, one of these states leading me on this path to the world of Infinity is becoming revealed. It is programmed with all the data except my mandatory effort and the screen. When I supply them, this Reshimo becomes realized and transforms into the true picture of reality.

Since this Reshimo includes in itself the entire picture of reality except for my own effort and my
anti-egoistic screen, it turns out that the Creator, who exposes a desire for my participation in this Reshimo, conceals Himself in it. It’s as if He is showing me a picture of reality with unfilled, left out intervals, in which I have to complete Him with my participation.

I cannot actualize a Reshimo in one go; it requires a number of actions, quite a lot at times. In the end, I must completely reveal the degree of similarity and lack of correspondence between us. Therefore, a Reshimo is structured and unfolds in such way as to not just bring me to the completion of this picture; it also must supply me with what I lack.

While I fill in the picture, I add all of the Creator to the point that has initially unfolded in me. After all, our goal at each rung is to become equal to the Creator.

I realize my Reshimo as though I am working and filling in something within me. Thereby, I elevate (fulfill) myself to the level of the Creator at my present degree. It is a multifaceted process that eventually leads me to perfection.
[33249]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/20/2011,  “The Quality of the Hidden Wisdom – in General”

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Thanks to quantum physics, the deeper we penetrate into matter which, in and of itself, is inanimate and can be researched using a purely deterministic approach and mechanical discovery, the more we suddenly discover reason and feeling there. Although it’s we who endow matter with these properties, we find thought, a plan, there. We understand that we encounter someone’s thought.

Astronomers also claim that they feel as if behind the stars and the entire cosmos there stands a certain thought. If a person is developed enough, he comes to feel that way.

At my recent lecture in Moscow, I mentioned that if we were to magnify an atom, we would find a void between its nucleus and electrons. I’ve already received objections from my friend, a physicist, who denies that emptiness can exist inside an atom because all the entire space there is full.

Today, we understand that the electron is not a particle which is local, but a certain blurred cloud that fills the entire space of its orbit. That seemingly contradicts the way I presented it, but who knows what will happen and what physics will tell us in another twenty years? It’s clear that the entire theory will become even more abstract because as we advance, we find that our universe is not an assembly of solid particles and can’t be explained by ordinary mechanics; rather, the universe is approaching the spiritual form.

When I said that there are empty spaces in an atom, I meant the qualitative voids that are inside it. No matter how loudly our research claims that the entire space of the atom is full and that one electron fills the entire volume, together with that, we discover a void which hints at something with this emptiness. That’s the thought that’s hidden there.

It’s the same with states between the spiritual degrees. When we are passing from one degree to another, we get into the same kind of empty gaps. We fall there and become renewed. Therefore, each next degree is an entirely new structure.
[33255]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/20/2011,  “The Quality of the Hidden Wisdom – in General”

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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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