Rav Baruch Shalom HaLevi Ashlag (RABASH) is the source from whom we receive the entire wisdom of Kabbalah. All of it flows to us from his mouth. All his articles, all his explanations, and all his teachings that he received from his great father, Baal HaSulam, pass on to us through him. Let us hope that we accept and realize all of this properly in honor of that great soul.

Of course, in the spiritual world there is no such thing as death. Therefore, even today we are governed by that same force, called RABASH. We must understand and feel this, and never detach ourselves from the heritage he left us. It is our obligation to translate the writings of RABASH into all major languages and to disseminate them throughout the world.

We must carry out all his advice and recommendations as precisely and carefully as possible, and see him as our Teacher and spiritual father. Everything that we can attain in the spiritual world, in eternity, during our life in this world and beyond it depends on this.

The ladder of degrees and souls never changes, and thus we are all dependent upon him. RABASH is that source from which we receive life, through our connection with him and with one another. Therefore, our organization bears his name, Bnei Baruch (“The Children of Baruch”).

We truly are his sons, may we be worthy of this honor!

Come and see how grateful we should be to our teachers, who impart us their sacred lights and dedicate their souls to do good to our souls. They stand in the middle between the path of harsh torments and the path of repentance. They save us from the netherworld, which is harder than death, and accustom us to reach the heavenly pleasures, the sublime gentleness and the pleasantness that is our share, ready and waiting for us from the very beginning…

Our sages have already said, “You have not a generation without such as Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob” (Baal HaSulam, Introduction to the Book Panim Meirot uMasbirot, Item 8).

This means that the Kabbalists themselves are the source of spiritual life, through whom the abundance from the Creator flows to us that descend into our world as the light of correction and the light of fulfillment. The light passes from Adam HaRishon onward through the entire chain of Kabbalists, and we receive it from RABASH.

Therefore, how immense is our gratitude to our teachers who impart us their sacred lights and dedicate their souls to do good to our souls.
[214081]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/24/17, “On the Day of Remembrance of Rabash”

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Question: How do you view Kabbalistic art from the perspective of painting? What do you think of the idea of ​​creating educational cartoons for children, and what would you envision these cartoons to be?

Answer: Kabbalah is just beginning to unfold. It awaits you. You will receive spiritual insights from us and begin to further develop Kabbalah and reveal it to people in various aspects. You will be able to tell, demonstrate, and allow them to feel what attaining the higher world brings us.

You will begin to create all kinds of manuals, textbooks, and tasks for both children and adults that will develop them and bring them closer to a sense of the higher world and the correct state of being between people.

I believe there is room here for all forms of creativity. Even drawing, which was never a feature of Kabbalah. It will become possible to somehow depict feelings, especially for children.

As you study Kabbalah, try to explore ways in which you can use your art to express something to others, so that they can better understand the message of Kabbalah. Think about this.
[248748]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian, 3/10/19

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Comment: We must bring Kabbalah to people without frightening them.

My Response: I’m not frightening them. I’m offering medicine for their fears, only I’m offering it not so that they would stay in this life and sweeten it a little, but to rise to a level where they would be eternal, perfect, infinite. Of course, it sounds cool and unclear, but deep down every person basically wants only this.

Comment: It’s clear that the one who is meant to come to Kabbalah will come, his inner part will open. And the one who isn’t meant to…

My Response: Even the one who isn’t meant will still want to come, because this life is becoming very frightening. Frightening! Just wait a little. Here there will be an oil spill, there will be a volcano, another tsunami, a couple more fires. Let’s live until winter and you’ll see what kind of winter it will be, maybe minus fifty degrees. That is worse than plus forty in summer.

So everything is still ahead. I’m not threatening, on the contrary I want us to go on a fast, good path, because for your child you always want him to grow wiser, not make foolish mistakes and to have things go well, not so you have to punish him.

Question: But in fact, a blow comes, a person feels depressed, unwell. Do you really think some part in him will open, or that some process will happen in him?

Answer: If you get hit a couple of times, you will agree to anything! You don’t have your own “I.” Our “I” is not ours. We are all little animals. The “I” can be suppressed any way, and you will agree to anything.

Even now you subconsciously act according to your animal state. You have no personal philosophy, no ideology, you don’t stand on anything. There is no such notion in our world. We all proceed from our egoism; it dictates to us what to hold onto, what to value. That is all.

Who is a person in this world anyway? A small programmed egoistic creature with nothing of his own. A puppet on strings pulled from above, with no freewill. So why even reason about it?

Question: And the process? What happens to the person after the blow? What is transformed?

Answer: This puppet starts to twitch a little. Then he gets the chance to hear how to get rid of suffering.

Question: And how will he hear among the general mass of information around him?

Answer: Maybe he will have to go to India for twenty years and come back empty. And the next generation won’t go at all. For now, nothing can be done.

Question: So it’s not a stage of one single blow?

Answer: No, humanity must come to awareness on its own, otherwise you will lead it by force. This unprocessed stage must work itself through. It is like a rocket: the first stage burns out, the second ignites, then the third, and so on.

People must see the emptiness in philosophies, in sciences, in religions, and in everything else. They must uncover this emptiness, see in all of it only earthly culture, and to that extent use it reasonably. But it will give them only registration in the train in which they are riding. And where is the train going? That is for them to find out.
[348106]
From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Where Is the Train Going?” 8/26/10

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Question: Many of your students use their material qualities for the dissemination of Kabbalah. They are told that first they must rise out of their egoistic attitude, but they don’t want to listen to anyone. What should be done about this?

Answer: In Kabbalah, as in our world, this is called the suffering of parents: “If youth only knew, if old age only could.” You can’t do anything with such a person except try to educate him as much as possible. But, in principle, everything depends on him.

You give the students what you can, you soften and accelerate their development, but nothing more than that. And then, gradually, they begin to absorb it.

To this day, I am nourished by what I went through with my teacher during twelve years of being by his side. Education is when you give a student the beginning of a connection with you, and then through this connection between souls—whether on the level of our world or from world to world, it doesn’t matter—his further development takes place.

We must look not at bodily interactions within the framework of this world, but at the fact that we exist in the system of souls, and everything happens there.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. If Youth Only Knew, If Old Age Only Could” 10/4/10

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Question: Why do we keep talking only about the connection between us, and not about the connection with the Creator?

Answer: Right now, we are talking about the realization of our mission, and that is why we devote so much attention to the connection between us. The ultimate goal is adhesion with the Creator according to the law of equivalence of form, which means for us to become a “Man,” “Adam,” that is, similar to the Creator.

To achieve this, we must prepare our spiritual vessel (Kli) by making it similar to the upper one. This Kli must be one for all, where all its parts unite as one man with one heart. It must include all our hatred, jealousy, ambition, pride, and thirst for power, and above all this, we must rise and unite in order to become similar to the Creator and attain adhesion with Him.

We may think that the Creator exists somewhere outside of us, but in the end, He is revealed within the very same common spiritual Kli that we build among ourselves. Therefore, to have the right perspective, we must perceive everything as existing in one place. We are building this place for the revelation of the Creator! It exists exactly where we unite with each other above our egoism.

Our egoism remains below, and above it we build connections between us. And if our connection becomes really strong, based on the power of the light that reforms, then within it we will reveal the Creator (Boreh), which means “come and see” (bo–reh).

It is not that He is somewhere high above in heaven and I am doing something down here to reveal Him up there. I reveal Him precisely within the connection between souls, between the organs of the spiritual body as the inner light that fills it.

But people think that we isolate the Creator from our discussion and talk only about our connection with each other, and this is because inwardly they are not ready to agree that there is a connection between our work, studies, dissemination, uniting with each other—and the Creator.

Each one imagines the Creator as something exalted and is willing to unite with Him, but not with another person. They do not understand that this is the same thing. It is the deeper connection between people, the quality of bestowal that is called “the Creator,” but human nature does not allow one to agree with this…
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From Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/18/10, Writings of Baal HaSulam “The Arvut [Mutual Guarantee]”

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Question: Did Kabbalists of the past try to bring the method down to each person?

Answer: No! This has never happened! They have been trying very hard to lower the threshold only in our time, in the last 100 years.

Comment: But you said that the method must be lowered so far that it practically touches the tip of egoism.

My Response: So that it becomes understandable to anyone, to absolutely everyone.

A person living on the simplest egoistic level should clearly understand that the wisdom of Kabbalah reveals the secrets of the world, allows them to understand their destiny, and even change it.

Indeed, by drawing the upper light, we do change our destiny! What else shapes our future if not it?

So it needs to be explained simply and directly to every person while gradually revealing that this involves serious inner work, work on correcting the errors of nature.
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From KabTV’s “I Got A Call. Hello Aunt Fenya!” 9/27/10

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Question: What is so special about the period in which such a great soul as the ARI is revealed? What was happening in the world at that time?

Answer: The people of Israel, throughout their history, go through four exiles and four redemptions, which correspond to the four stages of the complete development of desire (HaVaYaH).

These stages were embedded already in the very first HaVaYaH, in the four phases of the expansion of the upper light for the creation of the general vessel of creation. And accordingly, all of creation, every part of it, exists and develops according to the four phases of HaVaYaH. Every world, any spiritual object or action, from the smallest particle to the scale of the entire creation, always contains HaVaYaH.

Therefore, humanity in this material world, which is a consequence of the spiritual root, also developed along the steps of HaVaYaH. For this reason, there were four exiles and three redemptions, and now we are on the threshold of the final redemption.

The ARI represents the end of the last, fourth exile and the beginning of the redemption. And therefore, when his soul was revealed, it was able to grasp the entire system and, through his explanations in this world, give many people the possibility to attain comprehension, to draw the light through their souls. This was begun by the Baal Shem Tov and continued by all the Kabbalists after him, up to Baal HaSulam and Rabash.

The ARI gave everyone the method of the wisdom of Kabbalah on the fourth, final level. After the ARI, Baal HaSulam adapted this method for our generation, but in essence, it is the ARI’s method.

The ARI lived on the border between the end of the fourth exile and the beginning of the final redemption. This is a very special period, which occurred in the 16^th century. But spiritual processes do not manifest instantly in the material world; they unfold gradually in the order of the development of lights and desires, which takes time. And therefore, this may stretch out over many years before it is revealed.

After all, the desires must gradually develop toward knowledge, sensation, and realization, through their freewill, and draw the Light. This process includes many stages that cannot be skipped.

A person must acquire developed feelings and intellect, the ability to work against their nature, to connect with others, which always opposes one’s egoism, to clarify all of their inner shattering. And this is not simple, which is why it required time, as we see, from the ARI to Baal HaSulam.

Even Rav Chaim Vital (the first and, one could say, the only student who understood the ARI’s method) writes in the introduction to Sefer HaHakdamot how he sits in despair and sorrow that the messiah has not yet come. And this was already in the 16^th century. Though he was a great Kabbalist, he still waited and hoped.

Clearly, this is a very prolonged process, but each generation adds to the same enterprise that the ARI began.

We have merited to spread the method of the ARI and Baal HaSulam even further and to disseminate their books. Who knows, perhaps another generation will be needed to complete this work. But let us hope that we will succeed in bringing the correction of the entire world to its completion.
[191429]
From Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/5/16, “Memorial Day for the ARI”

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These days, we commemorate the memorial day of the ARI (Isaac Luria Ashkenazi)—a unique person, a great Kabbalist. The fact is that the upper force, the reality in which we exist, is revealed in our world gradually. It was first revealed to a person named Adam, who is therefore considered the first man.

From him, this revelation was passed down along a chain of Kabbalists to Abraham, then to Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Aaron, Joseph, David, and so on. The entire Torah is revealed stage by stage, because our development is egoistic. From generation to generation, egoism grows, humanity evolves, and along with it, Kabbalah and the Kabbalists develop.

Before Abraham, there were only small groups of Kabbalists. But Abraham gathered a large group, which developed and called itself the “people of Israel,” meaning Yashar-El (straight to the Creator). This group went through many ascents and descents on the spiritual path, through shatterings, and eventually entered the final exile, meaning the last spiritual descent.

The soul of the ARI symbolizes the exit from this final exile and the beginning of the redemption, meaning the beginning of the revelation of the spiritual world, the upper force, to all of humanity. From within this world, we can now begin to reveal the world of infinity, to connect the two opposite poles of creation, and to move from this temporary, transient life to one that is eternal and perfect.

The ARI is unique in that he revealed the wisdom of Kabbalah to us in its complete form. In his time, the period of the final exile came to an end, and so he stood at the peak of the revelation of the vast egoistic desire. By correcting it, he was able to attain the entire creation and describe this wisdom in full.

He understood how all parts of creation are connected, in what form, and by which laws and formulas they develop, and how we, human beings, human souls, gradually reveal all of this as we progress toward complete revelation, our final correction.

All of this the ARI revealed and described in a way suited to the perception of the modern person, to the souls of our generation. That is why Kabbalists, who understand who the ARI was, hold him in the highest regard. Truly, he is a unique soul.

Baal HaSulam writes that he lacks the words to express the greatness of the extraordinary soul of the ARI and his contribution to the development of Kabbalah. The ARI left us all the keys to the attainment of the spiritual world. Today we are not yet capable, but we hope that one day we will come to understand his greatness.

Baal HaSulam writes that he was granted an inclusion with the soul of the ARI (Ibur Neshama), and that through this, he was able to write the Sulam (Ladder) commentary on The Book of Zohar, and The Study of the Ten Sefirot—his commentary on The Tree of Life (Etz Chaim). All of this was made possible by the inclusion of the soul of the ARI within him, this special soul, this unique desire, corrected by the great Kabbalist.

Naturally, we must try at least a little to adhere to this exalted soul. To the extent that we are able to connect, to bond, and to nullify before him, to that same extent, we too will be able to enjoy some of his light, and perhaps attain something from his revelations.

The language of the ARI is entirely unique: flowing, beautiful, gentle, and close to us. He describes each detail that he chooses to explain with utmost precision. And all his explanations are primarily aimed at drawing the surrounding light so that through this study, we may attain spiritual perception.

This is how the book of the ARI Etz Chaim (The Tree of Life) begins:

Behold that before the emanations were emanated and the creatures were created,
The Upper Simple Light had filled the whole existence.
And there was no vacancy, such as an empty air, a hollow,
But all was filled with that Simple, Boundless Light.
And there was no such part as head, or end,
But everything was One, Simple Light, balanced evenly and equally,
And it was called “the Light of Ein Sof (Infinity).”
And when upon His simple will, came the desire to create the worlds and emanate the emanations,
To bring to light the perfection of His deeds, His names, His appellations,
Which was the cause of the creation of the worlds,
Then the Ein Sof restricted Himself, in His middle point, precisely at the center,
And He restricted that Light, and drew far off to the sides around that middle point.
And there remained an empty space, an empty air, a vacuum
Precisely from the middle point.
And that restriction was equally around that empty, middle point,
So that the space was evenly circled around it.
And after the restriction, when the vacant space remained empty…

[191388]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/5/16 on the topic of “Memorial Day for the ARI”

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The ARI is a great soul who descended to our world in order to open the gates of wisdom to us. And therefore, as Baal HaSulam writes, from the time of the ARI onward everything depends on man, who must correct himself and then be able to reveal the Creator, become one with Him, and reach the goal of creation.

Before, prior to the ARI, this was simply closed to ordinary people since the souls were not yet ready and needed to go through a certain path of development and mix with each other.

The ARI symbolizes the period of Messiah (Mashiach); therefore, he is called Mashiach ben Yosef, and from his period onward the wisdom of Kabbalah began to take the form of a method of correction. And before it was intended only for selected individuals in a special form.

We must respect the Kabbalists who were in Safed at that time next to the ARI and recognized his greatness. They appreciated him. RAMAK was already old, famous, and respected, but he came to ARI’s lessons and sat like a student. Although he was twice as old as the ARI, he was known and revered as a great Kabbalist.

Thanks to him and several other Kabbalists who appreciated the ARI, he was protected from opponents of Kabbalah. After all, he had only a few young (26-year-old!) students. In those days, the attitude toward Kabbalah was not at all friendly. It only seems to us that everything was allowed, as they like to write about that now.

This is somewhat similar to the fate of RaMCHaL: he was persecuted for studying Kabbalah, expelled from the ghetto of Padua, the city where he lived. Until the Vilna Gaon declared to everyone about his greatness, and he was left alone.
[18770]
From Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/8/10, Writings of Baal HaSulam Preface “Introduction to the Book Panim Meirot uMasbirot”

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Question: The ARI lived 500 years ago. At that time, there was a certain awakening. Today too, an awakening is taking place, as many are beginning to study Kabbalah. What is special about our time, 500 years later?

Answer: In the time of the ARI, his books did their work and attracted many people. Then Baal HaSulam hurried to meet the people with the commentaries he wrote on the books of the ARI.

It is the same today. We can go out to people and feel how the books of the ARI have become part of their daily use, they study them.

Essentially, there is nothing new here. The only thing we want is that the attitude of the ARI toward the wisdom of Kabbalah, toward the attainment of the Creator, toward ascending the steps of the spiritual ladder, could be realized by us.

That is why we study the conditions by which we must draw closer to the Creator.
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From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/29/2025, “”Memorial Day for the ARI””

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