Baal HaSulam, “Matan Torah (The Giving of the Torah)”: Indeed, know that for this reason, the Torah was not given to our holy fathers—Abraham, Isaac and Jacob—but was held until the exodus from Egypt, when they came out and became a whole nation of six hundred thousand men of twenty years of age or more. For then, each member of the nation was asked if he agreed to that exalted work. And once each and every one in the nation agreed to it in heart and soul, and said “We shall do and we shall hear,” it then became possible to keep the whole of the Torah, and that which was previously impossible became possible.

At first everyone participates individually in the group and not willingly but because he is compelled to do so. We see that we disrespect our obligations to our friends; we disrespect the option to be considerate of everyone and to follow the spiritual path. To what extent does a person understand that his advancement totally depends on his mutual cooperation and his connection with others, in rising above his ego, above his weakness and his laziness? Does he at least look for the powers of the general cooperation and the general doing?

If we keep these conditions, then out of a collection of just ordinary people we become a group. Then, like in the exile in Egypt, we experience different periods, good and bad, we work hard and we have to turn it into holy work for the Creator. Here everything depends upon how much people can identify the place in which they can fulfill the goal.

There can’t be an exodus from Egypt unless they find the deficiency within them which will enable them to unite more closely. This is because the exit from egoistic slavery is labor pains, when I simply have to reach connection, when I am better off dead than alive. Then I understand that I am buried in my desire, in my ego, like in a grave. From there I am born into the Light, but only if I connect with others. This is the only way the birth can take place. Then I reach the giving of the Torah, which means that I reach the instruction, the guide, the connection with others.

There can’t be any other kind of work and there can’t be an exodus from Egypt if I don’t cry out that I want to serve the Creator. It’s with this desire that Moses turns to Pharaoh: “I want to work for the Creator, to connect in mutual guarantee.” Therefore, I have to exit the ego, to rise above it, to escape from Pharaoh. It’s an obligation, since the next level is so desirable, so necessary, that I am like a developing embryo that can’t stay in its mother’s womb any more and must be born.

Baal HaSulam writes about it in the article “And This Is for Judah,” saying that the future redemption is already revealed in the previous level, in exile. The difference between exile (Galut  – גלות) and redemption (Geula – גאולה) is the letter “Aleph” (א), which symbolizes the Creator, the Champion of the world. The Creator can’t be revealed in exile—Galut since there can’t be a corrected vessel there. It’s because you are still in your ego, but when you rise above your ego, it’s called the exodus from Egypt, and then you acquire the first spiritual vessel and then you can reveal the Creator.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/24/12, “Matan Torah (Giving of the Torah)”

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Thanks to mutual guarantee a person reaches a state in which he feels that everyone supports him in order to provide him everything that he needs. Then he can think about others. It is only under this condition that he rises above his ego.

There are no other forces. The ego is the only force that dominates us and only in a group can we neutralize it.

If the group doesn’t neutralize and annul my ego, I will never be able to do it myself. I will be buried in it forever and will not be able to be born, to exit it. Mutual guarantee is the law of life for me, it is the precondition for my spiritual birth.

Unless I receive from the group the secure feeling of full protection and of the provision of everything that I need, I will not be able to rise above myself. In fact, it is mutual guarantee that gives birth to this feeling in me, and it isn’t up to me any more. If the friends influence me by their mutual guarantee, I will not stop thinking about them at all. That’s the way it works.

It is like a baby in his mother’s arms who feels that he has no troubles. He feels instinctively safe, and that he will be provided with whatever he needs. This is how I should feel, like a baby in the arms of the group, who feels that all his troubles are gone, all the thoughts, the anxieties, and the questions.

There is nothing that is connected to me; it is as if I am floating in the air. From this moment on I can begin to think about others.

We are talking about unchangeable laws, about forces that operate on us. It isn’t my fantasy or a guess. If the force of mutual guarantee operates on me, then I detach myself, and it makes no difference whether I want to or not. If the friends operate on me with this force, I am free of the ego’s domination. From that moment on I can think about others.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/24/12, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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We are not able yet to provide each other with the constant force of mutual guarantee, and sometimes we enter this condition and then exit it. However, we must try to minimize the state of exit, those moments when we again become preoccupied with the care of ourselves and are drowning in the desire to enjoy. Try to get out of this state quickly, and find support that will help you rise above the worries about yourselves.

Taking care of oneself seems quite fair and justified to us. We feel insecure, uncertain, and unsure about receiving our necessities. However, above that feeling, there should be the force of confidence called the force of faith, the force of bestowal.

Perhaps, a person will find himself in very dangerous, frightening situations. They should not be glossed over. Instead, one must demand the force of covering above them from himself, the group, and the Creator so that there is a void that needs to be filled with the necessities and the things beyond necessity, and a person builds this cover, the screen, above this feeling of lack and emptiness.

He should try to do this as quickly as possible in those situations, in those moments of life when the force of mutual guarantee, protection, disappears. We can show our dedication to the goal in those moments.

We are not responsible for the moments of descent, and you should not regret that you fell, lost confidence and faith in bestowal and mutual guarantee. The Creator builds new voids in us because no single moment is like another.

We must give thanks that, now, above your feelings of insecurity, you can build an even greater connection and bestowal to strengthen these concepts so that they become strong, protective screens for us. The final correction is to fill all the moments of descent, all the voids that open due to the revelation of greater egoism, with the force of mutual guarantee and confidence originating from bestowal, adhesion.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/24/12, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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In the News (from CBS News): “Two new studies say Earth has more than enough wind to power the entire world, at least technically. … The first line in the [first] study says it all: ‘There is enough power in Earth’s winds to be a primary source of near-zero-emission electric power as the global economy continues to grow through the twenty-first century.’…
“The studies are by two different U.S. science teams and were published in separate journals Sunday and Monday. They calculate existing wind turbine technology could produce hundreds of trillions of watts of power. That’s more than 10 times what the world now consumes.”

My Comment: First, we must study all the side effects of heat and air changes that windmills create. Then, they need to attract businessmen who make profits on other sources of energy, as well as the governments who depend on them. Of course, without changing people, we will not be able to approach the implementation of pure energy and the protection of the environment because it is contrary to our egoism to think about something but ourselves.
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A person fights cruel battles on the way to achieving the goal of creation, attacks and struggles with problems. It is so hard to attain this goal and in fact, it is practically impossible since it is against our nature. We cannot transcend nature; we don’t have the powers for that.

A person can only work in the range of the opportunities he was given. The goal we are seeking, trying to discover the spiritual world and reach equivalence of form with the Creator, is above us and is opposite from our attributes, so a person simply cannot do it.

Therefore, Rabash says that a united group of people should get together, in one place, under the leadership of one man, under the influence from Above, from the teacher, the Creator, the group, and all its members. Only then will we be able to take any steps to change our nature.

It isn’t so bad that we cannot change ourselves. The problem is that despite everything, we are constantly trying to reach the goal by ourselves: we get angry, we get pressure, and operate as we are used to in this world—attacking again and again, making a collective effort. We think that we will fight and win.

But we cannot succeed and win this way. Eventually we have to reach a state in which we really want the desired goal, but we cannot attain it. This is the recognition we should come to.

We have to fight; we have to try, but the more we tell each other that we need help from Above, the less energy we will waste in vain.

Why should we fight in vain against this monster, which is our egoistic nature? We will not be able to beat the ego by our own powers since they also stem from the same ego. It is impossible to beat the ego with egoistic powers; a person is deceiving himself!

This is why we were given a group. A person begins to understand that as long as he fights alone, he will stay in the same system, in one vessel, in his own cocoon. He will spin around himself like a dog chasing his own tail and will never break out of this closed circle.

If he understands this, he begins to look for a group. It may be that he has been in the group for a long time, but isn’t aware that this is an environment that was given to him to work in. He thought that these are just friends with whom he studies and dines with as is accepted in our world. But eventually he despairs of his own powers and understands that he needs help from Above.

He doesn’t see the Creator and he doesn’t know how to turn to Him. He doesn’t know whether the Creator hears his requests or not, and whether He responds. Perhaps he is just shouting in the desert, wasting his efforts and tormenting his heart. But he doesn’t feel that it leads to any results.

When he understands that he is lost without the friends’ support, he really needs a group.

Otherwise nothing will help him and he will end his life like the animal he was born. From that moment on he begins to look at his environment differently. He understands that it was given to him for a reason, and that the Creator has brought him to his good fate and told him “take it!”
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From the Talk Dedicated to the Memorial Day of Rabash 9/20/12 

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Question: We are speaking about the end of the egoistic development, and in the meantime, I have a feeling that humanity is still very far from reaching the peak of egoism and its recognition…

Answer: Having no choice, I can remain in an unchanging state as long as it doesn’t get any worse. Under the pressure of suffering and problems, I can subdue myself and settle for mundane daily life: go to work, come home, watch TV, close myself in, and not ask for more. I am ready to live like an animal and not ask difficult sophisticated questions till I die.

It is true; this is an instinctive defensive reaction. There is no human being here, but only an animal existence, which 99.99% of the people lead.

But there is another question: How much do I suffer? You are saying that the world is not ready for correction yet. It will never be ready for correction, but will it want to get rid of the sufferings? This is actually what we are talking about. If people have nothing to do, if they have nothing to live on, if they go out to the streets and shatter windows, governments will start wars in response to the riots just to hold on to what is left, to push the problems to a lower priority and to keep the people busy. War is sure way to put everyone in his place. It is a possible future scenario.

But there is also a new deficiency growing here: People are increasingly asking the “ideological” question, which may seem very far from the “animal” question. The question of “What am I living for?” It is being revealed more clearly in humanity. Although the leaders believe that they will be able to keep the masses on the “corporeal” level much longer, it isn’t so.

On the whole, when you look at the world, you see billions of people on the level of the still nature. The world will stay this way, on the level of still nature, but there are also the higher levels of the vegetative, the animate, and the speaking, which are changing. The main part is the level of the speaking, which is the most advanced. It needs to change first, thus pulling all the other levels behind it.

So don’t look at the lower levels and don’t wait for them to do something. They will never do anything but simply follow the shepherd, that’s all. A person needs a thin connecting wire in order to follow someone.

I certainly don’t disrespect them and don’t think lightly of them, since later they will accumulate into one whole and the differences will disappear. Today we can take our body as an example; it is made of different cells that are tied together in different ways and only a tiny part the size of a match head manages them. It is in this part that all the feelings and the understandings and all the plans and memories are revealed. Everything is concentrated in this grain.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/19/12, “Introduction to the Book Panim Meirot uMasbirot”

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The only means for spiritual advancement is working in the group, thanks to which we clarify whether we want to connect with one another. Eventually we discover that we cannot connect and don’t even want to and totally reject the mutual connection.

Our whole nature rebels against such a connection. We are ready to put up with anything except that. There are relationships that we enjoy and we want them, but a connection with the friends, a mutual connection in which every individual serves the general—our heart will never agree to that.

Only such a mutual relationship is called “connection,” in which everyone is like a component in an electric circuit, or in an engine. So in every whole system, every component is part of the system and has to perform his job and keep his obligations to the other parts.

In order to do that, we need to annul the ego. People whose ego isn’t so developed are ready to be with others and it is easy for them to be close, to feel one another, to be friends. However, the more a person develops, the more his ego grows and the more difficult he finds it to connect with others. He doesn’t feel that he has friends at all.

Once, even several decades ago, people felt close to one another, but today everyone is by himself. We don’t even notice how everyone is closed up in his niche. We hide behind the computer screen and call it a relationship. We feel better this way, more comfortable! All of humanity is like that now.

There are different methods to make people connect, which are mainly based on Nazism, fascism, and fundamentalism. These methods are meant to evoke the feeling of solidarity in the masses. To some extent it stops their psychological development and so it is easier to manage them.

But in spiritual development on the other hand, there are two opposing approaches that are integrated. On the one hand, a person has to be very developed, a great individualist. Everyone must feel that he is totally isolated and that he doesn’t belong to anyone else. It is so prominent that it seems as if he doesn’t belong to this world.

On the other hand, we are required to connect so powerfully that everyone should totally annul himself against his desire to annul others. It is the most unrealistic demand that can possibly be in our world, and it is against the trend of human development. After all, as the ego develops people become increasingly more detached from one another. Everyone draws away from others and hides behind his computer, his cell phone, or at home.

Everyone lives in a niche he has created for himself. Suddenly he is required to do the opposite: to leave his niche and connect in his heart and soul. What is more, we have to do this not by being forced, but to want it ourselves! After all, we discover that this unity is the highest value.

There is no advantage in it, but this is where the truth lies. So it is very hard to approach the values of bestowal and love, if internally in our feelings we don’t find a justification for it.

But this is the principle according to which the spiritual world works! In order to acquire these values, which are totally opposite from our current values, we have to recruit the help of the upper force so that it will influence us and change us.

We have to ask for that during the study. After all, we study the actions that take place on a higher level—actions of bestowal, love, and connection—working on the systems of the souls. It isn’t a mechanical system that is emotionless, but a live system in which the mind and the feelings operate according to the law of mutual guarantee.

We study about the relations between our desires, which are in mutual bestowal, and we want to resemble them, which means to study them, to connect to them and to enter the same state. Thus, we draw ourselves to this state and spur the influence of the force called the Light that Reforms.

We have to think and study about these upper states, about how our egoistic desires operate loyally in mutual bestowal.
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From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/19/12, The Zohar

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We consider it to be egoism only when people in the group repel one another rather than when a person is trying to achieve the most comfortable, advantageous, and winning position in an ordinary society. The latter is a regular everyday egoism.

Here we mean the societal egoism when a desirable state is set precisely in the group, when the goal is to become closer and rise above one’s natural properties and desires, when one has to rise above himself and enter into the common integral desire where a person will not be “I,” but rather “we” and his “I” will be annulled and suppressed staying somewhere at the bottom, while “we” will be cultivated. In such a state one’s inner opposition with this aspiration is called the egoism.

That is, egoism is a force that opposes the group unification.
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From a Talk on Integral Upbringing 3/4/12

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In the News (from Euronews): “Anti-American clashes sparked by a US-made film which mocks the Prophet Muhammad continue across the Muslim world.

“In Indonesia hundreds of demonstrators clashed with police outside the US embassy in Jakarta. Police deployed water cannons and tear gas to try to control them. Several officers were hospitalised after being attacked with rocks and sticks of bamboo.

“In Pakistan protesters in Karachi tried to make their way to the US consulate for a second day running. …

“Meanwhile in the Afghan capital, hundreds of demonstrators were blocked by security personnel while en-route to the US embassy in Kabul.”

My Comment: Thus, around the world, there is a consequence of politics promoting any movement that advertises not unity, but themselves. For the sake of saving humanity from a world war, it is necessary to ban all advertising and propaganda, except for unity, connection, and mutual support.
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There is an awakening from Above and an awakening from below. Everyone can be awakened from below in any state. For example, on Friday afternoon I can be in a state of the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur) and two hours later in Pesach (Passover), or just in an ordinary weekday. This is what we call the spiritual levels and here everything depends on a person.

In addition, there are phenomena that are part of the general order when there is an illumination from Above that comes in order to arrange the worlds. This is an awakening from Above that influences everyone.

The difference between the general and the particular form is in the intensity of the awakening. If a person operates on his own, he corrects himself and eventually reaches his individual end of correction, by leaving the general “stony heart” uncorrected. On the other hand, the general corrections are much wider and more intensive; it’s a totally different thing. This is also the difference between an individual and a group, since it’s in a group that we discover the upper force and all the individual levels are transcended in the relations with the friends.

In the article “The Discernment of a Wife and Sons in the Torah,” in The Rungs of the Ladder, Rabash says: Good days implies the ascents of the worlds, as each one rises a level, and rises a bit above the state it is in. This means that everyone who is part of the worlds rises together with the worlds. However, whoever is not on the ladder of the spiritual levels climbs them, since they require self-annulment. If you can annul yourself, then everything that happens in the worlds will happen with you and by your self-annulment you are included in the spiritual processes.

Rabash continues: And this is the time when everyone checks the cause for which he takes upon himself the yoke of Heaven. Why should I annul myself in order to ascend with the worlds? What will I gain from that? If I had already known the answer I may have not ascended. What do I actually get? Love of others? Concern for others? General connection? Do I really need all this?

A person should check whether it’s worthwhile to pay for this by such great efforts and exertion, giving up all his previous life and annulling himself. Malchut annuls itself before Bina, which means that the desire to receive is annulled before the desire to bestow.

This question is also relevant today, before Rosh Hashanah, (the New Year). Usually people wish one another a good year. So how do I imagine what a good year is? This is exactly what I have to check. A year is a change, the next level, an ascent. What changes would I want in the new year? A raise in my salary? Or something else?

A person should check for what he should annul himself. Time after time we discover to what extent we can bear self-annulment in order to reach the level of others, and to serve others devotedly. Before you attribute nice words to the Creator and praise Him, you should relate to all of humanity. The basic condition is: from the love of the created beings to the love of the Creator. Otherwise nothing works; first you have to prepare the vessels, and your vessels are humanity. Then the Creator is revealed to you there, according to your equivalence to Him. When you treat people correctly, He reveals His attitude to you. This is where you will meet in mutual vessels.

Question: Does this mean that I have to wish humanity a good year?

Answer: Myself, “I want a good year and it will be good if I adhere to the Good and the Benevolent.” How can I adhere to Him? I can do this in my attitude to everyone, by wishing them the best. Then the Creator will help me with that and there I will meet Him, which means the attribute of bestowal. No matter what I think, this is the Creator, I will dwell only in the attribute of bestowal and receive only the one force of love, and this is called “correction.”

Question: What is self-annulment?

Answer: Now you have desires, intentions, and different inclinations and you annul them in order to adhere to the Creator, Who is absolute love. You can’t be totally in bestowal if you don’t annul yourself in some sense.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/16/12, Customs of Rosh Hashanah

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