Question: How can we explain to people why love is necessary?

Answer: You can love to eat fish for lunch, you can love your little son, or you can love your neighbor or the Creator. The same words designate completely different notions.

Is it worthwhile to praise love for the neighbor to a person who loves fish? How can you describe to him the pleasure from bestowal? What will he understand? That he has to give his fish to someone else? Is this love?

What does it mean to love the neighbor? It has a completely different meaning. Loving the neighbor means attaching his desire to yourself and working with your desire in order to fulfill his desire. Then we both meld together into one whole, where I fulfill him and he becomes fulfilled. In what does he become fulfilled? In his desire. His desire in relation to mine is like Malchut in relation to Zeir Anpin. I am like the Creator, and he—the creation. That is what my work is.

Thus, “love” is the relationship between the Creator and creation. Only this is love—the creation’s attitude to the Creator. If I can build this kind of attitude to others, or in other words, if I acquire the quality of the Creator, the quality of bestowal, and by means of it I relate to the neighbor’s desire just like the Creator does, it turns out that the Creator is inside of me, and I make the necessary action in relation to the neighbor. This means that I love the neighbor.

We don’t have the right to use the word “love” in any other sense, context, or case. Otherwise we will confuse it with our “love of fish.”

We are talking about the extent to which the Creator, the quality of bestowal, dresses into me. First of all we have to carry out the principle, “Do not do to another what you yourself hate.” That is how I become neutral. After that, I have to acquire his desire instead of my own. Another person’s desire becomes more important for me and therefore he becomes higher than me. I am ready to do everything for him, just like I would for my sick child in our world. I am entirely “short-circuited” on his desire; it is what makes me act.

That is exactly why I am similar to the Creator, like Zeir Anpin who receives a request from Malchut. The more another person’s desire is able to activate me to bestow, the higher I am than him. This is love. Do you see how different this is from our current notions?

The more I can bestow to another person, the more I provide him with the Light of correction. After all, there is mutual guarantee between us. I do not fill his egoistic desire, but I reveal inside of him the desire to be in one system with me so the Shechina would reign between us. So what should I provide for him? I give him my support of the mutual guarantee, which he also provides for me by revealing it in his desire. This is love.

No one is indulging the other’s egoism. I don’t reveal the egoistic desire in the other person, but the desire for mutual support in order to reveal the Creator in the relationship between us. The Creator cannot be revealed in any individual or just in my attitude to another person, unless it’s fortified by the same attitude from him. Love does not work in one direction. It is a two way street. It requires a connecting net through which impulses of bestowal are flowing, a net permeated by feelings of love, relationships of mutual guarantee and mutuality by which we strengthen one another.

In the meantime, egoism remains below, without making any calculations to fulfill it. After all, we rise above it, connected by our mutual intention for the sake of bestowal. And when it reaches a specific level of unity, creating a net above us, then we reveal the Creator, the mutual quality of bestowal and love between us.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/20/11, “Matan Torah (The Giving of the Torah)”

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We are in an unknown reality, and to this day, while existing in this world we still do not understand exactly where we are, by what program we develop, and what goal we are moving toward. We do not understand anything in our life, and being sheltered by concealment, we consider ourselves smart and intelligent, as if we have knowledge, our own opinion, and freedom of will.

But when blows and suffering catch up to us, we understand that we are incapable of anything, that we don’t understand anything, and don’t have any chance to behave intelligently. Especially now, during a time of crisis, we see that we do not have any chances of relating to reality correctly, that we are facing problems and don’t even have the slightest ability to understand them. Even if we sometimes understand something one millimeter ahead of time, this does not enable us to change our state or to behave differently. Even if we decide that we really do need to change and start behaving differently, we don’t have the forces to change our behavior. So what’s the use of these decisions if we can’t change ourselves, influence one another, and the whole world?

Even when we see that we only inflict harm and misfortunes upon ourselves, that we are, in fact, leading ourselves to death, we are still unable to stop ourselves. What insignificance, what ignominy! We would simply finish our lives inside of our will to enjoy, which completely kills us if we did not receive the Torah, the means to correct the egoistic desire so that starting from the lowest possible point, a moment before death, we could start raising it to the top, to the level of the Creator, the higher, opposite quality—the will to bestow.

This means, called “Torah” is more important than anything. Without it there is no chance to achieve anything. We cannot develop through suffering. The influence of suffering only makes the will to enjoy develop. Blows make it search for all sorts of means to get rid of the troubles, and in the end it leads itself to death in order to avoid suffering. When the desire feels unbearable suffering due to its absolute opposition to the Light, it is willing to nullify itself completely, anything but to suffer.

If so, then the Torah is the only means leading us to life, correction, and existence. That is why there is no path of suffering, no path without Torah. The Torah has to become revealed to humanity so people would be able to use it. And they have to reveal it in the right form—as the Light that reforms. But if they don’t use the Torah correctly, meaning that they don’t realize it, that means they are following the path of suffering. If they use it correctly, then they follow the path of Torah, the path of Light. And if they are in the middle between one and the other, they advance by “the earthly path.”

Therefore, Baal HaSulam’s article, “The Revelation of Godliness (Matan Torah)” is very important since it tells us about how we can receive the Torah. There is a giving of the Torah from above, and there is a reception of the Torah from below. All of the suffering comes to us because we do not use the Torah correctly, the Light that reforms, that brings us back to the source of goodness. Everything depends on our efforts to become good. Therefore, we do not have a lack for anything besides this means. So let’s find out how to receive the Torah and come to goodness!
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/19/11, “Matan Torah (The Giving of the Torah)

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For millennia, we advanced with the slow growth of egoism and developed society, technologies, and various sciences in compliance with it. Then, during the Renaissance, a steeper ascent began that peaked in our century, with a consumer society.

When this egoism reached a certain level, it suddenly stopped, “interrupted its flight,” and its graph now turns into a horizontal line. It will not grow further.

In this state, humanity begins to feel depression as it can’t see how it can satisfy itself. Earlier, being at the intermediate stages of our development, we always aspired to something greater. Every time, it seemed to us that the next state was better than the current one, and we wanted to achieve it. We raised children, hoping that it would be better for them than for us, that their world would be higher, wiser, and so on.

However, today we don’t want to have children because we don’t see how their life will become better. We feel that egoism cannot grow any further; it has nowhere to grow. We even begin to limit our most ambitious space programs. Everything is declining. Besides that, resources do not allow us to develop freely. We begin to deplete ourselves in terms of energy, resources and in terms of our inner potential. We have nowhere to grow, nothing to strive for. “I don’t want anything.”

Over 50 percent of the people in the world experience some form of depression. We are not talking about drugs, terrorism, divorces, mutual estrangement, or conflicts between parents and children. All these are symptoms, an indication that egoism begins to “run out.” It can’t fulfill itself at the current level, on our small Earth.

Egoistic desires consist of two groups:

1. Food, sex, and family. These desires are natural; they are present in every human and in animals.
2. Wealth, power, honor (which are essentially the same thing), and knowledge. These desires are social.

Today, both these groups of desires no longer grow any more. They seem to have reached their peak and remain at the same level.

Soon, they will begin to diminish. A human will not need all that; he will begin to give up his “conquests,” to become empty internally because he will not expect any new desires or any new fulfillment. In our world, these six desires exhaust themselves, and this is also one of the reasons, one of the components, that drives us towards the crossing of the “Machsom,” the barrier between the worlds. They push us from behind by sufferings.
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From the 1st lesson at the Moscow Convention 6/10/11

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Dear Friends, please ask questions about these passages from the great Kabbalists. The commentaries in brackets are mine.

Man’s Essence Is the Will to Receive

The desire [to receive, to enjoy] is the [primary, only] essence of the person.
– Baal HaSulam, Shamati (I Heard), Article No. 153, “A Thought Is an Upshot of the Desire”

The essence of all the details in reality is no more and no less than the will to receive [the difference between all parts of creation in all the words comes only from quantitative and qualitative differences in their desire for fulfillment].
– Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” Item 20

The very essence of the soul is the will to receive [pleasure, fulfillment]. And the difference we can tell between one object and another is discerned only by its will.
– Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” Item 21
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Kabbalah is the method that talks about the need to unite with each other according to the plan of Nature, the single force which controls the entire universe, all of us, all of creation. Since the days of ancient Babylon, this science has been hidden from humanity. Kabbalah only states that this teaching would be passed through a tiny “stream” from teacher to disciple for thousands of years, from ancient Babylon to the present time, until our world becomes a modern Babylon, meaning the world turns into one whole with complete interconnection regardless of borders, countries, continents, nations, races, groups, and the religions that have emerged over the course of history. Our interdependence will become so strong that it will eliminate all these barriers.

On the other hand, our egoism will remain and continue to develop. Because of this, we will hate each other even more. We will repel each other automatically; we will think only of ourselves subconsciously and instinctively. We won’t consider the others and will only use them maximally for our own profit. This will be our nature for 3700 years, Kabbalistic sources said.

We will come to enormous egoism, and it will be natural for us. We will not even realize that it is special, but only that this is us and this the manner of our life. Nonetheless, this egoism, together with our extensive integral connection and the communication that we have developed between ourselves, will eventually turn us into Babylon again.

Besides that, during the last stage of development when this huge egoistic society becomes global, we will practically deplete all the natural resources and sources of: energy, oil, coal, gas, water, minerals, and metals. Everything is coming to an end. Even if we’d like to grow our egoistic potential, it won’t be possible.

The consumer society that developed during the 20th century has exhausted itself, emptying the Earth of all resources, and as a result, we cannot continue in this life even physically. We have reached such a confrontation with each other and the environment that it forces us to do something.

Our society will become different—uncontrollable. Recently we see revolutions taking place in different countries; we see how communication and connection between people urges them to demand social change. However, we still do not understand how or why this happens: Today it is there, tomorrow it may happen here or elsewhere. We do not see where any of this leads.

In this state of confusion, not being able to understand the next stage, we see the science of Kabbalah being revealed to the world again. I remember when I studied with my teacher, we used to travel to special, Kabbalistic places and sit there together, across from each other. During those evenings and nights, he tried to tell me that the time would come when Kabbalah would be revealed.

What does “revealed” mean? “Revealed” means that it is not you who starts talking about it, but people who want to hear start coming. It depends not on you, but on the ones who will listen.

We see that this time has come because there are plenty of people from different countries, on different continents, in various languages, who want to hear what nature, the Creator, demands from us. They want to know what we should resemble, how we should change ourselves, on what level to rise, how to enter an entirely different dimension, how to perceive the general level of nature, eternity, and perfection, and to feel this here and now in our world. It is said in the science of Kabbalah that such people would appear at the end of the 20th century.

I did not really believe it: I did not see these conditions. However, at the end of the last century, thousands of people became interested in Kabbalah, subconsciously and instinctively sensing this urge thanks to their desires which had developed and reached maturity. In the next stage, a new dimension is conceived in this finally ripened egoistic desire.
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From the 1st lesson at the Moscow Convention 6/10/11

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We do not have the slightest idea about the future world order because we have entered a system of forces which has never before manifested in our world. As nature, the Creator, approaches us, it becomes outlined more and more clearly. Thus, we must begin to reveal the upper world, meaning the system of governance by the upper force, the Light.

As this external force approaches us, as it shines on us, our society, and the world more perceptibly, more intensely, we sense our oppositeness to this force. We don’t feel the force itself, but sense our inability to settle down even a little bit.

The world has become unpredictable. People are engaged in fortune telling and even believe in miracles. How can it happen in our enlightened age? How can we suddenly begin to believe in it after the 20th century? Every year and sometimes a few times a year, we have all kinds of doomsday dates and other apocalyptic events.

In addition, we find ourselves in the rigid embrace of nature which unexpectedly generates crises of tsunami, hurricanes, volcanic eruptions, fires, floods, and so on. Gradually, everything is going out of balance, out of that delicate equilibrium in which we were. That’s because we are going through a turning point. We crossed this turning point once before on a smaller social scale in ancient Babylon. The entirety of humankind was concentrated there, and even then, it discovered that it was a small, closed society.

Today, even though there are seven billion of us, we are a closed society. We suddenly “short-circuited” together; we found ourselves dependent on each other. On the other hand, we are like spouses before a divorce. We hate each other although we are still in one apartment. We should move out, we cannot be together, but common ties hold us together. This is the “shared apartment” that we find ourselves in today on Earth.

Once before, this became evident in a small territory, in Mesopotamia 3700 years ago. Then, for the first time, people began to seek out what they could do about it. On one hand, they were in the same place and in complete, total interdependence. On the other, they hated each other and strove to be as far away as possible from each other. Two opposite forces, two of the hardest tendencies were tearing the society apart. Then, in fact, two methods were suggested.

The first method was the correction of their nature. “Let us correct the egoism that separates, distances, and alienates us from each other. Then, we would win. We would become a single entity in mutual support. We would have enormous power, and we really would erect a “tower up to heaven,” the tower of mutual love, cooperation, and unity, the positive force.

Thus, they would become equal to nature because everything in nature is interconnected. All its levels—the inanimate, vegetative, and animate—always act in mutual harmony, and only a human with his egoism feels himself above nature, believing that he can do whatever he pleases. However, if he understands the laws of nature and looks for correspondence with it, for a harmonious relationship, then he would sense all of its capacity and power. He would understand and realize its purpose, its essence.

This is what was suggested by the adepts of human correction, but, unfortunately, humanity (around three million people living between the Tigris and Euphrates) chose a different path. Like spouses after a failed marriage, they decided that it would be better for them to “move out,” divide their shared apartment, and break the contract. Thus, people dispersed around the world.

Many ancient sources narrated this story. From those times we have the book on Kabbalah called The Book of Creation. We have it in our free archive, in the Russian language as well.

The book called The Great Commentary appeared after that. It also describes the events that happened in ancient Babylon and how people could not solve the problem of unity. To do this, they had to work on their egoism, to rise above it by means of a special method, and that required much more internal, moral effort than simply to physically separate from each other and do whatever everybody wanted, each in his own corner.

Josephus Flavius describes where people went, to which places. Later, all the beliefs and religions were originated by them, everything based on egoism, everything that egoism supports.
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From the 1st lesson at the Moscow Convention 6/10/11

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The crisis that has enveloped the world was very obvious at the recent conventions we held, including the one in Italy three weeks ago and especially  the one in Madrid, Spain a week ago. There the crisis is very apparent. The masses are in disarray, and the rate of unemployment among young people is 40%. And things only get worse every day. There are demonstrations and protestors holding sit-ins on the streets, and more.

I deliberately walked around the streets there and talked to people. They don’t know what to do and are holding protests in front of government buildings. But the government also doesn’t know what to do. Everyone is confused and no one is guilty. And it’s all because we are finding ourselves facing nature’s challenge.

Work places cannot be created out of empty space. And what for? By doing that we would only exhaust the remaining natural resources even faster, ruin the soil, and pollute the environment even more. Our water and air resources will dwindle even faster. So why should we stimulate the deteriorating economy? Just to give people work? With these kinds of consequences, it’s better not to give it to them!

In Spain I appeared on the most popular TV channel during prime time. Instead of speaking for just a few minutes, which was planned according to the program, the interview lasted thirteen minutes. Can you imagine—thirteen minutes on the morning news, among reports about the most important current events! They just couldn’t put an end to the interview.

My suggestion was simple and came down to one piece of practical advice: We have to sit people down to study. They should be paid unemployment benefits (which will also be the most effective money-saving strategy) and they should be taught about what kind of world we are living in, what exists in front of us, and what kind of challenge nature is throwing at us.

This is not someone’s whim or the interests of a certain party or government leaders. This is none other than nature, which is challenging us. And the challenge is for us to change. We do not have to change anything besides ourselves.

We have to become integral and global, in conformity to the current crisis. After all, the crisis is the sensation of one’s lack of conformity with the surrounding nature. Therefore, if we correct ourselves this way, everything will become balanced out and will reach harmony. This is what people should be taught.

The interview received a widespread positive response throughout all of Spain, as well as Latin American and North America, and that’s because it really is the only sensible way to come out of the situation that has formed. And Spain is not alone. Greece, Iceland, Italy and others are in a similar situation, and there are many other countries gradually entering this crisis. And in other places the crisis is coming in different ways.

That is how nature places a clear task before us: We have to change. We have to be integral with nature just like everything else it contains—the still, vegetative, and animate levels. Man should not think that he is above nature and that he can do anything he wishes. His most important task is to consciously become an integral part of the whole.

By becoming an integral part of nature, he begins to understand what it is, and suddenly discovers new depths in it: the worlds of Assiya, Beria, Yetzira, Atzilut, Adam Kadmon, and the world of Infinity. He no longer obstructs himself from nature with his egoism, but starts to feel nature as transparent. He finally understands and becomes aware of the forces that control everything, including himself.

This is the task we are facing today. Therefore, if we desire it and use the force of aspiration forward, which exists in many people in the world, then we really will aspire to self-correction, to the world’s revelation, to exiting from the state of dreaming, from unconsciousness. Then we will attain total equality with nature, the Creator’s level.
From the 1st lesson at the Moscow Convention 6/10/11

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Human society is divided into two parts. People whose point in the heart has awakened comprise a small part of humanity; this is us. The rest of the people do not have the point in the heart, yet a powerful egoistic desire is concentrated namely in them.

Two forces, positive and negative, act in us. We move forward by creating a connection between our ego and the desire to attain the spiritual world, which we develop through the study and forces received from the environment. The connection built by combining these two forces is called the middle line.

The rest of the people, as the science of Kabbalah explains, gradually join us, feeling that there is no alternative: Their egoism, demanding fulfillment all the time, will suffer. Over the course of human development man’s egoism was constantly growing and striving to fill itself as much as possible. Today, when the human ego has lost hope to obtain fulfillment, it faces a crisis.

This encourages people to draw closer to us, although they do not know to whom and how. To make their path easier, we have to circulate the wisdom of Kabbalah and explain that there is a method of correcting the crisis. When they join us, together we will start working in the middle line and thus reach the world of Infinity.

What will we win as a result? We will reach eternity and perfection. We will rise above our reality, above the point of the creation of our Universe and our entire world—to the upper reality.

Nowadays, the point in the heart awakens in many people: There are millions of them already. And the people whose point in the heart has not been revealed yet feel the crisis in addition to egoism. They sense that they lack the positive force without which they cannot live. They know that they have to correct the crisis, they feel that the solution is hidden in unity, but do not understand how to realize it.

In a global and integral world, everything has to be unified; nature demonstrates this to us. Today, it shows that we have to reach the world of Infinity, that we are one whole. This is precisely what the crisis covertly points and directs us to.

In people who should lead humanity to this goal, the crisis reveals the point in the heart, a positive force, which they can obtain from the group and studying. With its help, they can move towards the world of Infinity independently. And those whom the crisis does not give the force of unification but who feel that they lack this force will gradually get explanations from those in whom the point in the heart has awakened, will join them, and together with them will aim for the goal.
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From Lesson 2, Convention in Spain, 6/4/2011

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The theme of our Convention is “Unity – the Future of the World.” I am very moved because after many years of studying Kabbalah, the unity of the world and the need for it are finally starting to become apparent.

Over the course of billions of years of our world’s development, as well as in the process of many events before its conception, everything progressed precisely towards this point—the point of realizing the need for unity. It is only now starting to awaken, to be expressed, and to show its necessity. And you and I are at the center of this realization.

Everything began when the single force of nature, the force of bestowal, or the Creator, which is the same thing, began acting, emanating, and creating matter. First it made the spiritual matter, meaning desire: the desire to be filled, the desire to develop, the desire to feel oneself and everything around.

This desire develops under the influence of the initial force, the force of nature. The phases of its development are called “the four phases of the expansion of the Direct Light.”
The entire purpose of developing creation, or desire, lies in making it similar to all of nature, in having it reach wholesome harmony, or in other words, reaching equivalence and adhesion with the Creator because adhesion is attained through equivalence of form. It is necessary for matter, meaning the desire that’s opposite to the Light, opposite to the quality of bestowal, to eventually go through all the phases of its development and to realize that the highest, best state is similarity to the Light, similarity to the perfect nature, harmony with it, and unity with it.

However, in order to achieve this state, it is necessary to first feel that you are totally opposite to it, meaning to experience yourself in a quality that is completely opposite to the Light, to experience egoism, cruelty, the desire to think only about yourself, the sensation of just yourself, the inability to feel someone else or to think about someone else unless it is for your own sake, unless it brings you personal benefit, unless it means using others. That is how qualities that are the most opposite to the Light have to be expressed in creation.

In our world this creation is man, who goes through an enormous number of developmental phases throughout the course of history until he attains the sensation, and most importantly, the realization that he is completely opposite to the force of nature. This is a very difficult and lengthy process. Over hundreds of thousands of years we moved forward, and egoism gradually grew stronger inside of us. Externally we see how man has developed in his social formation until he attained the current state. As a whole, this egoism, this desire, constantly pushed us forward until the present moment.

And now, as of late, we are starting to be convinced that this egoism, this nature we have is actually our enemy, and our only enemy. By separating us from one another, it literally deprives us of the opportunity to exist normally, even on the level of this material world.

We are becoming more and more closed in, cruel, separated, and frightened, and are taking on a defensive stance, thus depriving ourselves of a normal life and losing the meaning of existence. And indeed: Why should we live? Only in order to defend and protect ourselves? Only in order to place ourselves in some kind of boundaries and exist in them for a certain amount of time with a certain level of comfort and safety? And that’s all?

That is how man in this world feels as he becomes crueler and crueler by nature with time. We make him that way. Our egoism pushes us to this.

In the end, all of this is being expressed as a huge crisis. In some countries the crisis is felt more, and in others, less, but it is drawing to a head. No matter how much we conceal it, we cannot do anything about it. It is becoming expressed in the economy, in social structure, in the decrease of the family’s role, and in all of the problems that emerge in our society, such as the crisis of upbringing, drugs, terrorism, and so on.

In all areas of man’s activity he is coming up against numerous crises, but in the end it is all a crisis of our opposition to nature. And naturally, it can only be corrected at this essence.

We cannot correct it in any other way. We see how government leaders are trying, how the authorities are unable to do anything, and even tyrants, who use the money and armies that are at their disposal, are unable to change anything. The world is unrelentlessly moving towards a great rupture. Force and power are still trying to hold the world in the previous boundaries, but are no longer able to do that.
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From the 1st lesson at the Moscow Convention 6/10/11

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