The world convention that took place not long ago is a very serious phase, but it is over.

Unfortunately we don’t feel the pain of not being incorporated in others yet. I don’t feel any pain of not living in the heart of others; I have no feeling that I want to break away from myself and be in others, but cannot do so and so I feel pain. I don’t feel that it pressures me so much and worries me so that it is the reason that I ask for and cry out, but we are nearing that.

Still, it was a very serious effort in moving toward the goal. I don’t know how to measure it since we are moving along a path that has never been taken, and there are no examples we can learn from, but I believe that in another two or three such conventions, if people will hold on, if they feel a greater need to delve more deeply into each other, everything will be solved. This is what the coming conventions are for, and there is no going back. I have to live in the heart of the friend, inside it; I am not here. I exist there with all my soul.

Question: Will questions and workshops be only in this direction from now on?

Answer: Only in order to be as one man in one heart. This is a precondition without which we cannot reach spirituality. The point is not the Creator, but the friend’s heart. We have felt it now; we had access to it, and although there was not a clear demand for that yet, no attack and the accumulation of pain, it will happen.

Now we will work on it systematically and will hold a series of conventions in America and Russia and then in Israel again. A person should feel pain from not being in his friend’s heart. He yearns for that, but cannot. Something is holding him back, but he really wants to be inside his heart. He wants to work with his own desires like Malchut while the nine desires before him are the desires of his friends, their yearning for the Creator and not his own. The powers are his while the yearning is of the friends.
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From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 2/26/16

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Question: How can we be sure that we are putting the Creator first since our group has grown in number? Where is the guarantee that we won’t become idol worshippers and will advance exactly towards the Creator? How is it possible to check this?

Answer: Putting the Creator first means that there is nobody and nothing other than the power of bestowal and love in the world. It is a power! It is property! It is the only thing that determines and manages everything. And now you raise it above everyone and put it first.

This indicates that you now understand that the entire world is subject to this power alone and exists within it. It is only He who manages it and and leads it wherever He wants. If you want to be harmoniously linked to Him, you must try to attain this characteristic.

Question: What is this “selfless bestowal”? After all, aren’t we aware of love only through our desire to receive?

Answer: “Selfless bestowal” is when I give something without knowing what and to whom, in relation to my ego. Can you imagine how much this is detached from that?

Suppose that I am a millionaire and I donated a million dollars to help in Africa. But nobody in the world knows about this. But I know it and am pleased. This is not selfless bestowal because I know that I gave, and somewhere subconsciously the thought is going around: “And the Creator knows that I did it for the sake of the world.”

This is not selfless bestowal. It means that I know to whom, how much and what I gave. So here there is a connection with me. But if you cut off all three connections so that you don’t know what, to whom, and how much you gave, and in addition, the Creator doesn’t know anything about it, then this will be selfless bestowal.

As you gradually approach it, the spiritual world is revealed to you. Your state is called Hafetz Hesed (absolute mercy, or not desiring anything for oneself).
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 2/10/14

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Baal HaSulam, Shamati #121, “She Is Like Merchant-Ships”: In the verse, “She is like the merchant-ships; she bringeth her bread from afar.” When one demands and insists that “she is all mine,” that all the desires will be dedicated to the Creator, the Sitra Achra awakens against him and claims, “She is all mine,” too. And then there is a tradeoff.

When a person receives an awakening regarding the Creator from above, the power of the Sitra Achra also is awakened in him to make freedom of choice possible for him, and so two forces are active simultaneously.

A tradeoff means that one wants to buy a certain object and the buyer and seller debate its worth, meaning each of them claims that he is right.

The person is torn between these two forces, for both of them are pulling him: “…meaning each of them claims that he is right.”

And here the body examines to whom it is worthwhile to listen: to the receiver or to the giving force. Both clearly argue, “She is all mine.”

One force insists that it is preferable to advance along with this world and take everything that is possible from life, and another force pulls him toward spirituality, claiming that this world is not worth anything and is built this way only in order to rise above it, and the person ruins his life, torn between the two forces that trade between them.

And since one sees one’s lowness, that in him, too, there are sparks that do not agree to observe the Torah and Mitzvot even as a dot on the iota, but that the whole body argues, “She is all mine…”

The “dot on the iota” is the point, the beginning of all the letters. However, the person is not prepared to realize even this small point for the sake of bestowal.

…then, “she bringeth her bread from afar.” This means that from the removals, when one sees how far one is from the Creator, and regrets, and asks of the Creator to bring him closer, “she bringeth her bread.”

Bread means faith. In that state one is awarded permanent faith, since “God hath so made it that men should fear before Him.” This means that all the removals that one feels were brought to him by the Creator, so he would have the need to assume the fear of heaven.

He would have the need to serve the Creator because otherwise he will not be able to escape from the quagmire of life.

This is the meaning of “that man doth not live by bread only, but by everything that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord.” This means that the life of Kedusha (Sanctity) within one does not come specifically from drawing closer, from entrances, that is, admissions into Kedusha, but also from the exits, from the removals. This is so because through the dressing of the Sitra Achra in one’s body, and its claims, “She is all mine,” with a just argument, one is awarded permanent faith by overcoming these states.

This is our way. We are constantly given various physical temptations to confuse us, and it is up to us to reduce their value without foregoing them. It is impossible for us to abstain or be ascetics since we must use everything that there is in our world but in the framework of a reasonable, regular existence. Regarding everything that goes beyond the necessities, we must turn to spirituality. Both of these aspects must balance.

Our method is not mysticism and not religion. It is impossible to abstain from anything. A person must reasonably use all of the means that are at his disposal in this world, and turn all of his desires upward to resemble the Creator, to connect to Him.

“Reasonably” refers to something that we could forego, but don’t because we decide that this is necessary for our normal existence. In a case like this, it is “neither praised nor condemned.” Essentially, as of today, the entire world is advancing toward this state.

Today there are an increasing number of inhabitants on the face of the earth; there is less and less work, more and more unemployed, social benefits are being cut, and so forth. According to statistics, 50% of all of the property on the face of the Earth is owned by 1% of the entire population.

Ultimately, this will force the world through wars and revolutions, or through awareness, to reach the decision to produce and consume only what is necessary to survive reasonably and with dignity.

In the past, there was a condition, “Eat bread with salt, drink little water, sleep on the ground, lead a sorrowful life, and labor in the Torah” so that everything would be okay. But a few hundred years before our era, Kabbalists made special corrections for us in the system of management, and now there is no need for a person in our world to impose any physical and corporeal limitations for the purpose of correction. He can consume reasonably and calmly everything that is necessary for his health, for his existence, without limitation. So if my mind is always busy, with spiritual advancement, in a group, in study,  and in dissemination, then it is not important how much I drink and eat with friends. There are no limitations.

Now the world is  advancing toward achieving sustainable consumption. In any case, we have nowhere to flee. The external atmosphere and environment, and even the state of the economy and industry economic obligate us. Therefore, a person will be involved only with rational servicing of the body and all of the rest he will aim toward the spiritual level.

However, this article states that even if a person places himself in the middle line, nevertheless he will be drawn constantly toward the right or the left, the left or the right. In order to advance, we must be between the two lines of development. On the one hand, we seem to be drawn toward spiritual development, and on the other hand, we are drawn toward various disturbances, away from the side of the right line.

This means that one should unite everything with the Creator—that is, that even the exits stem from Him—and when he is rewarded, he sees that both the exits and the entrances were all from Him.

Being humble means being in the middle line all the time, being fixated on “There is none else beside Him” with the help of the balance of the two lines when the person understands that the two lines equally come from the Creator, and only so he would realize freedom of choice and advance.

Moses tolerated the humility, which is why he was called humble since the lowness made him glad. Thus, in each degree, one should hold onto the lowness, and the moment he loses the lowness, he immediately loses all the degrees of Moses that he had already achieved.

“Nullity” means that the person does not have its own forces, and all the forces to move forward, he receives from the Creator. In other words, I am not a power generator, I do not have them. Everything that I have: power, intelligence, desire, domestic status, external circumstances and the fact that I get to awareness at every moment of his life – all my Creator substitutes. There were no accidents or something that depends on me.

Lowness means that a person doesn’t have his own forces, and  all the force to advance, he receives from the Creator. In other words, I cannot create power by myself because I have no power. All that I have is energy, intelligence, desire, an inner state, external circumstances and what I become aware of every moment in my life. All of this comes from the Creator. There are no accidents here or something that depends on me. The only thing that depends on us is understanding what is happening, making the right choice, and bringing all that we feel within us and around us to the one and only source.

This is the meaning of patience. Lowliness exists in everyone, but not every person feels that lowliness is a good thing. One does not want to suffer.

The person begins to understand that he is not the main source of intelligence, thought, action, decisions, or anything. All of this comes only from the Creator. This helps him adhere to the Creator, and if he understands this more and more deeply, he simply melts into it.

So our work is to attribute everything that we have, in the heart, in the mind, our decisions, our vision, everything that we feel within our senses, everything that happens around us and within us, to the one and only source. This is the principle of “There is none else beside Him.” If we attribute everything that we do to the same origin, we achieve adhesion with the Creator.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 2/10/14

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News from our friends of the Bnei Baruch Center – Miami, Florida who participated in the five days of the Miami Book Fair: Our booth had many visitors, especially young people who came and bought our books. We were impressed that people have become sensitive to our message of the need for connection and union.

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In our world there is a special condition to start feeling the upper world: the creation of a small society, a minimum of ten people, who must constantly try to be mutually interconnected, as a living organism, in full, good, integral connection.

And if we try to establish a structure like this between us, we gradually begin to feel new integral properties within us. But they won’t belong to any one of the ten participants; rather, they will become their common property.

The general desire manifested between us to connect us as a single spiritual person is what we create ourselves; we complement each others’ thoughts that will become our shared mind. As a result, a new spiritual union is created: one common person from all ten.

Each of us experiences it himself, because when we enter into this image, we feel it in our place. We dissolve in it, and together we begin to become a single system, a single sense.

Each one who leaves his egoistic perception of the world through connection, through the integration of everyone into something single, reaches the perception of a new world that doesn’t depend on the previous state.

And in this sense organ we create, we begin to feel a new state of nature called the upper world, the system that manages and influences us with quite different characteristics of the world: not selfish but their opposite.

Everything in our world is constructed according to two opposing characteristics: plus or minus, hot or cold, and so forth. Balance between them creates a state of life, comfort, homeostasis; this is what we aspire to. Balance exists in everything except our inner egoistic desire.

But discovery of the upper world makes it possible to build a new system of equilibrium of our egoistic desires with altruistic ones, without destroying egoism but complementing it. Moreover, the altruistic desires don’t belong to our world because what we consider to be altruism on the physical level is also egoism.

Entering the balance between self-interest and the new system—the system of bestowal, integration, and exiting yourself—in Kabbalah is called “love.” Love is a state in which you fulfill the desires of another without wanting anything for yourself. This is the opposite of the current state of human nature.

The moment that we reach this state, at least once on the minimal level, we can balance the ego, because all these states are graduated; we will immediately feel where we are.

Around us manifest the forces controlling our world. We begin to feel ourselves existing within a complete network of forces, and then it will be clear to us what is happening with us and what must be done. This is our role.

So a person who truly has a serious desire to attain the meaning of life and the system of management of the upper world, immediately, automatically, involuntarily, like a charge in an electrical field, finds himself in one of our groups, and if not, then he finds us through the Internet.

This is a law of nature, because there such a person has a particular negative charge that is looking for a positive point that is appropriate for him, to connect to it and receive from it what is desired. That is how the whole system of nature is organized.

And when he reaches us, we immediately begin to teach him the proper connection with the friends, because the main thing is practical training. During this learning process, a person is connected with those who are like him, creates a shared integral sense organ together with them, and begins to feel the system of management of the upper world in it.

I very much hope that we can do a great thing and discover the true picture of our world, which we need.

After all, while we abide in virtually the source of all problems and find possible solutions, we raise ourselves to a higher level above all the deficiencies of our world and enter into the new system—a system of harmony between us and nature on all levels.
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From the Conventions In Odessa, “In The Circle Of Unity,” Day One 10/16/15, Lesson 1

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The wisdom of Kabbalah was first discovered 5,776 years ago by a man named Adam, who described what he discovered in his book The Angel Raziel. Since then, there have been many generations of Kabbalists and everything they did until our very days is incorporated into one system.

The Kabbalists were a different sort of person and each of them engaged in this wisdom in his own special way: some engaged in a certain special way of attaining the wisdom of Kabbalah, others wrote it on certain levels, and others’ goal was to attract as many people as possible to the revelation of this system of Providence. These Kabbalists are particularly important and dear to us, because with their help, we can achieve what are beginning to strive for.

Throughout human history most Kabbalists wrote on a level that today we find difficult to understand, but the greatest Kabbalist who lived in the 16^th century the Ari really managed to summarize and present this wisdom.

He brought a great treasure of knowledge to the system and we have received a ready-made matrix from him, which the whole wisdom of Kabbalah is based on. Many before him had tried to do that but did not succeed.

This is the reason that there isn’t anyone closer in spirit to us than the Ari and everything he did is most important to us. He died at a very young age of 38 and left his legacy for all of us.

400 years after the Ari, at the beginning of the 20^th century another great Kabbalist named Baal HaSulam appeared. None of the Kabbalists who lived before him managed to convey the Ari’s method and teachings in a more popular and accessible manner as Baal HaSulam Ari did. This is the reason that we use the writings of Baal HaSulam, which were written in relatively simple modern language. His writings are the mainstay of our studies.

In addition, his eldest son Rabash, my teacher, completed his father’s writings adding the principles of our internal work. Baal HaSulam wrote mainly about the system of the upper world and its internal psychology. And my teacher explained in his articles how we can practically begin to feel the upper world, what we should do to actually feel it and to absorb it into us, and how to create new senses and thus advance.

If we didn’t have Rabash’s writings, we could read the writings of Baal HaSulam and enjoy the logic of his simple beautiful and harmonious description of the upper world and the effect of this system on us, but we would not know how to attain it. All this is explained in the writings of my teacher.

Kabbalists describe the upper world and our world, which is the lowest and smallest level that is detached from the spiritual world, which work in perfect harmony.

The only resemblance to this system in our world is the perfectly corrected human body, in which the heart and mind and all the systems like the circulatory, nervous, lymphatic, and other systems operate in harmony, in unison.

They support each other, nothing is superfluous, and only the correct mutual functioning creates the opportunity to experience the entire system and study it.
To be continued…
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From the Conventions In Odessa, “In The Circle Of Unity,” Day One 10/16/15, Lesson 1

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Question: Many friends who are involved with similar activities chase after money, after the quantities of people. I am afraid that we also will begin to chase after quantity and not after quality.

Answer: If you are constantly with us in the lessons, then that won’t happen to you.

Thus, I am adamant that everyone, especially those who are involved with integral education for the public, must attend all of the morning lessons. It is a must!

Without that, it is not clear what they will begin to teach. They will deviate to psychology, sociology, mysticism, and who knows what else. We need to be afraid of that. Therefore, the connection with me through the lessons is essential.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/11/14

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This is the tenth consecutive year our publishing company is participating in the international book fair in Frankfurt. Our stand this year is in the main hall, near leading publishing companies in the fields of printed and electronic books.

This year we are also presenting interviews and video clips that I have had with different people like Larry King and we project them on a big screen in our pavilion.

Our students from Kabbalah La’am centers in Norway, the Czech Republic, Canada, and Germany are helping us.

In 2015 we published two new books in German, three in Turkish, three in Romanian, one in French, two in Italian, one in Czech, three in Danish, and three in English.
Thank you very much for all your support!
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Question: Suppose that I come to people to find out what they desire, but they don’t want anything except a lower mortgage rate. What should I think about and what should I ask so that, when I meet with them, they would want to discover the Creator?

Answer: The idea is not about a low mortgage rate. People want their lives to work out because life is pressuring them from all sides. They want a healthier and better existence for themselves, for their relatives, for the people, for the nation, and for the entire world.

So, you need to think about how to bring the world into balance so that every person, in whatever situation in which he may be, will be able to find this point.

When you wake up in the morning, you should connect with the group immediately, and then all of our events, all of our activities will be successful.

I am giving you an intention about how to go through the 24 hours of the day. If everything that you think about and want begins to move through the group, then you will be advancing toward a state of balance and harmony, and then everything will be normal. If it is not normal, this is a sign that you still haven’t reached balance and are at a point that is taking you out of it. It is possible to find balance only in the center of the group!

So, it is necessary to aim toward this from the beginning of the morning and hold onto this intention no matter what happens. We will solve everything this way at work, in your personal life, in the family, and everywhere. Otherwise, all your best desires, activities and thoughts will lead you further and further away from the goal.
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From the World Zohar Week “Integral Education Convention” Day Three 2/4/14, Workshop 5

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Question: We raised a prayer of many during the Arava convention so that we could be incorporated in one field in order to become one whole. Does that mean that if we simply remember it now, we can return to this point?

Answer: Why should you remember it? See what a global group we have! I never regard a certain small part. A group for me is all those who are members in our movement.

The main law of the general system of the universe is mutual guarantee, an absolute harmonious mutual connection among all the parts of creation. There is nothing but that!

It seems that this is some virtual condition, but in fact, mutual guarantee is the law according to which the system of creation exists and functions! If we are compatible with this law, we not only begin to feel the creation, but even take an active part in managing it. After all, according to the thought of creation, we are the most developed part that is equal to the Creator. This is the level to which we should evolve.

Now, we enter it unconsciously like the still, vegetative, and animate levels of nature, and in the current phase, we begin to ascend to the human level since human, Adam (in Hebrew) means to resemble the Creator. There is nothing other than this law!

The prayer of many or the general prayer is worrying about the entire system when I am incorporated in it integrally. How can I receive the right influence from it and influence it correctly if I am not connected to it this way? This is the reason that I must study and teach others only about this connection.

Question: What should we do if we are incorporated already in a unified field but don’t discern the Creator yet? What should we ask for?

Answer: The system is already in a state of complete unity, but we are not aware of it and don’t feel it. There is an obstacle here when I begin to ask for myself. We mustn’t do that. We must mean and ask to be an active partner, an assistant, who pushes the entire group, the whole system, toward unity.

The Creator is the force that sets the system into motion in unity, in wholeness, and that connects everything into one whole. This is the reason that when I aspire to resemble this force through the souls, through the components of the system, I bring it to the state of “He and His name are one.”

I must build this model, the image of this system, inside me, and then I will constantly feel exactly what I need and toward what I must advance.

Question: But we cannot fully imagine this model.

Answer: Imagine it to the extent that you can because the aspiration for Him will keep on guiding you later on. If you focus yourself this way, you won’t divert from the right path.

Actually, it isn’t complicated at all, but it isn’t easy to get used to it from our world. The actual structure is, in fact, very simple. What else is there besides the shattered desire that must collect and unite and discover as one whole desire that the Light, the upper force, is in it? This is the force of love and bestowal that we raise above all the other attributes and therefore call the upper force.
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From the World Zohar Week “Integral Education Convention” Day Three 2/4/14, Workshop 5

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