Question: People can understand the need to make concessions to one another, but how can you explain the Light of correction to a regular person?

Answer: The Light is the quality of bestowal, the upper force that is present in nature, which advances us, gives us life, corrects us, and moves us forward. Throughout the millennia of man’s existence on earth (without considering the millions of years of development of the still, vegetative, and animate levels of nature) we developed coercively, by means of the force hidden within nature. There is a certain program inside of it, an engine that operates by that program, setting all of creation in motion and causing its development.

Scientists are revealing that 15 billion years ago our universe began to develop as a result of the Big Bang. That is to say, the universe contains a developmental force. And now this force continues to develop us further, which is called “the natural course of history” (Beito).

However, we have the opportunity to develop “faster than time” (Ahishena), not by means of the harsh force of nature which pushes us to develop with a “strong arm,” through “judgement and restriction,” but by awakening “mercy” upon us, as it is written, “As He is merciful, so you shall become merciful.”

This means that I awaken good forces of development in nature. If I agree with the development, desire it, and aspire to the same goal myself, awakening the desire inside of me even before nature starts putting pressure on me, then I will feel good and comfortable! I will merit understanding and will shorten my path. In essence, this is all that we have to do!

We have to run forward ourselves, like a mouse running away from a cat. When a person becomes wiser, he understands that the developmental press is moving upon him. On the other hand, there are people who still don’t notice or feel this press that is catching up to them. That means it still hasn’t gotten close enough to them and does not evoke great suffering.

Imagine that you are running down a road and a huge press is chasing you, just about to crush you. If you already feel this, then you will look for a way to be saved from it. You have nowhere to run. On both sides of you there are buildings stretching out for many miles, and you are running down a narrow road between them, while the press is rolling forward right behind you. This is an astonishing picture…. You don’t want the press to squish you into the asphalt, do you?

Some people already feel that they are in this state, while others don’t feel it yet. Nevertheless, it’s all a matter of time. Maybe you feel good for now, like a person falling from the 10th story, and while passing the 8th floor he tells his neighbor who’s staring out the window, “How are you? Everything’s OK for now.” This is how the world is “OK” today, but it doesn’t understand it yet.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/30/11, Talmud Eser Sefirot

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The Zohar, Chapter “Truma (Donation),” Item 4: … Jacob, who was whole, brought love in both worlds, meaning he married the two sisters, Leah and Rachel, the two worlds, Bina and Malchut.

Question: Which of my inner desires are called sisters?

Answer: A person contains the still, vegetative, animate, and human levels of desire. The entire world that I see is my desire, divided into many particular desires, each of which forms a certain earthly image in my perception.

We “see” our desires. We look inside ourselves, into our desire that is divided into parts, the objects of the world. We see the world in three dimensions, as if we are looking through 3-D glasses. And we don’t even feel that we are in this virtual reality because we don’t have anything to compare our sensation to. That is why it seems to us that we exist in the authentic world.

That is, we perceive something inside our desire, but it seems like we see it outside, in front of us. However, if besides this world, we would see a different reality, then we would discover that the reality of this world is relative. Parts of my desire depict images of inanimate objects, plants, animals, and people. However, these are not people who appear before me in this world, but my desire on the human level, which divides into many parts and I see each part of my desire in the form of an image of some person.

I also have desires on the animate level and therefore I see different animals in this world. Moreover, there are desires that are present in me now, as well as ones that were present in the past or that will surface in the future. This is why I see a developing world, extinct kinds of animals, or new species that suddenly appear in front of me. This means they surface in my consciousness and disappear. And the same thing happens on the still and vegetative levels.

There is no world. These are just my sensations inside of my desires when certain Reshimot (informational genes) come to the surface, replacing others, and by perceiving the realization of my Reshimot in this way, I feel that I live in them—in essence, that I live in the world. This is an internal movie that is projected to me by the constant Light, which awakens Reshimot that replace one another.

In the process of the Reshimot’s development (where a Reshimo [singular form of Reshimot] is an informational record in my memory), a part of them depends on my willingness to process new Reshimot, while part of the Reshimot awaken on their own. This entire process of development, which happens by itself, is called “Beito” (in due time). But if I want to accelerate it and am able to, this path of development is called Ahishena (accelerating time).

However, in any case we are only talking about Reshimot that awaken in me, which I perceive as the world, myself, and the entire process of development.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/25/11, The Zohar

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Baal HaSulam, “The Peace”: When some element appears bad and harmful to us, it is but a self-testimony of that element; that it is still in the transition phase, in the process of its development. Hence, we cannot decide that it is bad and it is not wise for us to cast a flaw in it.

This passage speaks about thoughtful people and not about those who, like animals, don’t know where they live, why, and for which purpose. Unlike the latter, people who wish to explore themselves and nature come to a conclusion that we live in the world that is evolving, starting with the Big Bang up to this day. The still, vegetative, animate, and speaking levels develop gradually, from the simplest to the most complex forms.

As a result, we cannot make an absolute estimate of anything, any creature, act, or occurrence since we can’t see what will sprout from it in the end. Only when the fruit on the tree ripens completely can we realize that this juicy and sweet apple is ready to delight us.

Then we’ll see why it had to undergo all the previous stages and how it should be used. It can be learned only by observing all the intermediate forms, coming to the final stage, seeing the final form, and finding how to apply it. If, however, we haven’t reached the end of our development, even at the still, vegetative, or animate levels, we can’t say we already know what’s going on. After all, everything is weighed and evaluated exclusively by the final result.

Everything is learned from experience. A sage doesn’t sneak into the future, but rather makes conclusions based on the path he has walked. Therefore, it is said: “Nobody is as wise as the experienced one.” So, there is nothing bad or good in the world; everything is necessary.

Everything has its place, time, reason, and need to be, and only in the end do we learn that everything was supposed to be the way it was. Only at the finish line can we make a conclusion about anything at all.

This pertains to all parts of reality and more so to ourselves. Only in the final stage of evolution can we make conclusions and express opinions about ourselves: Who and what we are, why and for what purpose.

In the mean time, from all these explorations, we gain experience and learn from our mistakes. We finally understand that nothing in nature should be deleted since we don’t comprehend the reasons for any phenomena. Previously, man wanted to transform nature, “bend” it to fit himself, which only led to the worse.

We should be interfering with nature as little as possible and treating it with extreme care. In other words, we should restrict our egoism and use nature solely as necessary, as animals do. After all, in this world, in our bodies, we are similar to them. And hence, we can’t take from nature more than our body needs. Then, we will be evolving in it correctly, without harming it.

In the “Preface to the Book, Panim Meriot uMasbirot,” Baal HaSulam explains that even the non-Kabbalist sages, such as Plato and Aristotle, used to warn not to pass scientific knowledge to the masses. They feared that people would start developing technologies and getting from nature more than their bodies required until they would exhaust the Earth.

Therefore, we must be in harmony with nature in order to develop in its environment correctly.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/1/2011, “Peace in the World”

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Question: Essentially, I don’t have any freedom of choice. Nature rules over me. So does everything really depend on me?

Answer: Creation begins with the still level, followed by the vegetative, animate, and human degrees. The human degree, too, begins to develop from the still level and undergoes the same stages. This was the course of evolution on Earth over millions of years.

Finally, we have reached the degree of “human within human” and become accountable. We used to live like animals under a stick, but now we have to meet certain demands. Whether we like it or not, today we must undertake certain actions.

A few thousand years after what happened in ancient Babylon, we are handed the method of correction once again. Free will, as well as responsibility that comes along with it, begins specifically with the “human within human,” with our current level. Hence, we are talking about absolute goodness, about the purpose of creation, and about how to stay on course, in order to advance without cataclysms.

Conscious development begins now, while until this time suffering spurred egoism on to develop. Without these “injections,” it wouldn’t have made a single move.

The still, vegetative, and animate levels of nature do not possess free will. Neither does a human being who exists at the still, vegetative, or animate level. The possibility of free choice appears only now. After all, now you have the “point in the heart” and you can use it to connect with the friends and find Infinity in your unity.

Choice is impossible without inner struggle. You choose with whom you want to be: your friends or yourself. It’s either we or me.

Absolute goodness is awaiting all of us at the end of the path, but you have received the opportunity to choose, and hence you can already aim at it. For this, you have to always hold onto the middle line, using your “Self” and the environment together.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/25/2011, The Principles of Global Education

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Question: On the Internet, two approaches to the evolution of the vegetative and animate world are constantly clashing with each other: Darwinism and creationism. What does the science of Kabbalah say about this?

Answer: Frankly, Darwin is right in almost everything. Perhaps, even this reservation is unnecessary since he was simply misunderstood. After all, he was a deeply religious man.

Evolution really does progress in a consistent way where one thing follows as the result of another. Successive development is instilled in nature, and we cannot deny this. However, it does not happen in a random fashion at all since the egoistic desire is constantly searching for possibilities to realize itself to the maximum.

The desire to receive lives in each passing moment and cannot peek into the future. It does not know what it will give rise to in a few more stages. The desire to receive has an exclusively egoistic approach: “How do I get what I want? How do I fulfill myself?”

If this desire is working and the mind serves it, then any kind of progress, any successive development, is absolutely impossible. After all, you are constantly threatening your egoism. Under such conditions, evolution would not have moved beyond the very first particle of the universe.

However, the science of Kabbalah talks about the Reshimot, informational data instilled into the initial spark from which the entirety of matter emerged. These Reshimot are activated one by one in a chain, and the common desire realizes them, building up the matter.

This is precisely the factor of successive development. In Darwin’s theory, we see its external manifestation, but the essence is in the inner engine, the origin of the forces of evolution. They come as a result of the Reshimot.

What was in the primary point from which the Big Bang thundered? Was there really the entirety of the Universe’s matter instilled in it? Logically, such an assertion makes absolutely no sense. There were only two things in this spark: energy and information. They included in themselves the entirety of creation, and development started from them. Energy (Light) impacted the information (Reshimot), and the process took off.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/24/2011, The Principles of Global Education

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Question: What does it mean to feel that you are already at the convention right now, while reading The Book of Zohar, so the convention would happen in the best possible way?

Answer: Prepare yourself. If you are about to attend a wonderful, pleasant, and joyful event, then you prepare for it in advance. You anticipate it and enjoy this beckoning illumination of the future. And you receive great inspiration from that.

Therefore, as we get closer to the worldwide convention that will be held in New Jersey, we have to prepare ourselves already now. Everything depends on preparing the desire, “What do I plan on correcting? What do I want? What will I get out of it? How do I want to appear there?” I have to imagine all of this in detail, as if I am already there. Therefore, we have to make all the songs available on the website, as well as everything that will happen at the cultural programs and the other events so people can become familiar with it, understand it, and already be able to imagine how it will happen.

A child grows by imagining the future, and then it comes true. If a person does not experience this reverent desire at all times, if he does not increase his desires, and even his worries and fears, then he does not gain anything. He must already now wait impatiently, wondering, “How will this happen? When? In what way? How will I be inspired? How will I participate?”

This is necessary in order to grow up. If children did not receive the aspiration toward the future from nature, then they would not be able to grow. But for us, this aspiration is given as freedom of choice. Do you want to grow up? Then find a way to receive the greatness of the goal from the environment, and then you will grow. There is no other method! If we don’t learn on the example of small children, if we don’t implement these actions in practice, then it would be a shame to let our lives go by wasted.
From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/24/11, The Zohar

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While researching nature, we study many phenomena that take place in front of us and inside of us. To bring them to a common denominator, we can say that any species and any part in nature takes care of its own existence. And the more it takes care of itself, the higher is the level of its development. That is how the vegetative level of nature originated from the still level of nature, and the animate level came from the vegetative, and man came from the animate level of nature.

We understand from the science of Kabbalah that this did not happen by itself, but by means of Reshimot, the “developmental genes” that are successively realized one after another within the framework of the initially fixed model.

All of this exists inside the aspiration for self-benefit. The program instilled in all of nature’s elements places one task before us: What should I do to feel good? Be it realization of evil, conscious progress toward goodness, force, speed, connection, feeling, or mind: According to its potential, every species aspires to goodness and detaches from evil. That is our nature.

On the still, vegetative, and animate levels this nature is a "one way street”—urging us to act directly for our own benefit. But on the human level there is one more special action. Man is able to feel the neighbor, and therefore, he is willing to give something to his neighbor with the expectation of later receiving reward and pleasure. We have learned different ways to use the neighbor which don’t exist on lower levels.

On the still, vegetative, and animate levels there is only reception. But man also knows how to bestow to the neighbor in order to receive benefit for himself. Moreover, interaction with the neighbor is meant to eventually bring him much more benefit than regular reception. Otherwise he is simply unable to receive anything directly. But one way or another, in both cases, he acts for his own sake.

In principle, direct reception is a primate method for man. As a child grows up, he receives upbringing whereby we teach him to interact with the world, and usually that means learning how to use the neighbor in a way that avoids being harmed and that enables him to receive self-benefit at the end. This is human upbringing. If things are the way they are, then it’s best to take the neighbor into account. After all, often we wish to simply take, conquer, and steal without leaving a trace behind.

That is how our world is and that is why we only perceive what we receive inside of us. Our desire is limited and eventually it brings us to feelings of emptiness and despair.

But there is also another, opposite possibility—bestowal, where the tendency is away from myself, upwards, towards the neighbor, as well as away from myself, downwards toward myself, and then upwards toward the neighbor. In the first case I bestow for the sake of bestowal (Bina, Hafetz Hesed), and in the second case I receive for the sake of bestowal (the degree of love). This is called an exactly opposite calculation and it only exists in a human being.

Thus, we have two possibilities: reception with auxiliary bestowal or bestowal with auxiliary reception.
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/23/11 on Global Education

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True egoism develops within us when we wish to unite. It begins after the “usual” egoism. We naturally hate others, are eager to take advantage of them, and want to rise above them. This doesn’t exist on the animate level since it characterizes only the speaking level: We need to feel superior to others at least in some way.

But when a person still wants to become one with the others above his egoism, he discovers resentment of an unprecedented magnitude. It turns out that a force that opposes unification is instilled in his nature, and hence, even while willing to unite, a person cannot accomplish it. His desire to receive cares and thinks about itself, while hating and rejecting another.

Despite all my effort to bond with the others, I detect this force, that very egoism which we define as purposeful. It is not merely hurting the others, but the property which resists oneness. Only this kind of egoism leads me to transformation. I feel that it is exactly what I need to reform. It is a kind of supplement to the final, fourth stage of the development of desire.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/18/2011 on The Principles of Global Education

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