Question: From the Kabbalists’ point of view, what is the role of religion and other practices in the modern world?

Answer: Religions originated from the concealment of the upper world from us. Everything is concealed from us: the present, the future, what will happen tomorrow, what happened before our life, and what will happen after it. Religion is based on the lack of knowledge, on faith in something.

Kabbalah has nothing to do with it. It is a science. It absolutely does not operate with the notion of faith. It is a method of developing an additional possibility to perceive the world that surrounds us. But at the same time, Kabbalah expresses its opinion on events around the world, the reason for the development of beliefs, convictions, and religions.

In our world there is a total of 3,800 different methods, convictions, beliefs, religious practices, and so on. They appeared because we do not know what is happening and we exist in an unpredictable world. We do not see a connection between us. We do not see the reasons behind the events or what is about to happen to us around the corner. We do not know anything.

This is why people develop a need to somehow find out, or if that’s impossible, then to at least protect themselves, get some kind of insurance, a guarantee, if possible. And here arises the possibility for such religious methods. Essentially, these are psychological practices that provide us with comfort.

Naturally, there will not be a place for religions once we reveal the upper world. And this is why religions usually are not very fond of Kabbalah, the real Kabbalah, which works as a science because it reveals the things that were unknown to people.

But on the other hand, religions are necessary. They have appeared in us and exist in human society so that people would develop, so that they would think that something bigger and higher exists. Religion is a preliminary action, a preparatory stage, to begin to enter the upper world. For this reason, after several thousand years of different religious practices, there comes the time when people develop the need for an actual understanding of the world because nature simply does not leave them any other possibility.

Right now we are entering such a degree of resistance of nature that it will obligate us to attain it. We will find ourselves in such an unpredictable state, where we will not know what will be happening the very next moment. It is impossible to exist this way. We see that we are already destroying the family unit, we do not want to have children. Humanity is already moving towards a state where there will be nothing but drugs to get away from reality.

In other words, we are coming to a state where we must see the entire picture. Only then will we have the energy to have a reason to live, create, exist. Today we do not have a bright tomorrow of this kind. We have come to a level which is followed by nothing else but the revelation of the next degree, the next dimension.
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From Lesson 3 in Moscow 1/16/2011

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“Introduction of The Book of Zohar,” Article “The Donkey Driver,” Item 74: A man was driving their donkeys, meaning leading their donkeys.

Rabbi Aba said, “Let us open the doors of Torah for now is the time and the hour for our ways to be corrected.” “Driving” means stinging since it is an alias to the donkey driver because of his custom to sting the donkeys with a needle so they will go quicker.

The entire creation needs to be brought to adhesion with the Creator. Everything that happens in reality, including the rotation of any atom, is only moving toward this goal. There are no other actions in the world, whether they occur with the consent of the lower ones or lack thereof.

There is a special force from Above that drives us toward this goal, which is called the “donkey driver.” If we become like the sages described in The Zohar, we will go together with the “driver,” and he will be helping us along the way.

However, if we do not, the same “driver” will sting our “donkeys,” our desire to receive pleasure, with its sharp stick. This is the entire suffering that the world is experiencing when it refuses to move toward the goal consciously with understanding.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/10/2011, “Introduction of The Book of Zohar,” Article “The Donkey Driver”

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“Introduction of The Book of Zohar,” Article “The Donkey Driver,” Item 81: “My Sabbaths.” Et [“of,” this word appears only in the Hebrew of “My Sabbaths”] comes to include the Sabbath zone, two thousand cubits to each side. This is why he added the word Et [Aleph-Tav]. “My Sabbaths” is in plural form, the upper Sabbath and the lower Sabbath: two are included together and concealed together.

Sabbath stands for complete correction (Gmar Tikkun). In reference to time, the entire process when we are preparing ourselves for the complete correction is called “Saturday night,” and in reference to distance it is called “2000 cubits.”

All of us have already entered into that period. This is a reason why the world is experiencing all these painful events which force us to hasten our correction.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/10/2011, “Introduction of The Book of Zohar,” Article “The Donkey Driver”

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Question: Today I am unable to ask even for my own correction, so how can I ask for the entire world?

Answer: To ask for oneself or for the world is the same thing. Suppose you don’t have enough air. But we all have to breathe, so if others don’t have it, I won’t have it either, and if there is air, it will be for all. It cannot be sliced.

It’s impossible to ask for an individual correction since correction is based precisely on our unification. One can’t ask the Light for oneself because the Light is a universal force of bestowal that dwells between us. If I am an element of an electrical network, how can I ask for the current to pass only through me? It cannot reach me if it doesn’t pass through the entire network.

This should help us comprehend the nature of the global, integrated world which we are beginning to feel now. You can’t ask anything for yourself; it won’t help. If you keep trying to isolate yourself, you will only draw greater blows upon yourself.

Your plea for yourself, your protectionism, “separatism” will help you only in realizing your evil. You will be forced to admit that you are asking incorrectly! And how can this knowledge be passed onto you except by blows? The more you pray about your own well-being, the more you will be beaten until you learn that you can’t ask only for yourself.

You will see that not only does it not help, but it also brings an opposite result. At some point you will realize that fulfillment can be only collective. And if everybody doesn’t receive it, then you won’t get it either for you are the last one in line for it!

Understand what the Creator wants to teach you. And the sooner you will grasp it, the better. After all, if He has to use a number of blows to show you your place in the very end of this chain, how long are you willing to suffer? You’d better learn it fast so you can start living accordingly.

Granted, right now it seems absolutely unreal and undesirable to you. But on the other hand, there is no choice: You will have to come to the same conclusion anyway. So try whatever you may to fool your egoism and run ahead of the blows by asking for the correction of all at least artificially.

During the lesson, let’s ask the Light to come and give us this experience, understanding, direction,and a minimal aspiration for this goal. Let’s do it for pragmatic reasons at least, in order to avoid the blows. After all, everyone receives fulfillment last.
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From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/23/2011, Talmud Eser Sefirot

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Question: What does Kabbalah focus on and what can it give to a person?

Answer: When childhood ends, a person’s eyes gradually begin to open and he finds himself in a particular world. It is possible to live in it without giving it much thought; to simply live “like everyone else,” watching others. But possibly, a person wants to understand a bit more in life. Everything depends on a person’s internal need, which pushes him.

A person wants to discover the reality around him: his room during his childhood, then his yard, city, country, the world, the whole planet, and then he goes on to outer space. But in the end, he comes to understand that all of these attempts do not give him satisfaction.

Today humanity has even lost interest in space exploration. The only thing left of it is mercantile use for operating mobile phones via satellites or for espionage. We are no longer inspired by space travel to far-away galaxies. Man’s internal desire has changed and does not aspire to far-away, cosmic distances, but on the contrary, it aspires within.

So the question is: Where did this come from and what for? For the first time in human history, we are not simply trying to do “more,” but we first want to understand: Why should we do it? This is a question about our root: Where does everything come from? And where is it taking me?

Year after year, it becomes harder for people to sell something new, and that is because they are already satiated with everything. This does not mean that they do not have desires, but that you simply cannot give them what they want! That is why they are left unsatisfied, disillusioned, and begin taking drugs in order to forget about it all.

They need an answer about the meaning of life, and not simply how to arrange a well-fed, comfortable existence for themselves that’s pleasant for the animate body.

This can even be seen in fashion by how much simpler and free it has become. This indicates that man is becoming free of material values as he no longer sees meaning or fulfillment in them. He simply wants to feel comfortable and not feel the lack of something material, without excessively focusing on it or taking care of it.

This makes all the difference. I need a car, a house, and a thousand different things in order to live comfortably. But they are not interesting to me by themselves. I simply want to provide comfort for myself, but I actually do not need anything. They make my life easier, and that’s great, but all of this is not a goal in itself. I want to discover something else, something higher.

That’s where an inner question arises about the essence or meaning of life. A person can no longer find help in technology development, science, philosophy, or psychology; nothing will be able to answer this question. And that is because it is a question about his root: Where do I come from? Do I have a higher purpose besides this animate life?

I have already exhausted this life, but what else can I receive? One more super-fashionable toy or a TV? You can dream up any entertainment possible, but all of it comes from a level that I am no longer interested in. And I am not to blame! Inside of me there are questions awakening which belong to another level.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/24/11, “The Essence of the Wisdom of Kabbalah”

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The only thing we lack are anti-egoistic screens (Masach). The desire itself does not change. It only becomes revealed for being used to the degree of the screen that it has.

The screen determines what desire you can use, how much, and in what way. Therefore, we already have everything besides the screen—it is the only thing we need!

The screen is the force to overcome my egoism in spite of my egoistic desire, despite the things that seem attractive, sweet, completely obvious and rational, and are confirmed by my entire mind! Yet I go and do the opposite!

And I don’t just do the opposite, turning a minus to a plus. That would be very simple. Rather, I am in no way guided by my desire, logic, or any of my calculations. There is only one calculation for me: “This is the desire of the Upper One!”

I don’t receive anything at all from this, and don’t desire to receive anything. I want to know just one thing: that this is the desire of the upper one. This is called a “screen”—the force enabling me to act this way, above my desire, above nature, above egoism and all of its calculations.

And there is great pleasure contained in this. This is not masochism from enjoying trampling my desire, but pleasure from the fact that this makes me similar to the Upper One in some way.

It’s like a child who desires to be similar to an adult. This is a natural instinct children have. They have to make great efforts to achieve this, even though nature helps them.

The upper nature has endowed children with this enormous gift, enabling them to grow. It gave the will to enjoy such a powerful thrust that it forces it to work very hard, never stopping to rest. Look at how little children act, running about non-stop and doing something all the time.

This is the pure upper force, the force of bestowal, the force of the Creator, which is present in small children and in any creature that desires to grow. They do this against their nature because our nature aspires to rest! We can see this from all the laws of physics: Everything aspires to a restful, motionless, and balanced state. The laws of entropy, conservation of energy are aimed at this.

Yet in the case of children we see how the body does not let them take a break. A child is always running about, eager to do something, and it is impossible to stop him. In our days this phenomena is called “hyperactivity,” but in fact it isn’t “hyper” activity, but normal behavior for the increased will to enjoy that is being revealed in the last generation. For such a developed desire, this is not an exaggeration, but the norm.

It’s a wonder looking at what children do; they are anti-nature. We have simply gotten used to the picture where children know no rest and that’s why we aren’t surprised by it. But where does this body or desire take this moving force, causing him to run around this way?

This is the regular picture, inherent in any creature. An adult mother, such as a dog or a lioness, is lazy, sleepy, lying down, sleeping, sitting calmly, and wishing to rest. And all around her there are cubs whirling about and never tiring. This is the opposite nature. And man behaves the same way.

This aspiration is given to children from above, against nature, in order for them to develop. Likewise, we have to ask for this force in order for us to spiritually develop!
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/24/11, Talmud Eser Sefirot

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We exist in the opposite form to the Creator’s property of bestowal: the egoistic will to enjoy. On the spiritual path, all desires that gradually unfold within us, from the lighter desires to the heavier ones, have to be transformed into the intention to bestow.

In contrast to the still, vegetative, and animate levels, as we humans evolve, our egoism does as well. Our entire history is a non-stop growth of the will to enjoy and a chain of attempts to satisfy it. This is our nature. Therefore, we constantly wish for this desire to be realized, fulfilled.

So it goes on until at some point of his development man arrives at the question: “What do I need this for?” His desire completes its quantitative stage of evolution and transitions to the qualitative one. Now, a person needs not just a better car, bigger home, and more comfortable world. He starts asking questions regarding why things occur the way they do: “What for? Why? What is happening with me and what does it give me?”

New questions rise above the previous levels of evolution. At the human degree, we start evaluating and analyzing life, not being satisfied with the role as a “go-for” person who thoughtlessly serves egoistic desire. In previous generations, very few contemplated such questions and attained the source of events, the essence of the process and its purpose. These individuals are called Kabbalists, from the Hebrew word “the one who receives” (Mekabel) since they receive the revelation of the upper governance, advancing thereby. As for the others, they didn’t feel the calling for the answers to such questions.

In the wisdom of Kabbalah which assists a person in finding answers to the questions regarding the purpose of life (the source and goal), it is written that the time would come when many would wish to know for what we are living. In their gradually emerging egoistic desires, the masses will start transitioning from the animate level, from seeing a good life, to the human degree, to the question of for what is it worth living.

Kabbalists marked the time when such a transition was supposed to begin: the end of the 20th century. And it truly did. Today, “the highest priority questions” arise in a great many people around the world and to a certain degree among all of humanity. We see how growing despair, drug abuse, divorce rates, and the human crisis in general demonstrate that the questions regarding the purpose of existence halt our normal egoistic development, and they demand that we seek answers. Only then will we find the strength to continue the journey.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/21/2011, “Because Man Is the Tree of the Field”

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Mankind hasn’t sufficiently realized what it is supposed to discover or reveal. We are confused and don’t understand what action is correct to make. However, the wisdom of Kabbalah is not aimed at making our life comfortable in this corporeal world. On the contrary, it informs us that we have to start ascending from this world to the upper world, which is gradually being revealed to us.

There, life is completely different: It isn’t within us but between us. In the space between the elementary particles of the universe, we begin experiencing totally new phenomena and feel differently: that we are integral beings that are globally connected and living together in one unified system. Instead of feeling only myself, I will start feeling this system as one whole. Then we will lose the sensation of our individual selves. One’s “self” will become a collective, the entire world.

Kabbalah explains that this transition must take place in our time. That is why we are seeing a global crisis in everything that was created over thousands of years of our evolution. We have to become aware that we can’t exist in the previous paradigm anymore and that the time has come to step out into a different attitude toward oneself and the world. We must start exploring the “void” between us, which is filled with enormous forces that do, in fact, govern us all.

As a result, we will learn who we are and what we are here for, and will be able to achieve a completely different kind of life. On one hand, we are being pushed to this by pain, while on the other, we are being pulled by some internal force, a call. Every person has this “point in the heart,” a starting point of the new world that is being revealed in the void.

The entire wisdom of Kabbalah is structured in order to reveal this new world or additional dimension to us, where we don’t exist yet, and to tell us about the means that will help us develop an ability to feel and study it, as well as to interact with it.
From the lesson in Moscow on 1/16/11, Writings of Rabash

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When we come out into the external world, we discover the general force that includes both bestowal and reception. It is the source of everything taking place and it fills everything. It is the force of reason, thought, and plan; the general force of Nature.

We call it “the Creator” because we discover that in relation to us it is the creator. However, we are still talking about an all-inclusive force, which includes all other forces.

By studying it, we study its constituent parts—the laws of Nature, spiritual laws of the nature of bestowal which are above our regular, earthly state. At the same time we begin to understand how our earthly being is built, seeing the source of the laws operating in our world.

As a result, a person understands why he exists and how to come out of different situations that he has gotten himself into with his one-sided vision of the world. He starts rebuilding himself and the surrounding society, and it doesn’t happen coercively, but voluntarily. When revealing the true laws of nature, a person naturally acts differently. Coming from the same egoism, he understands that he cannot act otherwise.

Today we automatically act with the greatest self-benefit in mind. And later on we will also automatically act the same way, but with a consideration for the general part: that we depend on each other and are one whole. We will see the entire picture, the entire global, closed system and will therefore act completely differently.

The most important thing is for us to discover this general picture; then we naturally won’t make mistakes. This is what Kabbalah is leading us toward.

To the degree we develop, we gradually reveal our egoistic nature. However, overall we have already assimilated it, having exhausted all the egoistic instruments for attaining the world through science and technology, as well as in the human community and familial relationships. We see that we have reached a dead-end.

That is when a real need for additional knowledge arises. Today we are at the edge, the transition to feeling the next part of the universe. It is already here, between us. Sometimes we call it a different dimension because what matters is how you measure things: When you change your point of view, you see completely different phenomena in the same volume.

That is how we discover a new world.
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From the lesson in Moscow on 1/16/11, Writings of Rabash

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