Everything depends on the support of the environment; without it, it is impossible to advance spiritually. When you acquire a spiritual environment, then all the great Kabbalists who attained the spiritual world during their lives in this world, all of their souls will become your group.

You will enter the “Upper Assembly” of Rabbi Shimon (the spiritual level called by that name). You can connect to higher sources, but only to the degree it is necessary! Now you simply do not need this power.

If you needed the group that includes Baal HaSulam, Rabash, the Ari, Rashbi, and other great Kabbalists of the past from Abraham until today, then you would receive it. However, right now you do not need it. As soon as you need it, you will reveal the spiritual group in addition to the material one. Perhaps you won’t even need a material group because just the spiritual one will be sufficient.

If the souls start to help you directly, it is called “a donkey driver.” The Creator sends a high soul called “a donkey driver” so it will always help a person. But this help comes in response to your plea that you need spiritual ascension.

It’s similar to how Rabbi Abba and Rabbi Yossi, whom The Book of Zohar talks about, are on the path where they open the Torah and discover that they cannot reach correction on their own. They need the revelation of a special force that will help them to ascend.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/16/10, “The Essence of Religion and Its Purpose”

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

The Opposition of the Study of the Wisdom of Kabbalah

I see that the primary reason for the lack of success in everything being done to strengthen Judaism [revelation of the Creator] and Israel’s status everywhere, is that the Divine Light [for correcting their nature] has been neglected, completely abandoned by heart and mind. Everyone is now turning to correct simple ultra-orthodoxy [traditions called “commandments”] alone, as if the world could be revived in a body with no soul [without the intention to bestow and love one’s neighbor].
– Rav Kook, Letters 1, 160-161

Woe unto them that make the spirit of Messiah [the power of correction of our egoism] leave and depart from the world, and cannot return to the world. They are the ones [because of their attitude to Kabbalah] that make the Torah dry [by talking only about mechanical actions], without any moisture of comprehension and reason [without any understanding of the purpose of creation and the role of a human being in this world]. They confine themselves to the practical part of the Torah [observation of rituals], and do not wish to try to understand the wisdom of Kabbalah, to know and to understand the secrets of the Torah and the flavor of Mitzva [the essence of which is correction of human egoism]. Woe unto them, for with these actions [detachment from Kabbalah] they bring about the existence of poverty, ruin, and robbery, looting, killing, and destructions in the world.
– Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” Item 70
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The Zohar, “Introduction to The Zohar,” “The Night of the Bride“: There is a book of remembrance before the Creator about the sins and transgressions taking place in the world. For He needs them for the day when He will perform a miracle (Segula).

Question: What is Segula?

Answer: The Upper Force, or the Creator, or the Light, is inside the group. I can receive corrections only if we study the primary sources together with the group.

This is Segula – the special means, the works of Kabbalists, which make it possible to unite a person, the group, and the Creator into one whole. Their unity is possible only on the condition that the system they are in is used correctly.

Even now we are part of it. The worlds and Partzufim are all here, but in order for them to come through we have to evoke the influence of spiritual forces upon us. Desire alone is not enough. We need a means that will set the system in motion so it will start working on me through the group.

The system is set in motion with the help of the primary sources. That is why we study the works of Baal HaSulam, Rabash, Ari, and Rashbi. Without this I cannot establish a connection with the spiritual system and set it in motion.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/15/10, The Zohar
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Dear Friends, please ask questions about these passages from the great Kabbalists. The commentaries in brackets are mine.

The Opposition of the Study of the Wisdom of Kabbalah

Now you can understand the aridity and the darkness that have befallen us in this generation [lack of knowledge of the laws of life and the world], such as we have never seen before. It is because even the worshipers of the Creator [those who study the Torah] have abandoned the engagement in the secrets of the Torah [Kabbalah].
– Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” Item 57

All the great Kabbalists unanimously cry out like cranes that as long as we deny the Torah of its secrets and do not engage in its secrets, we are destroying the world [since we do not attract the Light into our world any more].
– Rav Kook, Igrot (Letters), Vol. 2, p. 231
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Dear Friends, please ask questions about these passages from the great Kabbalists. The commentaries in brackets are mine.

Concerning the Obligation of Each Person to Study the Wisdom of Kabbalah 

The whole part of the revealed Torah [known to the masses] is but a preparation to become worthy and merit attaining the concealed part. It is the concealed part that is the very wholeness [methodology] and the purpose for which man is created.

Hence, clearly, if a part of the concealed part is missing, although one may keep the Torah and observe its commandments in the revealed part, he will still have to reincarnate to this world and receive what he should receive, namely the concealed part, by way of 613 deposits. Only in that is the soul completed, the way the Creator had predetermined for it.
– Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to the Book, From the Mouth of a Sage”
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Dear Friends, please ask questions about these passages from the great Kabbalists. The commentaries in brackets are mine.

Concerning the Obligation of Each Person to Study the Wisdom of Kabbalah

Imagine, for example, that some historic book were to be found today that depicts the last generations ten thousand years from now, for as you and we feel, the lessons of the torments and slaughtering will certainly [involuntarily] suffice to reform  [correct] them into good comportments [transition from egoism to genuine altruism].

And these people, before them are good comportments that serve them to provide sustenance and complacency, or at least to guarantee a daily life of peace and quiet [not to mention the achievement of eternal life and perfection]. Undoubtedly, if some sage were to provide us with this book of the wisdom of statesmanship and the conducts of the [egoistic] individual, our leaders would seek out every counsel to arrange life accordingly, and there would “No outcry in our streets.” Corruption and the terrible slayings would cease, and everything would come peacefully to its place.

Now, distinguished readers, this book lies here before you in a closet. It states explicitly all the wisdom of statesmanship and the behavior of private and public life that will exist at the end of days. … [Kabbalistic] books and you will find all the good comportment that will appear and the end of days, and from them [these books], you will find the good lesson by which to arrange mundane matters today, as well. We can examine past history and by that correct the future history.
– Baal HaSulam, Writings of The Last Generation
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Baal HaSulam, "The Acting Mind": "Every person is obliged to attain the root of his soul. This means that the aspired-for purpose of the created being is adhesion with His qualities. His qualities are the Holy Sefirot, and this is the acting mind that guides His world and by which it allots them His benevolence and abundance.

But we must understand why this is called, “Dvekut with the Creator,” as it seems to be mere study…In every act in the world, the mind of its operator remains in that act. In a table, one can attain the carpenter’s dexterity and deftness in his craft….

This is so because in fact, there is no distance and cessation between spirituals, even when they are in distinct bodies. But the mind in them cannot be distinguished, since what knife can cut the spiritual and leave it separated? Rather, the main difference between spirituals is in their qualities – praiseworthy or blameworthy – and the composition, since a mind that calculates astrology will not cling to one that contemplates natural sciences.

And there is great diversity even within the same teaching, for if one exceeds another in even one element, it separates the spirituals from one another. But when two sages contemplate the same teaching and bear the same measure of sagacity, they are in fact united, for what separates them?

Hence, when one contemplates another’s action and attains the mind of the sage who performed it, they have the same mind and power. Thus, now they are completely united….

Hence, the rule is that in the Speaking, the mind is the best-adjusted force between the Creator and His creatures. It is considered the medium, meaning He conferred a spark of that force, and through that spark, everything returns to Him.

And it is written, “In wisdom hast Thou made them all,” meaning that He created the whole world with His wisdom. Hence, one who is rewarded with attaining the manners by which He had created the world and its conducts is adhered to the Mind that performed them. Thus, he adheres to the Creator.

This is the meaning of the Torah being all the Names of the Creator, which belong to the creatures. And by their merit, the creature attains the Mind that affects everything, since the Creator was looking in the Torah when He created the world, and one achieves illumination through Creation and forever cleaves to that Mind; thus, he is adhered to the Creator.

Now we understand why the Creator has shown us His tools of craftsmanship. For do we need to create worlds? But from the above-mentioned, we gather that the Creator has shown us His conducts so we may know how to adhere to Him, which is “cleaving unto His qualities.”
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Dear Friends, please ask questions about these passages from the great Kabbalists. The commentaries in brackets are mine.

Concerning the Obligation of Each Person to Study the Wisdom of Kabbalah

Understanding the meaning of the word, “spirituality,” has nothing to do with philosophy. This is because how can they discuss something that they have never seen or felt? What do their rudiments [their opinion about spirituality] stand on? If there is any definition that can tell spiritual from corporeal, it belongs only to those who have attained a spiritual thing and felt it. These are the genuine Kabbalists; thus, it is the wisdom of Kabbalah that we need.
– Baal HaSulam, “The Wisdom of Kabbalah and Philosophy”

Spiritual redemption is possible only by studying the wisdom of Kabbalah. [It is because only the study of Kabbalah, the study of the Upper Light’s act on the desire can attract its influence upon us. And this is our sole opportunity to change, ascend to the Upper World, and reveal the Creator.]
– Vilna Gaon, “Even Shlema,” Part 11, 3

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

Concerning the Obligation of Each Person to Study the Wisdom of Kabbalah

I have agreed to disclose [to the masses] all the secrets of the world [and its purpose], since it is time to do unto the Creator, as it is required at this time. Greater and better than I [Kabbalists of the past] have suffered nationwide slander for such matters [circulation of Kabbalah], as their pure spirit pressured them for the sake of the correcting the generation, to speak new words and to reveal the concealed, to which the intellect of the masses was not accustomed [to help them approach the purpose of creation by the path of Light and not the path of suffering].
– Rav Kook, Letters the Raiah 2, 34

And perhaps these interpretations could ease the mind, but the problem is that they have no scientific solution as to how a spiritual object [force] can have any contact with physical atoms to bring them into any kind of motion. All their wisdom [wisdom of philosophers] did not help them find a bridge on which to cross that wide and deep crevice that spreads between the spiritual entity and the corporeal atom. Thus, science has gained nothing from all these metaphysical methods.
– Baal HaSulam, “The Freedom”
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In his articles Baal HaSulam usually uses the words “religious” and “secular” in a different sense than what is commonplace in our world. In the terminology of Kabbalah, “religious” is not the traditional word signifying one of the world religions such as Judaism, Christianity, or all other beliefs.

Rather, a religious person is someone who lives in this world and desires to correct himself, to ascend into the spiritual world until the World of Infinity, until equivalence with the Creator. This is the purpose of every person in this world, and Baal HaSulam explains it in the article, “The Essence of Religion and It’s Purpose.” However, sometimes he really does refer to traditional religion, wishing to explain some aspects of it. Therefore, we should always look at the context to find the right way to interpret his words.

“Secular” people are those who do not work on their correction, but do everything only for the sake of a reward in this world or the world to come. A religious person is someone who corrects himself until reaching the level of the Creator. To do this he uses the “true Torah,” meaning the science of Kabbalah. It is written, “I created the evil inclination and the Torah as a means for its correction.”

First one must reveal the egoistic inclination inside him, and only then he will need the “Torah” for correcting it because this is his only purpose. Then the Light you reveal during the right study will return you to its Source, meaning that your evil inclination will turn into a good one.

Meanwhile, the desire itself does not change. Only the intention changes from “for my own sake” to “for the benefit of the neighbor.”
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/3/10, “Exile and Redemption”

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