…when it is accustomed to falsehood and deceit, it is then impossible to walk by another way, and this forces man to proceed with falsehood and deceit when one is alone, too.

It turns out that one must deceive oneself and cannot tell oneself the truth at all, because he does not find any special preference to the truth.

We might say that he who thinks that he is deceiving his friend, is really deceiving the Creator, since besides man’s body there is only the Creator.

We are continually present within the Creator’s nature and permanently deal with His forces, although we don’t remember this, neither do we completely realize this fact. Nature’s systems react to our deceit and as a consequence we receive negative feedback.

… The Creator wants man to feel that he is a separated reality from Him; but except for that, it is all “the whole earth is full of His glory.”

Otherwise, we would be fully subordinate to His authority and would not feel “autonomous.” But in fact. nature always rules over us.

Hence, when lying to one’s friend, one is lying to the Creator; and when saddening one’s friend, one is saddening the Creator. For this reason, if one is accustomed to speak the truth, it will help him with respect to the Creator.

By doing so, we gradually start to feel the upper system and have reciprocal contact with It; eventually we come to understand and completely merge with It.
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From Baal HaSulam, Shamati #67, “Depart from Evil”

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The Mission Of The People Of Israel

When the children of Israel will find perfection, the fountains of intelligence and knowledge shall flow beyond the boundaries of Israel and water all the nations of the world, as it is written (Isaiah 11), “for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord,” and as it is written, “and shall come unto the Lord and to His goodness.”
Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to the Book, Panim Meirot uMasbirot,” Item 4

Also, it is upon the Israeli nation to qualify itself and all the people of the world through Torah and Mitzvot, to develop until they take upon themselves that sublime work of the love of others, which is the ladder to the purpose of Creation, which is Dvekut with Him.
Baal HaSulam, “The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee),” Item 20

…the Israeli nation had been constructed as a sort of gateway by which the sparks of purity would shine upon the whole of the human race the world over. And these sparks multiply daily, like one who gives to the treasurer, until they are filled sufficiently, that is, until they develop to such an extent that they can understand the pleasantness and tranquility that are found in the kernel of love of others. For then they will know how to shift the balance to the right, and will place themselves under His burden, and the scale of sin will be eradicated from the world.
Baal HaSulam, “The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee),” Item 24
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Straight to the Creator

Baal HaSulam “The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee)”: Rabbi Elazar, son of Rashbi (Rabbi Shimon Bar-Yochai), clarifies this concept of Arvut even further. It is not enough for him that all of Israel be responsible for one another, but the whole world is included in that Arvut (Mutual Guarantee). Indeed, there is no dispute here, for everyone admits that to begin with, it is enough to start with one nation for the observance of the Torah for the beginning of the correction of the world. It was impossible to begin with all the nations at once, as they said that the Creator went with the Torah to every nation and tongue, and they did not want to receive it. In other words, they were immersed in the filth of self-love up to their necks, some with adultery, some with robbery and murder and so on, until it was impossible to conceive, in those days, to even ask if they agreed to retire from self-love.

Therefore, the Creator did not find a nation or a tongue qualified to receive the Torah, except for the children of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, whose ancestral merit reflected upon them, as our sages said, “The Patriarchs observed the whole Torah even before it was given.” This means that because of the exaltedness of their souls, they had the ability to attain all the ways of the Creator with respect to the spirituality of the Torah, which stems from their Dvekut, without first needing the ladder of the practical part of the Torah, which they had no possibility of observing at all, as written in “Matan Torah,” Item 16.
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Straight to the Creator

One wishes to complete one’s soul and return it to its root, which is considered Israel.
Baal HaSulam, Letter 17

Following the path that leads to the Creator is called Isra-El (directly to the Creator). It means that the person’s intentions in all their actions should be aimed straight to the Creator.
Rabash, Shlavey HaSulam, Article 20, “Who Strengthened Thy Heart?”
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[Commentaries in brackets are mine]

Baal HaSulam, “The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee): The Entire Nation of Israel is Responsible for One Another

This is to speak of the Arvut (Mutual Guarantee) [that can be achieved only] when all of Israel became responsible for one another.

Because the Torah was not given to them [to the group that was founded by Abraham and brought to a decision to stay in Arvut by Moses] before each and every one from Israel was asked if he agreed to take upon himself the Mitzva (precept) of loving others in the full measure, [as a result of their work on achieving unity] expressed in the words: “Love thy friend as thyself…

[The essence of the commandment is] Each and every one in Israel would take it upon himself to care [for all participants of the group] and work for each member of the nation, [for each friend] and to satisfy all their needs, no less than the measure imprinted in him to care for his own needs.

And once the whole nation unanimously agreed [to be in a state of a complete unity in their desires] and said, ‘We shall do and we shall hear,’ each member of Israel became responsible that nothing shall be missing from any other member of the nation. [Meaning their spiritual development] Only then did they become worthy of receiving the Torah, [the Light of correction that would gradually lead them to Arvut] and not before [because there was no readiness to implement mutual guarantee and the desire to unite as it was before the shattering of one unified Soul.]
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From Rabash’s Article “You Stand Today, All of You”: …This is the meaning of what is written, “You stand today, all of you,” meaning everything you went through, all the states you have experienced—states of Gadlut or states of less than Gadlut, which were considered intermediate or so. You take all those details and you do not compare one degree to another because you do not care for any reward, but only for doing the Creator’s will.

…This means that then the Creator makes a covenant with him. In other words, precisely when one accepts His work without any conditions and agrees to do the holy work without any reward, which is called “unconditional surrender,” this is the time when the Creator makes a covenant with him.

…When two people see that they love each other, they make a covenant between them that their love will always stay.

At each level, a person experiences a state of confusion and powerlessness. One goes through these states when one doesn’t realize where exactly one should go and how to advance.

All of a sudden, we feel that we are not capable of making the slightest movement, nor do we understand why our vitality and spirit are gone. We read, but see nothing compared to what we saw yesterday or the day before. Sometimes, we don’t even remember what happened yesterday or the day before. We become disconnected.

In other words, we go through multiple states of closeness and distancing from spirituality. It seems to us that our union with the Creator works better at a distance so we remember good states when bad times come, thus continuing to hope that soon everything will improve and return to normal.

However, it is not so. The union is of a qualitative nature, not quantitative. Actually, it is not about our states at all. At some point, we manage to unite with the Creator not because of a good state we are in or because we want to retain our unity in our memory when we go through lowly states, but rather because our connection made Him happy and made us similar to Him. So, for us it makes no difference what states we go through: good or bad. Good states can be even more confusing for us than bad ones.

At least while we are in bad states our egoism pushes us forward and forces us to look for alternatives, thus compelling us to act. When a good state happens, it calms us down and fulfills us so that we don’t seek any other options. We are unable to change unless some unsatisfied desire wakes us up. At this point, we have to remember the union that we have created and pull this desire from the past into the present in order to carry on our advancement.

So, this “agreement” protects us not only from deficiencies in our liaison, but helps to make the Creator happy above all kinds of bitter and/or sweet sensations. Our union has multiple conditions that apply to each particular state.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/17/13, Writings of Rabash

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All of Israel are responsible for each other.

“There is a certain people scattered abroad and dispersed among the peoples.” (Notes in parentheses are mine) Haman (the main egoistic characteristic of the person, one of the manifestations of Pharaoh, Amalek, and so forth) said that in his view, we will succeed in destroying the Jews (destroying the connection between those who yearn for the Creator in a greater and more final form), because they are separated from one another; hence, our force (the egoistic power that drives us away from bestowal and love) against them will certainly prevail, as it causes separation (of those who yearn for the Creator) between man (of each one of them) and God. And the Creator will not help them anyway, since they (through distance from each other) are separated from Him. This is why Mordecai went (the characteristic of bestowal in a person) to correct that flaw (the characteristic of separation, the Haman in a person), as it is explained in the verse (in Megillat Esther): “the Jews gathered,” etc., “to gather themselves together, and to stand for their life.” This means that they had saved themselves by uniting (Connection with the Creator)
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Writings of Baal HaSulam, Shamati #144 “There Is a Certain People”

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Rabash, “Concerning Above Reason”: It turns out that a person has qualities that his parents bequeathed to their children, and he has qualities that he acquired from the society, which are a new possession. And this comes to him only through bonding with the society and the envy that he feels toward the friends when he sees that they have better qualities than his own. It motivates him to acquire their good qualities, which he doesn’t have and of which he is jealous.

Thus, through the society, he gains new qualities that he adopts by seeing that they are at a higher degree than his, and he is envious of them. This is the reason why now he can be greater than when he didn’t have a society, since he acquires new powers through the society.”

A person is born a small animal, and what he grows up to be depends on the upbringing. If we are talking about an ordinary, earthly upbringing, then a person develops due to society. He envies others and longs for pleasure, money, power, fame, and knowledge, and that is why he learns from society how he can achieve these goals, that is, success in this world. If he has prerequisites for spiritual development, he finds himself in the environment that can instill in him new properties —spiritual.

In the material society, a person develops naturally, by instinctively adopting the values ​​of society and seeking to learn from it how to reach worldly success. But spiritual upbringing is different because it requires a person to cancel himself, that is, it gives him the freedom of choice: to adopt its spiritual values from the environment or not.

Only to the extent of his self-nullification will a person be able to see the society as higher than himself. He will have to apply much effort to look at society from the bottom up, and then he will be able to receive from the society its values, the importance and greatness of the goal, and thus advance spiritually.

Spiritual success depends not only on the environment, but also on how a person uses it, that is, how much he annuls himself and appreciates society, whether he agrees to suffer, seeing others higher than himself. Envy forces a person to feel humiliated, but he needs to understand that it is for his own benefit to see the others as great. If he is capable of such an attitude, then he will advance. In the end, a person has to enjoy that he can stand against his egoism and trample over it in order to attain spiritual values and get closer to the spiritual goal.

That is why advancement in the material society is completely opposite to spiritual advancement. And success in the material world does not guarantee that a person will be able to succeed in spirituality because it is determined by the free choice of the person himself.
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From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/2/13

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Question: Yesterday, you spoke about Abraham who discovered the wisdom of Kabbalah by introspection. What is that?

Answer: All of reality is in a person. What is more, reality doesn’t actually exist, there is a picture of it that I develop inside me. It is felt in the vessels, in my desires, by a certain sensor, by inner frames of a photographic film that reflect the reactions to the upper Light that depict my lack of equivalence of form with it.

A “flashlight” of the simple white Light is directed at me, but I am made of 613 different desires, different attributes that form a colorful, three dimensional picture of the world filled with sounds, scents and things I can touch on the background of the white Light. In other words, I actually “draw” or design the world in which I live.

However, according to my perception of reality, everything depends on my attributes and not on anyone else. It turns out that, if I change, the world will change. This is what we can do by introspection when I understand that I can change the world by the changes I make in me.

So, how can I change? I cannot do that by myself. I only have an unpleasant feeling in the current reality, and I cannot pull myself up by the hair out of the swamp. After all, even the thoughts about a change are part of this swamp.

This is exactly where the force of the shattering helps me. In my fictitious reality, there are people around me who tell me, “You know, we also think about that.” I see that the other parts of the still, vegetative, animate, and speaking nature are managed by one general mechanism, but my imagination draws people who have the exact same vector as I do, and this enables me to practice and to exercise. Now, I can see myself from the side. I can work with them just as I work with myself, like with an external reflection of myself.

When I work with them, I discover that this game is very creative. The relationship with the images of the friends helps me advance by acquiring a new perception, a new feeling. They don’t develop my old attributes and don’t add to the previous mind and previous feelings, but rather develop new qualitative attributes in me, attributes that I didn’t have before.

For example, a multi-dimensional perception or rising above the concept of time: Before, I could see the past, present, and the future, and now I stop feeling time. The external movements disappear and I perceive everything internally and connect it with the inner movements. I change, and as a result I feel changes on the background of the white Light.

If I work with the images of the friends that I see this way, I understand that it is true that they are depicted by my imagination, but the right attitude toward them allows me to acquire a special means for inner changes. Through the mutual efforts with these images, I attribute a certain independence to them—to the extent that I want to be independent. Eventually, when I play with them this way, I acquire the perception that takes me out of the current picture that is drawn on the screen of my consciousness to a new reality.
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From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/29/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Rabash, Letter 41: Thus the Torah is names of pleasures, and each pleasure has a different name.

Question: There are also sufferings and troubles other than pleasures, what names should we give them?

Answer: We name things according to the vessels, to the desires. It’s because we understand and perceive everything in the vessel, including the Light. It doesn’t exist by itself, apart from us, but rather like electricity about which we speak only with regard to its effects. Similarly, we discern the phenomena that stem from the Light, the effect of its actions inside us.

Pleasures are extra Light, a filling by the Light, and everything is revealed in the vessel. This is where the names stem from. Each one indicates the beginning and end of an action, as well as what happened in the actual process.

The name expresses an action that was performed by the force behind it. We, the created beings, have no other way to describe something. It’s because we don’t have any contact with the Light itself. We are limited in the matter of the desire and the form it takes on as it changes from its initial state until it resembles the Creator.
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From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/14/13, Writings of Rabash

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