Baal HaSulam, Shamati No. 99, “He Did Not Say Wicked or Righteous”: …if one does not have any desire and craving for spirituality, if he is among people who have a desire for spirituality, if he likes these people, he, too, will take their strength to prevail and their desires and aspirations, although by his own quality, he does not have these desires and cravings and the power to overcome. But according to the grace and the importance he ascribes to these people, he will receive new powers.

This means that we are capable of controlling our lives and advancing to the goal. First of all, one has to clarify if the goal is really worth sacrificing one’s life for. This life will not repeat. It’s impossible to try, then get disappointed in the goal and start living anew. It will not happen.

So, one has to check diligently whether it’s worth spending one’s life for and then join the company of the people who exercise, share, and cherish the same aspirations. It will allow us to obtain this aspiration from them, meaning that we regard our goal as something great and have the energy to attain it.

After choosing the goal, one should select the environment that is able to empower him to attain the goal. After that, one starts working on making his environment pleasant for himself. The more one gets inspired from one’s surrounding (from his friends’ advancement and from the importance of their activities) the more one manages to diminish oneself and become subordinate to one’s friends’ influence, the more one acquires energy and inspiration to attain the goal and will by all means achieve it.

Consequently, after we choose the goal and the corresponding environment, all our subsequent work is only about getting as much impact and stimulus from the environment as possible. Without it, we won’t have any energy; we will be “tossed” up and down. We will waste lots of time by uselessly swinging up and down and being in foggy states. It’s called “not a day, not a night.” Thus, we won’t even notice how our lives will end.

So, the most important thing is to cling to our friends, stick to them, get a “warm spot” next to them and nourish ourselves with the importance of the goal. This is how relationships of a person with the society and one’s duties in regard to others are outlined. It’s necessary to enhance the society not by enlarging it in quantity, but qualitatively. Beyond everything else, we should pretend and demonstrate to our friends how precious our goal is and how important our environment is to us. We should set an example to others of how to diminish ourselves in front of the group and in regard to our goal. Rabash described all of the above conditions as essential laws that should be used to create a group in order to empower each friend with enough energy to attain the goal.

All depends on the “attractiveness” of the group in one’s eyes. This is what one has to work on. That’s why it is written: “It would be better if I was forgotten, but my Torah would be treasured, since Its Light Reforms.” The Light works within the connection among people. So, please leave the Creator alone, since He will reveal Himself as soon as we manage to establish a correct connection among us.

I recommend everybody to talk about this issue in the evening with their families. A short conversation and reading of a small portion is quite enough, but it’s very important for everybody, for women in their circles and for the kids.
[109561]
From the preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/9/13

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Question: What type of connection should be formed in the “tens” in order to feel the inner connection with the teacher within this unity since only through him can we establish connection with the Creator?

Answer: Working in the group of ten, you do not have to think about the teacher. I say this not out of some kind of modesty, but because this is not the right approach. The teacher must be high enough in the student’s eyes and respected enough so as to become a magnifying glass through which you look at your path to the Creator and can advance. You use this lens, your teacher, as glasses, but he does not become your goal.

You look not at the glass, but at what is behind it; however, you can see this only with its help. This lens focuses your line of sight on the Creator correctly; this is the role of the teacher and the group.

I see all my students united in one circle, in one body, and I speak addressing this one person. If you try to be included in this common body and connect with them in the way I see them connected, you will receive spiritual information from me. We will meet inside this common body, and there we will really understand each other.

If you want to understand what I am saying, you can understand this in your mind or feel in your heart, but to understand truly you need to be precisely in the center of the group, as if you are walking around the room trying to hear a faint sound and suddenly you find the place where you can hear it well! And if you step a meter to one side or the other side, you will hear nothing. Try it!

It’s necessary to feel the importance of the teacher but only to the extent that is required to perform the work in the group for the sake of revelation of the Creator. The teacher is your instructor, a guide on the spiritual path but not an idol or a king replacing the Creator by Pharaoh’s example.
[109654]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/9/13, Writings of Rabash

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Question: I would like to thank you in the name of all the friends in the area of Siberia for the great efforts that you are investing in order to participate in conventions, for it’s not at all easy to travel such great distances. Thank you very much for investing so much attention in us.

Answer: This is my obligation. If there are people whom this interests and if the person yearns to change himself and the world, then I must do this. I thank all who accepted the invitation to come to Krasnoyarsk to gather together to make a leap forward, to discover a higher state, and then convey it to others.

We see that the world is in a difficult, unfavorable state and that it constantly wanders to and fro on the threshold of the abyss that is gaping before it in many areas. At present the world is deteriorating economically, politically, militarily, and ecologically and the condition is only becoming more severe. I don’t want to be a prophet of doom, but I already spoke about this ten years ago.

Therefore it’s up to us to try to inject into the world a positive stream in every way possible, a potential, that in spite of it all, we will open the eyes of people and will make it possible to reach the same goal not through suffering but through personal change for the better, with the help of equivalence of form with nature, with the Creator. So I will fly to Siberia because large, fresh new forces are gathering, and this is very important.

This area is very important to me. In my opinion it is prepared to provide freshness, inner potential, vigor, and seriousness to our yearning, as no other place in the world will be prepared to do! In spite of it all, the area of Siberia is so pristine that it will be ready to add all this to us; our world group requires this very much.

Come let us thank in advance all the participants in the convention for having seriously invested so much time preparing for it. I thank them in the name of the whole world because what they are doing is the greatest addition to the global connection between us.

We are happy to join what they are organizing and we will try to be together with them body and soul. I am sure that it will be a wonderful convention and that we will be able to feel what the next stage will be as a result of all that we have done until today. I truly hope that in Krasnoyarsk we will realize what we achieved and felt in the last men’s convention because the people began to go through unfamiliar inner experiences of connection with that which is higher.
[109379]
From the Virtual Lesson 6/2/13

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Question: Can a person who takes part in the work of a physical group of ten be in a virtual group of ten at the same time?

Answer: Of course, if he has the time because in principle it does not matter in what kind of group of ten you are. When I sit among my students, I do not see faces and do not remember names, I just feel people’s energy, and this is the most important thing for me.

If I were in any group of ten, these people would not matter to me, neither their appearance nor their names because what is important is only their inner spiritual potential; this is what is felt.

That is why groups of ten will gradually dissolve as a person inside it will no longer see everyone’s image. For instance, it’s similar in married life, having lived with your wife for many years you stop noticing her physical image and perceive her mainly internally.

That is what should happen to us. And then the groups of tens will lose their physical relevance. You will be able to connect, mingle, unite in groups of twenty, of hundreds, it doesn’t matter. Uniting in groups of ten is necessary at the current stage to help us exit ourselves a little, to begin to understand how to adapt to others.

That is why we tell a person: “This is your field of work, and you have to get used to it; don’t run away!” When he understands that the group of ten for him is the key to exiting himself, to feeling the upper world, then he will have no problems, he will want to unite, interact with all the other friends.

To begin to feel the exit from himself, a person has to work in his well-organized group of ten from which he cannot run away. Whether it’s good or bad, comfortable or not, he knows that it’s his and that’s all. That is why I have clearly defined the group of ten as something sacred!

It will not be like this later. But this “later” will come only after the group of ten becomes everything for everyone, and he will understand how much it is dear to him because this is the means of exiting oneself and entering the upper world. Then a person will be able to expand his circle.
[109376]
From the Virtual Lesson 6/2/13

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Question: In one of the videos you said that the residents of Siberia are a special people possessing an extraordinary harmony between heart and mind. Is there really some kind of uniqueness in them?

Answer: Without a doubt. The idea is that beyond the Ural region live people who are completely different from those in the European part of Russia. These are people with a different mentality, with another approach to life, who are more open, more honest and sincere than in Western Europe. They have more consideration, a great possibility, and great ease in attaining spirituality.

Therefore I explain that at the convention we are planning, we will speak together in a completely different form and will understand each other very well. The inhabitants of Siberia are themselves less complicated, closer to nature, easier in the contact between them. This is specifically what I felt when I visited Siberia, and in principle this is how it must be.

I hope that a meeting with people like these will be much more pleasant, much simpler and more open. This will make a great leap possible for us, and it will indeed happen.
[109201]
From the Virtual Lesson, 6/2/13

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Question: The commandment to love your neighbor as yourself is known around the world. Then, how is its original interpretation different from the conventional one?

Answer: It’s all about the difference between Abraham and Babylon. In Babylon, it was accepted to keep the uncorrected egoism and, at the same time, shout about love. On the other hand, the method of Abraham, that is, the property of mercy (Hassadim), is self-correction on the path to bestowal where the other becomes more important than yourself.

This can be achieved only through group work based on and constructed by Abraham. At the time, having gathered people, he began to teach them self-denial, self-nullification, and unity to the point of love for the other as for oneself. One must carry out this work precisely in the group where we build our environment on practice.

So, I do not see people engaged in this anywhere else. In recent generations, no one except Baal HaSulam, and Rabash in particular, wrote about the decisive need for unity and mutual guarantee.

Do various religions and beliefs, circles and organizations that preach love for the other facilitate the correction of egoism or do they just implant these or those collective attributes? For example, Nazi Germany also united people.

So, the question is the kind of unity we are talking about.

We have a methodology that enables a person to become united with others, to give himself to the environment in order to reveal mutual bestowal and love for the sake of all of humanity—not just some part of it that shields itself by fascist or protectionist methods—and ultimately, to achieve an absolute, abstract form of bestowal and love, in other words, to bring contentment to the Creator.

You can find a huge amount of material online about love for the other. Everyone talks about it, without mentioning Israel and Abraham, as if it is his personal invention or the property of his religion. When egoism covers the eyes, people do not understand the depth of the question, do not know the history, and claim that they know the ultimate truth. There is nothing you can do about it.

On our side, we already are based on the method of Abraham. He discovered love for the other as for oneself and, having exited Babylon, adopted this methodology. Then, Moses developed it by means of unity at Mount Sinai and so on. In general, we are talking about the task of the people of Israel, about its foundation. It was originally formed on this base. If there were no foundation, there would have been no nation.

All other nations came into being naturally, but Israel is “not a people” in this sense. It is not among other nations because its foundation is bestowal, love for the other as for oneself, separated from the reality of our world. Israel is the people connected to each other by the desire to find between themselves bestowal and love, and to rise in this love above their egoistic desire. There is no nation of Israel without this foundation. In other words, it cannot be called “a people” while it is in exile from the spiritual world.

The Jews in Egypt were not a nation until they came out of slavery and accepted the means that allowed them to live as one man with one heart, in common mutual guarantee. Only then did they become a people. Today, they are again not a people but a gathering of exiles.

It is no coincidence that throughout history Jews were so concerned about education. We also want to establish the method of integral education in our midst and then pass it to the entire nation and the entire world. There is only one reason: It does not exist without the nation.

The very concepts of “people,” “country,” and “society” among the Jews followed education. Before Abraham educated—taught those who escaped with him from Babylon—they were not a people. After all, it is necessary to have “glue” that will connect people into one; otherwise they are strangers to each other. It is the education on the principle of love for the other as for oneself that brings them together into a unified group or a unified nation. Of course, it is a unique people, different from all the others. They are united according to the conditions of our world, and in order to unite, Israel must accept the terms of the spiritual world.

This is the origin of its complete oppositeness to the rest of the world in terms of education and the essence of love for the other. If others are willing to distribute this principle to their nations, Israel cannot be limited to itself because this is not love as it should be. We must initially be aware of the goal of creation and carry it to the world. Otherwise, instead of love, there will be “people’s ego,” “national ego,” or, as it is called today, “national pride,” which is nonsense. Israel can have nothing like this. It must limit its ego and connect spiritual, higher values to it instead of boasting its differences in the matters of this world.
[109554]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/3/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Question: What can be achieved in mirror conventions?

Answer: We are now in such a state where we begin to feel an additional leap from every convention.

For example, a very short convention that lasted only one day took place a few days ago, but it gave a significant push forward. People there felt much: both unity and movement forward. They experienced new sensations.

That is, we are starting to draw the upper Light to ourselves, which we do not feel clearly yet, but its manifestations already are felt in us. This shows our approaching its revelation and I hope that every convention will become a greater step forward. So the convention in Siberia could be very effective in this sense.
[109318]
From the Virtual Lesson 6/2/13

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Question: It seems to me that we have been working like in a group of ten in our small group for a long time because we have to nullify ourselves before each other. What is the best way to do this?

Answer: I believe that we have to nullify ourselves always—a group has to feel like one whole. Without achieving “one” instead of “ten,” without uniting in one whole, we will not feel even the smallest spiritual Light because it is manifested in unity. The group of ten must unite into “one”—from “we” to “one.”
[109374]
From the Virtual Lesson 6/2/13

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Rabash,” According to What is Explained Concerning: “Love Thy Friend as Thyself”: If everyone is nullified before his friend and mingles with him, they become one mass where all the little parts that want the love of others unite in a collective force that consists of many parts. And when one has great strength, he can execute the love of others.

And then he can achieve the love of God. But the condition is that each will annul before the other. However, when he is separated from his friend, he cannot receive the share he should receive from his friend.

Thus, everyone should say that he is nothing compared to his friend. It is like writing numbers: If you first write “1” and then “0,” it is ten times more. And when you write “00” it is a hundred times more. In other words, if his friend is number one, and the zero follows it, it is considered that one receives from his friend ten (10) times more. And if he says that he is double zero compared to his friend, he receives from his friend a hundred (100) times more.

However, if it is to the contrary, and he says that his friend is zero and he is one, then he is ten times less than his friend 0.1. And if he can say that he is one and he has two friends who are both zeros compared to him, then he is considered a hundred times less than them, meaning he is 0.01. Thus, his degree lessens according to the number of zeros he has from his friends.

If I want to receive something from someone in our world, I have to pay for it in return or to take it by force like the big takes from the small. In this case the bigger I am, the more I can extort the other and receive more from him. That’s the way it is in the corporeal world, when we speak about receiving in the desire to receive.

But if it’s about receiving spiritual powers, it works according to an opposite law. The more important I consider my friend and the greater I see the friend, the more I can receive from him.

I cannot receive anything from someone who is equal to me since he is on the same level as I am. But if he is even a little bit higher than me, I can already receive something from him, and the more I raise him the more I can receive.

It has nothing to do with the friend himself but only with how I treat him with regard to me. It’s just like the students of Rabbi Yossi Ben Kisma who had no idea how their teacher worked with regard to them. He saw himself as relatively smaller than his students and so he received spiritual powers through them.

Everything depends on how great your friend is in your eyes. The greater he is, the more I can receive the force of bestowal from him. But if it’s about receiving egoistic powers, then it’s about a different principle according to which the greater I am the more I can extort the other in order to fill my ego.

So the spiritual power you will receive from the environment is only up to you whether it’s 1000 or 0.001. We have to be in a group of ten that is working on connection and in which each one is somehow connected to the desire to bestow like the students of Rabbi Yossi Ben Kisma. But this is enough since everything else depends on you and the extent to which you subdue yourself!

You will never have the power to advance if you don’t receive powers from the environment. So the rule of subduing yourself before the friends, even by physical actions is the most efficient means to advance. We mustn’t think that Kabbalists tell us about this only to establish good relations the way we teach kids in our world to behave morally since this approach is opposite from the wisdom of Kabbalah.

We do this only in order to receive the force of bestowal from the Light, from the Creator, through others. Since I subdue myself, the Light can flow into me through the friend. If I treat others as if they are really greater than I am, I will receive the power of bestowal through them. It’s enough to treat them with the intention of in order to bestow and in the relations between us I will begin to feel the Creator and will be able to bring Him contentment. Through the bestowal upon the friends, I will be able to feel how I can reach bestowal upon the Creator. He will be revealed to me through the image of the group that I will see in the Light of my bestowal. Thus the rule “love thy friend as thyself” is the main goal of our work, which is a constant feeling of humility towards the friends, and accordingly we build up the powers of bestowal.
[108298]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/24/13, Writings of Rabash

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Baal HaSulam, “The Love of the Creator and the Love for the Created Beings”: We should not be mistaken with deeds, for they are set before one’s eyes. We know that if we precede the needs of our own, it is bestowal. For that reason Hillel does not define the goal as “And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy might,” because they are indeed one and the same thing.

It is so because one should also love one’s friend with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his might, because that is the meaning of the words “as thyself.” After all, one certainly loves oneself with all one’s heart and soul and might, but with regards to the Creator, one may deceive oneself; and with one’s friend it is always spread out before his eyes.

We were given great help and a valuable chance to make the transition from the desire to receive to the desire to bestow in this world, meaning a state where we constantly see the corporeal reality, the corporeal desire to receive and all the boundaries that it depicts for us. Instead of the attempts to work with an attribute that is detached from us, which is the desire to bestow, we can work with what we actually discover, with what we can attain and feel, which is how another fellow being seems to us.

In other words, the spiritual world that is concealed from me appears before me in a corporeal form, and I am in contact with it. This allows me to change my attitude toward what I see and feel by mutually cooperating with the other. Together, we can reach such corrections so that through the corporeal world, in its depth, I will find the spiritual world.

Eventually, the attitude toward others and the attitude toward the Creator are the same thing, although if seems that these are two different things, they are actually the same thing. The more we discover spirituality, the more we see that it is totally “dressed” in corporeality.
[109021]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/03/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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