Question: When the authors of The Book of Zohar Rabbi Shimon and his disciples studied together in the cave and later on when there were small Kabbalistic groups, they were very well aware that one depends on the other in thoughts, desires, and intentions. They were the only ones in the world. But today we study along with hundreds of people whom we see on the computer screens and thousands of others whom we don’t know at all….

Answer: I perceive the entire world as parts of my soul. Obviously, I don’t see the world this way, but I should visualize it so and treat it accordingly. And despite the fact that the world is full of rivals, foes, and what have you, all of it is my internal properties. If they were reformed, I would see a perfect world before me, the world of Infinity.

Hence, I have to treat everything around me as sent to me to correct my perception of reality and finally experience myself in the perfect desire filled with the infinite Light. To do so, I am provided with the environment, a relatively small group. And although it may contain a few million folks from around the world, I still must strive to feel all of them since they are my desires, the parts of my soul, which wake up to spiritually.

I can collect them, unite them within into a single force, and with their help, reform the other parts of my soul. After all, the whole world is my single soul. This is the way I should view reality.

Therefore,  Rabbi Shimon’s disciples, students of the Ari, and we perceive reality in a relatively similar way. The world is still the same, as are the attitude and the method. There are differences in terms of technology, a more developed connection between us, and in the global approach to the primary sources and the awakening of the world. But personal work and the attitude remain the same.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/8/2011, “Introduction of The Book of Zohar”

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The task of the created being is to move toward new, unexpected, and unknown states by arranging for itself all the necessary conditions to attract the upper force which can transform it. Hence, these actions are regarded as the “miraculous remedy” (Segula).

The acts that the created being must carry out are clearly defined: It has to rouse its own desire, cultivate it, enter the group, and “purchase the friends for himself” by starting to bestow to and lower himself before the group. One needs to get inspired by their exalting the spiritual goal, “make a teacher for himself” to learn from him with the friends, and unify into one integral desire, one vessel (“Kli”), in order to correct the breaking.

The breaking is the place within which we reveal our correction: our reformed state and the upper Light that fills our restored collective vessel. That is, we are dealing with the actions that can be accurately described and practically applied while still remaining in one’s egoistic nature, in a still uncorrected state. This stage exists at each step of the ascent, even at the spiritual degrees.

As to the acts of the upper one, it’s the upper Light (the Light of AB-SAG or the Surrounding Light) which expands to us in the manner we can’t comprehend and affects us without our feeling or being aware of it. We only feel the effects of its work.

This is why there is a gap between the creature’s actions and the Creator’s work in response to the former if they are arranged correctly. That is, there is no cause-and-effect chain on the part of the created being, and we neither understand how the breakthrough occurs nor can foretell it. Hence, this entire work is regarded as the “miraculous remedy.”

But it is all due to the fact that the created being is preparing to receive a new nature that it presently lacks. And hence, we cannot see or feel the forthcoming transformations. That is why this is described as a miracle. However, when a person receives these inner transformations from Above, the entire chain of events he went through becomes clear to him, and now he says about the past: “I labored and I found!”

A find is exactly what Segula, a miraculous force, implicates. We must constantly strive to do whatever we can, as it is written: “Do all that you are able to do” and you will find! This is precisely what determines the gap between my present and future states. I am completely in charge of my current state: I am aware of it, understand it, and organize everything in it: “I do everything I can.” But then I “find” a completely new state that comes as a miracle. After all, I receive a totally new nature that I didn’t expect or predict in advance.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/8/2011 on The Importance of the Study

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My Good Environment – Dr. Laitman’s Advice and Principles for the Week

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Question: Do Kabbalah conventions serve as a final result of our practical work? What can you say about the upcoming convention in North America?

Answer: My attitude to such gatherings is very positive, and I think they provide an opportunity for great advancement. I see that with every convention, I get better and better at giving simpler explanations which are easier for people to digest. They start to understand me better, and we become closer to one another.

Every such meeting is a leap up. One visit to a Kabbalah convention is worth a month of daily studies. It gives a person internal and external impressions and many positive results. Once a year, we organize a congress in North America, so try not to let this opportunity pass by.

If you do have the opportunity, but it appears to you like there isn’t enough time or finances, this is an obstacle that was placed intentionally before you. You should honestly examine yourself, being aware that you stand before a profound decision. A person who has such an opportunity once a year and doesn’t come will lose a great deal since he loses the bond with this path.

Surely, there may be objective reasons which prevent a person from coming, such as being incarcerated in prison. However, if one is able to, but it is difficult for him, that is not an excuse. It is a test from Above, and he should leap over the obstacle placed in his way.

Many groups and individuals will gather. It is a very different kind of power, and we connect to the whole world from there. I will do my best to pass an internal charge to the people who will be so close in front of me at that moment. People keep feeling it later, after the event, unlike those who could come and did not.

It probably doesn’t matter that much how one studies day by day, whether in the virtual group or a physical one. It depends on a person and the relationships in the group. However, neither a physical nor virtual group can replace a collective gathering such as a convention where hundreds or thousands of people get together and unify.

There are those who left a group for different reasons, but a convention is something else, and everyone should go there without making any calculations regarding attitudes within the group or what have you. He just comes in order to unify with the world Kli (vessel) and ascend the new spiritual rung thereby.

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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/4/2011, Writings of Rabash

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To influence the men in a wholesome and powerful way, the women must also unite, but they should unite with an understanding of the principles of our work and what exactly to demand from the men. To do so, they must know what the Light is that the men need to draw and what it has to beget.

A woman in spirituality is a force even greater than a man. A man is just a force, a screen, whereas a woman is the place where all kinds of changes occur. She begets a new rung and nourishes it. Conception, nurturing, and maturing to adulthood, all of it lies within the female’s part of the collective or individual soul.

As regards a man, he only delivers the Light. It is said that he “provides the whitening,” and that completes his role, as it were. After that, he resides within a mother and through her, supplies the forces to develop the souls.

As regards the offspring, everything comes from the mother, the female part. All spiritual growth goes through a woman, and it is the female part that begets souls. The same is mentioned in the Torah. For example, “Abraham” and “Sarah” are two parts of the soul who beget a new soul, and their more advanced state is regarded as “Isaac.” Who gives birth to him? Obviously, it is Sarah.

We must function as nature dictates. Having aligned ourselves with the material nature, we will move on from it to the spiritual one, thanks to which we will accomplish what we set out to do without harming ourselves.

Vice versa, the more harm we inflict by indulging our egoism, the more we will scream about the “equality” that in reality ruins families and society, and the fewer our chances will become. Some politicians may benefit from it, but it won’t be us.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/6/11 on Women

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In the corporeal world, our perception of beauty constantly changes, and we are forced to follow the opinion of the majority. After all, we live in a human society and respect its values whether we like it or not. This is our nature. At the end, every person will esteem the things that the majority in his environment respects.

We do not even realize how unreasonable these values are. So frequently fashions change in education, culture, the industrial sector, creativity, and even food. We see them come and go, without any actual value. Everything beyond the limits of our animate existence that the body requires (simple shelter, family, and food) has value in our eyes only because the society appreciates it.

But spirituality is different because nobody is dragging us there. We need to build our own society and awaken it ourselves so it would pull us after it and through it, to spirituality. In other words, we are given free will in the spiritual development, and no one will force us there!

Of course, the Creator stimulates us: He arranges a hard life for us in this world and deprives us of fulfillment. But on the other hand, life is no longer as difficult as it was in the past, and we are not starving. Yet, we feel an inner emptiness that pushes us to develop. And when we discover this emptiness and start thinking about the purpose, the meaning, and the secret of life, but are unable to answer these questions, we realize that no one can tell or explain it to us, nobody pulls us after them.

We look around and fail to see any examples. We receive examples in everything else in life: the choice of a profession, the style of our home, the kind of things to buy, what to do, who to be like. The human society gives us examples of everything. And only spirituality remains without examples, as if you existed in an empty vacuum, and every day, even every moment you are faced with the questions: what to do, where to go, where to get examples of spiritual values and purpose?

This is a big problem. But on the other hand, this is a consequence of the freedom given to us! This is because when a person enters spirituality, he builds his own soul. Nobody teaches him. There are many advices and books, but all of them are merely general explanations around this topic, which only support us a little.

Ultimately, everything depends on the person himself. He needs to build his own environment which would provide him with the spiritual values and direction and be just as sound as the environment in our world with all its examples. Without this, he naturally would not know how to advance.

This is the main difference between the spiritual and the corporeal advancement.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/4/2011, Writings of Rabash

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Society is the foundation for spiritual advancement. And just like the people who ran from Jerusalem during the time of the Second Temple as they saw spirituality collapse and wanted to form a small society to hold on to the spiritual connection between them, the Upper Force, and hid in the vicinity of the Dead Sea; we also want to form a society like that.

For now, it may not be very big: “only” some hundred thousand people, which is not much compared to the entire humanity that now must awaken and connect. But we have to believe Kabbalists who say that we are always given enough strength, both in quantity and quality, and if we mobilize it according to our abilities and given conditions, we will be able to reveal the upper force.

Once we connect, that spark will ignite between us and distribute the upper Light throughout our entire system. This Light will fill us, and we will find ourselves in the spiritual world.

Our primary task is to form a society, a place for the Light to be revealed. The proper society is called “Shechina,” the place where the Light (Shochen) reigns. There are certain laws for the existence of this society. The Creator is the giver, Shochen, we are His Shechina, and we need to prepare our desire for Him to be revealed in us.

The upper Light cannot be revealed in one person; there have to be at least two. But two are not enough either because different egoistic problems immediately arise between them. This is why the bigger the society the easier it is for the person.

On one hand, if the society is very strong, it will be easier for the person since he will not need to invest so much into it. And on the other hand, he will receive inspiration from the others who are preparing a place for him among them, where he could enter. He will only need to cancel himself before the society, and this will be enough.

He will literally grow like an infant in its mother’s arms or an embryo in the mother’s womb. This society will become his refuge, the “Noah’s Ark,” his mother’s womb, from where he will draw all the forces to begin his spiritual life. Thereby he will advance.

And even though our group is not that big compared to the nation of Israel or the entire world, our possibilities are enormous! We can raise the entire mankind within us!

Every one of us can receive the upper Light only if he becomes a part of the mother’s womb (“Rechem” or “womb” comes from the word “Rachamim” or “mercy,” bestowal). Otherwise, he will remain “sealed” for the Light, and he will only be able to perceive this world.

By not continuing the flow of the Light and passing it onto others, I block my path and prevent the Light from going through me. Then I will only perceive its tiny glow that paints this world to me.
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From Lesson 2 Metzoke Dragot Congress 2/25/2011

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We can already rise and enter the spiritual reality for moments in time, even before we permanently begin to live there—everything only depends on the strength of the connection between us. When we reach a certain minimal level required for the perception of the spiritual world, we will feel how we approach and enter it.

Kabbalists give us precise advice on what to do in order for us not to wander around in darkness, by touch searching for the proper connection that would allow us to reach the spiritual world (because for now we do not feel or understand it, but operate according to our egoism instead).

We collect all these advices and try to use them to form a method that is more suitable for our time, conditions, and qualities. It is impossible to penetrate spirituality by individual strength.

That same spark of Light that erupted from the spiritual world and created our entire Universe and us in it needs to change us. It births a spiritual vessel out of our “point in the heart,” the spiritual spark placed in each one of us.

That big spark has separated into a multitude of tiny sparks, and each one of us has a part of it. We need to grow it. We need the Light to influence and develop us, raise us, like a full body grows from a drop of semen, beginning with an embryo, to a small person, and then an adult. But the problem is that we do not know how to evoke the influence of the Light upon us.

This is why we need to follow the advice of Kabbalists as closely as possible; this is the entire secret to success. Just follow the instructions and move a point at a time, and you will eventually come to a place when you will “activate” this mechanism, and it will suddenly begin to work!
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From Lesson 2 Metzoke Dragot Congress 2/25/2011

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Our world started with a tiny spark of Light that broke into the void and embarked on its evolution. Thereby, the Light made, begot, created, produced (the four stages of the Direct Light, corresponding to the still, vegetative, animate, and speaking levels of nature) everything there is in our Universe.

And the further development suggests that man, meaning all of us, must reach the root from where this initial spark once came. Now we are passing through the last stage of evolution so we may rise to this spark all together, and break through the tiny opening in our system into the place where our root is.

This return is possible only by way of our unification: We must come so tightly together that we may become as small as this spark. Therefore, people who attained the spiritual world strove to tell about the necessity of reaching oneness, the unification of sparks that reside in everyone into one spark.

This development has continued since the time of Adam HaRishon, up to Abraham in ancient Babylon, followed by the exodus from Egypt and further on; until two thousand years ago, we hadn’t come to an undesirable state. In truth, Kabbalists who lived throughout those times, starting with Abraham, lost their spiritual root and fell from brotherly love to unfounded hatred. This fall occurred in the time of Rabbi Akiva.

The region of the Dead Sea, Qumran and the nearing areas, is the place where people used to flee, unwilling to succumb to the descent that occurred in Jerusalem when even the post of the High Priest could be bought and everything had taken a low, despicable form. This remote place remained the last sanctuary for those who desired to keep unity and love between them in order not to lose spiritual connection with one another. So they fled there since they felt that they could stay together, far away from all those relations that were coming in force in Jerusalem.

That is why, almost two thousand years later, we have gathered here in order to continue this process. After all, there is no time in spirituality! We came from a sacred state where we were all bonded and felt the spiritual world, spiritual life, and another dimension, but then lost our awareness as if we were hit on the head and stopped sensing the spiritual world in which we lived. Today, we wish to return to that reality.

To achieve this, all we need to do is arrange the same kind of society that existed years ago since the spiritual laws haven’t changed. As we did then, so do we now need to become as one man with one heart and achieve brotherly love and oneness in accord with the laws that the Light and desire obey in the spiritual world. And then we will find ourselves in it!

Our corporeal bodies have to accompany us until we attain the spiritual world fully. But for the time being, we have to reside in these bodies; after all, we haven’t received the right to live in spirituality permanently and must remain the permanent residents of this material world. As to the spiritual one, we will ascend to and descend from there until we have established ourselves in it for good.

At that point, we won’t have to live in these corporeal bodies, and they will dissolve from our perception. This world regarded as “illusory” will dissipate as well, and we will start living in the new reality eternally.
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From Lesson 2 Metzoke Dragot Congress 2/25/2011

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