Question: Throughout all of history, Kabbalists passed the science of Kabbalah from one generation to the next. But on the other hand, they created a special concealment over this science to make sure it wouldn’t expand all over the whole world. Why?

Answer: Kabbalists reveal their attainments in concealment. That’s why it is written, “When revealing one measure, conceal two.” This is talking about the revelation of the necessary desire in a person, in which he will then feel the upper world.

Our nature is desire, and only if this desire is present do we perceive the world inside of it. The greater the desire, the more it perceives. All the objects in our world differ from one another only by the size of the desire. The desire of level 1 is still, level 2 – vegetative, level 3 – animate, and level 4 – human. If the desire intends to enjoy by itself, then it is in our world. If it intends to give pleasure to someone else, then it is in the upper world.

It’s known that pleasure can only be felt to the extent that one has a desire for it. In other words, the Light can only be received when there is a vessel.

Concealing two measures means that a Kabbalist teacher must create a concealment in a student—the desire of one measure, the need for revelation, and the concealment of one more measure so this desire for revelation would be for the sake of bestowal. In that case, the student will merit revelation inside of that corrected desire.
From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/9/11, The Zohar

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Question: Why is the path to love so difficult and confusing?

Answer: It’s us who are confused.

I am ruled by the egoistic desire and everything I feel and think is only inside of it, for the sake of my own benefit. So how can I make a different calculation—not for my own sake?

Imagine that you “dress” into someone else and begin making a calculation from his perspective. It was a mere 100 years ago that people began to grasp such concepts. It’s not an accident that this period was epitomized by Freud and Einstein, who not only made seminal discoveries, but also had friendly connections with each other.

After hundreds of thousands of years of development, it was a mere century ago that the greatest minds of humanity finally invented psychoanalysis—or in other words, began to analyze man internally on the material level. Only then did they begin to research human perception, “Me and the surrounding world, me and the neighbor.”

This is not simple. It took a very long period of time to approach man’s animate soul, and that’s not even close to spirituality. The entire problem is that we cannot and do not want to dress into others. Society has to ensure that every person will do this, that every person will try to do it and start discerning how he appears in the eyes of the neighbor and what the neighbor wants.

This is very difficult even though it only involves psychological exercises in the plane of our world, which don’t even relate to spirituality yet. Do you want more? Go ahead. Organize an environment that will finally begin to influence you.

The path is long precisely because no one influences you. There is no progress without social influence. Where could a person get the spiritual details of perception? Only from the environment.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/13/11, Shamati

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People view Passover as the holiday of the historical exodus from Egypt. “We used to be slaves and we built several cities and pyramids for Pharaoh, and then we came out to freedom.” However, in realty we are not celebrating a date in the historical calendar. After all, the situation today is much worse than back then. It’s enough to compare the situation of the nation of Israel in Ancient Egypt with the current situation and you would be running back to kiss Pharaoh’s hands, begging him to let you back.

The Jews lived in the land of Goshen, which was the most favorable part of Egypt with the most fertile soil and abundant herds. You could do whatever you want because Pharaoh doesn’t just rule there but he protects you as well. No one can touch a hair on your head, your vats are full of meat, your nets—full of fish, and your storehouses are full of produce. You are a slave only because you have to listen to Pharaoh. This means: Act by the orders of your egoism, and nothing more than that.

The Jews had a wonderful life, so it wasn’t incidental that they complained to Moses in the desert, “Where are the meat and fish, where is the onion and garlic that we ate in Egypt!? Our lives were great, and where have you brought us now?”

So what do we remind ourselves of on this holiday? Were we surrounded by enemies back then the way we are today? On the contrary, we had all the favors at our disposal and Pharaoh’s power protected us from enemies. In his country he allowed us to live however we wanted, even on separate territory and by our own laws. So what’s so bad about that compared to the current situation?

As Baal HaSulam writes, if the Jews today could disperse all over the countries of the Diaspora, then almost no one would be left in Israel. We have to understand: Egypt becomes a dungeon only when you start to think about spiritual exile, when you lack the Creator. If not for the need for spiritual redemption, Egypt by itself is a land flowing with milk and honey. Here you have everything besides the Creator, besides the answer to the question about the meaning of life. You have everything else in abundance. You are living the life of a king and you lack just one thing, “I want bestowal and love for the neighbor.”

When you desire precisely this, then Egypt will seem like exile to you. This is the only thing missing here—love for the neighbor. Thus, it turns out that we celebrate Passover to commemorate the good life in Egypt and not the redemption, which no one really needs. After all, coming out of Egypt means throwing away everything we have besides love.

Do we feel that we are in exile? On the contrary, people do not understand what this is talking about. But love for the neighbor has to become your only desire. Moses demands from Pharaoh, “Let my people go! I want to leave!” To which Pharaoh replies, “What do you lack, Moses? You grew up in my arms. Stay the Egyptian prince. Be a prince! Why are you making a revolution here? For the sake of love for the neighbor? You’ve gone crazy!”

Only at the end of the path does Egypt become a land of exile for us. But until that happens, we are satiated with everything besides bestowal.

It turns out that we celebrate this holiday to honor the fact that we once lacked love for the neighbor. If only it were possible to really explain this to the people and to show them the true situation today. Today are we willing to forgo anything in our rich lives for the sake of love for the Creator, for the neighbor, for friends, for the sake of mutual bestowal and mutual empathy? Are we close to this? Do we deserve to celebrate the holiday of redemption?

This is talking about freedom from egoism, when egoism has everything, yet I want to run away from this. I hate this abundance and I don’t desire it. I don’t need the filling food, nor the safety, nor the comfort, nor the health—nothing. I am ready to drown in the waters of the Marginal Sea or to dry up from thirst in the desert—anything to break out of the bonds.

So do we really want to get out to freedom?
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/13/11, Writings of Rabash

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Question: What should I do if I am not Jewish and I don’t celebrate Passover?

Answer: Go ahead, celebrate it—what’s the problem? Why can’t you be related to it? After all, you belong to “Israel,” the desire that aspires straight to the Creator (Yashar-El).

Besides, you can celebrate this holiday in honor of the fact that there used to be a group of Kabbalists that went through the entire path of corrections and then broke up in order to help us re-ascend again today. By celebrating Passover, we associate ourselves with this group: not with a nation, but namely with a group of Kabbalists.

Every person wishing to climb out of the current state into the spiritual world has to respect and value this group, which has gone through the path and written books with instructions for us that we can use to advance forward as well. We celebrate and honor our teachers, without any connection to national belonging. We belong to this group and want to be related to it.

Later, when we enter the spiritual world, we will discover that we are together with them, that our group does not only include the friends from the whole world, but also them. Mostly they are all the Kabbalists of all the generations who once turned away from Babylon in order to take the spiritual path. And we are in their group.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/13/11, Writings of Rabash

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I am in a net of forces that influence me. Their sum total is nature. So what is its goal? What does it want from me? Where is it leading me?

It’s clear to me that my development unfolds purposefully. I am convinced of this by the example of the other parts of nature. For example, a small, sour fruit grows into a large, juicy, sweet apple.

Just as the vegetative and animate levels of nature develop, so I develop, going through opposite states that are good and bad. It is impossible to advance only on one side. I alternate them, taking a step with the left and then a step with the right, again and again. I continuously reveal a lack that corresponds to the future fulfillment.

That is when I make a calculation: Where is this process leading? Where does nature direct me? Then I see that it obligates me to undergo social development. Over the course of the last several millennia humanity needed to develop society more and more, and within the society, to develop the interconnections among us.

We revealed evil, our egoism, our hatred to one another, and as a result we are starting to understand the need to unite. In the modern, global world, this is becoming clear.

What is the use of this? The use is that I will enter the next level of my development, the level of the common nature of the universe. I will attain absolute goodness and will acquire similarity to the perfect nature.

Therefore, I do not take into account the intermediate states which I go through on the path. If I hold the goal in front of my mind’s eye and constantly think about it, then I feel good now as well. The most important thing is to “float up” above all the present sensations, both the good and the bad.
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/25/11 on Global Education

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Question: We see that people of the new generation do not want to come closer to one another. That is why the Internet has developed so much, enabling a person to act from afar without being physically present in society. That way he makes contacts without really connecting. How, then, can we offer people a method that is entirely based on unification and social influence?

Answer: This is a very good sign. It means that there is already realization of evil taking place. A person does not want to come close to anyone or to touch anyone. He feels individual, not connected to anyone, and does not need anyone—not even his parents, wife, or children. He wants to be left one on one with himself.

Today every person needs a separate apartment. In the previous generation every person needed a separate room. But earlier, this problem didn’t even exist. People lived in one room and did not bother each other.

Rabash told me that when he got married, he moved to live in his wife’s house. Her family was well-known in Jerusalem and had a two room apartment. But all of them, the parents and the children, lived in one big room, while renting out the second room because they did not think they needed it. At night, when it was time to sleep, they would lay out mattresses on the floor and in the morning they would roll them back up and lay them in a pile in the corner. Besides these mattresses and a small table for food, there was nothing in the room. That is how people lived in Jerusalem in the beginning of the 20th century.

But today a person cannot stand even his own wife next to him in the same room. That is how much our nature has changed, which is why we want to shift to a virtual connection. The virtual connection is a search for a higher level of communication. It is not just replacing one kind of connection with another, but a connection on a more internal level. We are starting to aspire to connect with a person’s inner world, on the level of his psychology.

However, people will soon grow disillusioned with the Internet and will understand that it cannot satisfy their need for a real inner connection. All of these SMS text messages, e-mails, and social networks will not provide the answer to the demand that is now being revealed in us, which we do not even understand ourselves yet. We just feel that we have to unite, attain nature and the world, and feel and understand everything on a higher level than today.

The young generation does not realize this inner demand it has yet, but the fact is that this need is not for the virtual connection that exists today. It is a yearning for a more internal, sensuous connection. And that is something that can only be attained if we go from the virtual connection to the use of the science of Kabbalah. This will soon be revealed to us.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/21/11, “Introduction to the Book, Panim Meirot uMasbirot”

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Question: Can a Kabbalist abide by two ideologies simultaneously and be religious at the same time as being a Kabbalist?

Answer: No, he can’t. Kabbalah takes the upper hand over religious ideology. A Kabbalist can carry out all sorts or religious customs as a result of his upbringing, culture, and the traditions of his nation. And I think it’s good to do so. I do not look down on religion.

However, this should not replace Kabbalah because the most important thing for a person is to attain revelation of and adhesion with the Creator. Anything that interferes with this should be removed from this path. What interferes isn’t religion itself, but the false conception of it, thinking that it can replace the attainment of the Creator, that instead of spiritual revelation it’s enough to carry out some kind of material actions, to pray according to written words, and to think that this is sufficient.

This is completely not so. It is written that “Everyone must know the Creator from the smallest of them to the greatest of them.” We have to attain adhesion with Him. Everyone says they agree with this because that’s what is written and it is impossible to argue with it. It’s clear to everyone that we have to attain “the Creator’s work” and to bond to Him. It is also written that the main rule of the Torah is to love your neighbor as yourself. However, people everywhere only talk about this, but do not actually make it happen.

No one even knows what adhesion with the Creator means, how to come closer to Him, and how to become similar to Him. The problem is that religion has replaced the science of Kabbalah after the breaking of the Temple, when the nation of Israel fell from the spiritual level to the material level and all that remained for the people to do was to carry out just physical actions as a tradition in order to commemorate the previous spiritual actions.

Now we have to learn to ascend back to the spiritual level and add the attainment of the Creator to these national traditions. Religion seems to stop a person, telling him that it’s sufficient to make just the mechanical actions that are carried out by religious people.

However, many source texts say that it’s not enough to make just the material actions, that the Creator does not care how you slaughter an animal—in a kosher manner or not, and that the commandments were given in order to correct the creatures by them. This means that the action has to be supplemented with the right intention.

The intention is the most important thing, in fact, it is the person himself. What is important are his thoughts and desires, rather than the actions. A religious person usually does actions by habit, having been raised from childhood to make them without thinking. There is no correction in doing so.

That is why we want to supplement tradition, the customary way of life, or what is called religion, which we perceive as a nation’s culture or tradition, with “the Creator’s work,” meaning the inner work of a person whereby he corrects his desires in order to become similar to the Creator. Adam, man, means similar.

Every person, secular as well as religious, has to understand that Kabbalah can add something to his life. It adds the revelation of the Creator, the upper force that controls everything. And when you see it, understand it, and feel it, then you understand how to go forward without making mistakes, both in this world and in the “world to come,” the spiritual world that becomes revealed to you.

We do not attain the revelation of the Creator by religious actions, but by uniting with others. However, these actions do not become canceled. They are simply like a branch symbolizing the spiritual root, and a person can remain in that culture. This is a custom that does not interfere with one’s advancement, but neither does it help him. It simply reminds you that spiritual actions exist, and that is why it was preserved throughout the years of the exile.

The Creator does not care about your physical actions. He only cares about the intention you put into them.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/20/11, “Introduction to the book Panim Meirot uMasbirot”

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Today we have come up against the new generation, which can do anything only if it understands, feels, decides, and agrees with what has to be done. Otherwise it won’t do anything. We also see this by the events that are now happening all over the world. A new wave is rising, or in other words, a new level of the common soul is awakening in all of humanity.

The modern generation is contraindicative of a morally-righteous upbringing which threatens a person and forces moral teachings on him, telling him, “Look at us as an example and act the same way.” This is not enough for the young generation. They will not take this path. On the contrary, they will copy the worst examples and won’t be able to have a grip on themselves so as to abide by your wonderful models.

The new generation won’t accept anything just because that’s how it has to be. Even though a child absorbs many things automatically, still, if we raise the modern kids by reward and punishment, it won’t work. That’s because egoism grows from one day to the next and you won’t be able to withstand it. Therefore, habit will become second nature to them.

Right before our very eyes a new nature is maturing inside children, and it demands that you hand them a method. You want to give a child ready-made results that he will implement like a small machine that you operate where he looks at you and repeats everything. But that won’t work. Children see right through you. They are constantly studying and analyzing you. You are completely transparent to them.

We have to understand that this generation requires a very rational and logical method that it could understand and then use according to that understanding.

The slave generation has ended, or the generation of machines that were personified even by Charlie Chaplin. Today we have to think about how to give the youth an explanation of the process of development, reality and their place in it, the goal, the path of governance, and the opportunities standing before every person.

In short, it is necessary to show a person the limits within which he really is a free creature. The new generation is very different from us and therefore we shouldn’t develop methods to train them so they would obediently stay close by, but a method of passing on wisdom according to a person’s age. Then children will use and realize this wisdom through their behavior, and then all that will remain for us to do is to check whether we have given it to them correctly. We will see this by the results.

In the past education and upbringing were based on reward and punishment. Children were stuffed into different boundaries and held on a short leash. They were told, “This is how you have to act.” But today this won’t work because the Creator requires us to reach the realization of evil, the understanding of what happens in life. We have to learn to control ourselves according to the importance of the goal. This is a person’s independent work.

The soul has no age. It doesn’t matter in whom it awakens, an adult or a child. We have to understand that we are obligated to provide a method of correction for the young and the old so they would grow only by it.
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From the talk on education on 2/19/11

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Israel, meaning the souls that aspire to the Creator, exists only for the sake of the world’s correction because a broken Kli cannot correct itself independently. Only special sparks awaken in it, including Adam, the generations of Kabbalists that came after him, then Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and so on. This is talking about souls that were able to correct themselves without a method by virtue of their fine and pure nature.

They were able to feel what correction is to some extent without a group or a method because they belonged to the appropriate layer of desires. All the other souls followed and joined them.

Then came the stage where desires grew more powerful and the souls needed to mutually unite by mutual guarantee at Mount Sinai by using the method of the Light that Reforms. From then on, they had to attract the Light by uniting with one another instead of individually with their own forces.

Among them were those who were able to advance alone, practically without unification being a necessary condition. They are called “forefathers.” The others have to unite as one man with one heart and work on the common egoism by receiving awakening and ascent from one another. They bring their common desire to correction and then the Light that Reforms comes to them.

The same Light previously corrected individuals, but this was “personal illumination.” Now the Light does not come in response to someone’s personal desire, but to the common, unified desire that has become “the prayer of society,” the ten Sefirot. Our unity evokes an entire “package” of Light, which does what it has to do. Then the group is already able to correct itself.

However, for now it is only a group. And besides it, there are souls that are unable to awaken on their own. They suffer and are helpless. Therefore, the mission of the souls that have already gone through all the phases of correction and corruption is to unite with them, like Bina unites with Malchut. This enables the “incompetent” desires, the souls of AHP to be able to reach correction as well.

They cannot do anything to themselves alone. Nothing can be demanded from them. They do not have any conditions, method, or teaching. They receive everything from Galgalta ve Eynaim, which broke and descended to them. This happened because it is able to awaken them and to establish the right order among all of the broken souls that belong to itself, to AHP, and to the mixture between the two.

This is the mission of the nation of Israel before the redemption.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/13/11, Writings of Rabash

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We have finally matured to the human level and have become free. That is why our perception of reality will transform from a purely material one to an increasingly more spiritual one.

All of our machinery, workstations, and factories will become less material and more “transparent.” Even today half of the people are already working at a computer keyboard. But what could they possibly be producing there?

It’s clear what can be produced by working in the field, at a conveyor-belt, or by mining oil and coal. But what can you create by striking the computer keys? Soon the whole world will sit by computer screens. So will we be able to change the world through them?

In reality, this is how we create new matter, one that’s more spiritual. We will no longer need cars or planes because everything will shift to this virtual form. In reality it doesn’t matter one bit in what form we imagine everything. The most important thing is our effort, the Reflected Light we produce.

The Creator continuously moves upward, farther and farther away to give us the opportunity to expand our intervention into the upper realm with our Reflected Light. This is the kind of movement upwards we have begun from today onwards.

In reality, the entire difference is only man’s perception, his sensation of himself. In the past he was forced to work by the egoistic desire to enjoy, but now his effort lies in preferring the Reflected Light and bestowal over reception. This is called the human level.

In any case, one way or another, every person will work. The only question is: Will he do it unwillingly or by his own desire? All of human history until today was also spiritual work, albeit unconscious. That is how the Creator or nature had obligated us to work.

But now He no longer desires our slave labor. He wants us to become the same as He by ascending above our nature and playing with it ourselves the way He once played with us. You have to look at yourself from above and do the same thing to yourself that the Creator used to do. That is how you become equal to Him.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/8/11, “The Essence of the Wisdom of Kabbalah”

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