Question: How can The Zohar really become a book for all people, and not just for people with a point in the heart? Or is The Zohar just like any other book to those without a point in the heart?

Answer: The time will come when every person in the world will understand that we are all connected with one another through a certain network of connection. Educated people who are interested in what is happening in the world, who work with it, study it, and examine it are already discovering this.

There are also people who simply have this inner feeling; they are the ten percent of humanity who are altruists and feel the entire world as interconnected. But the fact that the world is interconnected doesn’t really mean anything, people simply think they must treat others well because everyone is tied together.

Yet, this network must be revealed between us. How does it become revealed? It becomes revealed when we feel it is vital for us because we want a safe, comfortable, and happy life for ourselves and our children, one without natural phenomenon or blows coming from all directions.

Therefore, we must attain the proper connection between us. So how do we attain it? Kabbalists say: “This special book called The Zohar describes the proper connections between us. Read it if you aspire towards this.” And then I open this book, read one page after another, and I see that it works.

People will see that it works because that is what happens when a large mass of people begin to study. At a minimum, they will somehow need to be connected with Kabbalistic sources, just like religious people read these books today without knowing its inner meaning. The entire Torah speaks about the connection between people, but today they study it in a different way.

We still need to complete The Zohar for All, which we have already started working on, in order to give it to the world since it will be part of the study. People will not be able to manage without this book, as it is written: “The Zohar will help everyone come out of exile, and not just the one percent.” Everyone will need to study it to some extent.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/18/2011, The Zohar

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Question: By our nature, every one of us tries to use others to the utmost, without taking the common good into account. So how can a regular person start taking others into consideration?

Answer: This can only happen with the help of the Light that Reforms.

You are forgetting that there is a force operating in creation which drives us. We are puppets. I cease being a puppet when I ask the Light to change me. I do not do anything on my own. The Light makes the actions in the vessels. However, I can influence it with my desire, with my request, “Change me more, accelerate my development.” This is the only thing I can ask from it.

If I attract it, then I advance by the path of acceleration, and this is my only possible personal contribution. Development unfolds one way or another. The only difference is in the extent of the troubles and suffering. I can either advance quickly, consciously, with awareness, by my own desire, or slowly, with “a lot of blood spilled.” But one way or another, I evoke the Lights that change me.

Naturally, I want to use the other for my own benefit and I will never want to unite with him. Why would I? I don’t have some hidden button that can switch the egoistic desire to an altruistic one.

However, if I use the environment and the study, if I persuade myself, if I form a “desire without a desire,” “a prayer before a prayer,” then all of my requests accumulate and work, even if they are insincere, and gradually I truly do begin to deem the quality of bestowal, love, and unification important. “There’s something worthwhile there, after all. I shouldn’t let it go by. It’ll come in handy.”

Sometimes I want it and sometimes I don’t. Later the desire no longer disappears, but it is small. And eventually, from the distant states, I reach a firm, decisive desire: “I want it, and that’s all.” Why? “Because.” What will you get out of it? “I can’t explain that. You wouldn’t understand anyway.” But still? “The Light is working on me. It has changed me and now I want this. The Light changed me because I resorted to all kinds of tricks and contrivances. I did everything I could, I made efforts, and I found.”

We should never forget this principle: Everything is done by the Light, and we can awaken it. Therein lies our free choice. Don’t look for an opportunity to change yourself directly and don’t eat yourself up for being weak. To achieve inner changes, we always have to turn to the Light. And that means constantly raising our prayer to the upper one.
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From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/23/11, “Peace in the World”

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All the picturesque descriptions that are given to us in the Torah tell us about an increasingly stronger connection between human beings. In the spiritual world one doesn’t enter corporeal Egypt, cross the physical Red Sea and the Sinai desert, or reach the corporeal land of Israel. In the spiritual world all of this symbolizes the different degrees of the connection between the souls, between human beings, who connect internally, in their desires.

It is a connection that the Torah tells us about. It doesn’t speak of geography or the history of some group that wandered in the land of Canaan or Egypt. It tells only about the connection in which we discover these degrees. “Go from your land” means to exit your egoistic desires, that is, the life in Babylon. You need to leave this desire and arrive at a bigger one, in which you connect to your group more strongly. This desire is already called the “land of Canaan” (“land” means “desire”).

Later we enter the left line, our desires increase, the evil inclination is revealed more, and this is called the “descent into Egypt.” And when we later ascend from this state of “Egypt” by connecting together, it is said that we are in “the Sinai desert.”

After connecting above all the problems that become revealed in us, we rise to a level called the “land of Israel.” All of these are degrees of connection and not geographical places.

The names are taken from our world, but they are used to name the spiritual degrees. We can take a bus and travel from Babylon to the land of Canaan and then to Egypt and back, but it wouldn’t be a spiritual trip. It would just be a corporeal trip.

It all depends upon how we, sitting in one place, climb the degrees and discover the spiritual worlds within us. It is revealed only according to the strength of the connection between us. As we unite, we discover the spiritual degrees according to the strength of our unity.

We correct all of our “613 desires” only through connection. If a person doesn’t connect with others, he doesn’t fulfill any “commandment,” doesn’t make any correction of the desire to receive. All of the desires are disconnected from each other as a result of the shattering, and they can be corrected only by connecting one to the other.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/14/2011, Writings of Rabash

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Humanity is experiencing labor pains today. This is the birth of a new world. We ourselves discover these external conditions, while nothing changes in the world itself. There are people in the world today who commit suicide because of the financial crisis or because of fears and other problems. But at the same time you can find people who are not worried about anything and don’t feel the crisis at all.

It all depends on how a person discovers the world, but the world itself has no form of its own. Thus we can relax, think that it is all right, and wait until the regular flow of life will bring us somewhere by itself. Or we can also bring ourselves to a state where we will feel that we can’t agree to remain in this state any longer and must finally connect and discover spirituality, which is only revealed in a connection between us.

Everything depends on the pressure that we ourselves create. And then the usual, relaxed reality in which the rest of the people live will seem to us like the darkness of Egypt. We will feel how our enemies, Pharaoh’s troops, push us from behind, and we must jump into spirituality, like into the Red Sea.

Everything depends on how a person perceives his own state and by this leaves himself no choice but to connect with others.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/14/2011, Writings of Rabash

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Once, in the days when I studied with Rabash, the group was in a state of special inspiration, and I asked Rabash: “What are we missing to make a breakthrough?” He replied: “An attack is missing.”

It was a year when we invested great efforts in preparations for the holiday of Sukkot. We built a new Sukkah according to stringent rules that Rabash wanted to uphold. It was made entirely of wood, without a single nail made from metal, and with the covering so dense that the light could hardly pass through it.

We invested a lot in it by working together, and maybe because of that, a very special, warm atmosphere was created. Rabash gave special explanations in his lessons, or it just seemed this way to us because we were able to grasp more. And then I asked: “What else are we missing? In the course of a week, we are together in a Sukkah each day, learning and talking. Why doesn’t it happen?”

And then he said that it still wasn’t enough. In order to reach a connection, an attack was needed. That’s the way it was during the exit from Egypt. The people joined together and then they escaped. It is not possible to exit without a connection. It was that way before as well, when the people of Israel sighed from the hard work in the store-cities of Pithom and Ramses and cried together to the Creator, having felt that they wouldn’t succeed.

And it was also that way at the parting of the Red Sea when they felt the troops of Pharaoh catching up with them from behind and before them the Red Sea was blocking the way. And when they stood at the foot of Mount Sinai, on one side the women pushing them (and it is written that the people exited Egypt thanks to the righteous women who put pressure on the men), and from the other side the Creator placed a condition: Either you connect or this will be the place of your burial.

We see that the conditions that are revealed here are not at all simple. They are like labor pains. It is only if we accept these conditions that we will really be born into the new world.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/14/2011, Writings of Rabash

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It is known that The Zohar is a special book. Everyone says that it contains many secrets and has the special, miraculous force (Segula). It is true. Thus, during the reading of The Zohar, each person has to try to think of the most important thing that this book could bring him—but only about what’s really worthwhile to ask for. Only about one thing!

For example, you bring your child to a toy store and tell him: “Choose one toy only!” And you see how his eyes go cross-eyed. He rushes around in confusion from one toy to another and each time grasps another toy: “This one! No, that one! No, this one!”

Thus, if The Zohar gives you the most important and the best thing from the “toy store” that you now entered, think about the most important “toy” for you. And then from the chain of thoughts, you will really come to something of value.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/21/2011, The Zohar

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Question: What is the upper mind, which every person must attain as a result of correction?

Answer: The mind is the Light of Hochma (Wisdom), which I attain when I bring myself from the side of my desire, Malchut, to correspondence with the first nine Sefirot.

Malchut is a receiving vessel, the will to enjoy. If I change it to bestowal, embodied by the first nine Sefirot, I turn it into a vessel for the Light of Hochma. This is called the mind, the Light of Wisdom (Hochma), that is dressed in the creature’s desire.

We cannot attain the upper mind with our corporeal mind. The upper, acting mind is the mind of the Creator, Who created the created beings with the Light of Wisdom. We can attain it only through equivalence of form, as we correct ourselves.

If I correct my desire to receive to bestowal, that is, I fill it with Light of Hassadim (Mercy), I acquire the anti-egotistic screen with which I perform a union with the Light (Zivug de Haka’a), thus raising the Reflected Light. Then the upper Light clothes me, and I attain the mind of the Creator.

The wisdom of Kabbalah is called the “wisdom of reception” since it teaches us how to receive the Light of Hochma and thus attain the Creator. However, we attain this mind gradually, according to our equivalence to Him in bestowal. It is not the corporeal, beastly mind we are born with.

We obtain the upper mind due to our correction. The more a person corrects himself, the greater spiritual mind he attains. It has nothing to do with one’s inborn mental abilities. One can be Einstein, but it will have no effect on his or her spiritual advancement.

The corporeal mind that helps a person understand how to better use his egoism has nothing to do with the mind he acquires namely by lowering himself, the work in the group, meaning thanks to actions that are seemingly senseless, irrational, and scorned by everyone.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/21/2011, “The Acting Mind”

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Question: Why should we have an “internal” convention at a time when we have started disseminating to the masses?

Answer: Now it is more necessary than ever. In the past we could have small gatherings of friends, and it was enough in order to advance, quietly and individually.

In truth, we waited for the world to wake up. We, Galgalta ve Eynaim (GE), don’t need to correct ourselves personally. As the AHP awakens, our task is to receive corrections and serve it. Baal HaSulam writes about it in “The Giving of the Torah.” This is what it means to be a “kingdom of priests and a holy nation.”

We are special only because we can and are obliged to serve the entire world. This is the uniqueness of Israel, of Galgalta ve Eynaim. If we “deserve” anything, it is only service, work.

Today the nations are waking up, public unrest is starting, and the world is submerged in problems. For us it is a sign that we should hold events like the convention in December, in order to accumulate in ourselves a greater power of bestowal, of mutual guarantee. Only then will we be able to turn to the world and invite more people to join us, which will enable us to receive the Light of Hochma (Wisdom).

For us, Galgalta ve Eynaim, revelation means reaching unity and mutual guarantee and doing so in connection with AHP. We have to awaken mutual guarantee in it too. Then in response to that, it will join us as the factor of its unification, and together we will all become the ten full Sefirot. This will be a true Partzuf, upon which the upper Light can act. Then it will begin to fill us.

 
The Light will operate not only on GE, on “half of the body,” but on the entire degree. Today we approach the realization of this stage: If we connect to the masses, if we bring them and ourselves to the minimal level of mutual guarantee, the upper Light will fill us. It will only fill all of us together. This is because by nature, GE do not require any filling and work only for AHP.
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From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/21/2011, “One Commandment”

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Baal HaSulam, “One Commandment”: It is hopeless to wait for a time when a solution is found for allowing one to begin the work of the Creator altruistically. As in the past so in the future, every servant of the Creator must begin the work egoistically and from that achieve bestowal.

We start from a distance, with the egoistic desire to receive whatever seems valuable to us: money, respect, power, knowledge, excellence, health, the next world, foresight, or comprehension of secrets. Each one is attracted to something else in the wisdom of Kabbalah, something that is close to his heart. This is how a person begins his path.

But gradually, thanks to the integrated influence of the group, the studies, and dissemination, a person draws upon himself the Light that Reforms. The Light is the only acting force, but we activate it by different, collateral means and actions that seemingly have nothing to do with it.

I may joke around with the friends, have no correct intention and hardly sit at the lesson, or disseminate because my ego wants to impose my values on others. It all does not matter. If the actions themselves are close to the Light, if they are intended to bestow, to study, and to unite, then they draw the Light that Reforms. As it is said: “Commandments do not require intent.”

So there is action, and there is intention. My actions are the studies, dissemination, gatherings of friends, and the work in the group. However, I have no control over my intentions. I can feel that I am an angel or a devil, it doesn’t matter. If I perform the necessary actions to the best of my ability, I draw the reforming Light that gradually helps me transition from the egotistic intention to the altruistic one—from Lo Lishma (for oneself) to Lishma (for the sake of bestowal).

The only difference is the intention. The actions remain the same: I continue to study as before, I take part in gatherings of friends and dissemination, but my intention is corrected more and more, compelling me to truly connect with others, with the Creator, and to bestow upon them.

This is the process, and we should only continue it without any delays. No one can escape it. We should only look for the most efficient actions to hasten the process and still look for the intentions that are closer to bestowal and can be added to them.

Everyone goes through the same stages, and no one can skip any of them. We can, however, speed up the advancement, and this is all of our work. It is said that Israel hastens time. Here the Creator cannot yield. After all, all the stages are essential in order to acquire the mind and feeling needed to create the vessels that enable us to understand and to attain Him, to reach the equivalence of form and merge with Him.

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From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/21/2011, “One Commandment”

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We are standing at the foot of a ladder in a state opposite to Infinity, which we have to attain. Our ascent through the steps of this ladder occurs as a result of two active forces: the force of our desire and the Light.

On each level of our ascent, we have to show a greater desire to connect, and then to the extent of our desire, the Light acts upon us and connects us to one another. We do half of the action, which is called “half of a shekel” and the Creator does the other half, as it said: “A prayer does half the job,” “the Creator will finish it for me.”

We only try to connect to one another, and the Light comes—and performs this union between us. On a higher level we’ll experience an even greater pressure so that we will connect even more, and then once again the Light will come to connect us.

This is how we obtain a greater connection by ascending up the steps of the ladder until we reach total unity. Essentially this is the entire process that we must undergo.

This process contains practical work when we must physically sit together at meals, participate in different events and dissemination projects. However, the main work in correction happens when we study and want to attract the Light that Reforms so that it will create a connection between us.

We have to want to connect in order to attain bestowal and spirituality, and then the Light will influence us. However, this is more effective when we request this when we study and wish to connect and attract the Light. After all, when we read the sources, the words of which hide the Light, we are in the same place, the same state as the Light, and it is close to us.

It doesn’t matter how much I understand while reading the text because I am still unable to truly understand it until we connect. However, from the very first level of connection, I’ll understand what I read—thanks to the fact that the Light will connect us. It will connect all of our different forms into a mosaic. From this mosaic, I will reveal a picture of the spiritual degree, and within this new picture, I’ll reveal what I read about in the Kabalistic books.

We’ll start ascending to a higher level, meaning we’ll obtain greater egoistic desires. We’ll still have to connect, and this will be a more complex and higher level of connection. We’ll demand more Light, it will connect us, and a new mosaic will form between us.

Although we won’t appear to change, what will change are our egoistic desire, our intentions, and our efforts to connect above our egoistic desires. In the connection between us, we’ll reveal a different mosaic, a different and loftier picture, and in the words of The Zohar we’ll reveal a new inner state, one that’s more exalted and detailed.

We aspire to connect like the pieces of the mosaic, but the text tells us of a state where we’re already connected, and no matter what level we’re on, the text always corresponds to it. For this reason as we read The Zohar, we must demand for the correction to occur right then—thanks to the Light hidden in it.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/14/2011, The Zohar

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