Question: Why do you and your central group have a religious appearance if you keep explaining that it doesn’t assist spiritual advancement? It would be better to assume a more secular look in order to become closer to people and the world, wouldn’t it?

Answer: I don’t think it should bother people. Our students come from different backgrounds, and we don’t tell anybody what they should look like. And if the public are familiar with our society already, they should know that we do not convert people into religion or force them to observe any religious rituals. They yearn to reach the root of their soul and come to us to transform their soul, to uncover the spiritual world.

We deal solely with the correction of the soul since the purpose of the wisdom of Kabbalah is the revelation of the Creator to the created beings. And revelation occurs only in the corrected soul. As to a person, he or she usually keeps following those traditions that they are accustomed to.

Nonetheless, Kabbalah was passed to us through the people whose background was in Judaism. After the destruction of the Temple, the people fell from the spiritual dimension, and Kabbalah was replaced with religion that is below in our corporeal world. But over the course of all these centuries and parallel to it, from Rabbi Shimon and further on, Kabbalah was passed on from one Kabbalist to the next along their chain. This is how it has finally reached us as a method of correction.

Kabbalah wasn’t related to religion that remained below. It continued to live among Kabbalists in the same way as it did before the fall of the Temple. There has always been a gap, an iron wall, between Kabbalah and religion.

As to us, we receive Kabbalah as it was before the destruction of the Temple, and that is why it has nothing to do with modern religion. We deal with correction of the soul. But at the same time, before the destruction, the Torah and commandments were followed by the people in intention and action alike, as one whole. There was the Temple and ritual service in it with all the necessary attributes. The same pertained to every person, according to his or her root as Cohen, Levy, or Israel.

The branch and the root were unified and viewed by people as one whole. But later on, the branch ended up below, in this world, having lost its tie with the root, and the root remained above, cut off from the branch. This is what is regarded as the exit of the people of Israel into exile when religion was all that remained for them.

But today, we need to ascend to where we came from, and let’s hope that when we do, we will comprehend what our duty is and return to the original state of complete and wholesome fulfillment of the Torah and commandments as spiritual actions. I don’t know how it will look; it is possible that physical actions will not be necessary any longer or they will be performed only by the people of Israel.

Baal HaSulam writes that even in the fully corrected society, every person may adhere to his or her religion since religion is cultural traditions. We don’t know any of it yet, and we should focus only on one thing: the correction of our souls.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/20/2011, “Introduction to the Book, Panim Meirot uMasbirot”

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Question: Why do we experience such difficulty finding words to convey our message to others?

Answer: If we were able to sense the spiritual definitions, we would find simple words capable of reaching the heart of any person.

We have to develop the method of correction in order to bring the entire world to adhesion with the Creator. To do this, we need to sense spirituality. After all, only when sensing something do you begin to understand, which gives you the ability to express it through words. A sensation comes from the depth of the desire, from its force, aspiration, and necessity to fill it.

There are no smart or stupid ones. Everything depends only on the desire! In our world there are people who can express their thoughts in a very beautiful and poetic way. This is impossible in spirituality where the depth of sensation and internal pain determine everything.

Our problem is that we are blocked by our mind and we do not care about the correct sensations. These sensations depend on our connection with the world, with the society. After all, you have to find words in order to convey the unity among all! Kabbalah is a science which expresses the unity of souls.

If we do not aspire to connect with one another, we can’t express anything through our words. We take what is written in the books and convert it into slogans and ready-to-use stereotypes that are not clear even to us.

Therefore, everything depends on the degree of our connection with the society, with the group. If this connection exists, if a new sensing Kli (desire) emerges, even if it is yet unable to perceive a lot, this already gives us the ability to speak an easy language which is close and clear to people.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/11/2011, Writings of Rabash

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The process of development of the egoistic desire, where the desire to bestow operated very gradually, has brought man to an absolutely broken state. The still, vegetative, and animate nature, as well human society, the entire reality is now a deplorable sight.

We are in a very dangerous state, in a contradiction to the entire reality. On one hand, reality seems to be something enormous, global, interconnected, and whole, but on the other, human society on earth seems to have turned into an invasive  cancer, a harmful mold which consumes and destroys nature by covering the entire Earth with its waste and excrement.

We are discovering that we are absolutely opposite to nature, so we will have to realize in the near future that there is no other solution but to attain balance with it. And this can be realized because the two opposite forces of reception and bestowal have already been revealed in us, and they are ready for us to begin using them in a balanced manner. Only then will we begin to rise together as humanity from the still to the vegetative level of our development.

Until now these two opposite forces were developing us without our consent. Finally, they have brought us to the first free choice, and now we begin to develop on our own by evoking the force of bestowal for it to determine our development above the force of reception enrooted in us.

Before, the force of bestowal was concealed inside, and it was gradually growing like rising dough, or on the contrary, it enticed from afar: “Come this way; there is something here; there are pleasures waiting for you here.” Now we will be choosing the bestowing desire on our own as the force that we should be following in our development. Bestowal will not be helping the receiving desire, but the receiving desire will follow the bestowing desire.

We must keep making this decision over and over above our egoistic desire which does not stop increasing. As we ascend, both forces, bestowal and reception, will keep growing and emerge equally in us to give us the opportunity to have free choice. We will feel like we exist in the middle between them. In Kabbalah, this place is called “Klipat Noga,” and this is the way we will advance.

On every point of my path, my choice consists of revealing the equality of these two forces in me and preferring the giving desire to the receiving one. Bestowal must determine my direction so that the receiving desire would develop specifically in this way. By doing this, the receiving desire takes the form of the bestowing desire, the form of the Creator. And when the receiving desire is similar (“Dome” in Hebrew) to the Creator, then it is referred to as “man” (“Adam”).

And we will use these two forces the same way. The receiving desire will be constantly growing, and the bestowing desire will grow as well in order to give it a new form. In the end, we will return to the same place where we began our descent, the world of Infinity, where both of these desires exist together perfectly incorporated. We also achieve their absolute adhesion through our choice, as we act from below upward, until the entire receiving desire acquires the full form of the bestowing desire. This will become the end of correction, the completion of our development.

We live in a special time, a new era. What is new about it is that now, through our choice, the desire to bestow must reign above the desire to receive pleasure. This is called “to develop in faith above reason.”

Every day we are joined by more people whose previous mixing of desires have been completed. Gradually, they come to their first free choice: to go from the still to the vegetative degree, to emerge as a spiritually growing being from a still being.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/18/2011, Writings of Rabash

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Question: Eventually we have to realize that we want to unite but cannot do so. But why do I keep forgetting about this?

Answer: You aren’t forgetting about it. Baal HaSulam has an article called “The Wondrous Quality of Remembering” which explains how it’s impossible to remember and then forget something. It’s simply that Reshimot are surfacing and passing in me.

Therefore, you shouldn’t be sorry about something you forgot from the past or something new that emerges that you don’t want. You have to accept every state as a working exercise and realize it. I need everything I have. I see myself after something has surfaced in me and I begin working from that point.

No matter what desires or thoughts awaken in you in order to confuse you with these unexpected “surprises” or infinite repetitions, they won’t go away until you realize them to the end, until you decide that this thought is not fit and you do not want to focus on it, or that it is desirable and you do want to realize it until the end. Nothing goes away until you make that final analysis.

The speed of realizing your desires and thoughts depends on your willingness to tolerate and ascend above them by working with faith above reason. In other words, it depends only on how included you are in the environment.

Question: Why do I have to tolerate this?

Answer: Because you are obligated to not run away from these desires, but to preserve them and analyze them, rising above them.

For example, I get some unpleasant thought. Then I become included in the study and the group, keeping a distance between myself and the disturbance that worries me. And I decide for myself that one is more important than the other. And I keep going that way until this bad thought gets discarded to the very bottom and disappears. That is how I analyze it. After that it keeps happening over and over again until I “trample” it completely.
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/21/11, Writings of Rabash

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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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It is written that “envy, lust, and ambition” lead a person out of this world, which means that we have to use these qualities in order to exit into the spiritual world. But the problem is that a person scatters himself in every direction and reaches for all the desires in the corporeal world.

If one employed all his strength to become a human, rise to the spiritual level, the human degree, he would succeed. But instead, he is chasing after money, fame, and power, and he lacks envy for spiritual properties that would allow him to become a human.

We need to analyze ourselves and connect to the environment which will mold us so that we focus on the most important desire of all: to become a human and fulfill the desires for power, money, and fame only as much as it is vitally necessary. All these properties must only sustain our aspiration to the right kind of envy: to envy the Creator and wish to be like Him! And if I fall and start envying somebody’s wealth, power, or honor, I will clearly not be tuned upward, to the goal.

But how can I envy the Creator if I don’t see or feel Him? This is why we are given the group: to instill the importance of spiritual qualities in us. You will never know who the Creator is until you reach His degree. And besides, His properties are opposite to yours and reject you. Hence, at this point, only the right environment where you can work can help. Only it can change your system of values.

But the problem is that even after a person completes his or her preliminary development at the still, vegetative, and animate degrees and arrives to Kabbalah, to the beginning of the human degree and free will, he may suddenly sway off the path and wander about in other directions for a few, long years, in search of wealth, power, and honor. And by the time he returns, his life is practically over….
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/17/2011, “Introduction to the Book, Panim Meirot uMasbirot”

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Writings of Rabash, Article 29, “Marrying a Virgin”: Every time a person receives a wife, he will receive a virgin who has never had a husband. In other words, he has never used this Malchut and she must always be a new wife. In spiritual work Malchut is called “the kingdom of heaven” which a person must take upon himself every day anew. He has to imagine that he is now starting spiritual work and does not care about anything that came before.

The Creator created creation and exists in adhesion and unity with it. We call this the first state or the world of Infinity. However, creation does not perceive itself in this state. It was simply created this way, but it is not permeated by any details of perception besides one sensation. Therefore, it is like the still degree, a drop of semen which does not have any self-perception.

The Creator’s desire is to bring creation to the realization of who He is so it would become similar and equal to Him. Therefore the true state is concealed from creation and it instead begins to perceive itself in the opposite state. This phase, in turn, divides into several: creation perceives itself as existing at the still, vegetative, animate, and speaking levels.

You and I feel our existence on the human degree of this world. Yet we don’t feel that we developed from the still level. We do not feel our past life cycles on the human level, but simply experience ourselves as existing here and now.

The matter is that every analysis has to happen by itself. A person in this world discerns adhesion, connection with the Creator, and develops to a level where he begins to express his part in creation, his attitude to the Creator.

The Creator brings him to this, giving him the sensation of emptiness in life, but on the other hand motivating him to connect to Him and become similar to Him. Thereby the Creator awakens a person’s desire in the first spiritual point. If a person properly realizes this desire by means of the method of correction, meaning the science of Kabbalah, if he increases his small desire with the help of the group, raising the importance of becoming similar to the Creator and uniting with Him, if he eventually makes his desire similar to the Creator, then he acquires a new degree. The initial point in him grows to become Malchut.

In Hebrew Malchut means kingdom. It is also called “the kingdom of heaven” because a person makes it similar to Bina, the heavens. That is how the first connection between Malchut and Bina, between creation and the Creator, is made.

Then, in order to give a person the opportunity to develop further, everything he had before becomes erased and he receives the next part of the egoistic desire that has to be corrected and made similar to the Creator. This part has to be brought to adhesion so he would become a person on a higher degree. Then no trace of the previous state is left.

Thus, if a person works correctly, then he continuously receives “a virgin for a wife.” Then he once against corrects his desire for the sake of bestowal, making it similar to the Creator and acquiring greater equivalence and closeness with Him. When he completes this phase, the adhesion once again disappears in him and a person again receives a new, corrupted desire that he once again has to work with by means of the group, raising the importance of the goal, increasing his desire, and uniting it with other souls. That is how a person advances.

He continuously receives a new part of Malchut, a “new wife.” If he works for the sake of bestowal, wishing to become similar to the Creator, then in the new state everything that occurred before becomes erased completely and he does not have anything to rely on from past experience. This is indeed a new degree, “virginity.”
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/20/11, Writings of Rabash

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Question: In the “Introduction to the Book, Panim Meirot uMasbirot,” Item 3, Baal HaSulam writes: “We distinguish four divisions in the Speaking species, arranged in gradations one atop the other. Those are the Masses, the Strong, the Wealthy, and the Sagacious. They are equal to the four degrees in the whole of reality, called “Still,” “Vegetative,” “Animate,” and “Speaking [human]…. It follows that the value of one person from the Speaking equalizes with the value of all the forces in the Vegetative and the Animate in the whole of reality at that time, and in all the past generations.”

Is it correct to assume that it is enough to have one person who, by having made his free choice, can open the path of further development to all other levels of nature, which cannot evolve further without it?

Answer: Certainly, by using his free will, one person can open the path to and ensure further development of all the still, vegetative, and animate levels of the human pyramid if all of them unify with each other and join this human degree. This is how Rashbi, the ARI, and Baal HaSulam opened it for us. One person can draw and lead all the others if he is at the “speaking” level of development, whereas they are at the still, vegetative, and animate ones.

We see this in practice. How would humanity evolve if not for certain outstanding individuals who open the door to a new world for the others?

But after such a person makes a breakthrough, reaching balance is up to all others who follow him. The former has done his job, as for instance, Baal HaSulam who revealed to us the entire method of the wisdom of Kabbalah; now it is up to us to actualize it. Until our work is complete, we won’t achieve equilibrium.

He merely explains to us that the problem lies in our imbalance with nature and it’s necessary to come to balance. Nature in its integral form is the Creator. It is with Him that we must harmonize ourselves, meaning to reach equivalence of form, oneness. This is what we must implement. It is necessary to engage the whole world into it, which will require a lot of work.

You may ask who is this person that makes all the difference and must use his free will? You are this person! It is every person who received spiritual awakening within and heard about the method of its realization from the outside.

Only the initial awakening occurs within, and because of it, a person hears a call to him or her from the outside. As a result, one comes to a place where it is indeed possible to realize one’s free will.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/17/2011, “Introduction to the Book, Panim Meirot uMasbirot”

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We never reveal true reality; everything happens in our desires. The Creator created the desire which essentially is the entire material of creation. We feel whatever is happening within it.

Sensations in the desire divide into internal and external, in other words, perception of oneself and the environment. In turn, these segments of perception also divide into a multitude of layers, degrees, parts, and forms.

However, all of this is inside the desire that was created by the Creator. We are not able to imagine anything that exists outside of this desire even hypothetically. There is no other “place” that exists somewhere outside; the entire “space” is confined within the desire.

And this is why everything we perceive depends upon the changes in the desire. All of Kabbalah speaks about the nature of the created desire, the changes it can acquire, and the things it will feel in accordance with these changes. The formula is simple: You enter certain changes into the initial desire and receive a certain sensation in it as a consequence.

The general spectrum consists of a multitude of shades. Different impulses can be revealed at the same time in one desire; we perceive different events, actions in every private desire. Man’s desire divides into 613 parts where he experiences all the different impressions and reactions. And all of them add up to form his image of the world.

The parts of the receiving desire that pertain to the still, vegetative, animate, and human levels shape the contours of reality for us. We can keep opening the desire wider and wider as we keep revealing new parts in it, and then our common world expands.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/17/2011, Writings of Rabash

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Question: What does the following mean (“Introduction of The Book of Zohar,” Article “The Sixth Commandment,” Item 221): “…for none other has permission to pardon him [man] except Him”? How can a law either be or not be merciful?

Answer: In Kabbalah, mercy is the quality of bestowal (Hassadim); it is not the forgiveness of sins like in our world. There is no forgiveness in the spiritual system. This is a system of very precise laws.

And when I do something sinful, I primarily need to know what I did, why I did it, and how. I must understand that the Creator has fixed this sin up for me for it to become revealed, and now it helps me to see how I can ascend.

Essentially, there are no sins; there is only the revelation of evil which was previously concealed and now becomes revealed. This is why mercy in The Zohar usually refers to an attainment of the force of bestowal.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/17/2011, “Introduction of The Book of Zohar”

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