Question: What is the role of the environment in our work against our nature?

Answer: The environment strengthens a person and provides him with a place to express himself, to do the necessary actions. It’s a place where he receives support and solidarity, the Surrounding Light (Ohr Makif), and the impressions along the way. The environment is everything.

Nobody receives anything directly from the Creator. We are interconnected within a single system where everyone has his place, like cells in a body, and everyone receives nourishment from this common body. And the life flowing through it is the common force of bestowal, the Creator.

Take our organism for example. It contains three levels of development: the still, vegetative, and animate. And at the same time, with a proper operation which surpasses their own existence they beget a new life: desires, thoughts, passions, feelings, attainment, and understanding. The body lives, and this allows an awareness of life to manifest over it.

Technically, the organism also continues working when I lose consciousness. But I no longer continue being a person in the full sense of that word; I become disconnected from human life.

So, right now our common body operates one way or another; it is complete, but the reciprocity of its parts is only realized on the still, vegetative, and animate levels. This is our world. But the human level, the degree of similarity to the Creator is missing; it is not revealed. And we need to develop it.

We only discover it when we ourselves activate our body with the purpose of establishing a connection with bestowal, the Light, the consciousness that we refer to as the “Creator.” We need to activate all our cells as is, but we also must add the intention to them: the purpose of life.

When we add an intention over the life we now live, we enter the human degree. Then due to this preparation, the Creator becomes revealed to this desire, to this intention that has been added. He becomes revealed in the desire of the human (Adam) within us.

The human manifests in us only under the condition that we unite among us as we understand and realize that the reason we are doing it is the Creator. We want to reveal Him, and He wants to endow us with bestowal.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/24/2011, Writings of Rabash

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Question: What is a group?

Answer: A group is the desire of each one of us to find oneself united with others and the Creator. It is written: “Israel, the Torah, and the Creator are one.” A group is those who strive to connect with one another for the purpose of revealing the force that fills them in this connection.

“I” is my spiritual movement ahead; it is just this movement, nothing else counts. My “I” can be egoistic, set against: “I do not want to connect,” or on the contrary: “I want to connect.” I only take this into consideration.

A group is all the others who want to be together with the same movements, even though they could possibly be set against. And here we are trying to do this together in order to reveal the Creator in our desire, according to the law of the equivalence of form.

We can never reveal Him any other way, but only as the property that we will create between us. This “tool” of ours will elicit what is happening outside of us. We are creating a detector that discovers the Creator to the extent of the sensitivity that we have attained between us.
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From Lesson 2 in Moscow 1/16/10, “A Prayer of Many”

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Question: How do we accelerate our advancement?

Answer: It is very difficult. I know through my own experience. I think the only possibility is through luck

. The mind does not work here, and nothing will help. Here, what is needed is called “good fortune” or luck, “Mazal” in Hebrew.

Or more simply, cancel yourself, turn yourself into a small cogwheel, a mechanism within the group: “I will do everything like my friends say; I do everything they want, with less of my own thoughts.” Take some kind of work and perform it automatically, without activating your feelings or thoughts, just invest yourself in it, and cling to your friends. That helps.

But overall, it is very difficult. Properly incorporating yourself in the group is the passport to success. You do not need anything else. Once you tune yourself into the group, you discover that it is completely corrected, that all the worlds exist in it, and the Creator is inside it.

Your friends do not even feel this, but once you cancel yourself in relation to them, you begin to discover it among them. And suddenly you see: “Holy smoke, where am I? Our world turns out to be the world of Infinity? Where did all the negativity go? There is none of it here! Everything is beautiful, in absolute perfection.”

This is how you see the world once you correct yourself. This is why in Hebrew “world” is “Olam,” from the word “Nehelam” (disappearing). It is relative. Just like the theory of relativity, everything depends on the “user,” the observer.
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From Lesson 2 in Moscow 1/16/10, “A Prayer of Many”

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Question: As we progress, we discover tiny, pitiful “selves,” low despicable characters within ourselves. How do we recognize them? And how does the other “self” emerge?

Answer: I discover such a low, unworthy character within only relative to the Creator. As to everything else, my character doesn’t matter.

What do we reveal evil in? Suppose I love to eat. Is it evil, egoism? No, it isn’t! I love to party. Is it good or bad? Is it egoism? No, it isn’t! Egoism surfaces where I must unite with the others in order to reveal the Creator, while I don’t wish to do it. Egoism is the rejection of friends in the group. Therefore, to reveal it is not a simple thing to accomplish; one needs to sweat to come to that.

This is exactly what we stumble on! Whatever gives us pleasure that is not connected to this type of egoism isn’t harmful. But as soon as a problem with egoism, which we need to work on, arises within a group, that’s where it comes to a halt and gets stuck. This is the type of characteristic that must be corrected.

Nothing else needs to be fixed. Keep partying, eating two or three portions during dinner, sleep ten hours a day. It doesn’t matter. What does matter is only your relationship with the friends. Such is the specific and selective way to filter my nature:

• What connects me with the group needs to be corrected.
• What lies outside the relationships within a group and between the groups concerns only myself. One person needs to sleep ten hours, another one needs to eat five meals a day, and so on. It doesn’t matter.

So, egoism can be only between the friends. It can show all its faces only there. This is the only thing to pay attention to. The friends, too, can be evaluated only by how they work among us. But until a person develops such an awareness, such understanding, and hears and accepts it, years may pass. He may hear about it, but still doesn’t adjust internally, register it, or perceive this.
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From Lesson 2 in Moscow 1/16/10, “A Prayer of Many”

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In our work, there should be a clear division of categories:

1. Relationships between the friends in the group itself.

2. Relationships between the groups. We are physically connected within our group, and virtually with the other groups. This difference exists to this day. It won’t disappear until we find the inner connection between us, not virtual, not through the Internet, and not through other channels.

3. A person’s connection to family and the surrounding world.

First of all, we should pay attention to our interconnection in the group. If the group doesn’t achieve the correct interconnection, everything else fails.

Furthermore, we are people with families. Within the group, we should practice the following policy: It is desirable that each of the friends look after the others so that all of them have a normal, comfortable existence. In other words, I should make sure that my friends have decent family relations, as much as it is possible. After all, we live in a transition period, and a husband and wife may not share each other’s interests.

If a person falls into a descent, we must support him. But we should merely support, while he has to take care of himself. If he doesn’t, but rather falls to the hands of his friends: “Do with me as you please” (so to speak), then this is not a true member of the group.

Besides, we must ensure disciplined attendance of the lessons. If anyone has an opportunity, I advise visiting us for a week to see how it is done. An hour and a half before the lesson, students on duty start calling all the others to get them out of bed.

Some have to be personally delivered to the lesson. It can be very difficult to get up, almost impossible. During the time I was my teacher’s student, we had a few students who, before going to bed, tied a rope to their leg and threw the other end over the balcony so I could tug on it until the person woke up.

This kind of reciprocity is simply necessary! And only if a person is adamant, if he writes a statement refusing to comply, then you can leave him alone for a while. Yet later on, still remind him, bring him over, invite him to a dinner, and so forth.

We should understand human nature. A person is as he was made by the Creator. Hence, we should act accordingly.
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From Lesson 2 in Moscow 1/16/10, “A Prayer of Many”

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Kabbalah describes sensing desires and the Light that fills them. Their gradual manifestation in relation to us builds spiritual worlds. The first in line is the world of Assiya with it being a small sensation. We perceive our mutual state not as dynamic; it is rather stationary and hence, it is called “still” nature.

Subsequently, we start to slowly realize that the states are mutable. It turns out they have their own dialectics and development. Thus, we transition to the vegetative degree which is characterized by consumption, secretion, and growth. We begin to feel the dynamics, our participation in the process. While sharing the same space with all the other desires (souls) and the Light that fills them, we can already exercise our influence.

Then, we feel the states at the animate level within this space. Now we can act autonomously and move from place to place. A plant, despite the fact that it can grow, is stationary, whereas an animal grows, moves, and bears living offspring. Thereby, we practically reach a condition similar to our world. Suddenly, we start feeling alive, existing in our world, but only in the property of bestowal.

Later on, the time comes for the next property. It unfolds when we learn this entire space so well that we start sensing its entire plan, Nature’s plan, from beginning to end and engage in it. That is the point when we get truly familiar with the primary thought regarded as “the Creator.”

We study all this in the wisdom of Kabbalah. The worlds of Assiya, Yetzira, Beria, Atzilut, Adam Kadmon, and the world of Infinity, all of them are the attainment of the space in which we exist. As we attain the spiritual worlds, our world with its corporeal affairs remains in our perception. It exists until we have reached complete and absolute knowledge, wisdom, and oneness with all desires and the force that fills them. Afterward, when we reach the last level, the world of Infinity, everything in it starts to interconnect and falls together; the space folds up.

And all of this is based on the prayer of the many. This means I never stop at a personal perception of what is happening with me. Having caught myself at the initial, egoistic analysis, I must straighten myself up and place myself in the right position.

To accomplish that, I make a preliminary analysis of any spiritual action: I realize that I am within all the others and that the Creator evokes hate in me, in the group, toward the others on purpose so that I can rise above it and with His help arrange everything correctly and well. I perform a calculation: Why do I need everything to be structured well?

I draw the Creator and evoke Him to appear and reveal Himself, up to a state when there is absolute peace between us, when we are as one man with one heart. We need the Creator not to install peace between us like a mother who is supposed to show up so the children don’t harass each other. He instills quarrels in us so we may call on Him and force Him to reveal Himself among us.

And when we finally achieve peace between us, it signifies that the Creator has really revealed Himself between us. And if we are still experiencing some tensions, it means that we haven’t yet revealed Him enough between us. In this way, we climb the 125 rungs until we fully achieve this.
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From Lesson 2 in Moscow 1/16/10, “A Prayer of Many”

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Everything depends upon the environment. It has to make me more sensitive to the challenges that the upper force, which exists between us and motivates each of us toward integral unity, constantly sets before me.

On one hand, I can be very keenly, very perceptually tuned to its finest vibrations. On the other, under the influence of the surrounding environment, the society that I belong to, the group, I can comprehend how to react to its influence correctly. This is how we should act all the time.

The Creator changes me to a certain degree, so I start to feel the environment and myself a little differently, and I harmonize to it accordingly. And then it is He again, then I; His action, my action again. It becomes like ascending using two legs. This is how we move forward by way of the inner attuning of our “instrument” to a dialogue with the Creator.

If we perceive Him correctly, we start working in sync, which is exactly what is regarded as “the work of the Creator” since it is He who works. As to us, we just need to react and tune ourselves in correctly. We don’t have to do anything except to build a correct environment for ourselves: the Creator on one side, the group on the other, and me in the middle, automatically reacting to everything.

I myself cannot influence me, just as I cannot work on myself; hence, what is needed here is the collective prayer. Don’t focus on yourself. Who am I to focus on myself? I cannot do anything with myself, can I? All of our life demonstrates that we ourselves cannot change, no matter what we do.

What we are is what we will be unless we start changing ourselves under the influence of two reasons:

1. The Creator, the integral force that fills all space between us.
2. The group, all the others except for me. They form particles filled with the Creator, inside which I reside.

Essentially, I have to find harmony with the other particles. They are harmonized with each other and the Creator, and only I in relation to them am not in balance, in the correct state, or integrated. This is what a person’s job, his attuning himself to the group, is.

While I am moving closer to it, I start feeling the upper world. I feel the Creator’s presence not somewhere “out there,” but between us. In the void between us, where all these “elementary particles” (our desires) are, I start feeling everyone’s desires, while the Light is between them.

The force that fills us, the integral desire consisting of individual interconnected desires, is called a Kli, vessel, or Malchut. And the Light that is revealed between us in our shared aspirations toward spirituality is what we call the Upper Light or the Creator. That is what we feel, and that is what the upper world is.
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From Lesson 2 in Moscow 1/16/10, “A Prayer of Many”

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The Zohar, Introduction, Article “Two Points,” Item 121: This is why the forces of separation are called “locks,” since they block the gates of approaching and drive us away from the Creator. But if we overcome them so they do not affect us, cooling His love from our hearts, the locks become doors, the darkness becomes light, and the bitter becomes sweet.

Question: What does it mean, “cooling His love from our hearts?”

Answer: If a person initially prepares himself for the fact that he plans to acquire love for the Creator, meaning for the quality of bestowal to become loved, accepted, and desirable to him so that he will feel the quality of bestowal that comes to him as a great value and reward for all the efforts he made, that means he prepares himself for the right actions.

Then by virtue of the right preparation, he looks differently at all the disturbances that seem to come in order to cool him down, to push him away from love for the Creator, from coming closer to the quality of bestowal. He views them as help because precisely by overcoming them he becomes stronger, more understanding, braver, and more learned, and through the greater understanding, sensations, and strength he ascends to the quality of bestowal.

For example, if I want to be physically strong, then all of my work with weights, jumping, and running is training for me that will enable me to become stronger. Everything depends on the preparation. If I don’t desire to be strong, if this does not worry me, then any obstacle that arises on my path will deprive me of the desire to advance. I will circumvent it and not be happy that it has come.

Do I see the obstacles as help sent to me from Above in order to make me grow and raise me to the Creator’s level, or not? This depends on my aspiration, preparation, and the support from the environment. This is the only way that we can advance.

Everything depends on the preparation. Before I open up a book, come to the group, start studying or thinking about anything, I have to ask the question, “Why am I doing this? And what should I be thinking about?” The only thing I should think about is how to make a calculation according to the analysis “true versus false,” rather than the sensations, “sweet versus bitter.” Then I immediately try to build my discernments based on the analysis, “true versus false.” And if that is so, then I at least know that I am not there, I don’t want it, and so on. Yet I nevertheless discern the truth: Who am I right now, and what is happening inside of me and outside of me?

This is necessary! In this regard everything depends on the environment, or the preparation from the surrounding environment. A grain cannot grow unless the environment provides it with everything it needs to grow. By itself it will simply dry up. There has to be an environment that awakens a person and works on him.

Imagine that you are in an environment where everyone aspires to be physically strong. Then you learn from them and together with them participate in all of the training. They jump and lift weights from morning until night! Why? Because that is their goal. And you start doing the same thing whether you want it or not because you receive the importance of the goal from them. You see every obstacle, every weight that you have to lift, every exercise you have to make as an opportunity given to you for growth. That’s all. There is no other opportunity.
From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/25/11, The Zohar

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The time when the wisdom of Kabbalah comes into circulation is not up to a Kabbalist. He receives a sign from Above as a revelation: rejection from the world to some degree and a striving to realize his mission.

These signs are absolutely clear, and he understands them since he lives in spiritual attainment. Due to the fact that he is connected with the upper force in the spiritual system, he sees how it arranges these conditions for him.

He does not pick the method either. There are no other methods; there is only one. However, in each generation, a new need arises, and hence a Kabbalist is able to explain more than was required previously.

The Kabbalists of past generations knew the entire method. Do you really think Moses or Rashbi weren’t familiar with it? Yet, they couldn’t express it openly, and that is why they wrote in a coded language.

In our generation, as Baal HaSulam informs us, a Kabbalist not only has the opportunity, but an obligation to reveal it. The generation has come that demands spiritual evolution. Hence, Kabbalists reveal it.

The type and degree of revelation are determined by the generation rather than by the Kabbalist because the need of the generation is what matters. For instance, if there were no students in front of me during the lesson and if I did not absorb their desires, I would have nothing to say. Even though I do have attainment, it wouldn’t get revealed or renewed.

Therefore, one on one with the camera, I can express some mundane things, but I can’t reveal anything new as we do during our daily lessons. This happens because a new desire awakens in the world every day, and through my students who are scattered around the world I feel the common need.

It includes all questions and desires such as the lack of perfection, striving to reveal the screens, the property of bestowal, and interconnection. The sensations of thousands of my students who are present at the lesson become concentrated within me, and I collect them as a mother who feels the need to feed her children. Then, as our studies go on, I see something new in the texts and my perception which didn’t exist before.

So it is every day, even if not everybody notices it. There is a reason the sages said, “from my students I learned most of all.” Why? This is because I receive desire from the students, which enables me to dig deeper into the matter of creation.
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From Kabbalah for Beginners, “Who is a Kabbalist” 12/13/10

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Question: If the environment doesn’t convince me that bestowal is good and enjoyable, I will never achieve it. However, on the other hand, if I don’t seek bestowal, the environment won’t desire it. How do we break free from this vicious circle?

Answer: We should agree to play a game with each other. Rabash writes about it in his articles about the group and its purpose. Nobody arrived here with a ready-made desire to unite with the others, but we decided that we wished to act that way.

You are complaining that it’s impossible to advance without desire, but if you did have it, you would advance egoistically, in this material world. However, how do you advance transcending this egoistic desire? You need to rise above it, and that is why we make a pact in our environment that we value bestowal above reception.

We understand how it works in theory, but in reality we don’t feel it. Hence, we need to play the game of bestowal which is described as, “I labored and found.” We pretend that the goal is extremely important to us, even though in truth we don’t see any importance in it. We are not deceiving ourselves. We admit it, but say that it doesn’t bother us.

I am immersed in my egoism in this world, but in order to raise myself to the next rung, to ascend into the upper world, I play this game with the friends as if it is vitally important for us to reach this future world, the degree of Bina, love and bestowal. If everyone before me pretends that it is important, I will accept is as truth. Otherwise, we will remain in our ego forever. If I don’t force values upon myself that are more exalted than the ones I have today and don’t accept them above reason, I will never achieve them.

If the environment constantly plays like this for me, this game will eventually become my second nature. However, you don’t want to play it. Instead, do you wish to remain “honest,” without corrupting your heart? Since there is nothing else in the heart except egoism, that’s where you will be stuck!

Yes, I admit that there is only egoism in my heart, but I pretend in order to be above it. I can’t order my heart to feel differently, but I wish to receive a new heart, a different one. Now, I act as if I don’t have this egoistic heart, as if I stepped out of it and started to treat everything solely with bestowal.

I rise above everything I have within. There is some savage being living inside me with whom I don’t wish to deal anymore. Let him suffer there inside me, but I, myself, am moving into another system, another body. The environment will affect me and so will the upper Light. However, I have to pressure myself so I may come to it! I don’t want to hear any arguments; I don’t let such people even come close to me.

We must agree that all of us together are sort of playing, working, for each other. If I don’t do my duty, I weaken everybody, and the harm that returns to me increases manifold. Therefore, I should not fear to meet the conditions of mutual guarantee; otherwise, I will suffer immensely. Arvut (mutual guarantee) is a horrible weapon, a double-edged sword.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/10/10, Baal HaSulam, Letter No.13

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