Question: The goals of the wisdom of Kabbalah and psychology are different. The goal of the wisdom of Kabbalah is to discover the Creator, and the goal of psychology is to get along better in our world. But the means are very similar. Both of them use work in a group, the influence of the environment, etc. What is unique in the wisdom of Kabbalah that is not found in psychology?

Answer: Group psychology is the study of how to connect people into a single collective. This is needed everywhere: institutions, schools, governments, and even the family. But they deal with connection on the level of normal psychology.

First, Kabbalistic psychology requires that there will be no more than ten people in a group.

Second, it is desirable for groups to be arranged according to gender, either men or women.

Third, the connection is achieved not through typical group psychology but through the upper Light. Unity like this happens on a completely different level: not on a psychological level, but rather on a spiritual level.

The difference is that on a psychological level, the connection is based on the benefit one receives from connecting with other people, since such a connection can help a person with regard to relaxation, security, sustenance, health, a better family life, a better atmosphere at work, in school etc. It can make a big difference in a person’s life and reduce his suffering.

On the other hand, Kabbalistic psychology is based on a different method: the attraction of the upper Light. We don’t try to connect with each other; rather, we call the upper Light onto ourselves, which connects us above our egoism into altruistic relationships with each other.

For example, I don’t connect with you in order to create our own small business. Instead, with the help of the upper Light—a unique spiritual energy that exists all around us—we build a common unity above us. We summon it through certain activities so that this energy, called Ohr Makif (Surrounding Light, which is invisible and not felt by us), acts upon us and connects us above our egoism. Then, our connection becomes altruistic and spiritual; within it we begin to feel the upper world and the Creator.

Question: What kind of feeling does a person experience when he calls the upper Light onto himself?

Answer: As it is said: “We live without feeling the ground beneath us…” You dwell within your friends; you adhere to them. Your egoistic salvation exists within them, but when this is realized, you are no longer an egoist. Thus, the wisdom of Kabbalah and psychology differ not only in the goal, but also in the means of achieving it. We don’t take anything from this world.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 9/3/17

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Question: We say that the wisdom of Kabbalah awakens people. Maybe we shouldn’t disturb their sleep?

Answer: This is exactly what Pharaoh said to Moses and Aaron in Egypt: “What are you awakening the people for? Let the people work peacefully and quietly. What do you want from them? See how good they feel and how comfortable they live. I created a paradise on Earth for them.”

Egypt truly was an egoistic paradise for them. Suddenly Moses came along and started bothering them, telling them they must leave and go into the wilderness!

Question: So we can’t touch people prematurely? We need to leave everything to the Creator? He is the law of nature and He will awaken everyone? Will the time come and people will be awakened?

Answer: We don’t touch anyone. We just disseminate the wisdom of Kabbalah to those who need it.

The freedom of man is in the ascent above our world. There are completely different conceptual bases. By changing the system of measurement, we look at life differently and change the value system.

Therefore, the concept of freedom is specifically in an elevation above our egoistic world where only the characteristic of bestowal and love exists, which is the characteristic of the Creator. That is what we must achieve and then we will talk, investigate, and discuss things correctly.

In contrast to this, all of the materialistic philosophies no longer provide any benefit. They are limited to the framework of human nature. For some time, philosophy has already exhausted itself there. Moreover, all the sciences are rounding out and gradually ending their development because humanity has achieved the final state of its development and later the attainment of freedom will be waiting for it.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 7/2/17

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In the material world, we are used to working with our intellect. The teacher explains and I listen to what is said. Then I try to understand with my mind and agree with my heart. In Kabbalah, we study differently because we learn about something that is impossible for us to understand or perceive. Our intellect is not adapted to the level being studied.

On the higher level, there are forces that are inconsistent with my logic and principles, which are based on what I currently understand and perceive. I have to accept them as laws belonging to a higher level while I, myself, exist on a lower level. I need to try—in a group, through study, and through the reforming Light—to rid myself of my current perceptions and reason. Once I have made modifications to my inner programming in order to raise it to the next level, I receive new perceptions and new reasoning abilities.

It is impossible for me to enter the information I am currently studying into my old program. The old program cannot process this new information—I do not understand it, I do not experience it, and it does not register within me. But when I change the program, the material being studied becomes clear and understandable to me. This is called spiritual study.

We need to receive that portion of the Light from above that raises us to a higher level—to a level of faith above reason, to a new reason instead of the old. New knowledge is called “faith” because faith is bestowal. In other words, I rise to a level of greater bestowal and then begin to understand and feel the material being studied.

All we need is greater unity among us and more Light that reforms, which will bring us to knowledge on a higher level, to faith above reason.
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From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/11/18, Writings of Baal HaSulam,“Introduction to The Book of Zohar”

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Question: What can a person do if after 15 years of studying, he realizes that he was not striving for what Kabbalah teaches?

Answer: What can you do? People get a profession, they study and graduate from universities, and then it turns out that this is not what they wanted.

When a person studies Kabbalah, at least this is recorded in his “account” because he was engaged in the correction of the soul. If he had been studying any other science, theories, or philosophies, he would have received nothing from them. So by studying Kabbalah, he is in a win-win version of his life.
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From the Kabbalah lesson in Russian 9/24/17

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Opening the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/24/18

In relation to the topic, “from disturbances to ascent,” the word “disturbances” is imprecise, because if we say that “there is none else besides Him,” that there is only one force, not two or three, but only one force acting in reality, then everything comes from the Creator, and He is good and benevolent.

Therefore, negative and positive influences from one extreme to the other stem from a single force, the “good that does good.” Only in the person does that influence split into two, where he feels good in some of those influences, and bad in others. This just points out the lack of a person’s correction, that he has no equivalence with the Creator, where he needs to feel everything emanating from the Creator as good, and the Creator as benevolent. If one doesn’t feel, at every moment, as being in an ocean of the good that does good, at least as an embryo in its mother’s womb, on all sides, in all discernments, where only good, mercy and love encase him, it’s a sign that he has a problem with his vessels’ correction.

Anyone could say, “Yes, I have a problem with the correction of the vessels, but what can I do about it? I don’t feel its lack. I cannot correct what I don’t lack.”

Therefore, here we need to attain the deficiency for correction. However, at least, we start by determining that we, who are in an ocean of good, benevolence, Light, bestowal and love, don’t feel it, which points out our lack of correction.

Now, how can I wake up? How can I not remain as I was before this calculation? Also, now, after this calculation, I feel a little bad and a little good, but it doesn’t concern, shake or force me to now act and exert. There is no deficiency. Intellectually, I could be saying all the right things, but it’s not enough. Emotion—deficiency—needs to shake me from my stance.

Deficiency can come from above. That is considered as being the path of suffering. Deficiency can come from a person who enters into proper connection with the environment, and through envy, lust and honor, he obligates himself to exit this world and enter the spiritual world.

If he doesn’t do that through the ploys great Kabbalists write about, then he doesn’t progress on the path of Achishena (“I will hasten it”). He is gradually brought closer on the path of Beito (“in due time”), but it is gradual, i.e., it is time dependent, and also dependent on a person’s attitude to the whole general system.

Therefore, everything depends on our attitude to the situation: Can we, even in a state where we feel nothing—where nothing moves me, nothing matters to me, and where I simply don’t care, most of the time when I’m detached from spirituality, where I seemingly know what’s going on and I’m ready to just keep going with the flow—how can we muster all the means at our disposal in order for us to, in the group, somehow create an alarm system that will wake us up, that will impact us. Even if we all fall asleep, in any case, let there be something that pushes and pulls us to the purpose of creation.

That is considered as accelerating time. It is called “Israel sanctifying the times.” Whoever is “Yashar Kel” (“straight to God”) really shortens time, and everything depends on shortening time, because certainly Gmar Tikkun (the end of correction) is alive, even now, but do we reach it or not, now or in who knows how many events, incarnations or years?

The main thing is that our work is not through great ascents and great descents, but on indifference—it’s a war on indifference. That desert consumes us.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson on January 24, 2018.

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Remark: Until the 17^th and 18^th centuries, Western civilization lived with a sense that there is some kind of cosmic order in society and in nature, that there is an upper force.

My Comment: Man in Western civilization walked, as they said , under the grace of God, a God they invented for themselves. This was useful for kings, clergy, and other controlling structures. It gave a king legitimacy that he was God’s representative on Earth.

But then everything turned upside down because egoism grew and it was no longer possible to reign over people. Various movements appeared: Calvinism, Lutheranism, and so on, which gave a powerful push for future development.

Very quickly those movements started to transform religion into new social forms because the old ones were already useless for the development of the population. In its social, economic, and political relationships, the population outgrew the framework of the old religion; it needed a different religion. So various faith-based movements appeared.

The Middle Ages were distinguished by rapid development. It only seems to us that it was somewhat slow. But serious processes were taking place that gave significant impetus for new possibilities in the development of the sciences and arts, and the birth of a new freedom. The individual started to emerge from the control of the clergy.

And then the question of how to keep the individual reined in arose. All sorts of nationalistic movements appeared, and opposing them, socialistic and communistic movements.

Question: What was the goal of leaving ordinary religion? To prepare humanity for a more enlightened perspective?

Answer: The goal of nature is giving people the opportunity to understand their own destiny and to find the means of solving the most important question of life: “Why do I exist?”

During those years, even if such a question arose, it was suppressed by the fears and opinions of society. But after the Middle Ages, it began to manifest more forcefully according to the inner development of people who no longer feared calling themselves atheist, not connected to the Creator. Theism is connection with the Creator, atheism is the absence of this connection.

Question: Didn’t the atheists also try to build a social system based on morality, but without the control of the upper force?

Answer: Yes. They tried to figure out how a government could be structured if there is no upper power, not in the form of God and not in the form of a king. This was a very serious leap forward, when the individual comes first.

But the individual is not capable of controlling himself, he cannot do anything “without the king at the head” and without God at the head. That is why all kinds of terrorist movements appeared: fascism, Nazism, etc. People were searching for how to control themselves, to hold the system in order, and saw they could not succeed. And so they went, from blow to blow.

Therefore, in the beginning of the 20^th century, after rapid development of science, culture, and self-consciousness, the science of Kabbalah began to be revealed. When the era of scientific discovery and arts ended, it became clear they did not provide an answer to the question about the meaning of life, which appeared even before the Middle Ages. Even the Age of Enlightenment did not give us this answer.

Then, Kabbalah was revealed. It began explaining that it had the solution to these problems. But since it is irrational to humanity’s way of thinking, it is as if taking the theory of relativity and trying to apply it to daily life.

In our world it is not understood, and even if it is understood, then only by a few people. So what is there to talk about with the simple person? But according to Kabbalah, everyone must be raised to a new level.

Therefore, even though Kabbalah is being revealed, it is apparent that a great deal of time is needed before people understand that society must exist on its principles and will otherwise not have the ability to sustain itself.

Humanity is gradually approaching this state, but it does not yet exist in it. Right now our Kabbalistic group is engaged with modeling these principles, analyzing them, and developing them internally, like in a laboratory. But, eventually, this will be the realization of the basic law of nature in humanity.

Kabbalists are obligated to demonstrate to humanity that their methodology is the only one that has the answers to the future structure of nature, society, humanity, family, and upbringing. And without it, the world will not be able hold itself in any kind of a framework.
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From KabTV’s “The Last Generation,” 7/3/17

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Question: How do we correctly perceive the methodology without introducing an incorrect understanding?

Answer: We must read more and more, passing all the Kabbalistic material through us, like through a meat grinder.

In addition, systematically listen to lessons trying not to miss them because every next lesson, even on a completely different topic, is still at the level following the previous lesson.
[219508]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 1/14/18

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Question: You say that one doesn’t need any special intellectual aptitude to study Kabbalah, that the only thing needed is to attract the upper Light. Wouldn’t it be best if you just had uneducated students?

Answer: The fact is that you are talking about an animal, egoistic mind that helps a person in this world. The range of his intellect can be from a fool to Einstein, but it will not have anything to do with Kabbalah.

Therefore, the main thing for a person is a desire to attain the Creator, and it does not depend on any mental abilities.

Nevertheless, most of my students have higher education.

Question: But if they had no education, would it matter to you at all?

Answer: Absolutely not! Only the question about the meaning of life is important and a very great desire to realize it.
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From the Lesson in Russian 9/24/17

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The main difficulty is that we cannot know what spiritual work is. It is neither in our sensation, nor in our intellect.

From the outset, we are people who belong to this world. We work with, understand, and discuss what we have in this world. It’s our life. The definitions in this world create a work space in us. Our world is full of definitions of receiving or giving in order to receive, within which we have greater or lesser sensation.

Our definitions accord to what pleases and pains us. This is because we are matter that desires to enjoy. Therefore, I can hear sounds, smell scents, and see things, their width and size, even though they seemingly don’t interest me. It doesn’t matter what it is, maybe it is mechanical phenomena: I always translate things into emotions. Then, in terms of whether or not I feel good, I process, feel, and live in those emotions, because whatever doesn’t enter my sensation doesn’t exist to me. I don’t see it, and really, it doesn’t exist because the world only exists in the field of my sensation: the desire to receive, to enjoy.

Therefore, we are programmed and created as sensing creatures, and what we enjoy and don’t enjoy is clear to us from our experience. As such, we form a picture of the world.

How does this relate to the wisdom of Kabbalah?

I started feeling bad in our world. Many people feel bad. You could even go as far as to say that most people feel bad. Also, it’s not just people, but the still, vegetative, and animate. However, other than feeling bad, i.e., I started feeling something unpleasant. Together with that, I start feeling an attraction to a different state. This is considered as the point in the heart waking up in my heart. Then, I start searching with this point: where is it pulling me? What does it want from me?

I arrived at the wisdom of Kabbalah. I started hearing all kinds of things, but I don’t know what is being taught. I could be studying for years, but I don’t exactly know what I’m studying. I turn up like a child who was sent to school. He doesn’t know why he’s there, but he’s there because all the other kids are there. Or maybe I feel comfortable here with my point in the heart. I feel somewhat at peace, secure, and that a good future awaits me.

But what is Kabbalah? I don’t understand it.

If you’d ask me, I could explain it using words that I read. But it’s not mine. Why? It’s because, again, the world that the wisdom of Kabbalah speaks about is not my world. It is something that I have neither in my understanding nor in my sensation.

I remember that when I was with Rabash, I used to sit at all kinds of meals, at the Kiddush he conducted during the Sabbath where he used to give all kinds of explanations on various articles and whatnot, and he would always talk about faith above reason, that everything is attained in faith above reason.

I understand what faith means. Faith means “I believe.” What does it mean “to believe”? It means that “I believe a certain thing exists.”

Why? Do you have proof?

No. If there were proof, then it would be knowledge. If there is no proof, then it is faith.

What, then, do you believe?

“I believe in God. It is what’s written.”

You believe in “Him”? That’s even more ambiguous.

What, then, is faith?

Kabbalists in the past, who started discovering the spiritual world—the quality of bestowal, love of others, “love your friend as yourself,” “love will cover all crimes,” where they started attaining that quality in their connection—named it “faith,” because it is the degree of Bina. There was never any other definition of the word “faith.”

However, afterward, when they started falling from the degree of faith, from the degree of bestowal and love—there is faith as “bestowal in order to bestow,” and complete faith as “reception in order to bestow”—and when they started falling from that degree, they held onto the understanding that it is correct, that they felt it in the past, and they were connected to many Kabbalists surrounding them in that same period, which was over 2,000 years ago, and they called their feeling “faith.” Then, the term “faith” started becoming tainted. It started becoming interpreted as “knowing as fact”: “knowing” not in terms of knowledge, but just accepting that it is how it is.

Therefore, until today, the concept of faith is very vague. We live in a way where everyone believes in what he thinks he needs to believe in.

Also, “faith above reason” is an incredibly difficult concept. We need to explain it to ourselves, beginners, and whoever studies with us. Faith above reason is the construction of the spiritual vessel, where we build the vessel of bestowal upon the vessel of reception, and as such, make spiritual progress.

It is thus very important for us to make a dictionary of correct definitions of the wisdom of Kabbalah by which we can show everyone how it speaks about a different reality, and how words that appear to be familiar to a person in this world immediately get defined differently in the wisdom of Kabbalah, by people in spiritual attainment.

That is also one of the difficulties we have in coming to revelation from the disturbances, where disturbances support revelation. Disturbances become supportive when we know how to accurately define them. That’s the difficulty. We will need to build that dictionary within us of accurate spiritual definitions to replace corporeal definitions so that we will clarify what is happening from now onward, where there is nothing in reality but the desire and the light that acts on it, and the desire needs to be defined properly, with real definitions, i.e., according to the extent in which the light acts on, divides, and hierarchizes it. That’s how we need to approach the wisdom of Kabbalah.
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/23/18

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Question: Man has been endowed with a mind in order to think abstractly. When he starts studying the spiritual worlds, he can either materialize all of this or hover in the clouds. How can you take students who are unprepared and explain the secrets of the universe to them?

Answer: First, your statement is not entirely accurate. What do you mean by “students who are unprepared”? Newcomers are always unprepared and need to be educated.

Secondly, what secrets of the universe can I reveal to them if they don’t understand anything about that? If, for example, I were to take a tenth grader and sketch the structure of a nuclear bomb for him, would he be able to build one? Millions of people have worked on this for many years. We see how difficult it is for any nation to produce such a bomb, although the principle is well known.

Question: Suppose we study the “Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah,” which has sketches and the structure of the spiritual worlds?

Answer: But this needs to be explained gradually. There is nothing mysterious in Kabbalah. The “Preface” talks about the interaction of forces—the force of bestowal and the force of reception—and the connection between them. Generally speaking, the method is very simple to study and understand. It is difficult for a person to perceive and implement. That takes years.

Question: So if a newcomer comes and listens to the “Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah,” including sketches of the worlds and Partzufim, is this normal?

Answer: It does not matter. It is intended for everyone, with no exception. Nothing is concealed. It’s just that for now, the person does not understand Kabbalah because he still hasn’t reached these truths. There is a specific internal threshold within which it interests him, and outside which it doesn’t. And to the extent it interests the person, he understands everything.

There are people who study with us, say, for ten years, and only after ten years do things fall into place all of a sudden and he starts thinking and perceiving differently. Then a few years later they fall into place again. He seems to be hearing the same things, but the channel of perception opens up.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 9/24/17

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