Question: When we start talking about current global problems during the lesson, many of our friends take it negatively feeling that we are “missing” part of the lesson. I feel that this attitude should be changed. Without current affairs we have no right to exist. If we are not relevant people won’t hear us out.

Answer: This is also true. Baal HaSulam wrote about the Jerusalem Kabbalists who studied Kabbalah like mathematics and didn’t realize that it’s about the connection among us, about how to correct the broken vessel. Today we discover the shattering of the common soul of Adam HaRishon (First Man), and so the wisdom of Kabbalah is revealed to us in order to correct the shattering.

If we don’t examine the current events from this perspective, then why should we study the wisdom of Kabbalah? Clearly we study only for this reason. Missing the lesson means that I come out of the lesson and throughout the whole day I have nothing to hang on to so that my life won’t go by aimlessly. If my wisdom isn’t connected to real “substance,” it disappears. Even if I feel important, that I have acquired something, and that I understand something, it’s only an egoistic filling, nothing more.

Therefore, if someone thinks that we are talking about current problems just to pass the time, then he shouldn’t come here. After all, he is here thanks to the relevance of these current affairs. Only because of this was each of us brought here so that he would contribute to the correction of the world. But if a person sets himself another goal, he can leave. We don’t need him.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/1/12, “Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot”

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Question: If we prepare all day long for the lesson like for a meeting with a king, where it is possible to come with only one request, how would tomorrow’s lesson look?

Answer: You would receive a very great Light. You would feel how much it gives you. Through the material studied, you would begin to feel the spiritual system that bestows upon you. Dry lines (of the text) would be resurrected. They would acquire depth and transparency and create inner volume in everything. It would become clear to you that our entire world is flat, like a picture on the wall. And behind it, you would suddenly see a new dimension, a system that moves the whole picture and assembles its parts. When you feel the importance of the goal, you will begin being in it.

But in the meantime, we belittle the goal, reject it subconsciously, thus, of course, it is distant from us.

In any case, we must advance forward, and first of all to be concerned about understanding its importance. Even if we are advancing now, we must always pass over to the left line for critical clarification and see that it is not enough. With each day we must add efforts to the connection, and only to this.

Besides that, we must thank our friends from all over the world who perform dissemination and distribute explanatory materials. We need to support them in their work, it really helps us all very much.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/24/12, “Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot”

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Question: During a convention or the friends’ meetings it’s easy to attain the feeling of love towards the friends and the connection. But why does the opposite sometimes happen during the lesson?

Answer: The morning lesson isn’t meant to fill the student. The lesson should shake him strongly and put him in his place, so that afterwards he will be able to choose the direction correctly, to exert himself during the lesson and also afterwards, and to continue living in it the whole day.

The morning lesson is the minimal daily portion that everyone receives and continues to process the whole day. From it he chooses several principles for his internal work and for dissemination. I remember that when I studied, I never missed a lesson except for one time when I was very ill. If you spend the morning without a lesson, you will only feel your corporeal body the whole day and will serve it the whole day.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/24/12, Writings of Rabash

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Opinion: (Michail Barbolin, The Institute of Adult Education, The Russian Academy of Education): “It is well known that the concept of good and evil are relative. Where is the line we need to adhere to in order not to harm either oneself, or the others, or nature? Where is the mechanism which would regulate and guide human behavour? How can we arrange a world, where not only we will bring no harm, but will also know how to organize life? To accomplish this, we need to grasp the meaning of life, the meaning of modern civilization, and from there, to determine the necessary changes in society.

“With the advent of man, his destiny in this life is inherent in his essence, which he must realize by manifesting morality, interacting with the environment, and realizing love and duty.

“The meaning of life is the result of systemic activity of the human body. Its form of expression is a mental representation, as reflected in the way of life.

“The significance of meaning binds the psychic activity and the objective reality, and at the same time, belongs to the subject and object, connects the mental and physical worlds. Providing a qualitative change, the meaning of life acts as the law that connects people and actions.

“Personality is a set of social relations.

“The law of the meaning of life integrates the moral qualities of the inner world of man and their manifestations. Through the thought and meaning, man’s nature, the self, which does not concur with nature, and material actions get adjusted.

“The deep meaning of life is in an endless continuation of life through the way life.”
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The Creator doesn’t hide from us; rather, it is our ego that hides Him. Our opposite nature is what separates us from Him. So how can we take on the Creator’s form? How can we reach Him according to the law of equivalence of form? How can we discover Him and find out that He is in us?

In order to do that, we have to perform certain actions. Who performs these actions, us or Him? There is probably a need for cooperation here. We can’t advance without the upper Light. By “rocking” us, It demands our cooperation, which is called “free will.” This cooperation is all of our work. There are no restrictions here. It is open to everyone and is implemented by the correct studying of Kabbalistic books.

These sources can be the “elixir of life” or the “potion of death.” It all depends on our approach.

• If I intend to discover my evil inclination and to correct it, I can succeed, and the wisdom of Kabbalah will be the “elixir of life” for me. I will discover “death,” my ego, inside me and will want to correct it in order to come to life.
• But if I study to attain egoistic achievements, if I am looking for knowledge, power, respect, control, etc., then the studying only reinforces the egoism in me and my success is opposite to bestowal and I am not even aware of it. Such a study becomes the “potion of death.”

Thus we go through the stages of the Creator’s concealment. The concealment is divided into single and double concealment; the revelation first reveals to us the governance as reward and punishment and then the revelation of His eternal Providence.

Actually it all depends on my desires, on my vessels. With regard to the Creator, there are no restrictions. He doesn’t hide and is not concealed. It is my desires, my vessels, that hide Him, and if I work with them properly, they are gradually corrected, and according to their correction, I discover the Creator. One way or another, I am the one who hides Him from myself. [Read more →]

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Kabbalists were always against memorizing, against learning by heart and against writing while studying, and so were the first scientists and scholars. After recording, you are limited by it. You put on paper or a computer what you should have put into yourself and used in order to change internally.

If you want to perceive the Kabbalistic, philosophical or even a scientific message, you have to change. You have to change so that the idea will live in you, not in the mind but in your emotions.

The mind should only help the emotions. It needs to clarify all the data, both the internal and the external ones, and to process them and evoke the desire to change so that the data will become our Reshimot (informational genes) in the desire and not in some memory box.

Therefore, we have to make an effort that the material we study will enter our nature and not stay only in the mind. It is possible that we read too much, hear too much, and download too much material from the Internet with all the encyclopedias that are there.

My teacher Rabash was against writing during the lesson, even if it helped us remember the text that we read; then too we had to make an effort so that it would penetrate more deeply so that through the network of memory cells it would drip and penetrate the heart. It does go through my internal filters, but, one way or another, eventually it should make me change. The information I receive and the clarification I make should change me, not intellectually, but internally.

If only the mind could be emptied and I could be new each day, start from a blank page without any additions from the previous day. I could study the same material I studied yesterday as if I see it for the first time. Why? Because I have changed in my desires and with the new desires I see something completely new in the “familiar” text. [Read more →]

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Question: Why does Baal HaSulam write in “The Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot” about the forbidden part in the wisdom of Kabbalah: that Kabbalists can reveal what belongs to “Flavors of the Torah,” but cannot disclose the part that belongs to the first three Sefirot or the “head of the Partzuf?”

Answer: Even if Kabbalists tell about something that is “forbidden,” we won’t understand anything. It is like talking about anything next to a baby without needing to be careful because the infant still will not hear or understand anything anyway. He doesn’t connect the words he hears to any meaning. Just like when we read The Book of Zohar, single words are understandable, but for us they add up to senseless sentences

“The secrets of the Torah” are not information that is carefully hidden from us. It is simply our brain, which at the moment is on an ordinary beastly level, cannot perceive them. So for us it remains a secret, as does all of reality. Please, it is all revealed to you, look! Do you see anything? Who is to blame that you don’t have the means to perceive? Develop them and you will see reality. It is the same when it comes to the “secrets of the Torah.”

We study in “The Study of the Ten Sefirot” about what belongs to the head of the world of Atzilut, the head of Arich Anpin, and we know that there are the parts of RADLA (Reish delo Eiyada), parts of its “brain” (Mocha de Avirah, Kruma de Avirah) that are concealed from us in the upper Light. But we study everything that belongs to the “flavors of the Torah” and not its “secrets” in this system. The difference is that the “flavors” relate to the thoughts of the created being and the “secrets of the Torah” relate to the Creator’s thoughts.

There would be no point mentioning all this, if there weren’t people who claim that it is forbidden to study the wisdom of Kabbalah because it is a secret. There are no secrets in it; on the contrary, the wisdom of Kabbalah reveals reality to us! It doesn’t reveal some “forbidden secrets”: In order to reveal the secrets you have to reach them yourself by preparing your vessels, your desires, your vessels of perception. If you prepare all the desires that belong to the seven lower Sefirot (ZAT) in the full height of the spiritual ladder, then you begin to discover their upper part (GAR). You will be ready for this revelation and will discover this secret yourself. [Read more →]

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Evening Lesson, Topic: “Silence”
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In order to figure anything out, one must either start from the very beginning or the end – from the beginning of creation or from its final goal. After all, what’s in the middle belongs to our work, free choice. By analyzing the beginning and the end, we have to understand what we have to do in the middle.

The difference between the beginning and end of the path lies in acquiring the intention of bestowal. Nothing but this changes in reality. By changing the intention, we attain our difference from the Creator and correct it. Therefore, it is clear that our task lies only in attaining this proper intention.

Every action consists of thought, speech, and action. Thought is the plan preceding everything, which initially includes the result of the action. And in the middle, between the plan and the execution, there is speech, meaning discernment.

And in order to make the proper discernment, there must be concentration. This is why Kabbalists have a custom of being silent, which is also done in this world. When a person is about to undergo an important event and he wants to understand how to do it, he focuses on it, requiring silence, and trying to close himself off so he won’t be bothered by external conversations. He intensely prepares to carry out the action correctly.

That is why we want to spend the weekend in silence, in quiet, and think about how we can attain the right action. Instead of talking, we will make discernments in silence.
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From the preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/10/12

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It is common knowledge that before one begins to study the wisdom of Kabblah, he must first study all the books of the Torah, Talmud, and Mishna as if to enter the “Pardess” gradually: to start from the simple explanation—Pshat, then to go on to the hint—Remez, then to allegory—Drush, and finally to the secret—Sod.

Actually, however, the order is the opposite: It means that a person goes from Sod, from the first level in which he still doesn’t understand anything, to Pshat in which everything is revealed to him clearly and simply in the world of Atzilut.

We need to go through the worlds of Assiya, Yetzira, Beria, and Atzilut to change from secret (Sod)—the world of Assiya, to allegory (Drush)—the world of Yetzira, to hint (Remez)—the world of Beria, and to simple interpretation (Pshat)—the world of Atzilut. It turns out that the Kabbalistic books are a simple interpretation (Pshat) because they reveal to us what is really going on and are closer to the truth, to the source, because they speak directly about the Light and the desires.

In all the other forms such as the Bible, the Mishna, and the Talmud, this revelation was concealed. Therefore in our days it is possible to start studying Kabbalah directly.

Furthermore, in the past there were additional levels on the way to spiritual revelation because it was impossible to start studying the wisdom of Kabbalah without acquiring all the corporeal sciences, the “seven wisdoms of the world.” The wisdoms weren’t just physics or chemistry, but also music, dancing, art, etc., the ways of man expressing himself in our world.

It was impossible to start studying the relationships between the desire and the Light, the internal mechanism, without knowing how the desire receives and is impressed by the Light and expresses itself in our world. It is only from such a distant external form that a person would gradually approach the internal revelation.

So until today we see many customs and external rituals in all the religions and beliefs. They are the external expressions of the internal experiences of man.

After all, how can a person in this world blindly approach spirituality? First he needs to make an acquaintance with what is going on here, and with the help of the external forms, to try to penetrate the material more deeply, like water seeping through sand. This is how people reached spiritual attainment in the past.

We don’t understand how a person perceived reality in the past and in what a time we are privileged to live. After all the previous generations and the development of the Reshimot (the informational genes), we are at such an advanced phase today in which anyone can come straight from the street and start studying books like “The Study of the Ten Sefirot” or “Shamati“!
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From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/3/12, “Study of the Ten Sefirot”

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