No one before Baal HaSulam ever discovered the true meaning of love of others. This idea appears quite frequently in all the sources, many great novels and other masterpieces praise the love of others, brotherly love, love among friends, and the need to concede. Who hasn’t talked about it! Every politician who wants to be elected speaks about how much he loves everyone. Every thief thinks that he is fighting for justice.

Baal HaSulam sets a criterion for the true test; he puts everything on the right scales and bases everything on an analysis by which one cannot be mistaken. When we read his compositions, we can be sure that we cannot keep our previous views. You can either close your eyes and try to forget everything he writes about and then somehow continue to exist like before, living your beastly life for your ego, or you must change!

He created the entire method of clarification so that it is impossible to stand up against its revelations. After reading all his articles, you begin to feel that you must clarify everything to the end. He writes in such a way that only if you know all of them and reread them again and again, examine them from every angle, read them thoroughly, only then do you finally begin to understand the whole picture.

You can’t just read some small part and then relax, feeling that you have understood everything. The understanding comes only by reading and rereading, from the beginning to the end and from the end to the beginning. Only after reviewing it several times, are you able to tie the concepts together and to analyze yourself. Then you won’t be able to escape anymore.

A person who doesn’t study Baal HaSulam usually thinks that he is a perfect righteous and believes that there is nothing to ask for, there is nothing to regret. Only when a person begins to study according to Baal HaSulam’s method, does he begin to understand how opposite he is from bestowal, how corrupt he is, and that the Torah was written for him because the Light in it reforms.

If we read Baal HaSulam’s writings in order to clarify our evil inclination by them and thus draw the Light that Reforms, they operate upon us and help us advance, according to the Creator’s plan: “I created the evil inclination, and I created the Torah as a spice.” We fulfill all these stages thanks to our work with the compositions of Baal HaSulam.
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From a talk at the meal devoted to Baal HaSulam’s memorial day, 10/8/11

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A Virtual Lesson on Fundamentals of Kabbalah
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Question: I don’t understand what is written in The Study of the Ten Sefirot, how it relates to us, and why I need to study it?

Answer: Everything we can perceive and come to know (ourselves and our environment) makes up our life, the sensation of our existence. If our senses were turned off, we would stop perceiving both ourselves and the world. We are but various desires for fulfillment that are different from one another. We are all connected between us by a network of connections, like cells of a living organism. And all of us, connected together with many connections, are swimming in a “soup” of the property of love and bestowal, referred to as our Creator.

Our perception of life and this world is the perception of the connection between us. Perception is either its fulfillment or the lack thereof in everyone’s individual desires. The desires of fulfillment give us the perception of this world. The desires to fulfill others, the system of connection between us or the Creator, give us the perception of the general connection, its similarity to the property of bestowal, the “soup,” the Creator.

So, The Study of the Ten Sefirot and all Kabbalah books in general narrate about the revelation of this system of connections between us, the Creator, to the extent of our efforts. That is, it tells us how this system becomes revealed, in what order, and also about its interconnections.

This is what Kabbalists have discovered, and this is what they are describing to us. We don’t understand what we are reading because it’s only possible to understand what we already perceive, and we don’t yet perceive the upper world. However, even reading about this system without understanding evokes the influence of forces on us, meaning the reforming Light (the quality of bestowal), our Source, and brings its revelation closer to us.
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The connection between people is a lot stronger and obligatory then people realize. According to nature, this connection represents a whole organism that is gradually becoming revealed to us.

As it turns out, all of nature is unified. It began developing from a single point as a result of the Big Bang. In our perception, nature is divided into many different parts: the still, vegetative, animal, and human levels, as well as into physical, chemical, biological, ethical, moral, and other laws. We don’t see all of this as one whole. We don’t see how all of this is interconnected and interdependent, how my thoughts and feelings effect the explosions of stars, or how these star explosions effect the plants in my garden. We don’t see everything, but it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist.

Nature is global. The reason that we are discovering this fact more and more is because we’re becoming more developed. After all, the revelations I make today couldn’t have been made yesterday because I wasn’t developed enough. However, it doesn’t mean that these things didn’t already exist in nature and that I’m discovering some new attributes in nature. It appears within me because I develop.

I am the most actively developing part of nature. As a person, I develop more and faster then anything else: in my knowledge, attainments, emotions, and so on. And when I develop, I obtain a greater overall perception.

Did America not exist before it was discovered? It did exist! What about the stars and the galaxies, did they not exist before we discovered them? Everything existed, only we couldn’t see it because we weren’t developed enough.

We’re beginning to reveal our interconnection. This interconnection exists on levels we can’t sense, meaning that I can’t perceive it through my five senses. This interconnection exists beyond my senses, within some thoughts and systems of connection between us, and therefore, my thoughts, actions, and feelings effect you.
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From the Discussion About Global Education 09.07.2011

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It’s not important if I understand what I read in the book correctly or how confused I am—what counts is my desire to understand! A person advances thanks to the influence that he receives from the upper system as he studies it, hears about it, wants to be included into it, performs all kinds of activities towards it, and works with his environment and in dissemination.

Gradually he begins to feel this system from afar:  He begins to discern that it is Aba ve Ima, inner and outer parts, and the Light of Hassadim (Mercy) or Gevurot (harsh forces of restriction, limitations), which influence him according to the measure that he is included within this system.

It is a complete world, and it’s impossible to explain it to someone who doesn’t live in it. It just like it’s impossible to briefly explain to a creature from another planet about what happens in this world. He would need to be in it himself, to receive our tools, feelings, intelligence, and tastes. If he embraced our life, then after a while he would absorb all kinds of impressions from the society surrounding him and would understand what happens in this world.

It is impossible to understand anything through words. It all has to go through you and leave internal impressions in you. Then you will understand, as they say, “one thing within another.”

We are also like that. By awakening the Surrounding Light on ourselves with our desire to enter this system, we begin to feel what is before us: that the entire system is based on love and bestowal.

“I am for my Beloved”—after all, I yearn to bestow through this system composed of my friends. “And my Beloved is for me”—because then I will begin to feel how He changes me with the help of the Surrounding Light from the same system that I want to enter into. And thus my correction occurs.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/4/2011, Shamati #42

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Question: How do you see The Study of the Ten Sefirot? To me, it seems like something totally abstract. How could someone write it?

Answer: You are right. When I first came to Kabbalah and saw that it uses incomprehensible terms to describe some unclear interrelationships between who knows what, I didn’t understand what kind of wisdom, belief system, or religion it is. It was simply very strange, just like reading about something that is totally unfamiliar, just like finding a diary of total strangers.

Then, for a long while, I read and studied it by heart and tried to make sense of it. Thanks to the close relationship with my teacher and my dissemination activities, I began to understand that by studying the totally unfamiliar ties between unfamiliar objects, I evoke their influence upon me. By the way, this is quite ordinary in our world: We begin to deal with something that is totally unfamiliar to us, we learn about it, and it becomes clear to us.

After several years of studying, the same thing happened to me: I began to feel much more clearly that I exist in some network of connections between people. They were certainly not among the bodies, but rather among their essences, among their desires and their thoughts. Everyone is part of this network: those who lived in this world, are living in it now, and haven’t been born into it yet, and they exist there as equals, regardless of their physical bodies.

Everything I learned in the wisdom of Kabbalah turned into the explanation of these ties, from the strongest to the most broken ones. It explained the conditions under which these ties improve, what the quality of the ties depends on, the limitations on our deeds, and more. This perception was very theoretical, in the form of the network of connections between the “self” of every individual. By the way, I wrote about this network created by the upper force, upon which all the worlds including ours rest, in my first Kabbalah book in 1983.

The more you exert yourself so that the network between your “self” and everyone else’s “self” is revealed, the stronger is the influence of this network that you evoke upon yourself (the Surrounding Light, the Light that Reforms, the Light of the Torah), and this network, the mutual connections of all of creation, becomes clearer and clearer to you. Thus, our world grows pale in contrast to the upper network of forces that determines everything.

Afterwards, it becomes quite clear which of your efforts (desires) evoke certain reactions in the network. Thus a conscious movement begins (conscious actions) through the correct inclusion (bestowal) in the network.

By attaining this network (the spiritual world, these ties), we begin to attain the entire development of our world: to draw closer towards this network and reveal the self (the Creator) in it. We begin to understand the reasons for the global crisis and its solution in order to hasten our inclusion in the network—in the upper world, in the attributes of love and bestowal that reign there.
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When we study The Study of the Ten Sefirot or “Pticha” (“Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah”), we should first learn the diagrams mechanically. Then, when you have the whole system before your eyes, you can ask: “Why is it so?”

First, we have to accept everything that is written there “as is,” meaning as reality, and then you will start distinguishing the reason why everything is arranged this way. We cannot swallow the whole wisdom at once because our vessels grow, become clearer, and connect in a certain order.

Hence, there is no point in building new theories; rather, we have to learn everything from nature. In nature, we are moving from externality to internality. So, first we perceive the picture (the sketch), and then we penetrate further in, deeper and deeper, until we come to the essence.

Otherwise, we corrupt the entire approach for the revelation of reality. Ninety nine percent of the people who quit studying are those who fail to arrange for themselves the right approach to revelation. We all are here to reveal the upper world. However, he who does not understand that “there is none else besides Him,” that all there is comes from the Creator, that we need to justify Him, that we need to see all negative things as “help against me” and arrange them in such way that specifically thanks to these obstacles we would rise and clarify more exalted, inner, and subtle concepts, such a person will not succeed.

If a person fails to arrange those things one after the other so as to reach the right perception, it turns out that “a thousand enter a room, but only one exits towards the Light.” We have to follow the example of children and learn from Nature. A child doesn’t know much; he doesn’t know what his father does, but he wants to do the same. He copies adults’ actions without getting their internal sense and plays with a plastic hammer without thinking too much. This is what we need: Without too much deliberation, we need to draw a sketch of Keter, Aba ve Ima, Arich Anpin.… For now, it’s sufficient for me.

Then I start penetrating deeper and deeper. This is the only way to advance; it is a science, and it is supposed to be learned this way. It is not The Zohar that we study as a “miraculous remedy” (Segula). The Study of the Ten Sefirot and “Pticha” are all about diagrams and drawings; otherwise, you’ll be detached and will simply wait for the Light that Reforms. But it won’t happen this way. We still need to get inspired from this wisdom since we want to find within ourselves all the elements that are being described in the books in the language of Kabbalah.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/26/2011, “Pticha”

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In the past, Kabbalists who wished to reveal the spiritual world had to start in our world and work through it, through various sciences, with enormous efforts and suffering, meaning they had to pull themselves directly from matter itself to the revelation of the spiritual world and reveal the correct system of connections between people.

But then the compositions of the Ari were revealed, in which he explains about the inner connections that unite us through various special systems of relationships: ZON, YESHSUT, Aba ve Ima, Arich Anpin, and so on. By that he explains to us what forms of connection we can be in, how their different connections influence us, and how we can influence them ourselves and awaken these forms of connection. What happens there is the same thing as in our world, but in the quality of bestowal.

Just like in our world where we are able to activate certain types of connections so they would in turn begin influencing us, the same net of relationships connects us in the spiritual world as well, except that it is more internal. Thus, we go from materialistic psychology to the spiritual one, and then we reveal the true connection between the souls, the people living now and the people who lived before. It does not matter whether a person exists in this world right now or not. What’s important is to tune into this net. Then it’s as if our world evaporates, loses its importance because it is just an external imprint through which we have to enter inside.

The Ari described all of this, and the Baal Shem Tov taught how to work with all of the soul’s loyalty (Mesirut Nefesh), saying, “The Creator is your shadow.” And now, after all of this, by working in the group (which was restored by Baal Shem Tov anew, after Rashbi) we can draw the Light that reforms from this net. We do not simply attain it with our desires and forces, but attract an illumination called the Light that reforms, the Light of the Torah, the Surrounding Light, to ourselves from above, from this net.

After all, if we study the structure of this system and aspire to it all together, wishing to organize the same forms of connection among us, then it doesn’t even matter whether we understand it or not—our effort will awaken the influence of this force upon us.

It’s just like in our world: If we want to attain any system, then we become part of it, study it in various forms, and gradually begin to feel it. Suddenly, a picture of this system comes together inside of us and we understand what this is and how it is possible to connect and work with it. The same thing happens in the spiritual world: Only a person’s intention changes. When he becomes included in the upper system, he does it for the sake of bestowing himself to this system. The more he becomes included in it, the further he advances toward revealing it.

This requires great work with the teacher, the friends, the whole world, and the studies. All of this connects together.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/2/11, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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A Virtual Lesson on Fundamentals of Kabbalah
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Question: I’ve been trying to place materials from your blog into the Facebook network, but I see that they don’t get through to people….

Answer: Look at how Baal HaSulam wrote the newspaper, “The Nation.” Is it something you can place in social networks? But a newspaper has to be close to people. In reality, he writes deeply and clearly. If you read it closely, you will simply be struck by his analysis and will truly enjoy it. However, he intends it for a specific level, for people who think and understand.

That is how I am built as well: I cannot lower my explanations completely. Others will do that. I am simply incapable of less. My blog is based on lesson and lecture materials, so don’t wait for anything extraordinary to appear here. This is your work. I have done my job by conveying to you the science of Kabbalah and all the principles of activity in the conditions of the modern world. You have all the keys. With time, as changes take place, I will add more, but in principle, you have already received everything.

And now you are coming to me with demands? I write my blog for those who are able to understand it, and for those who may possibly use it in a few years. You won’t receive anything more from me, not in the spiritual sense nor the corporeal. You have already received everything and the rest depends on how you use what you have received.

I convey to people what I can and how I can. This is what I received from my teacher Rabash and what I revealed with him and after his passing from the primary sources, which were mainly written by him and Baal HaSulam. Whoever wants to hear it hears it, and whoever doesn’t want to, doesn’t hear it. Anyone can come and listen, and anyone can leave without saying a word and never come back again.

This is how I act and this is my attitude. A person will perceive as much as he will. Let him come or leave. Let him carry out some of what he has heard, or let him not carry it out. I cannot control this and this is not my work. I let people have total freedom. And if anyone wants to work, whether for salary or for free, our dissemination system presents them with specific demands according to the work plan.

I am not planning to build anything besides this. If someone doesn’t understand what he has to do, it is his problem. I don’t have anything besides what I give at the morning lesson. Everything else is not my work.

You are sitting here and looking at me expectantly, and you can just keep looking. But I would not look in your place. A person has to come, receive the teaching, accept it as a mission or instruction, and carry it out. And this happens over and over again. Without the realization phase, one simply doesn’t advance but “bottles himself up.”

This is described by the verse, “More wisdom than deeds.” This kind of person has no future and his study only worsens the situation. It’s better for him to leave, and I am saying this with all seriousness. I prefer for that person not to be here. If a person does not realize himself as much as possible in dissemination and the world’s correction, then his leaving will benefit both him and me.

Therefore, I am not sorry when people leave and I don’t run after anyone. This is not done in spirituality. Everything depends on the environment that you build or fail to build. Everything depends on whether you are helping the world or not. My only task is to tell you about what you should be doing. But I am not meant to enact the realization.
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From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/27/11, “The Nation”

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