Baal HaSulam, “Letter 50”: “The head of the pleasant future that is expected, God willing, is approaching us. And so I yearn and long for your being near me in your body and soul. (which means that you will come near me and not that I will come near you, which is impossible and also useless).

How sorry I am that last Tishrei, was a great time of good will, but you were not near me at the time…so the sorrow that I felt all of last year because of that goes without saying. The reason for that is pride that crept into you, and to the same extent, the unfounded hatred among you… clearly that if you hate a member of the group, it is a clear sign that you don’t feel absolute love towards me either.

These words were written according to the law of love, the law of adhesion, like in a family where there are not small ones or great ones, but rather, the law of love ties everyone together and is equal for everyone. So, each one should rise above his criticism, according to “He who faults another does so through his own flaws.” Through the eyes of love, no one will seem inferior to others. If you connect according to the law of love “above reason,” you will be able to connect equally with everyone correctly.

If there are some differences among the members of the group, it is a sign of a flaw.

There are good times and bad times, and there are comfortable times and less comfortable times. Although, on the one hand, Kabbalists are above time, motion, and place, and they go through different periods according to their individual time, the general periods also influence them. Therefore, there can be general good times and bad times.

There are times of general awakening from above or times in which it is easier to be awakened from below. So, we must try not to miss such opportunities that are given from above to connect the awakening from above to the awakening from below. Otherwise, it will seem like disrespect.

There are two directions in getting close: each member getting closer, without any discrimination, and every student getting closer to the teacher. Here, everything is examined according to our image, which is a result of our pride and to what extent we can advance in “faith above reason” and understand that it is the Creator who is sending us all these obstacles.

Everyone sees everything the way he is allowed to see it, and he never sees the truth, but by our exertion in “faith above reason,” we draw the Light that Reforms, and by that are rewarded to see the truth.
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From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/23/12

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Question: In the popular book The Secret, author Rhonda Byrne outlined the methodology: The universe is joy and bliss, and in order to be acceptable to it, we have to be joyful and happy. We have to ask the universe to give us everything we want and behave “as if” we have already have it and are very happy about it.

Answer: It’s good comforting advice. Kozma Prutkov used to say: “If you want to be happy—be happy.” By the way, it’s very true.

As children, we imagine ourselves playing in our next developmental step; if we do so, then we are being pulled up to it. The question is: How do we envision our next phase? Is it a step of bestowal, love, and connection with the rest of the world? Is it about liaisons with everybody who are a part of one indivisible, integral whole? Or it is a stage of receiving overall energy, universal love, and mutual understanding? If we visualize our next step for the sake of uniting with and bestowing to others, then imagining this state is very beneficial for us.

Comment: The authors of The Secret do not explain this. They know nothing about it. So the people who try to live up to the advice given in the book complain that they constantly forget that they are happy, and they frequently become upset about minor things.

Answer: This happens because they don’t have a methodology, and they do not participate in group trainings.

If they had the correct group training, then they would naturally move in the right direction, not because of the guidance that is detailed in the book, but due to the correct training. Visualizing ourselves as happy through bestowal and love, by building a system of mutual connection among everybody is actually the correction of egoism.

Even if the authors of the book created groups that I just described, they wouldn’t be able to provide pertinent guidance to them since they have never experienced the sensation of the upper space, the next dimension, the level that is called “Man.” They simply won’t be able to direct these groups; they don’t know how to work with them. All they would do is provide them with a psychological practicum, nothing more.

Comment: They are trying to talk about absolute, unselfish love without having any idea of what that is.

Answer: They can copy us as much as they want. They are only helping us by gradually preparing people and setting up various types of analyses that will eventually facilitate people’s understanding of our methodology.

I wish them luck. Why not? They somehow “evoke” people to search for a way out of their animate state; at least they lead them somewhere. I don’t think that anything that occurs in the world is wrong. All that exists is a necessary step for something else…
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From KabTV’s “Conversations with Michael Laitman” 11/3/12

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The Book of Zohar, “Neso,” Item 99: “…and they shall stand at the foot of the mountain.” This is how they will be in the last redemption, under the sages of the Torah, as a slave who walks by the feet of his master’s horse.

Question: How can we bring the slave to walk by the feet of his master’s horse and not the other way around?

Answer: It is up to us. Baal HaSulam talks about it at the end of the “Introduction to The Book of Zohar“,saying that if we divide our internality and externality correctly in the work, then accordingly things will be divided in our world. If, on the other hand, we don’t divide things correctly internally, then the world will not be divided correctly.

So all the attacks on the world indicate that you are not divided correctly internally; your inner spiritual concepts such as bestowal, love, Creator, group, are not above the corporeal ones. As a result, you turn the world “on its head” by lowering the internality and raising the externality as something that is important.

If you divide everything inside you correctly, no one in the world will be able to resist it. So let’s raise spirituality in our eyes, let’s raise it above us. Bestowal, love of others, connection—should all be placed above everything, and then there will be no resistance on the outside, since you are aiming according to the upper force.

Today you are denounced and rejected from every direction, only in order to evoke you to do this work so that you will raise the internality above the externality.

Question: How can I let “Israel” rule inside me?

Answer: It means placing bestowal above receiving, “faith above reason,” the group above myself. In fact it is actually the group above me, but in constant thought, in the daily care. The main struggle is here inside, in order to constantly raise bestowal above receiving, the Creator’s greatness above the created being’s greatness, the greatness of the group over my own greatness.

Question: How can we fight this war together?

Answer: By mutual help. This is all our work.

Yesterday, for example, you didn’t manage to hold on to an intention, and today? Are you holding on to one intention throughout the day? Are you filled with the Creator’s greatness, so that by the evening it will be your only concern? Does everyone worry about others, about the fact that you should all think about the same thing? The Creator’s greatness is the deepest, innermost point of our connection. It is there in that point that we meet Him.

In one word, if you don’t advance, you will not hear anything new…
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From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/20/12, The Zohar

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Rabash, “Make Yourself a Rav and Buy Yourself a Friend 1”: If a person is very tired and goes to sleep at around 11 pm, if he is awakened at 3 am, of course he will say that he has no energy to get up to study because he is very tired. And if he feels a little weak or has a slight temperature, the body will certainly have no power to rise at the time he is accustomed to rising.

But if a person is very tired, feeling sick, and goes to sleep at midnight, but is awakened at 1 am and is told, “There is a fire in the yard; it’s about to come into your room. Quick, get up and you’ll save your life in return for the effort you are making,” he will not make any excuses about being tired, mindless, or sick. Rather, even if he is very sick, he will make every effort to save his life. Evidently, because he will obtain an important thing, the body has the energy to do what it can to get what he wants.

Therefore, while working on “Make for yourself a rav,” a person believes that it is, “For they are our lives and the length of our days.” To the extent that he feels that this is his life, the body has enough strength to overcome all the obstacles, as written in the allegory. For this reason, in all of man’s works, in studying or in praying, he should focus all his work on obtaining the greatness and importance of the rav. Much work and many prayers should be made on that alone.

In the words of The Zohar, this is called “Raising Divinity from the dust”

…It follows that all we lack is, “Make for yourself a rav, to sense the greatness of the Creator. Then, everyone will be able to achieve the goal, which is to adhere to Him.”

We see how in our groups around the world there are sometimes many people who arrive at the lesson and sometimes very few. It is hard to judge them, since it says: “Do not judge a friend until you are in his place.” But no matter what the hardships are, the reason for being absent from a lesson is still the same—the lack of feeling its importance.

The feeling of importance depends on the group and not on the person himself. We see different groups on the screen during the lesson: Kiev, Moscow, St. Petersburg, and many other groups. Sometimes we see that the place is full of people, but usually there are just a few. The reason for all that is the lack of feeling the importance of the goal, which we don’t develop in us. From Above, the feeling of the importance is intentionally lowered, so that a person will need the group and feel that he depends on the environment that should increase the feeling of importance. To the extent that he adheres to the group, the importance of the goal increases in him, and he is attracted to the group and advances.

But if he doesn’t feel the importance of the group and doesn’t adhere to it, then accordingly he doesn’t feel the importance of the goal. Therefore, he will not be able to advance and eventually will leave.

It all depends only on feeling the importance of the goal: to what extent a person yearns for it, studies, and demands the awareness of this importance during the study. It serves him as the fuel necessary for his advancement.

Our main concern should be that we lack the feeling of the importance of the goal, the fuel, the Creator’s greatness, that it should be enough for our advancement, so that I won’t stop thinking about Him, and will constantly worry that the feeling of importance will draw me to the center of the group in which I will find the entrance to the spiritual world.

“Rav” (big, great) is the Creator. “Make yourself a Rav” means to raise the Creator above all the other values a person has, so that nothing compares to it. According to such priorities, a person will determine his daily schedule and his attitude to everything.

“Buy yourself a friend” is required in order to increase the importance of the Rav. Therefore, you should buy yourself friends; pay them by your attitude, by your efforts, by serving them, so that they will help you acknowledge the greatness of the Rav, the greatness of the Creator.

Then during the study, we will have the right prayer for the one thing that we need—the Creator’s greatness. Everything is focused only around this greatness: the prayer, the illumination, and the love. Only the environment can help us by that, if a person evokes it by himself.
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From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/19/12

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The whole world is a force and not matter. So you give importance to the force of thoughts and your attitude to the friends. It is what operates in reality. By your attitude to others, you correct and change the world. No one can stand in the way of such power. If you think and worry about the connection with the friends from morning to night and that it should bring us, the world, and the Creator good, then you are actually performing a very powerful action, which cannot be compared with anything else.

The power of thought, the power of our desire, is the most important thing. If you activate it according to the goal of the creation, then you influence things much more strongly than an ordinary person.

Question: Can this be proven?

Answer: The point is that I don’t want to prove it to myself. The proof will give me egoistic confidence, while I want the opposite, I want to bestow upon the friends by using these forces so that I won’t be able to see the result. I want to help, to connect, to love, but not in order to receive a reward.

After all, I need something else: I am ready to pay with my attitude toward the friends, in order to discover one thing only—whose command am I fulfilling? I want to discover the Creator and to bring Him contentment by that.

Then, I have to conceal the result, so that the reward won’t bribe me. By that, I attain the point from which bestowal begins.

Question: Why am I not attracted to this?

Answer: Because this truth is opposite from us.

Question: So how can we advance?

Answer: By small lies every step of the way. You conceal the truth from yourself and play as if it is attractive and will bring you some reward.

Question: What will force me to think about the friends all day?

Answer: The recognition of the importance: “I will profit from this, I will attain spirituality; otherwise, my whole life will be wasted in vain. I have to attain something in life.” It says: “Taste and see that God is good.” “So, where is He? How can I taste Him? I have to manage until the evening, no matter what…”

You are told: “If you worry about the friends, if you lower your head before them, if you join them, then you will discover spirituality.” You are ready for that; you imagine the reward according to your taste, as it says: “Educate a child according to his way.” You imagine spirituality as tempting, as some great spaces, hovering in space, forces, and you are drawn to them.

Everyone depicts his own image. Ask the friends to explain the goal and its importance to you. We have to feel the taste of love: Ask for it.
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From the 4^th Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/18/12, “The Wisdom of Kabbalah and Philosophy”

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Question: So far, our ego twists and turns, trying to find different excuses. How can we change this on our level?

Answer: We can only do one thing: evoke the Light that Reforms. We don’t have any power but for that. So we have to know how to draw this Light.

The Light is evoked only if I want to attain the next closest level to me. How can I take such a step towards the Light so that the Light will influence me, and then make another step so that the Light will influence me again? I need a group for that. To the extent that I can influence the friends and evoke them by some corporeal actions to connection, to love, to corrections and to raise their spirit, I draw the Light upon me.

I don’t need to ask anything from the Light; it will operate and influence me without any request, without any words, only in response to my actions. To that extent, I will advance. Everything happens according to exact laws according to the powers one invests, as it says, “the reward is according to one’s sorrow.”
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/18/12, “The Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot”

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Rabash, “Letter 24”: Regarding your first question about having to stand guard and evoke the love in the hearts of the friends, which you find unbecoming, I actually see that as necessary for you. You know what Baal HaSulam said, that from between man and man one learns how to behave between man and the Creator.

This is so because the upper light is in complete rest, and it is necessary to always evoke the love, “Until the love of our wedding pleases…”

And you must always stand guard, all day and all night, when you feel a state of day or feel a state of night. We say to the Creator, “Yours is the day, and Yours is also the night.” Thus, the night, too, the darkness of night, comes from the Creator to man’s favor, too, as it is written, “Day to day utters speech, and night to night expresses knowledge.” (See the Sulam Commentary, Part 1, Item 103).

It follows that you must evoke the heart of the friends until the flame rises by itself, as our sages said about it, “When you light up the candles.” By that, you will be rewarded with awakening the love of the Creator upon us.”

Several conditions are involved here. First we must “stand on guard to awaken love in the heart of friends.” We must do that all the time, which means regardless of my condition: “all day and all night,” which means, when I feel good and elated and also when I feel bad and am in the dark.

Despite everything, I must evoke love in each of my friends, in any state, “until the flame rises by itself.” This means that I have to make every effort in order to become the fuel for that eternal flame. If I do that, then I am awarded evoking the love for the Creator, or the love of the Creator for us.

Thus we see that this condition is absolutely crucial, like a command that is above time, place, and state, which is an absolute obligation. Accordingly, we have to think about what we do next if without this condition we cannot advance towards the goal. We shouldn’t confuse ourselves that the goal is anything else except for the attainment of the Creator, equivalence of form with Him, since His attitude towards us is love or a desire to bestow, which is the expression of this love.

So we must constantly hold on to this goal: In the morning, a person must plan all his thoughts and actions and in the evening, he must calculate what he has done. And so day after day, all day long. We should aim everything at the one requirement: to try to evoke as much love, or at least an awakening, the importance of the goal, which is the same component as love, until the flame rises by itself. This means that our awakening from below should be so strong that it will summon an awakening from Above, and the merging of these two awakenings, from below and from Above, will create a big flame.

This is not just figurative language. Whoever seriously yearns for the goal must accept this seriously. These conditions are eternal laws.
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From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/18/12

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There cannot be love without hate. After all, love comes precisely as the correction for hate. It isn’t an innate part of us, but we have to build it by ourselves. This is where the command of “love thy friend as thyself” comes from: From the love of the created beings we move on to the love of the Creator. The Creator is the general, sum of all the forms of love.

But first I discover the matter of my egoistic desire, my “Mt. Sinai“, my mountain of “hatred,” the shattered vessel to its dark depth. This is called the “illumination of Malchut,” and it is really frightening.

Then I have to correct this hatred, and only by that do I reach love.

There is no independent love; there are no independent vessels of bestowal. There is the Light that Reforms that I draw in order to correct myself. I don’t leave the hate, I still feel and acknowledge it, it is kept, and above it instead of the “mountain of hate,” I build a “mountain of love.”

This is how the vessel is built; below there is thickness and above a Masach and the Returning Light (RL), which means adhesion. In the upper part I form my attitude to the Creator, all my intentions, and then I cover my hate with the Light of Hassadim below. Then comes the Light of Hochma and fills the vessel.

This happens time after time until the end of correction. Hate which is opposite from the Light remains, since otherwise I will not be able to be independent.

Question: Does that mean that I have to come to the lesson charged with rejection, and aversion in order to overcome it? What deficiency, what feeling of a flaw, should I bring with me?

Answer: Don’t look for hate. You should not come with a flaw, but with love. There is only one goal and what comes along the way is not our business. If hatred is revealed—let it be revealed, and if not—then it isn’t. I have to be attracted to one thing only, and if in the process I discover in me an inability, lack of understanding, lack of knowledge, etc., it means that that’s the way it should be.

I want to be clever, and on the way I discover that I am still stupid. But I am yearning for something that is totally different. So despite everything, I need to focus on the final goal.
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From the 4^th Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/17/12, “The Wisdom of Kabbalah and Philosophy”

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Question: Why do I discover new things about the world when I correct my attitude to others and love them?

Answer: It is always about your desire. There are only the vessel and the Light—the desire and what happens in it. The whole point is how I treat you, the “outsider,” from within my desire.

In other words, there is an image of a stranger in me, and I have to correct my desire with respect to that image, to turn my desire around, and accordingly, to discover a new state.

I never exit myself. I only need to change myself, my bad attitude, my hatred, and turn it to love. Then I will discover the spiritual world in my relationship with you.

One way or the other, everything happens inside. We are facing a huge world, but everyone understands that this picture is depicted in us. Baal HaSulam writes about it in “The Introduction to The Book of Zohar.”

But where does the image in me come from? It is a result of the Creator’s action. Every level in nature—the still, vegetative, animate, and speaking—all the levels of the development of the desire from the “root” phase until “phase four,” lead me to the Creator, to attaining the upper force.

This means that everything that I feel on the outside is the Creator. Therefore Rabash says that we should see the Creator in the friend, or at least behind a friend.

So the external image in my perception is the spark, the particle of Light, the Creator. Thus, thanks to the shattering of the vessels, I suddenly discover the others, the strangers outside myself. A “dipole” is revealed in me: I and someone else. This someone fills the place of the Creator for the time being, so that I can exercise self-improvement with him; but in fact, there is nothing but a person and the Creator.

So we should understand that in our corrections in the circle of friends, we help improve the whole world. Here we can understand what Baal HaSulam says at the end of the “Introduction to The Book of Zohar“: If Israel correct themselves, the Light pours from them to the rest of reality; we don’t need anything else. It is enough for us to correct ourselves.

So my friend is not a friend but the Creator, who has inserted this image into me on the background of all the other levels of reality. On the fourth phase of the development, the created being feels shame before the Creator, and it is exactly for this reason that I hate the friend that I see before me. This is the result of that shame.

Let’s go back to what a person learns during the correction.

Without this information it is simply impossible to manage. Since how can he increase his love? Every level is made of feelings and mind—it is impossible to advance only by one of them. After all, the pleasure is only in attaining the Creator’s actions.

He wants us to discover Him as good and benevolent. In order to do that, you have to know how He does it: by what wisdom, in what way, with what concern. The wisdom is essential here, and it has to be deep wisdom, as if you are dressed in the Creator.

In our world you will not understand parents until you actually grow up and become a father. It is the same in spirituality, the adhesion is necessary, since without it you will not understand the Creator: who He is and what He is. Love comes as a result of this.

Unless you attain the Creator, you will not be able to love Him. As adults, we remember different events from our childhood, what our parents did, what they taught us, how they sacrificed themselves for us, and we begin to understand them, and to love them much more than in our childhood. It is the same with the Creator.
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From the 4^th Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/16/12, “The Wisdom of Kabbalah and Philosophy”

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Question: How is it possible to love a friend like your own son?

Answer: In our world, we were given this example of a natural, human love for one’s child. And according to this, we need to measure what spiritual love means. It’s love at a level “+1.”

Question: But it’s quite obvious that this is impossible?

Answer: Nothing is impossible! Because everything is impossible without the help of the Creator, only the Light makes everything possible. And if something seems impossible to us, this means that we need to ask first, and only then it will become possible, the Creator will do it.

The world is divided into two parts. One part is the action that the Light performs automatically, without our request, and this is what we refer to as “possible,” and we think that we’re doing them ourselves with our own will. But we don’t do anything ourselves; we’re not capable of doing anything. However, we don’t need to ask in advance for the Creator to do those things.

But there are also actions that we must request first, because through asking, we show that we desire this action, that we desire correction. This correction should happen in me, it should bring things inside me into order and reformat me, and thus it must be preceded by my request.

This request means that I cleave to the Creator, I reveal him through His actions. But this entire correction is done by the Creator. So all actions are divided into “possible” and “impossible.” Impossible ones are those that won’t happen on their own but only after my request.

You love your son with a natural, animal love. But love for a friend is an ascent to the next degree of love, love that is perfect and eternal, which is much greater than the love for one’s own child.

The very first spiritual love towards others, which appears in the very first degree, is already an order of magnitude greater than all your love for your family. Just ask the Creator for it, and He will do… The entire world was only created as an example so that you would have something from which to begin loving, something relative to which you can measure yourself.
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From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/13/12, “The Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot”

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