Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” Item 24: The essence of the body is but a desire to receive for itself, and all its manifestations and possessions are fulfillments of that corrupted will to receive, which had initially been created only to be eradicated from the world, in order to achieve the complete third state at the end of correction. For this reason, it is mortal, transitory, and contemptible, along with all its possessions, like a fleeting shadow that leaves nothing in its wake.

Nothing ever happens to the desire. It only increasingly divulges itself while going through a 125 steps, whereas egoistic intentions arise together with desires. However, those are two different things: a desire to receive and an intention for the sake of receiving.

We should never cancel the desire. We are not planning to turn into hermits; rather, we strive to change our intention from egoistic to altruistic. It is the intention for the sake of receiving that has to be “eradicated from the world.”

We perceive the picture of the world through our intentions, through ourselves and our surroundings. This picture will disappear if we re-direct our intentions from the will to receive to the will to bestow. Everything we see today, the entire world with all its particularities and phenomena, with life and death, everything unfolds inside our will to receive that has an egoistic intention. If we change intentions, we start seeing an “inverted” world that is called the upper world, the first spiritual level. Then, we start observing something quite different.

While sensing the material, we have a chance to convert it with the help of the upper force, a group, and by using other means. We are the ones who start the “revolution,” because the first  time anything is revealed we see it as corrupt, as if it reflects in a “distorted mirror” of our egoistic intention.

So far, our selfish intentions “saddle” tiny desires of this world; this is what makes this realm look the way it is to us. Then, let’s say at the thirtieth step, there appears a desire that is a billion times bigger, yet it still originates from the will to receive. It would be dreadful as if we were among “dinosaurs,” in a monstrous jungle of immensely, powerful egoistic desires.

People would look as hellish “fiends” to us; they would seem like criminals, crooks, liars, villains, a wickedness that we currently cannot even imagine. In essence, we would see the evil forces that belong to this particular step. We would consider the lessons to be outrageous stupidity, utter nonsense. Even the group would appear in such a terrible shape that we wouldn’t tolerate our friends’ company, nor would we be able to breathe the same air with them.

However, if we find the strength to overcome this situation and change, then we would figure out that everything is just wonderful. In fact, nothing will change, but somehow all of a sudden we will see the world around us permeated with Light, where everybody receives benevolence from the Creator, nobody ever suffers, no one dies of hunger, or kills others. Our friends look as if they are the greatest people on the face of the Earth, and there is nobody higher than them. Baal HaSulam writes about this state in his article “Concealment and Disclosure of the Face of the Creator.”

We all go through these states, the pendulum swings stronger each time, and everything depends on changing our intention, turning it into the opposite, from egoism to altruism. The desires remain intact, only the intentions change.

One way or the other, the Creator never brings us to bestowal; otherwise, He would have stolen the chance for us to know Him. He leads us only through disasters in our will to receive so that we acknowledge the need to bestow.

At first, we try to escape troubles that force us to blame and curse Him. Then, with the help of a group, lessons, and dissemination, by lowering our heads in front of our friends and the teacher, we turn to the Creator, and plead with Him to help us.

Question: Isn’t it a pretty long path of suffering?

Answer: The trick is how we accept the suffering. Without the sufferings, it is impossible to wake up. Any state starts with sorrows: “And there was evening and there was morning, one day.”

Our path is long not because of the troubles we go through but because we don’t react to them in a correct way.

This explains why we need preparation and a correct attitude. There is no doubt that our states will change soon, and we will feel emptiness; moreover, we can start hating our friends as Rabbi Shimon’s disciples did. And yet we continue advancing because everything that happens to us is for a purpose, to lead us forward.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/13/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” Item 24: And since the essence of the soul is but a desire to bestow, and all its manifestations and possessions are fulfillments of that desire to bestow, which already exists in the eternal first state, as well as in the future third state, it is immortal and irreplaceable. Rather, it and all its possessions are eternal and exist forever. Absence does not affect whatsoever at the departure of the body.

“The death of the body” refers to the death of the egoistic desire to receive. The moment it gets rid of the intention of in order to receive, it means that it becomes the body for the soul.

Each and every part of the egoistic desire to receive in order to receive is called a corrupt and impure body. When it makes a restriction (Tzimtzum) on itself, it “dies,” and then it receives the power and acquires the intention of in order to bestow. When the intention of in order to bestow “rides” on the desire to receive, it fills it with the Upper Light and gives it the power of bestowal, the Returning Light (Ohr Hozer).

Then the Returning Light and the Direct Light, which meet in the corrected desire that has the right intention, fill it with life. Then the desire is in equivalence of form with the Light and becomes the body of the soul or the Partzuf. The Light that fills it is called the Light of life that is in it. There is nothing other than that; there is no Heaven or Hell after the corporeal body dies, as it seems to us.

In fact, this body doesn’t exist at all. The world that we see is merely a hologram. The truth is that the desire to receive with the intention of in order to receive doesn’t exist. It’s only depicted to us this way as a fictitious picture with which we have to work and learn to change our intention to in order to bestow.

In our current state in this world, we are detached from the spiritual ladder so that we will enter each spiritual level from a neutral state that is external to spiritually. Thus we acquire the spiritual world by ourselves. This is why this world is important and this is why we were given this fictitious state. Without it we wouldn’t be able to enter spirituality. But still, this world remains external to the real categories of our existence.

The whole system of the shells, which brings so many troubles, problems, and death doesn’t exist either. It only exists as a replica, the opposite side, the oppositeness, of the Creator. In fact, the system of the shells is not more than a reflection, a shadow; it exists only when there is a flaw, a barrier, that blocks the Light.
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From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/13/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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There is only one force that draws me to the reality together with all the people and this world. I need to reach the state in which I will see, in reality, the only one force that operates it. Although this world will remain in my perception, I will, nevertheless, see only one force that clothes in it and operates it.

So, why do so many people, animals, and this huge universe surround me? Why does the world divide into such a tremendous amount of pieces, instead of being one material, one desire? But, it is specifically there where the uniqueness of this world lies, that is, that it appears to us to be separate from the spiritual world. This picture, specifically because it is imaginary and doesn’t exist in connection with the Creator, can be seen in us even when we reach Gmar Tikkun (end of correction). This is a very special form of reality.

Thus, we ascend the spiritual ladder and see how the Creator is clothed in the entire world, which is on the same level that we are on. The Creator rules all the attributes of the upper worlds, but still this world remains. This corporeal form remains, seemingly outside of the spiritual space. I can feel spiritual levels that are very different, that differ very much from each other, but the form of the corporeal world remains intact in my five senses.

This is the wonder that allows us to work on the perception of the upper force.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/19/13, Shamati #15 “What Is Other Gods in the Work”

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All the pressures that we feel, the little pushes that advance the creation along the time axis forcing it to develop gradually, and the terrible afflictions that it goes through, all stem from the love of the Creator who wants to advance us and who operates only considering the goal. The Creator’s Providence is a purposeful Providence, and doesn’t take into account different events and states that we go through.

It is impossible to say that the Creator, the force of love and bestowal, doesn’t care how we feel. First, He feels it Himself, and much more than we do according to His level. The inadaptability, the lack of equivalence of form of the created being to the Creator, is felt as great sorrow on the upper levels.

We, however, feel only the faint resonances of this pain to the extent that we can feel it only on our account. Just as bestowal increases the feeling of pleasure by 620 times, so are the sufferings felt in the upper 620 times more strongly than we feel it. This is actually an infinite difference.

The Creator is an upper level compared to us and so our inadaptability, our deficiency, is felt in it sharply. To the extent that the future perfection is revealed in the upper level, we can see our deficiency in the current state, our helplessness, our suffering, and our inability to justify the Creator who operates for our sake as the good and the benevolent only out of love. Yet because of our corruptions, we don’t understand this goodness and so we don’t advance.

It is only a psychological problem of determining that everything we feel now is healing us and bringing us to adhesion. Then all the problems are solved, the darkness becomes the light of faith, and the bitterness becomes sweet. We don’t need anything else! In fact, nothing changes but the way we determine the state we are already in: It is like is says: “And you shall eat that which is ancient.”

Now we are in the Light of the Infinite, in the eternal word, in the fixed state. All the concealments are only in us, in our perception, in our understanding, in our inner attainment. We only have to change our attitude inside and to prefer bestowal to receiving, and we will feel that we are moving into the eternal and perfect world to the same extent. We will realize that our world was imaginary. So we actually don’t have to do anything but correct our perception of reality.

Question: How can I determine that everything that happens to me leads me to adhesion?

Answer: In order to do that, I have to accept the mind of the environment instead of my own mind. An environment is a group, a teacher, and books that have to perform such a change in me that a new state will be revealed in me; a state called the Creator.
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From the Preparation to the Lesson 12/22/13

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Science is the revelation of the Creator, the sole force that acts on us. There is nothing else to discover. A scientific approach is to measure revealed phenomenon and describe it in formulas.

That is to find out the cause and effect, to describe patterns in the parameters of time, motion, space: either spiritual or material, to determine the correlation of forces, actions and results. We reveal how everything is connected with each other.

In addition, we have to figure out the elements themselves, between which this connection exists: what the actual force is, what the material on which it acts is, the object of influence, and what happens as a result of this interaction with the force and the material: what is the reaction and its result. In essence, this is a scientific study; it doesn’t matter at what level it occurs, the usual Newtonian or quantum physics, or the microcosm of the macrocosm.

But the science of Kabbalah brings everything under one base and speaks about the two forces acting on each other: the desire to receive and the desire to bestow. It explains that with the correct perception of reality, everything that happens inside and around us in fact is our inner feelings inside a single material. Only this material is divided relative to my feelings into external and internal parts.

The science that studies our internality we call psychology. Those sciences that study the material that we feel supposedly outside of us, as if it does not belong to us, is not called psychology, but physics, chemistry, and biology, depending on the level of material and its proximity to us.

Kabbalah is called an inner science and conventional sciences are called external because we do not feel that they belong to what lies within us. All their actions, instruments, seemingly belong to what we consider as the external world. But the problem is only in us.

We study the desires of this world, which we do not perceive as our own, on the still level and call this physics. The studies of the desires of the vegetative world, we call botany and biology, of the animate world, zoology, etc. In fact, we divide our perception into several levels: still, vegetative, and animate, and considering them external, we develop sciences with respect to them. Thus, we can study only the material of this world only on this primitive, lower level, provided that we feel it as external.

But if I start to correct my perception, I will see that the entire reality is inside me, and only one force acts in it. I feel that all this reality in which “There is none else besides Him,” I comprehend in one single desire. Then all the sciences are absorbed by the science of Kabbalah. Why should I study physics, biology, zoology, botany, etc., including psychology, education, culture? All these are partial knowledge, fragments of knowledge, developed by humanity. They create a very limited and shaky picture, unstable, and often changing.

There is no firm basis under all this. As we are approaching the unity of our perception, all the sciences are going through crisis and are absorbed into the science of Kabbalah, which provides a universal, single foundation for all the phenomena, occurring in the material of the desire to enjoy under the influence of the Light.

Today, humanity has thousands of different formulas in different sciences. But all this ultimately boils down to a desire, pleasure, and the restricting screen between them; the confrontation of two forces reconciled through the middle line. That’s all!
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/19/13, Shamati #15 “What Is Other Gods in the Work”

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Baal HaSulam, “The Teaching of Kabbalah and Its Essence”:  Whereas in the first discernment everyone receives equally without adding or subtracting, like Adam, in understanding the reality of this world. In viewing it, all are equal, but this is not so in understanding it—some evolve from generation to generation and some regress.

Everyone can see the same things in this world, the same phenomena. Yet, it depends on the one who sees them, whether it is a child, an adult, or an old person. The difference is in a person’s mind. After all, their senses have a mind that is behind them that analyze their perceptions; it depends on the level of one’s attainment.

It turns out that we live in very special wonderful conditions. There is no greater wonder than this world: The Creator created it and we can live in it and start our spiritual path from a state that is not spiritual. There is a reality before us that everyone can see, but everyone attains it according to his external understanding.

Suppose I took a photo of a friend working on the construction of our new building: For me it is just someone working, and only later I find out that he volunteers in brotherly mutual guarantee together with all the others, but the photo itself remains the same.

This is the uniqueness of this world: Here everything depends on how a person attains the “frames” that appear before everyone.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/10/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam, “The Teaching of Kabbalah and Its Essence“

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All that we perceive in this world does not belong to the spiritual realm. Of all the entire spiritual reality, we “catch” only a tiny and distorted part that can be sensed in our corrupt vessels. This tiny part of spirituality provides the livelihood of our vessels, “fuels” us up, thus letting us maintain our pseudo-existence called “the sweat of life.”

Our world with all its laws, nature, and science are imaginary since they are manifested solely in fictional vessels of the egoistic desire at its lowest stage. Anything we can attain with the help of science, even if it continued evolving for thousands of years, will always remain inside the ego.

This world exists only in our imagination. Eventually, above it, we will reveal the laws of the upper reality, altruistic desires, in other words, we will learn the laws of Kabbalah that pertain to the corrected world.

At that time, this material world will disappear (vanish). After all, this world exists not just in the egoistic desire, but rather in a human being. A person includes this world with everything that it ever had and has: dinosaurs and lions, stars and planets… We don’t perceive the universe per se, but rather we feel the depth of our material desires.

To the extent of the correction our material desires, everything will “flow” from egoism to altruism; then, materiality will “evaporate.” So, spending energy and efforts for materiality is a complete waste, since it is only a preparatory basis for the subsequent stages.
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From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/4/13, “The Freedom” 

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Baal HaSulam, “The Teaching of the Kabbalah and Its Essence”: Moreover, even the things we imagine we attain by their essence, such as rocks and trees, after honest examination we are left with zero attainment in their essence, since we only attain their actions, which occur in conjunction with the encounter of our senses with them.

I perceive everything and feel only as an impression, created in my sense organs, not in the original form. The truth is outside of me and unknown to me. Only by perceiving something within myself, distinguishing what was “depicted” in my vision, hearing, taste, smell, and touch, can I consider something. All names and symbols, all phenomena, and responses, all kinds of matter, everything that happens is due to the perception in my sense organs. The essence remains “behind the scenes,” eludes material sensations, lies outside of the picture of the world that they “draw” for us.

Question: How, then, can we communicate with each other and understand each other?

Answer: We can understand each other because each one has a similar program with a similar template inherent in our sense organs. Their correspondence allows a person to pass his emotions to others because they are in the same illusion as he is. We are all at a certain level of perception and this situation allows us to discuss it among ourselves.

Based on the current “picture,” we admit the existence of our world, in which there are the still, vegetative, and animate natures, as well as people who perceive reality. What it is in reality, we don’t know. Perhaps, it’s just waves as physicists say, or almost primordial emptiness because the distance between subatomic particles is incomparably greater than their size.

How do we perceive the world? How does this affect us? How do we imagine what is happening? Why does reality specifically take these forms in our perception? How do we process the received data? How do we compare them with past results? How and with the help of what code do we pass information to each other? How do we store it to use the accumulated experience later to find something, to draw an analogy? All these are derivatives.

And the most important thing is that people in this material world perceive only a subjective picture. If they are given other sense organs, they will see a different world. If their program of perception is changed, the picture will change. Today we have already invented devices that enable us to modify and augment the perceived reality, to create illusions and false images.

Moreover, animals, compared to us, perceive the world completely differently. A dog orients himself by “spotting” odors; he does not look at a person, but smells him and by this means builds a human image. He recognizes a cat that runs by not so much by the eyes, but in the field of smell. A snake determines the temperature of objects to fractions of degrees, and this gives it a clear picture.

In general, it’s clear that everything in the world is relative. It’s relative even between people, although by nature, there is not such a big difference between us.

Question: In this case, how can Kabbalists, discussing the spiritual world, understand each other?

Answer: A Kabbalist is a person who resides in a body, like you, and who perceives the world through the bodily senses, as you do. Besides that, he has additional perception, in which he distinguishes the forces controlling the world and his connection with them. There is a network of forces before him, that’s all. But it is really everything.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/8/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Humanity has believed that there is life after death for ages, but in fact the next world is the next level. On the whole, there are five worlds: Adam Kadmon, Atzilut, Beria, Yetzira, and Assiya. Each of them is divided into five Partzufim and in each Partzuf there are five Sefirot. They make a total of 125 levels and each one is also called a world. It’s a about a certain “place” in my desire to receive that has certain attributes.

Eventually I am stabilized; I am in my current state, and then I feel and understand, perceive, and live according to the definitions, the values, the perceptions and method of clarification that are typical of the current level. This level is my world, “this world.” Everyone is on this level, including the greatest Kabbalists who are also on the levels of the still, vegetative, and animate nature of their existence.

This state is given to us from the start. No one asks me whether I want to be born here.

But I can add the next level called the next world to the current state. It says: “You shall see your world during your lifetime.” This means that I have to attain it here and not after death. This is why the wisdom of Kabbalah is called “the revelation of the Creator to the created being in this world.” I can discover the Creator on the level of this world. The revelation of the Creator is called discovering another level of the 125 levels. This is how I attain it, starting from the smallest measure until the fullest measure.

The next world will be revealed if I form the image of the force of bestowal out of the items that I have prepared. Then I will acquire new feelings and a new perception in that image, in my new desire to bestow. This will be my next world, one of the 125 levels.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/5/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Question: What is the connection between my constant yearning to return to the center of the group and the war to see the true picture of reality?

Answer: The war is specifically made about this. If you wake up in the morning and see that you need to direct yourself towards the center of the group, this says that you are on the right path. If time after time you catch yourself unconsciously departing from this state and bring yourself back, this is a sign you are going in the right direction.

Question: What picture and what feeling appear in the center of the group?

Answer: In the center of the group the feeling appears that there is nobody; there is only one desire, not many, in which all of reality is felt.

And then you discover that today’s reality is not true, but only a simulation like on a computer screen. To the degree that your vision is corrected, you begin to see that there is nothing true in this world, there are no real forces. This is like a distorted copy of the spiritual world that shows us what we have ruined and points us in the right direction so that we can eventually enter the true world.

It is as if there is a life that you don’t see, but they show you a performance about it in a theater. And in this presentation you discover how much your view was mistaken and how you can correct yourself in order to see the true life.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/01/13, Writings of Rabash

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