Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” Item 41: Bear in mind that the reality of all the worlds is generally divided into five worlds called a) Adam Kadmon, b) Atzilut, c) Beria, d) Yetzira, and e) Assiya.

These “worlds” are the levels of my internal closeness to the Creator, to bestowal. It’s as if I look through their prism. At the same time, I can accept bestowal on a certain level of Aviut (thickness) from zero to four. On the whole, these are all levels of attainment until full adhesion.

Question: What do we need these worlds, these concealments, for?

Answer: So that we will gradually discover the Creator according to our equivalence of form with Him; it’s a law: Every phenomenon in reality can only be attained according to an equivalence of form. As long as I, according to my egoistic nature, am external to it and am not compatible with it, I cannot feel it. When the point in the heart awakens in me, I begin to feel my oppositeness to the Creator, and then I can grow and increase my point and my closeness to Him. But until then, I am detached from Him by my ego: He is total bestowal and I am total receiving, and I have no connection with Him. This is how the law of equivalence of form works.

Question: Can we say that the levels of equivalence reflect my sensitivity to others?

Answer: Yes. My attitude to others or to the Creator is actually the same thing. The main thing is that the direction is from me outward.

We must understand that we are in one state called the “world of Ein Sof (Infinity),” or “Malchut of Ein Sof.” But we are separated from it by five levels of opacity of the senses. Special Masachim (screens) weaken them like filters that are dressed on the perception of the world of Ein Sof, and as a result, we only feel the “external world” although everything actually takes place inside.

Reality is fixed, but it’s depicted to us in the form of this world. The only difference is in the vagueness, in the dullness of the senses.

Question: How can we sharpen our senses?

Answer: It depends on your sensitivity to others in feeling the other and whether I can feel that he is as important as I am. Therefore it says: “Love thy friend as thyself.”
[104944]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/14/13, “The Introduction to The Book of Zohar”

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Question: On one hand, I must correct my attitude towards the friends, no matter how I perceive their relation towards me, even if it seems that they hate me. But on the other hand, I can’t aspire to correction if I do not receive support and guarantee from the friends. How do these things work out?

Answer: It’s necessary to see the reality like this: There is Malchut of the world of Infinity, and all of it it’s me. Malchut is divided into two parts: Now I feel one part as myself and the other as what is outside of me. Yet actually these are external Kelim (desires), near and far, constituting a complex system of various relationships between themselves and even between me and them. This entire system, everything that seems to me as “I” and “them,” is in fact myself. All this together is mine. But at this point I need to see a double picture: my own part and the part that is opposite, contrary to me.

And besides this, there is a Creator who built this state. What for? This is to develop my mind and feelings. After all, they are developed only through the work between us, meaning between me and others.

If the picture of reality were entirely portrayed within me, I would be below the still level. It’s because even the still feels the environment, while I would only be a point of primordial matter. I would be even further from the vegetative level that feels the environment more strongly, consumes, absorbs, and excretes substances, and reproduces, in short, lives, even if it pays for it with its death. This is even more relevant regarding the animate and speaking levels. People don’t just interact, they overcome vast distances, discover new means of communication, and make extraordinary efforts to transcend time and space.

Therefore, everything is measured according to the strength of the connection between a certain creation and its environment. The intensity of our development depends on the amount and capacity of connections between us, in other words, on interdependence, mutual guarantee, and the integration revealed throughout the world.

It’s impossible to reach the Creator if I don’t see everyone as opposite me and opposing me, hated by me and hating me. And in every detail I must rise above the habitual, superficial approach to a higher level. I need to ask for help from the Creator and build support in a group by picturing it to myself as part of me.

In fact the entire world, all people, animals, and plants, all of the still level of nature, the entire universe, is my soul. But I am separated from it by that power of imagination that the Creator inserted into me and thus I can’t discern see the closeness between us. This is too much for me.

But Kabbalists suggest to me to use a group, a small part of the world that I can imagine as my soul. It means that I need to stick to my friends with my heart, to unite with them, and to bring these Kelim (desires) back into me, contrary to the power of my imagination that portrays them as being outside of me.

Understandably, I can’t do this alone, the upper Light is required here. It separated me from these Kelim, so let it now correct my present “vision” and bring it back, within. And then I will feel that I am getting my soul back. I sink into the friends, melt into them, or embrace them and put them inside, it doesn’t matter how to say it. The main thing is to make it happen: unity, oneness, the guarantee. As I build a mutual connection between us, to that degree I will feel what is felt in the soul: the revelation of the Creator.

Regarding the current period, our times, a small group is not enough. We need to connect with the groups scattered throughout the world and then with the entire world. This is the task we have received.

In its essence, the present generation is ready and called upon to correct the entire shared soul. This is clear from the world crisis, from the awakening of the people and the continued correction in all kinds of places.

But the most important thing that we need to understand is that the group is the soul. Even though in reality the soul includes all levels, all the worlds, the Malchut of Infinity, but at least for now we must focus on ourselves, the members of the group. A friend is someone who works together with me and wants to reach unity like me so that no “gaps,” no separation, nothing remains between us. Exactly in this form we must define and mark the boundaries of the group.

In this case, if there are hundreds of thousands of our supporters in the world, the world group can count only a few hundred people, those who understand the idea, work on it without question, and use their natural resistance to create an even stronger connection. After all, everything contains its opposite, which makes it possible to establish itself. Thus, we need to be happy when defects are discovered—after all, the love is revealed above them.

Someone who is capable and ready to work in this way is called a “friend.” And the rest, in the meantime they are “spectators”…. Of course, I don’t underestimate anyone—everyone should examine where he is.
[104788]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/7/13, Writing of Rabash

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Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” Item 42: As we have clarified with the corporeal still, vegetative, animate, and speaking in this world (Items 35-38): the three categories—still, vegetative, and animate—did not extend for themselves, but only so the fourth category, which is man, might develop and rise by them. Therefore, their role is only to serve man and be useful to him.

So it is in all the spiritual worlds. The three categories—still, vegetative, and animate—appeared there only to serve and be useful to the speaking category there, which is man’s soul. Therefore, it is considered that they all clothe over man’s soul, meaning to serve him.

Therefore we are at the center of all of reality. Everything is designated for the development of man’s soul, in order to bring him good, which means to bring him to wholeness by the most efficient means. This is why all of reality was created and this is what its software is for, and accordingly we have advance in the best possible inner way to the best state.

There is a problem, however, when it comes to our participation in the process, and so each of us and all of us together see ourselves in an imperfect bad state in all the phases of our development. In the whole state we could feel ourselves in the world of Ein Sof (Infinity) every step of the way if we used the means we were given correctly. We could implement the current phase we are on and wouldn’t feel any limitations, just like in Ein Sof when the Creator is revealed in the whole desire. Later, additional layers are revealed, at the moment the desire is perfectly corrected by the whole Masach (screen) and the whole Light.

Thus, we don’t need to suffer the “whole way” by waiting for the end of the road, for the end of correction. If we fulfill ourselves correctly right now, then we will feel that no one can harm us and that there is no cruel one in the King’s palace but only the Creator who fills the whole world. That’s the way it is on each and every level. What is more, we will also perceive the descents as ascents then, about which it is said, “Darkness will illuminate like Light.”

However in reality, we do not reach maximum acceleration and we advance, as a rule, in the “middle” line getting some relatively weak blows and trying to get aligned with the middle line…
[104936]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/14/13, “The Introduction to The Book of Zohar”

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“…His religious feeling takes the form of a rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural Law, which reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection.

Albert Einstein, “The World as I See It”

Question: Often times physicists are required to frame the results of their research in the language of formulas. However, the perfection and harmony of the phenomena they research cannot be confined to formulas. They manifest in sensations that come from Nature and are much more important than any dry numbers.

Answer: There is a physical law that can be defined as follows: “The tension of the field is inversely proportional to the square of the distance between the objects.” This law covers various phenomena irrespective of what kinds of power fields to which they belong. Those who happen to understand this law also can feel it. Using our terminology, we would say that with each step we receive two times more Light.

Everything depends on the observer. Knowing (perceiving) is not a part of the formula, but rather, the formula unveils inside our sensations. We live through it and feel its impact on us. If we really know what this formula means, we sense the powers that act in accordance with it.

This also applies in spirituality. Thus, by adding the language of Kabbalah to the texts of The Book of Zohar, Baal HaSulam enhanced our sensations. We cannot see yet how this combination influences us exactly, but at the same time, we know that it allows the Light to impact us effectively and therefore lead us forward.
[103877]
From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/29/13, The Zohar

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A person has to create a “safety net” around him so that he won’t break when the workload is heavy, when his sensitivity is sharpened and he is shown all the evil within him. Advancement is measured by how fast a person wakes up and feels happy for having received the “hardening of the heart,” as Baal HaSulam says: “I am happy with the revelation of the wicked.”

A person begins to work with the wicked, with all the interruptions: his lack of desire, the thought about how hard and useless the work is; he is critical of the friends and the teacher and has complaints about his life. The world around him may be in ruin and people may feel depressed, but when he looks at them, they seem to be successful. He is shown a distorted picture, and people on the street seem full of vitality and wisdom.

All this is a theater and a lie, and a person definitely needs a safety net that will make him feel secure and strengthen him to keep on moving forward. There are two conditions for that: The first condition is the group that focuses a person on the Creator. The second condition is to immediately turn to the Creator in order to receive the force of bestowal that allows him to be above the force of receiving that the Creator will evoke in him the next time. This is how a person advances.

Therefore, Rabash says that the Light helps “only those who want to leave the domination of evil,” which means those who exert themselves. I can’t hope that the Light will correct everything by itself and that nothing depends on me, that there is no point in taking steps in the direction of the friends. The Light will not influence me if I don’t first do everything that is in my power.

I am only capable of the simplest thing: to take care of the friends, to connect to them, to hug them, and to do something for them, even with the wrong intention. In response to these false intentions and these lies, the Creator gives me the hardening of the heart: I begin to feel terrible heaviness and reluctance to do it; I don’t see any sense in it. This means that the Creator reveals the evil in me, and it seems that I am getting worse each time and getting further and further away from the goal.

And the truth is that it makes sense that in everything one exerts himself one advances to a certain extent, but he doesn’t go backward. (From Rabash’s article “What is that Before the Egyptian Minister Fell, Their Outcry wasn’t Answered in the Work”). That’s the way things seem to me now since I accuse and judge everything in the world by my corruptions.

And the excuse is that one doesn’t go backward, but rather advances towards the truth, which means that I don’t approach the false goal, as I see it in my egoistic desire, but rather the truth, and then I see to what extent the evil can operate in them. To the extent that the evil is revealed in a person, he can return to the right place with the help of the group in order to turn to the Creator.

Without a group a person has no chance of remembering that he has to turn to the Creator. He will forget it and will miss the chance that he was given from Above. He will not be able to use the awakening he was given and will simply fall and drown in the evil within him. So we need an environment that raises a person to the good state and shows him in which directions he should act in order to come out of the descent.

The group operates like a mother who supports a child who is learning to walk, and he only needs to make a step forward, thus he takes one step after another until he acknowledges the total evil within him, and then the Creator helps him. Then we see that the Creator hears a person’s prayer the whole time, and that it is the Creator who has put the person through both the good states and the bad states.

… and so we need to be very strong and not to escape, but rather believe that the Creator hears every prayer. A person has to try to hold himself in every situation in the direction of the Creator and to make sure he has the necessary support. The courage is not in fighting my laziness, my bad feelings, the despair, the fatigue, or the helplessness; all my efforts should be focused on arranging the right support for myself, which means getting ready.

Thus a person “secures himself” and puts himself, in advance, in a position that doesn’t depend on him. It’s as if he buys an insurance policy. I don’t know what will happen in a moment and I want to make sure that the moment I grow weak and will not be able to control myself, then someone else who is powerful will take care of me. He will undoubtedly help me and do everything that is right for my sake.

I make myself such an insurance policy in advance: through the study, my commitment to the group, and my participation in duties. I organize everything so that when I fall, I will not be completely detached and will not get lost. This is the only way we can advance.
[103755]
From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/27/13

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Question: The world is portrayed to us as it is now through our senses. But as we advance spiritually, it gradually dissolves. How does this happen?

Answer: It’s very simple. To date many scientific articles have been written on this subject.

We feel everything within us. The upper Light constructs these feelings in us. The physical or spiritual waves (it makes no difference what they are called since they all have the same nature) perform certain actions upon us, and we sense them. It follows that everything that we feel depends upon our Kelim (vessels), our senses.

If our senses are on the most minimal level, in them we feel different ranges, objects, and events, which we call our world. But if the senses are expanded, instead of these volumes we begin to feel additional ranges that engulf the present ones. Ultimately everything dissolves, everything disappears into the waves.

Baal HaSulam presents a very simple example. If we cool water, it transforms into ice, which is to say that from a liquid state it passes to a solid state. If we heat water, it evaporates; it transforms into vapor, into a mist. But this is the same entity that was once in a liquid or solid state and now has transformed into a gaseous state. That is, everything changes relative to us.

If we had other senses, then, for example, we might feel the air as if it were concrete, like an insurmountable obstacle. It follows that it is our senses that portray the world as it is for us.

Read what scientists have written about the perception of reality. After Einstein there was Everett and other great physicists who have written that everything is perceived relative to the observer, and this has been proven experimentally.

Therefore, if our senses change, even matter becomes something else. It is only a wave of light. Whereas we need to be involved with the aspiration for the Creator, for this force, since its discovery is what makes all the changes in us.
[103811]
From the European Convention in Germany 3/23/13, Lesson 3

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Question: What does it mean to ask for connection with the Creator when in a difficult state, instead of trying to overcome the difficult state on one’s own?

Answer: Wisdom comes only with experience. We need to feel darkness many times, and then light, and again darkness and light. That is, we need to go through many unpleasant and pleasant sensations where I feel bad or good for all sorts of spiritual and material reasons, and I can do nothing about it.

Thousands of these experiences should change in me until I begin to realize that my perception depends upon my assessment, on the importance that I attach to the spiritual properties of connection, love, and my relationship to the others. I already start to guess what is hidden in this darkness and to feel it. I don’t just feel good or bad, but good and bad because of my relation to the group, because I don’t consider it important or don’t treat friends well.

There are many steps on this path, many small stages, not yet spiritual, but psychological barriers that must be overcome. And then comes the understanding that waking up out of the darkness, I start thinking about the screen, about the time when I can be above these feelings.

We have to go through the good and bad feelings, through day and night, until the end of correction. Although everyone goes through this in his own way, in the end, I begin to feel the need to rise above these feelings. I no longer want to depend on them and be their slave, but I want to be protected against them with a shield.

Let various internal impressions arise in me, but they should not affect my attitude toward the friends, toward the spiritual path, toward the importance of the goal and the Creator. I want to be independent in that from my egoistic desire and its sorrows. This requirement is being born in me: I want to be above the suffering of egoism, similar to the behavior of a true man in this world who bravely stands his ground, and nothing can shake him, no outside influence.

From this moment, I have a direct connection with the Creator because I begin to demand from Him. So far, I have asked for only good feelings, nice states, sweet fulfillment, that is, I demanded for my egoism. Now, I demand to raise me above my egoistic desire, and this the correct requirement for the Creator. I want to relate to the Master equally well, in the same direction, while remaining above emotions, above the sorrows of my ego. This is called the “anti-egoistic screen” (Masach).

Of course, these screens have a number of levels and features, but the work with the Light starts from this first screen. I want to restrict my desire to enjoy. And naturally, I feel everything that happens in it and the worry in myself. But all these emotions, cooking in my stomach, do not affect my vision, heart, and mind. There is a partition (Parsa) between them, which I feel as a diaphragm inside my body. Under this partition, in the “stomach” something is cooked and happens, but I want to identify myself with what is above this diaphragm: with the lungs, heart and brain.
[103829]
From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/28/13

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Question: What is the difference in intentions when we are learning from The Book of Zohar or the The Study of the Ten Sefirot?

Answer: In principle, there aren’t any. The two books were written from the level of GAR of the world of Atzilut. These two languages simply complete each other and help us in that way.

If we read books that were written only in the language of the Midrash, then it’s not clear to us as to what to attribute to them. One person might be caught in isolated details and would search for meaning in them, another would try to draw parallels, and so forth.

Therefore, in order to establish, to stabilize us with the right approach and not turn The Book of Zohar into what has been done with the Torah where everyone finds what he likes: psychology, sociology, history, law, and so on, Baal HaSulam inserted a kind of “physics” or “mechanics” of mutual spiritual activities into our learning. Thanks to this we know what he was really speaking about. His books describe a spiritual system of concepts methodically, and even though I am not there emotionally yet, I can already basically imagine the essence: the ten Sefirot, the relationship between them, their actions with regard to the upper Light found above them, how they identify with it and are filled by it.

So from the start, I can hold to the right direction without running away; after that, I can begin to clarify why the author writes like this, conveying emotions like these, using words like these of our world. Baal HaSulam communicates the upper system to me where everything is determined according to the nature of things found in the lower system, where I see the nature of the still, the vegetative, the animate nature, and humans in all their diversity and richness and all the mutual connections between them. My feelings are derived from the world in which I am found, but simultaneously Baal HaSulam describes the upper world for me: “See how it is constructed.” And so without choosing to do so, I begin to receive some kind of stimulation, begin to connect seemingly separate details, and so I advance forward.

There are many things hidden there that we do not know. When we begin to become a little more sensitive, even subconsciously, with slightly greater feeling, we receive an illumination that develops us…
[103880]
From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/29/13, The Zohar

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As I annul myself, my ego, the old “me” disappears. Instead I acquire the whole system that becomes mine. I don’t drown in the system, as if I cease to exist; instead I acquire everyone!

I begin to feel that everything in the system is my desires, my intentions, my life. I live this system, I kill my desire to receive and so I begin to feel the desire of the system, its mind, the force that operates it.

I can’t be under two authorities at the same time: I can either be under my dominion or under the dominion of the Creator; it is one of the two. So I have to raise my vessels from the worlds of BYA up to the connection with Malchut of Atzilut, up to the Shechina (Divinity).

The worlds of Beria, Yetzira, Assiya (BYA), are the desires of HBD, HGT, NHY that are under Parsa. First we raise our vessels from the world of Beria to Atzilut, then the desires from the world of Yetzira to Atzilut, and then from the world of Assiya to Atzilut. Accordingly, the states of Ibur (gestation), Yenika (suckling) and Mochin (mind) are formed in us.

Thus we raise ourselves to Malchut of Atzilut, rising in faith above reason. Everything that is external to me is separated from me by a barrier, by the Parsa, behind which there is the world of Atzilut. On this side of Parsa, there are the worlds of BYA that are called vessels of separation in which I feel my “self.” But in fact it isn’t me, it is the shattered vessels that were once connected and then fell and so they are depicted to me this way now.
[103367]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/20/13, “Matan Torah (The Giving of Torah)”

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Question: How can we work with the next degree correctly? What is this next degree? How can we approach it, find it, see it, discover it? What is the difference between the degree itself and what is discovered in it?

Answer: Our world is the feeling of our egoistic division, of mutual repulsion. We comprehend everything in this state of mutual distancing: from one another, from the still, vegetative, and animate nature. And this state is called “our world.” In other words, since we draw everything towards us in an egoistic manner for the sake of personal pleasure, we separate the one spiritual Light into negligible portions and comprehend these as objects of the still, the vegetative, the animate, and the human nature of our world.

And on the contrary, if we begin to connect these objects together and relate to them as to a single whole, then we begin to feel the next degree, the upper world.

The group has been given to us so that we can find how to comprehend the space that surrounds us in another, correct form. Ultimately it follows that when we connect with each other, trying to unite emotionally, imagining the integration of our desires and thoughts, as one heart and as one mind, then we portray the spiritual world before us, and yearn for it. In the same manner, a child desires to be an adult.

Through this desire we summon upon ourselves the upper Light (Ohr Makif), which corrects the ego that separates us and in this manner forms the next degree, the connection between us, the AHP of the upper degree.

Thus we connect to the upper level, only through mutual cooperation between us. And then we begin to feel the field, the energy, the wave, that streams between us.

Problems between us will grow more and more, forces of repulsion will be discovered more and more, while we need the opposite: To rise above them and to connect ourselves all the time until the negative and rejecting forces of opposition, on the one hand, and the forces of our mutual connection, on the other hand, will attain the position of our first spiritual degree. And then it will be discovered in the middle line.

Thus, the spiritual world will be discovered through the connection between us provided that we rise above the repulsive forces, working patiently and steadily on the connection until we rise to the position of the first spiritual degree.

These accumulated degrees, when we tirelessly try to connect despite the incessant problems between us in a group, are simultaneously the internal development of the embryo through which we need to pass. And then we are born.

What do they say when a newborn arrives in the world? “Congratulations!”
[103439]
From the Meal before the European Convention in Germany 3/23/13

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