Baal HaSulam, Introduction to The Book of Zohar, Item 66: Bear in mind that in everything there is internality and externality. In the world in general, Israel, the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, are considered the internality of the world.

“Israel” are those who have an inclination for the three lines, for bestowal. These three lines symbolize Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—and Israel aspire to integrate them so that the force of bestowal and the force of receiving will connect and reach adhesion with the Creator in the middle line.

After all, there are only these two forces in reality—the force of receiving and the force of bestowal. The first refers to the created being and the second to the Creator.

If the force of bestowal is also in the created being, a spark or a point in the desire to receive, then by that the created being can build the middle line. The desire is the left line, and the point in the desire, the spark from the Masach (screen) before the shattering, is the right line, and the Light that was summoned to operate on welding them provides the middle line, above reason, bestowal above receiving.

So we need the desire and the point in it (●) and also the tension (∆) between them, due to which a person feels bad. Then his point receives an urge to become acquainted with the Creator. And in this case, all of his desires become a means that helps the point in the heart reach the Creator.

That is why the Light initially, by descending, created a desire as powerful as itself. Now when the created being uses this desire, he can reach the Creator and rise to Him.

“Abraham” is the point of bestowal, and when a person uses it correctly and looks at the desire from it, he is called “Isaac.” And then there is the combination of them, “Jacob,” the middle line. We need these three components.

Question: If the Light and the desire have the same power, where does the difference (∆) between them come from?

Answer: The spark of Light, or the Creator, enters the desire and evokes in it a feeling of another nature, of another essence.

Then a person feels bad because of his dissimilarity with this nature in the use of his desire.

The truth is that none of us knows what the desire to receive is, but everyone knows its benefits. So we are not speaking about the desire but about the intention of in order to receive; we live in the egoistic intention and not in the desire, and it is not felt in itself.

Our whole perception, our whole program, is based only on our intention, on our self-centeredness. The difference is not between two desires, the desire to receive and the desire to bestow, but between two basic characteristics.

I compare them not according to size but according to a qualitative difference. In fact, I feel the difference, the gap between the Creator and the created being. This is what pushes me to start the path to the level of the Creator, to an equivalence of form with Him. Otherwise I wouldn’t receive such an urge.

Then I climb up the levels of resemblance, the levels through which a person brings himself to an equivalence of form with the Creator.

There are people in whom there are three lines and others not. In fact, they exist in everyone since eventually everyone has to reach the same state. The shattering was total, the incorporation was total, and the correction also has to be total.

Still, the three lines are not expressed in everyone at the same time. In the general desire there is an upper part—GE, or in other words those in whom the point in the heart (•) has already risen and been revealed, and there is a lower part, AHP, those in whom it is still concealed below. Accordingly, those above are drawn to unity (Yechud), to the Creator, and so they are called “Jews” (Yehudi). Below, people have a huge amount of desires, each one seemingly living in his own world—and so they are called “the nations of the world.” Above, everyone wants to connect to one point by which to reach the Creator and below, this point has not been revealed yet and still means nothing, and so the different desires draw people in different directions.

But “the individual and the general are equal,” and every person is a small world, so this system, this structure, already exists in every one. Even if the point is revealed in a person’s heart, there are also many other desires, although they may be concealed at the moment waiting for their turn. Everyone has desires that in the meantime do not accompany the point in the heart.

Still, the people who have received the basis for the three lines from Above have to feel that they are responsible for the correction of the world.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/29/13, “A Speech for the Completion of The Zohar“

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Question: You say that by reading The Book of Zohar we have to discover inside us the same spiritual attributes it speaks about. But it’s hard for me to think about the connection with the friends at the same time.

Answer: For the time being we can’t identify these spiritual attributes inside us, they are concealed too deeply. You sometimes get so angry at someone you love, for example at your wife, that you begin to hate her. If at that moment someone says to you, “but you love her,” you will get mad and say: “I love her?! I simply hate her!” Love is concealed and hate is revealed. Sometimes it’s the other way around, a few gentle words evoke the love in you, and you love her and everything is just great. So where is the hate? It’s as if it doesn’t exist.

Similarly, inside us there are all the spiritual discernments that The Book of Zohar speaks about, Jacob, the Torah, HBD, HGT, the middle line. But they are all concealed internally, and we don’t identify them at the moment.

The main thing is the intention. I also asked Rabash a similar question when we studied such “technical details” like Kruma de Avira or Mochin de Avira, the 13 corrections of Dikna, etc. in TES. It didn’t concern me at all, I couldn’t relate to them. So I asked him whether I could think about myself during that time: Who I am, what I am, for what reason and why? Whether I should suppress all the internal clarifications that come up and think only about what is in the book. Rabash said: “No.” If you care about the right intention now and about how to approach bestowal, then think about it.

Later you will see that everything you think about the states that you go through, about the group, and about the Creator and everything that is written in the book is actually about that, you will suddenly feel: “Wow, it’s about me! How did Baal HaSulam and the authors of The Zohar know that I would be thinking precisely about what is written in this text?!” That’s what will happen.
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From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/28/13, The Zohar

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Baal HaSulam, Shamati 34, “The Profit of a Land”: It turns out that all the suffering he feels is because he slanders Providence. It turns out that what hurts him is that where he should have been praising the Creator, saying “Blessed is He who has created us in His Glory,” meaning that the creatures respect the Creator, he sees that the world’s conduct is unfitting for His glory, since everyone complains and demands that first it should be open Providence that the Creator leads the world in benevolence. Since it is not open, they say that this Providence does not glorify Him, and that pains him.

This is all that pains him since by being in a state of separation, he cannot justify His guidance. This is considered hating the state of separation. And when he feels this suffering, the Creator hears his prayer, brings him near Him, and he is rewarded with adhesion. This is because the pains that he feels due to the separation make him be rewarded with adhesion; and then it is said, “As far as Light excelleth darkness.”

We already know, understand, and feel these things. On every degree only between two opposites can we find the correct details of perception, choose the quality of bestowal over egoistic self-interest, and refocus the criteria of “light” and “darkness” from reception to bestowal. Then in inner efforts, in doubts, and with the help of the group and studies, we can demand correction so that the Light comes and, first, shows us what “light” and “darkness” are in reality, as opposed to our current notion according to which we call material, egoistic fulfillment “light,” and the absence of it “darkness.”

Thanks to the Light that Reforms, I rise above these measures to the spiritual measures. Then, light for me would be distancing from myself and getting closer to the other, to the Creator. Moreover, this scale should be based on the antithesis of the former approach. If earlier I hated someone, enjoying his difficulties and my advantages over him in anything, then now, with the ascent to the property of bestowal, everything turns out the opposite: In my feelings he remains hated, but I overcome myself, enjoying his well-being and bring him pleasure, which in reality becomes my fulfillment. I enjoy what the one I hated enjoys and, in general, the fact that he enjoys. I am pleased to give him pleasure, rising above my hatred for him.

Every detail of this perception consists of many nuances, but in general, all this is achieved only by the efforts in the group. Along with studies and the Light that Reforms, we eventually come to transformation, to an internal revolution…
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/27/13, Shamati #34 

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Baal HaSualm, Shamati, article 9, “What are Three Things that Broaden a Man’s Mind in the Work.” The Holy Zohar interprets what our sages had written: “Three things broaden one’s mind. These are, a handsome woman, a handsome abode, and handsome Kelim (Vessels).” It says, “A handsome woman, this is the Holy Shechina (Divinity). A handsome abode, this is one’s heart; and handsome Kelim, these are one’s organs.

We must explain that the Holy Shechina cannot appear in its true form, which is a state of grace and beauty, except when one has handsome Kelim, which are the organs, elicited from the heart.

This is about our vessels, which are desires that must be transformed since we currently don’t use them correctly; we use them for our own benefit. A “woman” that is handsome to the desire to receive is ugly for the desire to bestow and must be transformed not to be graceful or beautiful, but modest, which means that she is totally in Hassadim. A “handsome abode” is the whole human heart and “handsome vessels” are the external desires.

This is how the five levels of our vessels are termed. The vessels are corrected by envy, lust, and honor, the attributes that take a person out of the egoistic world by evoking him to rise to new values.

Today, it is not in our power to perceive and to identify any aspect of spiritual life. We cannot attain such values, discernments, levels of attainment, feelings, and understandings. However, we can “expand our mind,” which means to start bringing the attributes of bestowal into the desire to receive.

How can we fulfill this? The point is that bestowal is essentially an intention and not a desire. Therefore, it is possible if I first stop working with the desire to receive and restrict it. As of today, it isn’t the place in which I receive pleasure or sufferings. I “close” it, and this attribute isn’t in me anymore.

Then, I develop the option to receive something on the side: “I will use you now as I see fit.” When different pleasures come along that I previously used to receive in this desire, I reject them now one by one, from the smallest pleasure to the biggest one.

What do I need this for? Is it because I am simply “on a diet?” No, I reject the pleasures because I want to resemble the Creator. This means that I must recognize the importance of the Creator and not receive anything. I receive this recognition of importance from the group, and I begin to value the Creator, the attribute of bestowal. Then, I really don’t use my desire to receive. Let the pleasures come, above my desire. I want to develop and to build the desire to bestow above it.

Thus, I already stabilize the human image inside me, the image of Adam that resembles (Domeh) the Creator. I use my desire to receive, the pleasure, the group, and the force of the Light that comes and fulfills all this as means to bestow upon Him.

Bestowal upon the Creator is the means that allows us to bring Him contentment. Is that the goal? No, that is also a means. The goal is to attain adhesion with Him since it is that which He really enjoys.

This turns into the means to attain a higher goal along our way, and it is so until we reach the end.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/23/13, Shamati #9

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Opinion (Silas Beane, physicist): “There is a famous argument that we probably do live in a simulation. The idea is that in the future, humans will be able to simulate entire universes quite easily. And given the vastness of time ahead, the number of these simulations is likely to be huge. So if you ask the question: ‘Do we live in the one true reality or in one of the many simulations?’ the answer, statistically speaking, is that we’re more likely to be living in a simulation. …

“In our universe, the laws of physics are the same in every direction. But in a grid, this changes since you no longer have a space-time continuum, and the laws of physics would depend on direction. … I gave a lecture on this topic the other week and the turnout was amazing. Half of the people looked at me as if I was disturbed and the other half were very enthusiastic.”

My Comment: I understand him perfectly, but as always with a breakthrough, scientists get hit by the ignorant, and they need to be prepared for criticism and wait patiently until people mature…
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The most unusual thing in the wisdom of Kabbalah occurs when a beginner hears the message about “love, unity, and mutual inclusion” that are totally contrary to our natural desires. In the beginning, Kabbalah appears to us as a conventional, hard science: “I want to understand the system, study phenomena behind the façade of nature, comprehend the upper force and the principles of Its work, learn the laws of universe, and find the hidden causes of history…” In other words, a person tends to study concrete formulas, and then he discovers that it is all about love.

Is there anybody who seriously addresses this subject? Hollywood? Serious people are sitting in Wall Street, whereas love is the domain for odd fellows and “Bohemians…”

It takes a lot of time to start understanding the message of love. It takes years to have this information “go under the skin” and reach one’s heart. Our egoism is not willing to accept things like love, nor does it allow the message that only through unity we reveal a new reality and that only due to love we rise to our highest state, become more kind-hearted and reveal new worlds. Our material experience doesn’t provide any examples of the above, nor does it prove these statements in any way.

Some people are more prone to accept these ideas; to others, this message is really hard to apprehend. It depends on the readiness of our souls and on the “depth” of the desire (Aviut). It also requires persistence, diligence, and a sense of utter necessity to achieve this state. If both factors, a strong rejection and an overwhelming attraction, force us to stay on our path no matter what, then, even before we reach love, we still discover that everything depends on our qualities. The upper Light influences us and triggers various impressions in us; thus, we begin realizing that our internal changes either shut or open the image of the upper world to us.

Something “clicks” inside us and we begin seeing much more and having keener sensations than ever before. We keep penetrating into the structure of reality; we acquire a clearer and wider understanding of it… Everything depends on our heart. It is the place where we sense and distinguish between everybody and everything that are within the field of our vision and sensations.

Then, the “door” shuts, as if a black cloud descends on our feelings and intellect, and now again, we stop understanding and feeling anything, as if we are walking in a dream and can hardly cope with our responsibilities. Time passes, the door opens again, and then, it shuts again. So gradually we begin realizing that everything depends on the level of openness or closure of our mind and senses.

And then we penetrate deeper into the core of the mechanism that closes and opens the doors. After we go through all these states many times, we realize that the “door” leads us not just somewhere outside us, but to others. When we feel extremely close to them, our eyes and ears open and we advance. When we are farther from them, everything shuts down.

This is the way the Light impacts us, thus gradually forming the connection between our feelings and mind and by building our attitude to our friends, adding more mutual care, deepening sensations and openness to each other, making us familiar with the upper world and the upper state. At this phase, a person realizes that this world is not somewhere in the clouds, nor it is behind the horizon, but rather concretely in our sensations: The more we open ourselves to others, the higher we rise.

Gradually, we approach the “edges” and start distinguishing the details of our desire to receive. We separate it into steps and levels; in view of that, we build the desires next to the mind.

It takes time. We have to include ourselves into the group as much as only we can; literally “throw ourselves” into the group as into the sea; “lose” ourselves in it, dissolve into our friends. Due to this kind of “self-annihilation,” one “soaks” in others and realizes that “it’s not important what we get from this connection and mutual-inclusion. Everything that comes from our friends is the territory of the Creator. Everything that is in me is the territory of the evil inclination, the “angel of death.”

When one realizes this much, the requirement “to love one’s friends” emerges. One feels that he needs them and strives to relate to them as if they were very close to him, as a mother who permanently internally embraces her children in order to protect them from harm.

From this point on, it gets much easier to advance, since one has already built one’s path correctly: One already knows that everything is inside him, inside his sensations, in his attitude to his friends and neighbors who in fact are the parts of his own soul. He understands that instead of seeing externality in the shape of inanimate, vegetative, and animate nature, he has to observe “external” details that are produced by his mind and senses as something that belong to him, but at the same time is separated from him by the “cloud” and “dust” that cover one’s perception of the world. It means that one has to return a clear picture even though there is a confusion created by the evil inclination; he tends to merge with the correct picture of the world and become one unified feeling and intellect.

This is the essence of our work. If we manage to do it, we gradually will ascend the ladder of the worlds. To the degree of our ability to return our “external” parts, we sense them as being filled with the upper Light.
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From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/16/13, “Love of Friends

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Question: Any qualitative breakthrough is always hard in terms of awareness. For example, the theory of relativity, essentially denied the very foundations of customary perception; thus, it wasn’t immediately received and understood and only with difficulty. How will an integral understanding of the world spread in the general system of humanity?

Answer: Really, Einstein suggested a revolutionary approach to understanding spatial characteristics. Until then, people lived in the usual three dimensions and couldn’t immediately understand and agree that everything depends on perception, that “the reference point” could change and enter another coordinate system.

It turns out that the three axes are not fixed in a monolithic structure, but can move relative to each other, depending on the observer. For example, I see the system in motion and you see it at rest. Accordingly, we see different phenomena, different pictures, and don’t understand each other.

Thus, it was difficult for people to grasp the theory of relativity, and only after a few years was it indirectly confirmed when physical experiments and studies predicted its results. But still, even today, there are only a few who really grasp the essence of this approach and the results that follow from it.

Many are satisfied with a superficial understanding at the level of formulas and not through a deeper, inner emotional interpretation. Since, in order to “feel” this theory, one needs to be able to disconnect from our reality at least a little bit. It seems to me that Einstein himself had the beginning of this feeling that accompanies the exit from the regular axes system.

On the other hand, our problem isn’t as great. We don’t disseminate the wisdom of Kabbalah and its application, but rather, we disseminate integral education to the general public. We show people how beneficial integral relations are and how it helps in solving all kinds of problems. For that one does not need to go to different axes and experience internal revolutions.

We suggest simply connecting and working on ourselves through workshops, discussions, and communication between us, and from that, it will be good for us. Thanks to that, people will finally feel what constitutes the “round” world, and by that, they will understand what nature wants from them.

We don’t give them tasks that are impossible to execute. On the contrary, subconsciously each person understands that integrality, without a doubt, does not cause evil, and that connection and unity of forces and desires, and closeness between people, will necessarily bring benefit.

And in the meantime, if they don’t want this very much, well, perhaps after a few more troubles and problems, they will have the desire. We are speaking about realistic and achievable things.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/10/13, Shamati #66

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Question: What is the difference between the pleasure that a man experiences and a woman experiences in the state of the common integral mind, or is it the same?

Answer: Every person has his own pleasures because everyone has his own root and his bonding with others. They are strictly subjective. Therefore, it is impossible to say how men are different from women in their state of pleasure and fulfillment.

This difference can be explained in the image of what exists in our world. After all, there is a difference in how a man perceives our world and how a woman does. A man somehow is capable of feeling what another man experiences. However, he is unable to feel a woman’s experience. He cannot understand her because she has a completely different view of the world.

A man and a woman are two worlds. The same applies to spirituality. Being a male part in the spiritual world, it is impossible to imagine the experience of a woman’s part. You can attract and include her desires in yourself in order to fulfill them, however, not instead of her, but for her.

Question: However, shouldn’t it merge somewhere in the end?

Answer: In the end, it merges in complementing each other, in mutual bonding, but it is still a bonding of two opposites.
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From KabTV’s “Talks with Michael Laitman,” 3/11/12

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Baal HaSulam, Shamati, Article 53, “The Matter of Limitation”: The matter of limitation is to limit the state one is in and not want Gadlut (Greatness). Instead, one wants to remain in one’s present state forever, and this is called eternal Dvekut (Adhesion). Regardless of the measure of Gadlut that one has, even if one has the smallest Katnut (Smallness), if it shines forever it is considered having been imparted eternal Dvekut.

However, one who wants more Gadlut, it is considered luxury. And this is the meaning of “any sorrow will be surplus” meaning that sadness comes to a person because he wants luxuries. This is what it means that when Israel came to receive the Torah, Moses brought forth the people to the bottom of the mountain, as it is written, “and they stood at the nether part of the mount.”

A mount (Hebrew: Har) means thoughts (Hebrew: Hirhurim)). Moses led them to the end of the thought and the understanding and the reason, the lowest degree there is. Only then, when they agreed to such a state, to walk in it without any wavering and motion, but to remain in that state as if they had the greatest Gadlut, and to be happy for it, this is the meaning of, “Serve the Lord with gladness.”

We have to constantly keep ourselves in a minimal state. It is the most desirable state; this is pure bestowal, Hafetz Hesed, the constant state. Then if I am thrown off in the negative direction, to the “minus,” by the addition of more ego, I have to add Gadlut (greatness) in the opposite direction, the importance of the Creator, “plus.” This is how I advance.

Thus, I fill every descent and feeling of lowliness, which I must feel with the recognition of the one who gives it to me, where it comes from, and whom I have to reach an equivalence of form with. In that case I will constantly return to the constant state and constantly advance along the shortest straight line, no more and no less. I don’t need any luxuries, not even a shirt, like the righteous (Hafetz Hesed) living in the forest. Thus, I advance, and nothing can throw me off track.

It is the same when I feel Gadlut and am thrown towards the “plus”; I don’t take this into account. The important thing is to constantly yearn for a constant state, and although it is constant, I still advance under the external influence and go up the ladder from level zero to the 125^th level. But I don’t ask for anything for myself, except for staying in a constant state.

I am ready to remain in the same state I am in and I don’t even need the revelation or anything above that. To the same extent that I give up the revelation and refuse to accept it, I discover the spiritual world in the same vessels, so there is the opposite outcome, as it always happens in our work since everything is built above the vessels of receiving.

Of course, everything is done by the Light that Reforms. Without the Light nothing will happen, and it is only the Light that performs all the changes and the corrections. We should never feel sorry that we don’t have them, but we should feel sorry only about “where is the Light that can correct us.” If we feel that we don’t have corrections, it is good; it is already the revelation of what we lack. In that case the Surrounding Light will come, the Light that Reforms, and correct us.
[98096]
From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/16/13

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Question: How can we know that our actions are in favor of the Creator?

Answer: If the Creator is a certain form that I put together inside me, then I have to know what is in His favor and what is not. If the form I am putting together is a total form of bestowal, then it is in its favor to bestow.

The Creator is inside me. A person doesn’t know anything about what is outside him; the world that seems to surround me is an illusion. It is a lie that was created so that by my attitude towards it, as if towards an external world, I will be able to learn it in greater details, by bringing things out of myself.

If I could take out my feelings and my thoughts and see that I spread all over the world, then it would be the world of Ein Sof (Infinity). Then I would discover that our world doesn’t exist, that it is all parts of my vessels. In fact, there is nothing, not all the images and people around me. All this is me, called “Adam” (man) who is standing before the Creator’s force. Now I don’t see Him, but I was given a chance to start feeling Him.

We will never be able to know about anything outside ourselves since everything is only “from Your actions we shall know You,” and in order to do that we have to acquire spiritual attributes by ourselves. It is in that the spiritual world is different from the corporeal world.

There is a region in us that is like a white spot, in which we don’t feel anything now. This region is gradually being revealed and it is called “the upper world.”

There is also a region that I feel as “this world,” and then I begin to feel bad in it, as if it is crowded and too narrow in this circle. I begin to search; perhaps there is something outside it.

Some of my senses tell me that there is something beyond my boundaries because this part of my senses is concealed: I feel that I live in them and die. There are also different discernments in me: still nature, the vegetative, the animate, and the “speaking,” which I also feel as “this world.” They also appear and disappear, are born and die. I see their life and death, and by that I begin to think that everything is temporary and expendable; everything changes and then I feel a kind of emptiness. So I begin to search and to investigate what is beyond the bounds of this corporeal life.

If I don’t break out of my boundaries, how will I be able to discover what happens there? This is how we enter the upper world that is beyond the bounds of this world, but both this world and the upper world are all a desire to receive, and if we unite them, the outcome is the world of Ein Sof.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/15/13, Writings of Rabash

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