Question: How is it possible after the convention to continue feeling that I have no individual abilities, but only the abilities of the group?

Answer: Before you didn’t have any individual abilities either, and you were part of the group, but now it is clearer, and accordingly more is demanded of you. The more that is revealed to you, the more you are demanded to participate, mentally, emotionally, and actively in overcoming.

It is very clear that by very small efforts, we have already discovered that within our collective vessel an illumination is emerging. The problem is that we attained this by physical connection between us and not by spiritual connection. In the meantime it is a very big deficiency.

In addition, it happens thanks to the fact that I am incorporated in the group using the force to connect with them. This means that there is still al lot of work that has to be done on the part of our group in order to reach a true inner connection among the friends. Then the Light that is equal to this connection will arrive.

In the meantime it is lacking within the group and among the groups. We have to connect more strongly with one another. I think that this convention has shown everyone that we are closer to one another than we thought. All the groups felt close and people understood that we have no choice but either to advance toward an even greater connection or leave.

We will soon see how this happens: There will be people who will come gladly and there will be those who will leave cursing. This is how the clarification is done.

We now have to fulfill what we felt in the convention. In order to fulfill that, a person needs constant self-control with regard to his attitude towards the world that is managed by the Creator. Am I aware of the fact that I am in a world that is managed by the Creator? Do I perceive the world as a place where by focusing on the fact that everything is done by the Creator I will eventually find the Creator in this world?

World (Olam – also means concealment in Hebrew) is concealment on the one hand and the revelation of the Creator on the other hand. The world is concealed because I don’t reveal the Creator. But because I intend to reveal Him, to identify with Him, and to receive everything that happens as the absolute good and benevolent and there is none else besides Him, then by that I accept this concealment, and then the concealment of the world becomes a revelation.

This is all I have to say about this. Don’t expect anything beyond this and don’t think that as we advance I will have new words. But the same words will be clearer to you. If someone else begins to read, it would mean nothing to him, just like people who read the Torah and understand it literally. These are ordinary words, since in spirituality there are no words.
Besides, it is forbidden to reveal more than is allowed. We have to understand that the teacher is an educator who has to do his job.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/11/12, “Questions and Answers Regarding Novosibirsk Convention”

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Question: After the congress in Novosibirsk, we feel a very strong responsibility. It is as if a new system of relations between us was born, when our whole life should be in mutual care for each other. How do we start our work anew, with a clean slate; how do we take the first step onto this new platform?

Answer: Indeed, a new sensation was born. But the connection itself is not new; it already exists and only becomes revealed to us more and more. I see that you feel the new stage and discovered a new experience. And respectively, your mind that works in sync with the feelings was renewed. Now the question is how will we accept this as a fact that binds us to connect even more—all of us together, and me with you as well. This was the qualitative change—I am much more engaged in the group since you have come to a more advanced state. And our further advancement is in that each of us now should maintain the unity we achieved.

We should at least try to maintain the same feeling that arose during our uniting at the congress. This is despite the fact that totally opposite states will be coming: totally opposite feelings and calculations will wash over. And they will not even contradict the former unity, but will just distract and sway you off to the side, forcing you to strive for the philistine values that you used to have in the past. And this is where you should try to view your condition with the Creator’s eyes. This means to look at it not only from “below upward” but also from “above downward”. In other words, you should see yourself as a child who is imagining being a grownup.

He doesn’t just look upward at adults from his place, but he imagines being big and what he would do then, how he would arrange his life, himself. That is, we should visualize how we would apply an “adult” spiritual state to our life if we were already in it.

To be an adult means to be like the Creator. And I need to envision I am next to the Creator and my spiritual vessel creates a complete connection of all desires, thanks to our self-annulment and the mutual inclusion of everyone into everyone infinitely, so that each of us feels all the common desire and the Creator being revealed in it. This cannot be described with words because all our words derive from the broken world and not from oneness.

With these eyes we should look upon life, the friends, the teacher, and on your entire work, and regard them accordingly. In normal life, “outside the temple walls,” we act as all others, not separating from them. But inside your group, you should see the corrected state. Everyone should view the group and his or her life this way. Then, a person can fit into this corrected picture. Likewise, as during studying, so with the teacher and the group, one can act in sync with the upper state being envisioned. After all, who is the Creator? It is the upper state. And this is all we need.

Most importantly, stay in “There is none else besides Him, the good who does good” every moment. I envision the Creator, who resides within me, as such, and what He demands of me in this case. What would be required of me if I were in such a state? How would I see everything if I were exactly the one, besides whom there is nobody else, someone good who does good?

I need to see that all my actions come from the Creator, and my attitude to the friends, and to the world—and all of it is good and only for their benefit. Everyone will eventually feel this way, and gradually, we are beginning to feel it. This is described as “penny by penny builds to a large sum.” We exerted efforts that accumulate and ultimately result in a leap: one passes level 0, 1, 2, 3, 4 and finally makes a leap. And then again stages 0, 1, 2, 3, 4 and a new leap. That is how we finally reach our first spiritual state.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/11/12, “Questions and Answers Regarding Novosibirsk Convention”

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Question: Recently, I watched a movie in which a group of boys came across a cave with a spaceship in it. After they looked at the spaceship, they suddenly began to fly. Can those who participate in group integral education start flying?

Answer: What imagination!

This world is based on very rigid physical laws. There is nothing else here! The upper world partakes in this realm through numerous physical laws.

Talk with physicists; they will tell you that all there is behind this material plane are waves. They will prove to you that there is no such thing as matter and that it blurs, meaning that when we penetrate deeper into its tiny particles, they simply disappear and turn into waves and energy; nothing more than that.

All that we observe is the interaction of energies in space. What lies beyond the observable world? Who knows? Energy, space, everything fully disappears when we get beyond these boundaries. There is no time, no motion, no distance whatsoever.

Interaction between things is independent of the distance between them. We have already seen this on the border of physics.

Comment: This picture seems pretty empty for an egoist.

Answer: Why? There is a huge egoistic field that we can work in. We don’t see our bodies, nor do we need them. Our bodies dissolve and disappear from our sensations.

We see ourselves as being stretched all over infinity and eternity; we sense infinity, we control it and fulfill ourselves with it. In return, we fill it with ourselves. This is the way we exist. Each of us regards this dimension from his or her personal viewpoint. These states are quantifiable by regular physical devices. Kabbalah provides actual tools for that to us.

Comment: In other words, there is a flow of energy, bliss, and love.

Answer: Energy is the joy that flows through our desire with enormous strength.

Actually, there are two kinds of desires: to please and to be pleased. They are constantly changing, shifting, and flowing; this complementary interaction is life.

Everything else is outside of this life.

Comment: Our people who like to fantasize will be upset.

Answer: I think that people are approaching truth at a pretty fast pace. Our egoism grows and fairy tales won’t satisfy us any longer.

Interest in yoga, new age theories, etc. is almost over. This period was required solely to “decorate” our existence, to add a pinch of spice to our life to make it a little juicier. That’s why all sorts of salespeople are travelling all over the world selling red strings, holy water, and promoting a variety of training, but all of this is meant for the public; of course, it isn’t worth anything.
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From KabTV’s “Conversations with Dr. Laitman,” 11/4/12

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Question: If relative to the Creator, we are already in the third, corrected state, then what does it mean that we have to give pleasure to the Creator?

Answer: We have never gone out of the third and the first states; relative to the Creator, there are no changes. Everything that was created by Him was created at once and instantly, and there is not even question of time. We will begin to feel this soon.

Ari wrote in his poem: Behold, that before the emanations were emanated and the creatures created, the upper simple light had filled the whole existence. What do it was before and then mean? Baal HaSulam explains this in his writings.

The state of time is a causal relationship. But we do not understand that either. Cause and effect are always related to time for us.

The picture that we attain in spirituality is beyond our limitations of time, space, and motion. We feel them only at our lowest earthly level. Once we start to feel the upper world, we will see that there is no time, no death, no birth—nothing! There is only a constant ascent in the property of bestowal.
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From the Novosibirsk Convention 12/8/12, Lesson 3

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The wisdom of Kabbalah is a special wisdom which actually explains everything. However, one must attain it. It isn’t perceived by the mind and the desires we were born with, not through our nature.

We were born on the “animate” level” and we have to develop the properties of the next level in us, the “human” (Adam) level, which means resembling (Domeh – resemble in Hebrew) the upper force.

In our corporeal reality we also receive different signals from the world around us according to our equivalence to it. I perceive the world around me according to my sensitivity to the range of frequencies and to the sensitivity of my senses of sight, hearing, and other senses, but, in addition, many other frequencies exist, all different sources, which I don’t perceive. I perceive the world only in the range of frequencies that my senses are tuned to or through the instruments I can create in order to expand the range of these frequencies, and not more than that. We don’t create something that we don’t have; we only expand what we have.

On the other hand, in order to reveal the upper force, we have to create a totally new additional sense inside us. It is new qualitatively; since all our senses are locked on receiving, on the egoistic intention for one’s self, we perceive the world around us only with regard to what concerns us: what good we can receive from it and what bad things to avoid.

Initially I perceive the world through the filter of my five senses, in the frequencies I am tuned to. Besides that, there is my ego, which filters every thing according to one principle, “Will it be good or bad for me?” If there is no response in our huge desire for something, in the estimate of the potential benefit or the harm, then I don’t perceive and don’t see it. We only perceive what our desire wants, which means what is positive or negative for it, or what can harm me or bring me contentment—then I see it.

With such an approach, even if we expand our senses by creating different instruments such as telescopes, microscopes, etc., nothing will help since our ego, which is behind them, will still classify everything according to this scale.

There is a lot of research on this issue by psychologists and physicists. In modern physics, there is the concept of the “observer.” At first Newton’s physics claimed that the universe is as we see it. The picture that was depicted was rather simple, although Newton studied the wisdom of Kabbalah and also studied Hebrew in order to read the original version of the sources.

Then came Albert Einstein and Hugh Everett who reached a different phrasing of the concept: The world around us is as we perceive it; in fact, it is totally different, but as we perceive it, we change, tilt, and break it by our attributes. By observing any physical events, we distort them just by viewing them, and as a result they will not be as they were without us.

So, it isn’t enough that we perceive everything through the filter of our ego, but even when we just look at something, by our participation, we interfere with the picture of the world. Look at a star and it is already different just by your looking at it; this is what physicists say.

Today, we reach the understanding that there is a different perception of the world, not the formal perception that is based on our animal attributes. The wisdom of Kabbalah puts it simply; it says: Instead of your ordinary sense, instead of the ego in which you receive only for your own good, stabilize a different sense, make it totally different, make it in order to bestow. If you open the attribute of this new sense so that it is focused outside yourself, you will determine what the world actually looks like. You will see that it is totally different; you will see that it is real. In addition, you will change yourself. The new sense that will appear in you is called a “soul.”

Actually, it doesn’t matter what you call it. One way or the other, with this new sense, you will see the whole external world that “hasn’t been touched” as it is—the forces, the connections, and its goals. You will be so adapted to it and so connected to it that everything that is in your ego, your animal state, your animal body, will simply “die.” This means that you will not feel it—this is how microscopic the current feeling of life will seem to you compared to what you will feel when you discover the world outside yourself and exist in it.

This is what the wisdom of Kabbalah leads a person to.
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From the Novosibirsk Convention 12/7/12, Lesson 1

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Question: What is a group? Are these physical bodies or my inner attitude?

Answer: It is preferable that I see them as physical bodies. It is desirable that I perceive them in my five senses.

When we enter the next level, and are on a real conscious level of mutual connection, distance will be meaningless. This means that we will reach a level that physicists talk about as existing beyond time and space, where certain forces and worlds operate. And it is actually so! Scientists approach this barrier and admit: “Yes, it is possible that there is something beyond this barrier, but what? We don’t know. There the feeling disappears and it becomes impossible to study things.”

In our case, however, this doesn’t happen. If we enter the same area, distance and feeling don’t matter to us. I don’t need to see anyone, I feel a person’s shape, his bestowal, and how I am connected to him in mutual bestowal: He may be more and I may be less (it makes no difference), but we are already on a different level of connection between us.

Then distances don’t matter to me and I don’t feel whether it is a man or a woman, a grownup or a child; it doesn’t matter if we are connected this way. I feel the previous generations of Kabbalists who are in this system, who developed themselves and remain in it. I already have a different feeling, different glasses.
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From the Novosibirsk Convention 12/7/12, Lesson 1

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Question: How can we bridge the gap between the perception of reality of those who study Kabbalah and the rest of humanity?

Answer: According to the wisdom of Kabbalah, we create a special attitude towards us, towards reality, and towards the Creator, the upper force, which we discover according to the equivalence of form with it. According to our equivalence, we discover increasingly more of the 125 degrees, each of which is a whole new world, and in it a new me.

On the other hand, most people’s attitude towards reality doesn’t change. A person remains on his level and perceives a fixed picture of the world to which he has grown accustomed. In addition, he is proud of it, he holds on to it, feeling that he is right, thinking that he is absolutely sane.

We are constantly changing; we constantly have doubts, constantly ask questions. The next moment may turn out to be the opposite of the previous one. Our whole way is full of similar surprises that come from the inside.

It isn’t by chance that it’s said, “Don’t believe in yourself until your dying day.” If you say something like this to someone on the outside, he will smile patronizingly, as if you are not from this world, as if you’re not human at all. When we approach him with our message, we need to understand his perspective, his perception doesn’t change and therefore, he is very sure of himself.

But there comes a time when a person begins to break through a crisis. Then his whole perception of reality is shattered and he doesn’t know where he is anymore; a moment ago his world was whole, understood, and predictable. Only a moment ago he knew what he has to do and suddenly he feels like a small helpless child. His picture of the world has been shattered to pieces and he doesn’t see the right solutions anymore; he doesn’t understand what’s going on, he isn’t sure of himself, feels scared and terrified: “Where is my mother? Where can I hide? What can I do?”

This is how people feel in the current crisis—increasingly helpless, since they have no answers anymore. Once we could turn in a certain direction, we innovated things, we had revolutions, social revolutions, industrial revolutions, and cultural revolutions; in short it was clear to us what needed to be done. We always found a trend and we held on to it and were sure that we were right.

But today it isn’t happening because the general bankruptcy is in every aspect of life. It’s a total, global, comprehensive bankruptcy. The main thing is that simple people understand clearly what is happening. The world is falling to pieces, so what does one have left?

There are three things left: fascism, fanaticism, or an ascent, which the wisdom of Kabbalah offers. If we judge logically, there are no other options: education, culture, work, competition, technological advancement, space research, all this doesn’t work anymore, everything is falling to pieces leaving nothing in its place. This means that man himself has to change. But how?

Fascism and fanaticism offer a rigid fundamental way: People should believe in something and be dedicated and loyal to it. We will insert a certain “fact” into his head which will become a new basis for his life and make a fanatic out of him, or in fact a “zombie.” This is what is happening in the Middle East; for example, here it seems like salvation to people. When the whole world is collapsing, a person is ready to raise the flag of his faith and even die for it. The right environmental conditions favor such a chain of events.

It’s the same regarding fascism: “We are the best! We will follow our way and succeed no matter what!” A person learns short slogans that narrow his mind and help him feel internally consolidated when all the other rational principles of our world don’t work anymore. This is the reason for the crisis.

On the whole, the wisdom of Kabbalah tells people: “We have to rise rationally to an irrational level.” It’s hard to understand this, but one way or the other, it’s clear that the struggle is against a big “narrow” ego, that is trying to pull and to bring people down, while we have to raise them up.

Here things don’t depend on people’s strength or weakness. Fanaticism and fascism will be able to change people’s perception by promising them refuge from the troubles that hit them. Therefore, we have to activate our inner forces, the mutual connection between us, in order to draw the upper force. Then through the internal network it will spread all over the world so that people will feel there is another way and they will follow it.

The negative forces aspire to pull a person into fanaticism, while we approach him differently from the inside, opening his eyes. This is the whole essence of the current struggle. This is exactly why the Nazis were so uncompromising regarding the Jews. We will succeed. There is no doubt about it.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/5/12, “The Wisdom of Kabbalah and Philosophy”

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The wisdom of Kabbalah consists of two parts: the concealed and the revealed.

“Concealed” means forbidden to reveal. And what is the point in revealing? Indeed, everything can be written in books, but what a person can get from them depends on the state he is in. Thus one of the parts of the wisdom of Kabbalah is called “concealed,” because it is revealed only after certain conditions are fulfilled as a person goes through the cleansing of his ego.

It is also called that way since the upper part of the world of Atzilut is inaccessible to us. Even if I learn about the smallest, initial level of the spiritual ascent and am still in the worlds of Assiya, Yetzira, Beria and only later enter the world of Atzilut, still, even the smallest level I am on, the first ten parts called “one level” (one level is made of ten Sefirot), already gives me an idea about all of creation, but in a minimal way, on a small scale. Then I rise and see, like on a map that I read on a larger scale, everything there is enlarged.

But being at the bottom, I cannot bring the concealed part, GAR of Atzilut, its upper part, close to me in any way, which means to depict it. I can imagine different lower levels more or less, and then too I am always wrong, since every upper level is a new attribute regarding a lower level. Still, I can somehow imagine it, but not the levels that are concealed or that are called secret. All the levels below them are called revealed and we can reach them all, anticipating in advance what revelations they will bring us.

The first Partzuf of the world of Atzilut is called Atik, from the Hebrew word “ne’etak” – “cut,” detached and cut off, from our attainment. The next Partzuf is called Zeir Anpin, and the upper part of its “head” is called Keter, or more accurately Kitra (in Aramaic), and this part is also concealed.

Everything that is below this part is gradually revealed to us: Kruma of Avira, Mocha of Avira, Mocha Stima. The structure of all these parts is very interesting, since it is from them, from the revealed part of the head of Arich Anpin, that the Providence descends into our world, that our fate descends.
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From a Virtual Lesson 11/25/12

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There can be different fears: for my condition in this world, for my relatives, and for the whole the world. But all these are corporeal fears that stem from the fact that a person isn’t connected to the Creator in the right way at the moment so that he could realize that everything is in His hands and that “there is none else besides Him.”

A person doesn’t understand that he is totally under the Creator’s control, and so he fears for himself in this world. Since he has no contact with the Creator, he feels that he and this world are detached from the upper force. He thinks that this world exists on its own.

Then there is another stage when a person begins to worry about the way things are in the next world: about himself, about his relatives, and about the world. This means that he separates himself and the world from the Creator, as if all these things exist separately from one another, and he looks for a connection between them that can ensure the best existence for him.

All this fear stems from concealment, so nothing can help except for advancing towards true fear, the fear of the Creator.

This is already a different kind of fear; it isn’t regarding this world and not the next world, and not about the reward and punishment in it. There is simply fear that remains in a person for now; he hasn’t totally discovered that the Creator controls all of His good creation and that he has nothing to ask for and nothing to worry about, not in the present and not in the future.

When he looks back at the past he is ashamed of his bad deeds. This means that he still hasn’t adhered to the upper Providence so that he can understand that there is none else besides Him, except the only Providence.

It turns out that the cause of all the fears is the concealment. Everything is determined only by our transition from concealment to revelation. There is no other criterion to assess our states. Concealment, an insufficient feeling of the Creator, and incomplete faith above reason, all lead to fear and worry.

This level is called “repentance of fear” and it is the intermediate level before wholeness. It must exist. On this level a person clarifies how many desires in which he feels this world are still disconnected from the only good, infinite Providence of the Creator.

He can arrange his desires faster if he connects more strongly to the group. Inside it he will always find the upper Light and himself operating, and he will process all his fears correctly so that every fear will advance towards wholeness as much as possible.

Complete fear is called the Light of Hassadim in the illumination of Hochma. He should approach such a fear gradually by his examinations. If he demands it correctly, he demands to know about all the interruptions, which means about all his desires and discernments in which he doesn’t yet resemble the Creator and in which there is no whole fear.

In the meantime a person is not in a state of whole fear, worrying whether he has the intention of in order to bestow, above all his vessels of knowledge, his vessels of receiving, but actually this is what makes up the complete fear. At the same time, worrying about this, about how great his bestowal is, which means above what thickness of the vessel that was revealed, he can rise and be in bestowal. This is how we reach complete fear.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/4/12, “Introduction to the Study of the The Sefirot” 

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