Question: What does a person obtain when he attains spirituality?

Answer: He obtains qualitatively new knowledge because now his revelation is part of him. In our world, I discover these or those external phenomena. For example, if I am a chemist, I observe, examine, and describe a chemical process.

In the science of Kabbalah, I reveal the upper world and am myself in the picture that opens to me. I am identical to my discovery; I have the same qualities that are there in the reality that I discover. Of course, at the same time, I see all the stages that I have passed, both spiritual and material. They remain in me, and I can descend to any of them to establish contact with others.

In general however, spiritual development is a precise attainment. I don’t just get to know or understand something. Knowing and attaining are not the same thing. Attainment means that I turn into the state that I have reached, not just becoming acquainted with a new degree, but become it.
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From the 4^th part the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/4/12, “Kabbalah and Philosophy”

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Question: If I am totally dependent on the environment, how can I influence it?

Answer: If you look closely, you will see that indeed everything you will be in the future is totally determined by the environment. This means that you are like clay in the hands of a craftsman, which is the environment, since the upper Light comes in an abstract form. The environment stabilizes you and then the upper Light goes through it and influences you, and then you can somehow imagine what the environment is like, what is should look like. Since it is your future, you want to look for this future form on the environment and thus relate to it. Then suddenly you begin to discover that your future attributes and the attributes of the whole world are in it, since the individual and the general are equal, and even if you delve into an individual person, you will see the whole world in him, all the way to the end of correction.

So when you look at the environment this way, you want to become dependent on it, and then you begin to discover that in all the friends there are the correct future states, although they don’t identify them yet. Thus the great Kabbalist, Rabbi Yossi Ben Kisma learned from his new students, as it written, “I have learned from all my students.”

This is the way you should relate to the environment, since it is the same wrapping that affects you. The more corrected you imagine it to be, the more it impresses you. It has no form of its own; everything depends on how you see it.

You may ask, so why does it say: “Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked or stand in the way that sinners take or sit in the company of mockers.” (Psalms 1) It is good for the person who does not sit among the wicked and certainly good for a person who sits among the righteous.

Of course we refer to wicked and righteous in the right and good environment that advances to spirituality. But the point is that a person himself shapes his environment. By the way he treats it today, he determines if it is an “environment of wicked” or an “environment of righteous.” And accordingly he determines how this environment will affect him.

It is because we don’t know who is wicked and who is righteous. At first people yearn for spirituality—this is what I reveal by my corporeal senses (sight, hearing, taste, smell and touch). I see in my mind and heart that everyone yearns for spirituality more or less. The way I perceive them from now on depends on me. The different qualities I attribute to them and the more sublime and respectable they are, is how they will impress me.

I build my environment, the envelope that affects me. Then it determines not only this affect but also the form of the Creator. It is because the Creator has no form. The relationship between me and the environment stabilize the Creator’s image for me, and since He has no image, I simply imagine Him that way.

Later this environment becomes an external vessel for me in which there is the Surrounding Light, and this process continues until the end of correction, until this vessel unites with me and becomes my vessel, for my whole “self” that is filled with the Inner Light.
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From the 2^nd part the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/29/12, The Zohar

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The main point we constantly should guard as our inner goal is the principle of “There is none else besides Him.” The Creator is the reason for every state, every thought, every perception, for everything that happens. There is only one force managing me and the world around me, and nothing but that.

It is all meant so that I, through my connection with the world, at every moment, in every event and in every action, both internally and externally, will reach the understanding that “There is none else besides Him” within the global circle. This is called adhesion within the general vessel. This is our work, and this is what we focus on.

However, the world is big, and, so, we begin with the group (1), and only then move on to the rest of the world (2). I must connect with the group through different cases and problems, and it should be the most important thing for me now. When I turn to the group, I also must remember the world as the second part of my work.

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Question: How can we affect all the groups in the world now so that they will feel what we feel? How are we able to transfer our feelings to them? What kind of intensity, relationships, and connection is required from us?

Answer: We really are in connection with everyone. If they grasp us or not, is not, by the way, our problem since everything happens in relation to the Creator.

He affects us, He is completely disclosed to us. The Creator doesn’t conceal Himself. When we say that the Creator is concealed, He isn’t. It is we who conceal Him through our uncorrected attributes. He has nothing to conceal from us. We simply express it this way. But actually the concealment is in us and not in the Creator.

It is also this way in relation to other groups. When we study, hold workshops, in anything we do, it includes all the world’s groups. When we try to include it in us, even if we don’t think about it each moment (because we also don’t think about it now each moment), we can’t include it within us. We still have only a small desire, a small Kli (vessel/desire).

But when we begin to connect between us, we can simultaneously grasp a billion thoughts, a billion feelings, and they don’t annul each other. It is as if we are now very small, like one byte of information, and on it, for example, it is possible to write 0 or 1 and nothing more. But when we have a huge connection of 0s and these 1s, which means of all kinds of units of information, then we will be able to list and to include in us all of humanity, and then we will try to do that .
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From the Georgia Convention 11/6/12, Workshop 2

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Baal HaSulam, “The Essence of the Wisdom of Kabbalah”: As there is no perception of the Creator whatsoever, so it is impossible to attain the essence of any of His creatures, even the tangible objects that we feel with our hands.

We perceive the Creator according to the principle: “Come and see.” I don’t know what the essence of the Creator is, but I can “come and see.” In order to do that, I perform certain actions and by them I know the Creator, as it says, “From Your actions we shall know You.” All of reality, all His actions and the ways He is revealed, are a result of our self-correction and by that we perceive Him in our feelings. I perceive everything in my vessels because it is there that I discover different phenomena, including the Creator.

The “Creator” is the uppermost level that I can attain. It is bestowal and love that controls all of reality. I discover the law of to do good unto His created beings, the Good that does Good; I discover the phenomenon that resides in all the vessels, in all my parts, in all my soul and my desires; I see and perceive that He is the first, the original. It turns out that even before I began to understand, to perceive and to feel, there was something determining my thoughts, desires, and actions.

But how could it be that first I perceive this and then I acknowledge and admit that He existed first. Can it be? Yes. Within the action itself I perceive and discover that He was first. So everything only stems from the actions. In spirituality I can’t recognize and identify something that doesn’t move and doesn’t act.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/19/12, “The Essence of the Wisdom of Kabbalah”

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Question: Is the realization of evil an incessant process?

Answer: Oh! We still have to get there! Then you’ll see how a second is stretched out. It simply doesn’t have an end; it simply disappears. Time is not compressed into a point as they say in our world, but rather stretched so that it disappears.

This is not as people usually think, that time is accelerating like in technology where we move from hertz to kilohertz, to megahertz, to laser frequencies, and so forth. No! Here everything is happening the opposite way. Time is gradually stopping; however, during one second, you can go through a huge number of states. This second still does not end.
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From the Georgia Convention 11/6/12, Lesson 4

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Baal HaSulam, “The Essence of the Wisdom of Kabbalah”: Actual things are found even in the corporeal reality set before our eyes, although we have neither perception nor image of their essence. Such are electricity and magnetism.

Nevertheless, who can say that these names are not real when we vividly and satisfactorily know their actions? We could not be more indifferent to the fact that we have no perception of the essence of the subject itself, namely electricity itself.

In the “Introduction to The Book of Zohar” Baal HaSulam gives us the example of water, which can be cooled until it becomes solid or which can be brought to the state of vapor and cannot be seen. In other words, we cannot judge according to our perception whether something exists or not, no matter what it is. This is especially true in our times when we have discovered different frequencies, quantum phenomena, bacteria, and other phenomena that cannot be felt.

In fact we see that it is much more complicated than the picture that is depicted by our five coarse senses. I cannot limit the world to these limited senses any longer. In fact, the whole world is actually not matter but waves and energy, and I am also the same.

By studying about different phenomena, we name them according to our feelings. In the past, for example, a person looked at a mountain and said: “It is a good idea to grow olive trees on the slopes of this mountain.” Since then that mountain is called the “Mount of Olives.” Is there a spiritual attainment in that? No. But on the other hand, the idea didn’t come by chance either, but according to the order of the Lights of the vessels. There is no chance at all; the names always stem from some attainment, in this case a corporeal attainment. Kabbalists discover phenomena of the spiritual reality in their feelings and accordingly call them by names. What is more, these names are filled with a rich inner content that is stabilized in different aspects, processing, and components.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/19/12, “The Essence of the Wisdom of Kabbalah“

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Question: Can The Book of Zohar help me recognize evil?

Answer: The Zohar, more than any other source, can help a person feel the evil. We advance on the way to the Light, to the Creator, to the force of bestowal, which is the only one who rules and who operates in reality since the desire to receive doesn’t move if the force of bestowal, the force of the Light, doesn’t impress it.

So it turns out that without Kabbalah books, and especially without The Book of Zohar, we wouldn’t discover the source of our movement, but would just wander in this world. It is the Light that impresses us in the form of circles if we evoke it to get closer to us equally on all sides, and then everything is immersed in different troubles and problems.

But what are troubles and problems? It is the feeling of our oppositeness from that Light. We don’t know what the Light is, but we feel bad, not knowing what it is.

If a small child feels cold, for example, he is shivering and crying and doesn’t know what to do. Next to him there is a door to a warm room, but he doesn’t know that he should go in there. So he continues to cry and to scream, but is not able to tie his bad feeling with the cold. He doesn’t understand that he feels bad because of the cold and doesn’t know that if he goes through the next door he will feel good and warm. He attains this only according to the actual phenomenon, but he doesn’t know where it stems from. He only reacts simply to his inner state, without a cause and with no results. This is how the simple desire to receive responds.

But if this desire begins to build a head for itself, then he already understands where things come from and why and how he can be saved, and what actions he should take in order to escape the bad situation—this is already a head. But how is it created? By the Light that by different actions builds in him this mechanism, which doesn’t exist in the desire to receive at all.

Thus we gradually advance to the good. There are people on such a level of development who simply cry out when they feel bad. There are others who try to escape in different directions, but don’t know the right direction. There are also those who manage to escape. There are those who understand that there is no need to escape, and that if we perceive the Light that comes to us and it makes us feel bad, here in our place, we will turn it to good, and there is nowhere to run at all. So they overcome their state, transcend it, and discover the Light in the same place. It all depends on our development.
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From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/18/12, The Zohar

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The latest written source of the wisdom of Kabbalah is dated approximately 500 years ago. These are the books by the Holy ARI. About 20 volumes of his writings disclose in detail the entire system of governance of this world and its interaction with the upper world.

The ARI’s books explain not only the way this world is controlled by the upper forces, but also our impact on them, the reverse influence, and how this influence once again triggers the actions of the upper forces upon us. The books by the ARI describe all these interactions between the upper governance and us, our freedom of will, our destinies, previous reincarnations, and so forth. They provide a very serious and detailed description of everything there is.

However, it turned out to be insufficient. In the 20th century (400 to 500 years after the ARI), another Kabbalist, Baal HaSulam (“master of the ladder” in Hebrew), appears. Why? It’s because he described in detail the “ladder” that one must ascend when climbing from this world, the current state in which an ordinary person finds himself, to the peak of his development.

It’s not about physical growth, nor does it talk about intellectual development. We see that there is nothing much to boast about in this world. Rather, it is about the advancement that each of us must accomplish: to attain the upper world, the system of governance. It is about our attainment of the eternal, perfect world that still is beyond our perception. Baal HaSulam presented a modern-day methodology that we are using at this time.

His son Rabash has developed his father’s method further and made it more practical. He created a concrete, step-by-step instruction described in numerous articles. These articles clearly show how by changing ourselves, expanding our organs of perception, we can begin perceiving the hidden Universe concealed from us by our own limitations.

It’s common knowledge that we are limited. We can hear only within a certain range of sounds, we see a limited spectrum of light, and so on. In other words, all our senses—vision, hearing, smell, touch, and taste—are limited. While here we are talking about other organs of perception, not the ones that we currently have.

In order to widen our organs of perception, we invented multiple devices, such as telescopes and microscopes for the eyes, numerous types of radars, locators, and so forth. However, most important for us is to figure what additional organs of perception we need in order to sense the world around us.
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From the Georgia Convention 11/5/12, Lesson 1

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Rabash, “Three Lines:” Before a person is granted to exit self love and to do everything in order to bestow, which is called Lishma (for Her name), even though a person studies different things the way they are, they are only names with no commentary, since he has no attainment of the matters that he studies, since he knows nothing about the upper roots that are called by the Holy names or Sefirot or Partzufim.

And we can learn the upper matters, called the wisdom of Kabbalah, only by way of merit, since they can bring a person a desire and passion to adhere to the Creator, since these are Holy matters referring to the Holy names…and when a person studies the upper matters in order to get closer to Holiness, it brings the closeness of the Lights, which he wants this study to bring him, so that he will be granted to aim all his actions in order to bestow, and this is called working in preparation, as a person prepares himself to be ready to enter the King’s palace and to adhere to Him.

There are several phases in the preparation work. In the first phase of the study a person listens, but he doesn’t hear, since he doesn’t know what it’s about. All the terms Kabbalah books speak about are hidden from a person—he doesn’t feel them and doesn’t see; he doesn’t discern himself or his environment. So he imagines what he hears as he desires.

He doesn’t work with these concepts and cannot discern them or respond to them, he thinks that Pharaoh is a person who rules Egypt, which is a distant country, that the Creator is very far, and that Israel is someone who is born to a Jewish family. He lacks the right spiritual concepts, so that he can immediately feel an inner reaction if he hears them.

If he hears about a pain in the heart, the head, the arm or the leg, he can immediately imagine it. He would feel a reaction to the word he hears, but the Kabbalistic terms don’t evoke any reaction in him, and so in the meantime he studies without attributing all this to himself. But the Surrounding Light operates on him and reforms him, and to the extent that a person does everything in his power, it brings him closer to the upper world.

The main thing is that at first a person doesn’t know that the only way to advance is by subduing himself to the group, the teacher and the books. After all, he is like a baby who has to adhere to the grown ups, to an upper level. By that he shortens or prolongs time. The preparation may take several years, until he comes close enough to the Light and begins to feel how the Light operates in him and begins to discern every attribute in him. This can take 20-30 years.

Everything depends on the extent to which a person can subdue himself before the teacher, the group, and the study with all the means that he has. It’s the study period of Yenika (infancy) when one must adhere and devote himself to the upper level, when you annul your mind and everything that you know as much as possible. Then there is the stage of greater awareness, when a person already begins to discern these attributes in him and to experience ascents and descents.

In the third phase he already understands that it’s the Creator who evokes these ascents and descents in him, as He calls him, “Come to Pharaoh!” The Creator is always on the right side, and Pharaoh is on the left side, and a person is left in the middle between these two forces. But until this is actually revealed within him, he can only guess that that’s the way it is according to his own reactions. Eventually he cries out since he cannot exit himself and break free of Pharaoh’s domination, and then is granted redemption.

Afterwards the road doesn’t get any easier. A person simply sees everything that happens along this road differently. Redemption becomes an opportunity to bestow for him, to ascend above himself and to work disregarding the unpleasant inner feelings.

Thus he advances and his advancement is determined by the re-evaluation of his values.
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From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/15/12

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