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.
[93297]
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.
[93000]
From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/15/12

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Now we are reading The Book of Zohar. How can I tie this text with the Light that Reforms, with the changes I have to feel that I go through, and by them to reach the goal of creation? How can I feel that? What do I have to do when I read or listen to The Zohar?

Actually I am required to find an inner expression to what the authors of The Zohar say. In what desires, in what feelings, in what internal states or changes do I see the fulfillment of what I read about in the book? A person is a small world. All the worlds are in a person. All these states, all these patterns are already inside me. I only need to reveal them; I want to see them. I want to reveal in me what we read about in The Zohar.

Question: Does it mean that I must always look inside myself and try to find the inner reactions to what we read about? But we always try to incorporate in others and to feel them.

Answer: Of course, everyone is in you, and you also see us inside you. The same system by which you reveal everything, including the Creator is in you.

Question: I can understand it in my mind…

Answer: No, it has to be in your feelings. Gradually you will feel that everything is inside you; there is nothing on the outside. All this resistance, all the conflicts between me and what is on the outside is gradually erased, this disparity, this distance is emotional. It disappears.

The more we speak about the fact that what is external to me is increasingly more important for me, all the way to “love thy friend as thyself,” when your friend who is external to you becomes more important to you than yourself, the more you erase the distance and you advance towards the state in which what is external and what is internal become the same for you or close to that. You begin to perceive reality in a more realistic way and that it is inside you.

Where does this perception come from? From the fact that what is on the outside becomes emotionally closer to what is inside. This is where the feeling that all of reality is internal comes from. This is how a mother feels her child inside her, although he is actually on the outside. Therefore, first he is in her womb and then he comes out.

These are the phases of our development. But it doesn’t mean that he is getting further from her. On the contrary, a person grows, gives birth to children, and what is external seems to exist internally too. In fact there is no internality and externality, everything becomes one whole.

Here we have to overcome an emotional barrier, so that I will feel that what is on the outside is equal to what is on the inside. Then I will discover that all of reality is inside me. It isn’t in our mind but in our feelings. The mind is already a result of this correction.
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From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/14/12, The Zohar

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Question: Sometimes there is a feeling in the group that we all understand and feel a certain phenomenon, but suddenly we feel fogginess in our minds and thoughts, a kind of stupor, and there is the feeling that we develop very slowly. Why is that?

Answer: Why do we constantly forget our goal while in the group, why do we connect and then it all disappears, why do the pictures of the world conceal the real picture in which we should see that everything around us is our desire and that we have to connect in order to discover the Creator in it? Why do we detach ourselves from the true picture of the world and the mirage and imaginary picture that we see conceal spirituality from us? Why is our world stronger than the spiritual world?

It is all because you haven’t focused yourself together with the group on connection.

If you make efforts by yourself, you cannot attain anything by that, you can only succeed when we mutually help one another so that the picture of connection will become a spiritual picture, that it will acquire life, acquire Light in it, and will show us that it is the only true picture of the world.

The external picture that you now see will suddenly lose its intensity and its influence on you and will gradually fade. You would feel that everything that is happening here is like a dream. I drive somewhere, go to sleep, wake up, go to work, go somewhere, all this suddenly begins to fade. You suddenly begin to see that it all stems from your attributes and it stops being so real, clear, and alive and becomes blurry and foggy.

The same picture that is focused on connection, which you imagined before, now becomes real and in it you discover new states. It is this picture that becomes the important one, which means that you begin to feel where the signals are coming from, the Providence, the higher level.

Thus you gradually change one attribute for another.
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From the Georgia Convention 11/06/12, Lesson 2

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Question: Suppose people have been playing for a while and in the process of integral study, humanity changes. Sitting somewhere in a cave is a hermit who doesn’t know about that, how can we advance without him?

Answer: It makes no difference. He will feel it. Distance does not matter.

Question: Will he feel it and run to that group?

Answer: He will connect to the world according to his state and his position. He doesn’t have to run anywhere, but can continue to live on a desert island, or in the tundra, or in a cave in the Himalayas, but he will feel that the world is changing according to the changes in him. After all, the Light operates on all of humanity. If there is a critical mass, everyone feels the changes.
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From KabTV’s “Talks with Michael Laitman,” 10/3/12

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Question: Where is a person’s desire located: in the body, outside of it, in the air, or next to the person?

Answer: There are no desires in the body at all. We can replace every single organ in one’s body, make as many transplants as we want, but we won’t impact the human in that body whatsoever.

When half a century ago Professor Barnard from South Africa made the first heart transplant ever, everybody worried: “What will happen with the patient? What will he feel afterwards?” Nothing at all! The heart is simply a mechanism that pumps blood, nothing more than that.

Even if we make a brain transplant, nothing will change. Our brain is not a thinking unit; it doesn’t form thoughts. It’s only a conductor that connects us with the universal field of reason. Our desires also exist in the same field, and not in our bodies. Our body seemingly exists in that field and merely perceives it. A little induction brought upon us is in fact life that we sense.

Question: In other words, in the integral reason, when a person enters the general field of love, he starts to use his conductor by all 100% and thus develops it further?

Answer: Yes, but it will be not the same brain that we currently have!

We only have a tool similar to an induction coil that picks up the field outside and it triggers certain currents in it. And what we feel is these currents, those of them that we are able to recognize, master, and be aware of. In reality, however, the field that surrounds us is tremendously powerful and intense.

Question: By intensifying our “coil” by 100%, do we expand our awareness?

Answer: It expands only when we connect with others. So, if we want to “launch” ourselves and turn into a reliable “solenoid,” we have to penetrate into and acquire other people’s desires, to contemplate and feel how we can get closer to others and help them get closer to each other.
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From KabTV’s “Talks with Michael Laitman,” 11/3/12

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Question: How can we tune ourselves to one force, to one Light, and not get off this path?

Answer: This is possible only by mutual adhesion of the friends who want to clarify everything only with regard to the connection between them. All of the Torah is the history of this connection and nothing but that.

Gradually we get to know the desire to receive which at first seems to be good; this is called the “seven years of satiety” in Egypt. Then we discover that our desire is bad. This is evidenced by the cities of Pithom and Ramses. The position of the ego doesn’t change, and if you identify with it, you live a comfortable life. But if you identify with Israel, it is bad, since the point that doesn’t let you rest appears and forces you to detach yourself from the previous attitude. Thus you don’t change the reality, but only divide it and prolong it according to your ego or according to the Light.

First you determine that the desires and the thoughts that cut you off from your property are bad. This approach is called “the opinion of the landlords.” Then the evil becomes something that cuts you off from the Creator and this is called “the opinion of the Torah.” These two opinions are opposite from one another, and the Torah tells us how a person moves from one world into another. If a person determines that everything has to exist within the desire to receive, it is a state called “this world,” which means the current level. From this point a person moves into the “next world,” to the next state in which everything has to exist in the Creator.

The story of the exodus from Egypt is the general story that repeats time after time, each time in a different quality, on a new level of perception that reveals deeper layers and exposes smaller details and a more accurate assessment. In this story we leave Egypt, but we are still quite far from the end point. Egypt returns to us during the wandering in the desert. In other words, it returns to us on a higher level as you see and live the “movie,” but in “higher resolution.” This is in addition to different wars and problems. Everything returns and rediscovers finer details of our clarification.

Everything always revolves in a triangle: “I—the group—the Creator.” We clarify the point of unity, the adhesion between the group and me. I am the vessel and the Creator is the filling. Then we examine what disturbs us and what helps us. We constantly clarify this; we clarify the necessary attributes every second, in order to correct them and to connect them. By that we ascend the spiritual ladder. So if you are looking for the most efficient way, there is only one place you should focus on.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/26/12, Writings of Rabash

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Question: Kabbalah predicts absolutely everything in the development of human history. What does it say about the current millennium?

Answer: Kabbalah predicts everything if I know in advance the general system, its motion, because everything occurs deterministically in it; that is, there are forces that interact according to a particular program, and I study this program.

The program exists; it is perfect, complete. And while I do not even know it completely because I have not reached this level to see it entirely, I can already foresee something, predict.

So it is in our world. If I have learned some laws of nature, for example, certain weather conditions, then I can calculate all the weather conditions and say with some degree of probability that during this week it might rain, or snow, or be sunny, or cloudy. Can I predict this? Yes. That is, on the basis of previous studies and the current state, I can predict the future state. This is already the knowledge of laws. Of course, this is not the knowledge of the absolute law, when there is a formula before me and I clearly see what and how, but I can forecast something approximately. It is the same thing with Kabbalah. We deal with the system.

Once I studied Bio-cybernetics; it is absolutely the same. This is the same system. I also work with the forces that affect our world. If I know these forces, know the nature of this world, then I can predict ahead of time, that is, calculate in advance how they come into contact with each other over time, and what the result would be. There is no surprise.

When we turn something on or off for a young child, it is a miracle to him, that is, we show him something he does not understand, but for us it is not a miracle because we know what we’re doing. So it is with Kabbalah.

Rising to the next level of understanding, knowledge, you see what happens, and it becomes work for you because in principle a Kabbalist is a person who is engaged not only in study but in the practical application of the management systems, the practical implementation of the program of development of the world.
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From the Georgia Convention 11/05/12, Lesson 1 

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