Question: What does it mean to proceed by the path of bestowal?

Answer: If the goal of creation is to bring pleasure to the creatures and the Creator is a positive force that does good, and only this is the essence of His treatment of us, then why do we need to pray for Him to do good to us?

Everyone screams out to the Creator, “Do something good to us!” But that is ridiculous! Why beg a kind person to perform an act of kindness toward me? He is already doing good; He cannot do anything else. After all, it is written that the Creator is benevolent to the good and the bad alike. He never changes His attitude, as it is written, “I did not change My HaVaYaH” and “the Light exists in absolute rest.”

That goes to show us that it is not worthwhile to ask Him for good. Yet all prayers, all requests, and psalms are composed by Kabbalists, people who exist in spiritual attainment. Then why did they pray, “Help me, save me, do for me”?

These are pleas to form the desire “Help me correct my perception!” That is called “the work of the Creator,” while for the Creator bestowing to us is not work, it’s pleasure.

My work is to ask for the right desire or vessel, and His work is to create this vessel. In other words, it is request for readiness to accept the fulfillment due to which we achieve adhesion rather than a request for a pleasant change.

The word “prayer” is translated as “self-judgment”; it is the creature’s request to be changed. When I ask, “Why have You forsaken me?” has He really left me? Or do I say this only in regard to my own perception within which I feel that He has left me and I realize this myself? In essence, I ask for Him to correct my sensation so that I would feel that He did not leave or become distant from me.

A prayer is a request for correction of our desires, and all this is called work for the Creator rather than fulfillment itself.
[66470]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/15/12, Writings of Rabash

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Baal HaSulam, “The Freedom”: The yielding due to satiation causes no grief. Relinquishment out of despair is full of pain and sorrow, and can therefore be called, “partial death.”

If we rise to a new desire, to a new level of awakening, we feel a growing despair and eventually die. We don’t die in the physical sense which is expected in any case, but the point is that our spirit is extinguished.

On the beastly level the spirit dies together with the body, but while the body lives, we can find a source that will allow us to rise anew each time, a new awakening. In it we feel life, livelihood, to such an extent that we become detached from the physical existence and its dependence on the body and begin to live in an awakening that is detached from corporeality. These become two different things for us, as it says “you shall see your world in your life.”

Thus a person acquires new vessels, desires, to feel life. This begins from the descents: When a person doesn’t feel life in the vessels of bestowal, he considers himself dead. Then he changes the reason, the vessel of awakening, from receiving to bestowal, and thus gets rid of the spiritual and the physical “angel of death.”

Spiritually he moves on to the vessels of bestowal that do not belong to our world. There is no death in them when the biological body dies; it ceases to feel the livelihood connected to it when the time comes for it to disintegrate and to return to the basic materials it’s made of, as always happens. But at the same time, a person acquires an awakening in the vessels of bestowal in which he feels life and the force of livelihood.  After all, he can always add something to these vessels.

As a whole, the feeling of life isn’t measured by a person’s present desire, but rather by the addition to the desire, by an acceleration coefficient. So a person should always be like a “bent old man” who seems to be looking for something he lost. I should constantly worry about losing the yearning for the goal. If a person performs this work, then he is young in soul. Otherwise we become “children who have grown old,” who retire without maturing.
[66040]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/11/12, “The Freedom”

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Question: For quite some time now during The Zohar lesson I feel as if I am trying to find the right wave of a radio station, but I only hear noises. We constantly speak about the fact that while reading The Book of Zohar we should tune ourselves to one goal or another, and I can’t do that at all…am I missing something by that or should I just keep on going and it will come eventually?

Answer: The thing is that if we are talking about receiving a wave and not about the Reforming Light, then among all the noises I should find the exact frequency in which I will hear the silence; the silence is what I need to hear. This is the exact frequency of the station. According to the wisdom of Kabbalah this accurate direction indicates that I am getting ready to receive the Inner Light.

Here, however, we are talking about the Surrounding Light, about the Reforming Light, which you don’t recognize when it comes to you. You aren’t working here in order to receive some wisdom, to receive some “station” and to hear something new.

You are here in order to activate the maximum desire, and in it you will receive the power to overcome, not knowledge. After all, you are not looking for knowledge here, but for the desire to bestow, to annul yourself before the Upper, to adhere to Him, to His attribute of bestow, to the power of bestowal, to reach self sacrifice, and the ability to actually incorporate in the group in order to receive from it the power to find this upper spiritual mechanism there.

You are not tuning yourself to the “station” of wisdom. You don’t wait to be shown something like on a TV screen. This isn’t the channel through which the Reforming Light comes. It comes to the place in which you yearn for bestowal most and are ready to annul yourself and develop your connection with others. This is the result of the Reforming Light, which we should expect.

I don’t aspire to understand and to feel the material we study at all. I yearn to understand and feel the actions of bestowal themselves. After all, “to know the material studied,” as Baal HaSulam says in part 155, of the “Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot,” means to know the Upper, and not to acquire knowledge. Knowledge in spirituality is the knowledge of bestowal, and it is in the Light that I study how the spiritual tool works. I won’t see it if I don’t have this approach.

After all, what does the Reforming Light bring us? It allows us to relate to the hidden world in which we dwell through the attribute of bestowal. When I begin to relate to the world using the attribute of bestowal, the world becomes transparent and through it I see the networks of connection. It is about these networks that I study, the networks in which I am incorporated, in which I begin to feel like a spider in a web.

When I feel the whole system of connection, I begin to correct it, to pull the strings that are drawn from me and to see upon what I bestow. Eventually, this is our whole study: about how I move the whole system and how with its help I correct my actions and work for this system, and how this whole system moves until the Creator, the general force, is revealed.

This is why I don’t look for the “station” that should be revealed by The Book of Zohar. But the “static” will gradually bring you to search for another “station,” and you will find it.
[66044]
From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/11/12, The Zohar

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We have try to imagine more and more correctly what we see and instead of the externality to see the internality. My teacher Rabash and I used to have discussions about the forces that we saw behind this world’s picture.

Once I saw a horse on the street eating from a garbage can, and suddenly Rabash said to me: “Look, this is an angel!” I was surprised because I didn’t see anything but the horse eating the scraps from our meal. The following day I asked him for more information about what he had said, trying to learn how to see the internal forces behind this world.

If I see a picture that is focused in my retina or the backside of the brain, then this is how the forces are depicted to me, like on a computer screen, together making up one form. But that form doesn’t exist in itself. I only need it so that I can hold on to something. In fact, it is an expression of an attitude of the one who gives me, who bestows upon me by means of some object.

There are three components: the one who bestows, his bestowal upon me, and its impact on me that creates some form. Through that form, I need to return to the one who bestows in order to understand what he wants from me by showing me this form. If I see a horse, what does the Creator want to tell me by showing it to me: what is the combination of forces, what is His attitude to me, what sort of reaction does He expect of me? How do I have to treat this horse and, through it, the one who bestows, the one who is showing me this movie? We have to learn all this.

Now we see the world in its external form and not the inner content. This is very helpful and isn’t meant to confuse us on purpose as we usually think. In fact it helps us attain spiritual perception! This is because we have to exert ourselves in order to switch from the external form to the internal form.

I promise you that if you begin to “penetrate” into the friends and see the “points in the heart” that are tied together, you will begin to notice that the whole world is arranged in the same way. You will understand that people are not external images, but desires, “packages” of energy. They are all in some kind of a relationship and you can influence them and they can influence you. You will see forces and not bodies!

Even today we already treat a person as some kind of force and speak about his essence, but you need to penetrate more deeply. The fact that we don’t see the world in its spiritual form but in its external form, and the gap between the two, always shows us that we haven’t reached adhesion with the environment.

The moment we adhere to the environment, and attain the first contact, all this confusion immediately disappears. You see people, but you relate to their essence and not to the external figures. Just like a good psychologist who when looking at people immediately sees their essence, their desires, thoughts, tendencies, and deviations.
[65512]
From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/3/12, “Study of the Ten Sefirot

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The current crisis we are experiencing in our world is not a crisis of economy and our entire life, but the revelation of the absence of the right perception of reality. Previously, we perceived reality completely shattered, divided into separate pieces between which there is no connection, no common nature, no single force, and without a single plan, goal, and process of development. Now, with the help of the crisis we are beginning to become increasingly aware of the connection between all the parts of reality.

This is a sign of a new era, a paradigm shift, the perception of a new reality. Now we are discovering reality to be broken and separated in our awareness: This is called the general crisis. But this is not a crisis of anything, but rather a previously non-existent revelation. Before we lived with the perception of our layer of reality, but now a more internal layer is being revealed, and then we see that nothing is working out and that everything is really broken. It is true that this is a crisis. But this crisis is the revelation of a new state and an opportunity, an invitation for correction.

From here we see that we can correct it only by advancing towards unification between all parts of reality and revealing within this unification a natural law that exists in that system, as well as various forms of relationships and different tendencies. In short, we will begin to see reality correctly.

What do we need for this? Of course, nothing in our world will help us now. After all, it doesn’t have to do with egoistic development but with the correction of the ego, which reveals itself in the form of the crisis. It follows that nothing can help mankind but the Light that Reforms. This is why the wisdom of Kabbalah, the method of correction, becomes revealed. And this is why we must bring this Light to the world through us. Even though for us it will be the Light that Reforms, for the rest it will be the right, new structure of the world, so it will stop appearing broken to us. This is what our correction will be like.

This is why we must understand that everything is determined by this approach: seeing the world as one whole and explaining to others that it is one. But we explain it to them simply from a scientific perspective, similar to the way scientists explain things. But for us this unity assumes a single desire, which includes 620 desires, which we must connect into one. And nothing else exists but the perception of a person, who must reach a state where he will be able to see the entire reality as a single organism.
[65935]
From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/10/12, The Zohar

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Everything depends on intention. This is like the valve in the internal combustion engine, which opens if I have the right intention. And as soon as the intention is gone, the valve closes. That is how I work all the time: I open the valve and close it. Let us hope that we will be able to start up this engine.

The size of the intention is determined by which desires it can rule over. Maybe my intention is only enough for the still level of my desires, or for the vegetative or animate, or for the human level. And clearly, the strongest, most efficient and powerful intentions also influence the small, lower desires.

Therefore, the most important thing for us is to think about group unity, mutual guarantee, because by virtue of that we can undoubtedly rule over all the other, lower desires we have. That is why the condition of mutual guarantee is so necessary.

I think that the friends are also outside of me, and the whole world, all of humanity, and the Creator are also outside of me. But I have to try to attach all of that to me in mutual guarantee, in the right connection, mutual dependence so these desires would unite: me and the Creator inside of me, and all the external systems will also become mine. I should not see anything else besides this, but just the image of one person, who I assemble and take care of.

And if I come out of this inner perception and speak to other people, I live in this world, so naturally, there is a collision between this inner perception and the external world, which appears to me in my senses. But I will have to accept this duality for now, which is no more than a psychological problem. And gradually, I will begin to see a more internal picture.

It’s similar to how there is the perception of an adult and of a child. A child sees only the external side, whereas an adult understands things deeper and sees the inner reasons for what is happening. Even though this is aimed in one direction, but just penetrates deeper into matter since both our intentions and external behavior are egoistic.

However, by developing a habit and making efforts, we can attain a new, true perception of reality.

Therefore, all discernments of intentions, my entire work is to try to change my vision by means of this inner perception, the inner wisdom called the science of Kabbalah, the inner part of the Torah. Then I will see the whole world as one organism in which everything belongs to me and there is nothing besides me.

Let us try to reach this sensation, and especially while reading The Book of Zohar.
[65938]
From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/10/12, The Zohar

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Question: How can we awaken care for the whole world inside our hearts?

Answer: We all exist in one spiritual vessel, in one desire. The Creator created one soul and it is impossible to selectively care for just one part of it, but only for the entire, full vessel. Nothing exists “partially” in spirituality.

If we are talking about bestowal, then we have to be concerned with becoming a candle for the Creator, which means correcting the full vessel. Since the Creator made one, single desire, bestowal can only awaken in all of it entirely. And as Baal HaSulam explains in the article “Mutual Guarantee,” we exist only for this sake.

Therefore, a person who does not care for the common vessel does not care for himself. We just have to open our eyes and see that this is the exact same thing. The world is an imprint of what we have inside; it only seems to exist on the outside.

Therefore, the aim isn’t for “me to care for the world,” but to open my eyes, to see the truth and understand that care for the world and care for yourself is the exact same care. We have to dispel this fog and clearly see that this is one soul!

Instead of “awakening care for the world” inside myself, I have to take care of myself—of why I don’t see that the whole world is my spiritual vessel, my soul.

From this it is clear that I cannot stop caring for the world under any circumstances because this is the main part of me. Everything I feel inside of me now is just my body, and this sensation called “the body” will die one day and will disappear from my consciousness. And only the care that I will acquire for my external “body” will become revealed to me as my soul and will remain with me forever. In it I will acquire my true, eternal life.

This is the inner revolution we have to go through. Essentially, this is the meaning of passing the Machsom (the boundary separating us from the upper world). When a person begins connecting and identifying himself with what is outside instead of the ego that he previously perceived as being himself, this is called passing the Machsom.

Baal HaSulam says that this requires only a psychological revolution. This blindness and deception holds the reason for all of the evil we feel now.
[65711]
From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/8/12

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When we reach the wisdom of Kabbalah through different events in our lives, we think that the spiritual world has an external form, similar to this world’s where there are different objects that have a volume, and that there is motion and time there. This is how a person imagines the spiritual world, based on the impressions he has from this world that he is used to seeing, which is to say, that he is used to feeling. He thinks that he can feel the spiritual world this way.

In studying the wisdom of Kabbalah, we study about the “perception of reality” according to which the entire picture of reality is revealed inside our desire. All the images we see and the feeling of motion, space, time, and volume are all discernments of desire.

A certain desire gives us a feeling of time, another desire gives us a feeling of change, and a third desire gives us the feeling of volume, and so forth. Colors, sounds, height, and width all are different desires or vectors that together depict the world to us, both this world and the spiritual world.

The only difference is that in our world, we imagine that we are among figures that actually exist on the outside while in the spiritual world, we feel and understand that our internal forces are those that create reality inside us. We feel and understand this according to our control over these forces or desires.

If I don’t control the forces of my own desire, then these forces seem external as if they are not under my control. However, if I begin to control them with the help of restriction and Masachim (screens), then as a result of my attempt to control them, I reveal them as internal forces under my control.

Thus, we gradually begin to perceive the world in its true form until even this world that we are used to seeing as external is gradually felt more as an internal world that is inside us. Then, we understand how the writers of The Book of Zohar looked at reality, how they felt reality, and how they convey this to us when they describe it in this world’s words, in Kabbalistic terms, in the language of the Midrash, or morals.

Actually, all they talk about is a person’s internal forces and desires into which the Light brings all the forms and impressions. It is only about how the desires are impressed by the Light.
[65441]
From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/5/12, The Zohar

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Rabash, Letter #42: “Their opinions differ as much as their faces”—so how can they become “like one man with one heart?” The matter is that when everyone cares for himself, it is impossible to be “like one man,” because they are not alike. However, if everyone cancels his own domain (all the egoistic interests of man), and everyone only cares about the Creator’s benefit (everyone’s point in the heart), then they no longer have private opinions, everyone’s separate opinion becomes eliminated, and everyone enters into the domain of the One.

In other words, we can only connect under the condition that everyone cancels himself. But am I really capable of giving something up and doing something with myself in general? We see that we remain as we were.

But we need to begin to connect our points in the heart. This point does not pertain to everyone’s personal universe and all his special qualities, which are different from the qualities of others. The connection between us is only possible through these points in the heart, because they do not belong to us—they are a “Divine particle from the Above” in every one of us! And if we were to connect these points, we would be able to unite through them.

Hence the condition: ascend in faith above reason—it’s the only way to connect. When we connect the points in the heart, we reveal their source—the Creator!

If everyone cancels himself, “his domain,” then our spiritual points reveal the reality where they exist to us—and they exist in the Creator. And we enter Him through them. The moment I cancel myself, my point immediately connects with the points of my friends, and together they take me and bring me inside the Creator.

And then we reveal that instead of existing inside the vessel, inside the desire—we exist inside the Light that fills this vessel! My entire perception flips upside down: I was inside my desire and I thought that this was what I am—everyone on his own, in his domain.

But the moment we cancel ourselves, our points reveal fulfillment to us in the same place, the same state, where we just were. Only, instead of perceiving the vessel—we perceive the Light, which exists inside the vessel.

The change is only in our perception and nothing else. We have gone from perceiving the desire to perceiving the Light. We have canceled our egoism, and started feeling the source of the point in the heart, the Creator, through the points.

These points were merely a little way to hold on to Him while we existed in our domains. And now we have used them to transition into His domain.
[61597]
From The Arvut Convention Lesson 2, 11/18/11

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Question: What topics are there in the course “Evolution as Development of Egoism?”

Answer: It encompasses absolutely everything. It will include: culture, communication, family, nationalities, civilizations, and the history of humanity from which one can draw a large amount of data and examples for our life today and for future states.

Knowing about yesterday, I can better understand what is happening today, and then can somewhat effect the future. Personally I am not a fan of history and geography, but we really should know history on the basis of the development of our egoism. It helps us understand how we are developing.

Aside from the courses, “Evolution as Development of Egoism” and “Freedom of Will,” the other courses will have more of a psychological quality. The first one, which lies between these two and a course in psychology, is on the perception of reality, meaning ontology or the theory of knowledge. It examines how we perceive the surrounding world, our five senses, the way this world is reflected within our five senses, and to what extent our perception is a consequence of internal states and properties of a person.

We study whether our perception is objective, and how we can influence it. Can we set such internal parameters for ourselves that would allow us to perceive this world from different angles, from different points of view, as if changing places and dwellings within one another? Say you see the world from one perspective and I from another, and then it’s as if we trade our points of view with each other.

In conversing with someone, we always want that the person to understand us. “Do you understand me? Can you imagine what I’m talking about? Did I express myself correctly?” That is, we are always concerned about proper communication. But it’s never there because we can’t “enter” another person and from within him take a look at the world. Until we can acquire the technique of emotional perception of each other, understand the properties and feelings of another, and see the world through his eyes, we will not understand one another.

The integral connection involves teaching all the people in the world to achieve that inner contact with each other, when one can substitute for another, when it’s as if I move into you and you into me. Then we’ll start to really understand one another.

We see this in a pairing of any two elements in nature. If there exists some element “I” within me, and there is some kind of “you,” then if we want to understand each other we must combine together all of your qualities and all of my qualities, as if mutually overlaying each other. That is, you perceive my qualities and can imagine your life and the world through them, and I through yours.

The same thing happens in technology. A similarity of two elements is required for their joining. And even though they are opposite from one another (say, one is convex and the other concave), still when we combine them, they must completely correspond to each other. That is, they must be adjusted and created in such a way that each has the shape of the other. This is where our correction lies: in this adjustment of fit towards one another.

This topic isn’t merely part of some theoretical course because it provides pure practical conclusions and work on knowing the world. Without it there is no communication. As well, it will be impossible to know the world without seeing it internally through each other. In practice, in our integration with all the people of the world, we must achieve such a state where I can “dwell” inside all the others, feel all of them, and through them perceive the world.

And when I do that in mutuality, as if plugging into them with my aspiration and disposition, I suddenly see a completely different world: multifaceted, amplified seven billion times, and simultaneously unified, that is, one whole while simultaneously composed from an enormous quantity of cells, like a honeycomb, because I look through each and every one. What takes place is an incredible picture of amplification of power for penetration into this world. This is true ontology, the practical theory of knowledge.
[64807]
From a “Talk on Integral Education” 12/12/11

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