If we want to feel the real world we live in, we have to develop our sensations. Then we will begin to gradually see how limited our world depicted to us by our five bodily, “beastly,” senses is. It depends on these senses and exists as long as they exist. That is, our body is a limited egotistic desire, the existence of which is so short-lived.

A person returns to this world again and again and develops his senses. This is all in order to awaken him and to eventually develop sensations on a human level, on the level of similarity to the Creator, which is to develop the sensation of the Creator within him.

This sensation also arises through the five senses, but together they form the giving, altruistic desire, which absorbs what is on the outside. Today we perceive only what is inside us, while the spiritual organ of perception captures the external reality, according to the law of equivalence of form.

When a person calibrates his internal sensation, he rises above his egoistic desire towards the opposite desire: towards bestowal. Only so can he understand what bestowal is: as something opposite to him. As he rises, he begins to perceive what is outside of him and thus discovers the external world.

What will help me feel this external world? Exercises. If I am in contact with other people, with my friends in the group, if I feel them inside me and connect with them, we begin to awaken each other so as to feel that the friend is more important to me than myself. Thus we come closer to the out of body sensation because the spiritual world is “outside our skin.”

How can I “jump out of my skin”? With the help of the group. These are special people who also want to feel reality outside their beastly bodies. This reality is called “the eternal world” since it isn’t limited by the corporeal existence and the five bodily senses. So I begin to appreciate these friends since they help me acquire eternity. Thanks to them I can develop sensations that are independent of my body and rise above my present “self.” This is what the group is.

This is why the collective soul was shattered. The multitude of individual souls, numerous bodies in our world, enable us to develop the external, spiritual feeling in us by ourselves. The wisdom of Kabbalah was intended only to help us do that.

Thus we acquire the new body, the body of the soul. It also has five senses: Keter, Hochma, Bina, Zeir Anpin, and Malchut. In other words, it is the desire to receive with five levels of Aviut. It is in this body that we begin to live our real life, a life on the level of bestowal, everlasting, eternal, and the one that we imagine in our fragmented senses, like this world.

The present physical reality gradually “disintegrates” inside a person. It isn’t because his corporeal body dies, but because he rises above this feeling. As we advance in the spiritual reality, this world disappears from our perception. It was depicted in our imagination from the start so that on the basis of this world we would discover the true one.
[61246]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/20/2011, “The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee)”

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Essentially, we have nothing more to learn except the concept of Arvut (mutual guarantee). Our entire life and everything that would help us on the way to another life, to another existence, everything is attained within the vessel called “Arvut.”

The Creator created us with an egoistic desire to receive. This desire senses itself, thus we are, after all, vessels of sensations.

Prior to my coming to Rabash, I had studied Kabbalistic sources for a few years. I employed regular, rationalistic methods and tried to understand the material through the intellect as it is customary in other sciences. After all, the wisdom of Kabbalah is a science. But Rabash told me that in Kabbalah, it’s all a matter of feelings.

For me, “emotions” were something that lacked importance: Today I feel this way, and tomorrow I feel differently. I can drink a glass of wine and then life will be more cheerful, and I can listen to something sad and become sad myself. The emotions are something not real; they change, depending on the surroundings, on rumors, and many other factors.

I continued studying with Rabash and maintained the scientific approach: I used my intellect, but I used it on the emotions. The wisdom of Kabbalah researches the Light, goodness and pleasure, peace and movement, the overcoming, and drawing closer or distancing…. And all of this tells us what is happening within the desire. Although our work is calibrated according to various parameters, it is only in order to grasp and feel something within the desire. Our entire development has an emotional nature and is determined only according to the measure that we penetrate within our sensations.

Of course, feelings are accompanied by reason because we need to develop ourselves intellectually, consciously. When we feel something, we need to know how to measure this feeling, to be aware of what kind of sensation it is: Do we perceive it as external or internal, is it imaginary, how is it possible to examine it, and how do we go from current values and standards to other, more real values?

I need to objectively compare one with the other, outside of my current subjective feelings and understanding, which is called “above reason.” I begin to grasp that the “reason’’ is a vessel for the emotion, filled with the Light of Hassadim (Mercy) and the Light of Hochma (wisdom). When the Light of Hochma fills my vessels, my emotions, it gives me the facts, and the Light of faith enables me to broaden this “factual material” in me. But this way or the other, they are perceived within the sensation.

If a person penetrates a little deeper within the essence of his perception of his world, he understands that everything depends only on feeling. We are analog not digital systems.

When I served in the army, I discovered to my surprise that in the F15 jets, the instrument panels are full of indicator dials, despite that for the on-land equipment a digital control panel was used. The experts understand that man is an analog system. He can quickly identify situations, but not digits. When he quickly looks at the “control panel,” he immediately grasps their general picture.  When it comes to the value of numbers, he has to translate them within himself into some sensation, while the dial on the scale automatically instills in him this feeling.

Hence, we are sensual creatures, and all of our lives are built on feeling. Even if we measure our life according to money, power, or control, at the end, all of this is only to reach a correct conclusion: We need to develop our real vessels, vessels of sensations.

The politicians, bureaucrats, or technocrats who use the scientific, rational, “digital,” approach seem to us quite respectable. It is as if it is not worthy of them to develop feelings. However, the technocrats are very limited. They still haven’t moved from their personal, simple calculations, like “two multiplied by two” to the essence of the calculations. By experiencing another few small crises, they will understand what they missed. This is the way children grow up. But in general, it is desirable that the intellect and the feelings will develop reciprocally in a person, in harmony.
[61250]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/20/2011, “The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee)”

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In the News (from Discover Magazine): “New research suggests the mere act of walking through a doorway helps people forget, which could explain many millions of confusing moments that happen each day around the world. A study published recently in The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology found that participants who walked through doorways in a virtual reality environment were significantly more likely to forget memories formed in another room, compared with those who traveled the same distance but crossed no thresholds.

“Notre Dame University researcher Gabriel Radvansky says doorways serve as a type of ‘event boundary’ that the brain uses to separate and store memories. When you enter a new room, your brain updates its understanding of what’s going on in the new environment, which takes some mental effort. This parsing of memory, albeit subtle, leaves the information encoded in the other room (i.e. ‘Now I’m going to my room to fetch some knickers’) less available in your new location.”

My Comment: In Kabbalah, this is called “change your place, change the force, controlling it.” There are three factors that determine one’s state: time, movement, and space, which we can change by affecting them with the Light.
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Question: What should I do when I feel elevated and awakened during the reading of The Book of Zohar? How can one request correction in this state?

Answer: During the reading of The Book of Zohar and any other authentic source (the articles, letters, and The Study of The Ten Sefirot), I first of all need to build the correct picture of where I am. The picture of the reality I exist in arises in my senses, in my desires. It is the Light that forms me so that I feel and think that this is reality: me and my world. This way I have a connection with the Light, with the upper force, that wants to teach me to identify exactly where I am. This is because from the beginning, I don’t know or see anything. I am like a baby that has just been born.

Therefore, I need to first of all design this picture correctly. There is the desire and the Light operates in it, which wants to awaken the desire within and to become revealed in it according to the law of equivalence of form. The Light is within the desire, not outside of it. In its relation to this desire, it is called the surrounding, inner, external, distant, circle, line, and so forth. These are the forms of the Light that are revealed in relation to the desire. After all, we are talking about everything from the side of the desire.

If I understand that the entire world, all of reality, all the worlds, all the Light, is in me, then I now need to rearrange myself correctly. That is, I need to clarify how and in which way do I act in order to arrive at the maximum understanding and consciousness possible in my present state, and each time to discover more.

Thus, when I read the various authentic sources, I want to perceive the picture of reality and discover it in its most true, correct, and powerful form. And it’s not important which sources to read and in which styles. If these are the books that awaken the forces of my soul from the side of the desire and also from the side of its fulfillment, then it doesn’t matter. It can be The Study of the Ten Sefirot, The Zohar, the letters, or the articles. The essence is to awaken my development.

And then I understand the importance of my involvement in the Torah: the Light in it reforms, that is, it brings me closer to the revelation of the real picture of reality, where I reach adhesion with the Creator—a state that is concealed from me.

Thus, we first of all design the picture: There’s me, and everything is concealed within me. I must awaken the forces of my soul and in them discover the real reality in which the Creator and I merge into one.

After I have molded myself in this form, I work on the next step: How do I awaken myself through the studies? And then everything that I read speaks to me about my advanced states. They can be distant from or close to me, it doesn’t matter. What is important is that with the help of the story that I read, I try to identify these forces within me, these forms.

And I don’t forget that it talks only about my desires, about my soul’s inner forces: reception and bestowal. It isn’t important if they are called strange names or names that are familiar with my present reality. I constantly think: How do I discover all these forces as components of my connection with the Creator?
[60899]
From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/16/2011, The Zohar

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Question: How can we bring our common prayer into the study?

Answer: Everything that we study is revealed in the connection between us. We reveal the picture of our connection, the one soul.

The soul is the connection between all of the parts, which we can only imagine. The soul is everything that was created, all of creation together, the whole of reality, including our world. Even though our world is “imaginary,” it is also part of the same unified soul.

There is nothing except this one soul, which is the vessel that the Creator, the Light, created. But we can imagine this soul and discover its inner power only by connecting all of the parts and turning it into a living organism.

The Light is the life animating force. To feel life, we must connect all the internal parts into one body, putting each part in its place: the brain, the heart, the liver, the kidneys, the legs, the arms, and so on. If a person is able to perceive all of them as one body, even in the simplest form where most of the organs still do not function, but all of it connects properly, then the spiritual picture on the first degree is revealed to him.

We cannot discover half or a quarter of the soul. In the spiritual world this does not exist. There is no “partial” in spirituality, but only a whole structure of ten complete Sefirot, not nine and not eleven. So I must reveal the full picture.

In this complete picture I reveal every part of reality that I see before me. I see the place of all nations and the entire universe, all the first ten Sefirot, what belongs where, and what force operates everything. I see all this within myself. I discover myself and nothing besides that.

The wisdom of Kabbalah is the study, the discovery of oneself. In this way, I reveal reality. All of creation is me.

Through the study, we need to accept this picture and imagine it correctly. Then it will become clear to us that Kabbalists write about what’s going on inside them. After all, a person is the whole world. Everything you see now is portrayed from within, and it is only an optical illusion that it exists outside.
[60923]
From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/16/2011, TES

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To develop our spiritual sensation, we unite and connect. We have to attain the kind of unity that is called, “mutual guarantee.” Essentially, this is the vessel for feeling the spiritual, eternal and perfect life that is outside the body.

For that we have to do what Kabbalists, who are people that have already gone through this path, advise us to. They are our teachers and are therefore called “Rabbanim” in Hebrew, which is the plural of Rav, meaning a “great” person before whom I bend down my head like before an experienced instructor that is worthwhile to listen to.

He accomplished the transition from the sensation of just this world to the sensation of the upper world, and moreover, he went through many states and levels there. Therefore he can help me with advice throughout the whole path, until I complete my development in the true world. By virtue of Kabbalists, I reveal the gates to the world, enter it, and advance.

Kabbalits advise us to unite, and in that unity, by making great efforts in spite of our egoism and natural disregard, to look precisely for the feelings we disregard. I reject the neighbor and hate him, I am unable to even think about how we can be truly close to one another. But Kabbalists tell us that we have to be as one man with one heart, uniting in the mind and feeling to such an extent that no boundaries will remain between us in thoughts or desires.

This is all painfully opposite to our nature. We are being offered such conditions that we would be willing to trade them for anything else. We are nauseous from this and are thrown away from it at every moment in different directions—anything but unity. We just want to cover ourselves up with half-hearted advice and actions, lie to ourselves and others that everything is normal…But we can’t.

What can help us here are demands imposed by physical unity: We act all together and no one can evade his responsibilities. That is exactly why we are in this world of actions that are not defined by intention. In spirituality, the thought is the action, but in corporeality they are divided: I can think about one thing, desire another, and do a third.

This is the wonderful quality of our world: Here we can start the path to spirituality without even yet thinking about it for real or wishing for it sincerely. We are able to make actions that pride, passion, ambition, envy, and shame incite us to do—everything that is inherent to our egoism.

Therefore, being in the group, at the end of the day, I must carry out what it obligates each of its members to do. After that, by virtue of that, I advance involuntarily. I must only push myself into the group, take on obligations, and sign a “unified agreement” with the friends that under any circumstances, they have obliged me and I have obliged them to need one another. That is how we advance, using our egoism.

Thus, in our world we have the opportunity to start the spiritual path from zero, from pure ambition. We activate its negative qualities, connecting with one another by the unity of mutual help, and use all the negative qualities just to observe this unity. In this case, you obligate the friend and he obligates you, and you both advance, having no other choice.

This is exactly what we saw when we went to the convention in the Arava desert. We found ourselves together without external influences and discovered that the group can obligate every person to rise and come closer to the sensation outside the body, where a person begins to discern details hitherto unknown, a different existence “outside of the skin of his body.” It turns out that “outside of us” is really possible. That is how we advance.

Today we can unite with one another in this world by means of the right egoistic actions. However, now every one of us has to “jump out of his skin,” rise above his personal egoism, above his entire being, and unite with friends into a single whole. Stated differently, every person must rise above himself and go from the material group to the spiritual one.

Then the common vessel will form, the common soul, the holy Shechina where we will reveal the Creator on the first spiritual level. We made a big step toward this and acquired a common sensation, and now we must strengthen ourselves.

Thus, we build the vessel of mutual guarantee: We pledge not to forget one another and all together we take care of our spiritual life. After all, this is the purpose of our current existence in the material world, the goal of all people and this whole reality. Only by virtue of mutual care will we rise to the level of spiritual unity.
[61241]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson on 11/20/11, “Mutual Guarantee”

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Our current state is imaginary. Kabbalists compare the perception of this world with a person who has lost consciousness and is experiencing certain vibrations in the brain, certain random impulses that beget an illusionary and misleading image within him. And this makes him feel like he is alive and exists in a real world, perceiving it much like as it sometimes happens in a dream. But in reality, there is nothing from true reality in it.

There are a number of actions we can do to help us in this state, to make us wake up, or make an effort towards awakening. The idea is to try to imagine the true state, completely unrelated to our world, while being in our imaginary state.

We exist in this true state connected with one desire. No one perceives himself individually, but every one perceives this oneness. It’s neither “I” nor “we” because “we” is still a multiple sum of “I.”

But there is no sum; there is just that oneness where we exist with no differences between us! We need to try to rise from the image we now perceive to a “there is none else beside Him” state, where there is only One, and nothing else. And everything that is outside of Him is a consequence of the loss of consciousness. We need to try to imagine this situation.

“Everything that exists is one soul.” This is the formula of reality, and it determines the place of our work and the form of our life that we must attain. From it we begin to draw all the directions of our behavior, understanding of the method, and the true state. We will only be able to learn and understand what the upper world is from there. We will not learn about it in our world.

And regarding the economy of the future, it also must come from there. Otherwise it’s unclear how it’s possible for only one to exist. The laws of connection and behavior that exist in this oneness, the relationships and actions, all these things are only learned in a state where we exist as one. There are no physical bodies, this whole world does not exist; our heart and mind rise to this level of oneness.

As a result of everyone’s efforts, we will begin to perceive this reality and what’s happening in it. We will establish the relationships between us in accordance with it and understand the material we are studying and our attitude towards the world and dissemination.

Our head must be inside this One, while our body must be separated from Him and only follow instructions. Then we’ll see how uncomplicated this path really is. The main thing is the first contact with the reality of this one force called: “There is none else beside Him.”
[60760]
From Lesson 1, Israel Arvut Convention, 11/11/2011

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Question: If there are no separate parts, what does The Book of Zohar describe, the way one soul corrects itself?

Answer: The Book of Zohar tells us how we connect into one soul. After all, there is nothing else to talk about. There is a perfect state, one soul, and there is an imperfect state when the soul is shattered. We have to return ourselves to the perfect state.

Essentially, the shattering exists only in our consciousness. When we discover what is corrupt, we will see that everything is corrected. I only need to correct my perception, my vision. This is why this wisdom is called the “wisdom of Kabbalah” (“Kabbalah” means “reception” in Hebrew)—it is the wisdom about how to receive, to perceive reality. That’s all! Reality is perfect, and there was no shattering—it is all with regards to those who receive, a person who attains it.
[60658]
From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/14/2011, The Zohar

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Our perception is very limited. We cannot understand what our history is and what the Torah tells us when it describes the enslavement in Egypt and the Exodus.

But what is history? Now I feel that I exist in some reality, and I divide this reality into the present and in relation to it, the past, and the future. The perception of the past, the present, and the future is my feeling at the moment. Now, as I live and feel that I exist somewhere in space, impressions are revealed in me, which I divide according to time, place, and motion.

In this case, what is history? Is it memories, informational records of previous states, or a certain perception of the actual reality, called “the past?” It’s very hard to explain that to a person. So I constantly withhold some information, like in a conversation with children who ask intelligent and serious questions, but cannot understand the answer yet.

I don’t want it to seem like mysticism, but there is no “history,” there is no past. Our perception occurs solely due to the informational records (Reshimot). And there is no past in the Reshimo, but only the present. All the Partzufim that seem to come out sequentially, one after the other, like the “historical development” of the world that took place “before we were created” are nothing but our sensation in relation to ourselves.
[60218]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/9/2011, Writings of Rabash

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Baal HaSulam, “Matan Torah (The Giving of the Torah)”: There are two types of relationships: with the Creator and man. And both are destined to lead to the goal: adhesion. A person acting altruistically does not feel any difference in his action between love for his neighbor and love for the Creator since everything outside of his body seems to be unreal in his perception.

So, I exist in an imaginary reality surrounded by other people on planet Earth, in the Universe. Why do I imagine reality to be this specific way? Why am I made to perceive it in this specific form? This is because the falsehood of this “image” absolutely corresponds to the way I deform actual reality. The greater the lie, the further I am from the truth.

And then, being in the current state, I acquire a desire to reveal the essence of life, to understand the reason for living and the meaning of my existence. I want to rise above falsehood and see the truth behind it. If so, one day, my reality will need to change.

How do we achieve it? We want to imagine the true state with the desire that has awakened in us. One cannot manage without the advice of Kabbalists here. We are not able to do anything on our own without their help in evaluating our direction. After all, we are submerged in darkness and confusion, and we do not have even a bit of truth, but a spark of newborn desire. However, this new urge represents only a point, not a vector that could have showed us the path. For this reason, we must turn to the corresponding means in order to head in the right direction.

If I imagine the entire world as myself, as a unified whole, it is a proper image. However, I am not able to form this attitude within me on my own. I am not able to imagine that other people, forces, and phenomena of the still, vegetative, and animate nature are parts of my desire because in my perception, they are depicted as something isolated, separate, and sometimes distanced, opposite, and hateful to me.

For this reason, the method that leads to the truth is the group where I must work. Even though I see my friends as absolutely different and opposite, together, we strive toward a corrected, true state. Together, we must work to make the correction and truth into one.

This is where the need comes from for a proper attitude toward the ultimate, true state called the “Creator” or the group. I will attain the truth only on condition that instead of interacting with the so far imaginary Creator, I interact with a real group, and together, we imagine ourselves to be on the highest degree.

We can handle this work. We advance toward a common, true state through becoming closer to the desires of our friends where we can unite. Then our external actions of becoming closer will bring us to an inner closeness of a single desire.

Our world is a projection of spiritual forces. We perceive them as physical images and create conditions for the unification of our desires, which merge into one by uniting with common efforts on our common path into a single system. We can really begin with nothing, with corporeal, physical actions, even false ones, but productive. One can manage initially without the intention on a low degree. The first chord may be off-key, but it still counts. This is why no one can say that he was not given the reins to take himself to correction.

This way, the relationship between people is more important than the relationship with the Creator. On one hand, I have a small group that wishes to reveal the message, the method of correction. On the other, I have the vast humanity, subconsciously waiting for unity.

In the end, humanity must receive this method from us in a prepared form with strictly described relationship parameters. However, before the crisis and helplessness manifests the real need for unity between people, there is no reason to reveal the method. This is why Kabbalah is concealed.
[60247]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/9/2011, “Matan Torah (The Giving of the Torah)”

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