Dear Friends, please ask questions about these passages from the great Kabbalists. The commentaries in brackets are mine.

The Entire Reality Is Contained within Man

It is written in The Zohar, (Vayikra, Parashat Tazria, p 40) that all the worlds, upper and lower, are included in man. And also, the whole of reality within those worlds is only for man.
– Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to the Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah,” Item 1

When we see a wide world before us, we don’t see it in reality, but only within ourselves. In other words, there is a sort of a photographic machine in our hindbrain, which portrays everything that appears to us and nothing outside of us.
– Baal HaSulam, “Preface to the Book of Zohar,” Item 34
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Dear Friends, please ask questions about these passages from the great Kabbalists. The commentaries in brackets are mine.

Everything Is Preordained

By the very thought to create the souls, His thought completed everything for He does not need an act, as do we. Instantaneously, all the souls and worlds that were destined to be created, emerged filled with all the delight and pleasure and the gentleness He had planned for them in the final perfection that the souls were intended to receive at the end of correction, after the will to receive in the souls has been fully corrected and was turned into pure bestowal, in complete equivalence of form with the Emanator.

This is so because in His Eternalness, past, present, and future are as one. Hence, there was never an issue of a corrupted will to receive separated from the Creator. On the contrary, that equivalence of form, destined to be revealed at the end of correction, appeared instantly in the eternity of the Creator.
– Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” Item 13
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Dear Friends, please ask questions about these passages from the great Kabbalists. The commentaries in brackets are mine.

Everything Is Preordained

All the efforts of the Teacher should be directed not at attaching the students to himself, but at making them independent so that they won’t be looking at him at all, but through him would turn to the Creator. A student has to learn to be similar to the Creator, not the Teacher.

Indeed, our entire development is a kind of imitation of the Creator. As much as our properties and actions resemble the Creator, to that same extent we bring contentment to Him.
– Baal HaSulam, “The Meaning of Conception and Birth”
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Dear Friends, please ask questions about these passages from the great Kabbalists. The commentaries in brackets are mine.

Everything Is Preordained

The Creator truly resides within the heart of every person of Israel, and that is from His side. Hence, what does one lack? Only to know that. And the knowledge changes, and the knowing completes.
– Baal HaSulam, A Sage’s Fruit, Vol. 1, “Letter No. 32”

All is set ahead of time and each and every soul is already in all its Light, goodness, and eternity. Thanks to the descent into the egoistic body and the return to its root, the soul is rewarded with the complete similarity with the Creator and a real adhesion with Him.
– Baal HaSulam, Letter No. 25
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Dear Friends, please ask questions about these passages from the great Kabbalists. The commentaries in brackets are mine.

Everything Is Preordained

The revelation of the Creator does not change one’s actual reality but adds to it the awareness he had not had before.
– Baal HaSulam, The Writings of the Last Generation

There is nothing more natural than attaining contact with one’s Maker for He owns nature. In fact, every creature has contact with his Maker, as it is written, “The whole earth is full of His glory,” but one does not know and does not feel it.

Actually, one who attains contact with Him attains only the awareness. It is as though one has a treasure in his pocket, and he does not know. Along comes another who lets him know what is in his pocket, and this knowledge in particular makes him rich.
– Baal HaSulam, “The Solution”
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The end of correction, which Kabbalists describe in their writings, has to be realized in our world, in matter, in all our vilest, most “materialistic” relationships. This is the correction where “the darkness shines as Light” (Psalms 139:12) and “his feet will stand on the Mount of Olives” (Zechariah 14:4).

The animate part of me remains the same. My body does not start working for the sake of bestowal. Besides, it operates that way initially. The whole of nature, besides man, works for bestowal. We just don’t see that since we evaluate everything by our standards.

We think that animals only devour each other, but in reality, this is not true. We simply cannot attribute the intention to bestow to them because we do not feel or understand them. But in fact, nature rules over them directing them toward bestowal, and they obey its orders. However, the same cannot be said about man. He carries out the orders of his egoism, which is aimed at reception, and moreover, he mires nature by judging it according to his own faults.

When man corrects himself, he takes on the global form and sees the global picture. Simultaneously, we say that the inanimate, vegetative, and animate levels of nature become corrected as well, but what that means is that they become corrected in our new perception. Animals do not actually have to be corrected. It is you who will see that the wolf and sheep live in peace, just like today your eyes see that one eats the other.

In the article “The Creator’s Concealment and Revelation,” Baal HaSulam writes that you see wars and strife in the world because you are like that yourself.
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From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/18/11, “The Nation”

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Question: How can I connect with the world if the whole world thinks only about itself?

Answer: That does not matter. It just seems to you that the world thinks about itself. In reality, it does not think about itself, but it is you who perceives the world in this way.

When you become corrected and connect everyone to yourself, you will suddenly find out that there are no “others.” Your flawed egoism made the whole world appear broken into parts and made it seem like you need to correct them, while in fact, you were correcting yourself.
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From the virtual lesson on 8/14/11

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If we want to advance to the true perception of reality, then it is possible only in our corrected qualities. Indeed, in our current qualities, we feel only this reality in which we are born, live, and die. Again, we are born, live, and die, and this is everything what we have.

If we want to obtain a different, opposite perception of reality, we should acquire the additional properties suitable for this: the quality of giving instead of receiving, and bestowal instead of consumption. Our constant desire is to absorb everything into “ourselves,” but this is only half of nature. The other half is bestowal, the tendency toward the outside.

That is why all of our work is to strive to achieve the second half of nature, to acquire the second force existing in the world. This time is called the period of preparation.

This is where we are now, trying through the group, the study, and various other means to achieve the state where we will obtain the second force of bestowal. Then, using the two forces of reception and bestowal together, we will come to know the entire reality in which we live.

People who have already received this second force of nature and, together with it, have acquired the perception of all of reality, are called Kabbalists. The science itself is called the science of Kabbalah, the science of reception, because a person acquires all of reality, rather than just the tiny part he is able to absorb in his current qualities. Then, as Kabbalists say, a person reaches a state where he rises above the current perception to an eternal, perfect reality.
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From the lesson on 8/12/11, The Zohar

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Rather than existing in this tiny part of reality, when a person wishes to break through to its second part, the eternal and perfect part, then he has several means to do it: teacher, group, and books. The teacher explains that such an opportunity exists. He explains that it can be realized with the help of a group where everyone strives toward the perception of the true, perfect reality, and with the books that speak of the same perfect reality.

When we try to be together, it’s as though every person comes out of himself, out of his ego, because he must feel that he exists in the others. Then, when he tries to be above himself, in the others, connected with them, and he reads about the perception of reality in bestowal, this is the way he makes himself similar to the future state, as if he were already there.

To the extent of his aspiration, he evokes the second force from there that exists in reality, the force of bestowal, besides the small force of reception given to him from nature. Then, the force of bestowal comes and makes the changes in him.

A person can perceive these changes as an additional force of reception that comes to him, instead of the force of bestowal that changes him, and this type of perception is also correct. However, besides that, he attains the same force of bestowal. In this way, man advances, sometimes to the right and sometimes to the left, but driven by the same force of bestowal.

He must attain this force of bestowal together with the force of reception. These two forces begin to be revealed to man as two lines, the right and the left. Then, man advances, sometimes in a state of descent and sometimes in a state of ascent. He does not know yet what descent and ascent are exactly, and so far, he identifies them by his current sensations.

However, as time goes by, he begins to feel that he needs to use these two lines by being between them. In this way, he takes control of them and begins to combine them in the middle line.

Essentially, our entire work consists of studying together, wishing to connect with one another in our hearts, and aspiring toward unity above all the disagreements and differences because all of these things only concern our animate existence, which stays here in this world. We want to connect together in our desires, our points in the heart, above these things.

When we read The Zohar with this intention, the book speaks of our corrected states, about the way we reveal the quality of bestowal in the connection between us which is the same as the Creator, the Light, the spiritual world, the upper world. For this reason, every person must imagine this state when reading The Zohar.
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From the lesson on 8/12/11, The Zohar

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