Question: Life in our world appears as one endless heartache, with small breaks to give a person time to get back up on his feet after a blow, just to receive the next one. This is human history and the life of a separate person. What kind of progress is that and where are the gifts that the Creator gives to creation?

Answer: Imagine that I am in a faraway galaxy where I gaze at infinite reaches of space and look for something in that infinity. I accelerate to the speed of light and slowly move through billions of light years, coming closer to our galaxy, our solar system, and our earth. I land on the earth’s surface, and here I discover people.

It’s difficult to imagine the scale upon which I could compare such different proportions. Analogously, we do not understand what kind of system we are in. We know how to make measurements and to do research on our own scale, according to our proportions. We compare weight to how much we can lift, distance to how far we can see, good and evil—with what is good or bad for us. Our entire spectrum is a tiny fragment of the enormous total scale and our distinctions are miniscule.

However, now we are talking about the spiritual system in which our entire universe is imperceptibly small. We are talking about mechanisms that are enormous due to their qualitative characteristics. Compared to them, our entire world is in one quality—a small egoistic desire that is enlivened by a small spark of Light. The matter of this desire is created as “something from nothing” by the Light that broke through to here, outlining an exact projection of the spiritual creation.

And now, from this state, you are speculating about the suffering of all of humanity. True, that is how we feel. Every person negates things according to this own imperfection and judges according to what his eyes see. But what can you do? That is how we have to advance, and right now we are unable to perceive anything more. There is a gigantic canvas unraveled before you, but you cannot make it out.

We are only able to slightly catch on to the simple fact that there is a lack of desires, a lack of vessels. The questions abound, “Can the unchanging Creator change? Can He create a stone that He can’t lift? Why did He initially make us imperfect?” But all of these riddles are useless.

We have to understand one principle from our lives: We have to go through opposite states. Only from these opposites, by recognizing the advantage of the Light from the darkness, do we form the vessels for a higher, more elevated sensation. When I acquire the vessels that are ready for it, the world will open up to me. Nothing is hiding from me behind a stone wall. I must simply build the vessels inside of me in order to see reality.

This development is necessary and the Creator cannot make it happen ahead of time. Why? For now, I do not know why. I can make certain conjectures, but that won’t give me anything. I will brush everything aside, saying, “I don’t believe it! He could do it!” And there are no other facts in front of you.

Yet there is a rule: The advantage of the Light is attained from the darkness. Any thing is evaluated only from its opposite. That is why we must go through these states step by step, forming the vessels for revealing the reality we are in.

We are in the world of Infinity, but you do not feel that. So develop your vessels. You have been given the opportunity to develop them, or stated otherwise, to correct them. You were deliberately given broken desires that are opposite to the corrected ones. What for? So you would grow and collect them, understanding and revealing the world.

There is no other way to go. And later you will justify the creation. The lengthy process, lasting several thousand years throughout which we suffer, is the truth on our scale. However, in reality we do not realize what kind of proportions we are in. Besides this tiny “room,” there is an entire world our there that you have never seen. You are like a worm living in a radish—this is the example Baal HaSulam gives.

Question: But why is this worm told about the Giver and His love?

Answer: In order to aspire to this, in order to let him understand that there is a goal for which it’s worthwhile to climb out of the radish. Moreover, not only do you receive the understanding of this, but also the means to do it. We are all like worms in a radish, but if each one of us starts to push the others toward the outside, we really will come out.

Therefore, there is a solution. As long as you were satisfied by life in this world, no one offered it to you. But now you are being placed in a new, global system and given the solution.
From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/23/11, “Matan Torah (The Giving of the Torah)”

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Question: What happens “behind the scenes” of my actions when during the reading of The Book of Zohar I make repeated efforts to return to the intention, but they seem futile to me?

Answer: Your efforts determine your qualities of perception, your sensitivity, and then you make the revelation. Everything is in front of you, but your lack of sensitivity does not allow you to reveal the system of connection between the souls that The Zohar tells you about. Your efforts and prayer build the instruments of perception inside of you in order to feel that picture.

Question: I repeatedly keep trying to build my intention anew, but it seems like I make the same efforts and feel the same thing I did a week ago, as if nothing changed….

Answer: Suppose I am among musicians. Looking at them, I see how they listen to every sound and discern the combination of different sounds, and I see how important this is to them. As I look at them, I learn about how to treat sounds. Then, as a result of my efforts, I become more sensitive and begin feeling them.

Then I ask the musicians questions and they explain things to me, but I don’t understand their explanations. “A fourth,” “a fifth,” “glissando, “forte”—these words don’t say anything to me, just like the unintelligible terminology in The Book of Zohar.

But I want to learn them! That is why I try to become a bit more sensitive to them and to feel them. Then, because we are in a special system, according to my efforts, desire, and aspiration, I begin to feel. That is how a child develops as well: He wants to become big and is always running around, never tiring and researching everything around.

We wonder: How can children watch the same cartoon or listen to the same story a thousand times over? However, it’s a thousand times to us because we don’t develop any longer. But a child lives in that story. When he listens to the tale about Little Red Riding Hood today, to him this is a completely new story, not like yesterday. You look at him and think, “Fine, I’ll tell him the story. Let him sit quietly, calm down, and enjoy it….” But he hears this story anew every time! And even though he also knows it by heart, when he repeats it together with you, he relives it all over again. It’s similar to how you have to eat today even though you ate yesterday. That’s what happens to him too!

Therefore, our entire work is to develop the sensitivity to acquire new qualities of perception.
From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/23/11, The Zohar

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The Book of Zohar, Chapter “Truma [Donation],” Item 217: The soul of every living thing” is a soul that exits the One who lives forever, Yesod de ZA. And because he is His, for all the blessings come forth from Him and are in Him, and He waters and blesses below, toward Malchut, this soul that comes forth from Him has permission to bless this place, Malchut.

Malchut is the desire that every time takes on new forms in its intention to bestow, and then it feels that it becomes filled by Yesod. This means that Malchut becomes similar to Yesod according to the law of equivalence of form. In reality, it becomes like the first nine Sefirot because Yesod comprises all of the nine Sefirot.

When Malchut resembles the first nine Sefirot, it signifies that the creature becomes similar to the Creator to some degree. To the extent of similarity between them, to the extent to their similar properties, Malchut obtains the same form as the first nine Sefirot and exists in adhesion and oneness with them.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/21/11, The Book of Zohar

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Question: Why didn’t the Creator create the will to enjoy that would be able to bestow right away? Why didn’t He create only bestowal without reception? Why should we reveal this property of bestowal ourselves, exercising our free will? Why do we need this “dual” attitude toward the creature where the matter itself, the will to enjoy, is egoistic and evil, and the form that it should acquire is good?

Answer: If I treat these two opposite forms properly, it is thanks to them that I set a correct attitude toward the Host. The correct attitude cannot appear if I do not contrast one against the other, meaning the desire to bestow that I can develop within myself against the desire to receive that is embedded in me in the negative form opposite to bestowal.

Thus, I give thanks for the negative quality as for the positive one, for the bad state as for the good one. After all, the negative form is necessary and correct, and together they combine into one form and lead to one goal.

We see in the corporeal world that atoms are built with a combination of two opposite charges, the minus and the plus, and with neutral particles. Thus, connections occur between different, opposite elements.

Then, atoms combine in various structures, molecules, and crystals. Chemical elements become connected according to their valence, that is, the number of electrons (the negative particles) existing on the orbit that are free to make a connection.

All life is based on unification and separation, on connection to all kinds of forms. All these are manifestations of the desire to enjoy. If a molecule has two electrons that are free to make a connection with others, that indicates its ability to connect. We always talk about desire which we measure either by the number of free electrons or relative to forces or some other qualities, such as the forces of attraction and repulsion.

As a result, it is always about desire. Yellow and green lights, different sounds, water, and the sky are various kinds of desires. We are inside this desire. Nothing but desire was created.

However, inside this desire, I have a sensation of self and the outside world: the inanimate, vegetative, animate, and speaking levels, or in terms of the spiritual qualities: “root, soul, body, clothes, palace,” which are also desires. I have to unite and manage all of them so that I can bestow with their help.

The entire picture of reality, the billions of people, the universe, and the spiritual worlds revealed in the connection between us are forms of desire. I cannot do anything besides revealing more and more of what is inside this system, this sphere. It is revealed to me depending on how much I am able to bestow with the help of all these forms of desire.

We live in our sensations, and that is why we do not understand what desire itself is. Rather, we understand: “I feel, I want.” Desire does not exist separately, but only as I sense it. The perceived desire is already “I.”
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/21/11, “Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah”

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Kabbalah talks about desire. There is no time, motion, or space, but only a state of being. Then how about the past and the future? And how about the spiritual worlds? I don’t feel them.

So are there other states in existence besides the current one, besides our world? I don’t know because I have not experienced them. I don’t have sensations or Reshimot from there. I cannot reach them now and confirm their authenticity.

A person judges everything by what he sees. This is not just an axiom, but the result of what the desire feels when it has developed to the level of being where it is aware of itself and understands what it feels. Otherwise we become detached from reality and go off into fantasies.

I don’t talk about the higher dimension myself. I am told about it by Kabbalists, whom I trust. I consider their words true when they tell me that it is possible to exist in different states. “Aspire to them, ascend to them,” the Kabbalists tell me. “They are better than what you now feel.” Then I move from one state to the next in my desire by correcting and improving it. By revealing it as giving, I reveal new states in it.

In our times all of humanity is crossing this vertical axis in order to move from below upwards. We have completed the horizontal axis of history and there is nowhere to keep moving on it. From here on, our path is upwards.

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From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/21/11, “Matan Torah (The Giving of the Torah)”

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Baal HaSulam, “Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah,” Item 11: Now you can understand the real difference between spirituality and corporeality: Anything that contains a complete desire to receive, in all its aspects, which is Behina Dalet, is considered “corporeal.” This is what exists in all the elements of reality before us in this world. Conversely, anything above this great measure of desire to receive is considered “spirituality.” These are the worlds ABYA—Above this world—and the whole reality within them.

There, where the desire to enjoy, the intention to receive for oneself, reigns, where personal gain exists, where I look at reality, myself, the world, and the others through the egoistic paradigm, through the intention of “what can I get from this?” that is inherent in me, there, I see the corporeal world. I was born and grew up like this, and I cannot look at anything differently.

I recognize only what appears good to me and useful or dangerous and harmful. In short, I see only what my desire to enjoy can get pleasure from or what it should move away from to avoid suffering. I do not notice to whom I can give, and I see only from whom I can receive. This picture presented before me is called “this world.”

If I change my paradigm, my perception of reality, and wish to look from the point of view of to whom and how much I can give, then I already see the future world, above our world. Then, of course, I see other forms, different relationships, which I imagine in spirituality. This is called the spiritual world.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/20/2011, “Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah”

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Question: Do I have to correct the desires that unfold in my relationships with other people today, such as wealth, power, and knowledge?

Answer: No, you don’t. You don’t consider these desires. Why should you? Leave them. After all, they appear in every person individually in a unique combination, while you must correct your attitude to others as a whole, without breaking it into parts.

Treat your desires simplistically. First of all, you must reach the degree of pure bestowal: “What you hate, do not do to your friend,” meaning don’t take pleasure in the suffering of another.

At any rate, whether I am aware of it or not, I always prefer to look down on others. If a person is lower than me, I rejoice, and if I am lower than him or her, I suffer. Thus, my priority is to reach a degree where I stop comparing others to myself. I don’t wish to measure them against what I am.

When I gain such an attitude, the world takes a very different form in my eyes. It is as if I tear off one veil, take one filter off my perception—and open wide a new world. I suddenly get to see others as having no connection to me, to my ego. I eliminate any personal benefit, any interest.

I don’t measure a person by how he or she looks, what they wear, or how they act. I don’t look at them at all. I have neutralized all our relations. The world is full of opportunities. What kind of opportunities? I don’t know just yet. In fact, I don’t need anything. I simply exist along with the others and don’t do anything to them which I, myself, would hate.

It is a very, very transparent, pure spiritual degree since it unfolds above all the material desires of a person. On the outside, it is absolutely undetectable, yet you see the world very differently now.

It is difficult to describe its contours. Are people suffering in your eyes? Are they all righteous, or do you still sort them into good and bad? It is very complicated to explain the inner picture that appears in a person when he or she takes the egoistic filter off.

However, one way or the other, you are faced with a totally different reality, another type of relationship between people. After all, everybody judges by his or her own flaws, whereas you have rid yourself of it and see the world undistorted by the false egoistic mirror.
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From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/20/2011, “Matan Torah (The Giving of the Torah)”

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Question: Many friends exerted themselves a lot before the Moscow convention. The importance of the goal was high. What did we lack? What should we, as a group, realize now at the new level?

Answer: In other words, you would like to say that the convention was not successful because we did not reveal in ourselves the property of bestowal. However, we could not achieve it in one go. It is impossible. A child cannot skip a few years of his growth.

Development is a sequential, step-by-step process. Not having realized a certain Reshimo (informational record), you cannot start realizing the next one. You simply will not have the tools in the mind and feelings to develop further.

We have done a great job; we advanced in our perception powerfully and intensively. And now, after the convention, we will go through the process of realizing it—perhaps not altogether pleasantly, but necessary.

Practically, the work that such a convention performs in you is equivalent to half a year of intensive studies. How many people who attended the convention study normally so intensely? We “propelled” them and those who were with us around the world at least six months forward. Such gatherings are very effective, and I am in favor of organizing them as often as possible. I am ready to give all I have got for it.

Naturally, after the convention, the stage of realization comes: “What have we achieved?” Here, a person should proceed to analyze the entire method with the help of articles and studies. He has to re-evaluate it again.

After the convention, many people begin to analyze the method of Kabbalah in general: “What for? Why? How? Is it correct or not? Is it a tale or a real method of my transformation in accordance with general Nature?” These are very useful, necessary, and essential processes that must occur in each of us.

Kabbalah makes you a human, not a robot, not a “half-believer” or mystic, but a researcher. Exploring yourself, you perceive the world and the Creator because all of it is within you. The entire process in based on self-knowledge because a person exists and nothing more.

Each of us has a sense of his “Self” and his world. Now, I feel you, the hall where we are, the planet, the Universe, and all of it happens within me; this picture has been created within me. How can it be changed? How can it be investigated? Is it truly like this? Or is this world presented to us as ethereal, transient, and changing? I perceive everything through the changes of my own properties.

That is why it is impossible to skip developmental stages. I must form them within myself. I have to be my own judge, researcher, and analyst. Essentially, I have to become the Creator of myself. Kabbalah develops in you the need to understand absolutely everything, who and what you are, and to create out of yourself an absolute, perfect form that will be called “the Creator.”

This is long and hard work, but namely it is intended for every human being. Do not think that someone living in a jungle is incapable of such work. He will be included in it because he will have a Kli, desire, shared with others, common thoughts and feelings. Whatever he lacks he will obtain from others.

Had we not evolved under the influence of our environment, we would have remained little “animals.” It is namely the environment that develops us and gives us the missing qualities, desires, intentions. Thus, there is no person in the world whose environment would not include the entire humanity. Anyone can reach the level of anyone of us, no matter how primitive he is.

The entire process of self-knowledge and creating in oneself the highest property should proceed in this manner, step by step. On one hand, this process is individual because a person raises himself, and on the other, it is seemingly a group process. However, in reality, there is neither group nor humanity, but only your immediate part rejected by your egoism and perceived by you as alien.

When you work on yourself, wishing to gradually bring this part closer to you, to accept it as your own, you work against your innate egoism. And you turn it into the force of connection instead of the force of rejection of the seemingly “external” part, of humanity.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson from Moscow 6/16/2011, Writings of Rabash

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The wisdom of Kabbalah explains the entire system of the universe, it describes for us the world of Infinity and the four phases of the expansion of the Direct Light, meaning the formation of the desires “from absence.”

Kabbalah clarifies what “from absence” means, which is to exist in a spiritual dimension outside of our world, and it explains the descent to it and the ascent from it, which means to “exist beyond time, space, and motion,” which are states as they are realized: according to Einstein or some other higher way?

Kabbalah also discusses the descent of desire. It talks about desire and the influence of a single parameter, the Light, upon it. There is nothing else in the universe except for the Light and desire. They beget everything we see in us and between us. All these things are different manifestations of desire, which were formed by the Light one way or another.

Kabbalah tells us about the gradual descent from Above downward and the creation of blocks of the spiritual state: Partzufim, Sefirot, and the worlds (concealments). This refers to a causal process, a strict and precise one, which we study using a scientific approach.

There is an enormous amount of purely scientific and complicated materials on this topic: graphs, equations, conditions that precisely describe the cause and effect development of desire under the influence of Light, screens, informational records (Reshimot), stages of development, and so on. All of this is pure science that has nothing to do either with religion or poetry; it’s nothing but pure physics.

Furthermore, Kabbalah talks about our world, about its creation. As early as 3,700 years ago Kabbalists described how a spark of Light created the volume of our world because previously, this space did not exist either. Then the Big Bang happened in this space, and this tiny spark gave rise to all matter of our world.

Everything was born from absence in the world of Infinity. Since we do not comprehend this, we ask ourselves: “What does everything out of nothing mean?” However, physicists say that the same thing happened also in our world: There was a certain spark, a point, which suddenly exploded and produced the entire Universe. In other words, modern science follows the same principles and tells us exactly what Kabbalah tells us, including the four consecutive stages of development: still, vegetative, animate, and human.

Kabbalah also tells us about the creation of the Universe over billions of years, and then our planet from a cloud of gases. This is described in Kabbalah books that are hundreds and thousands of years old. Today physics, geology, and astronomy say the same.

Kabbalists described the periods of warming and cooling of Earth, which took tens of millions of years, until a solid crust appeared together with the opportunity for protein matter to exist due to the appropriate distribution between all the components. Why specifically protein matter? Why specifically this kind of foundation instead of silicone or methane, or some other matter? Kabbalah explains all of this.

And finally, Kabbalah tells us about the creation of a human being who was the result of the gradual development of the still, vegetative, and animate nature. Kabbalah describes the intermediate stages: corals which are between the still and the vegetative levels; a special species which represents the intermediate state between the vegetative and the animate levels; and a primate which is the intermediate form between the highest animal state and man.

Kabbalah describes all these stages and shows why evolution happened the way it did. The only difference from Darwin’s theory is that Kabbalah tells of informational data that exists from the very beginning, informational genes that exist in matter, which develop according to a preset program instead of an accidental evolution or evolution that depends on circumstances.

All the species are realized based on their inner parameters, which existed from the beginning on the world of Infinity and have simply descended and realized themselves here in order to once again aim upward. This entire chain is determined beforehand; it is calculated ahead of time from beginning to end.
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From the 1st lesson at the Moscow Convention 6/10/11

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HaVaYaH (Yod-Key-Vav-Key) is the only model the Creator imprinted on the desire created by Him “from absence.” The whole creation is included in these four phases that continuously expand and unfold in the worlds.

Yet, we never leave Malchut of the world of Infinity that begins to develop within itself, and that’s what we regard as the worlds of Adam Kadmon and Atzilut, the breaking, the worlds of Beria, Yetzira, Assiya, this world, and us in this world. All of this remains inside that very same Malchut of Infinity.

All these worlds appear in relation to those who are attaining Malchut’s properties and the place where they reside. Thus, Malchut reveals itself to them. And this is why we say that we are in “this world.” But what is “this world”? It is the same Malchut of Infinity which is, however, so dark, so self-restricted that we experience it as “this world” instead of the world of infinite Light.

When we begin working and drawing the Light there, aligning ourselves with the Light, we will begin experiencing, instead of this world, the worlds of Assiya, Yetzira, Beria, and so on in a greater degree, until the entire Malchut gets revealed to us in full.

After it was created, this Malchut was in its primordial state (1); now we are in it in the process of correction (2); and in the end, we will come to the state of the final correction (3). Yet, it is still the same creation, one Malchut of the world of Infinity.
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From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/30/2011, Talmud Eser Sefirot

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