Question: What is the “Nation of Israel?”

Answer: The “Nation of Israel,” just like any other nation, is a collection of different people, but, unlike other nations, they are united according to a special principle of “Love thy neighbor as thyself.”

Once, people used to live in tribes in ancient Babylon, and then they split up and dispersed in different directions and different nations that are corporeally connected, they were created by their corporeal desires.

In those days, Abraham collected about four or five thousand people out of several millions that made up humanity during the Babylonian age. Those who joined Abraham were people in whom the spark that yearned for something else was burning, the spark that evokes people to ascend above nature. They followed him with great hopes and expectations of finding the Creator.

They received from Abraham the method for the revelation of the Creator that allows a person to learn to love others in order to attain the love of the Creator thanks to this.

This group left Babylon even before the great dispersion and over time became the nation of Israel. First, the sparks were not united and everyone had different desires and could not unite.

However, Abraham began working with them and uniting them by a common idea and one goal, a perception that is above the egoistic desire.

He operated according to the principle that “Love covers all transgressions.” However, people can feel love only if the desire for pleasure grows in them. They acquire a sufficient power of rejection when they overcome it and ascend to love. Otherwise, the uncaring and alienation between them can extinguish any spark.

The dynasty of our forefathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob begins here. The group fulfilled its measure of initial unity, and then a new wave of ego covered it, and as a result, the successful and unsuccessful attempts to unite turned into a kind of work that we call the “exile in Egypt.”

It is the same group. No matter in which tent it dwells, what it studies, and in what it engages, its current state is simply called “Egypt.” “Pharaoh” appears between the friends, mutual hate, and the Torah, the method by which Joseph sustains the group, and later on, Moses.

Finally, the “study group” reaches an unbearable state because the ego simply tears them apart and they don’t know what to do with it. They really want to connect and to establish the mutual connection between them, but the ego separates them so much that they reach a dead end.

Then, they not only understand, but also enter a new state of the essential and vital need to escape from the “king of Egypt,” to exit self-love and transcend it.

Just imagine how strong you must be to hate the ego, how repulsive and unbearable it must seem so that you would “leap” and hold yourself above it. You simply don’t have the power to contact it, and this hate raises you. This is the meaning of the “exodus from Egypt.”

However, escape is not enough. How should we unite now? We still must coexist with the ego. In this state, the children of Israel stand before “Mt. Sinai,” not above hate, but rather, around it. Then, the Light comes, and thanks to it, they acquire the understanding of how to unite correctly, which means to use and to what extent to use the hatred in order to unite above it.

They begin to work mutually in different ways, and it is impossible to do so without incorporating the negative force. In order to receive the positive force, they make a covenant with each other, and between them and the Light, the Creator. Thus, their self-correction begins.

The group is the same group, but from now on it is a nation since now they really are united just like any other nation, but they are united in a collective desire, in sparks of bestowal.

The basis of their unity is not the ordinary corporeal desire for a good life in this world, but the necessity to live in the Creator, in the upper. In fact, the children of Israel also are attracted to the “good life,” but behind these words, there is already a different meaning. The term of what actually is “good” changes.
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From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson  05.22.13, “The Mutual Guarantee”

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Question: I understand that we have to love the friend but how do I feel it in my heart?

Answer: If you don’t think about the Light that Reforms while making efforts, if you don’t expect to receive it as a result of all your plans and actions, but rather hope to correct yourselves by these actions, it’s a fatal mistake.

It means that you don’t add the goal, the Creator and His help, the Light that can change you, to your actions. It turns out that despite your efforts, you are still advancing by the “path of suffering!”

The “path of Torah” is called the Light that Reforms that was created in order to correct us. We should focus on drawing the Light with every action that we make so it will come in response to our efforts. If we don’t throw a rod in order to catch and draw the Light, if we have no such attitude towards our actions, then these actions will lead us along the “path of suffering” and not along the “path of the Torah.”
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/22/13, Writings of Rabash “Concerning the Importance of Friends”

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Question: Why isn’t a prayer for self-correction effective?

Answer: It is only a prayer of many that works. A prayer for oneself is needed so that a person will finally understand that it doesn’t help and that it is ineffective. This world confuses us since people who think about themselves succeed. A person starts a business, engages in sports, and the more efforts he makes, the greater his success. This is a real fact.

However, spirituality is opposite from corporeality. The more I think about myself and do certain exercises, the more it proves that I cannot succeed this way. The laws that operate in spirituality are opposite from all the laws of this world: It isn’t the wise one who succeeds thanks to his wisdom, and it isn’t the brave one who succeeds thanks to his bravery. Whereas these qualities are very helpful in our world: The more power, brains, or money you have, the more successful you are.

This world is based on egoistic bravery. However, in the spiritual world it is the opposite, and everything depends on how much I exit myself and remain powerless, brainless, and totally unable to succeed by myself, but only by investing in others, subduing myself before them, and being influenced by them. Thus, I teach myself that this is the way to advance.

It is a very delicate issue. We work in the integral system, and only through my connection to everyone else—to the extent that I can attribute myself to them—can I succeed. I never will be able to exit my “circle” and to be aloof with regard to the others, and I don’t want that! Advancement indicates a greater penetration into the group in order to be equal to everyone else.

It is actually opposite to the laws of this world. So, all the rules we read about in Kabbalistic texts are not just good advice and suggestions of a concerned granny to a child trying to persuade him not to jump around, not to fight, and to sit quietly. Rather, these are iron-clad rules of the upper system. We have to forget all the habitual egoistic systems and try to get used to and accept the laws of the upper system where everything goes through the group, through the “ten,” only through the environment.

You will attain everything, but the means, the rules for success, are different from the ones that are accepted in this world. Your success depends only on you to the extent that you subdue yourself before the environment, your wanting to bestow everything upon the friends, to worry about them, and to love them like the people who are dearest to you and most beloved. Even if you don’t feel that, you force yourself to act that way, as if each of them is a great person, the greatest of our generation, the one who is closest and dearest to you, even more than yourself.

Soon, you actually will feel that this is so and everyone will become very important and dear to you: his state, his health, and his success. You will understand and feel that you depend on this and will have no other worries except for their well-being and health.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson – 05.20.13, Writings of Rabash, “Concerning Love of Friends-2”

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Question: What does “the ascent of the lower to the upper” mean?

Answer: The ascent to the upper depends on how much the lower can annul himself before the upper. He does it, of course, thanks to the Light that Reforms and not because of inner manipulations. He only has a clue that the Creator brings him to the right environment, to the good fate and tells him “take it!” If you manage to hold on to that point and to start working with it, you will succeed.

The ascent depends on what you consider an ascent. If you think positively about one of the friends at least once a day, unlike you have thought about him before, it’s already a great joy, since it indicates a qualitative inner change in you. You should worry that each of the ten friends in the group of ten will constantly aspire for such an ascent, and this is the mutual support and mutual guarantee. If you worry that all the friends should feel the same way and worry about one another, then your concern is conveyed to them.

This is easy for some of the friends and more difficult for others, and so we complement one another when we gather and connect. Those who find it difficult because of the hardening of the ego add power of Aviut (thickness) to the group of ten. Those who feel the ascent, which means the influence of the Light, pass this Light to the group.

The “shattering” of the vessel allows us to do this. I cannot draw the Light in my current shattered state since there is no connection between us. But I connect with the friends into one unity in which one adds the power of the coarse egoistic desire and another adds the spiritual ascent.

One pulls upward and another downward, but we are connected. Those who pull upward are influenced by the Light that Reforms and thanks to the fact that we are connected in one system, they also influence me. How is that possible? The point is that we have shattered the Machsom (barrier) between us, in our relationship we have worked and made efforts to overcome the gap between us. It’s as if we have placed a Masach (screen) over the egoistic receiving of the Light and now it can influence us.

The Light influences those who deserve it since they are in a state of ascent at the moment and through them it affects me. Even if we are not as close as we were before and not connected as strongly into one as we were, we have made a covenant and agreed that we will hold on to the connection between us as strongly as we can and will break down the wall between us.

It turns out that the shattering is simply a gift from Above; it’s a stick that we constantly have to kiss. It allows us to be constantly connected to others and to be in contact with the Light even in the worst state. If I lose contact with the others, there is the covenant by which I stay in contact thanks to those who are in a state of ascent and can draw the Light.

Thus everyone operates with regard to the others. This special connection of the shattered desires is called “this world.” It’s not what we see and feel at all, it’s not our corporeal ego, but a system, special conditions that allow us to connect to the upper. Although we don’t deserve anything judging by our state, we still accept this connection: either according to the conditions of the covenant between the friends, thanks to our connection, or thanks to the mutual support.

The friends may lack the willpower and I add it to them by my descent, and they help me convey my deficiency and hold on, just like healthy people treat those who are ill. The mutual help that we provide for one another, this shattered state, all these conditions are called “this world,” thanks to which we contact the Light that Reforms. So the advice and guidance of Kabbalists are focused on one point: How to connect to the Light in a state of detachment.
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From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/20/13, Introduction, “Mother Lends Her Clothes to Her Daughter”

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Question: If people were to change themselves, by all appearances they would just stop wasting their power and energy. Today, two trillion dollars a year is wasted only for armaments. In this process an immense amount of waste and garbage is produced that must be processed, using great amounts of energy. People continue to live in places that are incompatible with life, continue to draw the earth’s resources that are not renewable. Humanity has no clear concept of what is occurring. Most people don’t want to talk about this because they don’t think about it but only about their daily bread….

Answer: The reason for this is that a clear solution to all problems remains hidden from people. Yet it exists, and in order to discover it, the leaders, the ruling elite, must be replaced so that a new humanity can take into their hands the process of organization.

Question: Are you sure that these people will not want to use their control over minds and will not create a new cycle of elite, a redistribution of wealth and government?

Answer: No, because our desires are changing. People have lost their relationship to life that they had in the past, which was to acquire and to accumulate without limit. The result has been a great disappointment in everything. It’s necessary to change a person and nothing else.

According to the assessment of the Red Cross, many people in the European countries like Greece, Spain, Italy, Portugal, and Romania are starving; this is in spite of the fact that millions of tons of food are thrown away!

The problem is not that there is not enough food; the problem is in the relationships between people. If we correct the relationships between us, we will bring everything in the world into balance. Yet this cannot be unless there is concern for everyone.

Through integral education one acquires this sensation within weeks. Had those countries in Europe entered into integral education before the formation of the common market, everything would have been otherwise. It was necessary to begin not with a single currency, not with common economic rules, but with a uniform education, with an understanding that humanity is one whole body.

First they would need to create a particular commonality between people, to create a synergy of character, understanding, and communication. As in a family, everyone is different but it is, in fact, one family. This is the problem of Europe.

The same thing happened in the Soviet Union when they began to impose the new regime forcefully without the preliminary education of the population. And now this could happen again in Europe if they begin to use force. To our great sorrow, they are going in this direction at the present time; here and there, they have adopted various economic sanctions. Stalin did this much more simply with the Red Terror, and that was that. We see what is happening in Cyprus. This is also a type of terror against the will.

But there is a very clear program of development for humanity. We must reach the next stage of development, and we will reach it. The only problem is how to reach this in the softest, best, and fastest way. And this depends on the preparation of people, on education.
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From KabTV’s “The Global Crisis” 3/19/13

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Question: What does a person get from the revelation of the Creator?

Answer: By revealing the Creator a person attains the one upper force that operates in all of creation. By that everything becomes clear and understood. He sees all of reality that has no beginning and no end but only one fixed state. This one state explains everything to a person. He attains the upper dimension and has no question left.

He lives above time, motion, and place, and there is no division to past, present and future; this is the reality that exists outside our physical body. Our body lives if there is a pulse, and thus it perceives reality, by feeling itself in time, meaning in the past, present, and the future, but when we exit the boundaries of our body, everything disappears. Then we find ourselves in the same state as the Creator.

Now you are asking: “So what’s next?” But there is no such question since all our questions stem from a deficiency, from the desire to receive, which we want to fill, but when we are incorporated in the desire to bestow, all the questions disappear. We merge with the one unique force. We have to feel it and this will provide you with all the answers to your questions that cannot be expressed in words.

When I entered the spiritual feeling it answered all my questions. This question doesn’t stem from mere curiosity, but from good will. You will discover spirituality and you will see everything. It says: “Taste and see that the Lord is good.” Before we taste this feeling, we cannot see Him and it’s impossible to explain it. When we attain Him everything will clear up by itself.
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From the Convention in New Jersey 5/10/13, Lesson 1

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Baal HaSulam, The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee): The Creator did not find a nation or a tongue qualified to receive the Torah, except for the children of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, whose ancestral merit reflected upon them….

Question: I am the one who has to make all the corrections that are expected of me from the very beginning to the very end. How can our forefathers’ merits help me?

Answer: We all are in the unified system of Malchut of the world of Infinity that is filled with the Light of Infinity. It’s all that creation has, nothing but it.

As the system continued to develop, a restriction occurred and circumferences emerged. There appeared a line that stretched from the circumferences to the center of the circles. Later, the line was shattered. The black circle in the very middle represents a corrupt desire with the intention to bestow. It stands for the real egoism that we still haven’t yet revealed.

We have been developing through the still, vegetative, and animate levels to the speaking level at which we now discover our evil inclination: a slightly spoiled human ego. However, only when we join a group do we begin to reveal authentic evil. It’s at this time that we discover exactly where the intention to receive in its genuine form hides. It’s while in the group that the evil inclination is disclosed to us, thus allowing us to correct it.

Personal correction happens in five “layers” of the desire (in the five levels of Aviut): from a level zero to level four, from light to heavy, from bottom up.

We all are included into a bigger system where the general process of correction is going on. We are very far from being the first link in this process. Our forefathers were corrected before everybody else, then it was their sons’ turn, and only at the end of this chain is it about me and my group.

In reality, our forefathers corrected the Aviut of level zero, their sons managed to correct the Aviut of the first and second levels, whereas we get to deal with Aviut of the third degree.

So, there are souls that have fulfilled a part of the work, and their efforts were not in vain. Today, when we get to the point of correcting ourselves, we don’t start from scratch. Rather, we continue what they started and in our turn we continue building a foundation for those who are yet to come and follow us.

This is how the general process goes: It starts with correcting “Israel” (Galgalta ve Eynaim) and extends to correcting “the nations of the world” (AHP). The first stage, the correction of “Israel,” splits into several phases: forefathers, sons, etc. “Nations of the world” also divide into 70 parts that are to be corrected in a certain order. This is how different parts help each other on their path to correction.

This explains why today we live in a global society in which everybody depends upon others.
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Question: What is the indication that a person is advancing? Is it when he feels that he is increasingly more repulsed by the friends or that he values them more?

Answer: A person’s advancement doesn’t depend on either one of these signs, but rather on the extent to which a person can “weave” the right picture and correctly combine the feeling of repulsion and attraction. The repulsion stems from the evil inclination and the attraction from the good inclination, and a person determines when he has to choose. He creates a connection, the combination, and he works like a weaver on a loom.

Everything depends on how he combines the two opposite forces: He understands that the repulsion is just as essential as the attraction. He has to discover that all the forces that are revealed in him with regard to the upper are always a blessing, and for his own good. There is nothing in the world, in reality, that is harmful or bad; everything depends on whether a person can see and justify it.

Can he unite the two opposite forces, not just in order to connect them but in order to make a new reality out of them? This is the new psychological picture of the world that is woven of two forces, as from two threads.

This reality doesn’t exist by itself: All of reality, both the fictitious and the real, exist only if we begin to identify it as we create it for ourselves. So we have to try to connect all the power and force and obligate them to work together, as this is all our work.

We have to see the whole Torah, human history, our whole evolution that is made of the creation of the spiritual reality from the two forces that were revealed to Abraham in this light, in this perspective. Our success depends on how well we manage to connect the two: the evil inclination and the good inclination, and do everything for the connection, the unity between them.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/16/13, Writings of Rabash

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Question: It is known that a sharp qualitative change is always a change of phase, a sharp jump. Will integral development and correction be gradual or will a gap of potentials grow at first and a qualitatively new transition to a completely different level take place afterwards?

Answer: A critical state is an explosion, a nuclear world war, and other problems.

Thus, we must try to instill integral upbringing and education by all possible means. Also, if today we already see how effective it is to all kinds of organizations, then we can offer it to factories and institutions, various societies and communities, to housewives (via TV), schools, prisons, and so forth. We can instill the system everywhere possible, in any place where people even want to get just a bit closer to it, to begin to understand it at least a little bit.

In the integral network, people connect between themselves through their desires and thoughts. This is how the “wisdom of the crowd” works when it connects and creates some product.

Thus, we need to try to involve as many people as possible in integral unity, and  they can act via their thoughts. Also, there is no importance here to the social standing of a person, not to his general education and so forth. They can be simple people as well as representatives of the elite. It doesn’t matter since at the next level all corporeal differences disappear.
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From KabTV’s “The Wisdom of the Crowd” 5/6/13

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Question: In the workshop on the subject of integral unity for married couples, the question was asked: “What do women want from men?” And one of the women said: “I want my husband to survive through all my states.” What does that mean?

Answer: A woman expects fulfillment from a man. She relates to a man as to her source of mental, spiritual, and psychological fulfillment. In some way, she begins to grasp the world through her husband, through the man. It’s specifically what she is waiting for and wants. Without that she doesn’t feel that she is connected to the world, to life as it should be. It’s as if she has no base point, a point of support.

Psychologically, a woman wants to be next to a man who will be as a source of inner fulfillment. For this she is ready to give everything material, everything external, in order to receive from him what she is not able to create herself, meaning mental, spiritual, and psychological fulfillment.

While the man, on the contrary, doesn’t need mental, spiritual, or psychological fulfillment from the woman. He needs support on the regular corporeal level. And thus they come in contact with each other. This is the way nature created us.
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From a Talk on Integral Education 4/4/13

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