Question: When we are talking about the holiday of Passover, why do we say: “Remember the exodus from Egypt?” After all, there were other exiles—from Babylon, Greece, and Rome—but we are reminded only about the exodus from Egypt. What is the meaning of this?

Answer: The Egyptian exile is the root of all the exiles. All the other exiles are as if superimposed on it. This exile is the most difficult and fundamental. A person rises above his egoism and, for the first time, realizes what the spiritual world is and what it means to feel the property of bestowal instead of the property of receiving with which we are born and in which we exist.

We perceive the world through the senses that constantly want to enjoy and benefit from everything. The revolution in the sensory organs—when I begin to “exit myself,” to identify myself with the world, to give to others, to feel myself outside of my body so that my heart stays there—is called the exodus from Egypt. All the other exiles already happen outside of me.
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From KabTV’s “Kabbalists Write: The Night of Passover Seder” 3/4/13

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Question: What values did the people of Israel have before the descent to Egypt, at the time that they were there, and after the departure from Egypt? Did the people undergo some kind of change or process?

Answer: Yes, they descended into Egypt already with an intention in order to bestow, like the patriarchs.

The entry into Egypt is compulsory in every spiritual level since the person corrects only what is within him. So, first, he feels the problem; his discovery is called being in Egypt or the awakening of Egypt in the person. The exile signifies that all desires and thoughts are egoistic, and he feels this. If you were to tell someone today that he is an egoist and is found in Egypt, no one would understand this.

The inner feeling of Egypt is a feeling that I am in exile. If I am just an egoist, I know it and am even proud of benefiting at the expense of others. This is not called Egypt. Egypt, as exile, represents my wanting to be freed from the property of reception for myself and to rise to the property of bestowal. Yet, I am not able. The feeling of exile is born from a lack of correlation between what is desired and what is.

This is a very high state and very complicated. Feeling yourself in the Egyptian exile is not easy; it is a spiritual degree. If a person wants to attain spirituality, he comes to a group, learns, and connects with friends in order to pass together from hatred to love. They, then, suddenly feel themselves in exile because their egoistic desire dominates over them.
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From KabTV’s “Kabbalists Write: The Night of Passover Seder” 3/4/13

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Question: If I include all 600,000 souls in my quality would ordinary people feel my great power when they interact with me? Will I influence them in certain way?

Answer: 600,000 souls are not parts separated from one another; it is a conventional Kabbalistic name of the level to which we have to rise.

This means that if now I sense the minimal bonding with others then conventionally it is called one. When I begin to climb the spiritual rungs and let’s say I include myself into Zeir Anpin, it means that I include 10 souls within myself; if I become included into ISHSUT – it is 1,000 souls, in Aba ve Ima – 10,000, etc. In addition, this is multiplied by 60 because Zeir Anpin consists of six parts. When I rise to Arich Anpin it turns out that I multiply myself by 600,000. It means that my today’s attainment increases 600,000 times.

However, this is just a convention because we don’t understand what 600,000 means. It is an incredible progression. It is not linear, but rather exponential in the infinite degree.
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From the European Convention in Germany 3/22/13, Lesson 1

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Question: I sit in the lessons and expect to feel something. But meanwhile I have no clarity about what you teach…

Answer: A person who begins learning requires a few years before he begins to understand anything. But even then he still isn’t moved; he still has no reaction. The words have already entered his brain and even into his heart, already giving something which is an inner reaction, but they still don’t reach the depths of emotion, don’t penetrate by way of the four phases, which typify every desire, still don’t invite a reaction.

After that the next stage comes: the person already wants to react but doesn’t know how. He needs to make a specific clarification of the emotion that from a general abstraction is gradually focused into something more clear and deliberate, like a vector.

After this, the person begins to react more and more to what happens in a group and sees that future events will take place outside of him, within the group. For a group, it is not the faces of the friends, but rather, the field in which the development is realized. And the person looks into it with more and more concentration, acquiring more significance for it and concern for his connection with the society, and after that, strives consciously not to lose this connection in any state.

Now he sees that the group is the collective spirit that dwells among the friends that belongs to all of them. Gradually in their field, he begins to discern all kinds of forces, with different interpretations. This is not merely a homogeneous picture; rather, it has every variety of forms, that is, relationships of forces. It is like seeing the individual spokes in a rapidly revolving bicycle wheel…

Our advancement is like this in which time, patience, and effort play the key role.

Question: If I discern isolated “spikes,” in isolated connections, so what do I need to do with this?

Answer: There exist various forces by which we mutually connect with each other. When I enter into a system, I see how to use them so that they will bring it benefit, I learn our connections, understand and improve them by means of more detailed corrections. And certainly I attribute everything to the Creator.

In the end, this force is something simple, and its action is like a dual-phase switch. But the mutual connections create a very complex picture of reality for us. The matter of our world consists of elementary particles, but look at the universe that is composed of them.

All of the richness and variety are derived from an integration of connections. The simplest elements of Mendeleev’s Periodic Table are integrated in various ways, forming substances with completely different characteristics and with absolutely different behaviors. The possibility of mutual connection of the three components, the proton, neutron and electron, produce infinite forms of complex connections. This is to say that connection is the foundation of everything.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/21/13, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar”

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Question: How can I connect with this gigantic European family if I am not acquainted with anyone personally? On what level is this connection realized?

Answer: I also do not know anyone here, except for 10 – 15 people that I came across personally, and I don’t even want to know. What does it matter to me what their names are?! I never remember names and don’t know whether it is this person or another. This isn’t important at all! What is important is that he has that same desire as you, and therefore you are both attracted to it, and together you have already become some kind of whole. From this connection is the whole of our method.

What is the connection to the bodies of people here, where they are from, what language they speak, what their characters are, or if it is a man or a woman? It doesn’t matter. We need only the connection of our points in the heart and nothing more. In any case, ultimately, in another few decades these bodies will no longer exist in our world, and only the points in the heart will be left. And those we need to connect in order to feel eternal existence in them.

All matter gradually disappears; nothing is left from it. The main thing is our eternal point! When you begin to pay attention to only this point in the heart, you will begin to relate to a person completely differently. I often scold my students, you know how I am, but I very much love this point in them.
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From the European Convention in Germany 3/22/13, Lesson 2

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Question: How can we work with the next degree correctly? What is this next degree? How can we approach it, find it, see it, discover it? What is the difference between the degree itself and what is discovered in it?

Answer: Our world is the feeling of our egoistic division, of mutual repulsion. We comprehend everything in this state of mutual distancing: from one another, from the still, vegetative, and animate nature. And this state is called “our world.” In other words, since we draw everything towards us in an egoistic manner for the sake of personal pleasure, we separate the one spiritual Light into negligible portions and comprehend these as objects of the still, the vegetative, the animate, and the human nature of our world.

And on the contrary, if we begin to connect these objects together and relate to them as to a single whole, then we begin to feel the next degree, the upper world.

The group has been given to us so that we can find how to comprehend the space that surrounds us in another, correct form. Ultimately it follows that when we connect with each other, trying to unite emotionally, imagining the integration of our desires and thoughts, as one heart and as one mind, then we portray the spiritual world before us, and yearn for it. In the same manner, a child desires to be an adult.

Through this desire we summon upon ourselves the upper Light (Ohr Makif), which corrects the ego that separates us and in this manner forms the next degree, the connection between us, the AHP of the upper degree.

Thus we connect to the upper level, only through mutual cooperation between us. And then we begin to feel the field, the energy, the wave, that streams between us.

Problems between us will grow more and more, forces of repulsion will be discovered more and more, while we need the opposite: To rise above them and to connect ourselves all the time until the negative and rejecting forces of opposition, on the one hand, and the forces of our mutual connection, on the other hand, will attain the position of our first spiritual degree. And then it will be discovered in the middle line.

Thus, the spiritual world will be discovered through the connection between us provided that we rise above the repulsive forces, working patiently and steadily on the connection until we rise to the position of the first spiritual degree.

These accumulated degrees, when we tirelessly try to connect despite the incessant problems between us in a group, are simultaneously the internal development of the embryo through which we need to pass. And then we are born.

What do they say when a newborn arrives in the world? “Congratulations!”
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From the Meal before the European Convention in Germany 3/23/13

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Question: Why does the Passover Haggadah gladly tell about the plagues of Egypt?

Answer: First, while a person is under the control of his ego, it seems as if these plagues are performed on him because he does not separate himself from his egoism. But then, having exited his ego, he feels these blows as happening to another body, some past state, which does not belong to him, but to his egoism.

After all, he has already separated from his ego, and that is why these plagues are sweetened. This sweetness causes a special joy in a person.

The exodus from Egypt takes place on each new degree. Whenever egoism is revealed, it is necessary to overcome it, to run away from it, to rise above it, and then correct it to bestowal, so that the angel of death turns into the angel of life, the good angel. It is like a mini-exodus from Egypt on each next level, in “every generation” because in this way we ascend the steps.

The more our egoism grows and we rise above it, correct it, and pull it up to our degree, the further it helps us grow. We connect with each other more strongly as a people and thus affect the world, passing the methodology and then the force that allows rising above egoism, uniting, and revealing the spiritual world.

However, only the upper force is able to pull us out of our egoism, not we ourselves. Because we connect, we give the Light an opportunity to affect our connection and realize it. After all, we cannot unite on our own; we are able only to ask and apply efforts, which the upper Light influences and realizes this state. Then we feel within our newly formed bond, the exit.
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From KabTV’s “Kabbalists Write: The Night of Passover Seder,” 3/4/13

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Question: During the Seder meal different generations gather at the table, and the elder is obligated to tell his son about the Exodus from Egypt. What is the message that this story conveys to the new generation that can also be seen simply as an historical event?

Answer: We all come out of Egypt together: young and old, women, children, men, and the elderly together with all the cattle, which means with desires that are on lower levels compared to man. They take from Egypt the gold and silver vessels, which refers to different desires, all the egoistic desires, that can be raised above our ego and can be turned into bestowal instead of receiving. This is called the “Exodus from Egypt.”

This is why we have to connect, to sit at one table and to talk about this, thus emphasizing how important it is for us to be focused in one direction: freedom from our nature.

Question: What does the Afikomen (a piece of hidden unleavened bread) that we search for according to the custom during the festive meal symbolize, and why is it the children who look for it?

Answer: The Afikomen symbolizes our readiness to come out of our ego with all our might. It is the children who look for it because they embody the weakest forces of all the “generations” in a person. They are the smallest, undeveloped desires that lead a person forward.

The older the generation, the more knowledge it has; and the younger the generation, the more energetic it is. The meal of the Seder symbolizes the connection between the generations, when everyone gathers and we all come out of Egypt, the whole family. There is a certain division of labor in this family and the younger generation’s role is to pull forward in the direction that the older generation is showing it.
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From KabTV’s “Kabbalists Write: The Night of Passover Seder,” 3/4/13

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Question: How can we come to feel the necessity of carrying out our mission and being united?

Answer: We learn about connection and unity in a group from all the essays by Baal HaSulam and the Rabash, why this is needed and for what. This touches upon both a person regarding the group and a group regarding all the others.

Today the world demands this. The world crisis obliges us. For if it didn’t exist, we would not think about it.

Our group once numbered 30 – 40 people. We learned in a small apartment, and that was fine for us. This was only 15 years ago; and I thought that this was how it would always be.

But at the end of the ‘90s of the last century, the world suddenly began to change. Many new people began to come to us, and we were compelled to move to another building. After that people began to feel a need for us, they began to appear in various countries around the world, and I arranged a lecture tour in 11 major cities in America. This is to say the world had changed.

So from the start, we planned to learn only in a small group, as it had always been customary among the Kabbalists. But when there began to be a move towards us from the world, and it began to show its need for us, we were compelled to change. So today, you have found us. But if it had been up to us, we would not have shown ourselves to anyone, we would not have gone onto the internet, we would not have been occupied with dissemination, for the Kabbalists had always been closed. But the world began to demand; its state had changed.

It is also the same thing now; the crisis obliges us. It is as if this were a condition: If you don’t correct it, why are you receiving the upper Light? Is it for yourself? There is nothing like this “for yourself” in the wisdom of Kabbalah, in spirituality. You don’t receive anything in the spiritual world for yourself. And so a prerequisite appeared for us—to connect between us, and along with this, to disseminate.
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From the European Convention in Germany 3/22/13, Lesson 1

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Question: Lately, we are seeing growing confrontation between the two opposing forces in Europe and in the world. Is this not a prerequisite for us to find an opportunity to move forward correctly?

Answer: The science of Kabbalah, along with other sciences, says that everything in the world is made up of the two opposing forces: plus-minus, north-south, pressure-vacuum, hot-cold, etc. All this is based on the two fundamental opposing forces: reception and bestowal. Perfection, life, consists of these two forces forming the third force, the middle line, where, in principle, all that exists is there. We see this in living organisms, in plants and animals. Before our time, we were also developing like animals, meaning instinctively, under the rule of the middle line.

But now we are reaching the next level of management when these two opposing forces emerge in us and we have to balance them on our own. This is the peculiarity of our time, of our development. Therefore, we have to see the world in harmony and have to bring this harmony into it by correctly combining the two opposing forces in ourselves: the force of reception (Aviut) and the property of bestowal (screen). We have to act in this manner.
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From the Meal before the European Convention in Germany 3/23/13

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