Question: What are a deficiency of the individual and a deficiency of the general?

Answer: A deficiency of the individual doesn’t exist in spirituality because it isn’t about the ordinary corporeal desires. In spiritual desires, a person has only one point in the heart, which he still hasn’t realized.

A general deficiency is the ability to detach from oneself and to connect to the general. This means that a person already understands and feels from studying, from being part of the group, and from disseminating that the spiritual world is revealed only in a whole deficiency.

A whole deficiency means that it is connected, at least minimally, which enables a person to perceive several spiritual discernments. Until then, one doesn’t see anything, like in the evening at twilight when everything becomes blurred.

There is a saying that it is evening time when you cannot recognize the face of your friend from a certain distance (four Amot) as everything blends together. However, if I can recognize my friend, it isn’t evening yet.

Evening symbolizes the fact that I can see something, but that I don’t understand exactly what it is. Thus, we gradually begin to come to the understanding that, instead of a revelation, there are several discernments in which we can recognize, similarly to the way we recognize a friend’s face from a distance of four Amot, which means in the four minimal phases of the desire to receive.

In order to do that, I need to connect my desire with the desires of several other friends so that there will be a connection among us, and, from that, I will be able to discern good and evil, light and darkness. I need to clarify what receiving and bestowal means for myself and for others, or for everyone together, among us.

In the connection between us, I already begin to see these discernments: what “in order to receive” means and what “in order to bestow means.” In this place, built by me, in the deficiency by incorporating with others, I already understand to some extent what in order to receive and in order to bestow mean. This is an initial, minimal understanding, but I already can see the difference between the two.

A deficiency is formed in me, a vessel of perceiving by which I can see the spiritual world, to feel it and to see different discernments. Thus, my spiritual introspection opens up, which is different from the external perspective that I have in this world now, where we imagine that we see something.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/13/12, “The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee)”

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Good education is when people receive knowledge together with an explanation that they are ready to accept, because many facts that we receive without explanations, especially during our childhood years, remain in us like viruses, and it becomes impossible to get rid of them. We subconsciously use this baggage of facts and consider them to be true, even though in reality they are wrong and often get in our way.

All this happens because as children and adolescents, we were stuffed with different “irrefutable” truths without explanations. Since then, they have been imprinted within and there is nowhere to hide from them. No matter what you do, you are not in control of the things that have been imprinted in you.

And this is why everything needs to be accompanied by an explanation. There is no need to confuse people with ornate constructions based on higher mathematics—people need to receive a clear, accessible explanation, because otherwise knowledge becomes slogans or axioms, and do not advance people forward. A person needs to develop through common sense when one learns good explanations. Moreover, it is necessary to maintain adequate speed, so an excess of information would not block a person’s ability to absorb information.

Correct education is devoid of unsubstantiated facts. This is because people will not be able to use them in the right way, and it will be very difficult to rid them of this unnecessary load. It is impossible to work with facts when you do not know their causes and consequences. In this case they will not allow a person to create a common picture of reality. Instead, a person treats them as strict laws.

Meanwhile, there are no laws at all in reality: We create them ourselves. Once I am born, necessity pushes me to begin to form a picture of the world, connecting its parts together. This is because we come from a breaking, and our entire reality consists of putting together a mosaic of its parts on all the levels, as deep as it goes, from this world to the world of Infinity, constantly adding new quality and quantity of traits. After all, this picture is multidimensional.

So, when I give a person an ultimatum regarding the way he should put together certain parts, I send him down the wrong path, and he continues to follow directions since he does not know how to make analyses and draw analogies. Instead of giving him prepared answers and naked facts, I need to give him a study technique, a method, a guide for action.

This is why modern education is collapsing. This is because we are molding “soldiers,” skilled “workers,” rather than creative people who know how to put together pieces of a mosaic.

Question: You cannot just confine yourself to facts, even if they are true?

Answer: The facts are not the problem. A person needs more than knowledge: He needs to develop his mind, put together things that no one has put together before. He needs to have an approach, a new program instilled in him, which allows him to independently form a picture of reality in him.

A child will not learn through forced actions: This gives a very limited effect. When I tell him something, I must explain why this is the way it is. Otherwise I introduce another “virus” into him, and he will not be able to rationally use this “truth” that is imprinted in him. Caused by a certain context, it will keep emerging in his subconscious until the end of his life, and only the death of the body will put an end to this.

Question: During the period of concealment, we also use slogans that we do not understand. Why are these not “viral” to us?

Answer: That is true, Kabbalah has its own “mottos”: “There is none else beside Him,” “Good who does good,” “Love thy neighbor as thyself,” etc. However, they come from a higher degree and cannot come to us in any other form. We “swallow” these viruses, artificially try to shape ourselves in accordance with them, and thus we attract Reforming Light. And it corrects and lifts us, providing us with a new understanding of the world, a new mind and a new feeling.

On the other hand, in our world, we swallow false facts instead of acquiring common sense, and this does not allow us to move forward by combining all the parts, studying the right picture of the world, and developing on its basis.

After all, I can be independent in our world, while I will never be able to enter spirituality on my own. On the contrary, I must try to realize the laws of the spiritual world in me, connect to them to the extent of my abilities, and then the upper Light will lift me there.

This way, positive instead of negative “viruses” operate in the spiritual world: Be near great people, exalt your friends in your eyes, and constantly strive towards the Light, which you know nothing about. All these things are not facts in my perception; nevertheless, receiving them from the spiritual world is beneficial.

In our perception, even Kabbalah books are “viruses.” They speak of things that we cannot feel, see, or hear. However, I study these texts in order to want to rise with their help. Let these “viruses” strike me so I would become infected with love. And then I will come to it.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/12/12, “The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee)”

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Baal HaSulam lists five questions in the beginning of the “Introduction to The Book of Zohar“:

1. What is our essence?

2. What is our role in the long chain of reality, where we are small links?

3. We feel low and defective, but should not the Creator, who created us, only emit perfect actions?

4. How could the Creator doom His creatures to such suffering?

5. How could something Eternal, which neither has a beginning nor an end, produce perishable, temporal, and inferior creatures?

Many have thought about it over the course of many centuries since mankind has come to know itself. And our generation has the same questions before it. We have not managed to reach understanding, while this is regarding fundamental questions that refer to the very essence of our existence: What are we living for? What is the purpose of life? What is its reason? What kind of process is contained in it? Do we have freedom of will? What is the purpose before us? Is nature blind or does it follow a certain program? Can it be changed?

Moreover, there are questions that have to do with scriptures: If the Creator is kind, then where is His kindness? Is it in a certain other world? But who has seen it?

Briefly speaking, these questions comprise the entire reality, except for the animate degree where we must provide for our daily needs.

Comment: Not many people ask themselves these questions.

Answer: This is a separate problem; people do not know how to think about things that matter. However, these things definitely bother them on the subconscious level. And especially today.

And in general, has there really been a single person in history, who did not ask himself?

– Why do I suffer?

But at the same time, what is so surprising here?

– You suffer because you feel bad.

– But why do I feel bad?

– And why should you feel good? You assume that good is a normal state, and anything worse is not normal? Where do you get this? Maybe you believe in the Creator? But how can you know that He exists and that He is kind? So why do you feel surprised when you feel bad? Maybe bad is a normal state of the world.

Thus, any question a person asks, when he rises above his concerns over his daily life, necessarily contains all these basic, essential complications, even if they are disguised. Let us slightly uncover them.

1. Naturally, a person does not ask: “What is our essence?” He phrases it in another way: “Who am I? Why and what for?” Children think about these things and then they forget. However, questions remain: What is our role? Where is the historic process of development taking us? Does it have a purpose? Is evolution accidental or does it follow a certain plan?

2. We discover that all parts of nature are tightly interconnected; moreover, their interconnection is not spontaneous, it is reasonable, and this reason is above our reasoning. But in the end, we are consequences of nature, and we barely comprehend even a tiny fragment of its common picture.

And this is why a person asks questions: If we are observing a consecutive process, which follows nature’s deep wisdom, and which naturally leads to a certain goal, then who am I and what am I? Where am I going? Where should I be going? Where does my life come from? Does it come from another planet? And if so, how did it get there? Some people worry that the sun will be extinguished in billions of years or that a certain celestial body might collide with planet Earth. “Even if it does not happen to me, what will happen to mankind?” Don’t laugh about these concerns.

3. We are incredibly limited, and we still want to know everything. But on the other hand, when we look at ourselves, we see our own deficiency. And this is correct, if we draw a comparison to the greatness of Nature, its power, beauty, and perfection, the beautiful landscapes that have not yet been ruined by man with a starry sky above us. Look deep into the magnificence of Nature, delve into the structure of DNA or an atom and you will be amazed by what you see. We are small, very pretentious fools. Everything that matters to us is nothing but a tiny crumb scraped off the great canvas.

Anywhere we look, we see immense wisdom and inseparable interconnection. It is astonishing that all parts of nature maintain one another, while we only lead to their extinction, failing to understand that this leads to our own destruction. Because no matter how proud we are, in reality nature feeds us and provides for us. Nothing appears out of thin air. Food, water, clothes, all this we receive from it, and we respond to kindness with destruction. This only testifies to our foolishness.

And thus it follows that everything in nature is perfect and only we are defective. But how can it be that only we are defective out of all the elements of nature? We do not only destroy the world, we are destroying our near future, and we refuse to think about it. Even when a person knows that he is to die tomorrow, he still will not stop, he will not resist, and will still travel the rest of the way to the unavoidable scaffold.

Nature undividedly governs over the still, vegetative, and animate levels, but its power is not absolute over us, it has given us freedom of will. So why do we use this freedom to ruin ourselves even more? Instead of using our independence for the good, becoming Human with a capital letter, wonderful and beneficent to themselves and others, I destroy everything I can. Why do I need this freedom?

4. Why do we suffer, when the perfect Nature has prepared a wonderful goal for us?

5. And finally, how could the perfect Creator produce perishable, temporal, and inferior creatures, born in pain, living in suffering, and dying in agony? A person’s entire life is passed in pursuit of pleasure, which he never manages to grasp. Because the second he fails to grasp something, he immediately concerns himself with his next pleasure. We are never fully satisfied, and even if little things are enough for us, it does not last forever. Every pleasure is followed by emptiness, and we constantly pursue a mirage.

Thus, the questions Baal HaSulam has listed, concern everyone to a certain degree, and we will have to find the answers to these questions.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/14/12, Introduction to the Book of Zohar

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Question: How are we supposed to help each other? Let’s say I am a farmer and most of the time I don’t communicate much with other people. How can I possibly bestow to them?

Answer: Tell me, why and for whom do you work on your land? We think that we work for our own sake, but in fact that’s not what’s happening. A long time ago, humans were at the animate level thinking only about how to feed themselves. They didn’t feel that they were a part of each other or have a sense of community. But with the development of our receiving desires, people were no longer able to provide for themselves. Then, one became a farmer, another a shepherd, and another worked with tools. It is said: “Go and earn from each other.” Our desires grew more complex; accordingly, our world became more complex.

Ultimately, we think we serve ourselves, but in fact, it is really others. We are under the delusion that we act for the sake of our own benefit, but in fact, it’s a misunderstanding. Actually we work to get our salary, which is nothing other than a deception. In fact, we work to bestow and to provide for others.

For example, you grow tomatoes and all day long you are thinking about how to sell them and what you will earn. So remember, if you did not regard yourself through the deceitful prism of egoism, you would see that you simply are trying to find a way to help others profit. You are suppressed by a delusion that all you do is pursue profits because you don’t know how else to motivate yourself because you still don’t know how concern for others will serve the purpose. Well, you can remain under the impression of this lie if you want.

In reality, your pursuit of profit is a complete fraud. Soon the banking sector will collapse, and you will see this. Similarly, we encourage children or trick a donkey by dangling a carrot in front of its nose to make it work.

Question: So, a Kabbalist grows tomatoes, earns half a million by selling them, and constantly thinks about how to use this money for the benefit of others?

Answer: Of course! Otherwise, he wouldn’t be working for the sake of bestowal. What kind of a Kabbalist would he be?

Comment: But, people are constructed in a way that most of the time they don’t think of things like that.

Answer: You keep forgetting because your perception is not connected with bestowal as of yet. A mother feels her child within herself, so she never forgets about her baby. Internally, she never separates from her child; she simply cannot cut off the umbilical cord that connects them together. Wait, you too will discover the cord that joins you to others.

Comment: But even egoistically, I don’t dream about my future salary all day long.

Answer: That’s right! However, you constantly think of various pleasures that attract you. An expert receives sensual and intellectual fulfillment from doing his work well. Eventually, you’ll find out that you are working for the benefit of others. All of us are the Creator’s workers; we are giving to each other all we can against our will and do not acknowledge our bestowal. Instead of a beautiful and perfect picture of the world, we see a perverted and wicked image that alters the reality into its complete opposite.

Eventually, we have to “remove the blinders” and lift the veil of concealment. Nothing will change, except us; but when you change, you will see an inverted world.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/7/12, “The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee)”

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Question: Why does it seem to a person that he can advance on his own without the help of the environment?

Answer: People prefer to rely on themselves, since they are used to implementing their habitual egoistic approaches. Because of the egoistic desire, one doesn’t appeal to the upper Light that Reforms, but thinks that he will earn everything by using his own knowledge and efforts. We tend to think that we are clever and strong enough to overcome all impediments and get a reward without outside help.

We think we don’t need the upper force, the Creator. When we feel powerful, we neglect to maintain connection with the upper force, even if we presume that it exists. One begins to imagine one’s association with the upper force only when facing threats in this world or fearing punishment after death in a future world, that is, only when one can’t cope on their own.

If a person is confident that he will succeed and fill his egoistic desires on his own, he won’t strive to attain the upper force. But, when the spark that is part of the upper Light awakens in a person, he feels that it cannot be fulfilled unless he is connected with the upper force, which gives him additional fulfillment.

The spark is not just a particle of Light from above that was cut off and placed in me. This spark is the faintest illumination of the Light, the Creator that descended within a person: the beginning of the revelation of the Creator in me. This is the beginning of man (Adam) within us, similar to (Domeh) to the Creator.

The spark needs to be connected to the desire to enjoy, so they are brought into harmony by establishing the correct connection between them. This is what we have to work on until the Creator completely reveals Himself to us and not just a tiny spark; in other words, instead of a small desire to be pleased, we should find great aspiration, and both should reach complete adhesion.

A tiny part of the Creator is disclosed within us: This is called a spiritual awakening, a spark. A small portion of the great desire to enjoy wakes up all my earthly passions for food, sex, family, wealth, power, and knowledge.

The difference between my natural desire and the spark is that the desire to be pleased demands that we fulfill ourselves for our own sake, whereas the spark requires fulfilling others, bestowal. They contradict each other, and so a person first loses his head when he first senses the spark.

A person feels the split because the desire to be pleased pulls him into this world with all its egoistic pleasures, while the spark of bestowal carries us in a completely different dimension, although we do not know where or what it is. At this point, we stop caring about this world and become totally attracted to something more lofty and unearthly.

Eventually, the spark leads us to a special place where we can realize it, that is, to the place where the Creator’s desire reveals itself with greater force. The place is called a Kabbalistic group.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/6/12, Shamati #21

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Question: Is there a way to avoid reaching the point of catastrophic bifurcation and to turn to a good path in time?

Answer: A smart person is one that can foresee a future outcome, and because he’s able to see it so clearly, he’s able to change the present. For instance, a person wants to do something that will bring him instantaneous pleasure; however, seeing that this action will result in future suffering, a person will annul the urge for this pleasure, he will become cautious, and will have the strength to overcome the urge.

For example, if a drug addict would see the future picture that his drug use would lead to, it would convince him to give it up.

This is why people need to be shown the picture of the horrible future, even though scaring people isn’t what we want. It’s very difficult to present such information, but since people are closing their eyes to what’s going on, it is necessary to find suitable means of informing people of the threats. So now there are more and more films on this subject.

I hope that reason will prevail. I see it actually happening in our awareness of the nature of evil, although I would like to see it happen more quickly. But only a vision of a threatening future and fear can help a person, nothing else will stop him.
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From a “Talk About Integral Upbringing” 6/13/12

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Question: There are two forces: One force leads to unity and goodness and the other toward destruction and death. Right now, humanity is irreversibly heading for a point of bifurcation where we need to stop, because we cannot go on like this any further. If things go the natural way, would that be catastrophic?

Answer: Yes, it would be a natural and social catastrophe, which means wars. If we continue to stubbornly go against nature, then on the one hand, it would evoke a variety of natural disasters like earthquakes, hurricanes, and so on, and on the other hand, it would trigger in us such internal strain and pressure that a global nuclear war would erupt. This is the natural course of events without our conscious awareness.

But if we reveal this point in advance through mass media, through all kinds of possibilities, then we can move it forward. This should be done not when it’s already inevitable and we enter a state of great conflict, but while we are anticipating everything and feel it in advance as though this point already exists now, and then we can start changing ourselves and society.

This can be achieved only by disseminating the truth about our state and direction: what are we heading toward, what force is leading us forward, and about the inevitability of coming to that precise state. Actually, people are already talking about it, though very little.

And most importantly, there’s a method of correction that allows us to change what exists today. By the way, the method itself is painless, without drama. A person won’t need to break him or herself.

A person comes to a group and engages in it under the influence of a gentle, kind, and friendly environment, attends it like a simple psychological workshop in a university. And within a few sessions, he begins to feel how he himself and his view of the world change.

So, nothing dramatic happens to a person. He or she simply, easily, and comfortably begins to acquire a new system of knowledge and perception of the world.
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From a “Talk About Integral Upbringing” 6/13/12

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Question: Currently, we move from a linear, narrow-minded egoistic development to a “round,” whole world. How do we build the course of integral education in a way that it quickly shifts a person from a linear perception of the world to a global, universal perception?

Answer: It’s easy! Everything depends on the influence of the environment!

If the environment surrounding a person is integral, there will be a society built on top of specifically equal circumstances. Naturally, there are no equal people, but specifically equal circumstances will serve as a connection among them: friendly and equal, creating integral fields of communication around them where a person will feel as a part of the whole even if this feeling gradually disappears as the feeling of the whole will start prevailing.

Then a person begins to perceive the world in a holistic way. And he will treat everything else outside of his small society as a whole, and he will be able to perceive the world correctly and interact with everything in a proper way.
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From a “Talk on Integral Upbringing” 5/21/12

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Baal HaSulam, “The Essence of the Wisdom of Kabbalah”: This wisdom is generally divided into two parallel, identical orders, like two drops in a pond. The only difference between them is that the first order extends from Above downwards to this world, and the second order traverses from below upwards, precisely by the same routes and make-ups imprinted at the root when they appeared from Above downwards.

The descent was in five stages, from the “root” phase (zero) until the fourth phase, and there are exactly the same stages on the way from the bottom up. Where do these levels come from? From the desire that the Light put through the same stages of development.

So the structure is fixed and only the way it is put together is called development. Actually there is neither up nor down, we only discover the complexity of the relations between the Light and the vessel to a greater extent. First, when they were together, we could not discern it, later when it was opened, the picture became more complex because of the new details that were added to the levels of understanding of the Sefirot, the worlds, the Partzufim, etc.

Later the Reshimot (informational genes) that were left after the descent are fulfilled during the ascent.

On the whole, there is a desire, a Reshimo, and the Light that influences both of them and which builds a Masach (screen), which means the level of compatibility between the Light and the desire.

The Light is good and it is called the Light that Reforms since the desire because of the Reshimo wants something that is totally the opposite. If we still lead our desire towards the Light, we place it under the influence of the Light, and the Light turns the desire into a good desire.

Question: According to the drawing, we begin the ascent from phase four, as if it were the first stage. How does this work?

Answer: It is true that there are two opposites here. If we grow in our screen and in the use of the desire, we raise the levels of thickness (the depth of the desire), from the root phase to the fourth phase. We descended the levels of the desire under the screen, and we raise the levels of the screen itself.

In any case, while moving towards this world the use of the desire decreases. Phase four below doesn’t symbolize the level of the “matter” of the desire, but the work we have to do with it.

So we begin the ascent with a small desire since we don’t feel the “matter” itself, but rather whether there is a screen above it. We attain the perception of Holiness or impurity, but not the desire itself.
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From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/08/12, “The Essence of the Wisdom of Kabbalah”

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Question: Why do you think that Kabbalah is the foundation of all religions and that religions appeared because Kabbalah was concealed?

Answer: Abraham’s religion is love towards everybody. On this basis he organized a group of students in Babel. This group existed in this quality (of course, not without the problems in realizing this condition, yet with the desire to reach it) until the final victory of egoism 2000 years ago. In the end, as egoism surpassed altruism, they fell from the relationships of love to the relationships of hatred. In the end, the sensation of the upper nature, the Creator, disappeared from them.

Having been left in darkness, they resorted to guesswork concerning the upper world, the goal, and the purpose, and this gave rise to the creation of far-fetched theories, which over time became religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

However, the biggest problem with the Creator’s concealment is that all religions separate people and evoke in them if not hatred, then at least rejection and disregard.
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