Question: Is it possible to acquire the soul, reveal the spiritual world and the Creator without the wisdom of Kabbalah?

Answer: A person begins to explore nature and discovers in it a certain law, a particular connection between phenomena. For example, I throw an object on the floor, calculate the acceleration of its fall, and draw a law from this experiment. At the same time, other people don’t study natural phenomena but learn about them in a prepared form.

There are people who discover the laws of nature, and there are those who learn them and thereby make a revelation, always personal and individual.

Phenomena that are being discovered by scientists existed in nature before. Hadn’t apples fallen on heads before Newton discovered the law of gravity? In this way, there is nothing new; we reveal what already exists, already happens. However, there are pioneers and those who learn from them and try to use the acquired knowledge correctly.

The same can be applied to the wisdom of Kabbalah, the physics of a wider world, not perceived by our sense organs. To feel it, we have to develop an additional sense organ called “the property of bestowal,” in which we will reveal the spiritual phenomena: Sefirot, the worlds, and Partzufim. Nonetheless, we continue to work as scientists.

It is said: “By Your actions we will know You.” It’s clear that everything stems from an action, from research. “A person judges only by what his eyes can see.” “Faith” is the force of bestowal that you attain. You don’t close your eyes to accept blindly as fact someone else’s opinion; this does not exist in any science, including the science of Kabbalah. On the contrary, it is said: “Know the Creator and serve Him.” Knowledge, analysis, and revelation are the foundation of everything.

There are people who have already made this discovery and have seen certain patterns; they convey to you knowledge about these laws, the method of research to ease your way. These laws apply to everyone because we are in one world.

So, don’t look at Kabbalah as at an unknown animal. It’s the root of all the other sciences of our world because it reveals the roots of creation, and it should be treated as a science. Kabbalah is not related to religion. When we fell from the degree of love of friends into self-love and mutual hatred, we lost Kabbalah and stopped perceiving the upper, spiritual world. Then, religion was born.

Thus, “religion” is the science of Kabbalah remaining in exile, in separation from the Creator, in isolation from the upper world, apart from the object of studying. Outside of real perception, without knowledge and understanding, the interpretation of spiritual actions and the relationship with the true reality, with the upper force, turned into Judaism. It exists in the period between the destruction of the Temple and redemption, after which we return to the wisdom of Kabbalah. That’s why it’s said: “Everyone will know Me, from the smallest to the greatest.”

Of course, we should not despise anything. We advance with the help of available means, but each of them has its own application.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/27/2011, “The Freedom”

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Question: If the Creator has a certain program of our development, why should we be interfering in it and trying to go around it?

Answer: There is a natural program of evolution regarded as “nature.” Nature has a built-in engine that spins and unwinds the entire development, while we obediently follow it for hundreds of thousands of years and thereby evolve. And so it has been over the whole human history on earth.

But at the same time, the program stipulates that man gradually reaches a state when he will start participating in its work himself. The force underlying nature keeps influencing and developing desire. And inside desire, it also cultivates the point that originates from the soul’s root. At a certain moment, besides the will to receive pleasure, we start hearing the voice of this point in the heart. The time comes when it makes itself known and demands man to actualize it.

Realization of the point occurs above desire. Hence, man feels split into two and finds himself facing a choice: to follow his ego, which is his corporeal desire (for things such as food, sex, family, wealth, power, and knowledge), or to keep raising this spiritual point and get the answers to the questions: Who am I? Where did I start? Where is the upper force? What is this life all about? What is the purpose of existence?

The point in the heart begins asking these questions and plunges one into confusion. Then he or she somehow finds the wisdom of Kabbalah, which is programmed as well! Life is not accidental; everything that takes place in this world descends on us from the upper world. Whether you will choose the second path or not, get all the opportunities to have it actualized, this too is subject to the same program of creation.

Today, you come to study not at your own will. It’s just that there were forces which worked on you and made you realize that you should come. Your freedom starts only where you are clearly facing a choice: to enter a Kabbalistic group or not, and even at the deeper level within you, are you willing to sacrifice your ego so you can become vital part of it or not.

The choice lies only between two desires: one aimed at oneself and the other directed outward. Here is where you really have to choose. Desire directed at oneself is AHP (the lower part of the Partzuf). Desire turned outward is Galgalta ve Eynaim, the upper part of the Partzuf. And in between, there lies an area regarded as “Klipat Noga,” where you seem to be making that choice. Yet, new questions arise: What do you base your choice on, and how are you being manipulated from Above so that you make this and not the other decision?

The same program dictates us to circulate Kabbalah all over the world. Without it, it won’t come to correction since it follows only a natural program of development, just like all other levels of nature. We need to use these levels correctly, meaning that we need to use—in thought, action, and intention—the rest of humanity, as well as the animate, vegetative, and still levels of nature, in order to adjoin them to ourselves and together, as one creation, ascend from the level of this world to the upper world.
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From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/27/2011, “General Introduction to the Book, Panim Meirot uMasbirot”

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Question: When we are in such close proximity at the Kabbalah conventions, what are we trying to overcome, the grip of the ego? Or are we trying to feel our friends’ desire, to make everybody feel good? What should we think about while we are there?

Answer: I personally recommend that you try feeling the collective state as much as possible. Don’t dig into yourself, don’t do the “soul-searching.” You’ll never find the soul anyway because you don’t have one and neither does anybody else. Your soul is beyond you!

Try to feel the collective state, the common spirit of this exalted gathering of desires for unity, attended by people who put huge effort and means into it, anticipating such an event for many months or even years so as to reveal in this unity the integral upper force of Nature, the force of love and bestowal—the Creator. You need to catch the collective spirit. And when it starts working in you, do the only correct and most effective action: lose yourself in this common spirit, just like an embryo in the mother’s womb.

Then you will get to feel how this property of bestowal gradually works on you, forming and building in you a new sensory organ for this new property (or dimension). This new sensory organ isn’t aimed at you, the precious, but at the will to bestow, at those whom you love.

If you want to succeed, leave all thoughts about yourself and dissolve in the convention’s collective spirit. Take advantage of every minute we spend together.
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From the Virtual Lesson 5/29/2011, Fundamentals of Kabbalah Series

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Question: What is the “faith” that Kabbalah is talking about?

Answer: Faith is the Light of Hassadim (Mercy), the force of bestowal or Bina, the Creator’s property, nature. If the property of faith starts taking over your will to receive pleasure, you come to understand what bestowal really is.

To receive an imprint of bestowal, you have to first start feeling it and know how it tastes. Thereby, you will know what it is. Such a unification of irreconcilable opposites may seem impossible, but the intention to bestow begins ruling over your desire for pleasure, and it wishes to be used to bestow.

Such a property is observed even in a selfish desire which feels another as part of itself. In that case, it can’t be authentic bestowal. This is like a mother who is considered as giving since nature forces her to feel that her child is a vital part of herself. It’s as though he is still inside her, and that’s why she bestows to herself. She cares more for him than for herself since she views him as the most precious part of herself.

Hence, even though a mother bestows to her child, someone outside of herself, it’s not considered that she has attained spiritual degrees and is acting for the sake of bestowal. This is merely a natural instinct.

In order for the will to receive to start working with the intention to bestow, it has to receive the upper Light, the special force. We only say that it comes from some place outside. In fact, it wakes up in a person and begets in him the desire to bestow to another, the love for him.

“Another” is a person for whom I previously felt hate, resentment, and distance. I didn’t feel him as related to me, but rather felt him as an alien, an outsider. Despite all this, I suddenly feel the desire, capacity, and aspiration to bestow to and fulfill him. I want to view him as myself, while I realize that I don’t need anything in return.

If I expect to receive pleasure in return, it’s as though I act egoistically. That is, bestowal shouldn’t bring me any pleasure. On the contrary, it makes me suffer since in order to bestow to another, I have to deprive myself. Then, what could possibly make me want to give?

Therefore, we receive a specific force called the Light that Reforms. I begin to feel that on one hand, I am dealing with a stranger from whom I desire to receive, to take something he has. However, instead, I receive an external force that allows me to bestow to him without receiving any pleasure or benefit from it directly.

If I were to enjoy bestowal immediately and directly, it would be egoistic. However, I don’t feel him naturally as part of me and do not enjoy bestowing to him. It is the other way around. I overcome my egoistic desire, which doesn’t get fulfilled and becomes even emptier than before, and transfer all my efforts and fulfillment to him.

If I were to be asked why I am doing it, I wouldn’t have an answer in my selfish will to receive. There is another answer, though. What I do feel is the Creator’s greatness, my connection with the upper one; I fulfill the desire of the One who is higher than I am. I am motivated by a much more exalted ideal. However, words can’t explain it since the ego will always twist it so as to get some compensation from it.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/29/2011, Shamati #40

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Question: Is there an area in our brain where we can feel pleasure from being one with the group and revealing the Creator in it just as much as we enjoy food, sex, and family?

Answer: The brain, as well as desire, doesn’t care what we gain pleasure from, but the Creator is playing an “unfair” game with us. He placed a condition for us: If in this world, this life you wish to derive pleasure from sweets, you can do so, for now.

It is similar to how we treat our children. They have to grow to become adults. Hence, day by day, over the first 18 years, we give them everything we possibly can. A child breaks toys, disobeys, does things wrong, while you continue treating them kindly. What other options do you have? It’s hard to raise kids. All you can do is keep giving them what they need.

Clearly, nature also gives everything to its children: desire, strength and the will to grow. They run, play, and are always in motion. Everything is made so as to give a person a chance to grow. Have you grown? Now, it’s your turn to work and serve in the army. It’s so different from your previous life! Childhood has ended; you are a grown-up now.

In the spiritual world, the Creator puts us in a similar condition. You are given an opportunity to start growing in spirituality in a small state (Katnut) and receive all that you need just like children in this world. However, as you grow, you are placed in increasingly difficult conditions. You have to give more, pay, and love to get something in return.

The Light stays at absolute rest. Desire wants to enjoy the Light. But in between, there is a condition, like there is for a grown-up in this world: If you wish to keep enjoying yourself, you have to pay, complete your desire, the vessel that receives the Light. The pleasure remains the same, but due to the above rule, you can’t enjoy it. Hence, we have no choice: We must reach bestowal.

We say: “But I want to feel pleasure directly. Place me in Malchut of Infinity! Give me pleasure right now. Fill me up!” But, no, we are told: “Malchut of Infinity? Sure thing! But all you will find there is a horrible void.” How so? That’s because of the same condition, the First Restriction. If you are not similar to the Light in your properties, you will feel nothing but darkness.

So, all pleasures expand from the Light. Even if someone enjoys killing, that, too, is derived from the Light. There is no other source of enjoyment. However, there is a condition: If you wish to know real, everlasting pleasures, you must receive them in the will to bestow. You have no choice—this is the rule.
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From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/13/2011, Explanation of the Article, “Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah”

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Question: In a few days we will be celebrating Shavuot, the great day of the Giving of the Torah. All other Kabbalah sources are essentially just commentaries on the Torah, while all philosophies, religions, and wisdoms have also derived from it. How does Kabbalah view the Torah: as a book or as the method of correction?

Answer: The Torah is the Light that Reforms, that brings one back to the Creator. It is not a book but the Light, the force of bestowal that expands from the Creator, the source of bestowal, and reforms a person so he or she may also live to bestow. Then, a person becomes part of the Torah and is filled with its Light, the Light of Hassadim (Mercy) illuminated by the Light of Hochma (Wisdom). This is regarded as the Torah’s revelation, the revelation of the Light within man.

We have to align everything we hear about with the two notions: the Light and desire, and the measure of equivalence thereof, which is called the screen. There is nothing else in the whole of reality. In The Study of the Ten Sefirot, it is the “Light” instead of the “Creator,” “desire” instead of the “creature,” and the “screen” instead of the “correction of creation.” There is nothing else. All confusion starts with the fact that people can’t tie these three ideas altogether.

If you get too tangled in these three definitions, return to the four stages of the Direct Light. Only the Light and desire are there; start with that. All properties, perceptions, feelings, thoughts, all these confusing notions, the future worlds, and the perception of reality must always be brought to one point: the Light and desire since there is nothing else anywhere in all worlds.

And now, living in this reality and experiencing this big world, either frightening, good, or bad, you experience it all within the desire, which is in a certain state.

Question: But in my current state, I still see a book that somebody wrote.

Answer: Kabbalists have described for you the Light’s actions, its work on desire and they expressed them in various symbols so that you may connect with them in some way, thereby causing the Light to do work on your own desire.

This book is called the “Torah” (from the words “Oraa” or the instruction manual and “Ohr” or the Light”) since it describes the sequence of the Light’s actions over desire, how the Light moves desire. The book doesn’t offer anything other than that. After all, in the entire reality there is only the Light and desire.

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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/29/2011, Shamati #40

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Question: I’m stunned that a series of such dramatic changes in the world draws such a weak reaction from the leading nations. What’s going on with us?

Answer: I think that the “movers and shakers” of the world have understood that they’re not in control of the situation, and they’re trying to mitigate the blow. They are especially concerned with the sharp decline in oil production and the resulting sharp decline in the global economy.

This will undoubtedly impact global reconstruction. The automobile and aviation industries will be demolished, and a new public mode of transportation will need to be implemented. People will only be buying the bare essentials, which will crush many of the economy’s sectors.

Every tenth US citizen works in the auto industry. A string of bankruptcies will shatter the national economy and bring about the rise of extremist political parties, the kind that emerged under similar circumstances in the 1920s in Germany.

It is no accident that Kabbalah asserts that the next phase in the collective global development is either correction via the method of Kabbalah or fascism! I suspect that the US deliberately terminated their auto industry, correctly realizing that it would be the first to fall in the looming global crisis. This bought their other industries and their workers time to make a transition from the economy sectors so badly dependent upon oil, such as the automobile, to other modes of manufacture and consumption which are simpler, more natural, and direct. As for the media, they simply carry out orders from those who pay them.
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Question: Why does the letter “Samech” in The Zohar refer to GAR (the three upper Sefirot) de Bina if letters start only with ZAT (the seven lower Sefirot) de Bina?

Answer: And how do we use letters in our world? Do we really have any connection to ZAT of Bina, ZA (Zeir Anpin), and Malchut of the world of Atzilut? It’s known that letters from Aleph to Tet descend from ZAT de Bina; Yod to Tzadik from Zeir Anpin, and Kuf-Resh-Shin-Tav from Malchut, while the final letters MaNTzePaCh stem from the Parsa.

Everything ends at the Parsa of the world of Atzilut, below which lie the worlds of BYA (Beria, Yetzira, Assiya). Below them we have this world, while we exist even lower than that, in our world. So how do we use letters?

The point is that in the world of Atzilut there is a pattern according to which every part of reality divides further more. Hence, no matter where I am, I can use letters according to my spiritual degree.

In France, for instance, in the International Bureau of Weights and Measurements, BIPM, there is a meter gauge made of platinum and iridium. (Incidentally, they decided to stop using the physical model, and from now, a meter is defined based on the consistency of the continuity of the speed of light, as the distance the light travels in a vacuum per 1/299,792,458^th of a second.)

Therefore, in our world there are world standards of measurements with which to verify our measuring devices. This allows us to measure objects and distances between them in any place. Likewise, there is the world of Atzilut, where the key model or standard is. It governs how everything is divided and measured in all other worlds. Based on this standard, all other degrees in the world of BYA are built, each of which is a projection of the world of Atzilut, and that is why there are letters in them as well.

Our world is a projection of the upper worlds although its matter has a totally different nature, the egoistic one. Therefore, in our world, we also use letters. Besides, we use the words of our world to describe the spiritual worlds, the so-called “language of branches.”
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/26/2011, The Zohar

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Question: Do the letters that The Zohar talks about express the forms of connection between us?

Answer: Of course! Only the connection between us! Without the connection between the souls, the authors of The Zohar could not have perceived anything. Everything is perceived in the network of connection between us.

What do we perceive? We perceive the forces of bestowal. The sum total of these forces is called the “Creator” (“Bo-Reh” or “come and see”), which we reveal in the connection between us, the property of bestowal and love.

If we perceive this in the form of forces, then it’s our desire, our vessel for the revelation of the Light. If we perceive an impression in it, the Light, this is the Creator, the Light, that is revealed in the vessel, the desire. There is nothing else.

All that we read in The Zohar or all the other books written by Kabbalists are merely man’s impressions, a Kabbalist’s perception of the force of bestowal within his desires, according to the similarity of properties. He tells us about his desires, his impressions, the force that he perceived, explaining this in an external form.

It’s possible to express this in music, songs, and beautiful words. It’s also possible to explain it in the language of Kabbalah, the Talmud, or the Legends. In the final analysis, Kabbalists explain their attainments.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/26/2011, The Zohar

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Question: Why is it said that an act of bestowal always brings a sensation of joy?

Answer: If a person cleaves to the upper one, this adhesion must bring him joy since he enters the perfection of the upper one. This is not simply a good mood, but rather a sensation of being filled with perfection and eternity, belonging and dependency, of touching upon something perfect and infinite.

This sensation is experienced by a person who has a connection with a higher degree consisting of the teacher, the group, and the Creator. The more he values them, the more he feels perfection. But then the question arises: How does he use this feeling? Maybe he is simply looking for a pleasant sensation in order to appease himself? Or perhaps he is using this feeling to ascend and bestow in return?

That is, it’s important whether he is using his connection with “the teacher, the group, and the books” to acquire the spiritual vessel called “faith” or to fill oneself. If he is looking for an egoistic fulfillment, it is an impure desire, Klipa, that wishes to cling to sanctity and draw out the Light from it.

However, one has to go through such impure states as well, feel them acutely on the path, and try to overcome them. Ultimately, I have to attain that there is nothing besides the single authority: the authority of the Creator. It means that the Creator is “good who does good”; He fills my entire world, all of my desires, my entire heart and mind. I have to always feel that I’m under the Creator’s rule, and He fills me. I shouldn’t allow a Klipa (my impure desires) to torment me.

There are people who derive pleasure from such self-criticism. Or they are so used to it that they can’t come out of this state. However, this is a very bad state, and it brings no advancement.

A person thinks that suffering helps him to advance and that one day suffering will end. But it will never happen. Progress takes place specifically by virtue of us aspiring toward joy, goodness, and happiness from performing good deeds—toward the upper degree, toward faith. This is called faith in the upper one, when a person feels that he belongs to perfection, meaning connects to the upper one.

So ask yourself: Are you trying to cling to the upper one to receive pleasure from it or are you looking for inspiration and joy that can help you acquire the ability to bestow?
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/29/2011, Shamati #40

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