Question: If in spirituality a person is born anew every moment and starts everything from the beginning each time, how can it be that once he strays from the path once, he then diverts from it more and more?

Answer: This is how Baal HaSulam depicted it, I’m simply repeating his diagram. If at the beginning of the path you divert from it just a little bit (say, by 1 cm), then by continuing to advance on the same way, you eventually divert from the correct path by, say, 5 cm.

It seems to you that you have made progress: received knowledge, realized and went through many things. You become increasingly confident that you are on the right track, while in reality you have already strayed from the path and are advancing beside the mark.

Nobody took away your freedom from you or the opportunity to make an adjustment. But if you do not suspect that your have veered from the path, if you do not feel it, you think you can continue like that.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/28/2011, Preparation for the WE! Convention

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Question: What is the difference between revealing the Light through one of the eastern methodologies or the method of Kabbalah?

Answer: The revelation of Light can only be reached if one has a big Aviut (coarseness, thickness of desire) which he can correct only with the help of Kabbalah and thereby reveal the Light, the Creator. After all, with a smaller Aviut, a person will not be able to reveal anything but more or less pleasant sensations that give him or her the illusion that he or she is already “soaring” in the spiritual world.

Everything except for Kabbalah—all the eastern methodologies, New Age teachings, different beliefs and religions—are its modified forms born out of the desire to receive pleasure which has not reached its last degree, that of Dalet (four), and is not perfect on all of its levels of Aviut, not as egoistic.

Besides, what did they take from Kabbalah? One preaches moral norms, another advocates meditations, a third recommends food limitations, a fourth prompts to believe in drawn images or spoken tales, a fifth commends ceremonial observances that are considered to be sacred, and so forth.

All of these are the results of the desire to receive pleasure which has not yet reached its final development. It thus expresses the wisdom of Kabbalah in an equally light form instead of correcting itself.

After all, a person like this does not feel the need to correct himself. He does not understand what he needs to correct. He believes that if he were to kiss a “sacred” object or donate something, he would be all right. A small desire to receive pleasure does not push man toward anything greater. All of this flows out of the desire that has not yet been developed to the level of the last degree, that of Dalet.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/27/2011, “The Wisdom of Kabbalah and Philosophy”

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Question: How does the need for a scientific approach go with the principle of “We will do and we will hear?”

Answer: These goes together very well. “We will do and we will hear” is a pure scientific approach which exists in true science. This is because science constantly reveals phenomena that were previously concealed from us. We had no factual knowledge nor connection to them. All we had was our desire to reveal, develop our perception and abilities, in order to grasp new, additional phenomena, test them on us, on our own flesh, on our senses, and register them. Relying on this data, we gathered a more robust image of reality where we exist.

The same approach operates in Kabbalah. It is a science just like a regular science as it is our aspiration to reveal a new reality. There is no difference.

However, in the regular natural sciences of this world, we are not required to change our senses. We only need to expand them. The research instrument already exists: It is our desire to receive pleasure. We simply must expand it through different microscopes, telescopes, and other tools that raise our sensitivity toward previously concealed phenomena.

The entirety of reality divides into two halves: reception and bestowal. In order to check, examine, and study the reality that is based on bestowal instead of reception, we primarily need to arm ourselves with the corresponding instruments of perception (Kelim, vessels).

It is no longer enough to simply expand our senses. We need to build new organs based on bestowal from scratch. This is called birth in the spiritual world.

In the spiritual world, a different nature where we study the force of bestowal, our ability to test, examine, and register data depends on the expansion and development of our senses. It happens the same way as with our egoistic organs of perception when we build different auxiliary tools.

This is how a higher science called Kabbalah appears. It is referred to as “higher” because it works with the force of bestowal in nature, while the sciences of our world examine the egoistic force of reception.

However, in the end, we discover that there is only one source for both the force of reception and that of bestowal. This is because this division only exists in relation to us; we divide reality this way. However, in truth, they both come from one source: the upper force.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/27/2011, “The Wisdom of Kabbalah and Philosophy”

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Question: What does it mean to constantly accelerate in relation to the spiritual goal, and how can we “push on the gas” as much as possible now, before the convention?

Answer: In the spiritual space, acceleration is movement. That’s because if you don’t make a certain action now, then none of your previous merits will count and you will lose all of the speed you have accumulated until now by all the previous actions. The spiritual space is like an empty cosmos where there is no other system from which to start counting, and if you don’t accelerate then you don’t move at all.

A constant state is equivalent to zero. Even if you are flying at the speed of 10 miles a second, this is not considered motion and it’s the same as if you were just hanging in the air. In the spiritual sense acceleration means speed, and in essence it is the action.

Therefore, there are no “gaps” between spiritual actions. Wherever one action ends, that is where the next action immediately begins, just like during the birth of spiritual Partzufim. This indicates that a person’s attitude to the group and the group’s attitude to him must be such that it will constantly awaken him to act and always renew his desire.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/28/11, Preparation to the WE! Convention

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Question: The theme of the upcoming convention is, “We make it real.” What do we actually have to do to make it real?

Answer: “We make it real” means that we are revealing the true reality instead of the one we imagine through the prism of egoism, the will to receive.

We include two forces: the will to receive and the will to bestow. If we are under the power of the will to receive, and the will to enjoy only gives us a slight life force, then everything we feel, determined by the role of reception, is called this world. But if we reach the state where everything will be determined by the will to bestow, it will be called the upper, spiritual world.

Thus, there are two forces in the world and you determine what you want to feel, in what world or reality you want to be. If your will to receive rules over the will to bestow, then you feel this world. And since the will to receive is limited by the amount of pleasures it is able to absorb inside, therefore our life is limited.

However, if you want to experience yourself in the will to bestow, then you will feel bestowal, and that is already life and eternal, unlimited development. Our presence in the will to receive is real. It exists and we are in it, but it is far away from life because we only imagine that it really exists. The entire realty of the will to receive, its very matter, comes from the will to bestow that is present inside it. That is why it is unreal, similar to a children’s blow-up toy. We get the impression that it is alive, but the air filling it, its entire life force actually comes from the will to bestow; it is not its own. That is why our world is called an “imaginary world.”
From the lesson on 2/18/11, Writings of Rabash

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Question: What is the connection between the natural balance and the unification of people?

Answer: The unification of people is the highest form of balance in nature. In general, the natural balance is the integration of all of its forces. In the end they all become expressed in man, on the human level.

The true problem is not in the environment around us, not the tsunami, the earthquakes, the volcano eruptions or explosions in the sun, and not the problems in the vegetative and animate levels of nature, and not even the diseases of our bodies. The entire problem lies on the human level – its imbalance or balance covers all the other forces operating below. By balancing ourselves out, we will balance out all the rest of nature from the still to the animate levels.

Man is not supposed to do this instinctively or by force, but consciously, aware, by his own desire, in spite of his own temperament and his own nature, in spite of the extremely powerful forces of hatred, passion, pride, and love of power. That is how he builds himself. It doesn’t happen by balancing the forces of nature around him, but his own inner forces, his essence.

After all, I am the one who hates, I want to lie, steal, kill, and all the rest. In the end, I want to rule over others in various ways. But then I form my new self in balance with this aspiration. I build an inner model of a balanced state of two opposite forces, which is called my “soul.”

Through the prism of this balance I already look at the world differently. I acquire a new perspective. I no longer want to use the world to satisfy my desires, but on the contrary, from my balance I look for balance in it. Then I see that the whole world is balanced. It turns out that the whole world, inside and outside, is a balanced expression of two forces.

That is how I attain peace and conciliation. The state I experience is the soul filled by the clothing of the upper Light. The sensation of balance of two forces gives me a new reality.
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/28/11 on Global Education

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Question: What is your opinion about the situation in Russia?

Answer: Baal HaSulam writes in The Writings of the Last Generation that in the future, precisely after the failure of socialism in Russia, favorable conditions will emerge for the formation of fascism (Nazism).

It is facilitated by the complicated social situation and strengthened nationalistic tendencies, which can spiral out of control of authorities and lead to Nazism. Other problems like unemployment, drug and alcohol addiction, and layoffs in military and law enforcement do not help in bringing peace to the society. But most of all, the immense and unbeatable corruption causes indignation and hopelessness.

Authorities constantly support and nourish the dreams of people about becoming a great power, but they are unrealizable and therefore dangerous. Becoming a super power through the force of weapons is dangerous, and it leads the country to humanitarian disaster. Millions of additional people are necessary for the development of the country. However, the nationalistic trends prevent accepting these people from outside.

Solution: Only the realization that the method of correction enclosed in nature itself, revealed to us through Kabbalah, can save the country and make it flourish. Besides, it can allow it to be proud of its spiritual mission of bringing the Light to the world. The country will be able to take pride in its spiritual might rather than in its narrow nationalistic power that everybody hates. Will we be able to persuasively explain this solution to the Russian nation?
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Question: How can an egoistic heart ask for bestowal?

Answer: Of course, an egoistic heart is unable to ask for bestowal. It prays for something that it deems better for itself. It doesn’t know how to pray in any other way.

However, the nature in which a person exists is one thing, but how he uses that mechanism is a different matter. Even though he is an egoist and his prayer and attitude to others are egoistic, nevertheless he arranges this entire mechanism in such a way that lets him attract the Light that reforms.

How does the Torah, the Light that reforms act? I am an egoist and I plan on using it egoistically, but through that I activate a mechanism that attracts Light to me that turns me into the opposite of what I am today. This means that this Light returns me back to its source.

If I was already asking for bestowal on my own, then I would not need to be brought back to the source. Everything would already be clear. However, everything is arranged so that even when I shout for bestowal, this is still reception in disguise.

The same thing happens on every level. When I ascend to a certain level and check: What did I pray for? What did I do? What love for the neighbor did I talk about? What I find is that it was all egoistic. What seemed like holiness on the lower level appears as “garbage” when you look at it from above.

But there is a special mechanism of ascent: the connection between AHP of the upper one and Galgalta Eynaim of the lower one. If I face darkness and confusion, and I lower myself before the society that helps me to do so, then I attract the Light that reforms. I mix Malchut with Bina – mercy that reigns in the upper one, with the force of judgment that is in me. That is how I attain my correction.

Therefore, we are not required to be holy from the beginning, but only to organize everything to the extent we are able in order to attract holiness to us. Before that, I am opposite to it! Otherwise, how would it be possible to correct yourself after the breaking?

Every time we receive any new state, all the previous states are erased from our memory so as not to confuse us. The current state is also not very clear to us and from this darkness we have to start arranging everything so as to attract the influence of the upper force to us – the influence of the higher level, the quality of bestowal that we don’t have. We continuously receive a new force and become a new creation.

This is what the common prayer is all about. It is the prayer to acquire the force to be included in society and to feel care for the neighbor.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/27/11, Preparation to the WE! Convention

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Question: Could you tell us about your intention while reading The Book of Zohar?

Answer: Kabbalists teach us what the intention should be. Every person has to actualize what he read to the extent he understands it.

It is impossible to tell you about the intention. This is something that cannot be explained to another person since the intention comes from a person’s inner state which he reveals.

I am in a state that’s unknown to me. I reveal it as it unfolds inside of me. From this state that becomes revealed to me, I create the intention.

In essence, it is impossible to clothe this intention into words. There are no words for it. That’s because it includes a person’s inner desire (Hissaron) and the degree of his connection with the upper reality through his attempts to find the means that will bring him to the highest possible closeness to the Host, the Creator – to adhesion (Zivug de Hakaa) with Him.

What are those means? They are the books, the teacher, and the group. A person includes everything that he understands and feels from their entire sum total, and through them attains unity with the Creator.

All of these means have to be present. If you miss even one of them, then you don’t have the right contact. And in addition, each of them must be properly balanced with the others.
From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/28/11, The Zohar

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Question: Can studying The Zohar help a person realize that he has gotten off the path and correct this transgression?

Answer: In reality, the most effective means that directs a person in this regard is the group’s opinion, the common sensation that reigns in the group. If a group follows the advice of the teacher and the authors of the books, then it forms a sensation inside of it that enables every person to check the extent to which he loses the direction toward the goal of creation.

This is like a tower floating in the sky, but I have to be inside of that tower.
From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/28/11, The Zohar

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