Question: What is so unique about the Berlin Convention? What do we have to do there? What should each of us and all of us together do, as well as among the groups?

Answer: Right now whether you want it or not you are under the impression of the things I say. It’s as if you are slightly suppressed and included by me into one single desire, a unified thought. And that unites us.

All of these qualities, means, desires, thoughts, the things we have already gone through, the things we desire, our aspirations, the huge amount of people and groups—all of this comes together into one. The result is that it works on us, giving us a very powerful, progressive impulse.

But we have a “small problem”: It seems to us that we have a small egoism and must only overcome it, turn some small knob, press some button, and by that we will have finished the job. We don’t understand that there is a great system at work here. It’s not just a “tumbler” that someone on top wants or doesn’t want to switch. We are in a system of two opposite forces: bestowal and reception. And until this system does not work by its dialectic, by its motion forward, by the law of the unity of parts, this won’t happen.

We only accelerate the time with our efforts, but we will never be able to make a jump. This is impossible due to the nature of things. Everything is done by way of gradual, sequential, and strictly determined movement, step by step. And through this step by step movement forward we constantly come closer to success, the moment when it will “shoot out.” The transition will happen! And it will be sudden.

Our conventions greatly accelerate the movement and therefore they are very important. During the several days that we are together and around us there are also many people around the world, during that time a very serious processing takes place in the degrees of our inner development.

One way or another a million states have to pass over us. We have to go through them. And every convention occurs differently, having new aspects, new forms, and feelings.

Therefore, the Berlin Convention is bound to be special because it will be a meeting of people who are permeated by the desire and qualities of the environment where they live. That environment is very bad; Europe is a very problematic continent, the source of all problems and wars, and having extremely great egoism, although it is already dwindling now, along with our entire civilization of the past. Still, it’s a tough nut to crack. That is why this convention is extremely not simple, and in fact, the most difficult.

The easiest Convention is one held in Latin America. The people there are fiery, open-hearted, and sincere. I have never met people like that anywhere. After that comes Russia. But in Europe things are most difficult, and the more difficult things are, the more interesting, and the more spectacular is the result and effective the work.

Therefore, I hope to have your support, both physical and virtual, so that we will “work on” Europe all together.
From the lesson in Moscow on 1/16/11, Writings of Rabash

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Question: How does a Kabbalistic prayer differ from a religious one?

Answer: Kabbalah fundamentally differs from all other methods and from everything there is in our world. In short, Kabbalah is one thing, and everything else another.

What is the difference then? It is in the fact that Kabbalah is based on changing a person himself rather than something outside of him, his surroundings; neither is it built on asking some “dear God” to start treating me better or to change other people’s attitude toward me. I do not ask Him to change my state of health or fate, nothing of the sort. I ask Him to transform my egoism, only that!

The entire method of Kabbalah is arranged so that a person can transform himself. On the other hand, all other methods and religions are founded on the idea that the Creator should change His attitude to a person: I ask Him to be more merciful and kind to me while I bribe Him.

Kabbalah doesn’t allow anything of the sort. In connection to the Creator, I am like man that changes in the face of the Absolute. And this Absolute is unchangeable. If the Creator is a primordial cause, the beginning of all, and if He is absolutely good, absolute, eternal, and perfect, then He cannot change. Only that which is imperfect can change. He cannot change.

Therefore, all changes occur solely in man. In other words, depending on my strengths, internal states, and properties, I feel more or less comfortable. But it is just me because I can change. The Creator never changes; He is a constant, omnipotent force of Nature.

Accordingly, all the prayers Kabbalah describes constitute man’s plea to be transformed. Who does one address these to, a wall? If the Creator is constant, eternal, and complete, then He doesn’t react to you in any way.

However, when you appeal to Him, you become different and receive a different response because you increase your sensitivity while doing so. You are still present in the same constant field regarded as the “Creator,” in the same constant force. Yet you are praying while wishing to change, and as a result, this field affects you with greater intensity. This is what we call a “prayer.”

The word “to pray” in Hebrew (Lehitpalel) means self-imposed judgment. “To pray” means to judge, evaluate, and rebuke oneself. It isn’t an appeal to someone, in order to be shown mercy or favored. No, it is self re-evaluation. This is what a prayer is.

Hence, although religions use the same word, in Kabbalah it has an opposite meaning, much like everything else.
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From Lesson 2 in Moscow 1/16/2011, “A Prayer of Many”

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Question: You mentioned that evil is revealed in relationships between friends. However, if a person studies over the Internet and is not engaged in mutual work with others, how can he reveal evil?

Answer: I see that people enter Facebook and a number of other social networks and are simply living there. Passions are seething and love is in full bloom; people even get married – if it turns out that the couple is indeed a man and a woman.

Although the network is full of lies and filth, we should respect it. Once, we were walking with Rabash past a stadium, and he said: “We have to respect this place, it brings joy to people!” The same is true of the Internet. With all the garbage that’s in it, it connects people. It provokes people, forcing them to stir up all the evil hidden deep inside of them: envy, hatred, lust, hunger for fame, and lies. It’s has all kinds of things in it, but it helps us actualize many Reshimot (informational genes).

All of humanity is there and everyone is lying non-stop, wanting to outsmart each other, arguing and bickering. Do you have any idea of what it does to the ego? What other common ground could you find to bring them together? Which other place? Instead, with the help of the virtual connection, people realize (and process) their Reshimot and are moving forward in the understanding of their egoistic nature.

So why can’t we, those who are seeking to reveal the Creator, the property of bestowal, fulfill our spiritual Reshimot correctly through such a virtual link, too? I’m sure that the entire Internet has evolved just for that. We’ve come to the final stretch of the path and it’s time to accelerate our advancement. Thus, in order to satisfy their need as always, people have come up with such a connection.

That’s why we need to set up a social network between us so that every one of our friends, regardless of whether he or she is part of a physical group or not, will feel close to everybody and will be permanently connected to our general idea, the purpose of our joint effort, work, study, and communication.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/20/2011, “The Quality of the Hidden Wisdom – in General”

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Question: How can an attribute that is totally opposite to the will to enjoy and seems to be killing it nonetheless unfold in it?

Answer: If it were two types of matter, matter and antimatter, then it would be impossible to unify them indeed. But if it is matter and an opposite intention to it, then it is possible. Besides, it gets revealed to me on condition that I will manage to unify them in the middle line.

Therefore, my natural desire to enjoy and the intention to bestow work in two different areas: one in desire, the other in intention. And all my calculations and struggle are aimed at how to bring them together.

Suppose I have the desire to enjoy that I live in. In addition to it, I receive the intention to bestow, which could be either below the will to enjoy, or at the same level as the will to enjoy, or above it.

Now I need to somehow connect them together. Pertaining to intention, I acquire it only by way of the “Light that Reforms,” the Surrounding Light. I draw it if there is an aspiration for bestowal within me, the “point in the heart” that I cultivate by being in the group.

All of this resides within my desire and unifies as one: I, the group, and my will to receive. If my desire remains below, in the degree of its importance, but the group and the point in the heart are above, and from within them I desire to bestow, then I raise a plea (MAN). And in response, I receive the Surrounding Light that supplies the intention to bestow to me.

Now, having received the intention, I can choose between three options:

1. to place it below my will to receive (desire), that is, to use it for my desire to receive pleasure, my personal benefit, what is regarded as impurity (Klipa),
2. to place the intention at the level of the desire and bring them together which is a state of ambivalence, or
3. to place the intention above the desire, which is “holiness,” bestowal.

That is what constitutes my work: In which of the three states I am able to reside. If a person starts paying attention and feeling what is really happening within him, he will realize that he constantly faces a choice, as if standing between the weighing pans of a scale. On one hand, there is reception; on the other, bestowal. And in the middle, there I am with a dilemma: What should I choose?!
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/21/2011, “The Freedom”

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Question: Where does our desire to bestow come from?

Answer: The desire to bestow awakens in us under the influence of the Upper Light, the “Light that Reforms.” We don’t know what desire to bestow is; bestowal lies outside of us.

We exist in our nature to receive. Suddenly some external force comes in and affects us, and we don’t know what this force is. We recognize it solely by how it manifests and acts. By observing the actions of this force in me, I start recognizing the Creator.

He is those effects that He causes in me. But I don’t know Him for what He really is. In essence, I don’t really know what phenomena of this world are: what electricity is, what bread is, what I myself am! I cannot attain the essence of things since only derivatives of the manifestation of this essence are revealed to me.

Therefore, the wisdom of Kabbalah (like any other science) studies solely what can be known: matter and form clothed in matter. And when this unique, foreign, outer force comes in, we don’t know where it comes from and Who it is. It is even evoked by me in some unique, odd way regarded as a “miracle” (Segula).

After all, I have no chance to know how exactly I affect it, how it is set in motion and starts working on me in response. I judge solely by how it appears in me, how I feel in my matter, in desire. Within myself, I experience changes as the results of this external act. This effect, a new form in me, is what is called the desire to bestow.

It is a very strange and special property which is totally unclear and unknown to me. When it suddenly emerges, I realize that I have never felt it before. But if you talk to regular folks, everyone will say that they are perfectly aware of what the will to bestow is and that he gives unto others. They don’t realize that all their giving is merely another form of receiving.

One can comprehend the difference between reception and bestowal only having received both of these desires. One comes to us from outside, while the other is hidden in our nature. In this specific case, a person is able to discern one from the other and starts to understand who he really is.

At present, we don’t even understand that in this world there rules just one law: the law of egoistic reception. We will comprehend it only when we acquire the desire to bestow. Only having exited Egypt can one realize what the Egyptian bondage really was compared to life in freedom! Everything is known and evaluated only from its opposite.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/21/2011, “The Freedom”

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Question: Kabbalah states that the entire world resides within me. What then is this external Creator’s force that descends upon me?

Answer: I don’t know what external force it is. I only know that all of a sudden something occurs in me, and a new property unfolds within. How then does it differ from thoughts and desires that used to appear in me before? Were they also new to me?

However, it’s absolutely clear to me that this property emerging in me right now, which is regarded as the force of bestowal, is something totally new and different from all of my nature. It is completely opposite, reversed relative to it, and it unfolds in such a unique form that it is cardinally different from all of my previous experience.

In order to connect to it, I have to rise above my ego, by having exerted enormous effort. I must cut myself off from my egoism, tear away from it, and constantly battle with myself so that I don’t fall into egoistic calculations.

Only under condition that I cut myself off from my egoistic calculation do I start attaining the force which is now pulling me toward itself, which acts within me by inviting me to join it instead of remaining in my egoism. This is the force of bestowal.

This power that is unfolding within me radically differs from all my previous strengths, thoughts, aspirations, and all of my nature. I feel this since it mandates me to cut myself away from all that I was before!
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/21/2011, “The Freedom”

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Question: There are only several days left until the convention in Berlin. We already want to feel it now; we want to feel that the entire world Kli is in one state. How can we do this?

Answer: First of all, we need to realize how we can keep increasing the connection between us and make our dissemination around the world more intense. Our spiritual state depends specifically on this.

Our next spiritual degree depends on how much we will be able to expand around the world since the Light will correct and lift us accordingly. This is because we do not exist for us, for our ascent; we exist so Kabbalah will spread.

In “Messiah’s Horn,” Baal HaSulam writes that the dissemination of Kabbalah around the worlds is called a horn or the Messiah’s call. Messiah is a property that pulls man out of egoism (the world “Messiah” or “Mashiach” in Hebrew comes from the word “Moshech,” to pull). So this is what we need to do. If we assist the world a little more so it will come closer to the correction of its egoism, we will be lifted as much as the world needs. But if the world does not need it, we will not be lifted.

What did the ARI say on his deathbed? Chaim Vital, the ARI’s main student to whom he gave the ways of this wisdom, was not there at that moment. Baal HaSulam writes about this in his letter: “Isaac Cohen, one of the ARI’s students…came in at the moment of his passing and cried because their hope to see the world full of good, wisdom, and the Light of the Creator, which they had during their teacher’s life, was leaving.

And the ARI said to him: ‘If there was just one absolutely righteous man among you, I would not have been taken from this world prematurely….’ And the student cried: ‘So we do not have any hope?’ And the ARI answered: ‘I will come to you and teach you if you will merit it.’ And the student objected: ‘How will you come to teach us if you are leaving this world?’ And the ARI answered: ‘What do you understand in hidden secrets and the ways of my return to you!’ After these words he immediately passed away to live in the future world….”

Baal HaSulam has said the same. He died because his students were insufficient for him to continue the study with them. There are no other calculations here. When a person is needed, he is kept with this mission, and when he is not needed, he is taken. There is other work for him to do.

This is why we need to understand that we need to strive to circulate Kabbalah with all our might, and then we will be lifted. One absolutely and precisely depends upon the other! It is not that just one of us will not be able to ascend (this is out of the question!); the entire group will not rise in their unity if it will not properly participate in the dissemination of Kabbalah in the world.

Let us hope that this year we will change everything that depends upon us, and then we will really merit entrance into the upper world.
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From the Lesson 1 in Moscow 1/14/2011, “Introduction of the Book of Zohar”

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Question: What does it mean to thank the Creator?

Answer: After all the efforts that are required from me in dissemination, studies, and the group, I reach despair and then I start perceiving my egoistic desire separately from myself. It’s the same as how a sick person feels the place of the illness and its source—the painful area inside him, which he discerns and wants to isolate.

Then he begins working to come out of Egypt, to isolate his egoistic desire. A person tries to separate from it, but cannot do it. That is how the first and second Egyptian plagues go by.

After that a person starts to feel that all of these changes in relation to his evil inclination are evoked by the Creator. As the Torah tells us, the Creator informs Moses that He has given more strength to Pharaoh in order to ascend and project Himself above him.

A person starts to see and understand that the Creator does all of the work inside him. He leads him up, out of the egoistic calculation, and then lowers him, and then a person falls back. Then the Creator brings him out once again and later a person falls again. That is how time after time, a person acquires the knowledge and sensation of the fact that unless the Creator performs these actions upon him, he will always remain in Egypt by himself, inside his egoistic desire.

These impressions accumulate, becoming clearer and stronger, until a person cries out, ready for anything—even pitch darkness for his egoism —anything to run away from it. This is the “Egyptian darkness,” the night of the exodus from Egypt. There is no darkness in a person greater than this one, but if he knows that he is following the Creator, then he prefers this darkness. Of course, he does not prefer it in the desire for pleasure, but because the Creator is walking ahead of him.

And the way to attain this is through meticulous work.
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/23/11, Writings of Rabash

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Question: Who or what gives me an example of the next level?

Answer: The example of the next level is given to you by darkness. That’s because the next level first becomes revealed as darkness. However, I have to try to discern the Light in it, which is something great and special. It only seems like darkness to my ego, but if I had a desire to bestow, then I would see the Light and the entire system of souls that are filled by infinite Light.

Therefore, darkness is the example of the future degree, until I turn this darkness to Light.
From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/23/11, The Zohar

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Question: Is joy a criterion of advancement?

Answer: When I merge with the Creator and place myself under His influence, I feel that I make Him happy.

Question cont’d: But don’t we come from despair? Should I be happy myself or just know that He is happy?

Answer: Sometimes a person feels despair, but this does not bring about progress. I cannot come closer to the Creator in this state. It’s best to do everything possible to avoid immersing in despair. It is written, “A fool sits with his hands folded and eats himself up.” It is Klipa to think that we advance out of despair.

When I grievingly revel in my evil hoping to advance, the Klipa obstructs the truth from me. I do not see the Light, the Creator, the world full of corrections, joy, and fulfillment. I am in the evil like a worm in a radish and there is no way for me to move forward from here.

We never advance out of evil. Imagine a child immersed in evil. How will he grow? He will be barely able to, or won’t grow at all.

We grow only out of joy, fulfillment, and good influence. Therefore, we have to put all our energy to coming out of despair and running forward, away from it. An extra moment spent in despair is already bad. You’re better off going to take a nap; anything but to get used to being in despair.

Question cont’d: What does it mean to greet the Creator first and then to greet people?

Answer: This means that first of all you have to make contact in your thoughts with the goal of your life, the reason you were created, and why are you doing, thinking, and deciding this? And of course, it’s in order to reveal the Creator inside of you. This means that you have greeted Him. After that you already turn the person inside of you and greet him in order to bring him to the Creator’s level.
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/23/11, Writings of Rabash

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