Question: Why is having a group so important for the study of Kabbalah?

Answer: The role of the Kabbalistic group is similar to that of family, friends, relatives, social security, and medical insurance in our life. If I’m in a tough situation, fall ill, or lose my job, there is a system that helps me in that weak moment.

This system of mutual support in spiritual development is called "mutual guarantee" (Arvut). The speed and ease of our advancement toward the goal – the revelation of the Creator – depend upon the strength of this system. It influences everyone, and its strength accumulates as a result of our common efforts.

Rabash writes: “We have gathered here to establish a society for all who wish to climb the degrees of man (Adam), and not remain as a beast.” When we make a joint decision to follow the method of Baal HaSulam, rise above our egoism, and reveal the Creator in the connection between us, we are already making an agreement.

We have to help each other to value the greatness of the goal and the Creator, seeing all the friends as the greatest in the generation, inspiring them with the greatness of the spiritual goal, and realizing our own insignificance. I guarantee to the friends that I will help with this, regardless of what state I am in. These are conditions of our agreement.

Following this, there can be two states:
1. Either I support the group in inspiration, power, unity, and the greatness of the Creator,
2. Or as soon as I become weak, they begin caring for me.

It’s like two communicating vessels. The moment a drop of water is removed from one of them, the water immediately flows into it from the other one, and the water levels always even out in them. The width or volume of each vessel does not matter: If they are connected, the water level will be the same in both.

This is how we are connected in the group. They give me strength, and I give strength to them. It’s impossible to advance without such a mutual guarantee.
[21435]
From the Lesson on Rabash’s Article, 9/17/10

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: We All Guarantee For Each Other
Laitman.com Post: The Covenant Of Friends
Laitman.com Post: The Main Witness

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Group Work, Inner Work, Q&A - 2 Comments →

Question: What is constant faith?

Answer: Faith is a force which I receive from the Creator. It illuminates me, keeping me above my desires, my nature, like a magnet that holds a piece of metal in the air, against gravity.

There are two forces: the force of gravity (the will to receive pleasure) and the force of bestowal (the power of faith, a magnet) that draws a “piece of metal” up. These two forces oppose each other. If the force of faith that the Creator radiates to me holds me up, above my desire to feel pleasure, I am “righteous.” If the Creator lets me go, I immediately fall into egoism, and then I am “wicked.”

What does constant faith mean? I reach the state when my connection with the group supplies constant aspiration toward bestowal, as if I make a covenant with the group about our mutual support, and the Creator becomes a witness to this by promising to always illuminate us, holding us in bestowal above the will to receive (faith above reason).
[21409]
From the Lesson on Rabash’s Article, 9/17/10

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Asking For Forgiveness Before The New Year
Laitman.com Post: The Covenant Of Friends
Laitman.com Post: “Grace Is Deceitful And Beauty Is Vain”

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Group Work, Inner Work, Q&A - No Comments →

Question: Rabash writes that the Creator “hears the prayer of every mouth.” But you say that the prayer has to be internal. So what prayer does He hear?

Answer: A prayer is a desire that actually reaches the Creator. There are only two forces in the world: the forces of reception (attraction) and bestowal (rejection). And there is a law of the equivalence of form: In the degree of their similarity, the forces (objects) grow closer, and in the degree of their difference, they grow apart.

Since the Creator is an absolute will to bestow, He “expects” from us equivalence with Him, where the will to receive would desire to become similar to Him and also become the force of bestowal. To ensure this, He placed His spark, “the point in the heart,” the initial point of the quality of bestowal, into the will to receive, our nature. And we must cultivate it.

The Creator responds only to a prayer for this. All other kinds of prayers don’t reach Him. The Creator hears the prayer of everybody who is asking for the force of bestowal. The Creator is the law of bestowal, so he reacts to no pleas but those asking for the ability to bestow. And if we don’t ask for it, He sends us even greater suffering so that we may realize for what we should be asking.
[21407]
From the Lesson on Rabash’s Article, 9/17/10

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: MAN: The Prayer That Contains Everything
Laitman.com Post: A Prayer For Society
Collective Prayer – A New Song By Arcadi Duchin

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Inner Work, Prayer and Intention, Q&A - No Comments →

Question: Why do I need a group and unification?

Answer: The Creator cannot be felt other than inside the desire He created which becomes similar to Him in spite of its initial quality. What we call the Creator is not Him (Atzmuto – His essence), but our perception of Him through our similarity to Him.

Question cont.: How do I know that my perception of Him and He are the same thing?

Answer: We can feel only 1) matter and 2) the form of matter, but not 3) form outside of matter and 4) essence. Therefore, we can only talk about what is clothed in us and felt by us according to the principle, “I will know You from Your actions [upon me].”
[21581]
From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/20/10, Talmud Eser Sefirot

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Unification With The Group Leads Us To The Creator
Laitman.com Post: Step Out Into The Universe!
Laitman.com Post: What Lies Beyond The Horizon?

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Group Work, Perception, Q&A - No Comments →

Question: Is it possible that some of the friends in the group disrupt each others’ work by saying that we lack unity now and that there are elements that prevent us from it? Could it be true, or is this person’s perception distorted? How long should it take for the accumulative system to operate before our unity is revealed?

Answer: It depends on those who have made efforts to reach this state. It is not the question of how long it takes. It can be done relatively quickly, through intense effort, or the process can be stretched by way of little effort. Ultimately, a certain level of desire (shared with other friends) must surface in a person, and this desire should be "willing" to "unplug itself" from each of them and become common for all of them. And in this collective whole, (called “one,” “united,” or “a point,"  "a drop of unity”) the Creator will be revealed.

This unification shouldn’t occur under some extreme circumstances, but in a normal setting.
[21241]
From talks with Vladek Zankovskiy

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: The Path To Revealing The Creator
Laitman.com Post: The Pyramid Of Unity
Laitman.com Post: A Station With Infinite Energy

Filed under: Group Work, Inner Work, Q&A - No Comments →

Question: What does the speed of spiritual advancement depend on?

Answer: The speed of the spiritual advancement depends on how often a person asks the Creator (The Upper Light, the universal property of bestowal and love) to correct him. As soon as he sees his egoistic attitude toward the world, reproaches himself for the past, hates others, starts performing calculations with himself and others, he has to draw the Light of the Creator because there is no other acting force in nature.

After all, everything that a person senses is what the Upper Light is purposely depicting for him in order to attract his attention to itself.
[21084]

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Use Each Instant Of Your Life To Move Ahead
Laitman.com Post: Just Listen And You Will Hear The Creator Talking To You
Laitman.com Post: The Guide To The Book Of Zohar: Climbing The Steps Of Egoism

Filed under: Inner Work, Q&A - No Comments →

Spiritual Simulator: Questions of the Day

Filed under: Q&A, Spiritual Work - No Comments →

Question: After the appearance of Baal HaSulam’s writings in the world, the whole method of correcting the soul is complete. From this point on, there are two jobs at hand: 1. disseminating the method of Baal HaSulam, and 2. our realizing the method. Should these two processes occur simultaneously?

Answer: Of course! To the extent that we circulate the wisdom of Kabbalah in the world, we attract people with the point in the heart, and they join us. Therefore, our force – the force of those who desire to reach the revelation of the Creator, the correction of creation, love of neighbor, unity, and merging with the Upper Force – grows.

As the number of our students grows, we achieve greater unification by the force of quantity, and as a result, each of us possesses a greater force. The more people that gather at the bottom of the pyramid, the more qualitative the force becomes since more people rise to the top of the pyramid, and the pyramid itself grows.

Thus, we have two opposite tendencies: to unite more on the inside and to circulate more on the outside, into the world. However, these two directions in our activities are not opposite since we disseminate the spiritual force through the strength of inner unification.

From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/16/10, Lesson for Commemoration of Baal HaSulam’s Passing Day

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Pass Baal HaSulam’s Gift To The People
Laitman.com Post: How To Please The Creator?
Kabbalah Insights: Pyramid

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Kabbalah Dissemination, Q&A - No Comments →

Question: You said that we can evaluate evil either according to our sensations or the desire to reach the goal. Can evil with a purpose be regarded as an ascent?

Answer: If I evaluate the evil from the point of view of the goal, I say, “It’s okay that my desire to enjoy (the body) suffers” since the suffering that I feel in the “body” (my desire to enjoy) helps me rise above it, restrict it, establish a screen over it, and advance.

Concealment must exist between the Creator and me in any case as I cannot reveal my desire to enjoy to Him. Either the Creator conceals Himself from my desire, or I conceal my ego from His Light (pleasure). To the extent that I conceal my ego, the Creator reveals Himself to me above my desire to enjoy, and then I feel Him. This is how we advance.

From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/16/10, “What is the Matter of Sufferings in the Work”

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Encounter With The Devil
Laitman.com Post: Help Against You
Laitman.com Post: Spiritual Birth Is A Breakthrough Into A New World

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Inner Work, Q&A - No Comments →

Question: How are we to understand the Sulam Commentary, or any other commentary to a Kabbalistic book?

Answer: When the concealed Light (Ohr Makif) influences a person aspiring to bestowal, the person starts to feel inner qualities of reception and bestowal in their various manifestations and connections. This is similar to our world, which we feel in many details and their interactions. However, in spiritual attainment, when a person discovers an entire world of qualities within, he also reveals the knowledge of their names.

Then, when he reads holy books, they start to tell him about what he reveals within him, and books written in the language of Kabbalah tell him about the qualities he discovers, similar to how the sciences of our world tell us about the qualities of the things we see. That’s why Kabbalah is the science of the Upper World, and only to the extent a person learns it can his soul understand its state and develop.

Reading The Book of Zohar without the Sulam Commentary can reveal the Upper World to a person similar to how our world is revealed to a simpleton: He sees it, but doesn’t understand it. However, learning the Sulam Commentary enables a Kabbalist to know and control his state and his abilities to come closer to the Creator, similar to how a connoisseur in our world has the ability to use the world to his benefit.

The same is true for all the commentaries to holy books written before HaShlah HaKadosh (the 17^th century). After that many authors did not even attain the Upper World. Likewise, we shouldn’t confuse the Sulam Commentary to The Book of Zohar with other, especially later commentaries to The Book of Zohar.

In order to help beginners come closer to The Book of Zohar, we have created a simplified Sulam Commentary called “Zohar for the Nation” (Zohar L’Am). In it we have removed some of the descriptions of images of the Upper World in Aramaic, making it limited in its comparison of the picture of the Upper World that a Kabbalist revealed, with the explanation of this picture by the science of Kabbalah. However, practice shows that precisely this form of The Zohar is best for beginners. And to the degree people reveal the picture of the Upper World, they will go on to the original Sulam Commentary.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: A Marvelous Bridge Into The Zohar
Laitman.com Post: Which Books Contain The Most Light?
Laitman.com Post: A Guide To The Book Of Zohar: The Ladder To All The Bounty In The World

Filed under: Kabbalistic Sources, Q&A, Zohar - 1 Comment →