Question: Why is it that no method accepts criticism of its so-called guru?

Answer: This is certainly incorrect. After all, we are engaged in the correction of man. Let him do anything he wants, just do no harm. Therefore, there are two very interesting laws in Kabbalah.

The first condition: You can do everything you want except harm the group where you study or slander it because this prevents attracting people who want to join this group.

The second condition: When it seems that the Creator tells you: “You will not succeed—why are you here?” You must stay and check! In general, you are given all the opportunities to intensely and fruitfully study, analyze, prove, ask, and convince.

This method requires a very tedious approach. You must bite into it and start implementing it on yourself together with the people who surround you, and not believe anyone. On the contrary, you must doubt everything.

Otherwise, how will you be able to rise and adapt to your teacher and try to be like him? It is from the denial—that he is not right—that you will understand what he is standing on and how he builds himself. This is the only way. After all, everything we have exists based on positive and negative.

If you do not have the opportunity to criticize and be in the state of opposition, how will you be able to build a state of similarity to the group, similarity to the teacher, and similarity to the Creator?

Coming from this point of view, you can see that all other methods are baseless because people who are engaged in them cannot make anything out of themselves. This is because from the beginning they are prohibited to have such a comprehensive, fearless, and critical attitude toward the very teaching, toward the inner movements, toward the friends, the teacher, and even toward the Creator.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Criticism of Kabbalah” 2/20/13

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The Creator is the Nature surrounding us and nothing more. Write “Nature” instead of the Creator, but still with a capital letter, so as not to attribute it to something purely mechanistic.

The Creator is the upper degree, the upper light, and the quality of bestowal in relation to us, who represents the quality of reception. That is, everything is based on very simple concepts that are close to each of us.

The only thing is that we are all very confused. After all, the attitude to Kabbalah throughout the centuries has been deliberately confusing and impeding. We are also confused by all kinds of external customs, items, and objects,  as well as the appearance of religious Jews, as if it has anything to do with Kabbalah. In general, all this is so heaped up that it is, of course, very difficult for a person to understand.

I can see how hard it is for my students in different countries of the world who belong to different religions and races. I see what a huge amount of work they are doing internally and will have to do for a long time.

A person brought up in a different religion who belongs to a different race and thinks in a completely different way, with an opposite mentality and a different language, and one must overcome all this. This quality of the soul is necessary for its correction and not that it is in a more favorable or less favorable state relative to others.

This is how we are separated and distant from each other. I see that many of my students from all over the world would really like to be here next to us. Just tell them it is possible and that a thousand people will come here at once. But they have to overcome huge problems within themselves, big internal disagreements.

When a person suppresses something in himself, since the truth has not yet been fully revealed in him, he is in a kind of semi-compromising state: “Well, what can I do? I will not pay attention to this, as if I don’t see it, do not understand it, and do not observe it, as if this is not in me. I will leave this aside.” It is very hard. But that is the way to live.

This is very similar to how Jews live among other nations. Exactly the same feeling: “We are opposite to them, but we want to be like that. Can we or can’t we? How do they treat us and how should we treat them?” All this omission, this kind of special attitude, is exactly what a person who comes to study Kabbalah goes through.

I understand this. There are many problems. The world is still in such a transitional state.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Criticism of Kabbalah” 2/20/13

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Comment: Baal HaSulam writes that the Ari’s book The Tree of Life (Etz Chaim in Hebrew) is identical in its importance to the Torah that was given to us on Mount Sinai.

One can imagine what the Torah means for all humanity. Today, all culture, art, painting, all religions, and all science are based on it. It’s hard to say what life would be like if there were no Torah. Everything is built on this, right up to our relationship.

And the book The Tree of Life was written only 500 years ago and was published literally 200 years ago. But there are still no implications; no one knows about it.

My Response: It should manifest itself in the future. We hope that its consequences will manifest themselves already in our days and will become the basis not only of our culture, but also of the life of all mankind.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 8/2/22

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Question: People have been looking for effective ways to increase luck in their lives for centuries. Often they use various lucky charms, amulets, or stones because they believe they bring good luck.

To this day, people believe in all kinds of superstitions: knocking on wood, the number “13,” a black cat, and so on. According to surveys, 70% to 80% of people prefer not to face these events.

In principle, superstition is an attempt by people to somehow control or enhance this elusive factor called “luck.” How do you feel about superstitions?

Answer: Luck is indeed a somewhat elusive factor. But the impact on luck is not in running away from the number “13,” black cats and something else, but in bringing luck closer with your actions.

That is, by kind actions toward others, we can bring luck closer. With them, we create a positive field around ourselves, an absolutely physical parameter. And then luck will favor us or will approach us.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 5/24/22

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Question: Was Abraham the first to break the idols and get to know the one God?

Answer: Yes, before Abraham, many people, naturally, believed in all sorts of gods, as they did after him too. But he founded an attitude toward nature as a single force that holds and preserves everything within itself, and this is how it should be related to.

Question: In a figurative sense, idolatry is interpreted as the worship of ideas, people, and idols. For example, can the idea of world domination also be considered idolatry? Are all the wars from Alexander the Great to Napoleon and beyond and the belief in these ideas also idolatry?

Answer: In some ways we are all in this. A man, without realizing it, always fights the idolater in himself.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 4/5/22

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Question: Can we say that the Creator or nature wants to teach us something through negative experiences?

Answer: That is right. It is through negative experiences that we must bring the idea and attainment of an absolutely eternal, upper, pure mind into this world.

Therefore, the entire experience of a person, from creating statues and worshiping various gods, to scientific research leading him to the conclusion that only he rules the whole world, can be called idolatry.

This goes on until he realizes that there is only one single force. We all commit idol worship until we reveal the Creator.

Question: So if I believe that some nation started a war against another nation or if someone has done something against me, and I do not feel a single force behind it, then is this attitude called idolatry?

Answer: Yes, you believe that it was done by someone other than the Creator. This is already idolatry.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 4/5/22

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Question: What is worse from God’s point of view: to worship animals, stones, plants, people, or ideas? Is there any gradation in this?

Answer: It depends on the person who chooses what to worship. The difference between just picking up some statue and worshiping it or worshiping some great idea or person is in our development.

Why worship a man who was born from a woman and created from biological substances, exists temporarily, and does not possess unlimited power over the world?

I can admire what he has achieved in his life, his accomplishments. But still, this is my personal, very limited worship. This is not what is meant in relation to the Creator.

Question: But is such admiration still higher than worshiping stones?

Answer: Yes, a stone is quite different.

Question: So have we, as humanity, already passed these stages?

Answer: From the way I see how many people go to Jerusalem, worship the Western Wall, kiss it, put notes there, I do not think we have passed this stage. It is still ahead of us.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 4/5/22

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Question: Why do you always say that Kabbalah gives a person an answer to what is the meaning of life and other methods do not?

Answer: Because it raises a person to the level of clear, explicit comprehension of both the question of the meaning of existence and the answer to it in this life. It reveals to a person the line between the present life and life after death; it pushes this border, and the person continues to see his existence beyond the border of animal death.

Question: Can this also be fantasy?

Answer: No, this is not fantasy.

This is the same fantasy as our life today. Exactly in the form in which we perceive it, we also clearly perceive what Kabbalah reveals.

Since Kabbalah reveals the upper world to us and gives us the whole perspective of the transition from this world to the spiritual one, i.e., a perspective of transformation, development, correction, and elevation, then we can talk about the next stage as reasonably, clearly, and scientifically as we can talk about our life.
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From KabTV’s “Close-Up. Is Frankl right?” 8/8/10

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Question: Archaeologists often find a great number of figurines of different gods and idols dating back to the time of the First Temple during their excavations. How can the worship of various idols be combined in a people who believe in one God?

Answer: Look at small children—how they make all sorts of idols for themselves, build some little things. When a child firmly holds a toy, it calms him down, gives him self-confidence.

Keeping something familiar, something a person is used to (cameos, amulets, red threads, holy water, for example) gives a person confidence, like a child who does not let go of a small toy because he is used to it, it soothes him.

This is the original basis of worship, pure idolatry.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 4/5/22

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Everyone has their own program of development, according to which they are advancing. No person who was born can understand where he ended up, why he was born with such qualities, in such a family, at such a time, and in such conditions.

Then he grows and develops. As far as souls are concerned, this corporeal development leads to the question of the meaning of life, and then a person comes to the wisdom of Kabbalah, and receives the opportunity to develop further, beyond the boundaries of corporeality.

If a person declines the opportunity given to him to study the wisdom of Kabbalah, he continues his animalistic development. If he accepts the wisdom of Kabbalah, but uses it incorrectly, he will be moving in circles until he corrects his approach.

Nowadays, however, it is no longer possible for a person to develop in all possible directions, the way it was in the past. After all, back then, the development of humanity happened widely in all directions. Today it is narrowing more and more, focusing more and more precisely on the purpose of creation.

In our time there are not many people in the world who want to found some new religion or their own school of philosophy. Humanity has already gone through all these fantasies. The time has come for more practical exercises that allow us to discover methods of correcting a person in order to bring him in line with the correction of the world.

A person receives thoughts and desires all the time from above, from his purpose of creation, that is, from the point where he should be in the common soul. From there, he constantly receives all kinds of discernments in his mind and heart, in his feelings and in his reason, which each time guide him in life, that is, that return and push him to that very end point.

If he tries to use his chance and finds the right environment, he can develop quickly and successfully. If not, he will wander and get confused on the way for a long time, but in the end, he will still reach the goal.

Everyone will eventually reach the goal. The only question is how long will we have to wander, that is, how many cycles of life will it take and how much suffering, in order to eventually understand that there is no choice in this life, except to approach the purpose of creation.

We are inside a solid, correctly organized system, but it leaves us some degree of freedom and allow us to make mistakes in order to learn from them or to learn in order not to make mistakes.
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From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/24/22, Writings of Baal HaSulam, “A Speech for the Completion of The Zohar”

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