The Torah, “Numbers” 8:1 – 8:2: The Lord spoke to Moses, saying: Speak to Aaron and say to him: When you light the lamps, the seven lamps shall cast their light toward the face of the menorah.

Question: Why does the weekly section of the Torah, BeHaalotcha begin with the description of the Menorah (lamp)?

Answer: It is because the Menorah (lamp) is the embodiment of the Light that descends from above unto the human souls. It is a Menorah of seven candles that is the embodiment of the six Lights that descend from Above: Hesed, Gevura, Tifferet, Netzach, Hod, and Yesod. All the six Lights belong to Zeir Anpin, a structure that we call the Creator.

The Creator is a relative concept that symbolizes the one who is above us. Because Zeir Anpin is above Malchut it is revealed as the Creator with regard to us. If we ascend to His level, it rises above us once again and so there is a different Creator each time: we change and ascend and He changes and ascends. It is all relative.

The Creator operates and influences us by the seven Lights and so the Menorah is called the lamp of the seven candles (three candles on the right, three on the left and one in the middle), which symbolizes our connection with the Creator. Thus, we change our properties into the opposite attributes, the attributes of receiving into attributes of bestowal, and can illuminate like Him.

Three candles on the right and three on the left symbolize the right and the left lines and we who are in the middle are the middle line in the spiritual work. Of all the items that symbolize different attributes of the connection between the Creator and the created beings, the lamp is the brightest and most prominent symbol of this connection.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 2/4/15

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Egoistic desires run the world. We try to absorb into ourselves as much as we can, and we see that these desires cannot be fulfilled. All attempts to satisfy them lead us towards death.

No matter how much we fill ourselves with all kinds of: food, sex, family joys, discoveries, knowledge, and so on, we still come to the fact that from them nothing remains. On the contrary, even greater emptiness comes and adds to the disappointment.

We think that the pleasure we will get is equal to the desire for it, but when the pleasure enters the desire, it grows twice as much and we are left doubly empty. This is because Light and desire cancel each other out leaving us with twice as much emptiness.

To this day this was how life has been for all of us. A person enters the world naked, and leaves life doubly naked. We go through a lot of incarnations until we begin to understand that it is not worthwhile for us to pursue anything; it gives nothing.

Gradually humanity is becoming aware of this, and we are beginning to search for the truth. It brings us to a method with whose help it is truly possible to be fulfilled. But this fulfillment doesn’t enter directly into the desire to receive; rather, it is realized through the fulfillment of others. So here love for others is vital, and so we have an infinite possibility for enjoying, while they enjoy themselves, we enjoy fulfilling those we love.

In our world there are examples of how this works on the instinctive animal level of nature, when we fulfill our children and those that we love. And in the spiritual world everything is much more powerful, because there we fulfill each other, not because we love someone from the start, but we give birth to love within us for absolute strangers and even people who repulse us. This love doesn’t just appear that way; rather, it comes with the help of the Upper Light. When a person obligates himself to serve others, he begins to give birth within himself to a feeling of love for them, because they become dear to him, like an adopted child in a family, because of their investment in him, the parents begin to love him even more than their biological children.

The wisdom of Kabbalah teaches us how to bestow to others and be fulfilled with this. But we are not talking about bestowing in order to receive. The main thing is receiving for the purpose of bestowal.

Then I fulfill myself and simultaneously fulfill others. My goal is to fulfill them! But ultimately the fulfillment remains within me. Here appears the “branching out” that is incomprehensible to us today, which a person gradually begins to attain when he is involved with the wisdom of Kabbalah.
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From KabTV’s “Conversations with Michael Laitman” 6/10/15

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Question: Our desires keep growing. How can we turn them into a ladder on which we can only go up and feel the ascension?

Answer: There are two states in creation: absolute bestowal and absolute receiving. The distance between them is called a ladder and on every step of that ladder there are increasingly greater desires. As one ascends the ladder they take on the form of an increasingly greater intention to bestow. The desire itself is a desire to receive while the ladder determines the intention of in order to bestow. In fact, we have initially been created as individuals who think only about ourselves and who use all our desires in our own interests. Being unable to give anything, we can only receive from others.

But when using the wisdom of Kabbalah, we draw the special energy of bestowal, which begins to operate on our general egoistic desire and correct it layer by layer by adding the attribute of bestowal to the attribute of receiving. When the Upper Light operates and influences the desire to receive, it divides it into 125 levels of correction, forming a ladder called “Jacob’s ladder.” This is how we correct ourselves until we reach complete bestowal, thus changing the form of our entire huge ego into the attribute of receiving in order to bestow.

When we use the two major attributes of creation, the attribute of receiving and the attribute of bestowal, we reach equality with the Creator. At the same time we don’t disappear in Him because, on the one hand, our desire to receive is kept and only acquires an external form of bestowal, but on the other hand, receiving with the intention of in order to bestow makes us similar to the Creator. This means that externally we become like Him and internally we are made of the desire to receive. This is what the whole correction comes down to.
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From KabTV’s “Conversations with Michael Laitman” 6/10/15

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Question: On whom does success depend: is it the inner connection between us, the sufferings the world will go through, or our swift dissemination?

Answer: Ten years of sufferings in the whole nation will not bring the Upper Light as close as one day of dissemination and a few mornings of lessons, even ten years of suffering in the whole nation! Because sufferings that comes from the side of the vessel are not clarified, are not calculated; it’s similar to an animal that howls from pain and does not know what to do.
People don’t have conscious connection with the Creator. Therefore, this cannot be compared to the lesson that sometimes awakens a prayer, a request, a yearning. This is quite so regarding dissemination, that is realizing what is lacking, which lacks only the intention in order to bestow. Therefore, dissemination is the means to the most efficient correction; the sufferings direct us. But the question is, what is all this suffering for? What are you suffering from?

Comment: I suffer because I feel bad.

Answer: This means, you suffer from the emptiness in the most corporeal and regular desires: food, family, money, honor, and knowledge. This is still in the regular way of sufferings. The Creator sends you troubles and you cry. He puts more pressure, and you cry louder, if he puts less pressure, you cry less. If He tickles you, you begin to laugh. All that is a direct action of the upper conduct, where is your correct reaction here? You must think not about your feelings inside the desire, but above it where you build your Rosh ha Partzuf (head of the Partzuf).

The group needs to permeate us with the spiritual deficiency, the need to exit the desire to receive and move to bestowal. If friends would start telling you now about impending danger, about a storm or a fierce storm that will blow everything, that it is on its way and will turn everything to a desert, you would become frantic with fear and worry. You would be full of fear because of that; so why can’t they transfer to you at least a tiny part of this worry regarding spirituality? They should do it.

But they are lazy. So you need to pay them, to do everything that is needed in the group. This way each one will help the other. But if you just wait for the deficiency for spirituality to be awakened in you and for it to become a directed yearning, this will never happen. Through the group you exit from the egoistic beastly point and immediately rise to the net of forces that is already spiritual. Even though it is not corrected, is egoistic, not for Her sake (Lo Lishma), it is already a net, and that is the main thing.

We do not receive enough pressure from the group; this is the whole problem. Another gathering of friends (Yeshivat Haverim) and another one, it’s only mechanical and it will not help. Rabash did not allow us to have more than one Yeshivat Haverim a week. Everything depends on a deeper penetration inward inside the dominion of intentions.
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From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Question: The fulfillment of the instructions of the Torah ends upon entering the land of Israel. What leads us onward?

Answer: It says that: “a person’s soul will teach him,” which means that person’s soul leads him along the spiritual path. This means that a person is born into the spiritual world; he has exited Egypt, wandered for 40 years, reached the full attribute of Bina, and can now work with the Light of Hochma, is in direct contact with the Creator, taking examples from Him and enacting them.

This is the work in the land of Israel, when a person’s initial desire is only a pile of clay, but once he contacts the Creator, he sculpts himself according to His image by becoming more and more compatible to the Creator. This means that he draws additional external forces upon himself, forces that are greater and coarser, and sculpts the Creator’s image from them, the attribute of love and bestowal in all its infinite forms beyond any limitations.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 1/28/15

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Question: How should I examine my egoism: as part of me or not? How should I work with it?

Answer: It is better to see egoism as an extraneous force and then you can gloat when you kick it. Then you will ask for powers to detach yourself from it.

Question: Will I be able to thank the Creator that the ego receives blows?

Answer: Yes, at first it is painful and then it becomes pleasant. When the ego dies, a person immediately begins to feel the eternal world. We can fully attain all the levels of correction while living in our corporeal body! But when we cut it off ourselves nothing ends. During the phase of correction we cannot even fully cut it off ourselves because we will have to advance with it. We continuously process the egoistic quality into the attribute of bestowal (the attribute of Bina) and then into the attribute of Keter, the intention to receive in order to bestow. Therefore, we mustn’t suppress our ego in any way. We have to regard it as something extraneous, but ours, and to keep it on a leash, like a dog in a doghouse.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 1/28/15

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Pharaoh (egoism) exists in us constantly. When we exited Egypt, we thought we escaped it, but it continues to control us calmly from within.

For that very reason, we need to wander through the desert for forty years so that, gradually, step by step, we can correct that quality in us—at least neutralize the egoism, connect it to Bina, and bring ourselves to a small state, wishing not to use the ego in spite of any temptations. We achieve this when we pass through the desert.

Therefore, it is written in the Torah that the generation of the desert must die, and a new generation will be born instead, where egoism will be corrected and connected to the quality of bestowal, but in a neutral form. We don’t transform egoism to bestowal yet, but it already exists under the control of the intention to bestow.

Going through the desert is completed when we completely have neutralized our egoism (bestowal for the sake of bestowal), but have not yet corrected it to altruism (receiving for the sake of bestowal), and entering the land of Israel (Eretz Israel: Ratzon – Desire, and Yashar El –  straight to God) means that we begin to process the desire that we already have made neutral, and we go to it in order to conquer and transform it.

After all, seven nations who live in the land of Israel remain there, and we need to throw them out of this land and become their captors, which means to check our desire.

Seven nations represent seven desires, the seven final Sefirot of Malchut that we need to conquer, expel from within us—that is, to neutralize, stop using, and throw them out of the boundaries of Israel. This is called the correction of Malchut.

We need to conquer this land, populate it, and begin to correct it with the weekdays and Saturdays—that is, with a consistent ascent, six years and the seventh year, and so on—using all the methods of correcting our desire, which is called “the land of Israel” (Eretz Israel).

That is the initial egoistic desire that the Creator created in such a way that the serpent of egoism enters us, and we work long and hard to realize it until we begin to relate to it as a foreign object inside us. We begin to hate it like an external force that enslaves and pushes us away from the Creator.

Only then do we see it as Pharaoh, rise above it, and escape it with the help of the upper Light since we lack the strength to do so on our own. But when we accept the Torah and begin to correct ourselves, extracting ourselves from the egoism, it means we enter the land of Israel and turn the quality of receiving into the quality of bestowal.

Then, Pharaoh becomes the greatest Light because the correction of the greatest egoism that we have turns it into a directly opposite quality, as it is written, “the angel of death becomes the angel of life.”
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 1/28/15

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The Torah “Numbers” 6:1 – 6:3: Do not drink wine or any other intoxicating (alcoholic) vinegar or grape infusions; do not eat fresh or dry grapes.

Question: Why are grapes mentioned alongside with alcoholic beverages in the Torah?

Answer: At that time, grapes were never used as food. People tried to stock food for a day, a week, and even years ahead.

This explains why wine as well as olive oil, flour, and other products that can be stored for a long time were especially precious and why grapes were used only to make wine.

Grapes belong to a very high level—the level of Hochma. Why is there a special ceremony of tasting wine and saying blessings for wine? The reason is that according to Kabbalah, wine represents the Upper Light, the Light of Wisdom, the Light of Hochma, not just because it is a useful product as they think nowadays.

Wine kills bacteria that live in it because the Upper Light treats, corrects, and fulfills all our desires completely. No matter how much dirt there is on the grapes, during the process of fermentation all dirt turns into sediment and the wine stays clean.

Collecting grapes and making wine is not an easy process. Kabbalah describes each nuance of this procedure: the type of grapes, the diameter of each grape is pro-rata to its external surface, the month the grape is collected, and on which side of the mountain relative to Jerusalem of where it grows, etc.

Usually, Kabbalists collect grapes before sunrise because the formidable force (Amtakat a-Dinim) that is present in wine “sleeps” at sunrise. It’s as if grapes sleep and wake up at the same time.

In this world, there are no objects or events that do not have a root in the upper world. Everything is governed by one force. Each person on Earth performs his or her work unconsciously and involuntarily. This is how the world moves on.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 1/21/15

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The Torah “Numbers” 5:18 – 5:19, 5:23 – 5:24: Then the Cohen shall stand the woman up before the Lord and expose the [hair on the] head of the woman; he shall place into her hands the remembrance meal offering, which is a meal offering of jealousies, while the bitter curse bearing waters are in the Cohen’s hand. The Cohen shall then place her under oath, and say to the woman, “if no man has lain with you and you have not gone astray to become defiled [to another] in place of your husband, then [you will] be absolved through these bitter waters which cause the curse. Then the Cohen shall write these curses on a scroll and erase it in the bitter water. He shall then give the bitter, curse bearing waters to the woman to drink, and the curse bearing waters shall enter her to become bitter.

If a woman (the creation) is a part of the correct desire, she rises and her relationship with her husband (the Creator) strengthens. However, if her desire is selfish then “letters will immediately appear on a scroll” as a result of the shattering. In this case, the Partzuf must be corrected all over again.

Question: Can you explain the work that the Cohen (priest) performs on Nukva? What does “expose [the hair on the head] of a woman” and “place into her hands the remembrance meal offering” mean?

Answer: There are no analogies in this world because in spirituality all actions descend from the upper level.

The highest level (Cohen) works on an inferior state (Malchut). Cohen is GAR de Bina, Keter. This is why the Cohen’s influence on Malchut is so intense. The Cohen is the only one who can reveal the depth of Malchut’s corrected or uncorrected desires. Nobody from the level of “Israel” or “the Levites” is capable of doing so. It can be done solely from Cohen’s level.

In other words, the Light that comes from the highest level of Keter scans Malchut to the very bottom of her intentions.

When a husband and wife (first nine Sefirot) and Malchut ascend, they can rise only through the Cohen who grants them the Light. If this connection is interrupted, it is essential to examine what goes on in Malchut.

Therefore, it is as if Cohen programs the Partzuf’s state. The latter is supposed to form it together with his wife by merging together. And when the Cohen gives the “scroll” to a woman (Malchut), it clarifies if her properties are adequate to the structure that she is about to attain together with her husband, i.e., if she is ready for it or not.

All men with whom she allegedly “cheated” on her husband are selfish desires that distract Malchut.

Comment: The Book of Zohar states that “Cohen’s judgment contradicts his high level of Hesed—the step of Mercy and Grace. It’s not so because the Cohen exerts to increase peace in the world. If a woman is “not guilty” (pure) the Cohen multiplies peace between her and her husband. ”

Answer: In this case, they form the next higher Partzuf, thus revealing additional evil and a stronger connection among them that makes it possible for them to attain the next level.

Therefore, at some stages “adultery” is absolutely necessary because it allows them to make further corrections. Everything in life happens exactly for the sake of our ascent. There is nothing in the Torah that harms people.

Question: Later, it is said in The Zohar: “… she impregnates with a son from the property Zachar (male). Applied to our material world, this phrase means that arguments between a husband and wife trigger even stronger love between them, isn’t it so?

Answer: If they correctly relate to the upper force and if they understand that all they go through is given to them only for the sake of their further convergence and uplifting, then there won’t be any mutual offense; rather, they will reconcile with each other and continue working on their further elevation. Otherwise, everything that happens between them will lead to a divorce.

Remark: It further states: “If she is ‘impure,’ then it is not the Cohen who judges her, but the Holy name to Whom she was unfaithful.”

Answer: The Holy Name (Kadosh) is a quality of bestowal, the level that they aspire to.

Together, they are supposed to reach the next, higher level of the property of bestowal, but her “unfaithfulness” made them degrade (fall) from the high level to the “will to receive.”

If she happens to be “guilty,” the property that she was supposed to attain is the one that tosses her down. At this point, she has to be corrected.

Something was missing in her aspiration to reach a new level. This “something” reveals through her “unfaithfulness.” At the same time, her husband also undergoes changes. He must find the Cohen, bring her to him, and raise his own desires to this level.

Comment: An immediate parallel with this world appears in our minds when we see a husband taking his wife to the court and the legal process starts…

Answer: In spirituality everything happens in one body: the Creator, a husband and wife, all properties and conditions—everything is within a man.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 1/21/15

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Question: In his article “The Last Generation,” Baal HaSulam tries to lead a person through the process of thinking about what we are living for, why things are the way they are, and why the whole human system is reaching a dead end.

He says: “I take all that so close to my heart that I cannot restrain myself anymore, and I have reached the decision to discover the way of our predetermined future correction from my perspective and from what I have found in these books. I will go out to people and I will blow the Shofar.”

On the one hand, he appears to us as a dispassionate scientist exploring the nature of things, but on the other hand, he appears as a man full of love for mankind.

Answer: I wouldn’t call a Kabbalist a levelheaded scientist. He does express himself in the dry scientific language of physics that is very similar to the language of programming, but what is concealed under this language? Feelings!

Therefore, although he tells us how the Reshimot (reminiscences) rise in us, how we gradually begin to mutually cooperate with the upper level, and how the force descends from there to the lower level, his heart and his desires are behind all these mechanical actions because he feels all that on himself.

A Kabbalist is not a physicist nor a chemist who looks at a certain instrument he has invented, confirms and records the physical or chemical processes that take place in the still matter, the vegetative (biology) or the animate (zoology). A Kabbalist is not a person who studies what goes on in a living organism like a vet or a doctor, but the intrinsic properties, the internal processes taking place in our desires and our thoughts. He studies the mutual connection, the mutual cooperation, and the mutual influence of the thought on the desire and of the desire on the thought. The heart is the desire and the mind is the thoughts.

What is more, he doesn’t study it in the conventional frameworks of our world where we see certain outcomes and try to influence them. A Kabbalist studies everything on himself! He is his own lab! He is driven by the attainment of the world, “I attain the world through me,” and it isn’t an unproven axiom like scientists in our world use. For a Kabbalist it is a field of discovery, and he immediately begins to understand the world he is observing, he sees it inside himself.

If I read the newspaper or watch a movie on the computer screen, for example, it doesn’t mean that the paper is posted on a newsstand or that the movie is projected in a cinema somewhere. I see it on my own computer and not beyond its boundaries.

Its the same with a Kabbalist. Whatever he feels he feels on himself, so he cannot express his feelings of self-rejection in a dry manner. At the same time he expresses himself in a very dry language. It is because the wisdom of Kabbalah is the only wisdom that compares our feelings with the very rigid and precise laws and responses of nature that invoke the feelings, responses, and the discovery of consciousness in us.

We are part of nature that is made of vectors of different forces that cooperate mutually, including our feelings and our thoughts. But it is impossible to study them on the earthly level because these thoughts and feelings are above us! A Kabbalist, through spiritual methodology, rises to the level where the interaction of these forces and the birth of the desire, feelings, and our thoughts, man’s inner world, take place, and it is from this level that he begins to influence them.

He studies on himself by which mutual cooperation he can invoke his responses, and why certain responses are specifically the way they are—whether they can be identical to the mutual cooperation of others, in what way people differ from one another, and although they are different, what can they aspire for despite the differences. A Kabbalist studies how nature influences us and what it leads us to, why it manages us the way it does, and how we will perceive the influence of nature if we change by ourselves, whether it changes at all or whether it influences us in the same way all the time, and whether we can change and perceive its influence differently.

This means that a Kabbalist enters such a lab where he is his own subject.

Comment: Many scientists have engaged in such studies: doctors, physicist who studied radiation on themselves.

Answer: No. it isn’t the same thing because they studied physical laws of the world of the still, vegetative, and animate nature on themselves, while here we speak about the laws of the upper world. The ultimate goal of such research is very simple: to understand what we exist for. After all, there are many galaxies around us and no one knows what is in them, while I want to discover and to know what I live for, who I was before I came into this world, and who I will be when I leave it; do I have to feel myself as living in a body that is totally connected to it in every possible way or can I somehow detach myself from it? It is going to die soon and I may transcend to another state, etc.

The wisdom of Kabbalah is a wisdom that allows a person to start answering questions about the meaning of his life. Animals don’t ask such questions. Those in whom such thoughts, desires, and yearnings are invoked are called human. Such people already ask human questions and the wisdom of Kabbalah provides the answers to them.
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From KabTV’s “About Our Life” 5/18/15

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