Today it is becoming clear that on the level of our world. we don’t have anything more to do, and that we are meant to climb upward. And from the state of emptiness on this level, the next possible state for spiritual development is appearing at the same time.

And we, all of humanity, are found on this historical border. Certainly the group of Abraham must burst forth to show itself correctly before the whole world and begin the collective ascent to elevate all of the human Babylon to the level of the higher power to which all of humanity, all of creation must reach.

In other words, it is necessary to constantly search for and work on the balance between the positive and negative forces, altruism and egoism, in order to unite them together into the middle line and with it attain the higher power until really becoming adhered with it. This is the next level.

In his time, Abraham took the people out and showed them how to balance the two forces. In the same way now, a group of Abraham must show how to add the positive to the negative progress of the egoistic, physical development of humanity, in general.

Question: So there won’t be a return to the same Babylon?

Answer: No. Babylon is reaching correction, so all of humanity is rising to the next level. Our world is disappearing and we are beginning to feel the next state, the next level with our new senses, which we call spirituality or the Creator.
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From KabTV’s “Babylon Yesterday and Today” 8/28/14, Part 7

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Based upon the knowledge of the shattering of the general desire and through the method of its subsequent correction, we construct all of our work in a group, in conventions, in groups of ten, and more. Everything is built on the study of the material, how it was broken up during the Shevira (breaking) and in what manner it is connected under the influence of the power of the Light.

By accepting the guidance and advice of the Kabbalists, which was written in a psychological form that is closest to us, we learn how to behave, in what manner to connect in a group, to support friends, and to attain states in which we promise to support each other in our alliance.

The existence of this alliance, the precise intention found in it, is called Arvut, where each one of us is ready to be a guarantor for a friend.

Specifically through this work, we begin to see that we cannot correct ourselves. Before us is an immense world, but it turns out that it only seems as if it is huge to us because it is fragmented and expanded by our ego, and the moment we begin to put it together, we see that this is one single mass, one unified force.

We begin to understand that the world is not as we describe it to ourselves. Everything that we see around us is a reflection of our inner characteristics. And even though it seems to us that this is completely unrealistic and even imaginary, all people, buildings, the universe, and all there is in the universe is a reflection of my inner characteristics: still, vegetative, animate, and speaking.

The four levels of my inner characteristics (still, vegetative, animate, and speaking) are four different levels of Aviut (thickness of desire). Desires number one, two, three, and four work within me such that I imagine them in the form of matching images.

However, when a person works not only with the separating force, but also with the connecting and unifying force, he immediately begins to understand that this is truly so, that, essentially, our world is an illusionary universe (with which many physicists are already inclined to agree), and that there are a multitude of universes that interpenetrate each other, and the entirety of creation is only some kind of hologram or matrix. What the wisdom of Kabbalah wrote about 3,000 to 4,000 years ago—what the Adam HaRishon saw more than 5700 years ago—finally, the physicists are talking about today.

So, we need to reach our first level of spirituality as rapidly as possible, and then we will no longer have problems. We will begin to understand how everything is organized. The main thing is that the very first level is truly the most difficult. And after that we will already have skills; there will be an understanding of what is happening.

However, now, from absolute ignorance, we must enter into another reality. So the Kabbalists reduce everything to simple actions. They don’t speak about lofty matters because there is no one to talk to about this. They don’t speak about some kind of clever actions with inner intentions, with internal clarifications, because we don’t feel this yet.

None of us feel that we include all of the worlds within ourselves, that man is like Olam Ein Sof (the world of infinity). When a person attains Olam Ein Sof, he attains everything. In the end, a multi-faceted system of worlds emerges in which all of us and each one of us is the entire system included one within the other.

So, the Kabbalists don’t talk about this because all of this is very confusing and doesn’t provide anything. They simply advise us what to do, and based on this follow all the laws and general rules of behavior in a group that we study in order to gather and put the group together. This is the most important thing.
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From Preparatory Lesson 2 of the Convention In St. Petersburg 9/18/14

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In The Study of the Ten Sefirot it explains from where came the Shevirah (shattering) of the collective desire and its correction—i.e., unification and connection—why they are like this, although in principle these laws are very logical, and in general we understand them with our physical nature. We must try to realize them in our workshops by immersing and being included in each other and agreeing with what a friend says. To agree means to go along with what he says. I sail on his wavelength and think like him. I don’t try to justify or judge his words, no!

I am together with him in his desires and thoughts. He says a sentence and I am within this sentence as if it were mine. This is so important that I try to guess his thought and desire such that if he were to stop, I could continue and come out with exactly what he would say. And so it is with each one of us.

We feel ourselves as completely equal, not higher and not lower than others. For only equals connect with each other and are found in mutual communication. So that is how we direct ourselves.

We try to help each other so much that from the beginning of the workshop to its end I follow myself every moment so that none of my thoughts and none of my desires will contradict the discussion, so they won’t be superfluous or foreign to what we are involved with now. It is necessary to try to be detached from the whole world, as much as possible, to be simmering only among us, to discuss everything that is happening with us and what else we can add to invite the revelation of the Upper Light upon ourselves.

The moment I see that someone is not engaged in the subject, is disconnected, is deviating from the direction—perhaps he has some personal problems—I invest effort to help him to return to our stream. Each one who departs from the common wavelength becomes a disturbance for everyone. This affects both women and men.

Someone who departs from the framework of the workshop in some way and is outside of our desires and thoughts disturbs everyone. But he disturbs himself much more. This is because he is in a unified system and is creating a disturbance within it; he is an organ that is not operating correctly and is inviting upon him a negative influence from the entire system. So we must try to be positive components of the one Kli of the collective soul.
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From the Convention In St. Petersburg 9/18/14, Preparatory Lesson 2

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We remember that this last summer was hot in every sense. Most of the whole year that passed gave our nation the longest military operation in many years. Its uniqueness is in the fact that it ultimately marked and emphasized the dead end we have reached. The battle is over, but there is still a threat and there is nowhere to which we can escape.

The moment another round is over, the shadow of the next round is hanging over our heads. Each time we stall for different reasons and postpone any decision making hoping that things will somehow work out on their own.

But things haven’t changed for decades. On the contrary, the connection between the contradictions around and inside our country is growing increasingly tighter. It is a clear sign that we have to do some self-clarifications before we can clarify and face our problems.

The prophet Jonah found himself in a similar situation thousands of years ago and is the hero of the book that we are used to reading on Yom Kippur. Strangely, this story keeps repeating regularly and although the atmosphere or the environment may change, it is always relevant. Our times are no exception.

The plot seems like an adventure novel, as Jonah receives a mission from God to help the people of Nineveh overcome the mutual hatred they feel and to fulfill the principle of love thy neighbor as thyself.

It was Abraham who first fulfilled this idea and founded the Jewish nation on this basis. It makes no difference today how he attained it, but the important thing is that the Jewish nation succeeded in doing what is basically impossible.

“What would have happened to mankind if Abraham hadn’t been a man of sharp perception and if he had stayed in Ur and kept his ideas to himself and not founded any unique Jewish nation? The world without Jews would undoubtedly be very different than it is today.” (Paul Johnson, British scientist and historian).

Today more than ever before, the entire world—not just the Jews, Arabs, Russians, and Ukrainians—is in need of love, or at least elementary, mutual understanding.

At the same time, just as in the past, similar ideas are perceived as totally unrealistic. No wonder Jonah decided to escape overseas, thinking he could escape the mission he had been given.

Just like Jonah, we too are trying to hide from the great, “impregnable” problems in our daily routine, and let others deal with them while we deal with our personal problems. Although our personal problems are not on a global scale, at least they can be resolved. Our whole life is a cycle of daily problems that we sometimes manage to float above.

It isn’t by chance that Jonah’s story is read on Yom Kippur. From ancient times comes the reminder that it is impossible to escape the mission we have been given.
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From the Russian Brochure: “The Main Secret of the Jewish New Year”

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The wisdom of Kabbalah works only in the realm of physical laws. There is no complexity, mysticism or religion in it. We study the most essential law of creation, which is the discovery of the higher power, the higher energy. It is highest because according to its category, it includes within it, all the rest of the forces.

Just as all of the sciences are engaged in discovering the characteristics of nature, the wisdom of Kabbalah is also involved with discovery, but only of its essential characteristic, which is this universal force.

We study in what manner it is revealed in our world and how the Kabbalists succeeded in discovering it through their yearning to understand that the world is fragmented and must be connected in complete harmony. Through their yearning for the harmony of the world, they began to understand that the power of unification is lacking in our world.

The first person who discovered this force 5774 years ago was Adam who understood that the world exists thanks to the one and only force that links all of the components of creation.

The next great Kabbalist was Abraham. He discovered not just the Higher Power and its revelation, like Adam and the ten generations of students that came after him, but the movement, the evolution of nature. Abraham understood the reason for evolution that necessarily led to Adam discovering the higher power, the revelation of the power within him to transform to become like it, meaning to rise to the highest level of attainment and development.

All of the levels, the still, vegetative, animate, and especially man, which exists within the previous three categories, are directed towards this in order to bring humanity to the necessity of uniting under the influence of two opposing forces.

One of them is the egoistic, negative force that distances people from each other. The second is the positive, altruistic force that can be revealed to help unite everyone.

When these two forces are gradually revealed more and more, a person begins to work. He locks them onto himself, changes, and understands their mutuality. In being found between them, he handles them like two reins by building himself, and he thus he rises higher and higher to the complete realization of the two forces within him.

This is the entire development of man, his evolution. This is specifically what Abraham discovered, and so his method is evolutionary. It was discovered during the crisis that humanity experienced in ancient Babylon.

The next generations of Kabbalists more deeply discovered the spiritual. First of all, the Shevirah (shattering) of one human desire into an immense number of particular desires that exist in each one of us, and the discovery of how to connect them, was discovered.

We still don’t feel this, don’t see the inner desire of each one, in what manner it is possible to use it, in what kind of combination, nor how to see that pattern within which we are connected by completing each other. Each one of us is versatile, and in every aspect of our multi-faceted nature and its features, its tastes, it is necessary to get along with others very accurately.

It turns out that an n-dimensional system was created in which each one completes everyone absolutely and nobody can be outside of this system. And only then, when all of the separated egoistic fragments begin to yearn for each other and to connect, will they begin to search for themselves within this system.

By moving towards each other, with difficulty, they find themselves by using the general higher power. We turn towards it so that it will perform these movements upon us. We want to get closer, but we don’t know how. Under the influence of the higher power, we begin to perceive and understand this. And what is required from us, in sum, is a desire that we can create together in each other by showing an example of how much we want this closeness and unity.

Other than a desire and yearning for unification, we don’t need anything. The higher power carries out the second half of the work, which is why it is called the half-Shekel. This means that I must give the first half, and the Creator gives the second half. From my side, only yearning and desire are required, and that this desire will be right to a particular degree. And it will be right if I will maintain the rules of communicating in the group. Then we will invite the power of unification and it will finish the work, will infect us, and be discovered within us.
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From the Convention In St. Petersburg 9/18/14, Preparatory Lesson 2

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Question: Did the Jews remain as people of Israel in the spiritual sense of the word after the destruction of the First Temple?

Answer: They were aware of their inability to resist the egoism that controlled them. This fact is documented in historical books and chronicles.

There are lots of materials that cover this topic. They were written in the remote past by immediate participants of the events, not by contemporary researchers.

The Jews were a highly literate nation. They conveyed their knowledge from generation to generation. Their writings were preserved, systematized, and classified. Thus, they were well-kept for centuries.

Hence, the people clearly realized: “There is no Creator among us!”

Question: Still, what did they take to the exile? What did they carry with them? Previously, they observed Abraham’s principles, but what did they have after the collapse took place?

Answer: They remembered their history quite well. It’s not that they were totally unaware of it, as if they were hit on the head. Moreover, the fall never happens immediately; it unfolds gradually; people slowly cool down, leave their prior states behind, and continue making unsuccessful attempts to return back to their previous states.

We exert holding on to our past, but we are unable to do so. At the same time, by making attempts to return back to it, even if we don’t achieve results, we still continue exploring and revising our prior states, thus retaining them in our memory.

It is similar to the distribution of the Light in a Partzuf and its further exit out of it—TANTA. At the very last stage, when everything else is already gone, all is left are recollections (Reshimot). However, at this stage, they are quite fresh and are called vessels (Kelim). These kind of vessels are correct. They reflect the right sensations, the definitions of what’s going on inside us, only at this point, one realizes what state one was in before. At the time we were in that state, we didn’t understand what it actually meant for us.

It happens in everyday life as well. Often, we tell someone: “You’ll remember this situation and understand it differently later.” So, something always stays when we lose our past situations and when it’s not in our power to discontinue the tendency of losses.
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From KabTV’s “Babylon Yesterday and Today,” 9/3/2014

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Baal HaSulam speaks about the wisdom of Kabbalah as being about “scientific research on an experimental basis” (in the article, “The Peace”), for this is correct, this is truly so. The wisdom of Kabbalah has the same approach as every science in this world. What is different is the subject that I investigate and the tools that I use. But, the general rules and principles are identical, and the main one being: “A judge only has what his eyes see.” (Baba Batra 131a)

Someone could come and persuade me that red is black. But I see that this is red, and so I write in my research that it is red. This means that I believe only what I see. One researcher says one thing, a second says something else, and eventually this is compiled into some kind of knowledge that everyone accepts. In principle, all of science is based upon statistical data. This approach testifies to conclusions on an experimental basis making it possible to gather all of the data and come up with some kind of general rule.
But in the wisdom of Kabbalah, there are no statistical methods where one scientist does many experiments and eventually decides that this seems to be the result. If some data is discovered by a Kabbalist, this is already an absolute fact, according to his Kelim and his level.

This is even though the next Kelim and level will reveal this as having been a mistake and the truth will be revealed. And then in the next Kli and level, this will be revealed as a mistake and the next as truth. This is always what happens during the transition from level to level.

So there is no absolute truth, except for what you are investigating at present. You investigate the Creator as an absolute, until He is revealed.

Question: You say that the wisdom of Kabbalah is based upon personal experience. So what does “faith in the sages” mean in their attainment?

Answer: This is what is accepted in any regular science. If you are the student of a great scientist, then they respect you too. You already belong to his school. This means that it is clear who you are, meaning who formatted you, who made you a scientist. This is called a teacher.

And in the wisdom of Kabbalah this is even more important, for the student receives all of the Light, all of the power from above to below through the teacher, and that is always how this continues.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/27/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Midrash Sefer, “After the Death of,” “The Holy Work on Yom Kippur”: At the time of the Second Temple most of the great priests would die within a year after Yom Kippur.

In order to be worthy of entering the Holy of Holies, the great priest had to purify himself first by detaching himself from all the corporeal desires.

Most of the great priests who served at the Temple bought their position by bribery. They could never attain the spiritual level that was required in order to enter the Holy of Holies and so the encounter with the Godly revelation that took place there was deadly for them.

The descent that took place during the time of the Second Temple is what we call the shattering of the vessels.

The presence of the Upper Light, of the attribute of love and bestowal, came in contact with the attribute of receiving for one’s egoistic self (although there cannot be any contact) and then the destruction occurred. The Light disappeared and the desire that wanted the Light, wanted it egoistically (even subconsciously), couldn’t face it and the great priest would die. They used to pull him out of the Holy of Holies with a rope that was tied to his foot since others were forbidden to enter the Holy of Holies.

But he didn’t care, as long as he could taste that sweetness for a moment. A person cannot resist the pleasure of the Light because without it his life is worthless! He opens his mouth and receives the drop of poison, which is in fact, a drop of Light. But for him, for the egoist, it is a drop of poison and he dies.

This also happens to us in our world when a person sacrifices his life for a drop of pleasure. Even if he dies, he just wants to feel the pleasure. This is how we are made, with a heart and a brain, pleasure and a mind. If the pleasure is greater than the mind, the mind doesn’t work and a person simply loses his sanity.

Therefore, the great priest couldn’t restrain himself from attaining the pleasure and so he died. If he had bought his position for money and did not attain through his own exertion, it means that he lacked a Masach (screen), the instrument for receiving the Light in order to bestow. If he had exerted himself instead of paying for his position, he would have performed his spiritual work and would have ascended to that level and connected to the Upper Light.

Now, after the destruction of the Second Temple, when we had fallen all the way down to our world, there can only be one way upward. If you are not worthy of ascending to the next level, you will not attain it.

However, during the time of the First and Second Temples, it was possible for a person to touch the Light since the descent occurred from the top down. In our case, on the other hand, during the ascent from the bottom up, it is forbidden to ascend to the upper level unless we are ready for it.

Therefore today the wisdom of Kabbalah can be revealed to anyone. In any case, people will not know anything until they reach spiritual attainment.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 3/12/14

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The Midrash, “Acharei Mot “After the Death Of”: On the night before Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement), If the High Priest was a sage, he would expound, and if not, the disciples of the sages would expound before him. If he was familiar with the reading of the Holy Writ, he would read; if not they would read before him. They would read before him from the Books of Job and Ezra, and Chronicles. Zechariah ben Kebutal said: Many times I read before him out of the Book of Daniel. When the High Priest seemed to be about to fall asleep, the young priests would snap their middle fingers before him and say to him: “My lord High Priest, stand up and drive sleep away by walking on the pavement.” They would divert him until the time came for the slaughtering of the daily morning offering. [Mishna Yoma I.1-7]

It is about a person’s personal desires that constantly must be awake since their common attribute, the state of the High Priest (Great Cohen), depends on the right connection between them into one system.

When they attain that, their collective attribute called the High Priest is ready for new action, and a spiritual state called morning appears. We already have spoken about the fact that there is a person’s external state and his internal state (the Holy of Holies), which he builds out of his desires.

This means that all these volumes that are seemingly a person’s inner parts—the person himself, his external attires, his environment—are all of our desires that come together in a certain manner and make up the picture that is described in Midrash Raba: the Temple, the priests (Cohanim) that help the High Priest, the Holy of Holies, the forks and spoons, his clothes, the entrance of the High Priest (Great Cohen) into the Holy of Holies, his work in the Temple and all the rest.

All of this is the collection of a person’s attributes in such a picture.

However, we are not talking about the picture that Kabbalists depict for us but about what we must do internally so that this picture will be created in us. It is like a computer and its screen, for example, on which I see the external picture.

In this case, I am the computer. I must find out which attributes must be in me, which connections, so that I will create inside me a picture like the one on the computer screen. They will be my attributes and not a display of strange attributes.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 3/12/14

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Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot,” Item 46: The verse says (Deuteronomy 31:17-31:18), “And My fury will rage against them on that day, and I will abandon them and hide My face from them, and they will be consumed, and many evils and troubles will befall them, and they will say on that day, ‘Is it not because our God is no longer among us, that these evils have befallen us?’ And I will hide My face…”

The troubles conceal the Creator, the source, from a person, which means that the Creator is concealed from him. This is how the desire to receive is made. The more troubles he feels and the more he suffers, the less he feels the Creator, until He is no longer visible. After all, the Creator is the source of goodness, and the troubles conceal the Creator from a person.

When you regard these words, you will find that in the beginning it states, “Then My fury will rage… …and hide My face,” meaning one concealment. Afterwards, it states, “and many evils and troubles will befall them… …And I will hide My face…,” meaning double concealment. We must understand what “double concealment” is.

This is a very subtle remark: that a person first feels a single concealment and only afterward reaches the double concealment. If I have no recognition or feeling of the Creator in any way, I cannot say that He is concealed. So, first, there is a single concealment, and only then when more understandings and troubles accumulate, do I reach a double concealment.

However, the Creator doesn’t disappear in a double concealment either. The Creator disappears only when you live in feeling the corporeal body. However, if I am a human being, Adam, which means that I resemble the Creator in some way, I am always in a state of concealment, either single or double. The difference between them is the amount of evil that I feel when I develop my sensitivity to the Creator.

Thus, the level of evil that is revealed to me determines whether I am in a single or a double concealment. This refers to a person who understands who the Creator is, the good that does good.

The Creator’s goodness is not in filling my desires to receive with pleasure but in bringing me to the goal of creation and teaching me properly. Therefore, I am ready for the afflictions as long as I advance in the vessels of bestowal so that I will resemble Him and accept the whole process.

I am increasingly more closely adhered to the Creator, which means that He becomes the good and the benevolent. His goodness is revealed in the equivalence of my ideology to His: the idea, the goal, and the means of attaining it. I determine that He is good that does good as a result of what He teaches me at any given moment in every way.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/27/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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