Question: The Creator gives us a choice and says: “Choose what’s best, choose life.” What is our choice?

Answer: We have to understand what is best for us. There are only two options we can choose from: either for myself or for the sake of others through the Creator.

“Choose life!” Life refers to spiritual life and to the existence in the attribute of bestowal.

This is what we are advancing to through a lengthy search, coming across small lowly matters until we go through all our ego to its very bottom, until we reach the lowest, most contemptible states, until we are actually immersed in self-mire and do not cease to be ashamed of it. It is because the Creator doesn’t lead us to justify ourselves but that we will justify Him by recognizing the opposite attribute that He has, the soul.

Choosing life means that in contrast to all the attributes, phenomena, and negative events, we will be able to recognize the Creator’s oneness and wholeness, His uniqueness, and will be connected to Him both on the good side and on the evil side by understanding that everything stems only from Him.

This means that the adhesion to Him is above pain or pleasure and we should feel that it makes no difference at all if we get joy from Him or not. The main thing is that it stems from Him. Our goal is to ascend above the ego in adhesion with the Creator.

We mustn’t fear that. The group has to support each other by understanding every friend, no matter what happens to him, no matter what ascents or descents he has, no matter what happens with each of us. All this is necessary only so that we will exit our ordinary egoistic corporeal system of events and value not the person but the Creator’s actions that are displayed by the friend.

Although not everyone fully understands this yet, we are already close to a state that we can go through this. Our getting closer is possible because now the gathering of our mutual feelings and mutual understandings are taking place in us since the Creator is doing that with us. Thus, we can begin to feel everyone as one single huge whole, the soul , which actually reconstructs and fulfills itself this way.
[141314]
From the Convention In Toronto “Day One” 8/4/14, Meal 1

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We are obliged to approach this whole subject from the thought and purpose of creation, from the perspective of the general, the whole picture. We cannot understand and know even a single part if we are not familiar with its place within the whole. Since all of reality is one system, there is no part that is not determined by the whole.

In general, all of creation, the entire desire to receive, defined as Malchut of the world of Infinity, must reach correction, equivalence of form with the Light of Infinity, meaning that it must increase itself 620 times through 125 levels. Accordingly, if we consider our world, it will be clear to us that all of the creatures that we see must reach the end of correction. We are talking about all of humanity, even if a few billion more people are added to the Earth’s population.

On the other hand, the still, vegetative, and animate nature are in adhesion with the Creator, for the instinctive force of nature that manages them is latent in them, without asking them at all.

In principle, free choice and the possibility of acting according to their desire without being connected directly with the Creator is given only to humans. This means that the opportunity is given to people to change themselves a little.

We still need to examine precisely how this ability is expressed in someone who yearns to be like the Creator. People like these are called “Israel,” which means straight to the Creator, “Yashar El.” And someone who doesn’t yearn for this is said to be part of the “nations of the world.” But ultimately, both they and the others must reach full equivalence of form with the Creator through cooperation between them.

In the course of development in our world, there are people, more precisely, desires, with such a yearning that has been prepared from birth. People like these (Israel) receive a push (a call) to discover the Creator, to approach Him, and reach adhesion with Him. They must do this first and the others will come after them; for ultimately everyone will reach their own final correction regarding the Creator.

The difference in the means for attaining the Creator is also derived from this. In general, the means is called the wisdom of Kabbalah. But Israel and the nations of the world use it and realize it differently. The time allotted for the entire process is 6000 years, during which, without a doubt, all of the creatures must reach adhesion with the Creator.

All of the still, vegetative, and animate nature ascend and descend on the ladder of adhesion together with the level of the speaking without any effort from their side. And people must advance individually and collectively from their free choice.

So there is a difference in disseminating the wisdom of Kabbalah to Israel and the nations of the world. A person who belongs to Israel feels an attraction and link to it; he feels that the opportunity for fulfillment is hidden here, so he is very happy to encounter the wisdom of Kabbalah. This is because from the start he has felt a deficiency that is expressed in the question: “What is the reason for living?”  At the moment he has no reason for living; he doesn’t sense any true “taste” and fulfillment in life; instead he always feels something is missing. In such a case, after he becomes familiar with the wisdom of Kabbalah, he discovers that he has found a means for fulfillment.

And the people who don’t feel that anything like this is missing and simply feel bad on the still, vegetative, and animate levels of development, can nevertheless feel a deficiency through which they can connect to the wisdom of Kabbalah. Clearly, they don’t need it at all, but the usual deficiencies that the Creator awakens in them, with the help of the general crisis, push them to search for a better life. So gradually they find a deficiency for higher things.

There are a number of reasons for this. One of them is that their daily deficiencies are still developing and the “point in the heart,” that was formerly concealed, now becomes revealed. And besides this, the desire to ascend can also be discovered as a result of integration with the people of Israel, meaning with the people who yearn for the Creator, and, together with them, they become one body, one vessel (Kli). This is the way that is designed for most of the nations of the world.

In any case, it is up to us to look at things correctly and also understand the reasons for the negative attitude of the nations of the world toward the people of Israel and the accusations against the people of Israel, that instead of bringing them pleasure, they bring them suffering, troubles, and problems. They blame Israel for every evil that exists in the world, and this points to a link between the nations of the world and Israel, and their interdependence also. Even though the nations of the world discover the connection in a more negative form, in spite of it all, this still speaks about how much they feel their dependence on the children of Israel.

So it is up to us to think carefully about how we can correct this situation and why the Creator arouses us and the nations of the world specifically in this way so that we will ultimately reach absolute adhesion with Him.

In the present stage, our dissemination focuses on the people of Israel. As Baal HaSulam explains in the end of the “Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” in the beginning of the process, the inner parts that yearn to discover the Creator are joined. After this those who have Reshimot (spiritual genes) remaining in them from their former ascents to bestowal and adhesion with the Creator from the days of the Beit HaMikdash (temple) will join them, meaning the collective vessel (Kli) with an intention for the sake of bestowal on the basis of union with Israel. So we must awaken those who are called a Jew by “passport” and not according to their aspiration.

And together with this, we must awaken all the nations of the world so that they will know the general process, because we are in the days of the Messiah, as Baal HaSulam and other Kabbalists write. Today we are talking already about the whole general correction so everyone must recognize the process of correction and share in it.

So it is up to us to disseminate the wisdom of Kabbalah to the whole world. After all, it is said that the redemption will specifically come thanks to the dissemination of the wisdom of Kabbalah and the dissemination of The Book of Zohar throughout the world. There is a need both in people who yearn for the Creator and are called Israel in spirituality, and also in people who belong to Israel in our world (the Jews) who don’t feel the yearning. As of today, everyone must understand the goal of creation.

So the Creator is arousing problems everywhere, including the threat of a third world war and the general crisis in nature and in human society. Through this, He awakens all people, all the nations of the world, to work to attain the goal. So our explanations must reach everyone without exception.
[141324]
From the Talk about the Importance of Dissemination 8/12/14

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Question: Sight for us is what we see, so what is spiritual sight?

Answer: You actually don’t see anything. It is the mind that sees, and in the spiritual world it is quite clear.

Question: So why do I need the two openings in the form of eyes and all the reflected light that I receive?

Answer: All our body is merely a kind of glued together “papier-mâché.” We actually don’t feel anything in our hands, our tongue, our nose, our ears, or our eyes but only in our brain and even deeper than that, in our desire.

A person’s body is the scenery, the continuous external display of our internal attributes. It is made especially so that you will see that there is someone before you. Still, everything that you see and feel is only inside you, in your brain, or rather in your desires. Since we work at the level of the material world, it seems that everything depends on external sensors or detectors called senses.
[141228]
From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 2/20/14

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The inner changes required for a person to connect with others to a complete adherence with connection, unity, and mutual sharing that balances us with nature is not a simple process. The stages of changes of this type are connected to a cycle that ultimately closes at a beginning point.

It is up to us to pass through this entire cycle, to correct ourselves, and transform into a useful part of nature, not a cancerous tumor within it that devours everything around it and destroys the globe. A person must be a source of health and comfort for all the good and balance in nature.

Every year these states return as in a spiral and repeat themselves on higher levels. Essentially, a year is the number of stages through which we must pass in our connection and in order to reach the goal.

This cycle of stages of correction was discovered by Abraham in ancient times. He taught his students who became the source of the creation of the Jewish people. So this is expressed in the annual cycle of the Jewish holidays.

We must understand that the Jewish holidays are not the tradition of a particular nation or of one people. Rather they are symbols of unique spiritual states in which we attain mutual bestowal, love between us on higher levels, and a greater depth of integration in this connection in heart and mind.

This is not a celebration of particular historical events that were experienced by some isolated people and not relevant to the general program of nature. These holidays reflect spiritual states of the people as a community. They are already latent in nature as particular levels of our equivalence with nature as we advance towards states of balance and harmony.

If we identify ourselves as a people and connect among us to one degree or another by attaining a particular level of unity that is latent in nature, then we specifically celebrate this event. When we rise a little further to the next level of connection with nature and equivalence of form with it, we again celebrate this attainment.

A person doesn’t establish the holidays for himself according to his decision; rather, he celebrates the attainment of similarity and adherence that already exists in nature. So these holidays cannot be changed.

In our state today we are completely opposite to integral nature. All of the parts of nature are linked one hundred percent in a unified system. Only the human species is found in total destruction and opposite the natural unity.

However, if humanity, or at least part of it, will begin to transform itself into becoming similar to nature, will approach its form of unity and totality, then we will reach a particular degree of connection. First of all, it is up to us to recognize that we hate each other. This is the nature with which we are born.

This is called “recognition of evil,” the awareness that our opposite nature doesn’t allow us to reach harmony and balance with it. For this we require internal scrutiny, and we must pray to Lehitpalel (incriminate –Lehaplil) ourselves. Such confession prior to Rosh Hashanah is called the “month of Elul.”

At this time, we scrutinize our true state in relation to that good and wonderful state of connection we must reach. This means that we discover what is said to be the corrected state, we compare it with our present state, we see the immense gap between them, and so we pray to Mitpalelim (judge ourselves).

We understand what criminals we are and what we must do with ourselves, so we begin to organize the work to begin to advance towards connection. The power that is found in nature and connects all of its parts we proclaim as the ruling power that controls us! This power holds the entire system together and becomes our goal. We yearn to resemble it. This is called Rosh Hashanah, the beginning (Rosh) of our changes (Shinuim) and the new cycle at the end of which we want to be like the general power that permeates nature.
[144178]
From the program “A New Life” 9/14/14

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Question: If I correct my perception of reality, where do the changes happen? Is it in me personally or in the entire surrounding world?

Answer: All of the changes happen only within a person. You never see anything outside of yourself. There is a screen in your head upon which this whole world is portrayed.

If you want to see the true reality instead of this, it is necessary to attain love for everyone. Then all of the creation will become one simple Light. People and this world will not exist; only you will be left, swallowed in an ocean of white Light; then there is only you and the Creator.

And then who are we, but you? We are an example of your uncorrected characteristics that you must correct to be similar to the Creator. If you will love each one of us, and all of us together, as yourself, this will indicate that you have corrected yourself. So then we will disappear, and instead of us, you will feel the Light.

If you love others as yourself, you remove all of the differences in the world. In fact, there are no different colors: blue, black, white, red; there aren’t so many noises and sounds that we hear; there is no above and below; there are no right and left sides; there are no people, animals; there is nothing.

Gradually, to the degree that you begin to love, this entire world loses all the characteristics that typify it, the entire variety of forms. After all, if you love, you don’t see all kinds of characteristics in the beloved, no nuances, everything in him seems good! We must reach a form of perception like this, until everything will become absolutely white.

This is because we feel everything within our desire to receive that evaluates things all the time about what is good for it and what is bad for it. The whole world is divided only according to this principle: more beneficial or less beneficial to my ego. That is how all the sounds, tastes, people, animals, plants, and rocks appear; everything receives form within your desire to receive.

But the moment that you begin to relate towards the whole world with love, then all of its differences disappear and it all becomes white Light. This is called: (Proverbs 10:12) “Love covereth all transgressions (meaning, all the differences)”!
[143704]
From the Convention In Chile “Day One” 7/30/14, Lesson 2

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The Upper Light is at absolute rest, and the Creator is good and benevolent. This means that we are always standing in the presence of the Light, the absolute good that never changes. We are the only ones who change.

It is possible to pray only for my own correction. To ask the Creator to change is worthless because He is absolutely good to everyone, without exception, and cannot be otherwise.

The correct perception of reality is the understanding that there cannot be change in the Light and not even in us, but in me alone. This is because how I feel each one in the world and all the changes that everyone undergoes are determined only by how I myself am changed. Instead of demanding that others change, through mutual cooperation with them, I must summon a change in me, and then the whole world will be changed.

Wise people have long understood from their life experiences that it is meaningless to try to change others. Nobody is going to change and everything depends upon me. The wisdom of Kabbalah brings a person to a very simple perception of reality and explains that each one must correct only himself and not others.

But in order to convince myself to change, I require an environment. By influencing society, I influence myself. I seemingly want to improve the environment, but ultimately the environment influences me and changes me.

I play with the Creator and with the environment, but this is to influence me. Ultimately I change myself this way, by becoming similar to the Creator. I then attain a true perception of reality and I will see it as it is seen from the side of the Light, from the side of the Creator.

The Creator gave us this opportunity to change ourselves gradually, to constantly produce changes within ourselves to become more like Him, through the environment. If I perceive the whole world and all of the friends as perfect and only myself as requiring correction, by accommodating myself to them, I will be found in constant work that brings me closer to the level of the Creator.

And in truth, it doesn’t matter what happens in the environment, who is right and who is wrong. I perceive all of this as the Creator’s game with me. He is the one who organizes all of this theater around me to help me adapt myself to Him. For if there is none else besides Him and He is good that does good, then any other image that doesn’t come from the only good force testifies to my inner corruption that I must correct.

So I must be in a process of scrutinizing myself all the time, in an internal dialogue with the Creator scrutinizing what He is giving something to me to see, to hear, to taste, to touch, to think, and to imagine. What memories float up in me, what thoughts spin around within me?

The Creator creates an entire world around me so that I will not forget, even for a moment, that all this is made by Him, that I am conducting an incessant dialogue with Him, that I want to discover Him, and to understand! This is like an infant to whom something is said, but he doesn’t understand anything, and just looks with open-mouthed excitement. This is how we also must try to understand at every moment what the Creator wants to tell us through this whole world that He shows us.

Essentially there is only a very small desire for pleasure to receive, that feels itself as if it exists in a physical body with hands and feet, and around it there are other forms, other bodies, a whole world. This immense world is changing all the time, everything goes around within it. All this exists only in my inner perception, in my desire to receive and is portrayed within my imagination, but doesn’t exist in reality.

We live in an imaginary world like this. All of its images are shaped within our ego so that we will interpret them correctly. If we accept the intention to bestow over our desire to receive, then instead of all of the forms of this world, we will feel the Upper Light that fills all of reality. We must reach such a final form of perception.

All of the work is to correct our inner perception, to be released from this pathological imagination in which we now exist, from this imaginary world, and come to the simple, Upper Light. Through work with the environment, imagining ourselves as closer and closer to the Upper Light, meaning bestowal, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” we can change our perception; and instead of this world, we feel the Upper World.

This distorted perception that portrays this physical world for us will disappear and in its place we will feel the one Creator, and see that besides Him, there is nothing. And we exist within Him and everything is immersed in an ocean of white Light. This will be the true perception, and not the imaginary reality in which we now live.
[143698]
From the Convention In Chile “Day One” 7/30/14, Lesson 2

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From the book: The Essential Secret of the Jews, M. Brushtein:

Organisms Unite

An organism is a biological system with different levels of organization: molecular, cellular, tissue, etc.

An organism functions as a whole living being and has a set of properties (metabolism, growth, development, reproduction, heredity, etc.) That distinguishes it from inanimate matter. (Academic Dictionary)

Organisms take up the “social” baton from cells, and, like them, begin to connect with each other. We are talking about the present law itself.

The essence of this law is that living structures always form a coalition when there is an opportunity. The participants in an association are able to solve problems which are too big for each of them separately.

The scope of this principle covers all the levels of the organic world, from the interaction of cells that compose a body, to social relationships in populations of all living beings on our planet, including Homo sapiens. (Eugene N. Panov, Escape from Loneliness)

Let’s agree for a moment that it is the law. Then, what can we do with such a terrible disease like cancer? It is known that cancer cells, aggressors, act in the exact opposite way, and that social sentiments are foreign to them.

Scientific studies of the behavior of normal and cancerous cells in an artificial environment have shown that the latter, unlike the normal cells, become socially unmanageable. This means that cancer cells fail to respond to the vital signals from cell-partners and begin to behave like anti-social individuals. (Eugene N. Panov, Escape from Loneliness)

The easiest way to say it is that the exception proves the rule. However, this is not our case. It turns out that cancer cells are not less, but perhaps more social than the injured party.

Eshel Ben-Jacob, physicist at Rice University in Houston states: Cancer is a sophisticated enemy. There’s growing evidence that cancer cells use advanced communications to work together to enslave normal cells, create metastases, resist drugs and decoy the body’s immune system. (Source: Rice Unconventional Wisdom)

It seems that all cells do prefer cooperation to individual pastime. Even cancer. We will continue our research on a more advanced level – vegetative.
[143266]

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Question: Can I learn to discover the Creator through physical pleasures?

Answer: It depends on what is meant by physical pleasures: pleasure for oneself or those pleasures clothed in the physical actions of our world.

If the pleasure is clothed in a physical action of this world, it is possible to discover the Creator in it, but if it is intended for oneself, then it is impossible. Every action “for oneself” is called physical, and “from myself” is called spiritual.

When we connect between us to complete adhesion, then we really feel in substance this state in which the Creator is discovered. But this is only on condition that we use it for our unification above personal yearning and desire. The Light does all the rest, it is not necessary to be involved with this in particular; it only confuses a person.

It is necessary to study the articles by Rabash and Baal HaSulam, which are interspersed with little information about the conditions for spiritual work, and try not to leave them. They must become the fundamental conditions that one must maintain all the time, and when you run across them, check yourself according to them.

Then the Light will create the appropriate characteristics within you, and you will begin to feel that the entire physical world is not essentially physical, but only seems that way. In fact, that is how the spiritual forces portray our sensations for us. When the one power of nature begins to be discovered through this, we finally begin to understand the secrets and characteristics of our perception.
[141511]
From the Convention In Sochi “Day Two” 7/14/14, Lesson 6

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Question: If, during a workshop, we are trying to come to a common state, enter into it, disconnect, connect, and suddenly a latecomer joins us, we immediately feel imbalance.

Answer: There should be no imbalance! We immediately need to “swallow” the friend who came. Suppose we have nine people, and suddenly there is the tenth, but he is not a disturbance to us, because we are working on him so much with our intention, our desire, that he immediately feels the framework that we give him and is included with us.

And if not, then during a round, no matter what he said or where he went, he must feel the framework of the group, and then occupy his place.

But in order for us not to fall out of this state, we need to specifically drive ourselves into it. Through our desire, our efforts, our constant example, including external efforts, we need to make other people feel that they exist so in a special ideological framework in which they cannot allow themselves even to speak about something external. This total pressure on each of us needs to be very strong.
[144153]
From Preparatory lesson 1 of the Congress in St. Petersburg 9/18/14

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Question: You said that we need to learn to take pleasure from making efforts in our progress and in the same way to take care of our friends.

If we combine these two sentences, it turns out that we need to work hard to help a friend get pleasure from making efforts?

Answer: Yes. As a result, the more you work, the more enjoyment you get, not from the results of the labor, but from the work, from the effort itself. When you are correcting egoism, efforts turn into pleasure.

It does not exist in our world. Here we work in order to earn, and earn to buy something or to enjoy something.

Why is the spiritual world infinite and there is no concept of time? Because the very effort includes both effort and its fulfillment, the Kli (vessel). The effort itself is fulfillment.

Start thinking about it, and you will see what a spiritual state is. There is no cause and consequence development of events, so a spiritual state is permanent.
[144157]
From Preparatory lesson 1 of the Congress in St. Petersburg 9/18/14

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