Question: I feel a complete detachment from TES (Talmud Eser Sefirot.) I can neither understand nor sense it. When I read it, I feel really frustrated. Is there a way to handle this?

Answer: And rightly so. After all, you see that everything written there is unclear to you; it doesn’t “stick” to you.

When we study any science that belongs to this world, we read slowly, try to understand, listen, “digest” the same page or a part of it many times, and then we eventually comprehend it. We can draw it on paper, create a model, or see it somewhere, or ask others about something we don’t understand yet.

Those who know the answers will show us how it works; they will also bring examples: This is an atom, it has electrons and protons. This is an accelerator, it speeds atoms up, hits them, and they break away from their nuclei and bounce from side to side… . We don’t see this picture but we can imagine “bouncing” balls.

When we study spirituality, we just don’t understand a thing. Everything that pertains to spirituality happens in a totally different realm, on a dissimilar plane, in another dimension, in opposite properties and qualities.

All we have is our brain (an empty computer) and an egocentric “program” that has filled our brain since we were born. We observe everything through this prism. We are not able to read texts that are so different, nor do we understand what these texts tell us. This is because we are run by different types of software.

As an example, let’s take a regular computer with a “Windows” operating system. We try playing a different software on this computer, let’s say “Linux.” However, it doesn’t have software to do that, so the computer has “no clue” of what is going on with it. This attempt of ours creates a total mess in the computer, nothing else.

The same applies to us. We are internally programmed. Connections between our memory and logic cells already have been established. We read with our eyes, but internally we feel what we are reading. So we should have a program inside us that is “compatible” with the incoming information, as in a computer. Quite simply, there is nothing else to it.

So, the information that we scan with our eyes contains a different volume and “sits” in a different pool of cells; it isn’t on the same grid with the informational data and their relationships that are in me. We read the information that is based on bestowal, on “getting out of oneself.” However, it is totally different information; it isn’t in us. We don’t have an inner machine to comprehend it.

There are people who still love to read, to understand; they literally “chewing” the granite of science. We have a student who is this way; by the way, he is a very good friend of ours, although he is a big “nerd.” I always use him as an example of how strongly one can really seek knowledge.

I too was one of them. I thought that through learning, I would conquer everything and to the extent that I understood the material I was studying with my brain, I would reveal and attain Kabbalah as any other science of this world. As a result, I hit a wall and felt a tremendous repulsion to TES.

It took me several years to understand the sixth and the seventh portions of TES, the World of Nekudim. Starting with the eighth part and from there on, I didn’t comprehend a thing! In other words, it didn’t live in me because I didn’t have these elements inside of me.

There are people who study TES and are very happy about it because they don’t have an internal demand to reach attainment, meaning they have no point in the heart. And I do have a point in the heart and it requires that I feel things that I study. I have to sense and form them internally; it’s not enough for me to imagine them as a basic model, I have to feel the entire world that they describe to me.

If this world is not present inside us, we won’t understand anything at all. Therefore, one who gets frustrated and angry about not understanding, is a really good soul. However, no one will understand this material until one “upgrades” oneself, re-structures one’s internal “program,” and in addition to the software that runs him or her, is added another programming language called “a spiritual system.”

Then, everything will be just fine. To the degree of our internal spiritual advancement, we will realize what’s written in this book, because it will tell us about ourselves, our sensations, and the innermost vivid feelings and states that we go through. There is more revelation, stronger sensation, deeper understanding, insight,and  connection with the universe and with other people who read TES when we begin disclosing Kelim, vessels, tools, that emerge in us.

So, please continue to be annoyed, not at TES, but at yourself. After all, if you’re angry, it  means that you have already come to a stage when you are able to re-arrange yourself in order to “accommodate” this material; it signifies that this structure will soon become yours. You will feel these sensations inside yourself. You will be able to tell that these particular feelings are Aba ve Ima, the other ones are ZON, others are small (Katnut) or great (Gadlut) states, and some are the Surrounding or Inner Light. It all exists in you! It’s not external but internal because the entire world is inside us. You will start seeing that everybody who is around you is in fact inside you and you will expand yourself to the entire universe.
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From Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/25/13, Questions and Answers with Dr. Laitman

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Even though this is against my nature, I still try to build this chain: to give satisfaction to another in order to give satisfaction to the Creator. Which is to say: “From love for the other to love for the Creator” and “Israel, the Torah, and the Creator are one.” In a manner like this, I attract the Light that Reforms to me, power arrives from the Creator and gradually helps me to do this, gradually teaching me.

But a large amount of activities are included here, one after the other, for I am not prepared to work together with all of my desires to receive with my ego. It’s very great and still not familiar to me. I don’t even know one percent of it, not even a billionth of a percent!

And in order to help me to give pleasure to another in order to give satisfaction to the Creator and to transform the guest so that he is like the host, all of my work is divided into small portions that I can indeed do. But these portions, meaning these levels, are absolutely separate from each other. Every time that I finish some small portion for the purpose of bestowing to the Creator, even in an insignificant form, without feeling and understanding it, in spite of it all, I transform my state; I pass to a new desire that is always greater than the previous one. And therefore working with it is different both in quality and in quantity.

That state through which I passed yesterday seems to me completely insignificant compared to the new and stronger desire. It’s as if I hadn’t done anything. I examine this with my new desires and they are greater than the old ones. Therefore it’s not necessary to grasp this directly in a form like this and to be in despair that it’s as if you are returning to that state all the time and that it might be even worse. This is how it must be because you get a greater and greater desire all the time.

The main thing is that you are actually taking what is found outside of you: still, vegetative, animate, and human, what is given to you, as well as the teacher, the group, and the books, in order to be equipped with the power of the Creator, with His help, and you try to work with them as a conduit that connects them. That is how you build a system through which and within which you will give pleasure to the Creator.
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From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/26/13

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It is written that knowing the worlds, that is, the Creator, is known to the degree of devotion to Him in the heart of the person to get closer to Him, the characteristic of love and bestowal, and this yearning can stop at any moment. Therefore, the Creator cannot illuminate a person like this through the upper Light because if the state of the person changes, the Light will transform into an even greater darkness, into Klipa, into corrupted desires that can throw him many incarnations backward.

And only if there is complete certainty (the calculation is done by the system and is not by us), that a person will be given the power of bestowal and will use it in the right form, will he be given this.

Therefore, the Creator increases the excitement that is the beginning of the connection with Him. However, this is very unpleasant, for it is built upon rejection. You see, the Creator shows a person where he must make an effort in order to complete the picture of adherence with Him. It is as if they agitate the person and say to him, “These and the corrections you must make,” and the person feels acute pain, rejection, powerlessness, and disappointment in this place.

This happens according to “The Creator is your shadow.” If the person hears and understands this, he will not fall due to the frustration, resentment, and neglect that he seems to feel and he will not stop his work because of the suffering, for in this, he sees that the Creator yearns for him.

The Creator shows what else the person needs to do in order for the contact between them to be realized. The person sees this not as rejection, but as a hint that if he corrects this, the Creator will embrace him, and when the Creator allows a person to feel negative emotions, he sees this not as his own pain, even though he is in pain, but as the pain of the Creator—how much the Creator suffers because the person has not yet corrected himself and cannot adhere to Him. This is called the “sorrow of the Shechina.”

Everything can be solved with a very simple direction: towards unity. Unification is the unique and correct solution to all the problems from the first correction to the last correction, and if something is not okay, not appropriate, it is up to us to sit in a circle and discuss it immediately, to clarify it in a group of ten where each one adds to the words of the other. No one struggles with anyone. Each is nullified toward the other and only adds to his words.
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From the St. Petersburg Convention “Day Three” 7/14/13, Lesson 6

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Mutual fulfillment is called bestowal, love. It is clear that this is not the physical coupling in our world, even though this also happens as a consequence of spiritual coupling. The most important thing is that we discover an opportunity to fulfill each other, meaning, to realize our desire, and in thus we discover wholeness.

The great Kabbalist the Ari wrote: “Behold, that before the emanations were emanated and the creatures were created, the Upper Simple Light had filled the whole existence….Then the Ein Sof then restricted Himself, in His middle point….And there remained an empty space, an empty air (Avir), a vacuum…Then, from the Light of Ein Sof, a single line hung down from above, lowered into that space. And through that line, He emanated, created, formed, and made all the worlds,” including our world in the center of the empty void.

Take the state of the “vacant place” as a first state (I) in which only the Light of Nefesh is found, the smallest Light. After that was the first Tzimtzum (restriction) and the shattering of the Masach, state II. And now there must be a completion of correction (Gmar Tikkun), the third state.

With the completion of correction (Gmar Tikkun), we reach a state called NRNHY, meaning the formation of a great amount of Light 620 times greater than the first state of the Light of Nefesh.

620 is an arbitrary concept, not like a billion; rather, it is a completely qualitative characteristic because through our correction, we perceive the highest Light that created all matter.

For the Light produced all the matter in our world through a small spark of enormous energy. Can you imagine what kind of intensity there must have been at the time of the “Big Bang” that created all matter, all energy, all information, the entire program of development, and all that we still don’t know?

All this appears from the spark of Light that reached through a thin channel to our world and exploded in it. Why did this happen? This is because the characteristic of the Light, this life-giving energy, is opposite to the characteristic of the matter that was produced by the explosion. And the energy of the Light was included within matter and matter began to evolve.

In other words, this was a micro-Light, a small particle of Light, actually a spiritual photon that encounters the nascent matter; the Light evolves according to the four levels of evolution of the Direct Light (Ohr Yashar), and in the last phase it manifests the opposite phenomenon of matter within it. We learn this from the four phases of the Direct Light in the world of infinity.

Why do we need all this? So we can perceive this Light existing in the world of infinity around us and around all the worlds. And we need to go out beyond their limits, to rise above the entire creation, beyond all matter. Therefore, if we want to leave our state, we need to pass through the entire way beginning from the root (Shoresh) state to the highest point, all 125 levels of ascent above our substance, above our nature.

All this is realized only within the group and only according to the principle of the group in which this is realized, the right side, the left side, and a yearning forward. Along with this, the ego evolves all the time, but only through our inclusion within the group. If I feel rejection and don’t approach the group and don’t work against this rejection, I will not be able to feel the true ego within me. The normal worldly egoistic Klipa (shell) we don’t take into account at all.

This is relevant to both women and men. We must overcome our gnashing of teeth about this obstacle (inclusion within the group), beginning with a simple hug, songs, and shared work. But the main thing is the inner inclusion, how much I am ready to connect with my friends, to be among them.

There are many articles on this subject. The interesting thing is that if you read those articles over the course of many years on different levels of attainment, the text remains the same, yet every time you will understand it in a completely different form.

All of us are found in mutual integration as in a puzzle. This is a system of multidimensional linkages that ultimately form a sphere. For each one is included in all the desires and characteristics of the others. It’s unbelievable, but the Light does all this because we are already found within these characteristics and desires. The Light only reveals them, shining on them like a spotlight, and we see them as something new.

The system remains the same as it was created in the world of infinity, except it is contracted in regard to us. And it’s clear that when we want to enter into it, we awaken the illumination and it illuminates more and more for us. And since we already exist within it, we begin to feel ourselves more and more as being connected and dependent upon each other.
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From the St. Petersburg Convention “Day Two” 7/13/13, Lesson 3

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Our task is to carry the Light to fulfill the desires, to conduct by intentions.

Our intentions are addressed to the Creator, and the actions to a wider audience, to its needs. These requests always boil down to getting something, and thus they will remain throughout the spiritual ascent. People will ask for more again and again because it is the task of AHP. It grows in its desires, and we are growing in our intentions to bestow.

Question: But how can I ensure the fulfillment of their desires?

Answer: I am in the environment, in the community of people. And besides that, I have a connection with the Creator through the group, with the world of infinity. From there, the Upper Light passes through me and enters a community. Meanwhile, I am not just a fiber-optic channel. After all, in order to carry bestowal to people, I have to make calculations along the way:

1. First of all, I absorb their desires.

2. Then I raise MAN, the request for correction, to the group. In other words, I unite with the group.

3. Next, I raise MAN to the Creator. The request must come from our common circle, and thus I carry it through the group so that it would match the Creator.

4. The whole group gets a response to the request—MAD from above.

5. From the group, I have to transfer it down, having performed a Zivug (interaction) with the Light. And so here, I need to move from the state of smallness (Katnut) to the state of adulthood (Gadlut) to pass their new state to people.

6. And then I carry the Light to the community.

 

 

Question: Suppose for example, the community asked me to get an apple. So, in the end of this sequence, in part 6, will it get an apple?

Answer: Yes, it will get its “apple” through me.

We record the participants’ requirements in the minutes and proceed to the construction of correct relations between them. And as a result, the fulfillment comes from me to them, and then we will check whether everyone received what they desired.

Question: But will it not be an apple?

Answer: They will receive the fulfillment that will satisfy all their needs, including the unspoken and unrecorded, added during the waiting time. After all, spiritual fulfillment comes devoid of form and becomes clothed in a person, filling him like a vessel, desire.

Question: What is required from me at every step of this process?

Answer: The work according to the principle “Israel, the Torah, and the Creator are one.” I serve as a conductor, “stretch” from the Creator to the community, and dwell in everyone: in the Creator, in the group, and in the general public. I am a connecting link, like jelly I fill everything with my work, my incessant efforts.

And as I decide to take care of some part of humanity, I must constantly transfer the Light to it, worry about it, love it, connect it with the group, and combine the force, enabling connection with the people and the force, providing connection with the Creator.

The group is standing beside me all the time, supporting and guiding me correctly toward the Creator, and toward the “dependents.”
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/11/13, “The Peace”

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In the article “The Peace,” Baal HaSulam analyzes the Russian “experiment” of building a socialist society in the last century. This period brought about a huge number of victims, and we have yet to understand the causes of what happened. Of course, the events were run from above and had to happen as a kind of discernment, “reconnaissance.”

Why did the attempt fail? It could not work out because its initiators had everything but the main thing, the connection with the Creator. They despised this relationship, could not understand it, keep it, or feel the need for it, so their expectations were not fulfilled.

Today, we know that it’s impossible to do without the Light that Reforms, and a person must correctly aim himself at its influence. But since Russia had nothing like that, the huge investment in education turned out to be in vain. The authorities tried a variety of things. The people were “brainwashed” in many different ways: through the press, radio, and television. The borders were locked to protect the country from external influences. Brainwashing started in kindergarten and continued in schools, but nothing worked.

After all, people’s egoism remained at the same level, even though they were a little accustomed to the external, superficial attributes, since a habit, as it is known, becomes second nature. Yes, there were songs and nice words about unity and other values, but it was not enough to be a real support.

In the end, the country has not achieved a decisive victory in the economic, social, or political sphere. Many in the world believed that Russia would become an example and influence the rest, but most of the world treated them with hatred and fear, or at least with dislike.

On the other hand, before the revolution of 1917, Russia blossomed against its industrial-technological development and sold its products in Europe. As long as there was temptation for and satisfaction of the egoistic desire, progress was remarkable. If that had continued, Russia might have surpassed the United States in spite of the reactionary government that prevented many progressive reforms.

However, the revolution switched development to the non-egoistic track and demanded a person work for the good of society because society is greater and more important. As a result, “fuel” disappeared and the breakdown started.

What could support these altruistic social transformations? They could only be supported by the connection with the Creator. After all, the human being needs a reward for his labors. And this reward is adhesion to the Creator. It’s worth working for, and although the Light that Reforms in the process turns the egoistic consideration into something else; nonetheless, it’s like a reward. We still don’t understand to what change this approach leads: A person seemingly works for one thing, but gets another.

But Russian revolutionaries cut themselves off from the source of Light, the force that animates changes, corrects a person and leads him to the goal. In other words, they fenced themselves off from the only force acting in creation, and in a short period, their endeavors were not successful. As a consequence, instead of a positive force from above that recharges and unites people, the authorities had to resort to the negative methods of influence that drove people from below by intimidation and suffering…

Today, in our society we should consider this lesson, and with respect for each of the friends, we should only use the upper force and not any coercive method. You cannot replace what the Upper Light gives with social pressure. Social pressure must be used to bring a person under the influence of this Light.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/10/13, “The Peace”

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Baal HaSulam, “The Peace”: Although I have thus far proven that one must work to benefit people, where is the proof that it has to be done for the Creator? Indeed, history itself has taken care of this for us and has prepared for us an established fact, sufficient for a full appreciation and unequivocal conclusion.

Is it enough to simply worry about the world when we approach the public? Is it enough to build a happy, integral, global, society in which everyone works together in collaboration and cooperates with each other? Or should all our actions be aimed at delighting the Creator, to such an extent that without it we wouldn’t lift a finger and go through any trouble for this suffering humanity or pay any attention to what is going on? If it is impossible to delight the Creator, then let the whole world burn.

I present this sharply and toughly on purpose, although not everyone will understand this. After all, it is actually the upper level that determines everything with regard to the lower level. If we yearn for and focus on the goal of creation, it means that we have a desire that matches it, a point in the heart that is connected to the goal of creation and not to nice, worldly social urges. Our work on the way to the end of correction is basically to rely on the principle of “Israel, the Torah, and the Creator are one.” This means that if the Creator is not part of our plans we will not succeed in anything that we do and all the nice initiatives will turn into futile attempts at establishing communism or kibbutzim and nothing but that.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/08/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam “The Peace”

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The effort and the attempt to understand the structure of the spiritual worlds, is not a theoretical understanding but a desire to feel, to live in them. Understanding can only be internal; just connecting the words in the mind gives one nothing without an understanding of their essence.

So the main thing is your efforts to be incorporated in these concepts and to begin to live within them, to enter into this system, into this matrix, or the opposite, that it will enter into you and “format” you, change you, according to the higher system. This is because you want to discover that you are acting according to its laws.

In the spiritual system these states change immediately, like a perfect and coordinated machine, but within a person many incarnations may pass between two small adjacent states.

The Klipa is like a rubber band that is inserted between the states and stretches them. The Klipa gives us a sense of time and doesn’t make it possible to erase the gap between the levels, between the states. If we were to nullify the Klipa, then time would disappear and all the states would be contracted into one action.

The ability of the person to advance and to develop depends upon how much he can pass through the force of egoism that gives him the sensation of time, movement, and space, to the Returning Light. In this way he nullifies time, movement, and space, and rises from this world to the spiritual state.
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From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/28/13, Talmud Eser Sefirot

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The Torah, “Exodus,” (Mishpatim), 23:2: You shall neither side with the mighty to do wrong—you shall not give perverse testimony in a dispute so as to pervert it in favor of the mighty…

Being on the side of the majority always “bribes” us. People feel powerful when they stay with the majority. It’s implanted in us by nature.

In this case, a person is “bribed” by a different approach: “I need this to disseminate Kabbalah, to correct the world, since the majority of people will listen to me and I will correct them. However, to begin with, I have to establish contact with them and somehow become similar to them.”

I support these things in my students because a teacher has to care about his disciples. Constantly they attempt to persuade me that this attitude is correct. I agree with them, but then I “back track” (trick them out of it) in order to teach them how to work correctly. The contact will happen by all means.

The majority has to “bow” to an individual. In spirituality, everything is delineated by individuality, not by the majority.

Question: In other words, you are not a fan of democracy?

Answer: There is no democracy whatsoever! The world is organized from “top to bottom,” from the leader to the masses. The masses have to follow the leader. The leader has to aspire to the Creator. The leader is the one who is under the Creator. We see where democracy leads us. I hope that people finally will understand that a rigid hierarchy of justice has to come into existence.

Laws that act in nature are called justice. It’s not something that we “invent” on our own, but rather something that we learn and receive from nature.

The entire hierarchy that was made by the Creator, the Upper Light, represents justice. If in our eyes it is not so, then it means that we have to alter our properties. When we manage to change ourselves, we’ll agree with this notion. When we agree, we’ll see that it’s true perfection.
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From Kab TV’s “Mysteries of the Eternal Book,” 6/24/13

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The law is very simple, we cannot get to know our root unless we reach a form that is opposite from the Creator. It’s impossible to get to know something if we don’t have a deficiency for it. First we have to build the vessel, the desire, the revelation of the deficiency. The revelation of the deficiency has to be opposite from the following attainment.

It’s a very simple principle, but we cannot accept it since we want to receive something, to feel the pleasure internally, and we forget that we don’t have a deficiency for spirituality. Only the natural deficiency is evoked in our world and every creature feels a need to live and to enjoy. So we usually don’t worry about a deficiency. Only when a certain problem suddenly comes up do we understand how complicated it is. The doctor tells a patient that he has to eat something, but the patient has no appetite and cannot even swallow a tiny bit.

In our world the deficiencies are usually revealed by themselves and we only have to try to fulfill them and to attain what is missing. In spirituality it’s the exact opposite. First we have to acquire a deficiency for spirituality and then there is no problem fulfilling it. In our world we chase pleasures, while in spirituality, we have to chase the deficiency for the pleasure. The pleasure is abundant since the Upper Light is in a state of absolute rest.

This is a very important principle since we make a great effort trying to attain the filling. However, we shouldn’t think about the filling but about the right deficiency! We work in order to fill the deficiency that we already have, but we should understand the very simple fact that we need to reach the deficiency in order to receive the right deficiency and not the filling. It’s a very important point.

The Creator has prepared infinite treasures for us, but we don’t even look in the right direction. It’s just like trying to convince a child that you have prepared many delicacies for him, different delicious dishes, but he doesn’t even want to see them since he has a certain idea and he thinks about something else and doesn’t even hear you calling him.

We are behaving in the exact same way now. So our goal is to want what the Creator has prepared for us and then we will receive everything! But all our prayers are only that He should give us more and more! These are the requests of a child who doesn’t understand anything. What else can He give us? Here take it, it’s all before you! Why are you asking for something else if the Creator already serves everything into your mouth? Just swallow it. But we are confused and we look the other way.

The psychological shift from looking for pleasure to looking for a deficiency is called the transition from Lo Lishma (not for its sake) to Lishma (for its sake). Only after we begin to worry about bestowal upon the Creator for His sake, for the sake of the created beings, do we understand that we need a deficiency and not a filling. It’s a very important moment.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/12/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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