Entries in the 'Spiritual Work' Category

Awakening Desire in the Friends

528.01Question: Some of your students are at their workplaces during the lesson, for example, in the studio engaged in broadcasting or something else. When asked if they ever come to class, many answer: “I fall asleep there, but here I at least I am working.” How can such students behave in the correct way?

Answer: If during this time a person creates some kind of socially useful product, then let it be.

Question: And if he does not create anything, but simply sits in his familiar place?

Answer: Never mind. He nevertheless somehow participates; he is included with us in the common process. It is really hard to be at the lesson. A person is tired in the evening or wakes up early; it is cold or conversely hot, and this makes him sleepy. I understand all these problems so I am very patient with them; it does not bother me at all.

Question: But on the other hand you say that we should not turn a blind eye to this; we should take care of the friends. After all he could leave the path in this manner.

Answer: You are his friends. You should try. Talk to each other and bring it up for discussion. This is your job, not mine.

Question: But how, can you pull them out by force? On the one hand you say that you need to give a person freedom of choice, but at the same time we should pull him up and not let him fall.

Answer: The main thing is desire. Try to awaken desire in him.

Question: Do you have any examples of how you awakened desires in other people?

Answer: No. I acted in accordance with Rabash’s instructions. I took a few veteran students, trained them as teachers, put new students with them, and they taught them. We studied with Rabash, and those who dozed during his lessons were teaching newcomers and thus did not fall asleep.

Therefore, for a person who falls asleep in his place at the computer I would definitely arrange such classes for him to teach. In this case, he will have to study. Moreover, it will motivate him to work and to connect with the rest.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Revival of the Dead” 12/12/13

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Rubicon of Rabash

917.01When I came to Rabash, he used to write some interesting little notes, for himself. He believed that there was no one to pass them on to. Such a human condition is difficult to explain. He did not allow his students to write anything down.

As soon as I started writing something down, he would stop talking. Then I said: “I am a student; if I do not write, I do not hear. I have to go from ear to pen.” I bought him with this.

We explained to him that this is the way they study at the university: the professor speaks from the lectern, and you sit and take notes because there are a thousand books but you need exactly what he teaches. Then Rabash reluctantly agreed.

Then I slowly convinced him that we needed to record him on a tape recorder. It was a problem similar to the gradual transition from the state of exile to the state of revelation.

I saw how difficult it was for him to cross this rubicon. To give up the state of exile when you are sitting alone in a corner studying The Book of Zohar and Kabbalah, and then you start to come out. It was very hard for him!

I started making drawings, tape recordings, and written recordings. Gradually the material began to accumulate, and I was absolutely sure that I was not collecting it for myself.

After all, when a person develops, he does not need this. We never look at past material. We need the next one, the future.

Although if you look at the past material, you will see how much you reveal there. But life is arranged in such a way that each day should be new despite the fact that you can take much more from yesterday. This is how the beginning and the end of the path are formed.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 2/12/10

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The Time of Global Spiritual Ascent

944Comment: You said that only connection between students will lead them to a spiritual breakthrough.

My Response: It seems to me that today there can be no other approach to spirituality; it will not work.

Question: Why can’t it happen again that you work with one student who will remain after you and lead everyone forward as it was with you and Rabash?

Answer: Neither I nor any of my students are inclined to start such personal work.

Question: Was Rabash inclined to this?

Answer: He had no other choice and neither did I. I say this absolutely precisely.

In addition, there were prerequisites that I really, really wanted this, although by nature I was completely different. There are people who know how to “place” themselves under another and at the same time feel comfortable and good.

I am absolutely not one of those people. I am a person who creates, commands, sees ahead—wrongly or not, that is another matter—but who wants to implement and generate something new. This is not a student who adapts to the teacher and like a small fish swims next to a big fish. It happened from above.

I think that today because of the global spiritual ascent that is taking place in humanity, this is simply impossible.

I have ten, maybe fifteen people I can rely on. If they work together with each other, not each one separately but only together, they will become the spiritual center that will be able to lead the world further.

Only their common effort to work together, to manage together, and to teach humanity together will bear even greater fruits than I did.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 2/12/10

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Similar Mentality

721.01Question: Why did Rabash choose you?

Answer: It does not depend on the person. It does not depend on anyone, only on the general system.

Comment: You, a person with two higher education degrees who was born in Belarus, came to an old man who did not study anywhere.

My Response: It does not matter at all.

By the way, we had a common mentality. I was born in Vitebsk, and he was born in Warsaw. At that time, Poland and this part of the USSR were somehow connected. My father even had Polish citizenship since this territory was annexed to Russia only before the war.

So what do I want to say? Even the names of food, drinks, and household utensils were very close and understandable to Rabash. He liked the food my wife cooked. In this regard, we understood each other well. Our mentality was very similar.

I do not know how it would have been with Baal HaSulam because this is, of course, a completely different spiritual level. But on the physical level I am sure it would have been the same.

It helps. Still, the mentality is very important for a student who is at a small level.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 2/12/10

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The State of Our World

254.01The need and necessity for the long cascading to this world will be explained below, that this great labor of turning the form of reception into the form of bestowal can only be conceived in this world (Baal HaSulam, The Study of the Ten Sefirot, Part 1, “Inner Observation,” Chapter 4, Item 20).

Question: What is this state called our world, and how come the form of bestowal can only be acquired from it?

Answer: On one hand our world is the lowest of the worlds; it is very distant from the qualities of the Creator, the qualities of bestowal, and exists completely in the quality of reception. On the other hand, by using a mechanism called the Torah, that is, the upper light, which comes to us and makes it possible to acquire the quality of bestowal, we can gradually rise from the quality of reception to the quality of bestowal and thus come closer to the Creator.

Question: But why specifically from the state of our world? What is so special about it?

Answer: Our world is opposite to the upper world, opposite to the Creator. While we exist in it, we can act the way the quality of reception dictates to us. Then, gradually we acquire also the qualities of bestowal. First, we acquire the quality of receiving in order to receive, and then receiving in order to bestow. Thus, we become equivalent to the Creator.

Our world is a special state where we exist only in reception, initially not understanding what real, absolute bestowal is. It is from the opposite state that we can understand what it is. But first we need to fully understand what reception is.
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From KabTV’s “The Study of the Ten Sefirot (TES)” 12/4/22

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With One Spirit

961.2Question: What was your attitude toward Rabash? Was it as a son to a father, that he is a close, dear person to you? Or was it more a feeling that over the years of study you must take everything from him to pass on? What prevailed: the attitude of the son to the father or the student to the teacher?

Answer: Of course, the son. There was a very serious, very clear sense of relationship between us. He felt that my house was his home. My wife cooked for him, washed his clothes, and knitted things for him. It was a very close relationship.

When I first came to him, one evening before classes I saw that his students were passing a letter of Baal HaSulam from hand to hand. It was an article that was later included in the collection “Shamati.”

When I asked him, “Where do I get it and how do I understand it?”, he replied: “The most important thing for you is to achieve the study of “peh el peh” (mouth to mouth).”

For a long time I didn’t understand what these words meant. That is, I heard that this is supposedly a state of study, but I didn’t know what it was, what it is like. Later I realized that “peh el peh” is a single soul when a student adapts to the teacher in everything.

It is very difficult to come to this because there are huge counter forces. It is not just like in a calm atmosphere—we are together and that is it. This is working against huge interference
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 2/12/10

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First Mind, Then Feelings

525Question: Any book leaves a person with a set of impressions. As one reads, a person’s imagination soars and depicts all kinds of things.

You said Kabbalistic books leave the same impression on different people. Did I understand correctly that they give such a clear imprint of certain states that fantasy has no place here?

Answer: Of course not. On the contrary, when a person begins to study Kabbalah all sorts of fantasies gradually disappear, a person becomes very grounded, engages in science, and understands that he exists in a system of forces, and he needs to learn to interact with them.

The more we advance and study man, the less we fantasize. What fantasies?! These are all kinds of electric fields in our brain that affect our biological forms. At the same time, some chemicals get released that also interact with each other, and so on.

That is, there are no feelings. There will be feelings, but only when they become independent of matter. After all, being given something to smell, for example, will produce certain sensations. This shows how much our feelings depend on the processes that occur in us.

While we must rise above these processes with pure logic. Pure logic—after the restriction (screen and reflected light), when I come into contact with the one upper force, with all my strength and scrutiny, and start working together with it on the basis called Zivug de haka’a (coupling).

On one hand, the coupling is a rejection because I reject my ego, but do not discard it, I do not destroy it, but simply push it away to connect with the upper force. And to the extent that I can include my ego, that is, my correctly aimed desires, I include them.

This is a very exact science, there are no sentiments in Kabbalah. It contains precise laws, formulas, forces, and their mutual rapprochement and distancing, and how by connecting with each other at different levels, they form all kinds of shapes: right and left lines. This way, certain feelings are evoked but only to control this process.

We rise from one sensation to another until we begin to feel the Creator. But all these feelings are not in us, not in our ego, but in the quality of bestowal that we develop in ourselves. It is an upper reasoning that is not based on our feelings because feelings come after reason.

First, the mind evolves, which develops self-control, understanding of all actions, and only after that does a feeling from you emerge. This is a completely different level of existence—beyond our present nature.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Recommended Books” 12/12/13

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Mutual Work

281.02Question: How can students ask questions so as not to distract everyone from the lesson?

Answer: Students should ask on the topic, what they are desperate for, and for more clarification about the material we are studying. Moreover, asking questions is optional when they need to clarify something.

Even if they do not have such an urgent need, but they understand that this question is now appropriate, then they should ask.

And it will help me to explain. Maybe I myself did not feel that it was necessary to scrutinize more here. We have to work together.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Ask a Kabbalist a Question” 3/6/13

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From the General Though of Creation

151Comment: Let’s say you start a dialogue with a student and can talk with him for an hour. You say that this is for the benefit of the group.

My Response: It is not him I am talking to. What does he have to do with it? He only awakens this topic, this desire, but this is not he himself, and I am, in a way, answering not to him.

I am talking about the group, about the Creator, about the world, about correction, connection, integrity, and about the way to bring it all to one common system in which the entire universe will be revealed to all of humanity. What does the student have to do with it? It is just that the required awakening came through him, and he voiced a question to which I should give an answer.

I do not look at the student at all. Through him, a question comes to me from somewhere, from the general thought of creation, from the common system. I now need to adjust this system a little, to twist a couple of resistors, a capacitor, a coil, an oscillating circuit, and make some adjustments. This is what I am doing.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Ask a Kabbalist a Question” 12/21/13

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When Does Shame Disappear?

294.1Any receiver of a present is ashamed when receiving it due to the disparity of form from the Root since the root does not have that form of reception.

In order to correct this, He created this world where the soul comes and clothes a body. Through engagement in Torah and Mitzvot [commandments] in order to bring contentment to his Maker, the soul’s vessels of reception are inverted into vessels of bestowal (Baal HaSulam, The Study of the Ten Sefirot, Part 1, “Inner Observation,” Chapter 4, Item 20).

With the help of the mechanism of Torah and Mitzvot [commandments], we evoke the light upon ourselves, and it changes our intentions from reception to bestowal. This brings us closer to the Creator, and then shame disappears.

Question: Why?

Answer: If we become similar to Him, where would shame come from?

Question: But nevertheless, the Creator remains the giver and we are receivers. Why does shame disappear?

Answer: If you transform the will to receive into receiving for the sake of bestowal, then you become a giver, and you do not have any feeling of shame. On the contrary, you experience a feeling of pride.
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From KabTV’s “The Study of the Ten Sefirot (TES)” 12/4/22

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