Since in Ein Sof it is He is One and His Name One, and since there is no place and vessel (meaning our desire) apparent there at all, no mind of a created being can attain Him, for there is no attainment without a vessel (Baal HaSulam, Study of the Ten Sefirot, Part 1, Chapter 2, Item 30).

Question: What does it mean “there is no attainment without a vessel”?

Answer: We must change our desire so that it is similar to the Creator, but how can we do this if we are created beings?

Therefore the influence of the light on our desire gives it an intention. If our intention matches the intention of the Creator, then we come closer to Him, and to this extent we can feel Him, contact Him, and be filled with Him.

It means that the most important thing is not the desire itself. The desire to enjoy is the primordial desire of creation itself, and it remains. But we can change our intentions for whose sake we enjoy, for ourselves or for the Creator (there are only two of these possibilities).

If we can change our intention from receiving pleasure for our own sake to receiving pleasure for the sake of the Creator, then we will become like the Creator in this; as the Creator wants to bring contentment to us, so we want to bring contentment to Him. To this extent, we will begin to feel Him.
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From KabTV’s “The Study of the Ten Sefirot (TES)” 10/2/22

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Question: The Creator does not have the opportunity to do what we can do. Why can’t He do this job?

Answer: Because then we will not be able to feel what He wants us to feel.

We will not be able to consist of the two parts of nature at the same time: receiving and giving. After all, we only comprehend the Creator in opposites, as light from darkness. Everything is attained in contrast, in opposition.

Question: But if there is none else but Him, why can’t He implement the program that He Himself created?

Answer: The fact is that if we do not go through all the preliminary stages of our development, we will not accumulate the necessary sensations of opposite qualities in ourselves.

Everything consists of the accumulation of sensations and the awareness of opposites and their connection. If I know that this is darkness and this is light, and at the same time I can feel one against the other, then based on their multiple contradictions I consist of a huge amount of sensations and knowledge. By comparing them with each other, I recall from my memory all possible combinations of them, and based on this I become able to feel the opposite of me.

Therefore, I accumulate these feelings in myself; I experience them myself. And it cannot be explained. There are a lot of clever answers and questions, but all of them still do not explain anything because if a person is not in the feeling of “what does light mean against darkness,” he does not understand what it is about. After all, we are in different shades of only one egoistic quality.

There is no light at all in our world. There are various greater and lesser egoistic qualities. But they are different only in their egoism and not in comparison with something opposite to it.  Therefore we have nothing to compare them with. We live only in the egoistic quality from 100 percent, although we are far from it, to zero.

In fact, we are in a very shallow zone of egoism. We wallow in it and that is it. We cannot go lower, because there are such huge egoistic desires that simply scare us away because we will have to make a lot of effort to realize them. That is why we live on a little egoism; the day has passed, and it is good. This is our life.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. See What Doesn’t Exist” 8/30/13

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Question: You are saying that it takes 15 to 20 years to attain spirituality. Is it possible to hasten it?

Answer: If you have a very serious environment around you, then it is possible.

I hope that we are creating a completely new environment for ourselves, which will work very intensively for us. For the first time in history, we are forming an environment not only from those who understand and know toward what they are going, but from ones who are completely ignorant and do not understand, that is, from a part of the 99% of the seven billion.

They follow us, they join us like little children. But there are many of them, billions of them, and therefore, they bring us their vast desires, although at a very low level.

But the fact is that they are carriers of enormous desires and aspirations, only this is not manifested in them. They have very small, so–called earthly egoism, the upper cut. They have an enormous egoistic potential, but they just sort of take off a very thin upper slice of their egoism, they exist in it and do not want more.

Each person puts himself in a certain “window” and he lives in it from plus to minus, which he determines by himself.

If he agrees to a bigger plus and minus, then this already is a bigger search, and he has a different, more interesting life. Like, for example, poets, composers, and scientists who are concerned not with purely animalistic, egoistic needs, but with somewhat larger, more abstract ones.

Therefore, we divide all the needs of a person into food, sex, family, money, honor, and knowledge. The higher the need, the higher the person.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Making Good Use of Others” 9/3/13

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Question: Baal HaSulam wrote The Study of the Ten Sefirot as a textbook for beginners. In addition to the original text and comments on the book The Tree of Life, he made explanations called “Inner Light” and “Inner Observation,” and also compiled “Questions and Answers” to clarify the meaning of words, terms, and spiritual actions. This is a complete textbook.

Are there any other books similar to The Study of the Ten Sefirot? As far as I know, all the other books are written quite differently.

Answer: The Study of the Ten Sefirot is a special compilation based on the book of the Ari’s The Tree of Life and is its complete commentary. There is nothing to add or take away. This is a complete statement of what the Ari wanted to say in his book The Tree of Life. Baal HaSulam really showed how deeply he understands the Ari and continues him. It is not for nothing that we believe that the soul of the Ari was incarnated in Baal HaSulam.

Question: Was it in the character of Baal HaSulam to write a Kabbalistic work in such a form as a textbook at a university with questions and answers? Or did he just want it to look like a textbook?

Answer: Firstly, he wanted it to be closer to a textbook since he was already writing for our generation.

Secondly, he would not have otherwise been able to explain thoroughly in detail what the Ari wanted to say: how a desire is born that is controlled by light, how it can react correctly to it, and through successive actions come to a complete similarity to light.

Thus, the textbook The Study of the Ten Sefirot contains an absolutely complete collection of the actions of desire regarding light.

Comment: Baal HaSulam wrote this book in two columns per page so that the eye immediately covers all the information. That is how it looked originally.

My Response: He did not like long lines in general, even when he was writing for himself.

That is, the page was divided into two columns, which can be read in narrow text. This is done so that you can cover the entire line from beginning to end with one glance, without moving your eyes or turning your head.
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From KabTV’s “The Study of the Ten Sefirot (TES)” 10/16/22

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Question: Does the speed of a person’s development and ascent to the spiritual world depend on previous lives and reincarnations?

Answer: Practically it doesn’t. It depends only on you.

Question: Usually people do not have problems with reincarnations; they are fine with this. The only question is whether consciousness remains. If at least something remains of me in the next life, then I can die without any fear.

Answer: As much as you think you can live in others and for others, to that extent you remain.

Question: There are many people who care about their neighbor and have maybe even sacrificed their lives for others’ sake. It is clear that we remember people who made some great discoveries for humanity a thousand or a several thousand years ago. Is it called that they live in us?

Answer: No, it is a poetic form of expression.

People who give themselves to others, that is, who have changed their nature from receiving to bestowing are indeed in a completely different active informational field. They go from negative to positive energy. In this case they have no fear of disappearing at all because they already exist in the quality of bestowal.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 10/9/22

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Question: What is the difference between thought and action? We always judge people by their actions, but thoughts practically produce the same actions. Let’s say a person wants to kill someone, we do not judge him by his thoughts.

Answer: In our world, we judge a person by actions, and in the spiritual world by thoughts. That is the difference. Therefore, we must correct our thoughts, as they say, intention.

Comment: Surely people do terrible things in their thoughts! They would have killed each other already.

My Response: This is why we are below the level of the spiritual world; we do not have its forces; otherwise, we would have taken this force and destroyed the entire world. But you are given the opportunity to have it only to the extent that you can make correct use of it and not in any other case.

The spiritual program is created in such a way that there is always an intention first and only then an action. Therefore, as soon as you may have some bad action and a bad intention before it, you immediately fall from this degree and do not have the strength to move on.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Thoughts and Actions” 9/8/13

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Comment: Before each congress you usually were ill, generally with respiratory diseases. In fact many would be ill. Now there is a period when this passes us by.

My Response: Because we have reached another stage where we agree with unification, dissemination, and expansion and where we have come into good contact with an external force and wish it to become our internal one. We have already passed the stage of opposition.

And since I absorb everything from others, that is why I would get sick. But now the stage of alienation has ended, connection has begun, and not resistance to this and resistance to me. People are more agreeable, more compliant, more attracted, and willing to attain the spiritual in connection with each other. Therefore, there is no cause to get sick! There is no reason.

Question: So, that opposition affected the physiology in this way?

Answer: Of course! This is reflected at the whole level from top to bottom at all levels.

Question: Why did you have to suffer for everyone?

Answer: If I give to everyone, then feedback also passes through me both from top to bottom and from bottom to top.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. There is No Reason to Be Sick!” 8/13/13

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Question: The Kabbalistic term “Lishma” is translated to “for the sake of the Creator.” What does this mean?

Answer: It means that all of creation, which is an egoistic desire for its own sake, must correct itself, change itself, as if to turn itself inside out, in order to do everything not for its own sake, but for the sake of the Creator or for the sake of others, which is basically the same thing.

It is said “From self‒love to love for friends, and then to love for the Creator.” Which means, it is the same thing. Only the meaning of love for the Creator is universal love, beyond all differences between all. And before that, we just practice on the love of friends.

Question: Which means, I should not receive and give for my own sake, but for the sake of others or for the sake of the Creator. Why?

Answer: Because in this case your desires become boundless and you begin to feel in them what the Creator feels: eternity and perfection. It seems like you have to give, but in fact you receive at the same time.

Question: It is like in an organism where every organ gets what it needs and gives everything else away, but thanks to this, life is maintained in the body and everyone benefits from it. Does Kabbalah say that we should all come to this state?

Answer: We must come to the most perfect, best, and greatest fulfillment—knowledge. Therefore, “Kabbalah” is translated from Hebrew as “the science of receiving.”

But this receiving can be limitless, infinite, only if it works together with others.

Question: So this kind of interaction should be between all people?

Answer: Yes. It allows you to get eternal and perfect fulfillment.

Question: What needs to happen for this to occur?

Answer: Recognition of the evil of our current state.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah”

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Question: Does a person born in our world already have an intention? Is he born not just with the desire to receive?

Answer: Yes, but they are small, micro intentions.

Question: We see that a small child has a desire to enjoy. Yet you cannot even say that he enjoys for his own sake. But when he grows up, he shows such, one might say, cunningness that he does it consciously for himself, he consciously uses others. Do we have a desire, a mind, and another function?

Answer: We have mind, desire, and intention. The most important thing is the intention. It determines where a person aspires in his actions.

With the help of the mind, we can change the intention. Desire itself is purely mechanical. But how we can elevate the intention above the desires and change the nature of the desire itself—for our own sake or for the sake of others—is already a human ability.

The mind is a very important function. Thanks to it, we can change our intentions.
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From KabTV’s “The Study of the Ten Sefirot (TES)” 10/2/22

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To bring a person to the degree of a complete righteous means to show him the most terrible, unjust, awful things in the world, and nevertheless, because he ties all that to the Creator as the only force, the only Creator, he justifies them.

It is impossible. Simply impossible! But you must come to this.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 2/17/22

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