Question: What is the difference between group prayer and individual prayer?

Answer: It is an entire system. The fact is that if we turn to the Creator, then it is very important for us that our prayer be collective and mutual, and that it comes from many people, not from one person.

When a person connects with other people, he tunes himself in such a way that the Creator can hear him. If he asks alone, then his prayer is ineffective.

Question: Do you mean being with other people physically?

Answer: Not necessarily physically. The main thing is for a person to feel that he is connected with the others and wants to combine his request with the request of many people.

Question: There is even a prayer called “The Prayer of Many.” Explain what this means. That is, should I pray for many and not for myself?

Answer: Yes. When a person asks for many, this is the most effective prayer.

Question: What do you need to ask?

Answer: For goodness, correction, coming closer to the Creator, and so on.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 9/25/22

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The Memorial Day of Baal HaSulam, Rav Yehuda Ha-Levi Ashlag is a special event. After all, it is dedicated to a unique person, a very special soul who descended in order to connect us with the Creator. He no longer needed this work for himself, just for us.

Baal HaSulam opened the path for the possibility of contact with the spiritual for souls who descend into this world in the last generation. It is us who are the coarsest souls with the greatest egoism, which could not be corrected until now. And our duty is to correct it with the help of the methodology that Baal HaSulam left us.

The teaching of Baal HaSulam, his method of correction, is a very great light that every person can attract to himself. Baal HaSulam spoke, explained, taught, and described to us all the steps for the proper advancement of our souls to correction, so that we could connect them together and thus realize our destiny.

Thanks to the work of Baal HaSulam, even the most ordinary person following his method can achieve connection with the Creator, as if he is an outstanding expert of the Torah. And before him, only great experts of the Torah were awarded this.

The correction of souls in the process of human development went step by step. Before Baal Shem Tov, it was necessary to be very exalted people with unusually high souls in order to attain the upper force and achieve connection with the Creator. And after Baal Shem Tov, it became easier in a way, the upper lights approached the lower souls. Therefore, low souls have more opportunities to attain the greatness of light, the greatness of the Creator.

The further humanity progresses, the easier it becomes for us to approach the sources of the upper light and reveal them.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/7/22, “Baal HaSulam Memorial Day”

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Repentance (Teshuva) is the main content of the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur) because this is the main thing we need to do to return to the place, to the state, in which we existed before the sin of Adam. This is our goal and purpose, our duty to return to exactly the place where we were and then fell.

We were all in adhesion with the Creator, inside Him like an embryo in mother’s womb. Then we fell from this stage of adhesion into our egoism, and now we have to return from one pole to the other.

After all, now everyone thinks only about himself and cannot think about anyone else unless it is profitable for him. However, we are not able to take care of others selflessly, simply love and help each other by giving ourselves to others.
In order to return to the state we were in, we need to change our egoistic nature, which we received as a result of the shattering and separation, as a result of falling from that high place.

Rabash writes: “Repentance refers to Adam HaRishon prior to the sin being adhered, but became removed because of the sin. Hence, each and every one, because he is a part of the soul of Adam HaRishon, must approach spirituality once more,” that is, return to its root, to the state where he was before the sin.

This is an extremely exalted state where we are inside the Creator and adhered to Him like an embryo inside the mother. It is impossible to even imagine such an exalted state, but we must come to it and we certainly will. That is why we are so happy to be in a group that is learning and yearning to implement this return, and we are firmly confident that we will reach it soon.

First of all, we need to study what thoughts and feelings dwell in us today, and then we will learn how to correct our heart and mind in order to come closer to the state we were in before sinning, before falling and distancing from the Creator. How did it happen that we fell from spirituality as if there was a miscarriage and the mother lost the child? The same thing happened to us when we fell and were distanced from the Creator. But today, we have a happy opportunity to return back to Him!
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/4/22, “Yom Kippur—The Day of Atonement”

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Comment: Yom Kippur is the day of atonement, the day of judgment, the day of forgiveness. It has many names. It is the most important day and even secular Jews in Israel celebrate it. On this day, highways are empty and children ride their bikes peacefully. Everything stops.

People scan the year that they have lived, they check, and think it over. They even say that there is such a rule from above that you have to check it because you are being sealed for the next year.

My Response: Yes. Humble yourself and check all your actions over the past year.

Question: What does it mean to check all your deeds over the past year?

Answer: How good and kind you were to others. Because if you have any problems with others, then no judgment will redeem you. So it is said! You have to ask everyone for forgiveness and check all your actions toward connection with others.

Question: One should perceive it directly like this?

Answer: Yes, directly! That’s how it is written and that’s how I take it.

Comment: Meaning, if I hated someone, or I snapped at someone, I did some nasty things to someone…

My Response: I’m letting go.

Question: “I’m letting go” in the sense that I am in some way apologizing to them?

Answer: There are some people to whom I cannot turn and ask for forgiveness. I do it within myself. Ostensibly, I apologize to them, although I know that I cannot approach them, I cannot approach them in any way, but I apologize.

Question: Is this to say, it is required from above?

Answer: Not just from above. This is a very serious psychological action that helps a person evaluate his attitude to the world, to life, and to people.

Question: Does it give some kind of purification to a person?

Answer: Of course. I know that I have to apologize now and come out of this state in such a way that everyone will forgive me.

Question: And if I really don’t want to forgive? If I know he’s a scoundrel?

Answer: It doesn’t matter.

Question: So even to the one who offended me, I apologize to him as well?

Answer: Yes, even if he is such a scoundrel as you say, you still need to apologize as if you are to blame for all this. And how do you know? Maybe it is so.

Comment: You’re talking in such a way now, as if it’s a world holiday. You don’t add the word “Jews” or “Israel” here, as if it applies to every person.

My Response: In general, everyone should have it. This is indicated for the Jewish people, but I believe that everyone should have a day of atonement.

Not necessarily at the same time. On different days or different times of the year, but every nation and every person should experience it as if he really is before the court and is obliged to ask for forgiveness from everyone!

Question: On this day I am judged for my character?

Answer: Yes!

Question: What should I be like?

Answer: I have to be like the Creator.

I should strive to not do evil to anyone and not to hold evil against anyone and I must be ready to do good at any time of day or night. The most important thing is to come to love the Creator through love for people.

Question: So one way or another, the end point is love for the Creator? From the love of creatures to the love of the Creator? Is this the most important formula?

Answer: Yes.

Question: But if a person does not feel the Creator and does not believe in Him?

Answer: It doesn’t matter at all. All people, from the age of maturity onward, who are considered adults (women at 12 years old and men at 13 years old), are obliged in some way to sanctify themselves. Sanctify is from the word “light” and the word “holiness.”

Comment: There are judgment day prayers. What is more effective: a prayer that is written or a prayer that is in the heart when a person sits, thinks, and prays?

My Response: Undoubtedly, the one that is in the heart. What the sages wrote, they wrote. But the way I think and what I would write, as it is said, “Write on your heart,” is much stronger.

Question: What would you wish now, on this day of judgment, toward this complicated world of ours?

Answer: I would wish the world peace.

Starting with a person in himself, with friends, with relatives, and ending with absolutely everyone, the most remote up to the very last person in the world, so that the whole globe is covered with forgiveness and that we would never let our egoism rule over us again. Then everything will be fine!

Question: So I have to come to the conclusion that egoism dominates us?

Answer: Yes, of course. The entire Yom Kippur consists in the trial of egoism.

Question: So I identify the enemy on this day?

Answer: Undoubtedly.

Question: It’s not the neighbor, it’s me. And then my request is to get out?

Answer: Free me from this evil inclination in me.

Question: And this is called the best spent Yom Kippur?

Answer: Yes. When I sit, think about it all, and decide that I don’t want to use it anymore, and I ask the Creator to free me from it.
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From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 9/29/22

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Without Rabash’s articles, we would not know how to properly attune ourselves to the goal and to connect with Baal HaSulam who gives us academic advice from a great spiritual height.

We are not able to extract the details for our connection from there in order to take even one step in practically implementing it. Rabash starts right from the beginning and explains every step to us. After that we can better understand and implement Baal HaSulam’s methodology.

When we come to the direct realization of Kabbalah, the practice of revealing the Creator, the articles of Rabash and The Book of Zohar become essential for us.

Rabash’s articles help us form the right intention and The Book of Zohar helps us attract the light that reveals the spiritual world to this intention. Rabash did something that no Kabbalist had done before him; he described all the stages of a person’s inner work, the practical implementation of the Torah.

He was the only one in the entire chain of Kabbalists starting from Adam HaRishon who gave a concrete step-by-step explanation of the work of a person and a group, which is so necessary today.

Before him, Kabbalists wrote about their individual attainments because this was the spiritual progress in the era of 2,000 years of concealment and exile from the spiritual.

Before going into exile, people were in spiritual attainment and there was no need to talk about something that each child mastered as he grew.

But today, in order to rise from concealment, we need materials that would orient us to enter the spiritual world and it is possible only by studying Rabash’s articles.

Without Rabash’s articles, we would not have been able to correctly understand other Kabbalistic sources.

Therefore, our work is divided into two parts.

1. Study of Rabash’s articles.

2. If we attune ourselves correctly, then we turn to The Book of Zohar or The Study of the Ten Sefirot and can already work with them correctly as we attract the correcting light.

Rabash was very discreet and modest and always kept in the shadow of his great father. All his strength and might were hidden deep inside, so it was impossible to see anything from the outside.

He was the first to teach Kabbalah to non-religious people without any distinction in origin and he considered it very important to disseminate Kabbalah widely.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson, 9/11/10

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Baal HaSulam had students whom he was holding at a spiritual degree. When he died, they fell from it. The same can be true for our students. Now they are at a certain degree, but when I will cease to exist…I do not even want to think how this can continue.

Naturally, the force that holds them will fall and they will not be able to maintain contact with me in the spiritual space. They will fall. This is the case with all Kabbalists and their students.

Comment: But you have students who have been studying with you for fifteen or twenty years.

My Response: It does not depend on time. To do this, one must be infinitely devoted to the teacher. Therefore, people prefer the son to take the place of his father. After all, a son, as a rule, does not go against the father. He follows him, and does not want to harm his father because from the point of view of egoism, this is also his possession.

Any other person, however, envies, thinks about himself, instinctively wants to exalt himself at your expense. This is what we need to overcome. This is how we are created, nothing can be done about this. But at the same time, therein lies the problem. It takes a lot of time and effort, until the student overcomes his “I” and merges with the teacher inside the teacher, only a few are capable of this.

The rest, however, are also advancing, it does not matter, each person performs his own function. But someone manages to follow the spiritual line after the teacher, someone else does not.

Rabash did it with Baal HaSulam. Nobody else succeeded in that. Nobody! I spoke with eyewitnesses, they said: “After Baal HaSulam died, all his disciples, except for Rabash…” Of course, they did something: they met, studied, taught others, but it was clear that all this was, what is called, ordinary courses for the general population.

The same is true about times after Rabash. I stepped aside, I did not want to deal with anyone. Then I was pulled into one group, there were only five or six people who forcibly made me their teacher, I did not want this. It is not that I did not know how, but I had to give up what I had and would ruin myself.

In general, everything is arranged from heaven. Then it turned out that gradually students began to gather who wanted me to teach them at least once a week. It probably was just the fact that the time had come.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. Dr. Laitman’s Prophecy” 6/25/13

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In the process of spiritual development, there is a special state called Yom Kippur (from the word “kapara” – “redemption”), which means the correction of all sins for which a person repents and asks to be corrected.

After all, it is clear that we ourselves cannot correct anything, and the sins we have committed are not ours at all because it is the Creator who created the evil inclination that rules over us and forces us to sin.

We are not guilty that we are immersed in egoism, which every time pushes us to think only about ourselves and not about others or about the Creator. Therefore, both sins and their correction are not our fault and not our merit because the Creator does everything. He has prepared all the sins and all the corrections against them for us, and we are between one and the other, like in a vice.

Our work is to relate everything to the Creator, both the sins and the corrections. We can only connect sin with correction when we can understand and feel that both of them come from the Creator and not from us. The Creator is above sins and above corrections. This is a special higher power above everything.

That is why Yom Kippur is a day of special joy that allows us to rise even higher above creation, to connect with the higher power, and to reach its level. All the sins and all the egoism that have been created by the Creator and the corrections that are achieved thanks to Him are necessary for us to understand the step that is above the evil and good inclinations, that is, to understand the Creator, who cannot be attained in any other way.

The Creator is separated from all creation, and it is possible to attain this essence only in this way, through the experience of our separation to the fullest extent. When we unite with each other, we unite with the Creator.

We rise above transgressions, above punishment and reward, and make these corrections so that only with their help will we reach the Creator who is detached from the whole creation. The Creator has prepared all these states for us so that we can attain Him: one, unique, and unified.

Yom Kippur is the main symbol of the process of attaining the upper force that is detached from the whole creation.

Without unification, without thoughts about the entire world Kli, and without thoughts about mutual help and about all of humanity it is impossible to achieve even the smallest spiritual revelation. All nations are destined to rise above their individual egoism and return to the system of Adam HaRishon, to become like one person, like one desire.

Yom Kippur is a spiritual state in which a person reveals that his transgression is that he thought he himself was transgressing and did not see that everything comes from the Creator. Meaning, he did not recognize that “There is none else besides Him.”

He thought he was doing everything by himself and he evaluated his thoughts and desires in his egoism. But now a person wants to correct his mistakes, all these impure discernments that are not related to the one, unique, and unified upper force. And this is what he prays and asks the Creator for.

This is the essence of the judgment day (translated literally, but usually it is called the Day of Atonement)—the day on which a person wants to atone and correct all the states and clarifications that he could not attribute to the upper force. After all, our whole job is to attribute everything that happens in the world to the upper force and to consider ourselves to be only a creation controlled by it one hundred percent.

The ascent of 125 spiritual steps is an increasing identification of oneself with the upper force until complete unification with it. When we completely correct the Kelim, which was intentionally broken by the Creator, and raise it to His level, then we will be ready to begin the true path to understand and unify with the Creator.

But these are secrets of the end of correction. When we achieve this together—all the creations who are now in this world and those who are not in it—then we will go further and find out what the Creator has prepared for us after the final correction.

In Yom Kippur we reveal that not only good, but also evil comes from the Creator and they have equal value. A person should bless for evil as well as for good because due to both of these forces he attains unification with the Creator.

This unification with the higher power is our common single goal, and therefore any past state must be perceived as an invitation for unification. It doesn’t matter what I feel or what happens in my mind, my heart, my body, or in my relationships, by this I am shown where I can add and strengthen the unification with the upper force.

The meaning of fasting on Yom Kippur is that we act only by the power of faith without using the power of reception.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson, 9/26/20

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If I annul myself before the friends, it already indicates that I have faith in the Creator. Therefore, by annulling ourselves before the friends, we can come closer to the Creator. After all, the Creator does not exist without created beings. If we connect, then our connection is called the Creator. We create Him ourselves and work with Him.

The united group is like a radio telescope that captures influence from the higher degree. An ordinary person cannot feel it, but a united ten receives this special, unattainable force from above. This force is revealed inside the ten, which acts like a radar, a satellite dish, that detects this upper quality.

Without such a group, we will not be able to reach the revelation of the Creator. Only by connecting with each other in a certain way do we create, rotate and adjust this radar dish, our common desire, so as to catch inside it what is called the Creator, that is, “come and see” (Bo-Reh).

The Creator Himself is above our attainment and the only way to reveal Him is to connect with each other and tune ourselves to Him, similar to the way any radio receiver can only receive the incoming wave but not the transmitter itself. Therefore, there is nothing more important than our connection because it leads us to connection with the Creator.

No matter how much I try to adjust my desires alone, in the end I realize that I will not be able to reach connection with the Creator and I need a connection with the friends. After all, only through them will I be able to come to connection with the Creator. I myself am the last Sefira, Malchut, and my friends are the first nine Sefirot, which through this address, the Creator reaches me.

A necessary condition for prayer is to become so integrated into the friends that we feel that within our connection we can receive a message from the Creator. When I catch this message, I want to answer it together with my friends. Through it we can rise and reach real contact with the Creator.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/3/22, “Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement)”

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Question: Do you have no fear of suddenly stepping somewhere aside?

Answer: What kind of fear can there be? Fear of what? That something will lure me somewhere? What can attract me?! Give me any people, even the smartest, or give me any other method in the world. And then what? Would that attract me? Will any religion or mysticism fool me?! What can tempt me in this world?

Comment: But you once said that temptations are waiting for us at every step.

My Response: True, but you do not have to go anywhere for this, they will be given to you in any condition.

Comment: I mean the danger of straying if you suddenly have some needs that distract you.

My Response: Which ones? Watch a movie, go to the opera, take a walk in nature, see a beautiful city? I have seen it all, I have been everywhere.

I visit many places, enjoy them, admire them, and understand that this is a creation of human hands, understand how it was made and with what perseverance and thoroughness people worked on it. At the same time I understand what a person invested his work into? Whom did he worship? Who needs his beautiful works? Architecture, culture, art. For whom? What for?

This does not capture me because all this is on a small level of our world, a futile attempt by a person to perpetuate himself and to somehow express himself, I would say, in a rather dead form.

How much work you need to invest at the inanimate level of your development in order to then rise a little to another level!

Today we also erect monuments to various people. In principle, this is the oldest worship of the alleged immortality of man.
This is idol worshiping because we cannot be connected with the spirit of man. I understand the desire to thank, the desire to elevate, the desire to leave in memory. But in what?! Humanity has nothing else.

I hope that our time will turn us around a bit.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. How to Protect Yourself?” 6/25/13

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It is better for a person engaged in Kabbalah to be in a state where he feels that he is not connected enough with the group. Then he will at least have a clear understanding of what else he needs to do. It is very important. It is better to feel yourself always lagging behind in spiritual work so that it spurs you on.

Imagine a group of good enthusiasts who feel that they are lagging behind, but they have to catch up with someone by all means. They are engaged in some serious development and are limited in time, but they have very big desires. This is very good.

Comment: But a person can fall into deep despair from this.

My Response: Well, let him fall. Do not look for any tricks, maybe you could do this or maybe you can do that. We are talking about the laws of nature. You match them—yes, you do not match them—no.

There is nothing here that you can turn over and somehow wriggle out: “I did it!” You will succeed only when you change yourself according to this level. That is it! Nothing else.

So there is no place for searching for any other ways, “maybe there is something else,” except for clear conditions that we are constantly scrutinizing. And they are the same.

All this only leads a person away, gives him some hope that suddenly he will read something, wriggle out somewhere, jump up somewhere and grab.

There is a group, and there is a connection between friends. You do it—yes, you do not do it—no.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call. It’s Better to Be Behind” 7/7/13

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