A question I received: Why does it sometimes take many years before a person begins to hear about the need to unite?

My Answer: We exist in this process throughout all of history. From one generation to the next, in all our reincarnations, our entire development is meant to bring us to a state where we will be forced to unite. Our whole history began with the breaking of the common soul, our spiritual vessel. From that time on, all these fragments collide with each other, hate each other, and do not understand who they are, where they came from, and why they exist. The most important thing for these fragments is the constant battle between them.

Gradually, step by step, we must come to a thorough understanding that due to our hatred and egoism, we miss out on a lot, in fact, so much so that we must unite. Why? It is because gradually, in the process of our development, we discover that we are connected. We can either kill each other or live together in peace.

However, there is a problem for those who feel an aspiration toward spirituality. The whole world advances toward unity by the path of Beito (in due time). Out of hopelessness, by thinking logically, a person sees that the world must unite. Yet on the other hand, one reveals that we are incapable of it. This is what the whole world feels. Whereas those in whom a point in the heart has awakened begin to hear that we must unite, and that only by uniting can spirituality be reached. However, they do not feel a need for unity. It turns out that some reveal a need to unite, but don’t know how since they have no means for it, while others have the means with the help of which they can unite but lack the inner need for uniting, although the rest of the world has it.

It appears that these two groups, the outer and inner parts, will need to come together and augment each other. We present them with a method of unification, and they give us a need to unite in the same manner that a baby transmits its needs to the parents, and this helps the parents obtain what the baby needs.

Therefore, the external society is the carrier of an inner need for unification, and we are possessors of the method of unification. In this way, we complement each other.

From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/28/10, The Zohar

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A question I received: It’s been said that if one goes to a convention their spiritual advancement is about the same as what they would have advanced between that convention and the last convention. Why is that? Why does someone advance so much during that short, little period of three or four days?

My Answer: Because we come together, we are leaving our work places, our homes, and our families, we take vacation from work, and we spend money for that effort in order to bond. We make efforts in order to acquire something that is beyond this level of life, something higher. It is a fulfillment that is beyond this life.

People, who are willing to give up on so many things, in order to bring themselves to spirituality, simply deserve it. Besides that, they come to unite, so everyone absorbs the strength and forces of everyone else. That kind of embrace is worthy of months and months of studying and even then it is impossible to attain it. I don’t think that a person who doesn’t come to a convention like that is capable of achieving a similar result. It doesn’t matter what he tries to do in life unless on the condition that he is, let’s say in prison or in some situation that doesn’t allow him to come. I have a student, for instance, that is in the North Pole; so, he works from there, and he can’t, really can’t come. Some people are really even in prison and they study with us. They are in prison (because of mistakes they made in the past), so they really can’t come.

But because they are incapable, they will receive whatever we receive from that convention. But if a person has the opportunity to come, even if it requires meeting difficult conditions, if he has the opportunity, I don’t think it’s worthwhile to stay home. It’s just a shame to miss this kind of intense opportunity to make such great advancement.

From an Interview with the Learning Center Director 4/5/10

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A question I received: What does it mean to cause harm to my friend?

My Answer: If it’s a friend in a Kabbalistic group, then I cause harm just by not worrying about uniting with him because I thereby drill a hole in our common “boat,” our common spiritual vessel. Thus, by being idle I already cause him harm.

If I am not working to increase our shared spiritual Kli, or even if I am just a little bit lazy, I inflict harm on others. However, it seems to us that if we’re not beating someone up, killing them, or stealing from them, then everything is ok and what else can anyone ask of us? We don’t understand that we can inflict harm even while being perfectly “good citizens.” Yet, this is insufficient in spirituality. In spirituality, if I don’t spend every moment worrying about how to create a common spiritual vessel, then I don’t have a good attitude to others. The moment I forget about the worry about the common Kli, I become an offender.

There is no intermediate state, but only good or evil. That is the law of the Upper System of our connection.

From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 04/27/10, “Matan Torah”

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A question I received: Students experience the practical side of Kabbalah at the conventions. What is the practical side of Kabbalah?

My Answer: We were born, created in a state where the ego separates us. According to the plan of creation, we must become connected in brotherly love. This is something that is impossible to realize using our own strength because we’re all simple egoists.

Egoistically we can feel only this world. It is whatever each individual perceives in their small egos. Once a person comes out of the ego and actually starts feeling the others, he starts feeling, in this new attitude towards them, a reality called the spiritual world, or the next world, or the upper reality.

This is precisely the very practical thing that we can do together in this kind of convention. It is through that connection between us. We can tangibly feel it. To actually realize that is what we intend to do.

I really hope that it will happen, and if not in this convention then maybe the next one. But we are going towards that and what we’re going to do are really tangible, practical things that the wisdom of Kabbalah writes about, that The Zohar writes about, here and now, on the face of earth, between human beings.

From an Interview with the Learning Center Director 4/5/10

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Advancing toward spirituality occurs only by disproving everything that is corporeal, egoistically reasonable and pleasant – by pushing it away. “Spiritual opinion is opposite to the opinion of an average man,” it is opposite to your current state in the feelings and the logic.

Ascending to the next spiritual degree is like jumping into a chasm while relying completely on the Creator. However, this is not fanaticism; it is acquiring the quality of “faith above reason.” “Jumping off a roof” means that I elevate bestowal above reception. How much am I able to give without leaving anything except what is necessary for myself? If in spite of my desires, my concern for myself, I am able to rise above this in the intention for bestowal, in unification with the group and the world, this means that I am trying to be “above reason.”

By reason we mean desires and thoughts that are roused in me every second by my egoistic qualities. Therefore, I need to try to constantly direct myself to bestowal and unification with the group. After all, only by uniting with each other do we achieve a common field of our mutual bestowal, forming our common desire to bestow, where the Creator is revealed.

We create a field of the Light of Hassadim, the force of a mutual guarantee between us, and in this field, the revelation of the Light of Hochma occurs.

From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah lesson 4/20/10, The Zohar

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A question I received: If I hate the “Egypt” within me, how do I handle this, since it is also a part of me?

My Answer: The whole world is a part within me. I need to examine with what desires, aspirations, inclinations, and forces I can work now in order to advance to the goal; and with what desires, thoughts, and qualities I need to part, to separate myself from, in order to come closer to the goal. I need to elucidate what to draw away from and what to draw closer to. My movement is determined by what I separate myself from and what I connect with.

Since we are talking about our whole, common desire, which I don’t know what to do with, I need to clarify with which desires I wish to unite and which I do not. Our picture of the spiritual world, which we imagine to ourselves, seems similar to our world where we move from one object or place to another. However, in the spiritual world, I exist within one huge desire comprised of many different desires. I am situated in a space filled with desires with no empty spaces between them. There is no space without desires. Therefore, while I am in the uttermost depth of this field of desires where nothing except them exists, I merely need to sort through those desires: which do I wish to connect with and which I do not. This is called movement.

After all, the whole reality is a desire, a Sefira, within which I exist. There is nothing else. There are some desires, with which I am more connected, and others with which I am less connected, and some desires I reject. This is movement in the spiritual world. As I clarify more and more desires and unite with them, this is an “ascent.”

I exist among all of these desires, within matter where I was placed along with a small spark of Light. This spark allows me to scrutinize the desires. Our whole work consists of clarifying the desires within which we exist: which desires I can use for the sake of bestowal and which desires I am incapable of using for the sake of bestowal and need to reject using.

After all, we cannot come out of this field of desires; there is no empty space between them. Free space is what we call a desire that is not clear that has not been elucidated, which you do not see and cannot make out anything in it.

From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/20/10, The Zohar

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A question I received: The whole nation existed in spiritual attainment during the First and the Second Temples. Why wasn’t it possible to go through the destruction of the Temples only in spirituality and to reach the Third Temple without the material manifestation of destruction?

My Answer: All descents and ascents of the souls have to be reflected on the lowest inanimate level – our world. Up until the end of correction, ups and downs of the souls have to go through all layers of the desire to receive, through its entire depth, ending in this material world.

Therefore, we have no possibility to escape events that occur in this world, meaning in our egoistic desire which we feel as “this world.” Our big or not so big successes in the spiritual world, in our relations with the Creator, will always be felt as events happening in this world.

It is impossible to separate occurrences in the spiritual and material worlds because they are the same. A desire to receive with its different layers of Aviut (coarseness) covers the entire depth from this world to the World of Infinity.

A person who is at the bottom of the spiritual ladder raises his MAN to the World of Infinity. Thereby he determines the Light which descends from the uppermost level through all layers (worlds) of the desire to receive pleasure to his rung and further below. When a person exists somewhere in the middle of the spiritual ladder, the entirety of the Aviut of the desire below him is included in his MAN. Then the Light that comes as a response to the prayer goes through a person and spreads out further below to the very end. This is why every person has an impact on the entire thickness of Malchut of the World of Infinity.

From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/15/10, The Zohar

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Some time ago (before the destruction of the Temple) the nation of Israel was on a spiritual level, and the commandments were spiritual actions for them – the Tefilin was not a black box, but the Light of an exalted state, which shines “in the forehead” of the spiritual Partzuf (ten Sefirot). It was not a root and a branch for them; it was united as one whole. They did not live in two worlds, but in one common reality. Therefore, the question regarding whether to carry out commandments in the material did not arise for them; for them the internal and external execution of the commandments were expressions of the same action.

Then a “breaking and a descent” occurred; our sensations of the spiritual world were concealed. With this concealment, we no longer sense what happens in the spiritual world. We are “cut off” from it, and no longer exist on a spiritual degree of “Tefilin” for example or “Talit” (surrounding Light, clothed onto Zeir Anpin of the world of Atzilut); therefore, these commandments have turned from spiritual actions into mechanical actions called “traditions” or “customs.”

Once they were true spiritual actions rather than merely traditions as they are now. Previously, I “put on a Tefilin” in the spiritual and in the material. They were the same thing for me; reality was one whole. As a result of our egoistic development, we uncovered our “breaking and descent,” the destruction of the common soul. Now the time has come to break this division so that there will, once again, be a single, whole world.

Should all people study these traditions and customs? No, we just need to break this division, and when it falls, gradually with our correction, the material reality will begin to vanish. If the all of humanity is corrected, rather than just the small part that came out of Babylon and was called the nation of Israel, then to the extent that the world begins to be corrected, it will “lose” its sensations of the material form. The lower layer, which you correct for bestowal, becomes spiritual, and you no longer perceive it as matter. It gradually seems to vanish from your sensations, until the whole material world vanishes, since it is imaginary (Olam Amedume). Therefore, all that Kabbalah teaches us is how to break the “iron wall” (see Introduction to The Study of the Ten Sefirot, Item 1), which separates us from the spiritual world.

From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/12/10, “Exile and Redemption”

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A question I received: Why is it so important in Kabbalah to know the meaning of terms? What is the benefit of that? After all, we see that a person needs to study for a long time in order to grasp the fact that words seemingly familiar to him have a completely different meaning. This is very difficult for a beginner.

My Answer: Even knowing the completely different meanings of familiar words is still very important, as through this we transition from a corporeal vocabulary to the spiritual one. Indeed, the words are familiar: “sun, moon, Earth, man, man’s body parts, animals, beasts, family, coupling (Zivug), kiss, embrace” – all these are words of this world (in the desire to receive) that we use in the spiritual world (the desire to bestow). We add a different meaning and interpretation to each word.

Baal HaSulam writes in The Study of the Ten Sefirot, “Inner Reflection” that we must transition to spiritual definitions and meanings of words, in order for them to be embedded into our minds like in a box, so that we will understand the word’s spiritual meaning the moment we hear it. By using the same words we are familiar with and trying to add a different meaning to them, we transition from a screen that draws for us the pictures of this world to a screen depicting the next, spiritual world.

We have no other words to express the Upper World, the world of forces and actions. But because these forces and actions are actualized in our world, we call these forces and actions (roots) by the names of their consequences (branches). Therefore, we must know their spiritual meanings. True, this is very difficult for beginners, until they free themselves of the former, corporeal content of a word and fill it anew.

As people change, we give words new meaning. The words “kiss,” “feet” or “head” of a Partzuf will remain physiological terms, but they will take on the spiritual meaning of their roots. In accordance with this change, you too will witness the changes you undergo.

Ultimately, the entire wisdom of Kabbalah is intended to give you a spiritual dictionary to replace your corporeal one. What is this “dictionary”? You will begin to interpret words in your inner sensation. You will feel and thus immediately grasp the word differently. In those words you yourself transition from the branch to the root.

Keep advancing and changing internally, and you will see the extent to which you change the meaning of words. This change is automatic. The entire spiritual picture is much stronger than the corporeal one, and so it will displace the corporeal and all its definitions with its own.

From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/12/10, Article “Exile and Redemption”

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A person wanders in darkness not knowing what to do and desiring to ascend spiritually, to move from reception to bestowal. Until the moment of the first revelation – crossing the Machsom and encountering the Light – he has no example of how it happens. After it occurs, his own experience allows him to sense a new reality rather than trust someone else’s words. Yet until a person reveals the right spiritual desire (Kli) within himself and contacts the Light directly, it is impossible to prove anything to him.

The wisdom from Kabbalists won’t affect a person that does not possess spiritual experience on his own. He starts from scratch. He deals with something that is above his nature and exists beyond the boundaries of death.

While we are still alive, we have to elevate to a level of existence that is above death, called “the world to come.”  Nothing can replace this attainment or prove this to us. To reach this revelation, we need to correct our desires and obtain spiritual “sight,” the Light of Hochma which clothes itself in our desire to receive. This is the only proof we can get. Right now, the only “justification” for learning Kabbalah is the belief that the Surrounding Light corrects us.

We hope that we have found a remedy that is able to disclose the Light and change us. It works like a miraculous force (Segula) that is concentrated in authentic Kabbalah books. These books serve as a means to reach an exalted state that we are unable to approach on our own, and attract the influence of Light upon ourselves from there.

It is written: “I created the evil inclination and the Torah to correct it, because the Light in it Reforms.” Our entire learning process is about the realization of this sentence. We strive to change ourselves and start sensing a new life, a new dimension within our corrected desires.

From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/6/10, “Inheritance of the Land”

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