Question: When we are talking about the holiday of Passover, why do we say: “Remember the exodus from Egypt?” After all, there were other exiles—from Babylon, Greece, and Rome—but we are reminded only about the exodus from Egypt. What is the meaning of this?

Answer: The Egyptian exile is the root of all the exiles. All the other exiles are as if superimposed on it. This exile is the most difficult and fundamental. A person rises above his egoism and, for the first time, realizes what the spiritual world is and what it means to feel the property of bestowal instead of the property of receiving with which we are born and in which we exist.

We perceive the world through the senses that constantly want to enjoy and benefit from everything. The revolution in the sensory organs—when I begin to “exit myself,” to identify myself with the world, to give to others, to feel myself outside of my body so that my heart stays there—is called the exodus from Egypt. All the other exiles already happen outside of me.
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From KabTV’s “Kabbalists Write: The Night of Passover Seder” 3/4/13

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Question: What values did the people of Israel have before the descent to Egypt, at the time that they were there, and after the departure from Egypt? Did the people undergo some kind of change or process?

Answer: Yes, they descended into Egypt already with an intention in order to bestow, like the patriarchs.

The entry into Egypt is compulsory in every spiritual level since the person corrects only what is within him. So, first, he feels the problem; his discovery is called being in Egypt or the awakening of Egypt in the person. The exile signifies that all desires and thoughts are egoistic, and he feels this. If you were to tell someone today that he is an egoist and is found in Egypt, no one would understand this.

The inner feeling of Egypt is a feeling that I am in exile. If I am just an egoist, I know it and am even proud of benefiting at the expense of others. This is not called Egypt. Egypt, as exile, represents my wanting to be freed from the property of reception for myself and to rise to the property of bestowal. Yet, I am not able. The feeling of exile is born from a lack of correlation between what is desired and what is.

This is a very high state and very complicated. Feeling yourself in the Egyptian exile is not easy; it is a spiritual degree. If a person wants to attain spirituality, he comes to a group, learns, and connects with friends in order to pass together from hatred to love. They, then, suddenly feel themselves in exile because their egoistic desire dominates over them.
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From KabTV’s “Kabbalists Write: The Night of Passover Seder” 3/4/13

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Today’s Egypt, which keeps the people of Israel in exile, and Pharaoh, which doesn’t allow us to get out of slavery, are our ego and the egoistic relationships between us. It is what does not allow us to become a people free from egoism and to feel the next degree both in a spiritual and in a material sense. That is why we cannot eliminate the external threat and hatred towards us from other nations. All this is because of the inner egoism that rules over us instead of the property of bestowal and mutual love.

Once, we seemingly managed to get out of this slavery, to mark the future when we would be able also to get out of our inner Egypt, from slavery to freedom. Today we are slaves because we are dependent on the entire world and on our egoism that governs us from all sides. We need just to realize that we are in a terrible and dangerous situation.

The most important is to feel that we have a duty for ourselves, for the whole world, and the Creator and we must realize the goal. This mission is entrusted to the people of Israel because we have received the method of correction and connection and are obliged to implement it.

Having gathered today at the festive table, let’s discuss these questions, and this is called the preparation for the exodus from Egypt. To get out of Egypt, a person prepares himself for “400 years,” that is, he goes through four full stages of egoism. At the beginning he has to experience as if egoism advances him and brings him advantage, what is called the “seven years of satiation.” And later there will come “seven years of hunger” and the Plagues of Egypt. Then, he has no choice but to flee.

It is important to move from the material perception of these events to spirituality and to hold the Passover meal in that spirit.
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From KabTV’s “Kabbalists Write: The Night of Passover Seder,” 3/4/13

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Question: How can we come to feel the necessity of carrying out our mission and being united?

Answer: We learn about connection and unity in a group from all the essays by Baal HaSulam and the Rabash, why this is needed and for what. This touches upon both a person regarding the group and a group regarding all the others.

Today the world demands this. The world crisis obliges us. For if it didn’t exist, we would not think about it.

Our group once numbered 30 – 40 people. We learned in a small apartment, and that was fine for us. This was only 15 years ago; and I thought that this was how it would always be.

But at the end of the ‘90s of the last century, the world suddenly began to change. Many new people began to come to us, and we were compelled to move to another building. After that people began to feel a need for us, they began to appear in various countries around the world, and I arranged a lecture tour in 11 major cities in America. This is to say the world had changed.

So from the start, we planned to learn only in a small group, as it had always been customary among the Kabbalists. But when there began to be a move towards us from the world, and it began to show its need for us, we were compelled to change. So today, you have found us. But if it had been up to us, we would not have shown ourselves to anyone, we would not have gone onto the internet, we would not have been occupied with dissemination, for the Kabbalists had always been closed. But the world began to demand; its state had changed.

It is also the same thing now; the crisis obliges us. It is as if this were a condition: If you don’t correct it, why are you receiving the upper Light? Is it for yourself? There is nothing like this “for yourself” in the wisdom of Kabbalah, in spirituality. You don’t receive anything in the spiritual world for yourself. And so a prerequisite appeared for us—to connect between us, and along with this, to disseminate.
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From the European Convention in Germany 3/22/13, Lesson 1

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Question: Lately, we are seeing growing confrontation between the two opposing forces in Europe and in the world. Is this not a prerequisite for us to find an opportunity to move forward correctly?

Answer: The science of Kabbalah, along with other sciences, says that everything in the world is made up of the two opposing forces: plus-minus, north-south, pressure-vacuum, hot-cold, etc. All this is based on the two fundamental opposing forces: reception and bestowal. Perfection, life, consists of these two forces forming the third force, the middle line, where, in principle, all that exists is there. We see this in living organisms, in plants and animals. Before our time, we were also developing like animals, meaning instinctively, under the rule of the middle line.

But now we are reaching the next level of management when these two opposing forces emerge in us and we have to balance them on our own. This is the peculiarity of our time, of our development. Therefore, we have to see the world in harmony and have to bring this harmony into it by correctly combining the two opposing forces in ourselves: the force of reception (Aviut) and the property of bestowal (screen). We have to act in this manner.
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From the Meal before the European Convention in Germany 3/23/13

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Question: Why did Moses need to spend forty years with Jethro, the priest of Midian? What does this mean in the spiritual sense?

Answer: Jethro, as well as Abraham’s father Terah, was a priest, an expert in all the religions and idols, which is to say, a servant of his ego. In particular, if Terah had listened to his son Abraham, then they would have worked together and they could have begun the correction of the world. But this was impossible without the Egyptian exile, the exodus, and the reception of the Torah because a person needs to immerse completely into the ego. Therefore Terah was against Abraham, and Abraham was forced to flee from him, away from Babylon.

Moses, like Abraham, is a completely different level: He already was in the ego, passed through all of this stage and left Egypt. The forty years that he spent with Jethro, as it were, their mutual union, a connection through the Jethro’s daughter Zipporah, Jethro’s ego, who gave birth to children, meaning the next level. This is all the combination of the egoistic Jethro and the altruistic Moses within a person.

Moses passes through a process that toughens him from a stage with the ego in order to return again to Egypt, into the depths of the ego. Thus, only Jethro could teach Moses and the people of Israel how to work with that ego that was beginning to be discovered. Therefore the weekly Torah reading called “Jethro” begins from after the exodus from Egypt, when it’s necessary to begin to correct the Egyptians, the entire ego of the person, and Jethro takes his daughter Zipporah, her and Moses’ children, Jethro’s grandsons, and comes to Moses.

In other words, the time comes when these characteristics begin to rise within a person and show how to proceed. For now the entire ego that departed from Egypt (the vessels that were taken out of Egypt), slowly, gradually begin to rise within the people, and that means that Moses needs to judge the people.

To judge means to explain where the characteristics of bestowal are, where the characteristics of reception are, with what perspective it’s necessary to act and join above ourselves in order to discover our connection to the next level, the Creator. That is, the right mutual cooperation is required here. But where is this hierarchy in this egoism?

The characteristic of bestowal is about to expand: expansiveness of soul, an open heart. It’s dispersed over the surface of the area like water. And the ego works continually in a vertical manner. And these two parameters are as if not integrated together.

Therefore Jethro says to Moses: “You need to construct another system, in the form of a pyramid, to divide your whole ego into parts, tens, hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands. You need to return to the state when you entered Egypt, twelve brothers. Thus you also exit there, the same twelve tribes, like twelve streams, lines. But in every one of them you need to calibrate yourselves according to the egoistic levels. Therefore for every level there must be its own hierarchy: its own laws, managers, and subordinates. You now work not just in order to bestow and to love, you work with the ego that is needed on that level with a quality that is possible to correct.

If Moses hadn’t gone through this school with Jethro, if he hadn’t connected with the ego and hadn’t begun working with it a little, then when he returned to Egypt, he wouldn’t have been able to stand against Pharaoh, he would have had no contact with him. For before then, Moses simply fled from Pharaoh after a confrontation with him.

And now he returns to Egypt, that is, he turns again to his ego and says to Pharaoh: “I need to take my people (the characteristics of bestowal) away from you.” In addition, he takes from him the huge ego that must later be corrected over the course of forty years in the wilderness. But he could not do this if the characteristic of bestowal in a person had not been connected in the beginning with the egoistic system called Jethro.

And Jethro takes from Moses the method of working with the ego and returns to his people in order to teach it to them. We see how a constant mutual connection of the two characteristics takes place within a person. And this is the system of correction.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 3/11/13

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The night of the Passover Seder for a person who has already exited his internal Egypt is a celebration in which he again undergoes the same states as during his exodus, in the same order (seder), and rejoices over his liberation. This helps him rise to the next degree, each time, higher and higher.

That is why, it is written that in every generation, that is, in each state, on each stage of growth of egoism, a person must see himself as if he had just come out of Egypt. And all the corrections that he performs on his egoism will always be accompanied by a reminder of the exodus from Egypt. Only after a person rises above his ego, can he carry out the actions of bestowal, which are called commandments.

On Passover night, everyone is sitting with his family at a festive table and reading about freedom and sufferings of slavery, and of course, feeling the inner pain, desiring liberation. This holiday awakens all the questions of enslavement and freedom again. Now how can we gain freedom, come to a new life, a new state?

We must realize that today we have entered a new era, and if we do not realize our mission, as the people of Israel coming out of Egypt, we will not be able to survive either as a country, or as a people. We will not be able to be Jews because this is our mission—we must send the message to the world to raise everyone, together with us, from the general egoism, owing to which we find ourselves in the current crisis.

This crisis expands more and purposefully pressures us so that we finally want to get out of it with the entire world. By this, we have to set an example to others. Celebrating today, the Passover Seder in 2013, I thus prepare myself for exodus and the freedom that I will attain after that.

This is a salvation from the angel of death, my egoism, which is killing me. I hope that through this I will become the light for the other nations, and they will also know how to come out from Egypt. They will see that our ego keeps us all in exile. The whole world is in exile, the entire earth is Egypt, and we must rise above it.
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From KabTV’s “Kabbalists Write: The Night of Passover Seder,” 3/4/13

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Question: The night of the Passover Seder is a special night for the people of Israel. It is thought that on this night this people was born and began its new way. So really, in what way is this night of the exodus from Egypt so unique?

Answer: The person begins to feel that he is found in the Egyptian exile, in slavery to his ego, which is called Pharaoh, and that it is necessary to depart from under its dominance, to flee; yet he cannot do this. He begins to scream internally, he is no longer prepared to endure a life like this. He invests effort in regard to the group, the environment, the teacher, and the books. He really feels that he is in prison, in darkness.

Gradually he sinks into a state that is called the “darkness of Egypt,” the night of the exodus from Egypt. This night is absolute darkness; no hope is left for him, no chance in life. He doesn’t feel that he is prepared to continue to live within his ego, since he hates everyone, and he is unable to relate well to anyone.

He strives to love the friends, to love the other as himself, but he sees the opposite, he becomes worse and worse. The Pharaoh in him, his ego, becomes stronger and more brutal. So in the end, the person is broken, for he sees that he has no chance of leaving this servitude.

He passes through very difficult inner states, which ultimately are amassed together: all of his attempts to flee from his ego, to rise above it, all the victories of the ego that show a person how strongly this Pharaoh is holding him from within. He really finds himself in the middle of the struggle of two forces: On the one hand, the person pushes since he yearns to go free, and on the other hand, the ego hangs on to his legs not letting him flee.

Ultimately, these two forces reach the peak of the struggle between them, and the person finds himself between them, feels absolute darkness. This state is called the night of exodus, the darkness of Egypt. And so suddenly he hears a call from within this darkness: “You must leave! You are ready to do this! You can get up and flee from your ego, here and now, at midnight, that is, from the darkest state. Don’t take anything with you to the new state, except those things that you really need for bestowal, the attainment of unity, the connection, the love”.

In this case the person is ready to leave and flee from his ego, wants to rise above it. This is called his spiritual birth.
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From KabTV’s “Kabbalists Write: The Night of Passover Seder,” 3/4/13

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Question: If there is no desire for spirituality, how can we awaken it?

Answer: We are in a state that we either awaken ourselves to the spiritual advancement or the advancement awakens us. Throughout history, from the Big Bang that began the universe until today, we have developed by the force of nature that pushed us forward by sufferings. This is called evolution. Every time, having no choice, we left the current state and moved on to the next state that seemed better. We developed in the better state until we began to feel that it wasn’t so good anymore and moved on to the next state that seemed even better.

Unless we feel that our current state is unbearable, we won’t leave it since our ego aspires for rest. Why should I change something if I feel good? If my arm feels comfortable now I will not move it, but if I feel that another position is better and here it is not so comfortable, then these forces move me.

This means that I never move of my own will, and there are always forces that influence and operate me. What are these forces? The arm as part of the animal body feels bad here and that it would feel better if it moves a little and so it moves.

It’s the same with everything in life. It isn’t any different from the way the wind blows: there is pressure in one place and a deficiency in another, a vacuum, and so the air masses move from place to place. There must always be two forces: one that pushes and one that pulls.

This is how it always been in the evolution of human society that has been through many transformations from one state to another: The negative force pushed it from behind and the positive force pulled it from the front, a hope for something good.

Now we are in a very special state. How is it different from all the other states?

It used to be that there was state one (1) and state two (2). In the second state I discovered a plus (+) and in the first state a minus (-). In the first state the rejecting force operated on me and in the second state the pulling force. I moved from one state to the other by these two forces. It’s natural evolution without freewill.

The state I am in now is different since I have freewill. In the current state I discover a very big minus (-), but I don’t discover the negative force, it hardly pushes me forward. Then a big question arises (?): What is the state of freewill? How can I be guided here, know which way to go, what to do, and what will become of me? It’s only with the help of the wisdom of Kabbalah.

/center>Otherwise, it’s impossible to understand what we should do, since in all the previous states we went from one human evolutionary level to the next, but now we have to move from a human level to a divine, spiritual level. Therefore, we cannot grasp how to advance and are actually in the dark. This is the whole problem.

So on the one hand, it is freewill, since it isn’t the animal body that dictates where I should move. I feel helpless and the choice is actually above reason.

So there is nothing we can do without the dissemination of the wisdom of Kabbalah. Here the nation of Israel has to fulfill its mission and this is why we are in such a special dangerous state. Now we come to the forefront of the stage of history and although we were always “watched closely,” now it’s more than ever before.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/19/13, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar”

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Rabash, “What to Look for in the Assembly of Friends”: It is the same with love of friends. It is a great effort when one should judge the friends to a scale of merit, and not everyone is ready for it.

Sometimes, it is even worse. At times, a person sees that his friend is disrespectful toward him. Even worse, he heard a slanderous rumor, meaning he heard from a friend that that friend, who is called so and so, said about him things that are not nice for friends to say about each other. Now he has to subdue himself and judge him to a scale of merit. This, indeed, is a great effort… However, if that person slanders him, where will his friend muster the strength to love him? He knows for certain that he hates him, or he would not be slandering him, so what is the point in subduing himself and judging him to a scale of merit?

The answer is that love of friends that is built on the basis of love of others, by which they can achieve the love of the Creator, is the opposite of what is normally considered love of friends. In other words, love of others does not mean that the friends will love me. Rather, it is I who must love the friends. For this reason, it makes no difference if the friend is slandering him and must certainly hate him. Instead, a person who wishes to acquire love of others, that person needs the correction of loving the other.

Therefore, when a person makes the effort and judges him to a scale of merit, it is a Segula [remedy/power/virtue], whereby the toil that a person makes, which is called “an awakening from below,” he is given strength from above to be able to love all the friends without exception.

This is a difficult question. The attitude of an individual toward society has different aspects. First, I must see the group in a perfect state at the end of correction and understand that “He who faults another does so through his own flaws.” So, I must see the friends as perfect, and, if I notice any flaws, it is a sign of my uncorrected attributes. I must constantly try to judge the friends to the scale of merit, and this shows me how I should correct myself and ask for the force of correction.

On the other hand, I must check what I can add to the society so that it will increase its influence on me—that it will lift my spirit, strengthen me, and make me feel secure. In order to do that, I need a critical perspective of the group so that I can see how it can be improved and where its wholeness is lacking. I constantly aspire to lift it, and, so, I must see it as imperfect at the moment so that I will have something to work on. I invest powers in the group so that it will grow strong and rise.

However, if you don’t refer to the attitude of an individual toward the society, but to the state of the society itself and its influence on all the friends, then the society must be strong enough to make everyone feel secure and keep each member on a certain height, to guide him and keep his spirit high so that he will not be able to fall. This is why we must see the true state of the society since we build it by ourselves, and we cannot settle for the idea that it is already in the world of Ein Sof (Infinity) in a perfectly corrected state.

We must see how we can lift the society so that it will lift us. In order to do that, I must exit myself, be incorporated in the society, and make sure that the poison of slander will not poison it, but that only the greatness of the goal and love for all, without exception, will reside in it. Then, this feeling and this support will pass on to each of the friends and obligate them to love each other in the same way.

There are different nuances according to the type of society, and whether it is a society of beginners or of more advanced students, a society of women, of men, or a mixed society. In each case, there are special relationships, but the two basic conditions are a person’s attitude toward a society which is perfect and the attitude toward a society that needs to be lifted in order to radiate this perfection back on us. As always, there are two, opposite poles to everything.
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From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/19/13

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