Question: If one person in the group reaches the Machsom, how can we make better use of him in the group?

Answer: It cannot be. One person in the group cannot reach the Machsom! A few people can, but not just one.

Question: What if this happens? What would be a better way to make use of this person in the group?

Answer: You should continue in the same way as before, to be included in each other. In this case, he will help you more intensely. But he will not tell you about what he has revealed! To the extent that he feels this, he will keep silent.

The person who really begins to feel the spiritual world does not talk much about this topic. The Tzimtzum, restriction, screen will work in him, and he does not need to advertise. For him, it is so dear and so internal that he just does not let it out. If he begins to teach, he will explain it clearly in certain portions. He will never show any miracles as they don’t exist, and he will know how to explain the method in portions. There are such people among us who are more or less in the feeling of this state. Of course, it must be still strengthened. But they will say nothing to you.
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From the Kharkov Convention “Uniting to Ascend” 8/17/12, Lesson 1

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Question: In what state and with what thoughts is it better to go to bed?

Answer: We have talked about this many times. A person should go to bed with such thoughts so that in the morning he will wake up with the idea that all the time he was in adhesion with the Creator, not so much with the group, but with the Creator.

There is a little “but”: If you think simultaneously about the group and the Creator, everything will become blurred for you. Before going to bed at night, it is necessary to try to find a personal contact with Him and fall asleep with this in order to wake up with this.
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From the Preliminary Lesson 8/16/12, Kharkov Convention “Uniting to Ascend”

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From Letters of Rabash (No.16): It is known that it is impossible to see a small object and it is easier to see a large object. Hence, when a person commits a few lies, he cannot see the truth—that he is walking on a false path. Rather, he says that he is walking on the path of truth. But there is no greater lie than that. And the reason is that he does not have enough lies to see his true state.

But when a person has acquired many lies, the lies grow in him to the extent that he can see them if he wishes. Thus, now that he sees the lies—that he is walking on a false path—he sees his true state. In other words, he sees the truth in his soul and how to turn to the right path.

It follows that this point, which is a point of truth—that he is treading a false path—is the medium between truth and falsehood. This is the bridge that connects truth and falsehood. This point is also the end of the lie and from here on begins the path of truth.

We constantly strive for goodness, truth, and bestowal. However, when our efforts reach a certain degree, we feel exactly the opposite. We reveal that we exist in the lie: We don’t bestow and don’t wish for bestowal, but we care only about ourselves.

However, the realization of this deceptive state means the revelation of the truth! Although it’s not pleasant and a person doesn’t know what to do, if despite everything he once again strives for bestowal considering it to be good, if he is thirsty for the truth since truth is bestowal, then once again he finds himself even in greater deception. But this is truth! It’s true that he exists in the lie. So it continues until the lie becomes so huge that it becomes unbearable to stay in it. Then he screams in such a way that salvation comes to him.

There is the state by itself and there is a realization of one’s state. The closer our states come to be true states the more polarized they become.
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From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/7/12

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We constantly have two feelings inside us: One is the “point in the heart,” and the other one is external to it. We all see a “double” world. This perception is given to us on purpose so that we will be able to correct ourselves and the world.

If you saw the world one dimensionally, like an ordinary person who perceives the world only on the corporeal level, then you wouldn’t be able to manage. If, in your ascent up the spiritual ladder, you perceived only the spiritual form that is revealed on the next level each time, this would also be a problem since you wouldn’t be able to serve as the link between the spiritual world and this world.

So those who ascend the spiritual ladder are given the perception of this world as “Shimon from the market,” and also the perception of the spiritual world. They perceive a double reality, but this doesn’t disturb them.

Until the full redemption of egoism of the world is achieved, the final correction, when all the souls are connected, which we must bring, we will continue to live in this world.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/2/12, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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From the letter by Baal HaSulam (No. 8): We see from the ages ago and up until today, how many people have poisoned their lives with all kinds of suffering and self-torture, and all for the sake of finding some kind of meaning in the service to the Creator, or to come to know the ruler of the world! And all of them have squandered their life in vain, and they left this world as they came, not having achieved anything, and why did the Creator not answered all of their prayers? Why did He pride Himself in front of them? Why, really, did He not move towards them? And it is in that He is called “The most proud of all proud ones”.

In the human race, lives a bitter delusion that compels them to go along the wrong paths in the search for the highest force for the reasons for their bad lives. This search is not correct because we need to search not in the midst of evil, but to clarify where the source of the good is and to strive toward Him, toward reaching similarity with Him, instead of waiting in your current state and demanding from Him to improve your life at the same place, where you are now.

That is why Baal HaSulam writes in his letter that: We see from the ages ago and up until today, how many people have poisoned their lives with all kinds of suffering and self-torture, and all for the sake of finding some kind of meaning in the service to the Creator. But what service is this to the Creator if man suffers and is tormented and at the same time is also searching in this for some kind of a higher meaning? This was not the goal.

In such an approach, there are several distorted conceptions, and therefore all who followed it have squandered their life in vain. One tried to make it better for himself in his place, changing nothing. Another one searched for how to control the Creator in the use for his own benefit. The third one counted on getting closer to the Creator by the means of suffering and to receive a reward for the fact that he suffered. And it is even written that: “Suffering softens egoism, as salt does meat.” From this, fasting and prayers have derived, having passed into all religions.

And all of them have squandered their life in vain, and they left this world as they came because that was not the correct approach. The Creator does not want our suffering. He does not need anything from us besides the attainment of His greatness and mergence with Him, meaning, to attain the same height.

All of our actions, besides the ones aimed at reaching similarity with the Creator, are completely useless and will not lead to anything. And even more so, do not assume that suffering is a part of the path to the Creator. If man suffers, it is a sign that he is disconnected from the Creator and not simply distanced from Him, but he is also moving away in the opposite direction.

While the “drop of unity”, a point of merging is only reached by the means of man constantly striving towards similarity to the Creator, as it is said: “From the love of the people, to the love of the Creator”. All other paths, however, are not the right ones.

Baal HaSulam writes about that with great pain, being sorry that it happens this way throughout the whole of the human history up until today. But what can be done? Taking the chance, we need to try to explain to everyone about what the truth is.
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From the Preparation to the Lesson 7/29/12

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Question: What is “Jerusalem” in the spiritual sense?

Answer: “Jerusalem” (Yerushalayim) in the spiritual sense is a “perfect awe” (Yira Shlema).

As The Book of Zohar explains, we have a commandment of fear and a commandment of love. The first commandment is fear, which can be of different kinds: from this world, from the future world, for oneself, for the community, for the Creator, and so forth. So, “Jerusalem” is the perfect fear, the level of Bina, which then develops itself in order to become the basis for receiving the Light of Hochma for the sake of bestowal. That is why this level is called perfect, on it, the Light of Hassadim and the Light of Hochma are together in one vessel. This way, the fear, meaning, Hassadim, holds the Light of Hochma, and this perfect state is called Jerusalem.

Besides that, as we know, each of the four levels of the still, vegetative, animate, and human natures contains in itself all of the others. Accordingly, on the human level there are also the previous levels, the still, vegetative, and animate. Finally, the ascent along them reaches an interaction (Zivug) of a maximum depth, that “place” where all of the creatures, connected by a common net, come to an integral state and come to the merging, to the drop of unity with the Creator.

That is what Jerusalem is. This is how we will see it, as the point of the highest spiritual quality, as the drop of unity. The Temple will be there, the high priest will be there, we will bring everything into this point.

But, perhaps, you suppose that Jerusalem is a city on a map? No, we are not talking about that. The material world will disappear, will rise in our perception to a spiritual level. The picture, which we see today is distorted by the forces of filth. This is a dream of those who are in materiality. But we want to awaken from the dream, then the shroud in the form of this world will disappear and we will see the true reality in which everything is united.

So the point is not in the buildings located on the Temple Mount; the work we need to do is internal. Throughout all of the years that I spent with Rabash, just once we visited Jerusalem. In his time, Baal HaSulam left Jerusalem for Jaffa. Therefore, clarify your expectations regarding the ancient stone slabs. In the branches, they symbolize what is inherent in the root, and we need them in order to get to the root from the branch. However, if we cling to the branches, then we will never arrive at the necessity for correction.

Today, the material still dominates in us. Some believe that if the stone blocks were to be arranged according to the drawings, which seem correct to us, then we will suddenly breathe the spirit of life into them, that we will endow them with holiness and spiritual force. In the same way a child makes an airplane from the materials he has at hand in the hope that it will fly.

Who really knows how to create spiritually today? It is good people are waking up, thinking about it; however, we understand that in this approach there in no spirit of life, no understanding of what really needs to be done.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/29/12, Writings of Rabash

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Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to the Book, Panim Meirot uMasbirot,” Item 8: There are not enough words to measure his holy work in our favor. The doors of attainment were locked and bolted, and he came and opened them for us. Thus, all who wish to enter the King’s palace need only purity and sanctity, and to go and bathe and shave their hair and wear clean clothes, to properly stand before the sublime Kingship.

You find a thirty-eight-year-old who subdued with his wisdom all his predecessors through the Genius and through all times. All the elders of the land, the gallant shepherds, friends and disciples of the Godly sage, the RAMAK, stood before him as disciples before the Rav.

All the sages of the generations following them to this day, none missing, have abandoned all the books and compositions that precede him, the Kabbalah of the RAMAK, the Kabbalah of The First and the Kabbalah of The Genius, blessed be the memory of them all. They have attached their spiritual life entirely and solely to his Holy Wisdom.

We should be grateful to the upper force that sent us these teachers. Having perceived, understood, and felt as one with the upper force, they tell us about it and pave the way by which we can also follow their steps at least in some way by implementing their teaching and preparing the way for others.

The Ari symbolizes the moment when humanity began to rise towards correction. That’s why his role is so important. Until then, all the ways were blocked, and the attainment of Kabbalists remained very limited. Sometimes, the feeling of it outweighed the understanding.

We don’t know exactly how it was or understand what exactly the Ari has done. Yes, he left books, he found the language; however, we are not yet aware of the greatness of what was done by him. By his spiritual work, a Kabbalist makes corrections in the whole system, and thus advances us to the stages of the revelation of the Creator to which we aspire. It’s not the books that we can read, but the fact that the Ari had prepared and brought the access to the spiritual world to us, to the Lights that lead us up along the spiritual paths. This is the work of the Kabbalist. The books in which he expressed this access are only a small companion to that which is open to our eyes.

All the subsequent Kabbalists are the students of the Ari. All of them, including us, are based on his legacy. The poem “The Tree of Life” and much more, all this stems from his great revelation. Baal HaSulam writes of his great predecessors Rabbi Akiva, Rashbi, and others who revealed the spiritual world in a secret and limited form.

There was no language as the vessels/desires were not ready. Of course, this depends on the generation in which a Kabbalist acts, and yet the greatness of the Ari is that he began correction and opened the path for us. He is special, and we should be thankful that we have such a mentor. Let’s hope that we will be able to go his way, leaving behind us those paths along which thousands rush forward to give pleasure to the Creator, waiting for all of us in His palace.
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From the Conversation During the Meal Commemorating the Death of the Ari, 7/25/12

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Question: On one hand, we say that we always have to turn to the right line, to start everything from the right line. On the other hand, they say that first you need to reveal evil. How is this possible, if evil is the left line, and the right one is joy and perfection? How is it, on the one hand, you first need to reveal, “I created the evil inclination” and then correct it? On the other hand, first of all, we must always turn to the right line.

Answer: As soon as we turn to the right line, the left line, the true evil inclination, resisting the right, is revealed to us. It is with this approach that there is a prayer, and the Light that Reforms descends, the power of the right line, from which the middle line is formed. Our entire ascent and progress occurs only in the middle line.
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We attain the Creator, which means that we reach the attribute of bestowal, the revelation of the spiritual world, only if we acquire two discernments:

• A great desire that is aimed at that, which is clarified enough and which is one degree lower than the level of attainment. A person imagines what the revelation of the Shechina (Divinity), the Creator’s face is, what the Light and the attribute of bestowal are.
• A person must feel great pain since he doesn’t have the attribute of bestowal. A person suffers and he knows that the attribute of bestowal symbolizes the rising above his ego and a complete detachment from his previous life and from all his personal accounts.

It’s very hard to reach that, since we act against our nature. Therefore a person advances on two legs, step by step, between two lines: left right, left right…from his part a person should try to start from the right line and fall to the left. But from Above, he is always given the left line, darkness first. On every level, by the darkness and the Light the “letters of the work” are registered in a person, the relations that are drawn between the types of darkness and the Light, the attributes of receiving and bestowal in different manners.

The letters are different on every level. Each time the darkness and the Light are depicted to him in different attributes according to different criteria. Accordingly the letters also take on different forms. This is why each time a person has a new Torah, a new Creator, a new world, everything is new and he is also new.

Thus a person grows by his consistency that indicates how much patience he has, and thereby he advances and comes closer to the right forms of the great deficiency that are aimed at true bestowal. Here we see the principle of “I have labored and I found,” meaning a person is looking for the Creator’s face, the greatness of the attribute of bestowal. Connecting to the attribute of bestowal, the force of bestowal summons in him the feeling of belonging, warmth, up to the actual feeling of love. Since to love the Creator is to love bestowal, to love the attribute of love itself, it begins to fill a person and enables him to dwell in it.

We have to go through great changes in our nature by detaching ourselves from our old values, from the previous understanding of what exertion means and what the goal is, who the Creator is and what the Torah is. Each time we re-evaluate the great desire that is required of us and the suffering that we experience. The values naturally change in the transition from one state to another, and a person constantly changes and becomes another, a new person.

Therefore it says in the Torah, “Abraham is an old man.” “An old man” is someone who has acquired knowledge, who has been through and “plowed” the whole path. A person acquires the attribute of bestowal gradually, the mind and the understanding of how to work with it, the feeling, the loyalty, the self-sacrifice, and how to identify with the Creator. Thus he attains the level of “an old man” which means his point of adhesion with the Creator. Then the attribute of bestowal fills him, and he feels love and appreciation towards it.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/13/12, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” Item 42: We have now explained the five worlds that include the entire spiritual reality that extends from Ein Sof to this world. However, they are included in one the other, and in each of the worlds there are the five worlds.

Why are the worlds necessary? Isn’t the world of Ein Sof (Infinity) enough? After all, it descends from its whole spiritual level that is totally in order to bestow to a gradually lower level of bestowal called the worlds of Adam Kadmon, Atzilut, Beria, Yetzira and Assiya.

On the whole, it is about the same unity, the same mutual bestowal, but on a lower level. There are the same features and they connect in the same way, but the intensity of their connection decreases and is conveyed more weakly through the general network. Thus, the “worlds” are the concealments of Ein Sof that cover the intensity of its unity and connection.

In any case, we are speaking only about one reality. Later, when the souls are created, when a person wants to attain the attribute of bestowal, he will see and feel this system according to his current state.

And besides the five Sefirot KHBTM in each world, there are the four spiritual categories: still, vegetative, animate, and speaking.

There are nothing more than Lights and vessels. As the vessels mutually connect with the Lights, they feel them differently. In the language of the branches, we attribute these manners to the levels of the still, vegetative, animate, and speaking levels, and give them different names. Now, they are all depicted to us as this world.

On the other hand, there are no identical “images” in the spiritual world where we feel the levels of our mutual connection. All the Kabbalistic concepts belong to the spiritual force that operates inside us, and so we have no illusions in the form of “three-dimensional pictures” that take up space, have weight, and so forth.

In spirituality, everything is clarified inside us in the true form, which means in the form of forces. However, in order to be able to speak about these forces and about the states of the desire, we give them names and definitions taken from the wisdom of Kabbalah and from compatible reflections in our world.

One way or the other, it is the same Ein Sof that is distorted to the extent that the created being looking at it is corrupt, as it is written, “a person who disqualifies, disqualifies according to his own faults.” The created being’s perception is depicted as 125 degrees, although, in fact, there is nothing but Ein Sof. When we speak about the worlds, about what goes on in them, we always refer to the person who is on that level. When he rises to another level, he will see a different picture.

So, we see that everything is relative. There is a system we are in and which we attain. The worlds do not actually exist, and their order depends on the person who attains it.

You constantly determine your state in relation to the world of Ein Sof. By perceiving twenty percent of it, for example, you determine your perceptions the world of Assiya. If you perceive forty percent of Ein Sof, you are in the world of Yetzira.

The worlds are divided also into degrees, but on the whole, you determine your current state with regard to the world of Ein Sof. Only it exists, and you aim your perception toward it and find yourself in one world or another on a certain level of concealment of Ein Sof.

Now, your desires are totally corrupt and opposite to it, so it is depicted to you in the form of this world. Actually, now, too, you are in Ein Sof, but unconsciously, and in this unconsciousness, the corporeal pictures are depicted to you. This is why our world is called “the imaginary world.”
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/15/12, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar”

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