Question: What role does asceticism play in human development?

Answer: Kabbalah has a very negative opinion of various restrictions. It does not demand anything from a person with regard to his earthly life. In principle, you can do anything you want.

It’s a different matter when you become engrossed in all sorts of fetishes in this earthly life by introducing some kind of special customs, habits, and exercises to it. Live normally. If you like doing yoga, then do it. If you like running in the morning, then run. If there’s a certain diet that is healthier for you and another that’s less healthy, then eat accordingly. None of this matters. The most important thing is not to turn anything into a cult.

Kabbalah treats every person absolutely normally. It doesn’t care about how a person lives, what habits he has, and what his customs, religious convictions, and inclinations are. Who he is in the earthly life doesn’t matter one bit.

We are once again returning to the essence: Egoism rises in us in order for us to compensate for it above ourselves. That is why it doesn’t matter one bit what I am like. Limiting yourself in food or applying any kind of methods—none of this will help. Nothing will help.

On the contrary, a person who does some kind of physical exercises or keeps some kind of strict boundaries thinks that he has already advanced forward, has achieved some kind of level, that he is righteous and so on.

This can only confuse people. Therefore, live normally, calmly, eat well, and think about your health and profession. Take part in all the things that your surrounding society does.

And together with this, study Kabbalah. This balance or normal state is the most preferable one. Fate has placed you in this environment so go with its flow. Then you will see that in reality, everything around you is in the ideal state, besides yourself.

A minus is compensated by the right plus.
[34198]
From the 2nd lesson at the Berlin Convention on 1/28/11

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Question: We see that man is a predator. The entire meaning of his existence is to devour his neighbor and reach his own goal. If we attain mutual guarantee and the earth’s population will increase to 20 or 25 billion, how will all of this actually take place?

Answer: What’s the problem with having twenty billion people? Imagine that they are all your relatives and you feel like one whole with them. It completely doesn’t bother you that they are together with you. On the contrary, you change your attitude to them: You feel good when all of them are as close to you as possible.

Question cont’d: But what will happen if there are no limits?

Answer: Every person makes a limit on himself. Imagine a mother who has twenty billion children. Does this number bother her if she has everything they need? She exists in the world of Infinity, meaning in the world of absolute Light, satisfaction, fulfillment, and abundance.

Of course, it’s difficult to imagine how a person changes. But if you are next to your beloved and you really love him without any calculation, then you want to be with him all the time. You always want to be next to him and as close as possible.

Then what would be the problem with having twenty billion beloved? You won’t feel that there are twenty billion people. You will feel that they are all together with you. This state is the most desirable and comfortable one.

In reality you do not split them up into twenty billion, but there is just one you. This is called inclusion.

Our obstacle is a psychological problem. We cannot imagine how this will happen. We imagine that we exist in bodies, but when we reach mutual guarantee, then instead of the bodies, we will feel every person’s inner potential.
From the 2nd lesson of the Berlin Convention on 1/28/11

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Question: I would like to know: Where inside me does the evil inclination reside? Is it in the heart or in the ego? How can I find it in order to get rid of it?

Answer: Baal HaSulam writes that he rejoiced about the revelation of new, evil qualities inside of him because they are not new, but are concealed in a person, and it is unknown when all of our evil, not yet revealed, will be revealed in us.

Indeed, the times when the evil becomes revealed are unpleasant. A person begins to eat himself up because he does not agree to it and does not want it. This approach also needs to be corrected.

To tell you the truth, we must only be happy when the evil becomes revealed, but not as masochists. If this evil reaches the necessary measure, then a person will explode and produce such an inner outcry, such a feeling will emerge in his heart that he will receive a revelation from Above.

Then in relation to his heart, he comes out to other people and starts feeling the spiritual world, which cannot be felt inside of you, but only in the desires of other people. However, this is a good feeling. Then a person experiences every moment as a great adventure where his desires and intentions begin opening up the world to him.
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From the lecture in “Kabalah L’Am” Hall on 12/21/10

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Question: Can Kabbalah help a person find mutual understanding between a man and woman or fix relationships in the family or at work?

Answer: No, you will not be able to create a good life for yourself in this world with the help of the science of Kabbalah. A good life will come as a result of your using all of the evil that becomes revealed in order to attain love for the neighbor and love for the Creator. Then the desires in which you feel bad will no longer emerge in you. The science of Kabbalah does not lie to a person! This is not psychology or charlatanism; it is not mysticism or a magical means to improve our lives!

Kabbalah says that the evil which becomes revealed to you is goal-oriented. It is intended to push you toward correction. You do not have to nullify the desire in which you feel bad, but rather, you have to admit that the desire is bad because of your hatred to the neighbor, and when you correct your hatred to love, you will be able to enjoy love for the neighbor and then the bad desires will no longer become revealed in you.

If you want to create a family or you are already married and a disagreement, animosity, or a misunderstanding comes up between you, that misunderstanding is impossible to correct without correcting your attitude to creation and the Creator. The Creator is between you: “Husband and wife—and the Shechina between them.”

For now the Shechina is still in exile. It becomes revealed as an evil, harmful force, the force of mutual hatred which sets you one against the other. The Creator does this deliberately so you wouldn’t connect on the previous, animate level, the way a female animal unites with a male animal in order to produce offspring, but in order for you to merge with one another as two souls into one soul and reveal the common force of bestowal that will connect you together.

If you are able to correct the relationship between you in this way, you will really become a family. Otherwise you won’t be able to do it. Kabbalah does not give you hints, solutions, or medicine for your current state, but elevates you to a new state where you will be able to be happy, successful, and perfect.

All of the suffering, problems, and blows become revealed in our world not in order to bring peace and perfection into the world, but in order to elevate us above our world. Otherwise it is similar to building communism in Russia. If you do something not for the sake of the Creator, meaning not in order to reach absolute bestowal, then you won’t achieve anything.

I feel bad, I have problems with my family, at work, with my children, and with my health, and I want to succeed in all of these areas. Kabbalah says I will feel good? Then fine, I agree to study Kabbalah! To do that I have to bestow to others? Then I’m even willing to bestow to others—anything to feel good myself.

This is called Lo Lishma (not for the Creator’s sake). This means that you know the method and you want to bring it to life for the sake of everyone so that you would also feel good. Now everything depends on what proportion you are willing to bestow to others in order to improve your state.

At first it is 1% for others and 99% for yourself. Then it’s the opposite: 99% for others and 1% for yourself until you acquire the force enabling you not to want anything for yourself. “I don’t care about what happens to me, I want to bestow to others.” This is called “bestowal for the sake of bestowal.”

However, we will never be able to return to a successful and corrected material life. All the methods that say that they can achieve this are lying, and Kabbalah tells you from the onset that this is impossible because all the evil in this life exists in order to elevate you to a new level.

Therefore, if you apply the science of Kabbalah to improve this life and you begin selling holy water or red strings, then it becomes a deadly poison. We have to understand that the reason for the general state of the world is the need to elevate us, but not to improve our situation. This is the difference between Kabbalah and other methods.

Therefore, if someone promises you a good life in this world, or health and happiness in your personal life, don’t believe it—it’s a lie and goes against nature! Nature wishes to elevate us to the “human” level. And when you aspire to this state, everything falls into place in the most wondrous way!
[34174]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/24/11, “The Essence of the Wisdom of Kabbalah”

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Question: What is the wisdom of Kabbalah?

Answer: A certain influence descends to us from the upper root (the thought of creation) from Above downward through all the worlds and finally reaches the final point, this world. It includes the exterior and the interior parts: the five upper worlds and the created beings.

The entire universe is worlds and souls which exist inside the worlds. The wisdom of Kabbalah examines everything except for the actual root: how it spreads from Above downward and then returns from below upward, which all happens in relation to the person attaining it.

There is someone referred to as “man” inside this system (so far, we do not know who he is). Everything that is being revealed in relation to him is called the wisdom of Kabbalah.

At this moment, I exist in the reality of this world, and I perceive everything through the five senses: vision, hearing, taste, smell, and touch. They help me reveal and perceive whatever happens outside of me, but I do not know what is actually happening there.

Physicists say that we are being influenced by waves and that nothing but waves exist. Chemists say that these are reactions between certain substances, molecules. However, what matters is that I perceive certain influences and react to them. This is my inner perception, and others could react in a different manner.

We are all people, and we all operate the same way. For this reason, we kind of perceive the same things. Another being would feel a different reality. Every being perceives the world according to his properties, character, and informational genes. People, animals, insects, plants, and even rocks perceive themselves and their environment in different ways.

However, Kabbalah only speaks of the way humans perceive the world. Although there are differences even here, we still have a certain common perception. We still kind of understand one another. Our impressions coincide so much on the still, vegetative, and animate levels that we are completely at one with them.

The difficulties in perception only begin on the human degree where psychology, individual characteristics, perceptions, and sensations begin. If we examine solely the influence on the five senses which has not yet been deformed by the factors of psychological perception, then everything we perceive in them is referred to as the perception of this world, so far without your nerves and thoughts layered upon it.

When we attain the entire five spiritual worlds this way, this is called the wisdom of Kabbalah: the entire descent from Above downward, from beginning to end and back from the end to the beginning, all the objectives and systems, causes and consequences, everything until the very last detail. Thus, Kabbalah explains who man is, his purpose, the reasons for the need to descend from Above downward, and what awaits us at the end of the ascent.

This wisdom incorporates everything. It incorporates physics, chemistry, and a person’s life in this world. Everything is inside there. Kabbalah is the revelation of the entire reality inside the person attaining it.

Man ascends through the spiritual worlds and attains the reality in one of its sections: the first, second, third degree, and so forth. When he ascends to the next degree, it becomes clear that all the previous degrees are included in this degree.
[33956]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/23/2011, “The Essence of the Wisdom of Kabbalah”

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Question: In your opinion, what is freedom? And are you free?

Answer: In my opinion, freedom is absolute similarity to the Creator, when I do not have any other desires but His. This is because the Creator is the absolute law of nature. It is not somebody from the skies, but an enormous law of nature that surrounds the entire nature and controls everything, all of its parts, including me.

And I exist in an absolute prison. Imagine yourself completely tied up. Your nervous system is not able to handle it, you are losing your mind; it is awful! This is your state when you are opposite to the Creator. But when together with Him you reach similarity to Him, His understanding, and balance, you suddenly feel that all these chains, these limitations, disappear.

Like a cogwheel, you are locked in from all sides with all other cogwheels. You are not able to move anywhere; you are not able to do anything at all! And suddenly you feel that specifically your understanding of the Creator, your agreeing with Him brings you to balance, a joyful state when you simply do not need anything else. What a relief!

This already is a state of “Hassadim (Mercy),” a state of  faith. You do not need anything else but corresponding to Him in properties. And no matter what happens, it is Him influencing you with the only purpose of giving you the opportunity to find an even greater possibility to correspond to Him.

Once all His different influences touch you, and you find your similarity to all of them, now nothing can affect you and make you fail to be similar to the Creator: You have attained the state of absolute bestowal, Bina. Now you feel completely free.

What does “completely free” mean? You are under the Creator’s complete power just like before, but you agree with Him completely of your own will, and not against it because you realize that everything must be this way and not the other. You find yourself in absolute harmony, in unison with Him. This is the state of Bina, when nothing is lacking!

The next type of work only begins after this. We call it reception for the sake of bestowal.
[33105]
From Lesson1 in Moscow 1/14/2011, “Introduction of The Book of Zohar”

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The condition for receiving the Torah is the need to become as one man with one heart, to enter mutual guarantee. This is talking about a spiritual Kli.

Until we understand this, the states will keep ruling over us because we do not use the group to accelerate them. Every state has to be desirable as a preparation phase for the next state. All the stages are necessary and we shouldn’t focus on the states as such, but only on the aspiration forward.

The Kli is evaluated by its desire, where a desire is an aspiration forward, and never for what I already have now. A spiritual vessel is evaluated by its pull to the next state. As soon as that pull disappears, there is no vessel.

Thus, a spiritual vessel exists only in the aspiration and yearning forward. If a person stops, loses this vector, and turns to what he has, then the spiritual world disappears for him. That’s because spirituality is not generated by the actual desire, but by its coefficient; not by the speed, but the acceleration.

It’s the same in Einstein’s theory: A body moving with constant speed is like it is at absolute rest. Only increasing the speed is taken into consideration and felt as a spiritual desire.

This desire can only be common for everyone and it only comes to a person as a result of everyone’s influence. Therefore, we have to leave the old approach according to which I exist, I receive inside, and I feel, and realize that my “I” is actually outside of me or above me, by the principle of the screen and Reflected Light.

Only inside of this interconnected net will I reveal the Upper World. All of its 125 levels are degrees of connection and unification of the parts of the common Kli, the pressure of the common field, which is what determines the power of the vessel.
[33636]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/25/11, Writings of Rabash

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Question: In a few days I will come to the convention where I will meet people whom I have never seen before, who speak different languages, and belong to other cultures. What do I have to convey to them and what do I have to receive from them in order to hold on to the thread that leads into spirituality?

Answer: You have to give each other mutual support, the understanding that if we inspire each other, then we will attain the goal. Don’t count on the Creator or some “kind God.” We see that the whole world cries out to Him, but did this ever help anybody? You can only turn to the group.

When you turn to the group and desire to reveal love and unity among all of you, that will mean that you have revealed the Creator. The Tabernacle, the Holy of Holies, or the Temple is the common Kli, the common soul of the group, the nation, or the whole world. It is our unification. The Creator does not exist outside of the creatures. He is called the Creator (Boreh) because you reveal Him (“Come and See,”  Bo–Reh) inside of the common, integral, connected Kli or desire.

With this intention I come to the group or travel to the convention where I want to tell everyone, “Guys, do we want to reveal the Creator? Then where can we see Him? Where is our unity!? How does each one of us inspire and get inspired by the unity between us, meaning from the Creator, from spirituality? Can every person receive such a force from our common unification that he will fortify himself and become included back in it even stronger!?”

This will mean that we have made contact with the Creator. The Creator is our common force, the force that consolidates us!

Say there are ten of us and each one has a force of 100 pounds. Do you think that we have a common force of 100×10, meaning 1000 pounds? That is not so. Because we have united together and canceled our ego in order to come closer and unite, instead of a thousand pounds of force, we have received a million! That’s because we worked against egoism, against hatred for others, and have attained love for everyone. This effort had to go somewhere. We didn’t just add or sum up our pounds because we had to exert a great amount of effort to achieve this.

Suppose we are collecting money for some shared activity in dissemination. I don’t just throw money into the common pot, but I work against my ego and various calculations. If I simply spent that money, I wouldn’t even notice it. But I cannot force myself to pay it to the group, to the common affair. Anything but this! I am ready to burn it, to spend it so tomorrow I won’t even remember where it went, yet I will know that I still did something for my own enjoyment.

But when I give money to the group, it costs me 100 times more, so it’s as if I’m not giving $500, but $50,000! That’s the kind of effort I make. Therefore, if unification is created for the sake of revealing the Creator, mutual bestowal, then inside of it I reveal enormous forces. This isn’t just us “pitching in” to the common fund because besides our personal contributions that fund contains one more additional, “consolidating” component.

There is one more “bonus” or addition to the account whose might is a billion times greater than the sum of the contributions. This is the force that each person receives from the group because it divides into everyone, but does not get any smaller!

That is why we get together at conventions and other meetings: in order to extract that common, “consolidating” component. Each one of us receives it for himself, for his own correction.
[33698]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/25/11, “The Essence of the Wisdom of Kabbalah”

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Everything depends upon the environment. It has to make me more sensitive to the challenges that the upper force, which exists between us and motivates each of us toward integral unity, constantly sets before me.

On one hand, I can be very keenly, very perceptually tuned to its finest vibrations. On the other, under the influence of the surrounding environment, the society that I belong to, the group, I can comprehend how to react to its influence correctly. This is how we should act all the time.

The Creator changes me to a certain degree, so I start to feel the environment and myself a little differently, and I harmonize to it accordingly. And then it is He again, then I; His action, my action again. It becomes like ascending using two legs. This is how we move forward by way of the inner attuning of our “instrument” to a dialogue with the Creator.

If we perceive Him correctly, we start working in sync, which is exactly what is regarded as “the work of the Creator” since it is He who works. As to us, we just need to react and tune ourselves in correctly. We don’t have to do anything except to build a correct environment for ourselves: the Creator on one side, the group on the other, and me in the middle, automatically reacting to everything.

I myself cannot influence me, just as I cannot work on myself; hence, what is needed here is the collective prayer. Don’t focus on yourself. Who am I to focus on myself? I cannot do anything with myself, can I? All of our life demonstrates that we ourselves cannot change, no matter what we do.

What we are is what we will be unless we start changing ourselves under the influence of two reasons:

1. The Creator, the integral force that fills all space between us.
2. The group, all the others except for me. They form particles filled with the Creator, inside which I reside.

Essentially, I have to find harmony with the other particles. They are harmonized with each other and the Creator, and only I in relation to them am not in balance, in the correct state, or integrated. This is what a person’s job, his attuning himself to the group, is.

While I am moving closer to it, I start feeling the upper world. I feel the Creator’s presence not somewhere “out there,” but between us. In the void between us, where all these “elementary particles” (our desires) are, I start feeling everyone’s desires, while the Light is between them.

The force that fills us, the integral desire consisting of individual interconnected desires, is called a Kli, vessel, or Malchut. And the Light that is revealed between us in our shared aspirations toward spirituality is what we call the Upper Light or the Creator. That is what we feel, and that is what the upper world is.
[33214]
From Lesson 2 in Moscow 1/16/10, “A Prayer of Many”

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Question: What does Kabbalah focus on and what can it give to a person?

Answer: When childhood ends, a person’s eyes gradually begin to open and he finds himself in a particular world. It is possible to live in it without giving it much thought; to simply live “like everyone else,” watching others. But possibly, a person wants to understand a bit more in life. Everything depends on a person’s internal need, which pushes him.

A person wants to discover the reality around him: his room during his childhood, then his yard, city, country, the world, the whole planet, and then he goes on to outer space. But in the end, he comes to understand that all of these attempts do not give him satisfaction.

Today humanity has even lost interest in space exploration. The only thing left of it is mercantile use for operating mobile phones via satellites or for espionage. We are no longer inspired by space travel to far-away galaxies. Man’s internal desire has changed and does not aspire to far-away, cosmic distances, but on the contrary, it aspires within.

So the question is: Where did this come from and what for? For the first time in human history, we are not simply trying to do “more,” but we first want to understand: Why should we do it? This is a question about our root: Where does everything come from? And where is it taking me?

Year after year, it becomes harder for people to sell something new, and that is because they are already satiated with everything. This does not mean that they do not have desires, but that you simply cannot give them what they want! That is why they are left unsatisfied, disillusioned, and begin taking drugs in order to forget about it all.

They need an answer about the meaning of life, and not simply how to arrange a well-fed, comfortable existence for themselves that’s pleasant for the animate body.

This can even be seen in fashion by how much simpler and free it has become. This indicates that man is becoming free of material values as he no longer sees meaning or fulfillment in them. He simply wants to feel comfortable and not feel the lack of something material, without excessively focusing on it or taking care of it.

This makes all the difference. I need a car, a house, and a thousand different things in order to live comfortably. But they are not interesting to me by themselves. I simply want to provide comfort for myself, but I actually do not need anything. They make my life easier, and that’s great, but all of this is not a goal in itself. I want to discover something else, something higher.

That’s where an inner question arises about the essence or meaning of life. A person can no longer find help in technology development, science, philosophy, or psychology; nothing will be able to answer this question. And that is because it is a question about his root: Where do I come from? Do I have a higher purpose besides this animate life?

I have already exhausted this life, but what else can I receive? One more super-fashionable toy or a TV? You can dream up any entertainment possible, but all of it comes from a level that I am no longer interested in. And I am not to blame! Inside of me there are questions awakening which belong to another level.
[33603]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/24/11, “The Essence of the Wisdom of Kabbalah”

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