Kabbalah Insights: The Chicken Or The Egg?
Posted on September 21st, 2010
Rabash writes, “My father Baal HaSulam promised us that by following his path and carrying out his advice, we will merit eternal life from the Creator, adhesion to Him.” Rabash himself reached a high level of spiritual attainment by using only the works and the advice of his father. Evidently, there is no other practical means for our generation to reveal the Upper world except for the writings of Baal HaSulam. His soul is especially close to us since we value a person according to how he benefits us.
We don’t compare the levels of the Kabbalists: Moses, Rashbi, the ARI, Baal HaSulam, and Rabash. To receive an eternal, spiritual life we depend on the souls that preceded us: Rabash and Baal HaSulam. It’s similar to how a mother is of the most importance to her child. Of course there are many elevated souls, but we can only unite with the spiritual system through Rabash and Baal HaSulam.
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/16/10, Lesson for Commemoration of Baal HaSulam’s Passing Day
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At first Nukva does not have a desire to receive the Light because it is just a point in relation to Zeir Anpin (it is behind Zeir Anpin’s chest). But then Nukva starts to grow and to receive the Light in order to build its desires (vessels, Kli). The Light comes from Zeir Anpin to Nukva, and thus Nukva builds itself up by virtue of its connection with Zeir Anpin.
They connect “back to back,” at which time Nukva goes through its formation, the formation of its screen or the forms of bestowal that Zeir Anpin teaches it. By adopting these forms, Nukva acquires more desire and force and is then able to become befitting and similar to Zeir Anpin. Nukva becomes Zeir Anpin‘s “wife,” and they (creation and the Creator) unite “face to face” where she receives fulfillment from Him.
However, creation can never become the Creator. It has to become similar and equal to Him! One thing cannot become another; it can only become similar to it. This is sufficient, and we don’t have a need for anything more!
We don’t know what will happen afterward, after the final correction, Gmar Tikkun. Right now it’s impossible for anyone to imagine this. Possibly, when we get there we will reveal completely new possibilities, similar to how a person in our world is now suddenly beginning to reveal the spiritual world, making this entire world of ours seem like a tiny grain of sand compared to the spiritual universe that is opening up before him.
That is how enormous the spiritual world appears to a person in his impressions, sensations, fulfillments, and attainments. It’s as if a person is born anew and perceives everything that happened to him in the past as nothingness. It’s even smaller than a drop of semen compared to a grown-up person because that drop belongs to the same material world and it already contains all of the information about the future person; all it has to do is develop. In contrast, something completely new is born in the spiritual world. The spiritual world means a new perception of reality where instead of perceiving egoistically, inside oneself, a person comes out of himself and perceives on the outside.
Perhaps after the end of correction, we will break through to another dimension, which we cannot imagine right now in any way. We can’t even imagine the spiritual world even though we have all kinds of tools to perceive it, including the Torah, religion, and Kabbalistic texts. However, there is absolutely no evidence of what will happen after the end of correction. Kabbalists do not say even one word to give us a hint about this. They only tell us about the path of correction, but no one talks about what will happen after we become equal to the Creator.
The Zohar strictly confines our research to just the matter and the form clothed in matter. We cannot ask about the abstract form and the essence because we do not have the instruments with which to research them in order to receive the answer.
From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/14/10, Talmud Eser Sefirot
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Every person has the right to examine whether the place he chooses to study is good for him. However, after a short test, he should make up his mind and enter the study process at the selected place without any further doubts. Otherwise, he won’t be able to reveal the Creator and His world.
There are groups who claim that they study according to their own method. But how can there be a method that was not passed down through the chain of Kabbalists from master to disciple?
It is impossible to receive such a method on one’s own. Only Adam HaRishon received this method “from Heaven,” as it were, and discovered it on “his own.” However, all the others, including Abraham, obtained it through the chain of Kabbalists. At first, Abraham was “an idol worshiper,” meaning that he was engaged in a special spiritual work, only in its reverse form, after which he realized its inadequacy. Twenty generations past Adam HaRishon, Kabbalah was passed on to Abraham.
The method of attainment can be acquired solely through clinging to a teacher. This is the way it expands from Above downward through the chain of souls, from soul to soul. Can you really connect to the root if you are not Adam HaRishon himself? Only Adam HaRishon is tied to the Creator directly. All the other souls must receive from him through the chain of Kabbalists, depending on the soul’s place in it. Everybody receives from the one who stands before him, and is connected by a linked chain with one root.
It is a hierarchic system similar to a tree. I am positioned in it at a specific place and can receive only from the person nearest to me and above me. For this, I need to annul myself before him in the same way a lower Partzuf annuls itself before the Upper One in the spiritual world.
Therefore, when people claim that they receive “Light or enlightenment” from Above or while in sleep, they are not being serious. A spiritual contact can be attained solely by staying close to a Kabbalist while he is alive. If you manage to reach at least one such point of contact, from that point on, you can develop everything else.
However, without this initial point, you won’t have anything from which to advance further: You are cut away from the whole tree, from the entire system of souls. This is why people always ask, “Who was your teacher? Where did you come from?”
For this reason, out of all diplomas, the most precious piece of paper that I possess is a tiny newspaper article where I am named as a loyal student and the right hand of Rabash. It testifies, to the very least, how connected I was with my teacher.
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/12/10, “Letter 38”
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Question: Is it possible to hold on to the Surrounding Light (Ohr Makif) during the day, when I come out of the group and the lesson into the external world?
Answer: The law of any physical field states that the intensity (of light or any other stimulus) decreases proportionally to the distance of the source squared. When you move twice as far away from the source, the intensity decreases by four times. But if you come twice as close, then the intensity increases by four times.
In the spiritual world there is no source of Light because the Light fills the entire universe. Therefore its influence is the same no matter where you are. You think that you come out of the lesson and enter the outside world, while in fact, all the spatial changes take place inside you. You go from one desire to another. All the “places” are your desires. You are traveling inside yourself.
Therefore, everything depends on how much you awaken the Light inside the desires. The Light is present in them equally and fully. It doesn’t matter where you are – out on the street or at the lesson in the group. I might be physically present in the group, but be far away in my thoughts. The degree of my connection with the Light depends only on the intention: How much do I desire to be connected to it?
From the talk on the Light that Reforms 9/8/10
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The Zohar, Chapter “VaYechi (And Jacob Lived),” Item 170: Upon the departure of one’s soul, all his kin and friends in the world of truth walk his soul and show her the place of Eden and the place of the punishment.
Question: People who have undergone clinical death speak of visions they experience, which in many ways are similar to what The Book of Zohar describes. However, these people don’t know the first thing about Kabbalah.
Answer: Understanding Kabbalah does not help a person see the spiritual world. The Upper World can only be felt in a corrected soul. Whether or not a person studies Kabbalistic books is irrelevant. The important thing is whether one wishes to correct himself.
We can look at clinical death experiences in two ways. On one hand, when a person falls into a critical state, it is a heavy blow to the physiological body, which is nothing more than the desire to enjoy. Our body only appears to us as something corporeal that takes up space, but in reality it is only the desire to enjoy a particular type of fulfillment.
If this desire feels emptiness or suffering, it naturally doesn’t want to feel the place (desire) in which it feels pain. It wants to reduce and restrict this place, to live less, to disconnect its senses, take drugs, and so forth. Any person feeling emotional or material suffering wants to restrict it, that is, restrict his perception of the world even to the extent as the desire to stop living.
But by feeling suffering and wanting to ascend, to escape this place that is full of darkness, pain, blows, wars, and diseases, meaning, to rise from the terrible suffering above this world, a person is essentially making a spiritual action. You don’t do it for the sake of bestowal or because you are drawn by spirituality, but because the suffering is pressuring you so much that it forces you out, like a pit popping out of a cherry when squeezed, and you are led upward.
This is the path of suffering, but it is not advancement because in this you do not draw closer to the goal. In fact, you don’t even know there is a goal; you’re simply running away like a beaten animal from the stick. But either way, you rise above your ego, the desire to enjoy. You want to nullify it, thinking: “I don’t want anything, just leave me alone!”
Suppose you stole a billion dollars and were caught and sentenced to life in prison. At that moment you desire only bread and water and to be back home. That’s it! Yet prior to that you wanted a billion dollars! The desire reduces itself, as though ascending by “faith above reason.” It is ready to be in bestowal, to reject and restrict itself so that it does not feel the suffering that punishment brings.
And that is when people begin to sense the truth; a connection with the Creator becomes revealed to them, at least to some degree. However, it passes very quickly, and people are unable to fully take in or retain this state because they lack their own permanent Kelim (spiritual vessels). And so the feeling passes.
In 99.9% of the cases, the sensation of something otherworldly relates only to people’s psychosomatic experiences. Since they live in suffering, confusion, emotional cloudiness, and faulty internal systems, it’s merely their imagination.
The purpose of creation is not for a person to feel the spiritual world in a state of clinical death. We have to feel spirituality in a state of total soundness and function in it like the researchers that have knowledge, understanding, sensation, and power. We have to come to be like the Creator.
From the 2ns part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/2/10, The Zohar
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The Simulator is spirituality because it means we are building something between us with a desire to produce our common spiritual state. This state exists outside of us, like an external point of connection between us that I can always make contact with. I can be constantly connected to it and I can constantly contribute everything I am capable of to it. I will then receive the spiritual force – life from it.
Therefore, the simulator is a spiritual quality like Bina. That is exactly how we should relate to it. That is why we have to turn this virtual space into our inner, spiritual space. We have to “throw” all our aspirations, hopes, and concerns into it. What is a group is and where is mutual guarantee? It’s there! Throw everything in there, inside this “mail box.” If we all put our efforts and aspirations for spirituality into this single space and receive spiritual life only from it, then this is exactly what we need.
This space is virtual in the external sense, but in the internal sense it is the place where all our desires, aspirations, and intentions are concentrated. That’s why this space is spiritual and the Creator becomes revealed inside it. We build the Creator ourselves; He is not outside of us. All of this is extremely serious. The time has come for us to start doing serious practical work.
The whole question is: Does a person consider this “simulator” the most important thing in his life, just like spirituality? Does he desire to receive inspiration from it instead of another place? If yes, then the inspiration he feels is spiritual because he is impressed by the connection among us which is embodied there in that simulator. At the end of the day, we must see it as the focus of our common concern and the source of life for everyone.
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The Zohar influences one’s soul more than anything else in the world. This doesn’t mean that we should discard all other books and study only it, but its effect is more powerful than anything else.
Talmud Eser Sefirot and Tree of Life are good for forming oneself. In addition, later on, when a person is already on the spiritual levels, they can serve as instructions for making inner actions.
When you feel ascents and descents, entrances and exits of Lights the way you might feel it physically, since your desire or spiritual vessel is ready for reception and bestowal, for the entrance and exit of the Light, then you can work with Talmud Eser Sefirot and Tree of Life by actually making the actions they describe.
On the other hand, when you work with The Zohar, you do so through an intermediary – the Surrounding Light. This composition develops the vessel of the soul in general, rather than according to the verse, “A person’s soul teaches him.” The latter is when you can take Talmud Eser Sefirot and carry out the actions in practice.
There is a time of preparation for the future level, and that is what The Zohar is mostly intended for. Besides this, there is a time for actualizing the levels, which is done with the help of Talmud Eser Sefirot.
From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/29/10, The Zohar
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Question: Can you explain what is Kabbalah in the simplest terms?
Answer: The science of Kabbalah is a science about everything. It answers all the essential questions:
– What is a human being?
– How were we created?
– How do we perceive the reality we live in?
– What is the purpose of our existence?
– How do we evolve, moving from one state of existence to another?
– How can we achieve perfection?
– How can we remove the borders of the visible reality and see what is beyond it?
– What awaits us after the death of the body?
– How do we control our destiny while we live and after we die?
This science talks about all the creatures and the Creator (the Upper Force that created them) and it also reveals how all creation is governed. The method of Kabbalah includes everything that exists, leaving nothing out of its scope.
Kabbalah reveals the Creator to man. It includes everything: time, space, events, and the force that governs them. Since all of this was created by the Creator, it is He whom Kabbalah reveals. Therefore, knowing the Creator and everything that exists is the same as learning the method of Kabbalah.
Thus, if we attain the wisdom of Kabbalah, we will know the entire universe. As a result, we will understand this world with all of its sciences and laws and we will gain control over everything that happens in it.
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