Writings of Rabash, Dargot HaSulam “Because Man Is the Tree of the Field”
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The Book of Zohar, Weekly Torah Portion “Yitro,” Selected Excerpts
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Explanation of the Article, “Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah,” Lesson 11
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Rav Yehuda Ashlag “The Freedom,” “One Law For All the Worlds,” Lesson 12
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Question: What does a person who has experienced the ten plagues, came into the desert, and entered the land of Israel feel? I think that anyone can imagine blows.
Answer: No, these blows are completely different. These are not the blows that we are used to. A blow is not something that makes us feel bad; we can all imagine feeling that way. Rather, a blow is something that makes me understand that my egoism, my nature, is evil. This attainment is called a plague. Nothing else pertains to the ten plagues.
It is not a blow if I am just feeling bad. I suffer not because I am feeling bad, but because I feel the evil of my desire to receive pleasure, of my egoism. A blow points me to the cause of the evil. It, itself, is not evil.
In reality, these blows are not that much suffering. People suffer much more in our world. What matters most is that a person feels a direct connection between suffering and his egoistic qualities: “You suffer because of what you are. You will not suffer if you rid yourself of these qualities and rise above them.”
A person strives to escape this suffering, but it is not because he just wants to stop feeling it. It is because he feels his insignificance, the evil in him, especially in relation to those around him.
There are several terms here: the Creator, man, Pharaoh, the sensation of evil, and the reason for the sensation of evil versus good. Man does not want to escape the blows. This is not the problem. The blows help him discover the true causes, and he no longer wants to just escape the blows; he desires to rise over them toward the property of bestowal.
He wants to attain a connection with the Creator and to disconnect from Pharaoh not from the bad feeling. In other words, he transitions from evaluation according to the principle of “bitter and sweet” toward examining the principle of “true and false.” He wants to cling to the truth, and this is why the ten plagues lift him and take him out of Egypt.
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From the Lesson on the Weekly Torah Portion 1/6/2011
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Question: Does the law of “The general and the particular are equal” mean that one can undergo the ten blows both individually and in the group, or is it an exclusively internal, personal process?
Answer: Yes and no. As a rule, all Kabbalists go through this individually; I know this from my own experience. One feels so desperate in his egoism that he tears away from it and cannot use it anymore.
There is no doubt that it’s easier to do this while being in the group, even if the latter knows nothing about it. It can be a small group in terms of the number of members and level of advancement, but its general atmosphere, its determination and aspiration to the goal helps a person and doesn’t let him escape from this process. A person holds himself intact at the time he is receiving a blow, which is what matters the most, and he passes through it.
However, even if he tells himself, “That’s it, I give up! I can’t stand it anymore! I wish to live solely for bestowal,” he eventually descends deeper into the egoistic desire and gets revisited by those thoughts and internal discernments. He sees that at the deeper, inner level, he is still stuck in his will to receive where he hasn’t yet made a final and irreversible decision that he desires to rise above it all.
The ten blows are not only just different in character, not at all. They differ in their depth since they become more and more internal. Therefore, even if during the previous test a person decided that he wouldn’t be using egotistic desires any more, now he sees that he hasn’t worked on this particular desire yet. He hasn’t become aware and realized that it cannot be employed and that he can’t comply with his egoism.
If a person has a strong and correct environment, he passes through these states with enthusiasm. He is aware that he is undergoing a blow that will help him tear away from egoism and get refined. I don’t think a student can go through it without the support of the teacher and the group.
The blows themselves are very specific, and one should move through them quickly and distinctly. It all depends on our discipline, the interconnection between us, and our willingness to lose interest in our egoism which is our nature.
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From the Lesson on the Weekly Torah Portion 1/6/2011
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In Moses’ standoff with Pharaoh we reveal the unique nature of our spiritual work. We work with our egoism, the will to receive; we don’t cancel it out, but rather cultivate and develop it.
It is written: “I created the evil inclination, and I created the Torah as a spice for it.” The Torah is only a spice for the egoistic desire: a little pepper, a dab of salt for all of this big meal called egoism, the will to receive pleasure. Indeed, what do we lack? We only have to add some Torah to turn the entire enormous egoism into the world of Infinity.
The form of authentic spiritual work is turning the staff into a snake and the snake into a staff. It all depends on how a person employs all of his attributes and predispositions. He destroys neither the good nor the evil ones and renounces none of his capacities! He must only modify the way he is using them.
If a person throws the staff on the group, it turns into a snake; and if he grabs the snake by the tail, it turns into a staff which helps him to move forth. The staff (Maté) derives from the Hebrew word “below” (Máta), meaning that a person reduces himself and with the help of the force regarded as “faith above reason,” elevates his egoism, the property of Malchut, to the property of Bina.
Each time, in the ten impure Sefirot, the ten manifestations of Pharaoh, he experiences an increasingly greater egoism that he can reform by way of ten Egyptian plagues. A person who is in the state of exodus from Egypt is willing to go through all of the 10 plagues. By using the staff, He himself causes the blows that strike him and help him rise above egoism.
He views these blows as medicine. Similarly, we are willing to take any painful and unpleasant treatment in order to get well again.
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From the Lesson on Weekly Torah Portion 23/12/2011
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The speed of our development depends not only on us, but on the entire world as well. People whose points in the heart awaken are willing to unite; they are desperately trying to do it, but cannot because the world doesn’t feel the need for it yet.
We are not taken into consideration since we are an alien body in the world from the start. Spiritual sparks, sprinkled into egoism, exist solely to reform this egoism. They are the channels of the Torah, that very spice with the help of which all humanity, “the main dish,” has to reach the end of correction (Gmar Tikkun). And if this dish hasn’t been stewed enough yet, spices cannot be added to it in order to make the dish ready.
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From the Lesson on Weekly Torah Portion 12/23/2010
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Dear Friends, please ask questions about these passages from the great Kabbalists. The commentaries in brackets are mine.
The Torah Develops the Recognition of Evil in a Person
Accordingly, what should one do in order to come to love the Creator? For that purpose we are granted the remedy [Segula] of engaging in Torah and Mitzvot [Kabbalah] for the Light in it reforms. There is Light there, which lets one feel the severity of the state of separation. And slowly, as one intends to acquire the Light of Torah, hatred for separation is created in him. He begins to feel the reason that causes him and his soul to be separated and far from the Creator. [Only the inner part of Torah, Kabbalah, is capable of attracting the Light that Reforms. Then a person will sense that he is an egoist and will desire correction.]
– Baal HaSulam, Shamati, Article #34, “The Profit of a Land”
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Dear Friends, please ask questions about these passages from the great Kabbalists. The commentaries in brackets are mine.
The Torah Develops the Recognition of Evil in a Person
The Torah and the Mitzvot [correction of oneself through the study of Kabbalah] were given only to refine Israel [to unite into a single desire], to develop in us the sense of recognition of evil [egoism], imprinted in us at birth, which is generally defined as our self-love, and to come to the pure good defined as the “love of others,” which is the one and only passage to the love of God.
– Baal HaSulam, “The Freedom”
When one engages in the Torah [the method of correction of one’s innate egoism, and if he indeed studies the true Torah], he sees the truth, meaning one’s measure of remoteness from spirituality, and one sees that he is such a low creature, that there is not a worse person on earth than him.
– Baal HaSulam, Shamati #56 “Torah is Called Indication”
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Question: How can we calibrate our attitude so as to aim it towards the goal?
Answer: You have to do it according to the principle, “Israel, Torah, and the Creator are one.” “The Creator” is the root to which we strive. The “Torah” is all of the means that help us along the way, including the teacher, books, group, and study. And “Israel” is the point in the heart, the initial spiritual desire.
Question: In order for me to solve this equation, what needs to be concealed and what needs to be revealed to me?
Answer: You need to imagine the corrected state where we are all connected and every person perceives the whole instead of himself. It is written: “The general and the particular are equal.”
The common force of love and bestowal reigns inside our oneness and fills everyone in equal measure. This force is called “the Creator” or “Nature.” This is what you have to see as the final goal. At the end we must arrive at this image.
This is why we are working on discerning the notion of "the group." The group is essentially the same system in which we awaken the same force. That force is already present inside the system; we just don’t perceive it yet. We must reveal this force which fills the group, strengthens it, manifests in it, and corrects it. This is the force called “the Creator” or the concealed Light that hides in our unity.
When we strive to grow in our world, we essentially reveal the same force. This is because we have the same direction, although on a corporeal level. “The Creator” is the common force that unites all the parts of creation.
Question: Still, there are too many unknowns in this equation.…
Answer: You have to keep searching and trying, over and over again. That is how you will awaken new sensations. There is no other possibility for doing it.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/11/11, Writings of Rabash
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Dear Friends, please ask questions about these passages from the great Kabbalists. The commentaries in brackets are mine.
613 Suggestions and 613 Deposits
The language of The Zohar calls the Mitzvot [commandments] in the Torah 613 deposits. However, it is also called 613 suggestions. The difference between them is that everything has an anterior and posterior. The preparation [correction of desire] for something is called “posterior,” and the attainment [in the corrected desire] of something is called “anterior.”
Accordingly, Torah and Mitzvot have the aspect of doing and the aspect of hearing, as our sages wrote (Shabbat 88), “Who carry out His word, hearing the voice of His word,” doing [correcting their desires] first and hearing [what they will receive in the property of bestowal, Bina] afterward. The Mitzvot are called 613 suggestions, and they are considered “posterior,” and when rewarded with hearing the voice of His word [because they have acquired the ability to hear, the property of bestowal, Bina], the 613 Mitzvot become deposits, from the term “deposit [the spreading of the Light of Hochma in the Light of Hassadim],” since there are 613 Mitzvot, and in each Mitzva, Light is deposited from a specific degree, corresponding to a specific organ of the 613 organs and tendons of the soul and of the body.
– Rabash, The Rungs of the Ladder, “What Is a Half of a Shekel, in the Work (1)”
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Question: On one hand, you say that the Torah is not a historic narrative, but on the other, you refer to our forefather Abraham as a real person who started disseminating Kabbalah at a certain point in life. So, is Abraham an actual person from history or some special force?
Answer: The Torah describes to us the path of spiritual development of a soul, any soul. Moreover, everything described in it also manifests at the level of our world once, according to the principle: “The spiritual root must manifest in corporeal consequence.” For this reason, all these spiritual degrees have also manifested in our world in specific people and events.
This is why our approach to the study of the Torah has to be based on two aspects: On one hand, we study our history. All these people, such as Adam HaRishon, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and so on, really lived at different times. But on the other, the fact that all these historic events really took place does not matter to us. More important is the fact that this refers to the inner properties of our souls. When we begin correcting ourselves, we reveal these properties, forces, and states called “Abraham,” “Egypt,” “Isaac,” and so on within us.
Question cont.: Are these forces present in every person?
Answer: Absolutely in everyone.
Question cont.: So what is “Abraham?”
Answer: It is the property of bestowal, Hesed, the right line. The property of “Hesed” in man is called “Abraham,” while the property of “Gevura” “Isaac.” “Tifferet” is “Jacob”; “Yesod” is “Joseph” in the state of Katnut (the small state) or “Israel” in the state of Gadlut (adulthood), and so on.
Question cont.: Does this mean that I suddenly begin to feel Abraham within me during the process of my spiritual development?
Answer: You feel the property called “Abraham” within you. You stop connecting the text of the Torah with actual people and events. Instead, you begin to feel these actions happening within you, you reveal your inner properties and changes behind all the historic characters. This is how you read The Zohar, the Torah, and all the other holy books.
Looking at the words: “First God created heaven and earth,” you understand that this refers to Bina and Malchut, and God or Elokim is the general force. You feel all these properties!
Question cont.: What does this feeling give me?
Answer: You experience the entire Torah internally. You correct yourself in such a way that you begin to perceive the tale you are reading as happening within you. And this goes on until you “finish the entire Torah,” that is, attain your individual final correction by completely correcting your soul.
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From a TV Program “Ask the Kabbalist” No. 186, 7/7/2010
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