Preparation to the Lesson
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Shamati #36 “What Are the Three Bodies in a Man“
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The Book of Zohar – Selected Excerpts “Beresheet Bet (Genesis 2),” Lesson 128
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Preface to The Book of Zohar, Item 34, Lesson 22
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Writings of Rabash “They Helped Everyone His Friend”
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Preparation to the Lesson
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Shamati #145 “What Is Will Give Wisdom Specifically to the Wise“
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The Book of Zohar – Selected Excerpts “Beresheet Bet (Genesis 2),” Lesson 127
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Talmud Eser Sefirot, Part 2, “Histaklut Pnimit,” Item 51, Lesson 18
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“Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” Item 12, Lesson 5
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Preparation to the Lesson
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Writings of Baal HaSulam, Igrot “Letter 34”
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The Book of Zohar – Selected Excerpts “Beresheet Bet (Genesis 2),” Lesson 126
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Talmud Eser Sefirot, Part 2, “Histaklut Pnimit,” Item 46, Lesson 17
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“Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” Item 9, Lesson 4
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Preparation to the Lesson
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Writings of Rabash, Dargot HaSulam “Article 24”
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The Book of Zohar – Selected Excerpts “Beresheet Bet (Genesis 2),” Lesson 125
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Talmud Eser Sefirot, Part 2, “Histaklut Pnimit,” Item 33, Lesson 16
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“Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” Item 6, Lesson 3
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Question: I am actually only an animalistic body and I don’t have a “soul” yet. How do I acquire it?
Answer: A soul is part of the Creator from above. It is bestowal; it is the level of Bina, the level of general love.
If you acquire this attribute, it means that you have received a part of godliness from above. “From above” means that you consider the value of bestowal and love as higher than all your other beastly desires.
If you acquire this part of the attribute, it means that you have received a soul. Why? It is because, with this part, you will be able to love others and to bestow upon them. You will feel a different world, the next world, something that is external to what you are feeling now. Every sphere that you are feeling now, as if you were in it and which surrounds you, is a sphere that you feel inside your ego.
If you acquire the attribute of bestowal, it is as if you exit this sphere and enter an upper sphere that is external to you. You get an extra corporeal feeling, a special emotional state (extra sensory), and then you begin to discover the upper world, thoughts and desires that are aimed fully at bestowal and love. This is called an “addition” above the five senses with which you currently depict this world: sight, hearing, taste, smell, and feeling.
You add extra senses to these five senses, which operate in bestowal, called Keter, Hochma. Bina, Zeir Anpin and Malchut in which you feel something else that is totally in bestowal. The new structure that you have acquired begins to take on the form of Adam, which resembles the Creator.
Now, you exist in an egoistic sphere called “this world,” you feel everything only within your ego, and this is your life. Suppose you expand yourself all the way to some external sphere. What you would feel in it is called the upper world.
Then, you attain an even greater world, the next level, and thus you advance up 125 degrees. However, there, you already have an upper mind and feelings that help you understand what is going on. The main thing is to exit the first sphere because its nature is aimed totally inward, and it is opposite to all the other spheres whose nature is aimed outward.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/15/12, The Zohar
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The Zohar is the Light that Reforms, and The Book of Zohar is also called “the Upper Light.” We can enjoy this Light only if we know how to draw it, when we are in equivalence of form with it.
What should we do in order to attain equivalence of form with the Light? The Light bestows, how can I bestow? If I tighten the connection with the friends, annul my ego a bit in order to connect with them, try to be a bit closer to them through different actions, events, and by dissemination, I become a bit more similar to the Light. To the extent that I get closer to it, I am rewarded by it influencing me more.
The Light is fixed in its bestowal, but by my actions I draw myself closer to it and become more like it. Thus, I am rewarded with the influence of the Light, and as a result my vessel becomes the one that bestows.
According to my internal change, when I become the one who bestows in my desires and my attributes, I begin to discover the changes that occur in me. Suddenly I discover such desires and thoughts (in the heart and mind) that are totally different from the ones I had before. Thus I feel more and more changes inside me until I acquire a new state in which I feel: “That’s it, I’ve changed!” This change reveals a new collection of attributes, desires, and thoughts in me that is called a Partzuf, man (Adam), or the Creator, which are all the same.
Since according to this new structure, the sum of the attributes, desires, and thoughts in me, I discover a new internal figure, which is a “human,” and in it, I discover its root, the reason that gave it birth, which is the Creator. Thus we discover our spiritual development.
Let’s hope that by our yearning for the level of Adam, which means that in return for the annulment of our ego, the connection with others and with the whole world, and the study of The Zohar, we will enjoy the Light that Reforms and will receive the form of a “human.”
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/15/12, The Zohar
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Preparation to the Lesson
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Shamati #8, “What Is the Difference Between a Shade of Kedusha and a Shade of Sitra Achra”
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The Book of Zohar – Selected Excerpts “Beresheet Bet (Genesis 2)”
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Talmud Eser Sefirot, Part 2, “Histaklut Pnimit,” Item 19
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Questions About the Consolidation in North of Israel
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Report on “1001 Round Tables,” Event in Kiryat Shmona
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Preparation to the Lesson
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Shamati #76, “With All Thy Offerings Thou Shalt Offer Salt”
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The Book of Zohar – Selected Excerpts “Beresheet Bet (Genesis 2),” Lesson 123
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Talmud Eser Sefirot, Part 2, “Histaklut Pnimit,” Item 19, Lesson 14
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“Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” Item 4, Lesson 2
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Baal HaSulam lists five questions in the beginning of the “Introduction to The Book of Zohar“:
1. What is our essence?
2. What is our role in the long chain of reality, where we are small links?
3. We feel low and defective, but should not the Creator, who created us, only emit perfect actions?
4. How could the Creator doom His creatures to such suffering?
5. How could something Eternal, which neither has a beginning nor an end, produce perishable, temporal, and inferior creatures?
Many have thought about it over the course of many centuries since mankind has come to know itself. And our generation has the same questions before it. We have not managed to reach understanding, while this is regarding fundamental questions that refer to the very essence of our existence: What are we living for? What is the purpose of life? What is its reason? What kind of process is contained in it? Do we have freedom of will? What is the purpose before us? Is nature blind or does it follow a certain program? Can it be changed?
Moreover, there are questions that have to do with scriptures: If the Creator is kind, then where is His kindness? Is it in a certain other world? But who has seen it?
Briefly speaking, these questions comprise the entire reality, except for the animate degree where we must provide for our daily needs.
Comment: Not many people ask themselves these questions.
Answer: This is a separate problem; people do not know how to think about things that matter. However, these things definitely bother them on the subconscious level. And especially today.
And in general, has there really been a single person in history, who did not ask himself?
– Why do I suffer?
But at the same time, what is so surprising here?
– You suffer because you feel bad.
– But why do I feel bad?
– And why should you feel good? You assume that good is a normal state, and anything worse is not normal? Where do you get this? Maybe you believe in the Creator? But how can you know that He exists and that He is kind? So why do you feel surprised when you feel bad? Maybe bad is a normal state of the world.
Thus, any question a person asks, when he rises above his concerns over his daily life, necessarily contains all these basic, essential complications, even if they are disguised. Let us slightly uncover them.
1. Naturally, a person does not ask: “What is our essence?” He phrases it in another way: “Who am I? Why and what for?” Children think about these things and then they forget. However, questions remain: What is our role? Where is the historic process of development taking us? Does it have a purpose? Is evolution accidental or does it follow a certain plan?
2. We discover that all parts of nature are tightly interconnected; moreover, their interconnection is not spontaneous, it is reasonable, and this reason is above our reasoning. But in the end, we are consequences of nature, and we barely comprehend even a tiny fragment of its common picture.
And this is why a person asks questions: If we are observing a consecutive process, which follows nature’s deep wisdom, and which naturally leads to a certain goal, then who am I and what am I? Where am I going? Where should I be going? Where does my life come from? Does it come from another planet? And if so, how did it get there? Some people worry that the sun will be extinguished in billions of years or that a certain celestial body might collide with planet Earth. “Even if it does not happen to me, what will happen to mankind?” Don’t laugh about these concerns.
3. We are incredibly limited, and we still want to know everything. But on the other hand, when we look at ourselves, we see our own deficiency. And this is correct, if we draw a comparison to the greatness of Nature, its power, beauty, and perfection, the beautiful landscapes that have not yet been ruined by man with a starry sky above us. Look deep into the magnificence of Nature, delve into the structure of DNA or an atom and you will be amazed by what you see. We are small, very pretentious fools. Everything that matters to us is nothing but a tiny crumb scraped off the great canvas.
Anywhere we look, we see immense wisdom and inseparable interconnection. It is astonishing that all parts of nature maintain one another, while we only lead to their extinction, failing to understand that this leads to our own destruction. Because no matter how proud we are, in reality nature feeds us and provides for us. Nothing appears out of thin air. Food, water, clothes, all this we receive from it, and we respond to kindness with destruction. This only testifies to our foolishness.
And thus it follows that everything in nature is perfect and only we are defective. But how can it be that only we are defective out of all the elements of nature? We do not only destroy the world, we are destroying our near future, and we refuse to think about it. Even when a person knows that he is to die tomorrow, he still will not stop, he will not resist, and will still travel the rest of the way to the unavoidable scaffold.
Nature undividedly governs over the still, vegetative, and animate levels, but its power is not absolute over us, it has given us freedom of will. So why do we use this freedom to ruin ourselves even more? Instead of using our independence for the good, becoming Human with a capital letter, wonderful and beneficent to themselves and others, I destroy everything I can. Why do I need this freedom?
4. Why do we suffer, when the perfect Nature has prepared a wonderful goal for us?
5. And finally, how could the perfect Creator produce perishable, temporal, and inferior creatures, born in pain, living in suffering, and dying in agony? A person’s entire life is passed in pursuit of pleasure, which he never manages to grasp. Because the second he fails to grasp something, he immediately concerns himself with his next pleasure. We are never fully satisfied, and even if little things are enough for us, it does not last forever. Every pleasure is followed by emptiness, and we constantly pursue a mirage.
Thus, the questions Baal HaSulam has listed, concern everyone to a certain degree, and we will have to find the answers to these questions.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/14/12, Introduction to the Book of Zohar
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Baal HaSulam, Introduction to the Book of Zohar, Item 4: To understand these questions and inquiries, the only tactic is to examine the end of the act, that is, the purpose of Creation. For nothing can be understood in the middle of the process, but only at its end.
For now, our questions remain questions. In the beginning of the work we don’t yet understand it and don’t see where it comes from. One must first comprehend creation in its entirety, and most importantly, see the end. That is when we’ll understand the beginning stage.
Indeed, we don’t determine the work; rather, we actualize it and are its consequences. Therefore, we shall know the beginning only from its end.
In contrast to us, the Creator doesn’t need a process that leads from a starting point to an end point. For Him, the beginning of the path, the path itself, and the end comprise an indivisible reality. Whereas we must go through all the stages of our development, and only after we have completed our work will we understand the path we’ve traveled and the purpose behind it.
This is why Baal HaSulam wrote that we must study the entire process to the end. Indeed, while on the path the coveted fruit always seems unripe, spoiled, corrupted, just as with any other thing that has not yet reached its final state.
We will not receive true answers to our questions until we reach the goal, the end of correction. Every question we have is a void, a vessel, into which we must receive fulfillment, which is really the answer. Therefore, questions about the meaning and purpose of our existence become filled with answers only after we have achieved the final goal.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/14/12, The Zohar
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