Question: You say that the Creator is the quality and act of giving or bestowing. However, if we are able to attain this quality, to attain the Creator, doesn’t this make us greater than Him? We are able to incorporate both egoism and its opposite, but the Creator is only a part of this antinomy. So how can He be superior to us? Maybe we just can’t categorize Him as superior but only as Different?

My Answer: One reveals the Creator’s status only after he attains the Creator’s quality. Then he is able to see where his qualities really stand in relation to the Creator, and what the purpose of creation is. Until this happens, all our words are empty because we don’t know what stands behind them.

This is why Kabbalah hates philosophy and considers it empty talk about things that philosophers don’t attain. Philosophy is opposite to Kabbalah – see the article “The Wisdom of Kabbalah and Philosophy.” Kabbalah prefers to deal with actual attainment and it talks only from the level of attainment. This is the meaning of the verse, “The judge knows no more than what his eyes see,” and, “If we don’t see something, we don’t talk about it.”

Question: Is the main intention behind the Mitzva of Yirat Hashem (fearing God) the perception of God? Thank you, Rabbi Jose.

My Answer: Absolutely, since the perception of the Creator is what enables man to rise above his egoistic nature and to use it (the Aviut) in the opposite way – as bestowal and love, according to how the Creator reveals this to him.

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I had a conversation that was recorded on the topic of love. I spoke with Oren Levi, manager of our Hebrew publishing department.

We analyzed how the spiritual property of the Creator, “love for creation,” is expressed in action – “bestowal and fulfillment.” However, since creation is egoistic and opposite to the Creator, it interprets this as love for fulfillment and reception. Creation aspires to use and humiliate others, in order to feel more fulfilled than them. In other words, its love manifests in a completely opposite form than the spiritual quality of “love,” yet we refer to both of them with the same word, according to the law of “root and consequence.”

However, when creation attains equivalence of form with the Creator (when it acquires the aspiration toward the property – “Love thy neighbor as thyself,” which is attained only through the influence of the Upper Light that descends during the study of Kabbalah), it begins to comprehend the true meaning of the Torah’s words and of Kabbalistic notions, including “bestowal” and “love.”

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Questions I received on how to work in a Kabbalistic group

Question: In one of your lessons you said that the people in the group are sent to me by the Creator, and if I will love them, then the Creator will love me. This is clear with regard to the spiritual, Kabbalistic group of friends. But in my daily life I’m surrounded by other groups – my family, neighbors, coworkers, and others. Are the people in these groups there by coincidence, or must I have the same attitude to them as to my spiritual brothers?

My Answer: In these other groups, you have to behave just like everyone else – function like a regular person, and conceal your spiritual questions and attainments. Otherwise people will feel that you are an “alien from another world,” that you are different from them, because you have different thoughts, decisions, and qualities – anti-egoistic ones. This will make them feel repulsed by you. So conceal yourself!

Question: I don’t understand what this means: “Lower and nullify yourself before the group, but not before other people, so you could firmly feel that you are worse and lower than all the people in the world.”

My Answer: All your spiritual discernments take place in your spiritual world, in the single soul, or in other words – only relative your friends in the group. As for the rest of the world – consider it just a place where your body exists.

Question: Is it correct to say that spiritual development is when you constantly try to feel “What is the force of bestowal?” through your connection with the group?

My Answer: That’s absolutely correct. There is only one creation – the common soul. To the degree you perceive it, and inside of it, you perceive the force that created it and enlivens it – the Creator. With every action you make, you must first define the objective of the action, and there is only one objective to all actions (whether they are unconscious actions taking place in all of nature, or conscious actions that we make) – to reveal the Creator in us.

Question: Baal HaSulam says that the only choice we can make is to choose the correct environment, in order for it to influence us. What happens once I’ve chosen the environment and I study in it? What should I do next? Where is my daily free choice then?

My Answer: The choice is the daily effort you make to be a part of the group. You’re incorrect in thinking that you made the choice when you came to the group. It was the Creator who brought you to the group (see the “Introduction to Talmud Eser Sefirot,” items 3 and 4), and now you have the freedom of will to participate in it by making daily efforts, in spite of your desire.

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Questions I received about Reshimot

Question: I’d like to ask about Reshimot: The point in the heart is a Reshimo, and Klipot are also Reshimot, but broken ones. What other kinds of Reshimot are “registered” in Kabbalah? There are probably more of them than elements in the periodic table!

My Answer: Reshimot accumulated during the common soul’s descent from its spiritual level of love and bestowal into reception and love for oneself. Altogether there are Reshimot from 125 levels of descent, and we have to correct them in the reverse order. By realizing these Reshimot in order, we ascend along their levels and reveal our spiritual senses, which feel the Upper Light, the Creator.

Question: How can a person tell what level are the Reshimot coming from, according to the special qualities of his individual soul? Do the Reshimot always come to help us grow and develop? And what about the Reshimot of the Klipot – why do they come to a person?

My Answer: Reshimot surface in us one after another, from below upwards, and they always become expressed in the form of broken levels (Klipot, the ego). By correcting them, we build our soul – the vessel in which we perceive ourselves, our spiritual life.

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A question I received: In the Book of Dvarim it says: “And there was no other prophet in Israel like Moshe.” And the Midrash responds to this: “There are none in Israel, but he can be found amongst the nations of the world. So who is he? He is Bilam.” Does this mean that Bilam was on the same level as Moshe? If Bilam was a prophet, then he perceived the Creator. But how can this be, if Bilam was the epitome of the will to receive for one’s own sake? He was so absorbed with corporeality that the sages even said that he slept with his female donkey – in other words, he didn’t have any desire to bestow. However, we say that in order to reveal the Creator, one has to acquire a screen (Masach), which is the desire to bestow. Then how was Bilam able to reveal the Creator?

My Answer: We are speaking about the forces of the Creator that descend on us from above – a positive force, the right force, and a negative force, the left force. Klipot are produced by the left force of the Creator, and they are an inverse reflection of Him. This is why the Pharaoh knows the Creator, and even his magi know Him. For example, they say, “This matter is in God’s hands,” and so on. In other words, we are dealing with opposite forces – positive and negative, which descend from one Source, and our objective is to connect them correctly inside us. And by connecting them inside us, we attain the Creator’s Design.

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Two questions I received on women in Kabbalah

Question: Is it true that a woman only lives once and doesn’t reincarnate, and this is why she shouldn’t study Kabbalah?

My Answer: Women must study and correct themselves just like men, but according to the structure of the feminine soul. Women reincarnate just like men do, and incidentally, so does everything that exists, whether it’s on the still, vegetative, or animate level of nature. It’s because the desires of all species and levels must reach their final state – absolute similarity to the property of bestowal!

Question: I had recently started studying Kabbalah and the one thing that I have understood so far is that we are built of desire, and desire is the main theme of our existence. Moreover, I understood that we should not suppress our desires but correct them, so that they serve our Creator. However, what about sexual desires? I love my husband with all my heart and want to spend my life with him, but I can’t help how I feel towards other men. So, my question is – if I should not suppress these desires according to Kabbalah (as I have been doing so far), what approach can I take to channel my desire and make it benefit others and the Creator?

My Answer: You will be able to distribute your desires correctly only by increasing the importance of the goal (the attainment of the Creator), through participating in the common study, group, and dissemination. Your desires will then evoke Ohr Makif – the Upper Light, which will make all the necessary changes in you, bringing you to peace and harmony.

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The Creator’s connection with creation is like playing tennis against the wall. The Upper Governance is unchanging: The Creator is Good and Does Good, and He treats all of us this way all of the time. The changes take place only in us, even though we think that they take place outside us. It says in the “Preface to the Book of Zohar,” item 34:

“We see a great world before us, and all its wondrous filling. But in fact, we do not see all that except in our own interior. In other words, there is a sort of a photographic machine in our hindbrain that portrays everything that appears to us, and nothing outside of us.

In our brain, there is a kind of polished mirror that inverts everything that is seen there, so that we see it outside our brain, in front of our face. Despite the fact that what we see outside us is not a real thing, we should still thank His providence for having made that polished mirror in our brain, enabling us to see and perceive everything outside us. This is because by that, He had given us the power to perceive everything with clear perception and knowledge, and measure everything from within and from without. Without it, we would lose most of our perception.

The same holds true with the Godly will for Godly perceptions. Even though the changes are all made in the interior of the souls, they nevertheless see it all in the Giver Himself, because only in this manner are they awarded all the perceptions and the pleasantness in the thought of creation. Even though we actually see every thing before our face, still, everyone reasonable knows with certainty that all that we see is only inside our own brain.

The same holds true for the souls. Though they see all the changes in the Giver, they still have no doubt that all these are only in their own interior, and not at all in the Giver.”

So essentially, you are playing with yourself and receiving feedback depending on your own obstacles and confusion. All of this is you.

All the changes happen inside man, who stands opposite absolute love and bestowal. He always sees, analyzes and feels only himself. Everything we feel is a realization of Reshimot in the Upper Light. All of man’s reality is essentially a tennis game against the wall. And we are always playing against this wall.

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A question I received: I understand that the period of correction begins when we cross the Machsom, but there is something that leaves me restless and I do not understood well: Once the Machsom is crossed, the things that happen to us in this world continue happening, but the form of seeing them is one of having enough intelligence to understand what happens to us and to use that to enlarge the vessel and to fill it. Now, based on the above-mentioned, my question is: Is faith above reason necessary to cross the Machsom, or will this be given when one has the complete Masach? And can a person tell whether he has the Neshama?

My Answer: Faith above reason is what we attain after the Machsom. Before it we’re just trying to understand what is faith and to attain it. Before the Machsom , we try to attain faith above reason (the revelation of the Creator, a perception of Him, of the quality of bestowal and love inside us – above our entire egoism). We desire to rise above all the obstacles to the oneness of the Creator and His good governance!

But the fulfillment of this desire takes place after the Machsom, when it is filled by the Light of bestowal on the level of Nefesh, then Ruach, and so on, until we fully attain the quality of faith above reason – the quality of Bina.

And after this, there is another degree – not ascent above egoism, but usage of egoism, or the correction of egoism to bestowal – when we receive into our desire for the sake of bestowal.

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A question I received: I have been watching your lessons over the Internet for about six months now. My brother, who is in the process of becoming religious, has also been studying your books a little, but in addition he studies the Mishnah by Rabbi Nachman, and a Jewish interpretation of yoga taught at Ohr Aganuz once a week. We have interesting and deep conversations, but it’s difficult for me to accept some things he says which aren’t related to what you teach. Would you advise me to be more open to the teachings of Likutei Mocharan, Breslov pamphlets, and the materials studied at Ohr Aganuz? And what advice can I give to my brother?

My Answer: My advice to you is: Don’t study at Ohr Aganuz, don’t teach your brother, and don’t talk to him about your studies, as if you don’t study Kabbalah at all. The two of you are on absolutely opposite paths – he’s on the path of Chassidut, and you’re on the path of Kabbalah. Don’t get in each other’s way.

You should let him mature on his own. Soon he will feel that yoga doesn’t supplement the attainment of the Creator, and that the only thing worth studying are the works of Baal HaSulam (provided they are interpreted correctly, according to my lessons).

What’s important isn’t the books you study, but how you study them. All the great sages wrote from their spiritual attainment. They all lived in the attainment of the Upper World, the Creator, and wrote only about this. So you’re both reading holy books. But they are holy because they speak of holiness – the property of bestowal and love that’s beyond one’s self. The purpose of studying these books is to reveal these properties within you, or in other words, to reveal the Creator.

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Two questions I received on virtual groups

Question: I’m starting to feel kind of a pull towards “groups,” though I don’t know what groups or why. I’ve always been an outsider and an “independent” loner. I just want information about virtual groups: What do they do? How can I join one?

The understanding of the group’s importance comes from the influence of the Upper Light (Ohr Makif) on you. In the beginning a person doesn’t understand that the only way to enter the common soul is by connecting with others. He doesn’t understand that there is no other path to the spiritual world, to his soul. So without the influence of the Light, you wouldn’t have begun feeling a desire for the group. And the fact that you feel it is an enormous achievement! However, mostly it didn’t come from you, but from above. As Baal HaSulam writes, the Creator brings a person to the group and thus makes the choice for him, and the person’s choice lies in reinforcing himself in the group – in that which the Creator put his hand upon. Now you have to use it and develop it – it won’t happen by itself.

Later the Creator will push you away from the group and you will suddenly start scorning it, yet you will think that this feeling is coming from you rather than being sent to you by the Creator on purpose, and so on. And you will need to fight this feeling by increasing the importance of the group, of unity, of Shechina (the place of the Creator’s revelation).

Question: Recently you mentioned that groups outside of Bnei Baruch lack the presence of a Rav who would represent the Creator, the force of bestowal. In this case, how will a virtual group work, since it also lacks leadership by a Rav?

My Answer: I am fully present in the virtual group. I am their teacher and every person is my student, if he desires to be and learns what I pass to him. Everything depends only on one’s desire.

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