All our efforts to unite our desires in a Kabbalistic group should be directed at our desires toward the Creator. All the efforts should be made only for the sake of revealing the Creator and uniting with Him. Then we will not repeat the mistakes made by the Soviet communists and Israeli Kibbutzniks, who considered the unification of “proletarians of all countries” a worthy goal, and it was to this end that they changed the society and viewed this as the necessary condition for perfection.

People don’t understand that the world, as well as ourselves, was created for the sole purpose of revealing the Creator’s qualities inside us, in order to reach His level of existence. This goal should be pursued in every action we make, both in the heart and the mind. For example, what is wrong with me simply doing something for the benefit of my friend, the environment, or the world? Although these actions seem good, the problem with it is that any action that does not initially include the final goal, the Creator, does not merit His forces. It is therefore not an action of correction, but on the contrary, it brings about our general crisis – the result of our “development.”

In order for any action to be successful, it must be done for the right purpose; it has to include the Creator as the initial cause, and the One that causes me to perceive myself, the world, and the situation at hand. It has to take into account the fact that He determines the action’s beginning, the need for the action, and its outcome, as it is written, “I am the first and I am the last!” A person is just the matter over which the actions are performed. However, he is not the master or the executor of the action.

Therefore, our only task is to clarify how to relate to what happens. Yet, by so doing, we do actually determine the extent of our desires’ correction, and hence the perception of this world and the spiritual worlds.

If we don’t accept the Creator as a partner, we will not succeed in any action. We will instead go into greater concealment and veer off the right path. When that happens, then it will take a great deal of effort and subsequent despair in order for us to begin to understand why this is happening to us. And then we will find the cause of the suffering inside the suffering.

The fact is that the Upper Force is everything! It determines every situation, creates it, participates in it, arranges everything about it, realizes it and provides the whole reward and fulfillment. Therefore, if we do not focus on the Creator, who is always present within our matter and all our actions, and if we don’t make Him the main purpose of all our efforts, then this will be a grave mistake that will prove very costly for us.

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Аt first glance, it seems that not all of my properties are equally useful and I would gladly get rid of some of them. But we only feel this way because we don’t know how to use them correctly.

Even after correction is complete, a person retains all his original traits. All we can do is to use them in different ways. This is what the methodology of correction, Kabbalah, is all about. We don’t destroy creation, and in fact it’s prohibited to obliterate, ruin or diminish our properties since they are created by the Light and only the Light can alter them in the proper way.

As we advance spiritually, we develop qualities and desires that are even more negative and despicable, but this is actually a reason to rejoice, because it’s proof that we are making progress and that we have enough strength to complete correction. That is where free choice lies – in accelerating the process of correction before being hit with negative events that would force correction upon us.

At this very moment you should come to understand the meaning behind everything that happens with you, and start using all the resources at your disposal (the teacher, the group and the books) to attract the Light, the force that will transform you. If you don’t take this initiative yourself, you’ll be pressured into it by external crises and events.

One way or another you’ll reach the end of correction. The wisdom of Kabbalah simply allows you to move forward in a way that avoids shocks and allows you to anticipate and avoid negative events. If you slow down this tempo of correction, you get hit. The strength of the hit you receive directly corresponds to how much you’ve slowed your progress. This is the sole cause of suffering in the world.

Only the greatness of the goal pushes all the temporary and fleeting things in our lives down our list of priorities. You’ll come to realize that the goal is so superior that even the shocks that destiny gives us on our way towards the goal are of no importance.

The point at which you’ll stop sensing the blows or shocks altogether is reached by rising above your egoism and learning how to use every one of your desires in order to achieve maximum bestowal, rather than trying to minimize the shocks you receive.

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Rabash has prepared a “shock” for our time. Gradually he has uncovered that the most important thing for a human being is his essence and his attitude towards life. Gradually he has disclosed that everything depends on the desires of our heart and our relationship to the truth.

These concepts are in opposition to the routine practices of religious traditions and blind obedience to the commandments, which is typically the behavior of many religious people. We must separate our habitual behavior imposed by our upbringing (“Girsa de-Yakuta”) which makes us feel guilty if we don’t follow our regular routine and that of real prayer, which is a cordial, genuine and conscious call to the Creator for correction.

Judging people by their clothes or their actions does not lead us to an understanding of which person is closer to the Creator. Is it someone who senses emptiness in his life, or someone who seems to have all the answers and wears the clothes (way of life) of someone who is close to the Creator?

The Creator demands that we make corrections in our hearts. That doesn’t mean that we have to neglect any religious traditions, but the distance between a human being and the Creator is measured by the intensity of our aspiration to attain properties similar to His.

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A question I received: Baal HaSulam wrote that he received permission from Above to disclose the wisdom of Kabbalah. What does “permission from Above” mean?

My Answer: When a Kabbalist achieves a high level of attainment, he divulges that he has received “permission from Above.” He accepts his new mission, feels obligated to carry it out and starts acting. This is part of the mission placed upon the shoulders of all great Kabbalists, starting from the time of Abraham and onward. The brightest example is Moses, a spiritual leader of the people.

“Permission from Above” includes knowledge of the structure of the universe, a methodology for revealing the Creator and for educating people about self correction, both in our time and to a certain extent in the future. One who receives “permission from Above” becomes a conduit through which higher knowledge flows downward, in accordance with the ability of those below the Kabbalist to absorb and learn.

Permission from Above includes within itself a vast system for bringing all humankind into harmony with the Creator. Being given “permission from Above” signifies that a human being has become a representative of the Creator, a liaison between the Creator and His creation. In fact, if a person did not receive “permission from Above,” he would only confuse others. He would not be able to adequately present the goal, its importance, the methods of achieving the goal, nor the significance of those methods.

The goal is to become one with the Creator. The method for achieving it lies in the correction of our human desires with help of the Light which returns us to the Source. This is initiated by studying Kabbalah and aspiring to become corrected, a desire that emanates from the “point in the heart.” This in turn drives our desire to connect (“love thy neighbor”) with the “points in the heart” of our fellow group members.

If a person uncovers this system, understands it, and absorbs it into his being, it means he received “permission from Above.”

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In the future, only 5% of humanity will work on providing the whole world with the “necessary things for existence,” while everyone else will work on advertising the importance of the spiritual goal. Alternatively, all 100% will be engaged in spiritual correction, and will work one hour a day to provide themselves with “what is necessary for existence.”

The work of developing spiritual connections between all the souls is continuous. The Creator has to be revealed in this world, which means that each person in this world has to be inspired by your desire for spirituality and your feeling of its importance. In response, they will inspire you with the same thing from their end. To the extent you inspire each other, you will desire and be able to connect with each other.

Today we are just beginning the work of disseminating Kabbalah. Dissemination is not just about disseminating the knowledge (such as through books, internet, and TV), but also about establishing a connection between every person and everyone else. This is the practical implementation of the correction.

Everyone will have to work on this, since we are all inside a system of connections within the common Kli where the Creator, or the spiritual world, becomes revealed. Dissemination is an opportunity for every person to tune into the corrected system.

Therefore, we have to realize that the dissemination of Kabbalah is not a duty, but the action of correction itself. It is your connection with the world.

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A question I received: What should I do if I feel that I am controlled from Above in every possible way?

My Answer: If you feel that everything is 100% controlled from Above, this is wonderful! What makes you think that you have to do anything about it? It’s very good if you feel that the Creator leads you and you are walking together with Him. The two of you are together in every movement, “body and soul” (with the body being your desires, and the soul – the place where you perceive His commands).

You feel His desires and immediately change your desires. You feel that you unite with Him, repeating all His steps after Him. You move together, until reaching the full correction, where it will no longer be possible to differentiate His desires from yours, to tell who is first and who is second. You will move together with Him without any delay. This state is called Gmar Tikkun – the End of Correction. It is when there is no difference between you and Him!

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Until I discover the evil within me, there is nothing for me to correct. However, the real evil inclination has nothing to do with the notorious vices – the desires to steal, lie, kill, and whatever else you can think of. None of them pertain to the evil inclination.

There was a time when we were one soul, united “Cogwheels,” but we then became broken and separated. This separation, the hatred for others is the real evil. The evil inclination is my lack of desire to unite with others in one heart and my unwillingness to love my friend as myself. This is the evil that must be discovered and corrected. It’s not easy to correct the evil!

The Light that returns to the Source must work me over good before I can begin to feel within me, the evil inclination that Kabbalah speaks of. However, once I do feel it to its fullest extent, I will immediately demand correction.

At first I expose and correct the “rupture” between myself and the group, and to the degree that I acquire the quality of bestowal, I overcome the rupture with the Creator. By aspiring to love my friends (their aspiration toward the Creator, their points in the heart) in spite of the evil within me, I reveal just how deeply I am immersed in self-love.

When the problem is brought to light, solving it isn’t difficult – I ask for the Light, and it corrects me.

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Questions I received about the fate of the physical body:

Question: In what body will we exist in eternity? Will it be the one from our last incarnation or a body from a previous incarnation? Or can it be a totally different body?

My Answer: “Body” in Kabbalah means the correction of desires, and our physical body is not a subject of discussion at all. It only appears to exist to us.

Question: What does Kabbalah say about cremation of the body instead of burial in the ground? I happened to see on one “Kabbalah” site that it is prohibited, and that one would only rise half a person with great penalties.

My Answer: At the level of our world, burial is the norm. At the same time, Kabbalah does not consider our bodies to be sacred, as religions do. Kabbalah just does not take them into account.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: When All Boundaries Disappear
Laitman.com Post: Reality Is In Our Imagination
Laitman.com Post: Connect To The Creator Through This World And The Spiritual World
The Path of Kabbalah: “The Body at the End of Correction”
Baal HaSulam Article: “Body and Soul”
Video: Physical and Spiritual Connections (3:52)

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A question I received: Why do people associate the commandments with correcting the body?

My Answer: Certainly, correction is now about correcting our arms and legs. We are talking about “the body of the soul,” the desire, or parts of the soul, meaning individual desires. The difference between the desires of the soul and the corporeal desires is that desires of the soul are formed of qualities similar to the Creator – using yourself in order to bestow instead of receiving for yourself.

The physical body has nothing to do with this. We can perform transplants, remove body parts or organs, and perform blood transfusions. Hospitals don’t check donors for “righteousness” and it’s possible that those receiving body parts or blood receive them from an unrighteous person. It is due to all the confusion in regards to the spiritual body and our physical body that all the mysticism, gruesome tales, and religious horror stories have developed.

Commandments describe a correction of the desires, not any correction of the animate body. The bodies in which we exist are only necessary for us to maintain a physical existence, but when among the desires of our world, an embryo of the soul emerges, we need to be able to develop that tiny desire to the level of the Creator.

Therefore, traditions and religions have nothing to do with correcting the soul. Let people all over the world hold on to their traditions; at the same time, they can correct their desires in order to love their neighbors as themselves. Meanwhile, the flesh will not change.

There is nothing spiritual in mechanical actions. It is very good if they calm you down and create a comfortable living format. Just don’t lie to yourself, believing that you correct your soul through these actions and earn your way into the “world to come.” The world to come is the revelation of the Creator. If you do not prepare your soul for this, then you have nowhere in which to reveal Him, before or after the animate body perishes.

It’s time to remove the blindfold from the eyes of humanity and for everyone to realize that in our whole worldly life, there is only one spiritual point called “the point in the heart.” This is the entrance into the spiritual world.

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We have to rise from the world we exist in up to the Upper World. This is the only purpose of our world. People who have revealed the path to the Upper World are called Kabbalists, starting from Adam HaRishon and on. They discovered that only the Upper Light can draw us into the spiritual world and help us achieve correction. Only the Upper Light is capable of correcting us and raising us along the spiritual degrees.

We can draw this Light by belonging to its system. Currently we do not belong to it because our nature is opposite to the Light. Our nature is reception, while the system is giving.

In order to draw the Light of correction, an “adapter” was created, or a buffer between the two systems. This buffer is Kabbalah books that connect us with the souls of the Kabbalists who wrote them. When we read these books with our “material” eyes, we unconsciously connect our souls (or the embryo of the soul that exists in us) to the soul of the author, and through his soul, we receive an illumination.

Some Kabbalists wrote books for each other, describing the Upper System in order to perfect their attainment and give joy to the Creator, or in order to prepare the Upper World to accept the souls that will later ascend to it. Other Kabbalists wrote for us, those who exist in this world, but they used four different languages.

Three of the languages – the Mikra, Halacha, and Hagaddah, do not allow us to adhere to the Upper Level. They can only be effectively used by people with a particularly refined soul. In addition, because we are living in a special time, we now need a different kind of language; the only language intended for our generation is that of Kabbalah. Only it can help us draw the Surrounding Light and ascend.

Moreover, out of all the Kabbalists who wrote in the language of Kabbalah, we single out the Ari and Baal HaSulam. Their language is most appropriate in order for us to find the connection with the Upper Level. The effect of their texts on us is the strongest, since the Surrounding Light that comes from their books is the most appropriate for our souls. So, of all the sacred books, the only ones that suit us are the books of Baal HaSulam, who adapted Kabbalah for our souls.

Besides this, there is The Book of Zohar, which is absolutely unique. It isn’t even a book, but a tool we can use together with the commentary of Baal HaSulam, who wrote it specifically for us. Besides these books, we cannot establish any contact with any of the other sacred books. Although they are sacred (meaning, they talk about the Upper World), they cannot help us correct our souls and realize the purpose of our existence.

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