Two questions I received on advancing on the path to spirituality:

Question: I have been watching Channel 66 and the morning lessons for the past few months, and I was at the Congress. But I still can’t understand the purpose of my existence in this world. Is there any sense in hastening the correction if it was initially determined to be completed at the end of this millennium? Is there a way to reach it faster?

My Answer: The program of correction will be completed by the forces of Nature (the Creator) by the end of the sixth millennium. This can happen in 231 years under the influence of the coercive forces, which we perceive as suffering. However, we were given Kabbalah in order to hasten the path of correction and to go through it pleasantly. Kabbalah explains the Creator’s plan, and to the extent we are willing to attain this plan, we proceed along the good, short, and simple path, arriving at same result.

Question: Nature constantly pressures us, forcing us to develop. Theoretically, we can classify the pressure into three types:

• strong, as when a child develops physically, not by his own free will;
• weak, such as a person who lives a regular life thinking that he is free in his actions; and
• intermediate, when a person discovers Kabbalah and acquires the freedom of will to choose to advance by the path of Kabbalah or by the path of suffering.

Is this classification correct?

My Answer: No, because the pressures differ in their nature and quality.

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Questions I received on the Maaser:

Question: Is it possible to cross the Machsom without paying Maaser?

My Answer: No.

Question: Do we correct ourselves during the initial period of study, when we do not contribute the Maaser?

My Answer: Yes, but only at your first preparatory stage. Kabbalists never accepted students who refused to follow this condition. After all, no matter how much a person tries, Malchut, the tenth Sefira, becomes corrected only when a person gives away to others one tenth of what belongs to him.

Question: Do new students who are in their first year of studies also need to give the Maaser? When should a person begin to pay the Maaser?

My Answer: One should begin to pay the Maaser when he begins to understand that he desires spiritual development. A person will not advance without making efforts. Maaser is the tenth part of the desire, which can only be corrected this way, by being given away.

Question: I have a question about the Maaser. I am a 13 year-old boy who is studying Kabbalah at your center. I do not yet earn any money and I cannot ask my mother to pay the Maaser because she does not study Kabbalah. Besides, my mother has no job. What is the solution for someone who cannot pay the Maaser? I support the center by disseminating, but the problem is, I cannot pay the Maaser because I cannot afford to.

My Answer: Only a person with his own personal income is obligated to pay Maaser. Whoever does not have a personal income has no right to pay it.

Question: If I give away 10% of my income for the dissemination of Kabbalah, will I go hungry?

My Answer: Well, have you ever really tried it?

Question: Can a person who lacks financial resources study Kabbalah?

My Answer: The study of Kabbalah is not contingent on any financial investments. All of our study materials are available on our website for everyone free of charge!

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About Maaser

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A question I received: The Creator created us and placed us in a vessel. In this physical world, He is not apparent. And when changes are made, it is His manipulation.

My Answer: That’s right.

Question cont’d: What the Bible teaches of the end of the world is that the Creator will destroy everyone in fire and brimstone.

My Answer: Correct.

Question cont’d: But that is an ultimate breach of everything He’s done so far.

My Answer: That’s also correct. The fire represents man’s revelation of his own ego and the desire to become free from it.

Question cont’d: He has designed these vessels with such egoism as to multiply, desire, take, destroy, and every other bad action.

My Answer: Yes.

Question cont’d: What if these bad things are happening as He planned?

My Answer: They are.

Question cont’d: What if He knew that, in their unquenchable lust for more, people would destroy themselves and the entire world?

My Answer: On the contrary, suffering is bound to correct us.

Question cont’d: He doesn’t have to destroy the world.

My Answer: This is why the final goal is our similarity to the Creator.

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A question I received: If there is none else besides Him, and we are all controlled like robots, how can we criticize anything in this world, the way you do? How can you say people should be doing this instead of that, if all is done by the Creator?

My Answer: A developmental force – the Light – descends from the Creator and continuously awakens new Reshimot – egoistic desires in a person. If a person doesn’t correct them, they “pile up,” bringing the person and the society to a crisis.

The only free act available to a person is to correct the Reshimot with the help of the right environment. A person is a robot in every other respect. Kabbalah teaches us how to make the only possible free action, which is why Kabbalah is being revealed now, when human society is becoming global and interdependent. Now each person depends on everyone, and everyone depends on each person. Under these conditions, it is now possible to realize our freedom of will. In the past, when humanity did not have this opportunity yet, Kabbalah remained hidden, because Kabbalah is the method for man to reveal the Creator through the quality of love for his neighbor.

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A question I received: My friends say I have a good heart, but I am unlucky. I am married and have children, but my life is unsuccessful. Does this have anything to do with my name? I changed my name at age 16, in Argentina, because I didn’t like it. My name was Veronica Nancy, and I changed it to Sivan.

My Answer: We are completely controlled by the Light (the Creator). We can change things only to the extent we are similar to Him – to the extent we have a desire to be giving and loving, like Him. Therefore, correcting our desire is the only thing we can do to change our fate. This change can happen only under the influence of the Light that reforms, which descends onto a person while he or she studies Kabbalah.

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Two questions I received on hatred and evil:

Question: Are members of HAMAS also parts of my own inner Kli? If yes, then why are they fighting in me?

My Answer: A person is a desire that feels only what’s in it. The desire is complex, consisting of many parts, which depict one’s picture of this world. Since our desires are not corrected, we feel completely opposite to the Creator, instead of feeling Him the way He really is. This is why we feel wars and suffering.

All of a person’s enemies live inside him; they are a reflection of his inner state. Even if it appears that they exist outside of you, out there in the world, the fact is that the world is a reflection of your inner state, like a movie that’s showing you your desires.

Question: When I correct myself to the last degree and attain the Final Correction, will I stop seeing evil in the world?

My Answer: If there will be any people left in the world who haven’t yet corrected themselves, then you will still see evil in the world because those people are parts of your desire.

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Two questions I received about the Full Correction:

Question: In one of the morning lessons you said that at the end of correction (Gmar Tikkun), the religions will remain only as traditions. Will man exist in the material form at the end of correction in order to continue to observe the traditions? Or will man become a spirit, whereupon all the physical traditions matter will disappear?

My Answer: There are several states of complete correction: particular individual, collective individual, unified collective in Tzimtzum Bet, unified collective in Tzimtzum Aleph, and absolute adhesion to the Creator. As long as there’s even one uncorrected soul, our world will continue to exist in our perception. And only when the general correction is complete, our world and all the worlds will integrate in our perception into the World of Infinity.

In reality there’s only one state – the World of Infinity, and all the worlds are just filters for the Upper Light in our flawed perception of It. In other words, the worlds are degrees of concealment of the only existing state, the World of Infinity.

Question: What does it mean that we are approaching the state of the Full Correction?

My Answer: It is the state when all the souls merge into one and the Upper Force fulfills and manifests within them. Every person will then perceive everyone else as himself, and will therefore perceive himself as eternal and perfect, like the Creator.

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A question I received: You wrote: “Every woman represents a desire, and every man represents the fulfillment of this desire. Hence, it’s impossible for women to be friends with anyone, and they can only love what belongs to them.” I don’t understand, why is it impossible for women to be friends with anyone? Perhaps my definition of friends is different. I understand that I don’t have many true friends and just lots of acquaintances, but I still feel I have friends. Can you explain?

My Answer: A man’s egoistic nature has to go through correction in order to transform to “love for one’s neighbor.” However, a woman’s correction doesn’t happen by participating in a group of friends or girlfriends, but by helping the men’s group do their work. How can a woman help them? By working on dissemination.

Everyone has friends, but in Kabbalah we are talking about something special: the unification of the male souls into one common soul, where each male soul and all the souls together are joined by the female souls, like Galgalta ve Eynaim and AHP. The male souls have to correct themselves by uniting, and they then transmit the correction to the female souls. However, the female souls receive the correction only to the degree they connect to the male souls.

It is written that when the Creator was revealed, 600,000 men united in a Mutual Guarantee while the women surrounded them, supporting and helping them. Another example is the family, where the husband works and earns, and a woman receives what he brings her, organizes the home, gives birth and produces the next generation, even though it receives the man’s name.

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A question I received: The wife of one of my friends is Jewish and she forwarded me this email from a friend:

“I sent you The Third Jihad. Now I’m sending you this, photos of a Muslim march in San Francisco. When did this kind of hate speech stop being against the law?”

So, I sent her the link to Kab TV to see that there were more than 6,000 souls meeting for peace and unity in Israel. I said I think there is still hope for the world.

Her fearful and arrogant reply this morning caught me by surprise: “It is incredibly naive to think that these 6,000 misguided souls, who by the way, are mostly what I’d refer to as self-loathing Jews, out of the billions of people in the world who are anti-Zionist, anti-Israeli and/or anti-Semitic can offer any relief to the enormous battle facing the Jews and the infidels in the future.”

I believe it is part of my responsibility to help anchor the Light in the midst of the unrest. Can you help me to reconcile this negative reaction from both a Christian and a Jew?

My Answer: There is no means of correction besides dissemination of the wisdom of Kabbalah to everyone. If it were not for anti-Semitism, the Jews would have forgotten all about their predestination long ago! Everything that exists in the world, especially the negative things, is necessary until we correct ourselves. Then these things will disappear.

A person moves forward only when he feels a need to leave his present condition behind, because he feels bad in it. However, Kabbalah gives us an opportunity to see the goal ahead of us. In this case, a person advances toward the goal; he aspires to it with love, moving forward, instead of being pushed from behind by suffering.

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In the News (from The Financial Times): “Remember the bottom billion in our brave new world” In 1978 James Tobin, the Nobel economist, proposed a tiny tax of 0.5 per cent or less on all foreign currency exchange transactions to deter speculation and pay for development. Some calculate this tax could yield $375bn (€289bn, £253bn) annually. Even at half that amount, it is on a par with the amount that should already have been directed to development globally. This levy, even if it is cut to 0.005 percent, would limit volatility in small economies whilst generating enormous sums for the poor. It would also cost taxpayers nothing. It is a smart, painless way to create revenues and jobs while bringing the poor into the global economy. It, like the Tobin tax, is tax neutral to the consumer while curbing overproduction of carbon dioxide and helping the world’s poorest.

My Comment: This proposition was made 30 years ago, and it still hasn’t been implemented (nor will it ever be), because it goes against our egoistic nature! And if it ever does get implemented, it will only be in order for the organizers to pocket the proceeds.

There’s no getting around the fact that we have to correct our egoism. None of our actions, no matter how “good,” will help us, save one – correction of our nature. And actually, we aren’t capable of doing this. Only the study of Kabbalah will correct everyone.

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