Three questions I received on how to relate to the past and future:

Question: I’ve been studying Kabbalah for six years already. In the last year I’ve started feeling haunted by memories of bad things I did to others in the past. Can you give me advice on how to get rid of this?

My Answer: Everything that happened to you in the past was “set up” for you by the Creator. But from this moment on, you are like a newborn baby. So start with a blank page in “the book of life,” where you will write your desires, thoughts and actions.

Question: If I don’t open Kabbalah books or listen to your lectures for a few days, why do I feel that I’m regressing? Where does everything I “earned” in the past go?

My Answer: Your egoism always keeps growing. This is why you must constantly keep recharging it with the method of correction. Otherwise you’ll regress for sure.

Question: How can we predict our next spiritual state and physical action?

My Answer: The next spiritual level is unpredictable because it will be felt in your new desires and qualities.

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Three questions I received on souls, death and life after death:

Question: How can I tell whether I’ll end up in hell or heaven?

My Answer: Hell is the feeling of being ashamed for your thoughts and actions. Heaven is a state of being in the qualities of bestowal and love.

After one’s body dies, one doesn’t “go” anywhere. Heaven and hell are felt right here, in this life, with respect to the Creator. They are your attitude to Him, what you feel within your soul.

However, you must first develop your soul through the study of Kabbalah. It starts as a point in the heart and then develops into the five spiritual senses, the five Sefirot of your soul or your spiritual body.

Question: If a person wants to commit suicide, is there free will in this, or does the Creator give the person such thoughts?

My Answer: All aspirations (including thoughts and desires) descend to us from the Creator; He is primary. However, everything depends on our attitude or reaction to what emerges within us. In spite of everything, we should proceed toward adhesion with Him through the path of equivalence of form.

Question: Recently someone close to me passed away. Is there a difference between the reincarnation of a person who passed away naturally and someone who was killed?

My Answer: You have no influence on the souls whatsoever, so relax and forget about them. Worry only about your own correction.

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Preface to the Science of Kabbalah (Pticha).
Items 10 – 12, summary:

10. Thus, the Light of Life emanates from the Creator and, passing through the Worlds of AK and ABYA, it separates from the Creator until reaching the smallest desire, where its source – the Creator – is no longer felt. This state is called “our world.” However, by studying Kabbalah in a group with the intention to attain the Creator, one evokes the Light of the Upper Degree, which pulls the desire upwards, giving it the opportunity to ascend the degrees of the worlds all the way up to the World of Infinity. There, one can receive all the Light prepared for him by the Creator back in the Thought of Creation. It is hence written: “The Creator wishes to purify (from egoism) those who aspire to Him; to this end He has given them the Torah (the Correcting Light) and Commandments (the correction of one’s intentions from “for my own sake” to “for the Creator’s sake”).

11. The difference between spirituality and corporeality is this: The intention “for my own sake” is corporeal and its state is called “our world” (Olam Hazeh). The intention “for the Creator’s sake” (or “for one’s friend’s sake,” which is the same thing) is spiritual and its state is called “the Upper World” (or the Worlds of ABYA). The Upper World exists above the lowest of all degrees – our world.

All the ascents, descents, changes and movements that transpire in the Upper Worlds don’t take place in some imaginary space. They are changes in the size of one’s intention “for the Creator’s sake” and the accompanying desire. The greater the desire, the closer it is to phase 4 and the lower it is.

12. The essence of all creation is the desire (to receive pleasure, fulfillment). This desire requires correction. We are commanded to “purify” it with the help of:

• The Torah (the Upper Light), and
• The Commandments (changes of the intention from using the desire “for my own sake” to using it for “for the Creator’s sake”).

Otherwise we will not be able to attain the Upper Goal – the Thought of Creation.

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Download PDF version of Pticha

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Three questions I received on finding contact with me:

Question: Do you have a personal page on the site odnoklasniki.ru (the Russian version of classmates.com)? I’m asking because there are currently two personal pages of yours on this site.

My Answer: I don’t have anything to do with these pages, as you probably suspected. Someone else is writing them using my name. My opinions are stated only on this blog and the official websites of the Bnei Baruch organization.

Question: If people ask you good questions that can’t be answered during the virtual morning lesson because of the time limit, can you answer them on this blog?

My Answer: If the questions are very peculiar, for example, on the construction of the worlds, then they can’t be answered on this blog because the blog is for everyone. However, if the question is general, then I always answer it here.

Question: Someone advised me to speak to a Kabbalist. Is there any time when you take visitors?

My Answer: I don’t accept visitors and I don’t give advice or blessings. According to Kabbalah, the only way to truly change your destiny is to change yourself, because you are opposite the unchanging Light – the Creator’s force of bestowal and love. Hence Kabbalah considers everything else no more than psychological reassurance, which in the long run only exacerbates a person’s illness: his imbalance with the Creator. In other words, it causes the illness (egoism) to be neglected.

Kabbalah gives you the method to change yourself, and the rest depends on you. We always focus on questions of self-correction. Good luck!

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Three questions I received on women’s work in Kabbalah:

Question: What is a woman’s role in Kabbalah?

My Answer: Both in our world and in the society of the future, which will be corrected from egoism, a woman is a full fledged half and more, because all people complete each other in a single system. A woman can feel her own perfection and full value only through self-correction, by becoming loving and bestowing to the entire world. It’s precisely in her corrected state that the female part of the common soul feels equal, or even greater than everyone, because precisely the desire that’s embodied by the female part of the common soul becomes the reason for the revelation of the Creator (the Light).

Question: If Lo Lishma (לא לשמה) doesn’t push a person to attain Lishma (לשמה), then the group has to exert its influence on him. How can a woman elicit this pressure?

My Answer: With her desire, because she depends on the attainment of the Light by the men’s group.

Question: I want to open up a book, read it, and enjoy it. But ever since I started studying Kabbalah I no longer enjoy reading. What should I do?

My Answer: Learn to receive pleasure from the Upper Worlds!

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A question I received: The second part of the film Zeitgeist was recently released. It encourages all of humanity to unite and gives advice on how to build the new world order based on equal distribution of resources, a new education, and mutual guarantee. It also refers to the laws of nature. Are these people our partners?

My Answer: No. In fact, I’m not even familiar with this movement. However, the ideas of unity and globality are already in the air and I’m happy that more and more people are realizing that it’s urgently necessary to implement them in the human society.

However, the correction can only be achieved by the Upper Light, which descends while people study its Source. The description of the Light’s Source is found only in the authentic Kabbalistic books, and in our time, the most effective books are Baal HaSulam’s. That’s why we study them all the time. There’s nothing for me to look for anywhere else because I’ve already proven to myself and through myself that this method is effective.

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Three questions I received on souls and reincarnation:

Question: At some point you talked about how a single Soul descended into this world in different bodies throughout centuries: Abraham, Moses, Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai, the Ari, and Baal HaSulam. As I understand, you and everyone who has crossed the Machsom (or in the process of crossing it) are in contact with this Soul. Has it completed its mission?

My Answer: No, it hasn’t. We are all parts of one soul. Its “lighter” parts have already undergone correction and are now helping all of us (this is called Zhut Avot in Hebrew). Gradually, one by one, they help us to do the same thing they did – connect to the single soul of Adam. All of humanity are parts of this single soul, the only created creature.

Question: What is a “ Kabbalistic soul”?

My Answer: It’s a soul that compels a person to attain the Creator. Actually, there are no other souls, because if a person still doesn’t have the aspiration to reveal the Creator, he still doesn’t have a soul. However, this aspiration will be revealed in the future, or perhaps in the next life cycle.

Nevertheless, even if a person doesn’t have this aspiration, listening to or reading Kabbalistic materials will accelerate the revelation of the aspiration toward the Creator and the revelation of the soul.

Question: If one is born a genetic Jew, does this mean that one always reincarnates as a Jew?

My Answer: Yes, just like anyone else. It’s because our world is an imprint of the Upper World, and a person is a copy of the soul.

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Three questions I received on the experience of being a Kabbalist:

Question: People come to you asking about what to change their name to, couples asking if they should get married and what to name their babies. How do you know what to answer them?

My Answer: I do not have any supernatural abilities. I give advice as a person with lots of life experience, and I may be wrong.

My recommendations hold no mystical spells or powers. In fact, no one has such powers! People such as Wolf Messing have a natural ability to see our world and to see the future; however, none of these “psychics” are Kabbalists. They’re only able to sense our world better than other people, but not the Upper World.

I’m a Kabbalist – I see the Upper World and the path leading to it. During our Kabbalah studies, to the degree we aspire toward correction, we evoke the Upper Light – the Creator’s force of love and bestowal, which corrects us. Even the beginners, who don’t yet have the qualities to clearly sense the Light, can feel this force and its influence during the studies.

However, in all other respects, I am just like everyone else.

Question: Do Kabbalists eat meat?

My Answer: They always have.

Question: Is Rav Laitman a Kabbalist?

My Answer: I don’t know, but he eats meat!

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Two questions I received on our connections with other souls:

Question: You say that before the destruction of the Temple, the entire nation of Israel, millions of people, all had spiritual attainment for centuries. What was their contribution to our civilization? What role did those millions of people have? After all, we only use texts produced by a handful of individuals from that nation. Did those millions leave nothing behind except for their gene pool?

My Answer: They left us their spiritual gene pool – their corrections in the common soul. Moreover, they continue taking part in the world’s correction together with us, now. It’s because the spiritual world is an entity that exists constantly, where nothing ever fades or disappears.

Question: The souls are corrected via the correction of egoistic desires and return to their source – the one Soul. Through our correction we build our Kelim, and after our physical death we retain the sensation of the spiritual world in these Kelim. How are our Kelim connected to the souls that have undergone their corrections through us?

My Answer: The soul is the quality of bestowal that a person can acquire only while being in a corporeal body in this world. All that he feels through the soul before the body’s death is what he’ll feel after. Through this quality of bestowal, a person feels connected with the other souls – with those who have undergone corrections through him, as well as those through whom he, too, had undergone corrections.

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A question I received: I don’t understand the views of this world according to Kabbalah. You say that Kabbalah is against asceticism, and you also said that a Kabbalist has the biggest ego and wants to swallow the entire world. But in the Talmud it says, “The way of the Torah is to eat bread with salt, drink water from a cup, sleep on the ground, lead a life of hardship and labour at learning Torah.”

I also read this quote in Attaining the Worlds Beyond: “When a person, by means of his studies, reaches the level at which he wants nothing but spiritual elevation and at which he accepts only the bare necessities of life in order to sustain his physical existence, not for pleasure’s sake, this is the first step of his ascent to the spiritual world“ (Talmud, Psachim).

So, I’m confused by all of this. How are we supposed to behave in this world? Can you give me a precise answer?

My Answer: Before falling from the spiritual level 2,000 years ago, people could sustain themselves on the spiritual level (in love and bestowal) through restrictions and studying Kabbalah (the authentic, inner Torah). This way they were able to oppose the egoism that constantly increased inside them.

However, after the people fell from the spiritual level of “love for thy neighbor” into “unfounded hatred,” the sages of the Talmud made a special correction (addition) in the Upper Governance, as Baal HaSulam writes in item 11 of the “Introduction to Talmud Eser Sefirot“.

Since then, only the “Light of the Torah” (Ohr Makif) can bring about a correction. This Light descends on a person who has gone through the proper preparation (in the group), during the study of Kabbalah with the right intention. It is written: “I created egoism and I created the Torah for its correction, because its Light returns one to the Source (to bestowal).”

Hence, only the correct kind of study will evoke the Light, which will make all the corrections and changes. So organize your studies – and relax!

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