Letters are the forms of desire. The Creator created only the desire to enjoy that acquires various forms of reception and bestowal. Yet, forms of reception have no right to exist in spirituality. As to the forms of bestowal, we are only concerned with those similar to the Creator, that is, with various types of bestowal from Bina to Malchut.

Altogether, there are 27 letters: 9 come from ZAT de Bina (from Aleph to Tet), 9 from Zeir Anpin (from Yod to Tzadik), 4 are contained in Malchut (Kof, Reish, Shin, and Tav), and 5 letters are used in the end of words, MaNTZePaCH, on the Parsa.  These are the forms of matter similar to the Creator or models of the correct behavior.

Therefore, when we talk about a book, word, or sentence, we talk about the matter of the desire to enjoy, which is constantly changing and acquiring different shapes like dough. This is how our desire alters its form, yearning to become similar to the Creator.

When one completes repeating the entire series of permutations from the first word (In the beginning – Beresheet) to the last (Israel), going through all the letters of the Torah, one acquires all of these forms, becomes completely similar to the Creator, and reaches the Final Correction. Hence it is said, “Inscribe the whole Torah on your heart.”  The heart is the desire; the book of Torah all the existing forms of the Creator’s bestowal onto the creatures. We have to transcribe them on our desire. Then we will become similar to the Creator.

From the Evening Zohar Lesson 5/5/10

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In the article "Matan Torah" (“The Revelation of Godliness”), Baal HaSulam writes that bestowal manifests itself through actions that are directed from one person to another and from a person to the Creator. Both of these actions are aimed at one goal: to attain partial similarity (through the 125 steps of the worlds) and then complete similarity with the Creator (the World of Infinity, a state of unity with the Creator). When a person acts for the sake of bestowal rather than for his own sake, he doesn’t feel the difference between giving to another person or to the Creator because anything beyond his own body is perceived as foreign.

What does it mean “to work for the sake of the Creator?” How do I imagine Him? I unite with my friends (people with whom I share the same goal), and for this purpose I rise above my egoism. Within this union, I begin sensing a more internal desire defined as “the Creator.” Through the group (Circuit 1), I influence Him (Circuit 2). In turn, both react to me. The Group and the Creator comprise two models of “strangers” or "others" that are present within me, both of which I can differentiate. I work with both models for the sake of bestowal and rise beyond my ego.

This is where the circle is completed. There are no “others,” I just imagined them within my ego (my desire to receive pleasure). I rise above my egoism and attain a state called “The Other – 1,” and then I rise even higher into a state that is called “The Other – 2.” Everything happens within me. The saying, “From love of the created beings to love of the Creator” refers to two steps of correcting my egoistic desires.

By “giving to the other” I want to be similar to the Creator, that is, to merge with Him. Everything is within me: In one case my desire is called “group,” “surroundings,” “humanity,” and “souls,” and in the other, on a deeper level, it is called “the Creator.” However, all of it happens within my corrected desire for bestowal. I am involved in two layers of relationships. It’s just harder for me to “give” to the Creator than to my fellow friends.

From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/5/10, Article “Matan Torah”

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A question I received: There’s a saying in the Torah that’s become very popular worldwide: “A Life for a life, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.” What does this mean from a Kabbalistic standpoint?

My Answer: Where there was a breaking, now a correction is needed at the same degree, on the same level, and in the same form. Where the desire was corrupted, we must now correct it, make it suitable to use.  We need to discern correctly where the breaking took place, and correct it in the exact same place. Why? In so doing, we study what the Creator has done, the cleverness of His plan, and how He trips me up in every state so that I would demand His help and learn from His work.

The entire work in correction is called the Creator’s work because I discern the corruption, take Him by the hand, bring Him to that place, and ask Him to correct it. I imagine ahead of time how this state must be corrected. Once He corrects it, I complement Him, and thereby, He and I walk together. In this way, we are connected to the Creator.

If I were capable of making this correction on my own, I wouldn’t have a connection with the Upper Force. If the Creator were able to do it without me, then who would I be? What would be the point of my existence? This is the only way He and I can work together as partners.

The Creator mourns for the broken desires (Kelim). On one hand, He wants to correct them but, on the other, He’s unable to do it in the general system without my request, my demand, and precise instruction as to what to correct and where. Thus, He and I become true partners in this work.

From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/4/10, The Zohar

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As a person rises from one level to the next and goes through various states, he mustn’t forget that there is just one force in reality. It’s not him or the environment, but only the Upper Force, the all-inclusive Nature, the Creator, who organizes all these states for him, and he exists in connection with Him.

It’s true that I have to lower myself before the environment and that I have to study the Kabbalah books that were written by wise people, Kabbalists, and that I must continuously build myself anew. But through all of these means, this wrapper, this entire theater, I am connected with the only Director who arranges everything by the rule, “Thou Hast Hemmed Me In Behind and Before.”

Then I don’t just go through levels and states or build a relationship with the group, but I am always connected to Him through all the means He has placed between us. They are like adapters that help me to reveal Him. Gradually, as I study them, I see that all these obstacles and degrees of concealment between me and Him are intended to help me change so I will become more and more similar to Him, to the Director who organizes everything for me.

Then I begin to perceive the surroundings, the atmosphere, the friends, studies, and teacher, as His representatives. I stop attributing any significance or existence to them in and of themselves, and they gradually disappear in my eyes. I no longer see them as having their own forces, power, and influence.

I relate them to the Creator more and more, and to this degree I justify them and the Creator, who acts this way with me. That is how I acquire a connection with Him. Then I love everyone, since they helped me attain adhesion with Him. And the whole world is then called “the holy Shechina” – one desire, inside of which the Light fills everything. And this desire is mine.

From the 8th lesson at the World Zohar Convention 5/9/10

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A Question I Received: How can we feel a deficiency for bestowal if this deficiency did not exist in the Creator?

My Answer: The Creator’s desire to bestow comes from perfection. However, if we wish to remain creatures and to differ from the Creator, bestowal within us cannot come from perfection. Therefore, our need for bestowal should come from a feeling of deficiency.

Yet the need to love based on a feeling of a deficiency is not good since then it seems that I wish to love Him for the sake of creating a better situation for myself. Therefore, we have to build within ourselves a need not based on deficiency, but rather to be above our nature for the sake of bestowal. Thus the desire to receive has to remain in me, but above it I have to build the desire to bestow.

The Creator is perfect and His love comes from perfection. The creature’s love cannot come from perfection, so what kind of love is this? A person needs to achieve a feeling of “a deficiency without a deficiency,” meaning a “double vessel (desire),” so that likewise, our love would seemingly come from perfection. Then our love would be truly pure.

The whole process is already determined by the final state – the only state that exists and was created by the Creator.  However, in relation to us, it unwinds in a sequence of states, like a carpet being rolled down the stairs toward us.

From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/3/10, Article “Matan Torah”

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A question I received: It is written that the pleasure is in the attainment of the Creator’s properties. It follows that we derive pleasure from receiving?

My Answer: The pleasure is in becoming like the Creator. The action itself – reception or bestowal – does not matter that much. The goal is adhesion to the Creator. It is the ultimate level that I am trying to reach. Adhesion is attained through my bestowal to Him and His bestowal to me.

However, in order to bestow to one another, we need to receive from one another. Otherwise, there will not be a connection between us. And in order for us to have a connection with mutual reception and bestowal, we need love for one another. Love is the means. Reception and bestowal also are means. They all are means for attaining adhesion.

The action itself does not matter. When I love someone and this person loves me, does it really matter whether we bestow to one another or receive? We simply enjoy one another! The mother receives so much pleasure from an infant who receives from her. Of course she gives to him, but he gives her so much more. What does he give her? He only demands, screams, and soils diapers. Yet at the same time, he gives her the opportunity to enjoy. Everyone understands this very well, there is no need to explain this.

The spiritual world is characterized by somewhat similar actions that we observe in the material world. However, their entire meaning lies in the intention: why I do all these things. The action itself, giving or receiving, does not matter at all.

An even better example: A person takes a knife and cuts through someone’s stomach. His intention determines everything. If he does it in the interest of the other, his actions are those of a doctor; if he is driven by his own interest, he acts as a thief or a killer. This is the entire difference.

An action can only be evaluated according to its intention: Why was it done, what was its purpose? You keep discussing whether to receive or bestow. What’s the difference? What matters is why you do it, whether you want to give pleasure or receive it.

From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/4/10, Article “Matan Torah”

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A question I received: How can we maintain within ourselves the need to bestow?

My Answer: The need to bestow that stems from love never dies out. You’ll never be able to say “Enough!” On the contrary, the more you give, the greater your need to bestow will be. Otherwise it’s not love. If love is limited to a certain level beyond which you won’t go, if you feel that your love has boundaries, then it is not love.

Your wife can explain it very well to you. Women can feel these things naturally. A man tends to limit his love because his spiritual root is the force of the anti-egoistic screen that dictates to him: “Here is the limit and I am not ready to go any further.” In contrast, a woman who wants to experience a man’s love can’t understand how love can have boundaries. This is instilled in our nature.

Pleasure can never extinguish the desire to love; it only awakens an even bigger desire. When you give to your children, you don’t tell them: “Enough, I won’t give to you anymore.” Perhaps you can’t give more because of external circumstances, but you cannot voluntarily restrict giving to your own children.

Love revokes all boundaries. We don’t understand what true love is. We think that it is about filling up our own stomach, but love is fulfillment of somebody else’s desire. It’s an aspiration to satisfy another person. I sense that this is about another person (not me); I feel the distance between us. Yet, I want to fulfill this person.

We are talking here about a spiritual Kli and the science of Kabbalah rather than about hugs and kisses. All of nature acts in accordance with this principle of lack and its fulfillment; love rules over everything. Everything in nature unites, draws closer, or, on the contrary, moves further away from each other according to this principle. This single force acts in nature since the Creator is the power of love. That’s why there is nothing else besides love and hatred (that is, love with a negative sign.)

“Love your neighbor” is not just a beautiful slogan, but rather a law of nature. To fulfill another person’s desire means to sense ourselves beyond time, motion, or space, beyond all limitations of this world. It is to enter spirituality. By doing so, we attain eternal life. If not, we live like animals and are restricted by our material body in this world.

From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/3/10, Article “Matan Torah”

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The Creator is a pure desire to bestow. He receives pleasure from bestowal. He creates the creature, the desire to receive, so as to bestow to it. Does the Creator feel pleasure from bestowal? He does! Does He bestow in order to feel pleasure? No! He receives pleasure from the very fact that He wants to bestow. We say that He suffers because of our reluctance to receive His pleasure, but it’s purely our limited perception whereby we perceive His “suffering” relative to ourselves.

We, on the other hand, are the desire to receive, and our joy lies solely in reception. This desire cannot be erased within us; it only needs to be corrected. The corrected desire will take pleasure in being fulfilled, but its fulfillment will come in fulfilling another.

How is it possible? Will I be fulfilling myself? Yes, but only on account of fulfilling somebody else, and in so doing I will feel as though I’m fulfilling myself. I’ll be like a mother that fulfills her child and takes pleasure in that very act. But a mother loves her child, and so it follows that I too need to acquire this love. If I manage to love the desire of another, then everything it receives will be my fulfillment as well. Love will unite our desire into one. Moreover, love will make the desire of another more important to me than my own, inherent desire.

Therefore, all that I need is the power of love. And this power can only be received from the Creator, for He is the one Who loves. Love is His inherent quality. Ask Him and He will share it with you. You will be able to love as well, as love will rise over all of your hatred.

Herein lies the giving of the Torah (Kabbalah): a power comes from Above, unites your desire with those of others, and you begin to love them like yourself. “Like yourself” means even more than yourself. Your love is so great that it obligates you to care for others before even caring for yourself. You become like a mother who’s prepared to give her child everything in the world.

On the animate level such behavior is compelled by nature (the Creator). But on the human level, we must reach this state on our own.

From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/3/10, Article “Matan Torah”

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In the News (From Top.rbc.ru): “According to Professor Dimitrios Karussis, member of the Executive Board of the Israel Society of Neuroimmunology and the Head of the Multiple Sclerosis Center, Hadassah University Hospital in Jerusalem, scientists were able to identify a soul in a human being by using MRT technology (magnetic resonance tomography).

Research indicates that Kabbalah study activates a part in the brain which the researches called “faith apparatus.” It activates brain activity and increases manyfold an organism’s resistance to diseases that have left modern medicine helpless.”

My Comment: How can we reveal the soul? It depends on what we want to discover. If that’s the force activating an animal body, then surely it’s doable. Back when I was a student, research about “the weight of the body before and after death”was already being conducted in the world, to define the weight of the soul that allegedly leaves the body.

Everything depends on how we define a soul. Sometimes a man and a woman address each other as “my soul-mate.” If that’s how you define the soul, then you can weigh it. But if we understand that the soul is a part of the Creator from Above, the force of bestowal, then, similar to other forces of our world, it can be identified only by the results of its actions. By perceiving the force of bestowal within the property of bestowal (the desire to give, Kli), we thereby reveal the Creator within us and thus call Him Bo–re, from the words "Bo" -"Come" (attain it with your property of bestowal) and "Re" – "See" (discover).

There is no Creator without the creature. We are unable to say anything about Him, as He is outside of us, since that’s the essence or the abstract form which we can’t discuss. Kabbalah, being a purely experimental science, forbids us to engage in such philosophical reasoning, as Baal HaSulam states in the “Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” “the judge has nothing but what his eyes can see.”

We need the material on which this spiritual force could act. This material along with the force acting in it will be called the “soul.” Why? It is because the material itself – a part of the Creator from Above that possesses the same property of bestowal – would resemble the Creator.

How can the scientists discover the soul if it exists in the property of bestowal? What kind of devices can they use? What can help them? To discover the soul, one needs the material that would have the property of bestowal.

That could only be when a person has reached such a correction. Then, whatever clothes that material would be called the Light of the soul. The Kli itself, the desire, the material that has the property of bestowal, would be called the soul’s body. Without possessing such qualities, a person of this world is unable to perceive neither the body of the soul nor its Light.

Hence, if we define the soul according to Kabbalah, as a part of the Creator from Above, then scientists have no way of approaching it. One can attain the soul only the help of Kabbalah.

Everything depends on our intention. If we aspire to reveal spirituality, the Light will come and correct our material (desire), so that it becomes bestowing. When the material will resemble the Creator, become the Creator’s part from Above, the soul will arise within us.

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If we were to bestow to the Creator due to the desire that He had instilled in us, could there be love more superficial than that? Essentially, we would love Him because He made us love Him. Love is possible only if the desire originates in us.

That is why it wasn’t an option to create us with a ready desire to love Him, for that would have been disgusting. Love must be completely genuine in its root, it must blossom in an empty space, absolutely selflessly and independently of any received pleasures.

How can we attain such an absolute, pure, and eternal love, utterly selfless without demanding any reward? How can the creature attain the same attitude toward the Creator as He has for it? This desire, the need for bestowal, must be developed by us. Herein lies our entire development from this world and to the World of Infinity: to attain the need for love.

Because we develop it within ourselves, this need for love does not disappear. We hold on to this lack, thanks to which we can love and bestow. For this reason, the spiritual vessel can never be overfilled. It cannot be filled; we merely cover it from Above, as it is written: “Love will cover all sins.” The act of covering only increases the lack. We cover it, but it keeps growing, continuing to blaze brighter and brighter.

That is why the process we undergo cannot be any different, as it stems from the end goal. Indeed, if the Creator wishes to bring us to mutual love, the same love He has for us, then there is no other choice. The entire spiritual ladder has already stretched from the end point to us, to the beginning of the path, and we must continue our journey all the way to the end.

From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/3/10, Article “Matan Torah”

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