A question I received: I completed the ARI Online beginner and advanced classes, and for the past two years have been attending your online classes daily. I’ve studied Pticha, Shamati, and The Book of Zohar. Your wisdom is profound. But, lately, the only portion of the lesson that that I feel I can relate to is Talmud Eser Sefirot. The abstract seems more real to me than the discussions concerning present world conditions. Is this normal, or am I losing my way?

My Answer: It’s temporary. You will discover that Kabbalah is the revelation of the Creator in our world and is realized by studying correction of oneself and of the whole world. To the extent one is corrected, one perceives the world as unified and transparent, for all of universal creation is perceived by us in a single desire that was created. It begins to appear as unified, and all of the worlds will appear as sensations in different layers of that single desire.

Subsequently, the study material, too, will begin to reveal one and the same thing, only in different languages. Finally, everything will come to be seen as one picture, static, whole and perfect.

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In the News (from The New Scientist): “North Atlantic is world’s ‘climate superpower‘” Today’s climate is changing most dramatically in the far North Atlantic, with record warming and ice loss in recent years. If the climate’s “tipping point” resides in these waters, then nature’s synchronized chaos could unleash unexpectedly sudden and severe consequences.

My Comments: Weather is controllable. It is a negative reaction that reflects our non conformance with the Common Nature – the Creator and His law of balance.  The law of balance means that we are to be equivalent to Him on all levels of our existence, expressed by such behaviors as consumption of only the necessities and in aspiring to benevolent connection between us as well as the surrounding Nature. Finally, we will wise up after having experienced the myriad of troubles coming our way, reaching an understanding that this is the Creator’s intelligent treatment of us – and we will then unwillingly correct ourselves.

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Today, all of humanity is operating in a global system. If we correct the ties between us in that system, it means we correct the souls to reveal the Creator here within that bond, in this world and in our lifetime.

The science of Kabbalah states that the breaking of the souls happened in their descent from one of the exalted spiritual degrees. Before that descent, all of the souls represented one common soul, called Adam.

Adam split into many separate parts, and absolutely all of them fell into this world, giving rise to all of humanity. There is no difference between the common soul and any person in this world. All we need to understand is that we are inside a closed system, where everyone is stuck in his ego. Thus, there are now seven billion separate parts. Each of them has been growing, influenced by their own unique ego until this time, a special time when the broken connection between us is being revealed: billions and billions of connections – linking each person.

People say that each person knows everyone else in the world through no more than five or six degrees of separation. However, we have yet to reveal that everyone of us is literally connected to everyone, since the link is corrupted and each one relates to the others based on his ego. It’s not our fault that ego is inside us – we had it to begin with. However, the fact that it has become revealed means that we must correct it. Besides this one task there is nothing of greater importance or meaning that we must do in our lifetime. For if we correct the ties between us, we discover the World of Infinity itself.

To the extent that a person reveals the true bond with others by his correct attitude towards them, he begins to feel the Upper Force – the force of bestowal and love. He then transcends the boundaries of his perception of the world and begins to see the world around him as it really is outside of him, and in this way, he reveals the Creator.

That is precisely what we must achieve in this generation. All the conditions are laid out before us; Kabbalists wrote about it and outlined the entire method for us, and all we are left to do is to realize it. We have been given every opportunity to do just that.

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A question I received: Since I cannot contact you directly, let me throw out some burning questions…

My Answer: I’m here for you on this blog, in direct contact with you!

Question cont’d: Do you consider Kabbalah to be a complete and absolute wisdom that cannot be supplemented by anything?

My Answer: Every person who attains Kabbalah today adds his part to it, along with the Kabbalists of the past. It works the same way in any science. However, in Kabbalah, this is done through one’s attainment by the method of correction, rather than through egoistic knowledge or theories. So, you are welcome to reveal and supplement the general picture with your own observations.

Question cont’d: Say a person has attained the full correction, but was forced to return to this world in order to complete certain tasks. Does he have to undertake the correction of the entire corrupted world once again? In other words, one’s individual correction is not final until one leaves this world?

My Answer: That’s correct.

Question cont’d: Were there any Kabbalists in the Sanhedrin aside from Kayafa? If yes, what was the percentage?

My Answer: All 120 members of the Sanhedrin were great Kabbalists who attained the Creator.

Question cont’d: Was Avesta knowledgeable in Kabbalah? If so, why did Alexander burn her, considering that all his actions were controlled by the Creator?

My Answer: The Creator governs everything. Avesta and Alexander were like robots that He controlled.

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Two questions I received on the correction of egoism:

Question: My egoism is not very developed. I do not aspire to become rich or to build my career. I have no ambition and I work all sorts of jobs for minimum wage. However, I do have an aspiration to get out of this cycle. In order to study Kabbalah, do I have to develop my egoism more or can I study Kabbalah without this?

My Answer: The only thing you should focus on is correcting the egoism that you have. You will then see that you are bursting with egoism! That’s because one’s entire ascent toward the Creator is based upon the growth and correction of egoism.

Question: During the last day of the 2009 International Kabbalah Congress, I decided to set an alarm on my phone that would remind me to spend one minute everyday thinking about the fact that all the people on earth are one Kli. Aside from this, I really want to join a group, but my egoism holds me back. Should I force myself to go to a group, or wait for this to happen naturally, for the Light to push me to go to a group?

My Answer: If a person is sick and is just sitting there, waiting for a desire “to come to him” to take the bitter medicine, a shot or an operation, then is he doing the right thing?

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A question I received: What does it mean to reveal Nature?

My Answer: To reveal Nature means to reveal the general law of Nature in which we are included and to reveal ourselves at a different stage.  In other words, it means to reveal reality in its true form, as opposed to its perception in our five corporeal senses. In that sense, we are no different that animals.

What makes us different from animals today is our egoistic desire to use all of Nature for our own benefit, the petty and narrow profit. But we have to learn to rise above this egoistic force that is within us all.

If we turn this egoistic force into a force of bestowal and love of our  neighbor, we will rise above our nature, attain bestowal, and become similar to the Creator, which is the general and the Upper Force of Nature. It is called “to reveal the Creator” in everyone. By that, one reveals the Upper Quality of bestowal in oneself and reaches an eternal and perfect life, as the Creator and as all of Nature.

Even when one loses his material animate body, he does not feel that he lacks for something, because this corporeal life is the smallest, worst and most insignificant form of life.

Rabash used an example of cutting the hair or nails.  Because the hair and nails represent the vegetative part on the animate part of the body, a person does not feel pain when he cuts them because the vegetative part is one level below the animate.

In the same way, when we rise above the animate level of Nature to the level of the Creator, we will stop perceiving the loss of our material life as an important and meaningful event.  But, until we have risen to this higher degree, we will continue to attach importance to it.

Once we rise to this next higher degree, we will realize that the only reason for us to remain in this life will be for the necessity of disseminating the knowledge of Kabbalah and the need for bestowal, in which case this opportunity will still exist. If this was not necessary and our corporeal body was to die, we would feel its death no more than what we feel when we cut our nails or hair.

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Questions I received about man’s descent into egoism and his ascent into spirituality:

Question: How is it possible within a short time-frame to transform our egoistic nature to one of altruism since we have been developing over thousands of incarnations without doing so?

My Answer: Over the last 5769 years and the span of thousands of incarnations, we have developed on the inanimate, vegetative and animate levels. We have been growing desires of the “human” level: fame, power, money and knowledge, and all of them fueled by envy.

Our egoism has continued growing with each generation until reaching the current state where it has become integral. We are fully bound together, completely dependent on one another!

Our development is akin to a pyramid. The top of the pyramid is very small, which is why the period of correction is very brief and must be made within the span of one generation. This is how time contracts – as we move along the pyramid from the base to the top.

Question: Why then did the Kabbalists of past keep quiet and not accelerate our historical development?

My Answer: Before we became united into one system (in the second half of the 20th century), we considered egoism the engine of progress. Now that it has begun to pit us against one another rather than uniting us, we are beginning to perceive it as evil. It will continue to reveal itself as the source of all evil in the world; it will force us to correct it to the opposite form of connection – towards compassion, contribution and love.

Today Kabbalists must assist the world to quickly realize the source of our suffering by revealing our egoistic nature as the source of all evil in the world. And to explain the rationale behind these events occurring within ourselves and our environment as the effect of that power that forces us to attain the highest goal – to attain life on the level of the Creator.

Until recently, this process of development was concealed from the masses. But today it has revealed itself and demands clarification so as to help diagnose these events and also provide the remedy. Because we live exclusively in the world of egoism (the force of reception) we cannot transform ourselves or even begin to consider how it can be done.

This is why we have been given the science of Kabbalah. When we study it, we draw onto ourselves the force of bestowal, the Creator, “the Light that returns to the Source,” meaning the force that transforms egoism into love and bestowal. That is the remedy that cures us.

Question: Where do we get the strength to make the ascent?

My Answer: The forced descent from perfection to imperfection is extremely “slow,” because egoism must gradually reveal itself and bring itself out of the Creator’s domain. On the other hand, our ascent from the bottom upwards happens under the influence of and with “the speed of Light.”

Question: Keeping in mind that it took matter in our world billions of years to develop after the descent from the Upper worlds, how can the ascent only take several years?

My Answer: We can make the correction in the span of several years because it happens under the influence of the Light. Perfection is revealed automatically from the state of imperfection merely because of our changed attitude toward it.

Our entire role in the correction is similar to the desire of a drop of semen to become a human being – that’s how indistinguishable it is in comparison with the actions of the parents at its conception, birth, upbringing and becoming a person.

Besides the indistinguishable desire to become Adam (from the word ‘Dome’ – similar to the Creator), the Creator does everything else. So let us do what He expects from us and become like Him.

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The following is a model of society as visualized by Oleg Yaalom, a Bnei Baruch student: After I heard the lesson where you spoke about closed and open systems, the following model came to mind:

1. Disconnected System – The “disconnected system” stage of human development is the simple life of an ancient human being who was a part of the natural world that surrounded him. For all practical purposes, egoism did not exceed the demands of the animal level of existence.

2. Transitional Stage – The disconnected system gradually transitions into the closed state. Over the course of the last 5,000 years, egoism grew, and people were less satisfied with the fulfillment they could find in nature. Instead, they began to find personal fulfillment through their use and exploitation of their neighbors.

3. Closed System – During our generation, the system has completely closed in on itself, and we are no longer able to fulfill our egoistic desires through the use of nature. Our egoism, which has reached its maximum corporeal level of development, is only satisfied through the use of each other.

4. Such a closed society is unstable and defective, as is any closed system (according to Gödel’s Theorem). In other words, such a society requires that we immediately adopt the principle of “love your neighbor as yourself.” Otherwise, like a burnt-out star, it will sink within itself and disintegrate as if into a black hole. The closed system will collapse.

However, the principle of “love your neighbor” will transform into the principle of “love the Creator,” as a result of which healthy spiritual competition will resume between people.

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A question I received: You said that if a person properly unites the qualities and traits that are present in him, he reaches perfection. What is this unification?

My Answer: There are two natural forces in man: the desire to receive and the desire to bestow, which correspond to the quality of the created being and the quality of the Creator. We need to unite them properly and equalize them!

Initially our desire to receive acts only for its own sake. Equalizing it with the desire to bestow does not mean changing it, but rather changing its implementation. The desire to receive remains, but its implementation needs to be changed from “for one’s own sake” to “for the sake of others.”

In this way, the desire to receive becomes similar to the Creator’s desire to bestow, and a person reaches the quality and the level of the Creator – the sensation of the desire in a new implementation of eternity and perfection.

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Two questions I received on our roles in life:

Question: You said that we have to follow the rule, “love your neighbor as yourself,” but you are not answering my questions! What’s more, ever since I began studying Kabbalah, everyone has turned away from me and I feel completely alone.

My Answer: I receive hundreds of questions, but I only answer those that are new (that don’t repeat something that was already answered) and that adhere to my topic.

As for the feeling that you are alone, it naturally emerges in the process of studying Kabbalah, and it is meant to help you search for the Creator. After all, doesn’t this feeling come from Him?

Question: Recently I was wondering whether all people are different or the same.  Since everyone has the same essence – egoism, is it correct to say that the roles we play in life are just clothes we wear over our egoism?

My Answer: Egoism forces us to play these roles, which are all manifestations of our egoism. Our task is to follow the Creator’s example and adopt His role.

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