Questions I received on observing religious practices:

Question: I practice Torah and the Mitzvot (commandments) in my daily life and my practice often becomes mechanical – not spiritual. You state that Kabbalah has nothing to do with religion, yet it seems inextricably linked to Torah.

Please advise me on how I can re-engage with the Mitzvot in a way that will correct my “desire to receive” to a “desire to give.” Surely that is what they are for. Please shed some light on the connection of the Mitzvot to Kabbalah, and the significance of the Mitzvot for a Jew.

My Answer: Kabbalah is the method of the soul’s correction by means of revealing the Creator. The soul bears no relation to the body.

If you want to follow the tenets of Judaism, it’s your business. Personally, I abide by this framework because it is the tradition of the nation I belong to. However, I have hundreds of thousands of students who are not Jews and who do not follow these commandments. This does not impair their spiritual development in any way. It is written: “They will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them,” and “My house will be called a house of prayer for all the peoples.” This means that everyone will unite by revealing the Creator.

Kabbalah was revealed in Ancient Babylon to everyone, and today it is being revealed to everyone again. Regardless, every person can practice his own external cultural traditions.

Question: How can we observe 613 commandments if we are not Jews? Where can we find the list of these commandments? How do I observe Shabbat and holidays: should I go to a synagogue or a Kabbalah center that observe such events?

My Answer: The 613 commandments are the correction of 613 desires. These desire will only be revealed inside you after you cross Machsom. They are not related to any actions in our world – they are desires.

Religious actions, however, are traditions and do not correct a person or his soul. It’s not necessary to observe them in order to attain the goal of creation. They are there for you in case you want to be connected to the culture of your people.

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A question I received: You don’t have to make any effort to love sushi or your child. So why is it that in order to love one’s neighbor, one has to go through such a difficult, intricate and lengthy process?

My Answer: When we are satisfying our egoistic desires, we act instinctively: we love ourselves and everything that is ours, and we dislike everything that is foreign, sensing that it is distant from us and does not belong to us. This feeling of the difference between “mine” and “the rest” was created in us in order for us to realize that we are opposite to the whole world and to the Creator. The revelation of this fact is called the revelation of the “shattered common soul.”

If the Creator was clearly revealed to a person, the person would be deprived of his freedom of choice, of any free desire, thought, and action. He would be completely annulled before the Creator. Therefore, in order for man to attain similarity to the Creator, who is the quality of bestowal, one must start out in a state where the Creator is concealed from the person. However, one then needs another example or model of the quality of bestowal and love, instead of the Creator.

In order to create this opportunity for us to attain similarity to the Creator while He is hidden, the single soul of Adam HaRishon broke into individual souls. As a result of this breaking, each soul now imagines itself to be outside of the others, and feels repelled from them by its egoism. And when a soul corrects its egoism – its separation from other souls, it attains the quality of bestowal and similarity to the Creator. This is the goal of creation.

Therefore, we should not seek to correct any of our actions, but only our attitudes toward others. It is written, “One goes from love for the neighbor to love for the Creator.” This is how we correct our soul, become similar to the Creator, and attain the goal of creation. Therefore, “love your neighbor as yourself” is the general law of the world (the Torah), and the other laws are particular expressions of this law.

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A question I received: How is our growing ego connected to the things we read about in the news every day: “father rapes daughter,” “teacher molests her students” and so on?

My Answer: The news tells us of only a small portion of what actually happens. A lot of it is passed over in silence. For years people have been coming to see me about their personal problems, and every year they speak more openly about the things they could not mention before. They have revealed inner impulses, desires, thoughts, disorders and deviations that were never before revealed on such a grand scale and of such quality.

All of this is caused by our ever-growing, egoistic desire to receive pleasure. This desire will grow bigger and bigger, and there is nothing we can do about it. The only thing we can do is begin to correct it.

We are now seeing the entire “thickness” of our egoistic desire, which separates us from the Creator and weighs us down. This is called the aggravation of the exile, concealment, or separation from spirituality. And it will go on until we become such monsters that we won’t be able to stand ourselves.

This evil must be revealed either though action or through the realization of egoism. The latter can be done through upbringing or education. A person can only be corrected by revealing the evil inside himself, by feeling that his egoism is evil and detrimental to him. Only then will a person be able to correct the evil that he does onto others.

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You are told that you have to be considerate of others, but you are incapable of this – even when threatened with death! Even if you want to be considerate of others, how could you? It is against human nature!

People really do want to be considerate of everyone already. The law of universal connection and the need for the “Mutual Guarantee,” which are being revealed in the world now, stipulate that you will only receive food under the condition that everyone will be each others’ guarantors. When this happens, the economy and businesses will begin to work again and will provide everyone with all the necessities.

Today our livelihood depends on the mutual guarantee, which means that you have to be considerate of everyone and everyone has to be considerate of you. Of course, you don’t want suffering for yourself and your family, and so you are ready to change. But how do you do this? You would like to unite with others, but you are unable to. The reason is because you were created an egoist. Recognizing this is called “the realization of evil.”

When you reach this state, this dead-end, you will begin to reveal that there has to be a force that will correct you. You will feel a need for a force that can correct your egoistic nature. This force is called the Creator – the whole of Nature, and it can only be revealed inside you. This revelation of the whole universe will give you the power to rise higher and to control your egoism for everyone’s benefit.

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A question I received: How do Kabbalists explain the parameter of time, which we feel through our senses and can measure using technical instruments of this world?

• Why do we need the factor and the perception of time, and why does this feeling fade after one crosses the Machsom?

• How and why do we create time within ourselves?

• What affect can a person have on time, and how does time affect a person?

• Finally, what affect does time have on nature as a whole, and vice-versa?

My Answer: Time is produced by one’s egoism. Time is the feeling of a deficit, of the difference between what exists and what will exist. However, if one perceives the future as something that has already been received, something that is already present, then he does not feel time – he does not have the sense that there is something missing today which will come in the future.

On the other hand, if a person fully believes, without a shadow of a doubt, that he has not yet received something, but he will definitely receive it, then the present and the future are the same for him, since the future has nothing to add to the present. This is why ascending above egoism lets us enter the present and nothing but the present.

It is written that one who strives toward the Creator compresses time. The fact is, the entire image of the world is within us, and it includes the parameter of time.

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A question I received: I am a regular person, like many others. I pay taxes, work at a factory and even do community service. I am considerate of others, I do everything I can to protect nature, and I serve my country. What else do I have to do according to Kabbalah?

My Answer: What you describe as being a “good person” is actually a good, corrected animal. However, now you are expected to become a human being. A human being (Adam) means “similar” to the Upper Force, the Creator. The Creator is Nature: It is integral, all-encompassing, and all its parts are united. Therefore, in order to become similar to It, you now have to unite with everyone, including the still, vegetative, animate, and human levels of Nature.

You will understand this through your suffering. You can shout all day about how you pay taxes fair and square and how you do community service. It won’t help you – you will still receive painful “blows” from Nature. Just because you follow all the different laws humanity has invented doesn’t mean you are following the laws of Nature.

Humanity has built an egoistic society in order to suit everyone’s desires for self-gratification, and everyone follows the established rules in order to feel comfortable in this society. However, this does not make you a good, corrected person. You have simply made your life more comfortable than if you were living in the wild jungle, by establishing various laws and rules of behavior that provide everyone with a worry-free life. And in addition, you are proud of this.

If an alien from another planet would come here and see all of this, he would say, “Friends, you are not uniting – you are using each other! You don’t look like good, kind citizens, but more like full-fledged criminals. You cannot continue like this. Enough!”

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In the News (from The New York Times): “Coral Fossils Suggest That Sea Level Can Rise Rapidly” Evidence from fossil coral reefs in Mexico underlines the potential for a sudden jump in sea levels because of global warming. The study, being published Thursday in the journal Nature, suggests that a sudden rise of 6.5 feet to 10 feet occurred within a span of 50 to 100 years about 121,000 years ago, at the end of the last warm interval between ice ages.

My Comment: Any occurrence in Nature has an initial stage where the energy builds up, and then an abrupt change. And the latter is always fatal for humans! However, we can stop the threatening changes taking place in Nature by bringing the whole of Nature to balance. The way to do this is by changing ourselves, by acquiring the quality of bestowal.

Kabbalah says that Nature and the Creator are one and the same. The Gematria (numerical value) of the word Nature (HaTeva) is the same as the Creator (Elokim). In our world, the level of Nature is lower than the level of a “human being.” Therefore, by correcting ourselves, by changing our egoism to bestowal, we will become equivalent to all of Nature or the Creator. We will thereby bring all of nature in our world to balance, making our existence absolutely comfortable and secure!

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A question I received: If every person affects the world positively or negatively with his influence, then what determines the general picture?

My Answer: The higher one ascends and develops spiritually, the more power he gains. The greatest power is the power of thought. Ordinary people influence the world with their thoughts, desires, and actions, but the extent of their influence is very small, even though there are six billion people.

The world is not static. One always sees it differently based on one’s changing qualities. When you realize that the world is your individual impression, you recognize that it’s necessary to change yourself, rather than improve the world. You must correct yourself in order for the world to change.

If you do so, then you will discover how the Upper Force affects everything that happens, and this will change your entire model of perception and your interpretation of what you perceive. Will people feel better? Will unemployment and hunger end? Will companies really bring their workers back to work? Yes! We will see this happen with our very own eyes.

Baal HaSulam writes in the article, “The Creator’s Concealment and Revelation,” that nothing changes in our world except the Creator’s revelation or concealment. Therefore, it will help us a great deal to stop viewing this world as a static picture that’s constant before us. We should instead understand that the world depends entirely on our perception, on our qualities and inner conception. We will then begin to correct our flaws, and as a result, to see the will of the Creator in everything that happens.

The science of Kabbalah helps us accomplish this. By definition, it is the method of revealing the Creator to the created beings in this world. In the meantime, this world is the picture that you feel today.

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We say that the modern world has become global and integral, and all the people in the world are now connected to each other. Is this a fact that’s described in some book, treaty, or convention? Or is it an indisputable fact that exists in the world? Where does this phenomenon come from?

Just as the force of gravity influences everything on earth, so the force of our connection is being revealed today. Until recently, this force – the connection between us – was not apparent, and everyone was free to do whatever they wanted. Today, however, we are dependent on this force and controlled by it.

This force connects everyone’s thoughts, desires, and actions with everyone else. It’s as if we are in a net that was imposed on us from above and that holds us together. In it, every person unwillingly influences everyone, and everyone influences each and every one of us – through thoughts, desires, and actions.

This force, this absolute interdependency, is being revealed to us in order to make us want to unite as one, and to reach the “Mutual Guarantee.” When we reach this state, we will reveal an Upper Intelligent Force – the Creator.

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Questions I received about the levels of development:

Question: Am I correct to understand that a person on the still level of development has not yet revealed his point in the heart? And does the development of the point in the heart follow the same stages: still, vegetative, animate and human?

My Answer: Yes, it’s exactly as you’ve explained.

Question: Is it possible to skip from the still level to the animate level, or from the vegetative level to the speaking level during one’s development?

My Answer: No. The transition is always gradual, according to the established order.

Question: Before we descended into our world, we had no concept or awareness of it. Therefore, when we ascend back up to the collective soul, will we develop a spiritual awareness? And how will this differ from our lack of awareness before we descended?

My Answer: The difference is our recognition of what happens to us and our participation in the process of attaining the Creator, His level of existence.

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