Two questions I received on how to deal with emotional states:

Question: If a person is in a difficult state, should he delve deeper into it and try to realize the whole depth of the emotional pain, or is better to pay less attention to this state and to delve more into the studies and dissemination? I am trying to act according to the second approach, but isn’t this considered an escape from the pain and from learning about yourself?

My Answer: You should strive only for the Light, for a good state, thoughts, and desires. Leave the bad states behind you as quickly as possible. There is no sense in suffering and “eating yourself up.” Whoever engages in self-criticism is unhappy with himself and suffers. This is a waste of your time and it puts you in opposition to the Creator. The Creator feels everything you feel in your heart!

Question: At the Congress I felt like someone who’s falling in love and wished with all my heart for this feeling to stay with me forever. This was my first Congress and the first time I met Bnei Baruch members in person, though I studied virtually for three years before that. After such a high ascent, I expect that the descent will be very big. How can I go through it correctly?

My Answer: You should devote all your effort and free time to disseminating Kabbalah in the world. This will connect you with many people, and you will be elevated to the degree you’ll make efforts.

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A question I received: You talk about the Creator as if He is Nature, executing Its laws silently and relentlessly. Nature is Elokim, the forces or angels governing our world. However, the Creator is something much higher; He has personality and a will. He is the one with whom we are trying to gain equivalence of form. Man was created in the Creator’s image and likeness. Isn’t this so?

My Answer: I do not want to go into disputes because words will only obscure the meaning. Instead, I would like you to read what Baal HaSulam wrote in the article, “The Peace”:

It is best for us to meet halfway and accept the words of the Kabbalists, that nature (Teva) has the same numerical value (in Hebrew) as the word God (Elokim) – eighty six. Then I’ll be able to call the laws of God the commandments of nature and vice-versa, for they are one and the same, and we need discuss it no further.

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Questions I received on overcoming  obstacles along the path:

Question: You have said, “All obstacles which one receives and will receive should intensify, and one must not eliminate but overcome them.” What does this mean?

My Answer: All the obstacles in life are given to us like problems we receive in school. By solving them with the intention of attaining the qualities of the Creator, we come closer to Him. If we knew this and perceived life in this way, we would see our lives as a unique opportunity and would get out of the cage of this world and into the World of Infinity.

Question cont’d: Afterward you said, “One should take the impressions one receives, the Reshimot, and multiply them with the help of obstacles. By doing so one will reach Mount Sinai and ascend higher and higher.” Please explain: how can I multiply the Reshimot and the obstacles?

My Answer: The more one ascends through one’s correction, the more obstacles one encounters. See item 133 of “Introduction to Talmud Eser Sefirot”:

It is rather like a king who wished to select for himself the most loyal of his subjects in the state and bring them in to work inside his palace. What did he do? He issued an open proclamation in the state that anyone who wished it, young or old, would come to his palace to engage in the works of his inner palace.

However, he appointed many of his servants to guard the palace gate and all the roads that lead to it. He ordered them to cunningly mislead all those nearing his palace and divert them from the way that leads to the palace.

Naturally, all the people in the state began to run to the king’s palace. Yet, the diligent guards cunningly rejected them. Many of them overpowered them and came near the palace gate, but the guards at the gate were most diligent. Even when someone approached the gate, they diverted him and turned him away with great craftiness, until one despaired and returned as he had come.

So they came and went, and regained strength and came again and so on and so forth for several days and years, until they grew weary of trying any further. Yet, only the heroes amongst them whose patience endured and they defeated the guards and opened the gate, were instantly awarded seeing the King’s countenance, and He put each person in his right position.

Of course, from that moment on, they had no further dealings with those guards who diverted and mislead them and made their life bitter for several days and years, running back and forth around the gate. This is because they have been blessed with working and serving before the glory of the king’s face inside His palace.

Question: Throughout the day, I experience about two ascents and two descents, sometimes three. I ascend by developing my intention and reading the original sources. How will this happen later, down the road? As I understand, the time between the descents will get shorter and shorter. Is this true? And ideally, should these states be changing every minute?

My Answer: No, much more often!

Question: You said that Reshimot surface in us at every second. Does this happen while we sleep too?

My Answer: Yes.

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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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Questions I received on the soul:

Question: What happens to the soul when the body dies?

My Answer: The soul is “a part of the Creator,” and the Creator is the quality of bestowal and love. So, a person acquires a soul when this quality of “love for one’s neighbor” emerges in him. However, he does not have a soul until he acquires this quality of love and bestowal, and is similar to an animal. This is why it is written in Kabbalistic texts, “All of you are like animals,” “A person is born a small animal,” and so on.

One can acquire the quality of bestowal and love only under the influence of the Upper Light, which is a force that corrects one’s egoism. This Light is called Surrounding Light (Ohr Makif ) or the Creator because It surrounds us and we are inside it. It is written, “The Creator is like water that cleanses Israel (Mikve Israel Hashem), where Israel is Yashar-El, meaning, one who aspires to the Creator, to bestowal and love.

What does this mean? A person perceives our world using his natural, egoistic qualities. When he obtains the altruistic quality of bestowal and love, he feels the Upper World inside this quality. This means that he acquires a soul.

Once he acquires this quality, it stays with him even if his egoistic quality vanishes, or in other words, even if his body (the matter we feel in our sensations) dies. And that’s because there is only one created matter – the desire, and all existence is felt within this desire. If the desire has the intention, “for one’s own sake,” then one perceives “our world” or “this world.” If the desire has the intention, “for the sake of one’s neighbor,” then one perceives the Upper World or the Creator.

The birth of our bodies, our life and death, are but the emergence and extinction of the Light inside the egoistic desire. Spiritual birth, on the other hand, is the emergence of the desire to bestow and to love outside of oneself (to act not for one’s own sake, or not in order to feel egoistically comfortable).

The desire to bestow is independent of the egoistic desire, through which we feel our bodies and this world. Therefore, when the body dies and the feeling of this world vanishes, what remains is the altruistic desire and the feeling of the Upper World.

Question: How can the soul “see,” “feel,” and “perceive” without the functioning of the brain?

My Answer: We feel everything inside the desire. The brain only helps us to distinguish what we see, or rather, what we desire.

Question: Is it really possible for the soul of a person who suffers from Alzheimer’s disease, who has lost his memory and cognition, to restore all of this after death?

My Answer: Once a person develops the soul, the quality of bestowal, it never disappears.

Question: Why does it happen that infants and small children, whose souls have not yet been corrected, die so young?

My Answer: By existing for as long as they were destined to, they corrected a particular part of their spiritual development.

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Evolution has never ceased, and today we have reached the critical transition point where the world is shifting from egoistic to altruistic. Kabbalah explains that life on earth, on all the levels, goes through the same process of development. Thus, studies of bacteria have shown that at some point in their evolution, bacteria were forced by circumstances to shift from hostile and competitive behavior to  peaceful interaction. This resulted in the creation of new, multi-celled organisms, which later developed into complex organisms, including humans.

A similar process occurs on all other levels of nature, from inanimate to human. We too will have to transform from being rival and hostile groups, nations, religions, and civilizations, into a global family. Indeed, we are driven by inner data (Reshimot – the spiritual genes of our development) that’s the same as our biological data, revealed to us externally.

The evolutionary process is explained by Kabbalah this way: The “thickness” of egoism (Reshimot of Aviut) constantly increases, causing the process of evolution to take place. Egoism grows along these levels:

• 0-1 inanimate

• 2 vegetative

• 3 animate

• 4 human

When egoism reaches the last, human level of its development, a special quality becomes revealed in it: a connection to the Upper Source – the highest degree, the Creator, or Nature. But this final, fourth degree also develops gradually, going through its own, inner stages (also the stages 0-1-2-3-4).  At egoism’s final, fourth stage, man finally reveals its global nature. Hence, on this level of man’s development, he has to begin connecting to his Source – the Creator. Humanity has to become one, like the Creator.

On the surface, a person appears as nothing more than a biological system. But when this system reaches a certain degree of its development – the fourth stage of egoism, it prompts a “system crash” – an upgrade in the system’s organization and operation, taking it to the next, global level. This is what we are witnessing today in our society.

In other words, the next level of our development, the “spiritual” level which demands our equality with the Creator, is beginning to be revealed in us. For now, we are only starting to define it, to see that it is global and integral. However, to the extent we become more acquainted with this new form of egoism in us, we will begin to feel the need for its fulfillment – the Creator.

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A question I received: What role does personal prayer have in Kabbalah, and does the Creator hear it? Can a prayer that has been articulated in one’s own words ascend upward? Can it also be directed toward corporeal things, like the desire to have a house or sound health?

My Answer: A prayer to the Creator can be about anything at all. However, it must come from the heart; spoken words don’t matter one bit.

Actually, everything we feel is already our prayer. However, if our desires or prayers aren’t aligned with the path leading to the goal of creation, which is similarity to the Creator, then they are “adjusted.” In other words, we receive “bad grades” (punishment) and this corrects us. However, this is the lengthy and difficult path toward the goal.

There is another, brief and pleasant path, when we direct our desires or prayers toward similarity with the Creator, the goal of creation. How do we do this? It is possible only by uniting with the group and thereby receiving the group’s desire to attain the quality of bestowal. We then end up with a desire or prayer called a “collective prayer” (Tfila be Tsibur).

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In the News (from ScienceBlog): For the first time, scientists have successfully teleported information between two separate atoms in unconnected enclosures a meter apart. Quantum information, such as the spin of a particle or the polarization of a photon, is transferred from one place to another, without traveling through any physical medium.

Teleportation works because of a remarkable quantum phenomenon, called “entanglement.” Once two objects are put in an entangled state, their properties are inextricably entwined. …measuring either one of the objects instantly determines the characteristics of the other, no matter how far apart they are.

My Comment: It works the same way with our spiritual development: when a person acquires the Creator’s qualities, he becomes like the Creator! He teleports the Creator into himself.

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A question I received: One of the principles of Kabbalah for inner work is the “recognition of evil.” Should there not also be a recognition of evil in the collective? You wrote,

“There is only one single opportunity in our world for us to influence the events: by continuously creating a better and better environment (society) that will influence every person. This environment will change everyone’s priorities from corporeal (receiving and using others) to spiritual (bestowal and love).”

Very true. However, the sound principles of Kabbalah will never be institutionalized because all education, economics, media, government, etc. are controlled by the Federal Reserve, IMF, World Bank and Bank of International Settlements that have taken over every segment of society with the exponential power created by the issuance of fiat currencies.

My Answer: The crisis will wash everyone clean, and then everyone will turn into “good boys and girls.” It’s because we are nothing but a desire to enjoy, and when we feel bad, we can become anything and anyone. We will do anything to feel good, without hesitating to give up all our principles. This is why it’s easy to control us, or our egoism.

You will see something happen that has never happened before: suddenly everyone will turn into “good boys and girls.” People will become altruistic in order to survive. And then everyone will start to understand the higher value of love for one’s neighbor. But people won’t just value it because it gives them comfort and safety; they will value it in and of itself. In fact, people will value it so much that even if you offer them all the riches in the world, they will take them only in order to use them for the benefit of others.

But there is another, quicker and easier path to the same result: we can reveal the Creator, the Upper World, and the connection between us by studying Kabbalah. When people see the interdependence of everything in nature and of all people, they will immediately start to act correctly – and then the crisis will disappear.

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Two questions I received about how we sense the  Creator:

Question: When I take part in feeling the world’s sorrows, don’t I accuse the Creator?

My Answer: No, not if you interpret the world’s sorrows as being the Creator’s invitation to unite with Him. If you are willing to help the world do the same, and if you understand that perfection is attained only from its absence, then you will justify the Creator, and in that case, all that remains for you to do is to help the world.

Question: Today during the lesson you said that the lower a person’s level, the more pleasure the Creator feels from the efforts that person makes. To me, this sounds like a groundless assertion. How can I verify this in order to check whether you’re right or wrong?

My Answer: First of all, this is what Kabbalists tell us, those who have already traversed this path. Secondly, even in our world we can see that parents receive the biggest pleasure from the tiniest baby, and the more the child grows, the less delight he evokes in his parents.

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