The Creator’s goal is to raise man to His level. What does this mean? We perceive our lives within the will to enjoy, which was created by the Creator. This quality is the only thing that exists outside of Him, which is why we always feel lack of fulfillment. We always lack something and aspire to some kind of pleasure. But the Light that comes to the will to enjoy immediately disappears. It nullifies the desire, and the desire does not feel fulfillment.

Therefore, because we perceive our life inside the desire for pleasure, our life is perceived as temporary and transient, where everything disappears. Every moment goes by and disappears, instead of remaining and becoming supplemented by every subsequent moment. On one hand there is the desire, and on the other hand – the pleasure. When the two meet, they are neutralized, even if the pleasure is minimal.

That is why our entire life is built out of these tiny point encounters between the desire (Kli) and the Light, which immediately disappear. And this continues until our life comes to an end. For example, suppose you have a quota of desire – several million small portions of the will to enjoy, which become revealed one after the other. Opposite each one of these portions, there is Light which brings that portion fulfillment. Then they meet – and disappear. Once you exhaust your quota, your life is over, and your whole existence along with it.

However, if over the course of these encounters of the desire and the Light, you were able to attain a state where the Light and the desire “catch” each other and remain together, then you begin to feel Light that is perceived inside the desire as eternal, endless life. That’s because the previous moment stays with you as well. You then ascend above the sensation of time. You stop the moment and acquire eternal existence! This is the entire patent of spiritual life, which is eternal and perfect. This is what one can attain by applying the wisdom of Kabbalah.

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Today humanity has reached such extreme growth of egoism that we can’t even dream about kind and altruistic human beings anymore. Some time ago, we still had hope of our capability of educating and cultivating such caring people. The 20th century has put an end to these dreams. Now, we understand that the human being is simply incapable of altruism. This is a great realization, since it is already recognition of our evil.

However, now we are facing the question: Can people continue to exist in this world if we don’t become more altruistic? Today, we are realizing that we are in a common, global system – a global “village” where everyone is interconnected. With such a recognized interconnection, will we be able to survive if we don’t become altruists?

It is clear that we will not be able to exist this way much longer. We are becoming torn apart. For humanity to survive, we must bestow to each other and become like one man with one heart. Yet as we have seen historically, we have no chance to achieve this with our own strength; it is simply impossible!

But we can reveal that there exists a third force – the Creator, who can do this. We can reach the point of making this revelation and clarification by way of horrible suffering, wars, and epidemics, which would force us to reveal the need for the Creator who will “establish peace between us.” However, this path of natural development is very lengthy and difficult.

There is an alternative. If we study the science of Kabbalah, if we understand the states that we need to go through and the decision that we need to reveal, if we disseminate this knowledge all over the world and draw the Upper Light, then the Light will correct us. It will give us the quality of bestowal, which we are unable to achieve on our own through our nature. This alternative allows us to reach correction through a short and pleasant path by “accelerating time.”

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When we read The Zohar, we need to connect everything there is into one reality that already exists within our soul. The soul is what we call the Malchut of the World of Infinity (Atzilut), meaning all the worlds incorporated together, “I” or “the whole world and I.” All that belongs to my soul since my soul is a tool of perception.

Who is the Creator? It is the inner power that acts within my soul; it is the reason for my existence, the cause that forces me to pursue revelation of the universe and the Creator as the source of my life.

The Zohar tells us about the soul and its various parts as well as the states and processes it goes through. Because of my desire to learn more about the soul’s states and processes, the soul is revealed; I find the tools of perception with which I feel the actual world I live in, but which has, thus far, been concealed from me. Kabbalah is called a “hidden” wisdom since it is the study of the concealed world and the process to reveal it.

In addition to the study of Kabbalah, the group is given to us to help us disclose this world. The parts of reality which I call the “Kabbalah group” or my “fellow-group-mates” can help me with this task. They are the active parts of reality, the only active parts of reality. I can feel the group and want to connect them with me. Together with them, I can work to bring them closer to me.

I can’t work with the rest of reality this way because I don’t sense the same kind of feedback that I can get from the group. These active parts of reality are given to me by the Creator so that by working through them I can bring myself closer to the rest of reality as parts of my own soul.

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A question I received: What does it mean to “receive from the Creator in order to delight Him”? What is this referring to?

My Answer: Baal HaSulam explains this through the example of a guest and a host in “The Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah.” The guest comes to the host. The host sets the table for the guest because he loves the guest with selfless love, without any calculations, and the host really wants to give pleasure to the guest.

The guest feels how much the host loves and wants to give pleasure to him. The host knows ahead of time and prepares exactly the dishes the guest likes in precisely the proportions the guest would like. He has done everything exactly according to the guest’s desires – in quantity and in quality. Realizing this, the guest feels shame. What is he to do?

The guest refuses to accept the food, saying “I don’t wish to be a receiver! I wish to be a giver like you! You have shown me your love, and I feel it. How can I give the same in return to you?” The guest continues to think and recognizes, “But if I don’t receive anything, I am disregarding the host. Is this my response to his love?! What can I do?”

Accordingly, he finds the solution: “I will receive only for the sake of the host. Since the host has a desire to give, and he wants me to receive, I first need to enter his desire, so that this will become the goal for me. If I enter his desire, feel how much he loves me, how much he wants me to receive, and how much he suffers from the fact that I don’t accept his refreshments; I can work with his desire and think only about how to fulfill him. While I am inside his desire, striving to fulfill only him, I discover an opportunity to do this in me – by accepting the food and receiving pleasure from it. After all, I can bring delight to the host only through the pleasure that I feel. I must receive delight immeasurably, since I feel how I can fulfill him through this.”

In this manner everyone works with the desires of the other. The host thinks about how the guest will receive from him and experience pleasure. And the guest thinks about how he will receive and experience pleasure in order to fulfill the host’s desire to give him pleasure. Each uses his desires to fulfill the other’s desires. Meanwhile, each gains double, and even more than that; each comes out of himself, and in doing so, he feels infinite and boundless pleasure.

This patent seems very simple. However, if we begin to think about it, it appears difficult to achieve. Yet ideally if we understand it, we see this is our only opportunity to fulfill ourselves with infinite pleasure, since I use the desires of others outside of myself.

The Creator is an infinite desire, and I am merely a little point. However, if I begin to adjoin and connect to Him, I thereby acquire an infinite desire which I can fulfill. I begin to feel how I fulfill Him, and I feel how this desire is experiencing pleasure. It turns out that by treating Him with love, I receive infinite desires, an infinite life, eternity, and perfection. This happens if I treat the Creator as the goal which I must fulfill. Therefore, the science of Kabbalah is truly a science of reception (the word “Kabbalah” in Hebrew means “reception”), a science of how to receive and how to delight without limitation.

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We cannot abide without the wisdom of Kabbalah that puts us directly across from the Creator. It explains how to study Him, how to build an incubator for our development, and how to employ the data from nature. We need this wisdom because we can’t create something from nothing; rather, we have to organize the forces given to us by nature.

If we don’t do it on our own the Creator helps us. If we don’t build the environment (the incubator for our development) using certain forces as we need to, the Creator shows us, but He does so from the opposite side. In this way, He demonstrates to us that our relationships with these forces are deceptive and false.

The Creator builds an incubator for us, but from our perspective, it looks broken. As we start to reveal its structure, we see that it is our attitude that is broken, not the incubator. The incubator is fine. As soon as we change our attitude, it begins to work; it takes good care of us and provides us the chance to become future “nestlings.” Its operation depends on our participation. This state is opposite to prior inanimate, vegetative and animate stages during which nature worked, not us.

At this time, we have to make our own investigations and research and voluntarily launch this system. In other words, we build a mechanism that replaces the Creator! If we succeed, we become similar to Him! We continue the work that He purposefully left unfinished for us to finish. I construct this machine with the help of the forces He gave us; I am the one who builds the Creator and thus becomes more knowledgeable and understanding, similar to Him.

The Creator (the Light that Reforms), the surroundings, the teacher, and the Kabbalah books (anything that enhances our spiritual development) become our spiritual incubator. It should be optimally organized to let the Creator take care of us and bring us to the perfect state, which means that He alters us to become similar to Him. This process becomes an incubator for spiritual nestlings; this is how we should treat our souls.

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There exists an empty realm in nature, which is there for us to have freedom of will. It’s there for man to take care of himself and complete his own development.

This means that we must hurry to build a machine that functions as an incubator in order to make up for what nature does not wish to complete. Suppose nature developed an embryo for just six months, and then left it without any support for the last three months. We would have to place the embryo inside an incubator that makes up for the missed development, supplementing it until the full nine months.

This is what happens with the development of our soul. Imagine what kind of state we are in: At first we exist inside the living body of mother nature which raises us and cares for us, bringing us to a certain state. Suddenly, it abandons us and tells us, “From now on, make do on your own as best you can!”

Nature has brought you to the “human” level, but this is a degree you have to build yourself. Yet, there is nothing in our world that can give us an explanation of what is the “human” or “speaking” level.

A human is one who stands opposite the Creator, and the only science that explains who the Creator is, as well as His actions, desires, intentions, and goals, is the science of Kabbalah. That is why it is so necessary for us.

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In the article, “The Nation,” Baal HaSulam writes that a person differs from an animal in that animals completely rely on nature. Animals cannot adapt nature to themselves. In contrast, human beings are endowed with the power of thought, and without having to rely on nature, can, for example, instead of waiting for a chicken to hatch eggs, invent an incubator to perform the job of hatching eggs.

In a similar fashion, a person always strives to better his state, without placing himself under the blows of nature. A person attempts to find the most comfortable means of achieving his goals using the least effort to get results as quickly as possible and with the least suffering.

For people aspiring for the goal of spirituality, the science of Kabbalah serves as an “incubator” helping us speed up our spiritual development without waiting for it to occur in a severe natural way, which is both lengthy and painful. The goal of our spiritual development is to give rise to a sensation of an independent (free) equivalence to the Creator. The spiritual “incubator” for people needs to be multilayered, so that each person can find his place in it and feel as though he is in the arms of his caring mother. Then he will receive beneficial “nourishment,” which will gradually develop and raise him.

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A question I received: What kind of “just” social framework does Baal HaSulam write about in the article, “The Nation”? Is he really concerned with organizing a more comfortable, well-fed life within the boundaries of this world? How can this be the concern of a Kabbalist who knows that everything is governed by the Upper Force, and we are temporarily placed within this world only in order to correct our soul?

My Answer: Despite what you say, Baal HaSulam also knew that people will reach a point in their development when they would reveal that they lack the Upper Force to correct their relationships. Then they will need the science of Kabbalah because only the Upper Light can correct the relationships between people. There cannot be a good relationship between people unless they are connected by the Creator. Only through Him can people unite with one another. In other words, life itself will force people to reveal the path and forces of correction.

Two people can never be connected with one another directly, but only through the quality of bestowal, which is called the Creator. Baal HaSulam understood this very well since he possessed the highest spiritual attainment. However, in order to bring the regular reader closer to this, he starts his explanation from afar. When a person understands what kind of unity and connection we have to attain according to nature’s plan, and that this is inevitable, the only thing remaining for him to do will be to reveal the means of implementing the correction: the Upper Light that Reforms.

Of course, Baal HaSulam did not think of socialism or communism as a goal in and of itself in order to create a well-fed life for the average person in this world. Rather, he had great understanding and personal attainment of the goal of creation.

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A question I received: If the Creator is the quality of bestowal, how can we bring delight to a quality? Does He really need anything from me?

My Answer: The Creator needs you to enjoy. The host wishes only one thing: for the guest to enjoy. However, He places a condition before you; you can enjoy only when you become like Him.

After all, we don’t want a child to receive pleasure only on his tiny level. We want him to continue growing, to become more mature and smarter. In order to help him develop, we surround him with toys that cause him to advance, rather than to just bring him pleasure. We seek an additional benefit in the activities for children.

The Creator treats us in much the same manner. He does not want us to remain as little animals. At the level of receiving for ourselves, we merely feel a brief life, and even over the course of this life we are never really able to enjoy.

However, if we enjoy while fulfilling the Creator, it does not vanish. We continuously feel even the most minor pleasure that we give Him in His desires to which we connect ourselves.

Why is it that all the pleasures that we feel in our life vanish? We want them to stay. Why should they fade? It is as though we consent to this, but why?

The spiritual world is called eternal. If you feel pleasure there once, it remains and fills you all the time. This is because the pleasure does not annul the desire, since the pleasure exists in one place while the desire exists in another. Therefore, you do not face any problem, you simply add more and more all the time. By this, there is an ascent by the spiritual degrees.

Meanwhile, in this world, everything occurs in one plane, where you move from one loss to another, until life ends, and that’s it.

Let’s hope that we will understand the unique opportunity that is contained in the science of Kabbalah – a science on how to receive infinite and eternal pleasure, and that we will realize it.

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Unity amongst us builds our new reality. I’m not speaking about creating this unity ourselves and “behaving” as if we are united. This unity isn’t on the level of this world as in when everyone is on good terms with one another. Unity is the revelation of the spiritual connection between us in the vessel for the Light. We only need to want the Upper Force to realize this unity for us.

The wisdom of Kabbalah wasn’t revealed to build communism and kibbutzim in our world. Kabbalah helps us reveal the spiritual relations between us, not material relations. The goal is completely different in its essence.

Don’t try to build good corporeal relationships, but strive to reveal the Creator between you. In this way, your spiritual connection will be realized. We need to attract the Light of Correction to do this work, to build spiritual connections between us. It is precisely in these connections that we will feel the Creator. This will be the optimal solution for all the problems.

This isn’t what idealists dreamed of in trying to build the “City of the Sun” on this planet. We’re not building a good life in this world. We have a much greater goal before us; although of course, our corporeal life will also become corrected at the end. Once we attain inner harmony, we will also experience perfection in our corporeal world. However, this only will happen under the condition that we attract the Upper Light which will correct our connection with one another. Our trying to do this with our own strength won’t make it happen.

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