A question I received: How is it that an external Upper Force balances Malchut (the desire to receive pleasure) with the spiritual worlds, if all the worlds are within a person?

My Answer: The spiritual Force resides within us. There is nothing outside. Everything is within a person: the Creator, the creature and all of creation. And if it seems to me that an external world exists, it is because I am lacking the true, corrected perception.

But, if I view myself as being the entire world and concern myself with becoming similar to the Upper Force, if I constantly imagine this Force as increasingly more bestowing and loving to all, then to the degree that I understand and feel this Force, I will organize all my internal desires and qualities in such a way as to unite with others. And all this is done within me.

It turns out that I must correct only myself and my perception that the world supposedly exists outside of me. I begin to sense that indeed the world is all within me, and thus I correct reality. It turns out that the correction consists not in changing my relations with others, but in correcting my current perception that others exist outside of me and are not part of me. But having discovered that everything is mine, do I still remain an egoist?

Then, all of reality, its external and internal parts, seem to be as one. And even if I’ve yet to reach the true spiritual perception of reality and everything does not seem to me to be one single whole, it does not matter. The most important take-away from the science of Kabbalah is that a person has to correct only himself.

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A question I received: What’s the connection between the revelation of a new Kli or desire, and the revelation of the Creator?

My Answer: These are the same, because the Light shines to us inside the concealment. What do I mean by that? The science of Kabbalah explains that this process is like a flirt. In our world, for example, a woman covers herself up and then gradually reveals herself to a man. It’s a game, where beauty is revealed out of concealment, and the concealment attracts.

While we are in the state of concealment, we acquire a desire for revelation. But that’s not all: the revelation that we later achieve must be concealed from our own egoism, as well. So, the Creator maintains the concealment in order to reveal Himself to you. He reveals Himself while in concealment. On the other hand, if you are ready to accept the screen that conceals the Creator from your egoism, and to build a screen yourself, concealing your ego, you thereby rise above your egoism and reveal the Creator.

At that point, there are no more screens of concealment between the two of you. Instead, you guard your ego yourself, so as to keep it hidden. You always preserve the concealment, but now you do it in your attitude to the Creator. This, however, is not a concealment of the Creator, but a concealment of your egoism. This is how you achieve fulfillment.

Our whole problem in this world is that we annul the screen and try to fulfill ourselves directly, but this fulfillment immediately neutralizes the desire. No matter how passionately a person wishes to achieve what he desired – whether food, drink, sex, or fame – as soon as he achieves this, the pleasure immediately fades. He wishes for it so much, and spends years chasing after something, but as soon as he receives it, the pleasure is gone.

Why is this!? A person saves money for a new apartment for several years, then finally buys it, and just one week later, or two weeks, or a month, he no longer has that feeling of novelty and pleasure. And that is because by buying this apartment, he nullified the screen.

The entire science of Kabbalah talks about how to reveal and receive pleasure while keeping the screen. That way we can guard the pleasure, ensuring that it will fulfill us without fading away. As a result, we achieve the feeling of eternal and perfect life.

The only reason we ever feel worthless, defective, and mortal is because we reject the screen – the partition that has to exist between the pleasure and the desire. People who work in technology know how to implement this principle. They don’t just connect two wires directly, because that would cause a short circuit to occur. Instead, they place resistance between them – a resistor, and then they can derive a beneficial product. However, when it comes to our lives, we disregard this principle, and this is why our devices work, while we, the main device, are uncorrected.

The greatest wisdom is in knowing how to keep the covering with which the Creator first concealed Himself, because then the concealment will always attract us. However, we will then need to conceal our desire, our egoism, and rise above it. That is how we will reveal the Creator. When we do so, we do not lose our Kli or desire, because we constantly get an additional desire, as well as a screen over it, and thus, the revelation of the Creator.

This is the science of revelation – the science of Kabbalah, where we really receive what we desire and we don’t lose it right away, the way we do when acquiring anything in our world. In the spiritual world, you can’t achieve a revelation of the Creator even for a second if you plan to reject the screen. You have to first prepare the screen that hides your egoism, and then you can reveal the Creator above it. You need the preliminary preparation.

This is why we have to go through the period of preparation – the first few years of studying Kabbalah. In the long run, a person has to learn how to force or convince himself, and to understand that he requires a covering. This is why it is written that “wisdom is for the modest” – meaning those who can hide their desire to receive pleasure. It is precisely by hiding his desire that a person can receive fulfillment inside that same desire, and this fulfillment will never fade.

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A question I received: You say that if a person willingly and consciously carries out the program of creation, he will attain the Creator’s plan. But when a child is putting together a puzzle, all he wants is to arrange the whole picture, and doesn’t connect to the thought that had created the game, right?

My Answer: The child doesn’t merely put together the contents of the box that contains the pieces of a puzzle.  As a result of his actions, he develops toward a state when he discovers an adult’s intelligence within himself, much like the one used by the person who had created the puzzle.  He begins to understand the purpose and function of the game’s every element – and therein lies his growth.

Our whole life is a puzzle! But the puzzle contains the thought of the Creator who created it. Therefore, as we put together this puzzle with a conscious desire to attain its creator, we attain Him. From the very start we are created such that by seeking the Creator of the world in our state (and Kabbalah tells us how to seek Him), we reveal Him. The effort of the search is the only thing that is required of us, just as a baby needs only to nurse in order to grow.

Question (con’t:) And what about all these spiritual worlds if we reveal the Creator in our world?

My Answer: This is the inner mechanism – our connection to the Creator across all the worlds. I exist in this world only in my perception, understanding and sensation, while in reality I exist in the world of Infinity, connected inseparably to the Creator. But He wants me to desire this connection on my own volition. That is why I feel distant and separated from Him, so that, gradually, I could come to Him, to the state in which I already exist and in which I have always existed. I need only to add a bit of my own effort in order to reveal this mechanism.

For instance, modern science needs only to look at a drop of semen to determine the future qualities of the person that develops from it. In other words, everything already exists within that drop of semen; all it needs is the force of development. The same is true with our soul – everything is already included within the tiny spark of Light and we need only to apply our own effort to it. We do not create a new creation; we merely reveal an already existing mechanism.

Our connection with the Creator already exists. All we need is to express the desire to reveal it!

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A question I received: In recent years, the Russian mass media has been extensively manipulating public opinion. Moreover, the influence brought about by the flow and density of this information exceeds people’s normal requirements as well as their ability to process and absorb it. This means that their perception is by definition distorted, wrong and unhealthy, regardless of the content. Would you care to comment on this?

My Answer: Only education and enlightenment can offset this. We have to act under the conditions we have, in the existing reality, without trying to destroy it. There is just one thing in reality that we have to correct – man.

Kabbalah’s view is the following: Let’s say we have a pill that we can drop into the city’s water supply, and when people drink the water, it will make them smarter, less prejudiced, and kinder. Well, even if we had this opportunity, we should by no means do this! What’s needed is a conscious correction in all regards.

Therefore, we should gradually help people feel the need to correct their qualities. A person needs to reach this realization on his or her own. It is because the entire reeking abyss of egoism has to be revealed first. It comes to us from Nature. Nature intentionally brings forth inner qualities in us that are opposite to spirituality, in order for us to realize that we need to ascend above this opposite state.

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A question I received: What must a person do if he wants to save himself in this world? Until now he only had to think of himself, but now he finds that he has to unite with others in action. Is it enough that his sole intention is his own salvation?

My Answer: Yes, it’s enough. A person’s starting point is the question: “What is the meaning of my life?” But when one asks this question, it is important to understand precisely what it means. Either he is doing bad from a material point of view: he was fired from work and he has all sorts of problems, illnesses and troubles. Or, he is feeling bad because despite having everything, he feels empty and nothing in life fulfills him; everything is meaningless and empty.

There are people who are just doing bad materially speaking, and this is the part of humanity that’s located at the lower part of the pyramid. They are only able to hear about how they can fill themselves in the material world. And then, there are people who feel bad not just because they are missing material pleasures. Even if they have everything, they feel as though they have nothing. The reason for this is that a new, non-material desire has awakened in them – the point in the heart.

When the point in the heart awakens in a person, it means that a new desire or quality arises inside him. This desire is what Kabbalah speaks of, explaining why you can no longer find happiness in this world. So, go ahead and reveal the Upper World. Come and see for yourself just how wondrous the Creator is. After all, you no longer have any other choice.

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In the News (from AFP): Nobel prize-winning economist Paul Krugman said in a speech to an international business forum that although the worst of the financial crisis was over, the world now faces a prolonged slowdown like Japan’s “lost decade” of the 1990s. “How do we get out? I think the technical answer is – God knows…” said Krugman, a professor of economics at Princeton University in the United States.

My Comment: Kabbalah is of the same opinion. Only it asserts that people can learn the answer directly from God!

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Two questions I received on obstacles along the spiritual path:

Question: What should a person who studies Kabbalah do at moments when he does not know what to do, but understands that he has to act, one way or another?

My Answer: It is written that a person should choose the manner of studying Kabbalah that is closest to him and that accords with his state and conditions. You can read, listen, watch, take notes on the material or edit it, write, disseminate, and so on.

Question: How can I ensure that the people not studying Kabbalah don’t influence and control me? Or should we consider their influence as given and as something that we cannot change?

My Answer: We cannot escape the influence of our environment; we are always in it. You can neutralize its influence internally if your thoughts are stronger and more complete. Then you will feel that your environment “helps” you through the obstacles it provides.

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A question I received: There are many methods that teach people how to exit their egoistic desires. How does Kabbalah view them?

My Answer: All these methods will disappear in the very near future because they don’t hold the power to draw a person out of his egoistic nature. The only thing they can do is numb our egoistic desires. But because our desires are growing and all these methods act in a direction opposite to this growth, they distance a person from the society and from life. It’s because what they offer a person is a complete separation from all the problems by way of meditation and other “tricks.”

In addition, these methods are incapable of creating a connection between people. As a rule, people who use these methods separate from each other. Nature, however, is pushing us toward unity. This is why these methods are proving ineffectual.

Kabbalah, on the other hand, will remain for two main reasons. First, Kabbalah works with a person’s huge egoistic desire, which has developed throughout human history, and which people cannot escape. Second, the method of Kabbalah explains how to utilize this enormous egoism without diminishing it, but rather by changing its application toward benefiting oneself and others. This is the work one does with one’s egoism without denying one’s nature and anything in this world, and without destroying any of one’s natural qualities. After all, Kabbalah tells us that it is necessary to use everything that we have.

In addition, with the help of the science of Kabbalah, we can effectively correct the division between people. All other methods only speak of the fact that we must love each other. Take for instance, the situation in India: The caste system that exists there in order to divide people does not prevent them from talking about “love of others.”

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A question I received: I am a student of the virtual Learning Center and I, along with others, am awaiting and very anxious for you to acknowledge this question. In the book, Kabbalah, Science and the Meaning of Life, on page 128, I found the following quote: “Because our caveman would not have the sense that perceives the wall as Matter or as Form in Matter, he would be able to go through walls as if they were air.”

Unless I misunderstood the information, the statement is inherently wrong. Just because one doesn’t know an object doesn’t mean one cannot interact with it. The text mixes concepts from quantum mechanics and the reality of the macro world. The applied logic is not logical. Matter will always be perceived as such, regardless of the form it takes on because our senses are made to perceive matter. In cases where our five senses are not sufficient, matter can be perceived with proper instruments.

Example: when I did my first scuba dive, I was surrounded by a huge number of forms and shapes I never saw before. Yet, my senses were able to register them. Please clarify the above statement.

My Answer: Let’s start from the opposite: there are walls that we do not perceive. Do we stumble upon them or do we go through them without noticing?

Everything exists in us, in our qualities, or in our five senses. If they were different, they would depict a different world to us. The book talks about a “caveman” because besides our qualities, we have also accumulated information and systems that create the “surrounding” illusion.

Until we acquire a quality that is opposite to us – bestowal, we won’t understand the qualities of anti-matter, and we won’t realize that the world is “depicted” inside us.

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In the News (translated from Gazeta.ru): “A National Non-Ideology” The modern world is structured such that no nation needs a national ideology or identity. More and more people could live without belonging to a state, as they are involuntarily becoming “citizens of the world.” The existence of a state is justified only if it helps people to build a more harmonious physical life.

My Comment: This is why Kabbalah proposes its model of the new society, as well as a scientifically sound justification for its suggestions. By implementing this model, we will reduce the time people spend “searching,” but more importantly, we will reduce their suffering!

Yet, despite the aforesaid, in Russia the search for a “national ideology” is almost synonymous with the search for the meaning of life on a national scale. Therefore, in this country, such an ideology may very well help to bring all the people (rather than separate individuals) to the understanding that the meaning of life, for a nation, does not lie in the plane of its physical existence, but rather, its physical existence is a medium for attaining the upper, eternal meaning – the revelation and attainment of the Creator.

In order to achieve this goal, however, there must be a special education and upbringing. Otherwise, the people will continue to wander around in the dark, as they have been doing for centuries.

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