I am the desire to enjoy. This is the only quality I was created having, and so I exist in it. However, I also have the ability to attain bestowal by uniting with this quality.

My essence will always remain the desire to enjoy. I cannot change it; I can only control it through the force of bestowal that I receive from outside. If the Creator will become important enough for me, then I will then start using my nature for His sake.

The way to receive the quality of bestowal is from outside, with the help of the Light. We can do this because we have a memory of this quality, which we used to have before we fell into egoism. This is why the quality of bestowal can reawaken in us under the influence of the Light.

This is exactly why I am referred to as man (Adam), because eventually I can and must become like the Creator. (In Hebrew, Adam comes from the word “Dommeh” – similar.)

So, what I have to do is to consciously use the Light so it will bring the quality of bestowal back to me. At the same time, my desire to receive pleasure will remain the same. Yet, the quality of bestowal can grow inside me so much that it will become more important and will control the quality of receiving pleasure.

The two qualities – reception and bestowal – never change. The only thing that changes is their balance inside a person. The stronger of the two qualities controls him.

It’s like a magnet that holds up a piece of metal: While the magnet is working, it holds the piece of metal suspended in the air, as if it were “spiritual.” But as soon as the magnet lets go of the piece of metal, the latter immediately falls back into quality of absolute egoism.
(From Part 2 of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson, on “Preface to the Sulam Commentary”)

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Even now, we are all in the World of Infinity; we just don’t feel it. Everything depends on our qualities, because the Upper Light is the unchanging quality of bestowal and love.

We don’t have to work on correcting our egoism and we don’t need to fight it. What we have to work on is building the quality of bestowal and love (the screen) above it, so we will be able to receive the Light inside this quality and discover the Creator. This is why in Kabbalah, the work and the reward are the same thing.

This is different from the earthly or religious systems where the work takes place in one place and the reward is given elsewhere. Moreover, if you could get the reward without the work, you would happily abandon the work. In Kabbalah, the only reward is to become bestowing and loving like Him.

It is written: “The reward for a Mitzvah is the Mitzvah (Schar Mitzvah – Mitzvah).” This is followed by knowing the Creator or merging with Him (Schar Mitzvah Ladaat HaMetsuveh). On the other hand, in religion people think that by performing commandments mechanically, they will earn a reward in the world to come, and once they get there, they will have everything. This is what religion tells us, and this is the fundamental difference between religion and Kabbalah, which says that we have to receive our reward here and now! There is nothing waiting for us after death, besides the next life cycle where you will get another chance to reveal the Creator within yourself.

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A question I received: You said more than once that everything occurs within a person. The whole picture of reality is projected on a screen in the  brain. Who is it projected to? Who sits on a chair, watching this picture?

My Answer: The desire! The desire to enjoy, which has 613 (TARYAG) Reshimot,  are connected to each other in a special form, called 10 Sefirot or five Partzufim.

The world consists of five Partzufim, with five Sefirot in each Partzuf, and five sub-Sefirot in each Sefira. Consequently, this is a huge structure, with many parts, which are connected to each other like pixels on a TV screen.

There is a whole layer of desires in the desire to enjoy. The Light enters the desire, fills it, and builds it according to four stages:

• In stage Alef, the desire begins to feel fulfilled.
• In stage Bet, it wants to become similar to the Light.
• In stage Gimel it desires to become just like the Light, and
• In stage Dalet it desires to become independent and to absorb all of the Light.

In this last stage, it already understands what is happening to it, and the desire evolves due to the Light. These are two opposite forces, one of which influences the other. Therefore, the Light develops the desire until it begins to feel and understand itself, as well as to feel the root and understand it. This is how matter develops.

From where do we come to enter into this world? We come from matter, which consequently represents electrons, protons, neutrons, and positrons, which begin to connect with each other in an ever more complex manner.

This connection forms matter, which suddenly begins to move and to feel on its own–what is good or bad for it,  what to draw closer to and what to distance itself from.

It begins to think what is to its benefit and what isn’t and it therefore begins to make plans. It has already gained a sensation of the past, present, and future. It remembers the past and foresees the future.

All this is formed from parts of matter due to the fact that they unite with each other, forming more complex parts. However, what does it mean to “unite?” In this unification, matter receives a quality of the Light, since otherwise it is incapable of uniting.

It turns out that there is a desire to receive pleasure in the form of enormous or microscopic masses of matter, right down to elementary particles, which are studied by quantum physics.

However, unification between them is possible only with the force of bestowal in addition to the force of reception. Then a quality of the Light enters the matter, and this matter begins to consist of itself and its opposite.

From these two opposite qualities being joined together, a sensation of “I” and “the Creator,” emerges, which is a sensation of the receiver and the giver, the past and the future, the good and the bad. This is how matter begins to perfect itself and perceive the reality that surrounds it.

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A question I received: There are so many efforts being made today to disseminate the wisdom of Kabbalah around the world. People all over the world are being given all the right conditions for correction, so why isn’t the world changing?

My Answer: You’re right: in all of history, people have never had such favorable conditions for attaining spirituality. We even have a special TV channel about Kabbalah in Israel! People have been given all the means, and now they only have to make the choice to take them.

Nevertheless, we have to understand that people’s desire has to be influenced by the Light. And even though the influence of the Light is very strong, it is also gradual, and there are many actions that have to take place inside the desire. This is even true when you have a very fast-working computer: no matter how hard we try to decrease the intervals between its elements and increase the frequency of the electrical pulse, every operation still takes time because it consists of billions of actions that have to happen on the inside.

I think that over the last year, humanity has gone through very positive changes. The year spanning from September 2008 to September 2009 was named “the year of hatred” in Israel. This is a good thing, because it means that people are already beginning to see that our relationships are ruled by hatred.

This revelation could only have happened through the influence of the Upper Light. People have finally begun to understand that Kabbalah is not mysticism, the performance of rituals, or the “Pulsa Denura” curse, but the method for correcting our life here and now, in this world. People are beginning to understand that Kabbalah is a serious, real science, which helps to keep families together, restore the balance in nature, come out of the world crisis, and avoid the imminent ecological catastrophe.

We have dispelled many myths about the wisdom of Kabbalah, and this has made the world advance a great deal. Only the dissemination of Kabbalah will save the world.

If Kabbalah will spread amongst people, then we will avoid all the catastrophes, we will merit both this world and the world to come, and both of these worlds will unite into one. Baal HaSulam refers to the dissemination of Kabbalah as the Messiah’s Horn in the entire world. Let’s hope that we will succeed. Everything depends on you!
(From Part 1 of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson of September 11, on Shamati # 18)

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A question I received: If Kabbalah is a science, why is it written that the Surrounding Light influences only those who believe?

My Answer: In Kabbalah, “faith” means the force of bestowal. Kabbalah doesn’t tell you to believe in something that someone says. In this science, faith is the force of bestowal – Bina, rather than words that someone says and someone else accepts as a fact.

When you study a science, you don’t believe in anything. Likewise, the science of Kabbalah does not use the notion of faith. This is not religion!

When I study Kabbalah, I trust the Kabbalists’ advice in order to draw the Surrounding Light upon me. The Kabbalists tell me what I should do, and explain why. With their help, I study the spiritual system, trusting them like a child who trusts his teacher in school or his parents. A small child has to trust an adult in order to ascend to a higher level. He has to rely on the instructions that come to him from the upper level – but not more than this.

This differs from the religion of our world, where faith isn’t when you trust someone in order to then ascend and verify things for yourself; but fanatic loyalty with your eyes closed. In Kabbalah, however, you don’t accept the Kabbalists’ words for a fact. Rather, you implement and verify them for yourself. Then, once you acquire a set of knowledge and proofs, you can continue the research on your own.

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If a person follows all the required conditions: he studies authentic Kabbalah books, has the right teacher and the right environment, and he makes efforts, then his soul starts to be connected to the spiritual world. This connection is evoked by the Surrounding Light, and it affects him so that he gradually begins to receive new impressions. These impressions become greater and greater with time, until his sensation of the vague, Surrounding Light turns into a clear revelation of the obvious Inner Light.

Although a person started out with a desire that was a mere point of aspiration to the Creator, he now begins to feel a whole new reality through this desire. In this new sense, he perceives the Light that is now obvious to him. But it is the same Surrounding Light that previously shone to him in an imperceptible, concealed manner.

A person thus begins to see the Light’s actions and to work with It like with a partner. The period of concealment and preparation comes to an end, and a person begins to act with a clear perception of the spiritual world.
(From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson)

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A question I received: What can I tell a person who is doubtful about attending an introductory lecture on Kabbalah? What can he receive from a one-time encounter with Kabbalah? What can coming into contact with this wisdom even once do for a person?

My Answer: It is quite possible that thanks to that one encounter, a person will be giving the greatest gift to himself by revealing his path in life. We keep track of our lives from the beginning, our birth, but if we understood the process, we would count back from the end of life to see how much time we have remaining.

A person who encounters Kabbalah brings Light into his life, with Light being the only positive force that exists in reality. A person then begins to see everything that happens as development through cause and effect, and he begins to see all of his problems correctly – as directing him to the goal. Kabbalah gives him power and reason to control his fate. It gives a person the Upper Light and teaches him how to control it (within the permitted limits and circumstances). All of this begins with one first encounter.

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Revelation is an upshot of concealment, just as fire is born from the wick of a candle. A person experiences a great deal of concealment on his or her path. And this concealment is necessary, as an oil in which a wick is immersed, the very oil that feeds the wick and allows the lamp to light up. But the light and the wick don’t have fuel to burn, only the oil (desire) does.

The oil, however, can’t burn on its own – it needs the “means of revelation.” Darkness, evil and the burdening of the heart that a person feels on his spiritual path, all remain. But not a moment is wasted: all of our efforts throughout the period of the Upper World’s concealment accumulate and create a body, like the oil in a lamp or the wax of a candle. When enough oil, or enough desires for the revelation of the Creator are gathered, then the wick appears together with a spark of fire.

The greater the concealment, the tenser a person becomes when awaiting to reach revelation, and the hotter the flame of revelation that will arise. After all, from Above we receive only the spark with which to light the wick. But the burning of the wick does not come from Above; it’s the Reflected Light (Ohr Hozer) that rises from the burning oil.

The Creator just supplies one spark that Lights a person, provided that this person is ready for the Creator’s revelation. Then a person is lit like a candle, and the flame nurtures the oil of disappointments and searches – the states that he went through while in concealment.

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Through the study of Kabbalah, we enter the second, concealed part of reality, which is 99.9% of what exists, because our world compared to the Upper World is like a tiny grain of sand in relation to the whole universe. We want to penetrate into this concealed dimension, which is operated by completely new forces, qualities, and laws, unknown to us today. We can be “born” into this new world, or in other words, we can give birth to the sensation of this world inside us.

But how can we reason about it today, before ever being born there? After all, your birth in the spiritual world means that new qualities will surface in you. Their emergence will be caused by the Light, which causes new qualities to develop.

For now, all of this is concealed from us. We can’t see which qualities and senses will enable us to reveal the stages of our spiritual advancement. All we can see is the efforts we are investing, which just keep disappearing somewhere, like pouring water into a broken bucket. At the end of the day, it’s as though we didn’t do anything!

This is why it is written in one Kabbalistic text: “Great wealth is built one penny at a time.” But where are these “pennies” being collected? Show them to me! Well, the reason we can’t see them is that the collection of our efforts will only be revealed to us once we enter the next dimension.

And even though we disagree with this arrangement, we demand revelation. Thus, even though we are in concealment, we still advance, and eventually we develop and start demanding the right things from ourselves. After all, we have been provided with all the means needed to attain the Upper, Eternal World: the Light, the correct environment, the books, and a teacher. Now we just have to place ourselves beneath the influence of these means, so they’ll influence us in the best possible way.

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A question I received: According to Kabbalah, we can’t correct ourselves. We have to place ourselves under the influence of the Upper Light. Also, there is no way we could feel the Upper Light. So, in order to place ourselves under the influence of the Light, we have to believe that it exists! Does this mean that at the initial stage (before the Machsom), Kabbalah is a faith and later, after the Machsom, it turns into science?

My Answer: Not exactly, because what incites you to study Kabbalah is not faith or someone’s persuasion, but your desire, the point in the heart that you feel compelled to fulfill. Therefore, it is similar to how you advance in any other science before you have mastered it. You do not have to believe; you have to know. This is what the Creator demands: “All will know Me, from the least of them to the greatest.” The revelation of the Creator is necessary to both man and the Creator.

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