Two questions I received from women about the purpose of preparation in one’s inner work, and the need to pay Maaser:

Question: I always try to be in the state of “preparation” – to hold the intention, connect to my husband who also studies Kabbalah, disseminate, and study. Still, sometimes I experience descents and lose all of my connection with the Creator. Later I come out of them and try to increase my preparation even more, as much as I can. But after that there are more descents, and then I again increase my preparation and aspiration, and this is followed by more descents.

I understand that there will always be descents and ascents, and that they are necessary. However, if I lose my connection with the Creator, doesn’t this mean that I don’t spend enough time preparing? Or am I wrong about the purpose of the preparation? Isn’t it intended to help you get out of a descent faster? Or is it intended to prevent the descents, to have less of them?

My Answer: If you prepare correctly, then whenever you experience some state, and then this state finishes passing over you (it finishes manifesting fully, through all ten Sefirot or all four stages), then if you prepared well beforehand, you’ll immediately begin perceiving the end of this state as a descent. And then you’ll immediately want to ascend from it, and you’ll begin intensively attracting the external forces of the group. The group will give you:

1) The importance of the goal;
2) The sensation of your own weakness;
3) The necessary aspiration to ask for correction from above.

As a result of all this, you will produce a request (a MAN), and then the Light of correction (Ohr Makif, MAD) will descend during the general group study. And then you’ll ascend – that is, you’ll perceive and value the property of love and bestowal as if it’s the highest possible thing.

And that’s how a new cycle begins.

Question: When women participate in the group together with men, do they also have to pay the Maaser?

My Answer: Yes. Every person who advances must give a tenth of his net profit to Kabbalah’s dissemination around the world – to the world’s correction. This is not a tradition, but a necessity in order to correct a tenth of your egoistic desire, Malchut. The other parts become corrected by your efforts in the study, the group, and dissemination. You can’t just “buy them off” the way you do to correct this “still” part of your desires.

Isn’t that a shame? It would be so easy to just pay someone, and then suddenly to find yourself in the spiritual world! However, since our act of giving 10% for the correction of the world is part of correction, our egoism objects to it in every way possible, and this is why every person receives enormous disturbances when it comes to giving away the Maaser. Yet every person normally has no problem gambling away or spending 10% of his earnings in any other way, on things he doesn’t really need at all or on entertainment. However, without participating in the common correction this way, one cannot undergo any private correction either! We usually recommend using this money to buy Kabbalistic materials and disseminating them yourself – in other words, putting your own 10% to the right use.

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Two questions I received on whether spiritual correction requires observance of physical rituals:

Question: You say that it’s possible to attain spiritual correction without physically observing the commandments of Judaism. Maybe you’re just saying this out of your concern for Kabbalah’s dissemination around the world? Or maybe what you really mean is that people can’t understand these commandments by simply reading them? If you can’t publish the answer on the blog, I would like to receive a private answer.

My Answer: The Creator created the will to receive pleasure with an intention “for one’s own sake,” and this is how we find ourselves in this world. We were created this way in order to correct our intention to “for the sake of the neighbor or the Creator,” on all of our 613 desires. This correction happens under the influence of the Upper Light, Ohr Makif, which descends during the study of Kabbalah.

This bears no relation to the observance of religious rituals. A person can attain correction and spiritual attainment without physically observing the commandments, or rather – the traditions. This is true for both Jews and the nations of the world. Moreover, every person can keep his religion, because religion is no more than a nation’s cultural framework. Kabbalah only teaches us about the intention “for the sake of the neighbor,” how to love and bestow to others – and nothing else.

Question: You’re all about spirituality and the love revolution. But what about connecting the root with the branch? After all, the still, vegetative, and animate levels are also levels of the will to receive. You always speak about the internality without any externality, and this confuses me. Baal HaSulam writes at the end of the “Introduction to the Book of Zohar” that the internality should be preferred over the externality. But it looks like Bnei Baruch gives 100% of their attention to the internality, and 0% to the externality! This is difficult and confusing. Why not make a small change and pay a little more attention to the externality? Why not combine both parts? Dedicate 90% of your attention to the internality, and 10% to the externality. This will really help everyone! What do you think?

My Answer: We at Bnei Baruch actually do this – we follow the traditions. But do you really think that all the people in the world – who are now approaching correction – have to observe the physical commandments of Judaism, even if it isn’t their tradition? In the article “The Future Generation” Baal HaSulam writes that every person can keep his religion!

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In our world, pain is the organism’s reaction to a problem in it. It’s the organism’s way of telling us that something is wrong with our body. For example, pain warns us of danger and makes us pull our hand away from fire. Pain compels us to move, to come closer to something/someone, or to get away from them, to change our qualities, to adopt new opinions, to realize the reason for the pain, to draw conclusions, and to progress to new states of being.

In fact, pain is the only force that is able to affect our egoism: pain when we feel bad, or when others feel bad, or when others feel good. Pain pushes us from behind and forces us to develop. The pain of feeling empty pushes us ahead, toward fulfillment. Pain is everywhere! All our sensations come from clashes, contact, pressure – or in other words, from pain. We feel pleasure only when it’s preceded by the painful sensation of an unfulfilled desire, suffering, or expectation.

However, when we come out of egoism and rise above the Machsom, we begin to realize that instead of living our lives based on lack or absence, we can live based on total fulfillment and fullness. Instead of basing everything on pain, we can take perfection as our starting point. Instead of doing the things we do because we need to, we can do them out of love, without needing anything.

This is a completely different kind of existence, a different attitude to the world, to people, to yourself, and of course – to the Creator. And when we attain it, the Creator immediately becomes revealed to us, because then we become perfect, just like Him.

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Question: You say that the Creator is the quality and act of giving or bestowing. However, if we are able to attain this quality, to attain the Creator, doesn’t this make us greater than Him? We are able to incorporate both egoism and its opposite, but the Creator is only a part of this antinomy. So how can He be superior to us? Maybe we just can’t categorize Him as superior but only as Different?

My Answer: One reveals the Creator’s status only after he attains the Creator’s quality. Then he is able to see where his qualities really stand in relation to the Creator, and what the purpose of creation is. Until this happens, all our words are empty because we don’t know what stands behind them.

This is why Kabbalah hates philosophy and considers it empty talk about things that philosophers don’t attain. Philosophy is opposite to Kabbalah – see the article “The Wisdom of Kabbalah and Philosophy.” Kabbalah prefers to deal with actual attainment and it talks only from the level of attainment. This is the meaning of the verse, “The judge knows no more than what his eyes see,” and, “If we don’t see something, we don’t talk about it.”

Question: Is the main intention behind the Mitzva of Yirat Hashem (fearing God) the perception of God? Thank you, Rabbi Jose.

My Answer: Absolutely, since the perception of the Creator is what enables man to rise above his egoistic nature and to use it (the Aviut) in the opposite way – as bestowal and love, according to how the Creator reveals this to him.

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I had a conversation that was recorded on the topic of love. I spoke with Oren Levi, manager of our Hebrew publishing department.

We analyzed how the spiritual property of the Creator, “love for creation,” is expressed in action – “bestowal and fulfillment.” However, since creation is egoistic and opposite to the Creator, it interprets this as love for fulfillment and reception. Creation aspires to use and humiliate others, in order to feel more fulfilled than them. In other words, its love manifests in a completely opposite form than the spiritual quality of “love,” yet we refer to both of them with the same word, according to the law of “root and consequence.”

However, when creation attains equivalence of form with the Creator (when it acquires the aspiration toward the property – “Love thy neighbor as thyself,” which is attained only through the influence of the Upper Light that descends during the study of Kabbalah), it begins to comprehend the true meaning of the Torah’s words and of Kabbalistic notions, including “bestowal” and “love.”

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Questions I received about Reshimot

Question: I’d like to ask about Reshimot: The point in the heart is a Reshimo, and Klipot are also Reshimot, but broken ones. What other kinds of Reshimot are “registered” in Kabbalah? There are probably more of them than elements in the periodic table!

My Answer: Reshimot accumulated during the common soul’s descent from its spiritual level of love and bestowal into reception and love for oneself. Altogether there are Reshimot from 125 levels of descent, and we have to correct them in the reverse order. By realizing these Reshimot in order, we ascend along their levels and reveal our spiritual senses, which feel the Upper Light, the Creator.

Question: How can a person tell what level are the Reshimot coming from, according to the special qualities of his individual soul? Do the Reshimot always come to help us grow and develop? And what about the Reshimot of the Klipot – why do they come to a person?

My Answer: Reshimot surface in us one after another, from below upwards, and they always become expressed in the form of broken levels (Klipot, the ego). By correcting them, we build our soul – the vessel in which we perceive ourselves, our spiritual life.

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The Creator’s connection with creation is like playing tennis against the wall. The Upper Governance is unchanging: The Creator is Good and Does Good, and He treats all of us this way all of the time. The changes take place only in us, even though we think that they take place outside us. It says in the “Preface to the Book of Zohar,” item 34:

“We see a great world before us, and all its wondrous filling. But in fact, we do not see all that except in our own interior. In other words, there is a sort of a photographic machine in our hindbrain that portrays everything that appears to us, and nothing outside of us.

In our brain, there is a kind of polished mirror that inverts everything that is seen there, so that we see it outside our brain, in front of our face. Despite the fact that what we see outside us is not a real thing, we should still thank His providence for having made that polished mirror in our brain, enabling us to see and perceive everything outside us. This is because by that, He had given us the power to perceive everything with clear perception and knowledge, and measure everything from within and from without. Without it, we would lose most of our perception.

The same holds true with the Godly will for Godly perceptions. Even though the changes are all made in the interior of the souls, they nevertheless see it all in the Giver Himself, because only in this manner are they awarded all the perceptions and the pleasantness in the thought of creation. Even though we actually see every thing before our face, still, everyone reasonable knows with certainty that all that we see is only inside our own brain.

The same holds true for the souls. Though they see all the changes in the Giver, they still have no doubt that all these are only in their own interior, and not at all in the Giver.”

So essentially, you are playing with yourself and receiving feedback depending on your own obstacles and confusion. All of this is you.

All the changes happen inside man, who stands opposite absolute love and bestowal. He always sees, analyzes and feels only himself. Everything we feel is a realization of Reshimot in the Upper Light. All of man’s reality is essentially a tennis game against the wall. And we are always playing against this wall.

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A question I received: I understand that the period of correction begins when we cross the Machsom, but there is something that leaves me restless and I do not understood well: Once the Machsom is crossed, the things that happen to us in this world continue happening, but the form of seeing them is one of having enough intelligence to understand what happens to us and to use that to enlarge the vessel and to fill it. Now, based on the above-mentioned, my question is: Is faith above reason necessary to cross the Machsom, or will this be given when one has the complete Masach? And can a person tell whether he has the Neshama?

My Answer: Faith above reason is what we attain after the Machsom. Before it we’re just trying to understand what is faith and to attain it. Before the Machsom , we try to attain faith above reason (the revelation of the Creator, a perception of Him, of the quality of bestowal and love inside us – above our entire egoism). We desire to rise above all the obstacles to the oneness of the Creator and His good governance!

But the fulfillment of this desire takes place after the Machsom, when it is filled by the Light of bestowal on the level of Nefesh, then Ruach, and so on, until we fully attain the quality of faith above reason – the quality of Bina.

And after this, there is another degree – not ascent above egoism, but usage of egoism, or the correction of egoism to bestowal – when we receive into our desire for the sake of bestowal.

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A question I received: This question has been posted on the forums of Kabbalah Education Center, yet the answer I received was somewhat not satisfying. I felt that the matter had been just passed over as any general situation, and not read with Love.

(What follows is a long, detailed description of drug induced “trips” experienced by a 21 year old psychology student from Mexico, who has been taking LSD for a long period of time. He describes how this gives him the opportunity to perceive the Upper Force, the higher reality, and his connection with Kabbalah. At one point he reaches the feeling that his mission in life is to comprehend the connection between spirituality and LSD.)

My Answer: There is no connection between drug induced experiences and the attainment of the Upper World, the Creator. You are completely disconnected from spiritual sensations and are controlled by your perceptions of chemical reactions. I recommend that you stop searching for ways to justify your behavior, leave drugs behind and begin correcting your soul. Good luck!

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A question I received: I have been watching your lessons over the Internet for about six months now. My brother, who is in the process of becoming religious, has also been studying your books a little, but in addition he studies the Mishnah by Rabbi Nachman, and a Jewish interpretation of yoga taught at Ohr Aganuz once a week. We have interesting and deep conversations, but it’s difficult for me to accept some things he says which aren’t related to what you teach. Would you advise me to be more open to the teachings of Likutei Mocharan, Breslov pamphlets, and the materials studied at Ohr Aganuz? And what advice can I give to my brother?

My Answer: My advice to you is: Don’t study at Ohr Aganuz, don’t teach your brother, and don’t talk to him about your studies, as if you don’t study Kabbalah at all. The two of you are on absolutely opposite paths – he’s on the path of Chassidut, and you’re on the path of Kabbalah. Don’t get in each other’s way.

You should let him mature on his own. Soon he will feel that yoga doesn’t supplement the attainment of the Creator, and that the only thing worth studying are the works of Baal HaSulam (provided they are interpreted correctly, according to my lessons).

What’s important isn’t the books you study, but how you study them. All the great sages wrote from their spiritual attainment. They all lived in the attainment of the Upper World, the Creator, and wrote only about this. So you’re both reading holy books. But they are holy because they speak of holiness – the property of bestowal and love that’s beyond one’s self. The purpose of studying these books is to reveal these properties within you, or in other words, to reveal the Creator.

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