A question I received: In this world, we receive egoistic pleasure from giving. What is the advantage of being in the Upper World if we receive pleasure from bestowal there as well?

My Answer: If we were allowed to enjoy bestowal in this world, then we would be giving all the time. The question is why do we give in this world? It is in order to receive pleasure. This is the difference between this material world and the spiritual world.

In this world people are willing to give up everything just for a moment of pleasure. Enjoyment is everything and the action itself does not matter to us. When we love somebody else, we are ready to give him or her everything including our life. This is because there is a mechanism inside of us that secretes a love and pleasure “drug” inside us. But if we don’t feel love, then we are not willing to give because we won’t feel any pleasure from it.

Now, here is the question: Do we need love to give or to feel enjoyment? This is the difference between the two worlds.

From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/4/10, Article “Matan Torah”

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Everyone asks the same question: if the Creator is omnipotent, why does He put us through the suffering of this whole life that sometimes is worse than death? If He treats us with love, then why does He plunge us into such horrible states? If there is none else beside Him, then how can He do this? Why did He have to create in us an evil nature and demand that we come to goodness through such a long path of suffering?

The fact of the matter is that there’s no deficiency in the Creator, and we need to bring ourselves to a feeling of deficiency on our own. This is impossible without hard work. We are not working hard in order to receive fulfillment, but in order to feel a deficiency. This constitutes the whole process that we go through.

It seems to us that we try to fill ourselves, but this is not the case. We only work on building a giving “Kli,” a desire to bestow within us. The higher we rise, the greater is the deficiency of bestowal, the need to bestow. When we reach Infinity, this will be an infinite, empty vessel (Kli) with an infinite sensation of a lack of bestowal. This is the ultimate achievement of the creature.

From this, we understand that we cannot complete the process in any other way. There’s no deficiency in the Creator to begin with; the very concept of the Creator lacking anything is nonexistent. It is we who need to reach a sensation of a deficiency and particularly of bestowal.

Yet, isn’t His desire to please the creatures a deficiency? No, it’s not. This desire of the Creator comes from perfection. We’re unable to understand this since our desire is a consequence of deficiency. The Creator and I are standing opposite to each other, mutually bestowing to each other with equal desires, but our desires are from completely different roots. His desire comes from perfection since He is initially perfect, and my desire comes from deficiency which I have developed within myself on my own.

Therefore, this deficiency isn’t to my detriment; it’s my virtue and I have reached it myself. I’ve built love for Him within me as the lack of bestowal or the desire to bestow, is, in fact, love.

From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/3/10, Article “Matan Torah”

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In the News (From Vesti.ru): “Starting April 1st 2010, schools in nineteen Russian school districts will begin to teach a new subject: The Fundamentals of Religious Cultures and Secular Ethics. The curriculum covers the four main religious movements, world religions and secular ethics. …Study content includes topics like love, friendship, guilt and forgiveness. The subject breaks down into six blocks: Orthodox culture, Islamic culture, foundations of Buddhism and Judaism, the study of world religions, and secular ethics. …Parents will choose what classes they want their children to take, and the students will be placed accordingly.”

My Comment: Religion has always led to hatred and wars, terror and separation. The Creator gave only one decree: the commandment to "Love thy neighbor as thyself." All other laws are only implementations of this one, general law of nature.

All religions and beliefs are inventions of the human ego. That is why they cause opposition, evoke hatred and speculation of excess, buying off hell and accepting cash for an entry to paradise. We mustn’t dress a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Religion is the greatest manifestation of the human ego; it will only cause hatred and a disconnection between the students. See Baal HaSulam’s article “The Essence of Religion and Its Purpose.” "Our religion" does not mean Judaism: It is the religion of love and bestowal to all.

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What is the Egyptian exile? It is the revelation of love for yourself. Accordingly, the exodus from Egypt is when you are able to feel love for your neighbor for the first time.

I can “come out of Egypt” only if I really desire to acquire love for others. As Baal HaSulam writes in the article, “For Yehuda,” the essence of the forthcoming redemption must be clear while one is still in exile. You have to understand what you desire. What do you consider to be exile? What are you exiled from?

If you see that exile means that you are enslaved to self-love, and redemption is when you acquire the force of love for others, the ability to unite and become a single soul the way it was before the breaking of Adam, in order to reveal the Creator inside the unity, then you really feel the exile and are ready for redemption. And then it comes to you!

If you have prepared your desires, then the Light that Reforms comes to you and leads you out of egoism. Everything depends on your desire to come out of your egoistic concerns to freedom. This is the purpose of the exile, and this is why we are not ready for redemption – because it consists only of this. Spirituality is bestowal. If we desire it, it means we are ready to be freed.

Right now we are prolonging our exile because we don’t consider it exile and slavery. We feel good in it. We only want more money, power, and other sources of fulfillment. We want to be left alone and not be told about love for the neighbor. We don’t want that love!

Hell is the inability to bestow. Heaven and hell are very different from people’s regular notions about them. People don’t want either of them, and don’t feel either within. This means that a person is not wicked or righteous; he is simply an animal that is not in exile.

A person who is wicked knows that he is an egoist and desires to become righteous, bestowing. Therefore, he calls his uncorrected state, “hell.” One who is righteous has attained the quality of bestowal and love and feels that he is in heaven.

From the Evening Zohar Lesson 4/12/10

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A question I received: If I am surrounded by parts of my own soul, why can’t I force them to awaken to spirituality?

My Answer: There can be no coercion of this sort; there is no coercion in spirituality. Those surrounding you are not parts of your soul yet. If you already felt them as your own, then you would become connected to them and awaken them.

The awakening would come from your love. Currently, you want to awaken them due to your egoism, by force, using your power. This is forbidden to do! When you correct yourself and begin to love your neighbor like yourself, your view will change. You will see that everyone else is corrected, and you will not want to change anything by force at all.

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When we gather, instead of thinking that we want to unite with the others, we need to think about wanting the Upper Light to unite us. Without connection with the Upper Light, any other unification will prove to be false and will lead to even greater hatred. This must be made clear to the people around us. Otherwise, it may seem that we’re talking about love and friendship in just the same way as many other people and organizations do in the world.

We’re not talking about the same thing that is understood in our world as “love.” Love that we are talking about is the result of the action of the Upper Light. Love will be born as a result of this action. At present, we don’t really know what it is; we just use the same word for it. In reality, love is entirely different from what we imagine it to be right now.

To feel love, we want to feel that the Light is between us. It’s the force that connects us into one whole. “You and me” are only a means for this force to be revealed. What is the real reason for me to be by your side? I need you for the precise purpose of revealing the Creator. I use you for this and vice versa. Only when the Light comes and creates the connection between us will I feel what it means to love you and not before. If it seems to me that I love you before this happens, it’s just a delusion.

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A question I received: What is so special about The Book of Zohar that it awakens such powerful reactions in us?

My Answer: It’s not a book; it’s a mechanism whose buttons we press even without being aware of it. In addition, we study The Book of Zohar together in a large group of people all over the world. We are very different from each other but we all want the same thing. Because of this, we press these buttons very powerfully; we simply don’t realize this.

A crying baby doesn’t understand what a turmoil he is causing in the home. Adults cannot ignore a baby’s cry; it causes a great commotion inside us. We can tell an older child to go to his room and not to bother us. However, with a one-month-old baby, we cannot act this way. We fuss around him and drive ourselves crazy with worry. This is the kind of worry that we bring to the Upper Force and this is how The Book of Zohar affects us.

Actually, it’s not the book itself, but the whole system of the universe that is activated when a person studies this book. The desire to reveal spirituality is like a baby’s cry that wakes up the father (Aba), the mother (Ima), the neighbors, and the whole world. It forces factories to work for him in order to produce food, diapers, and everything else a child needs. Does the baby know what he is doing? No, he doesn’t, but just look at how many things the whole world produces for babies.

In the spiritual world, it works the same way. Everything is put into gear by love. We don’t understand that we activate a whole system which influences us in response. However, this doesn’t happen according to our infantile, egoistic demand. Instead, it teaches us gently, with great kindness, and helps us advance toward bestowal.

A person exists between two forces. His own egoistic force is below and the force of the Surrounding Light is above. These two forces pressure him from both directions and he feels like he’s stuck between heaven and earth. By opening The Zohar, he enters a completely different system – that of the Upper Force, and moves ahead by the path of Torah, which is the path of Light.

Up until this point, a person developed according to his need through the process of evolution, just like the rest of nature. His desire to enjoy was always searching for a better place and an escape from blows. However, he wasn’t advancing toward the Creator; he was simply looking for a more comfortable corner. This was our manner of development up to today, whereas now we are attracting a completely different force from Above onto ourselves.

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The science of Kabbalah is the method of developing the soul. However, while developing my soul, I don’t really understand the process. I don’t know what is good or bad for its development, what kind of desires should increase in me and to what extent. It’s as if I wander aimlessly between egoism, disdain and self-sacrifice.

Here we need to obey a simple rule: love for the Creator will come after love for others. I will attain Him exactly inside the connection between myself and others. Our entire study is devoted to this.

At first thinking of others seems like the most repulsive thing to me. I am sick of it, and I would prefer to just study and work on myself, but not depend on others. However, I soon discover that there is no other way to go.

Although we are not familiar with the program of our development, we can still try to establish an interconnection among us. But the fact is that the Light does all of the work. It reveals various properties inside us, revealing them individually in every person depending on the root of his soul. Therefore, one person advances in huge steps while someone else advances by small steps. Someone reveals anger in himself and someone – apathy. There are no exact templates and standard rules.

The thing Kabbalists explain to us are what belongs to everyone with no exceptions – what is the goal we all have to reach and how to exert efforts on the path to the goal. Kabbalists reminds us time and time again that no matter what is happening, we shouldn’t forget to push on the gas, always strive to accelerate and always move straight ahead.

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It is impossible to achieve equal and fair distribution without knowing the inner nature of each person. This cannot be achieved in any other way, such as through different social support systems and other “crutches.”

Social systems might be effective for some time, but eventually the entire system collapses as soon as society becomes more interconnected. We have lost the ability to regulate it, since we need to establish equality and fairness on a global scale. Here the desires of mercy, fairness and peace cannot replace truth, and it is then that the crisis emerges.

The crisis in economics is a result of people wanting to receive without limit. They inflated financial bubbles beyond rational limits, neglected the formula that balances giving and receiving in a reasonable proportion, and forgot that it is necessary to give and do something for others.

It is now being revealed how much the situation is out of our control and how we are powerless to balance society. This is how Nature pushes us to the revelation of the truth and attainment of souls.

A soul is the inner part of a person, the basis of life. If it is possible to attain another person’s soul, one will attain all the properties of that person, and then will naturally relate to him knowing what he is capable of and what can be reasonably requested from him.

We are now coming to the great principle of the Torah – “Love your neighbor as yourself,” which is a means for us to connect together. We can then understand and feel each other and are are able to share fairly. Humanity will not solve the problem of its survival without learning and acting by this principle!

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A question I received: Why is it that despite my ability to feel other people’s desires, I continue to think mostly of myself? How do I resolve this conflict?

My Answer: You only think of others because you want to use them for your own benefit. Therefore, it’s obvious that you feel them and would even like to strengthen this ability.

If I want to deceive someone, I have to have a good sense of that person and understand them well. In order to trick someone I have to become a good psychologist and penetrate into their mind and heart. Then I will know how to manipulate them to my benefit.

The ability to sense others doesn’t necessarily indicate anything. What matters is whose desires are more significant to you – yours or theirs?

It is written: “Do not do unto others what you do not want others to do unto you,” which means that you should not use your neighbor for the purpose of advancing your own interests. But later it was written: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Does the phrase “as yourself” mean that half of the profit should go to me and half to him? No! It means that you should love only your neighbor the way you previously loved only yourself.

From now on, you have to start treating yourself the same way as you previously treated your neighbor when you took advantage of him. You have to start thinking about how you can use yourself in order to be of service to him.

You switch places: He takes your place and you take his. Your neighbor becomes more important to you than yourself. That’s what we call “bestowal.”

There is just one example of this interaction between people in our world: a mother and her child. When we make the transition to sensing others, we acquire the ability to begin sensing our own soul. This is actually the only way to feel it, since our soul consists of desires that are outside of us. By feeling those external desires, you can begin to feel the Creator within them.

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