Rabash has prepared a “shock” for our time. Gradually he has uncovered that the most important thing for a human being is his essence and his attitude towards life. Gradually he has disclosed that everything depends on the desires of our heart and our relationship to the truth.

These concepts are in opposition to the routine practices of religious traditions and blind obedience to the commandments, which is typically the behavior of many religious people. We must separate our habitual behavior imposed by our upbringing (“Girsa de-Yakuta”) which makes us feel guilty if we don’t follow our regular routine and that of real prayer, which is a cordial, genuine and conscious call to the Creator for correction.

Judging people by their clothes or their actions does not lead us to an understanding of which person is closer to the Creator. Is it someone who senses emptiness in his life, or someone who seems to have all the answers and wears the clothes (way of life) of someone who is close to the Creator?

The Creator demands that we make corrections in our hearts. That doesn’t mean that we have to neglect any religious traditions, but the distance between a human being and the Creator is measured by the intensity of our aspiration to attain properties similar to His.

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A question I received: Besides the writings of Baal HaSulam, we also study the writings of Rabash. What do they give us?

My Answer: Rabash provides a detailed explanation of the phases of the inner work, yet we don’t understand the entire depth and breadth of his explanation. There are places where Baal HaSulam gives very concise explanations for beginners, and Rabash goes on to expand them. He thus creates a wide entrance for those who wish to enter the spiritual work. When a person reads line after line, he experiences different sensations. That is how Rabash leads the reader with his detailed explanations, like leading a baby by the hand, taking him from one game to another, and from one impression to another.

However, don’t think that his articles are intended exclusively for beginners. They conceal an enormous depth. It’s just that Rabash always lowered himself before his father, Baal HaSulam, and thought that there was nothing more to add after Baal HaSulam. This is why he did not publish anything of his own and did not write many manuscripts. It was because of his modesty. Yet, he was a great Kabbalist and we are yet to reveal him.

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We can see how the system of creation is built in a step by step manner. A person is always connected to a specific level, and then he advances to the next level, and so on. The influence he receives from Above passes through all the levels in order to reach him. One’s path toward the goal is an ascent up the levels from below upwards, and in the process, one gradually becomes similar to the World of Infinity.

Each of us is a result of thousands of years of development by our ancestors. However, a person’s direct connection is to his parents. They give him the qualities and upbringing that the shape him inside and out.

The same thing happens in the science of Kabbalah. It has developed for thousands of years, and each Kabbalist out of thousands of Kabbalists did something unique in order to bring this wisdom to us today, the time when the whole world must awaken.

But nevertheless, our closest connection is to the most recent Kabbalists: Baal HaSulam and Rabash. They are our parents. They are the ones who give us life and the upbringing that shapes us. They connect us to the system leading to Infinity, and we perform this ascent with their direct help and by virtue of their teaching.

This is why it is so important for us to realize the method they have passed on to us – their upbringing. If we have the strength to hold on to these great parents which the Creator has sent us, then we will definitely reach success.

We are yet to see just how much they care for us. We will see that their souls are always connected with us and take care of us. We receive everything “Upper” only through them and only to the degree we carry out their advice.

Let us hope that we will merit and be worthy of what they have attained, and what they pass on to us. All the Light on their level is ready for us to accept It. Through them, we will be able to establish a connection with the Light, the Creator.

Baal HaSulam spoke about how the science of Kabbalah will begin to be revealed starting with the year 1995, and how thousands of people will come to it. He was talking about us. There is no other group that accepts anyone wanting to reveal the Upper World and that disseminates his teaching. Therefore, we have to be proud, and at the same time continue to make efforts in order to be deserving of such a benevolent treatment from Above.

Baal HaSulam writes in “The Future Generation” that a person has to try to:

1. Attain spirituality by himself, and / or
2. Disseminate it and help others attain it.

A person corrects his soul in either case. When we try to pass his teaching on to others, then regardless of how much we ourselves attain it, our actions bring about a correction and that is a great accomplishment that we have to be proud and happy about.

So let us raise a toast to this great soul, which connects us to the Creator. Each of us truly was chosen from Above. Each of us has received the great right and privilege to establish a connection with this soul, to be connected with this teaching and to disseminate it.

So, let us be worthy of being called Bnei Baruch. After all, Baruch – Blessed – is the name of the Creator.
(From my talk at Baal HaSulam’s grave this morning, 09.29.09)

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Preparation to the Lesson
The Daily Kabbalah Lesson is the best opportunity to attract the force of correction. It’s a time when a multitude of desires unite into one great aspiration.
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Part 1, on Writings of Rabash
At every moment, you have to leave room for the Light to work inside your desire.
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Part 2, on “Preface to the Sulam Commentary”
I am influenced by two opposite forces: the right line and the left line. My task is to build the middle line: my independent aspiration toward the Creator.
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Part 3, on “Thou Hast Hemmed Me In Behind and Before”
This world is egoism. The spiritual world is bestowal.
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While I was by Rabash’s side, I was always surprised at how short and formal the burial ceremonies were. A person has to perform the ritual: come to the cemetery, say a few words over the grave, and leave. And he has to come back once a year, not more.

In the corporeal sense, this ritual is somber, but in the spiritual sense, it is joyful! We are actually holding a ritual that a person should be happy about. He should rejoice about getting rid of his “body,” about the fact that his egoistic desire has died and the desire to bestow and love, called the “soul,” has ascended to a new level. It rose from the earthly level, reception, to the “heavens” – bestowal!

When you return once a year to your buried desire, you check whether there is anything more you can take from it in order to correct it and ascend even higher. After all, the ascent can only take place by way of correction, by turning egoism to bestowal.

After that comes the “revival of the dead,” when we correct all our desires and nothing remains in the “grave.” The dead (desires) will then be revived and the burial rituals will no longer be performed.

Rabash was a person who acted as no Kabbalist had before. He accepted secular students into his group, which was located in the midst of the Jewish Orthodox populace in the city of Bnei Brak. And he taught these students the science of Kabbalah. In those times, this was a real revolution. He went against his family, the people close to him, and the social opinion of the entire Orthodox community.

Despite everything, he dared to do this, and he made a breakthrough. He started writing articles and giving lessons for beginners, including secular people. He did everything possible to spread the Teaching.

The most important thing he left behind is his articles and his spirit. Everything we have today, our entire foundation was laid by him. I always feel that I continue none else but his work. That is why I feel the inner forces to continue. The way we study, explain and formulate things, all comes from him. I hope to continue to transmit everything I have, including Rabash’s spirit, which I received from him, to you.

This person is essentially a bridge, an intermediate link connecting all the great Kabbalists of the past, from Abraham to Baal HaSulam, to us. Through his spirit, he passed the science of Kabbalah on to us. We are living inside his Kli, and he supports us.

We have to thank the Creator for giving us this soul, which continues to include us within and develops us even today. Any spirituality we attain is in virtue of his help, his force that acts among us. This is why we are called, “Bnei Baruch” – the Sons of Baruch. Let us hope that we truly will become the sons of Baruch Ashlag, the Rabash.
(From my talk at Rabash’s grave this morning, 09.23.2009)

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Today is the day of remembrance for my Teacher, Rav Baruch Shalom Levi Ashlag – Rabash. We are all nourished by what we received from him. He was the only person who understood Baal HaSulam, who continued his path, and who passed the method on to several of his students. The fact that we are able to advance using Baal HaSulam’s method, to see, hear, feel and understand what he wrote, is possible only thanks to Rabash.

Rabash used to write an article a week, and we have over 400 of his articles. In them, he provides explanation of the entire science of Kabbalah, including everything that regards a person’s inner work. Through these articles, he has given us an opportunity to enter the sensation of the spiritual world. He explained the entire method systematically, simply and accessibly, in a form that people could easily connect to.

The reason why he often quotes the Torah, Talmud and other Kabbalistic sources is in order to connect us to the original sources and to help us understand how their authors (Kabbalists) thought. This is how they conveyed their sensations to us.

There’s no doubt that if it weren’t for Rabash’s books, we would not be able to connect to the writings of Baal HaSulam. Without Rabash’s explanations, it would be impossible for us to “open” Baal HaSulam’s books.

I am grateful to the Upper Force for sending me such a great Teacher, through whom we have received Kabbalah. His life’s work was a spiritual breakthrough into a new level and the revelation of Kabbalah’s method to us.

Baal HaSulam also stated this method in his articles, but they remained concealed.  Rabash took his father’s materials and rewrote them in a form that the world could understand. He also transmitted it orally to his students.

Rabash was the first Kabbalist in the entire history of Kabbalah who began openly accepting students. After a year of studying with Rabash, I gave several lectures at Berg’s center. The lectures weren’t for the general public, but for the instructors. After those lectures,  all the instuctors left the Berg center, because they understood that what they were doing there was not Kabbalah at all, but rather just business.

I brought them to study with Rabash, along with an entire group of young, secular people. Altogether there were about forty people. Rabash was 77 years old at the time, and he had spent his entire life living in Bnei Brak – a Jewish Orthodox community, with an overabundance of prohibitions and restrictions. But despite everything, he was not afraid to accept all of these new, secular young men to be his students!

These people weren’t planning to return to religion; they came to him to study Kabbalah exclusively. That is how he started teaching Kabbalah to secular young men from Tel Aviv! This was the revolution he made, and it steered our world toward correction. This was a completely new phenomenon, such that the entire history of Kabbalah has never seen. It was the beginning of large-scale dissemination of the science of Kabbalah, as those forty students continued his path.

Rabash was a great revolutionary. He possessed a tremendous inner power that enabled him to do this, in defiance of his Hassidic community and his relatives.

Everything I have, I received from him. Our group, Bnei Baruch (the Sons of Baruch) is named after him. And I believe that we truly will merit becoming his spiritual heirs.

Let his memory in us be blessed!

Related Material:
Rabash: The Last Great Kabbalist

My Experiences with Rabash in Tiberius

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It seems to us that egoism always defeats us and erases all the results of our efforts, forcing us to always start everything from the beginning, from the darkness, as it is written, “There was evening and there was morning…” However, we have to prepare for the night, in order to take from it everything that is useful for our advancement.

A person cannot go to sleep without reading a page from an article. If you don’t do this, then you will definitely see empty dreams and will wake up with the same thoughts in the morning. This will happen to anyone, regardless of one’s spiritual attainment and level.

This is why it is a must to read an excerpt before going to sleep in order to wake up with the right thoughts for the lesson. What you read will circle around in your head all night, together with your dreams. This has to become a habit.

I learned this from my teacher, Rabash. He always used to read an excerpt from Shamati before going to bed.
(From Part 1 of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson)

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A question I received: Why is it that when a point in the heart awakens in a person, he still has a long and difficult path to go before reaching spirituality?

My Answer: Why do you think the path is difficult? I look at the world and see so many people struggling to get money, power, fame, and knowledge, all to eventually experience a tiny pleasure. They waste their years on empty worries and false values.

When you engage in spiritual development, however, then even if you don’t move as quickly as you would like, but you still want to advance toward the goal, you will make progress. Isn’t this better than how the entire world is living?

Today, there are more and more people awakening to spirituality. It is impossible to even compare the number of students learning Kabbalah now to a mere few years ago.

When Rabash told me that the general awakening of the world would begin in 1995, I found it difficult to believe him. Who could have thought that the world would change so quickly? But suddenly, we do see that people are feeling empty and are experiencing a global crisis, including crises in nature, education, science, politics and economics.

It doesn’t matter that the media is lying and trying to hush up the crisis by assuring us that everything is alright. I am speaking of what is being revealed to us by nature.

Besides, it is understandable that people want to spruce up the situation. Everyone is instinctively trying to lessen their suffering and pain. This is why they close their eyes to the problems and tell themselves that everything is OK, that there is no crisis.

In the meantime, everything is crumbling and people continue to be laid off. But man is built in such a way that he does not want to see the truth.

The fact is that the Creator (Nature) is revealing to us that we are at a very advanced state. And this is all happening just twenty years after the general awakening has begun. Yet, you want to receive everything now, like a little child. You simply can’t understand what a huge, in fact – infinite desire we are dealing with, and how quickly it is changing.

The development of our desire dragged on gradually for thousands of years, but now it’s changing day by day. All you need is a little patience.
(From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson)

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A question I received from my student: You say that one should treat one’s friend in the group as a child, with love and without judgment. We have to rise to a higher level of understanding and see that the most important thing is to treat our friends by the principle of “love your friend as yourself.”

But does this mean that we have to ignore insults from our “friends” and refrain from reproaching them even when their actions cause moral and physical harm to us? Every time this happens to me, I want to resolve the situation and I feel as if that person is not my friend. Or, in cases like this, should I just put a distance between myself and that person in order to avoid the negative feelings, even though we both study Kabbalah?

My Answer: Rabash wrote that if you sincerely attempted to resolve the situation with that person, and your attempts failed, then you should leave him alone and act as if you don’t notice him. You have to wait for that person to mature, and when he does, he will become your friend. Keeping this attitude should help you!

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: We Are Always Subject To Nature’s Law Of Love
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Laitman.com Post: The Purpose Of Our Dependence And Alienation
Article: “Love for the Creator and Love for the Created Beings”
Lesson on the Article: “Attaining the Unity of the Universe”

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