A question I received: What can I ask for society?

My Answer: If the question is posed fundamentally, then it is incorrect to even think that there is a society and that I have to ask for something for its sake. The problem is not lack of food or health. The Creator has an abundance of all of these things and everything comes from Him. What we have to correct is the breaking. We have to attain equivalence of form with Him, and then we will have everything! But if we don’t ask for the most important thing, the reason we are here, then we also won’t have the means to sustain our existence.

The sensation of all suffering, from the most insignificant to the global, comes to us only in order to bring us to the right request. The reason for all ills is the breaking of the common soul into particular souls that hate each other, and therefore, the true prayer of society lies in desiring to unite with everyone. It is when everyone desires to become as one man with one heart once again in order for the law of mutual guarantee to influence us in complete equality and brotherhood.

This should not happen like the Communists did for the sake of a better life in this world, but for the sake of unity with the Creator above our world. Then the Creator, the Upper Light will correct our egoism and hatred by transforming it to bestowal and love. It will unite us all, the desires of the soul, into one aspiration to become equal to the Creator.

By making this correction we revoke the ego that separates us and become equal to Him and unified like Him. All of us together become a vessel that He fills, just as in the beginning of creation in Malchut of the World of Infinity.

That is the prayer of the society.

From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson, 7/13/10, “The Importance of the Prayer of the Many”

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I received a letter from someone who is complaining that he doesn’t understand anything in the lesson on the Talmud Eser Sefirot. He is outraged at the fact that we suddenly “skipped over” to the middle of the text, to Part 7 in order to study about the breaking of the Kelim (which is a custom Kabbalists observe before the 9^th of Av, the day the Temple was destroyed), instead of talking about correction. And generally speaking, he heard that the Talmud Eser Sefirot is intended for people who already have spiritual attainment and that Kabbalists wrote these texts only for each other.

And indeed, Baal HaSulam does say in Item 154 of Introduction to The Study of the Ten Sefirot that Kabbalists write these texts for those who already have spiritual attainment and who understand what the text talks about. Otherwise you will not understand a word of it. If you do not feel the text inside you and experience it as actions taking place within, you won’t understand a word.

It is only possible to understand it with the heart, the desire in which all of this takes place. But if a person still doesn’t have the desire that is able to perform actions of bestowal, then obviously he does not understand a word of what is written.

Nevertheless, Baal HaSulam created Talmud Eser Sefirot in order for it to work as a remedy, on the condition that we desire to attain the state where we will feel it within us, when “man’s soul will teach him.” It is impossible to study the spiritual world theoretically, with your mind. Kabbalists can only advise us on how to ascend to it. When the student does, he reveals the Upper World for himself, and his soul teaches him. Only when a person attains this level does he begin to feel and understand what is being discussed!

It is impossible to study without feeling because man lives by feeling inside desire. We have to study what happens inside our desire in order to feel it inside. Then we will read the book and it will explain to us what we are feeling. It will also teach us how to discern a multitude of shades of feeling inside us.

The science of Kabbalah is the science of knowing yourself. Therefore, it is natural that at first a person does not understand anything. You have to try to attain the sensation! We do not study in order to memorize the text by heart or to understand it theoretically. Our only goal is to attract the Light that Reforms.

From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/13/10, Talmud Eser Sefirot

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“We come into the King’s city [this world] all together.” Those who work faithfully for the Creator turn His “magic powder” into sweet, refined seasoning. And those who do not do the work keep tasting the bitter powder and they cannot enjoy His feast.

Everything depends solely on the correct effort of a person. There are many who come to study Kabbalah, put a lot of effort into it, but eventually leave. They realize that this feast doesn’t satisfy their tastes, and instead of blaming themselves, they blame the King, thinking that the method of Kabbalah, as well as, the group and friends give them a bitter taste. As a result, they leave thinking that they can find more pleasure elsewhere by either taking it easy or using some other methodology.

It all depends on whether a person realizes what ‘’place of work” he has entered, what responsibility rests on him, and what he should aim at in this work in order to taste the sweet flavor. The feast is set before us! It is written: “Taste and see that the Lord is good!” We only need to “taste” Him, meaning that we must prepare our vessel for His Light and receive this “supplement,” a sweet flavor.

But people do not labor in the correct place, and later they look at the clock to see how much time they have spent and they weigh how much effort they have exerted. But they did not put their effort in the most important work: in uniting with the other souls. This is why the work does not taste good for them. As a matter of fact, the sweet taste comes solely through connection, which is that very vessel where the Light is revealed.

Instead, they labored elsewhere in vain. It is as if you worked for one company for a month and at its end, you went to another company to collect your salary. Do you think they will pay you? You haven’t earned the right Kli, the vessel needed to receive the reward. The reward can only be received in the collective vessel because only there is the Creator, His feast, His Light, revealed. And if a person has not exerted an effort to earn that, his work is worth nothing.

We must be focused and alert regarding this. Everyone should examine himself: Does he understand that all his effort should be concentrated solely in achieving inner connection, and uniting toward one goal, one desire, where the Creator will be revealed? If a person aims at this, the “feast” will gradually begin to taste sweet for him. And if not, he will eventually get tired and disappointed in this work because instead of the sweet taste, he will taste “dust,” the “bitter powder,” and leave.

Such a person wonders, “How long can one work without receiving something in return?” But he does not see that he labors in the wrong place, that he is not working where he is supposed to be. It becomes evident in one’s attitude to the group and friends whether or not he is present in the group and works in it.

This effort cannot be substituted either with money or with professional skills. Only if you work for the unity of the souls, does this “bitter powder,” the concealment, fall away, and will you uncover the spiritual world which is right here, next to you. Until then, you simply have not gotten the inner device, the Kli, that allows you to tune into the spiritual world, like a radio that can tune into the right frequency.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/9/10, Baal HaSulam, Letter 26, pg. 85

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The Zohar, Chapter “VaYetze (And Jacob Went Out) – Part 2,” Item 381: All the admonition that Jacob had with Laban made Laban repent and thank the Creator, as it is written, “See, God is witness between you and me,” that he mentioned the name “God.” It is written, “The God of Abraham and the god of Nahor … judge between us,” meaning that that wicked returned to his bad ways. When he said “The God of Abraham,” who is holy, he mentioned the god of Nahor again, who is idolatry.

We think that this excerpt speaks of events in the corporeal world. But later, we reveal that it actually speaks only about the connection between the souls and the types of those connections. The Torah speaks exclusively about these connections and the way to strengthen the connections between the souls. Other than this, there’s nothing to reveal to man, nothing to show, and nothing else that he needs to be taught.

After all, the breaking between the souls was in order to separate them from one another. By connecting them and putting them together like Lego bricks, we learn how this system of souls is constructed; we learn the Creator’s action, and reveal the thought and purpose of creation.

This is why The Zohar speaks only about the types of connection between the souls and the ways to keep strengthening them. In other words, all the events described in the Torah only address the way to reach absolute connection.

And for this reason, our intention to connect with one another, as well as reading about an even greater connectivity of souls in the spiritual world, are both directed in the same way. We are trying to realize this connection between us here in this world, the world of our understanding, while The Zohar reveals the higher degrees. We want to attach ourselves to these higher degrees in order to receive strength from them, so they will influence us and connect us with one another.

As soon as we attain the very first, smallest connection with one another, the first spiritual degree, we begin to perceive the spiritual world. We had the same condition at Mount Sinai: "Unite as one man with one heart – and you will receive the Torah, the Light, and reveal spirituality, the Creator."

From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/9/10, The Zohar

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The Creator fills the connection among our souls with Himself. Being closer to the other souls means being closer to the Creator and having an ability to begin perceiving Him filling our interconnection as Light, bestowal, and love. Instead of being momentary, this desire to unite with the other souls should be constant and always growing. If it lights up only occasionally and immediately subsides, it isn’t sufficient. We must strive to sustain and accumulate such states continuously.

Granted, a person cannot achieve this through his own efforts. Man is not able to control his desires and this is why he is given a group. The desires get renewed in a person in two ways simultaneously: according to a chain of informational records (Reshimot) and due to the influence of the environment. A person does not determine anything by himself.

Our error lies in the fact that we listen to our ego that tempts us to affect it by force, thereby pushing us in the wrong direction. The right direction is to induce ourselves but solely through the group. Only through the group can I impact my soul, while on my own, I have no means to reach it directly. My soul resides in my connection with the others, and only through this connection, in this indirect manner, am I able to affect myself.

Can I affect my genes or chromosomes and change something in myself with my own hands? Of course not! But there is a device – the group – with the help of which I can do it. So, I manipulate this device by my leverage: I apply simple corporeal actions and thereby affect my environment. In its turn, the environment can affect me on the spiritual level. The essence of this miracle is an opportunity to keep transforming myself till I become equivalent to the Creator.

Through my physical actions in this world, I influence the other bodies. Others, through these bodies, are able to affect me, my spiritual properties, that is, my soul. I myself cannot impact my soul no matter how much I’d like to. It is a very simple mechanism whose principle is that only connection among us leads to the revelation of the Creator.

From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/6/10, Article, “And the Lord Appeared Unto Him by the Oaks of Mamre”

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A question I received: How can we relate everything we read in Talmud Eser Sefirot to love of friends?

My Answer: Everything described in Talmud Eser Sefirot takes place in the connections among the souls. The science of Kabbalah says nothing about what transpires in the material, which is the desire to receive. It speaks only of what transpires in the intentions, in the forces above the material, or in the connections between the souls.

There is a system of a general desire divided into a multitude of particular desires, levels, manifestations, variations, and thousands upon thousands of varied gradations of qualities. These qualities of different desires connect together.

The problem lies not in the desire itself. The desire is given to us on inanimate, vegetative, and animate levels because those levels are governed by calculations, thoughts, attitudes, and connections. For this reason, the science of Kabbalah speaks not of desires (material) but of the intentions (connections among the desires). These connections in particular are called souls and form the spiritual world, whereas the desires form our material world.

The connection should be comprised of a Rosh, the head of the spiritual Partzuf, which makes decisions and plans the connection, and a Guf, the body of the Partzuf, which actualizes the act of connection. In other words, both the Rosh and the Guf of the spiritual Partzuf are located in between the desires because the Guf of the spiritual Partzuf is the type of connection that has materialized in practice.

The desires themselves are beyond the scope of the discussion, they as though exist below the surface. It is a certain parameter created by the Creator, on the basis of which we build the connections. Hence the entire science of Kabbalah speaks only of the souls, the connections between the desires.

From the lesson on 7/2/10, The Study of the Ten Sefirot

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A question I received: When I take medicine, I don’t need to have a special intention. If the study of Kabbalah is supposed to be the medicine for our egoism, why do I have to observe so many different conditions in its study in order for it to work?

My Answer: When you take regular medicine there are also many restrictions and conditions, such as to take it before  food, in the morning or the afternoon, to take it with a glass of water, and so on.

Medicine is not just the pill that you swallow. The entire sum of conditions surrounding it is also part of the medicine. The medicine won’t work unless you observe these conditions.

When you take the medicine, you influence your body in order to make it healthy and to restore the complete operation of all its systems within the right connection with one another. We correct our soul in the same way. We have to give it medicine, the Light that Reforms and brings us to goodness, to the proper, good way of functioning. “Good health” for the soul means that it is completely connected with the other souls. Through their unity, as one, they become similar to the Creator.

It works the same way as in a body where a disease means that one of the body’s systems loses the proper connection with the others. The cure is when the right connection is restored.

In the same way, our souls return to being together. Just like you have to observe certain conditions when taking a chemical medicine, in Kabbalah it works the same way. You need the right books, the group, and the teacher, and all the inner conditions (your intentions), which the Kabbalists described in their books. Otherwise the medicine for curing the soul, your correction, won’t work.

From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/5/10, Introduction to the Book, Panim Meirot uMasbirot

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We are inside a system of souls that are interconnected and exist in a corrected state, which was initially created by the Creator. It is written, “The end of the action is in the initial plan.” The Creator does everything with His Thought. He had a plan, and it all came true.

We have to attain the same state through our own work. Why? It is in order to be able to differentiate all the nuances, qualities, and components of that state. We have to feel that we own, sense, and attain it.

That is why we are in the same state, but totally unconscious. What should we do? We should ask for consciousness. I want to see, discover, and feel where I am! Which state in the world I feel is similar to the spiritual state that the Creator made? That state is the connection among people who aspire toward Him.

Right now the corrupted connection among us gives me a sensation I call “this world.” I experience our connection this way because I feel only myself. I am entirely immersed in myself. However, if my senses start to work in the opposite fashion, from within to the outside, then I will feel the true reality where I exist.

This change of the sensation “from within to outside” takes place gradually, along 125 levels, by virtue of our work, our efforts, and our request for it to happen. Where do I implement this entire process in order to avoid living inside illusions, getting confused, and making mistakes? I do it in the group and in my current state. That is where I have to implement it in practice.

This is exactly what I ask for. Everything is very tangible and simple: There is a group in which everyone aspires to attain a connection among them. This is what we ask for while reading The Zohar. Why? Because by reading this Book, we awaken our true connection with the force that rules us, the force called “the Creator.” Then our expectations have a chance of coming true, even if they are inauthentic and artificial. Concerning this it is written, “We will do and we will hear.”

This attitude to our state, to the studies, and to what should happen is called “intention,” and our work is man’s inner work, the work of the Creator. The use of this system through a book and through the force that rules inside us is called the science of Kabbalah.

These are all phases of revealing the Creator to the creation. What is the meaning of “the revelation of the Creator?” It is the revelation of the force of bestowal inside us. That is why the Creator (Bo-reh) means “Come (Bo), See (Reh).” At the end of the day, we are doing the Creator’s work, and that is the entire science of Kabbalah.

From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/4/10, The Zohar

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The Torah talks only about how to unite all the souls together and mend them into a single soul. It is written, “I created the evil inclination, and I created the Torah for its correction because the Light in it Reforms.”

The Light of the Torah returns us to a single desire. The whole narration of the Torah is devoted exclusively to describing the process of unification among the souls. The Torah talks about the forms of connection between parts of ZON (Zeir Anpin and Nukvah) in all spiritual states. Therefore, the Light from these states of connection restores the connections between us and returns us to the source: the Creator.

It is difficult to imagine how unification of a single soul’s fragments can be elucidated so extensively, yet, the whole Torah tells us only about this. Although the Light of the Torah comes from a single soul, it passes through the systems that were created after its breaking. For this reason, it has adapted to our broken state and has the ability to correct it.

From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/30/10, The Zohar

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We don’t yet fully comprehend what a serious task has fallen into our hands. Billion of years of the evolution of the Universe, all of Earth’s nature, and the accumulation of human history up until our time are pressing on us so that we (with the still, vegetative, animate and human levels of nature standing behind us) establish a connection between the Creator. The whole mass of this will to receive must merge with the Creator through a tiny hole: the quality of bestowal that we must attain. The responsibility to pull all of the egoism created by the Creator through the “eye of the needle” has been laid upon us.

We sense that we are facing the wall of our egoism, but we don’t yet understand what kind of wall it is. This wall is the force of the Creator. Our ego is the force of the Creator! We think that it is an ordinary vice that we can beat or discard. That won’t work. We will have to recognize that only the Creator can change our egoistic nature. He must do it, but only at our request, our prayer.

In fact, the entire path of the descent of the spiritual worlds from the very World of Infinity, from Above downward, including all the human evolution in the corporeal world that followed, is now coming to the point of culmination, to merging with the Creator. It is our duty to draw it to the Light. Just imagine how much creation has gone through, and now we must implement this merger.

Our mission seems too grand, but the Creator has placed it on all of us. How many times in the Torah does Moses complain to the Creator that he is incapable of completing his task, but the Creator orders him to continue? Today, we are in Moses’ shoes; we have received strife to rise above our nature. We are to play his role for our generation. ("Moses" or "Moshe" comes from the verb “Mosheh,"  to pull.)

This is why we have to understand that our task is extremely delicate and subtle; it works through the eye of the needle that we can barely discern. However, if we focus the efforts of all who are studying within our system around the world, we will succeed.

We are given all that we need for this from Above; there is no doubt. We just need to have a clear vision of our goal and ask the Creator to assist us. We are that very creature that must come to adhesion with the Creator, and through that, we give all souls an opportunity to ascend to the state of perfection. Unlike the Kabbalists of the past who were only preparing the path for us, we must complete this path by realizing it on ourselves and the others.

The wall before us is the Creator Himself. He stands and waits for us to "break" Him in order to rejoice that “His sons have defeated Him.”

From the Talk during Friday’s Festive Meal 6/25/10

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