There is nothing but forces in the spiritual world. But the connection between them is determined by your perception (world-year-soul in a ready-made reality). And the Creator is also a detail of your perception. He is something outside of you. That is to say, from within your inner reality, you deduce something that provides and sustains it, and you call this part, “the Creator.” It is you who distinguishes and “depicts” Him inside your qualities.

The same thing is true regarding the rest of the picture (world-year-soul). When you are in the spiritual world, you reveal the spiritual matrix of forces, “world-year-soul and a ready-made reality.” You then reveal a different order of forces that influence one another. They contain an inner part (the soul) and an outer part (the world). And you understand some of the forces, seeing them as cause and consequence; this is the year. They contain an Upper Thought and a force that leads the process; this is the ready-made reality.

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The spiritual world consists of the same parts and connections between them as the material world. However, we can only feel the spiritual world to the degree our sensations enter it.

Forces descend from Above into our world, and they have inanimate, vegetative, animate and human qualities. This is what we observe: the expression of the Upper Forces in our world as objects and actions.

Our encounter with the details of perception gives rise to the forms. For example, say I see an object before me now. It appears to me in a specific form, but if I had different qualities, then I would see a different form. Baal HaSulam gives the example of a table: I see it one way, but an angel sees it through its qualities.

Reality or perception is produced when my qualities unify with the Light’s, due to our having common or similar qualities. Beyond my perception, there is only Infinity, out of which I perceive just the part that I have shared qualities with. So how can I attune myself to having shared qualities with the Upper World? I can do it because inside me, I have the same coordinate system (world–year–soul and a ready-made reality) as it has inside. And when I ask for it, the Upper Light makes my system similar to the Upper Level. This is called the correction of the soul. It’s when I make my inner system similar to Infinity, in a specific measure. I thereby determine my spiritual level and the degree to which I perceive Infinity.

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Preparation
I can feel empathy for someone in the material world, but this will only be a measure of my participation in his suffering. It won’t be pain that I myself feel.
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Part 1, on Baal HaSulam’s Letter 23
The spiritual world is not a theory. Actually, it is much more real than the “reality” we are familiar with now.
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Part 2, on Part 12 of Talmud Eser Sefirot, “Inner Observation”
All the corrections are made by the Light. So if a person acts on his own, he is acting inside his egoistic desire.
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Part 3, on “Introduction to Talmud Eser Sefirot,” Item 142
Reality is something that you have in common with the Light. You gradually perceive one more part, and then another one, and so on, but you always perceive only the things you are ready for.
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A question I received: Kabbalah says that there are 230 years left until the end of the world. Will babies still be born in 231 years – in the world to come?

My Answer: We think of time in terms of our perception of reality and therefore we can’t grasp the way a person alters reality by changing his or her attributes. Reality is what I feel within. By changing my inner attributes, I discover a different picture of the world.

Take a computer screen, for example. When you press a button, you change the pictures that appear on the screen. That is how you are now living in different pictures, jumping from one movie into the next.

The 230 years that you are talking about, and babies that are or aren’t born, are not real issues. That is because when you rise to the spiritual dimension, you will suddenly sense that everything you used to perceive, all these bodies, people, men, women and children, this entire world, including you who eats and drinks, simply don’t exist.

You will suddenly realize that what you saw before was just an image on the screen, while in reality this picture was drawn by the two real forces standing behind it all – the will to receive and the will to bestow. The “reality” you sense now, simply does not exist. It exists only on your screen.

What does it mean to give birth, to build a house, and to live in this world? It is a certain combination of these two forces, which create such a picture for you. And that’s all! So, you don’t have to wait 230 years to experience the sequence of images that will come one after another.

What does it mean to live in the world? Is it my body that lives? I exist in a specific form of the will to receive, until I complete all of my corrections, whereby I will attain the will to bestow.

I have to rise from the lowest point, called this world, until I reach the highest point, adhesion with the Creator. Then, at the last stage of the correction process, the Lev HaEven (heart of stone) will also be corrected.

What happens after that? The picture changes, altering everything along with it: all the attributes, awareness and comprehension. If you ascend spiritually even a little bit, you will already begin to sense that this world is what you feel within. The sensation will shift, and something different, more internal, will emerge to take its place.

Everything takes place inside your desires. This is why it is written: “I saw a reverse world.” And that is why there won’t be anyone left in 230 years that will still perceive the world the way you do today.

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The spiritual world is a real sensation, not just a theory or fantasy. It is a reality that one feels even more strongly than the regular life we are all used to. However, this spiritual reality is currently concealed from us. We have to start revealing it by making personal efforts, and we will then begin to feel all sorts of spiritual forces, events, and occurrences. Moreover, we will feel and understand them even more than the material world. But the only way to do this is through studying Kabbalah in a group of like-minded people.

Then you will see that the group, the studies, this entire world, and the spiritual system all unite into one whole inside your perception. To the degree you make efforts, you will reveal that the spiritual system you are starting to feel is far more powerful and determines more things than the material world that you perceive. This is how one advances, until one comes to see that the spiritual system is completely in charge of the material one. Then, the material world becomes secondary, like an imprint of the spiritual world.

In order to accomplish all of this, you have to study and work in the group. Today you have a regular, mundane perception of reality, and you must now reveal the picture of the general system. It has to be “projected” inside you like a photograph becomes projected from a negative. And then, this picture has to be depicted more and more clearly within you.

The way to do this is by working with the original, authentic Kabbalah sources and by studying in the group. The spiritual sensation is then added to your current perception and sensation of the world. Of course, your sensation of this world will change and expand as well, but it won’t disappear. Spirituality then joins corporeality, so it never takes place “somewhere up there, beyond the clouds.” A person remains inside his current life, inside the same perception of reality, but he supplements it. This new supplement gradually becomes the most important thing to him in life, because it becomes revealed as something that determines and governs everything.

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We live in an integral system, where any change is reflected in all the spiritual worlds, in all ten Sefirot. Therefore, any time I change anything inside me, this causes a change in every single person and even the entire universe. And each particular change in a person, in turn, causes new changes in everyone, and so it goes. This process comes to an end when the whole system reaches its final restful state. At that point the beginning and end unite into a single, unchanging, eternal state.

The spiritual world is not built on a piecemeal foundation; it is not made up of separate pieces. It is whole, complete and integral. And even though we treat each other and our surroundings in a “linear” fashion, in actuality we are speaking of an analogous, integral system that eventually “calms down” and becomes balanced out.

A person has to be an active part of this process until he comes to encompass this entire system, until he takes this entire system into him and it becomes his nature. This is why our task is not to gain an external understanding of the science of Kabbalah, but to make internal changes in accordance with the system we are studying. We need to completely absorb it within. Only then will everyone be incorporated in each other according to the principle of love of others. We will then attain full control over our eternal, complete, and integral existence.

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People are currently trying to fix the economic crisis, and they’ll continue to play this game until everything tumbles down completely. They are like poker players who have lost everything, but can’t tear themselves away from the table. It is all a complete lie and a bluff, but people cannot tear away from it because they don’t know where to run or what to do.

Kabbalah is being revealed to humanity particularly in this state, because it is the only means to reveal the cause of the crisis. Suffering will not enable us to see the cause because suffering is perceived on the still, vegetative, and animate levels. Meanwhile, the crisis is taking place on the human level: it is the revelation of the breaking of the common soul. The suffering will bring people to the science of Kabbalah, which will reveal the cause of the breaking, and people will then realize that they have to correct their attitude to others. There is nothing else to correct but this.

All the causes are in the spiritual world, and our world is merely a consequence. Because we want to correct the consequences, the Creator sends us more and more disappointment. Everyone knows that all our attempts to unite and to achieve peace are always followed by an outburst of terrible hatred.

Even if the G20 gets together now and signs an agreement to create a single world government, a common bank, a pension for everyone, equal and fair distribution, then an epidemic or some other calamity will still hit us because we do not wish to correct the point in the system that was damaged: the connection between us.

The simple solution is to reach the state of “love your neighbor as yourself,” and Kabbalah gives us a piece of advice on how to achieve this: “I created egoism and I created the Torah (the Light) that corrects it.”

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Questions I received about spiritual transitions in different countries of the world:

Question: You said that we cannot lump humanity together by force because all people are different. Does this mean that in the near future there will be a certain number of people in every country (more in some areas and less in others) who will be able to perform this complicated and difficult transition into the spiritual?

My Answer: Yes, but in fact, not everyone will perform it consciously, with understanding, in detail, and in steps. There are people in the world who have a greater understanding of this, those who have a lesser understanding, and there are also those who don’t understand it at all and only know how to use it by living the simple life of an average man.

Question: Does that mean they complete the transition almost without realizing it?

My Answer: They realize it, as it passes through them, but it passes in a relatively passive manner – only because they connect to those who attain actively. Ninety-nine percent of humanity is comprised of such passive people.

Question: There are countries where the majority of the people are still on the level of animal desires. Since we can’t push them anywhere by force, how will a new world order be organized?

My Answer: First of all, I see that Europe has more people who are on the level of animal desires than perhaps other “less developed” places. Second of all, the order of correction will organize itself, so we don’t need to organize it.

In this regard, our views and assessments of these civilizations: America, Europe, Africa, etc, are erroneous. We look at the level of knowledge, the level of our corporeal culture, the level of prosperity, and comfort of life. However, this has nothing at all to do with how well the “human” part is developed in a human being. Bedouins who live in tents in a desert could be much more human and much more open than modern European savages.

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The aim of the spiritual quest is to always strive in the direction of your target, never remaining in one place, captive to your desires. A person advances when his mind and heart are focused on the future, desired state.

When you do this, you don’t delude yourself, but advance forward. It’s okay if you haven’t reached the goal yet. What matters is that you don’t weigh yourself down with your current desires and qualities, which cling to your feet trying to stop you. However, you are also not “up in the clouds,” living an illusion of the spiritual world. No one experiences the spiritual world until it becomes their actual reality. This is the correct aim.

Each moment is an opportunity to make an effort toward the target – bestowal. With every step you take, you should feel as though you’re reaching the goal. This way, the work itself becomes your reward. Every time you have an obstacle on your path, you rise above it and enjoy the fact that you are building the form of bestowal above reason. The picture of the spiritual world is made up of your desires; it is formed by the force of bestowal using the contours of your soul.

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A question I received: Do my behavior, actions and attitude to people influence my spiritual development?

My Answer: A person who studies Kabbalah has to behave in whatever way is generally accepted in his society. Don’t try to play games or do anything unnatural, and do not tell your coworkers that you study Kabbalah. If you participate in dissemination, do so in social circles external to your own. The reason for all of this is so others won’t influence you negatively later on.

All the corrections that you can possibly make are not done by you, but by the Surrounding Light that returns one to the Source. This Light influences and mends the only thing that is broken – the soul. By correcting the soul, the Light restores all of its parts.

When looking at Kabbalists who perceive the Upper World, the Upper Dimension, or the Creator, you wouldn’t notice anything special about them, externally. Or vice-versa: how would you try to find a Kabbalist according to his behavior? There are plenty of people who volunteer in hospitals and protect the environment and wildlife – but you won’t find one Kabbalist among them! You also won’t find Kabbalists among those who meditate on mountaintops or practice all sorts of Eastern techniques.

You can only correct that which is broken, and the only thing that is broken is your soul. Your soul is incorporated in all the other souls, and therefore, by incorporating yourself into them correctly, you will be able to correct everything. Anything we do in this world, aside from the things that are necessary for existence, brings no benefit to us and only causes us harm. Therefore, you should only concern yourself with the correction of your soul.

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