A question I received: We know that the path of spiritual development isn’t easy, and an individual is constantly thrown to the left and the right on it. When all of humanity begins to rise spiritually, how will it go through this process, given that it is not a very smooth path?

My Answer: First of all, those who engage in spiritual development are not the only people thrown in different directions in life. However, when all of humanity embarks on the path of ascending spiritually, it will not be thrown from state to state, but will instead rise calmly and orderly.

The fact of the matter is that the whole world will begin to rise as one man, a huge mass that will have a better appreciation of Nature. This will cause people’s thoughts to change, and little by little their desires will change in the direction of drawing closer to one another.

Humanity as a whole will not experience spiritual rises and falls and will not feel the inner resistance of the force of bestowal against the force of reception, where a person either adheres to his attributes of bestowal or to the egoistic desires of his heart.  The resistance of forces is what causes the experience of ascents and descents.

Conversely, all of humanity as a whole will have just one common desire, and it will join with Nature, merging with it more and more, tuning into Nature and rejecting itself before the common Nature. This will be a beautiful and smooth advancement and revelation – a wonderful path!

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A question I received: It says in Beresheet 25:6: “But unto the sons of the concubines, that Abraham had, Abraham gave gifts; and he sent them away from Isaac his son, while he yet lived, eastward, unto the east country.” What gifts did the sons of the concubines receive from Abraham? Where are these gifts?

My Answer: These gifts are all the beliefs and religions in the world, except Kabbalah. Kabbalah, however, is the sole method of egoism’s correction. The sons of the concubines did not wish to correct themselves and to be Abraham’s students, and therefore he sent them eastward – Kedma, to a source from which they would begin to return to Kabbalah.

By the way, the Torah does not speak about people in our world, but about spiritual forces. Therefore, the Kabbalists did not mean that a woman named Sarah gave birth to child named Isaac, for example. Rather, they meant that two spiritual Partzufim, called Abraham and Sarah (in Kabbalah they are generally called Father and Mother, Aba ve Ima), gave birth to their common, more advanced state, called Isaac.

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A question I received: If a person is trying to change from an egoistic state to a divine state, could he become mentally ill by doing it wrong? And if he succeeds, will this person be able to influence the laws of nature using the power of thought?

My Answer: There is no danger in studying Kabbalah because it’s the most natural thing a person could do. It heals you spiritually and physically.

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A question I received: If every person affects the world positively or negatively with his influence, then what determines the general picture?

My Answer: The higher one ascends and develops spiritually, the more power he gains. The greatest power is the power of thought. Ordinary people influence the world with their thoughts, desires, and actions, but the extent of their influence is very small, even though there are six billion people.

The world is not static. One always sees it differently based on one’s changing qualities. When you realize that the world is your individual impression, you recognize that it’s necessary to change yourself, rather than improve the world. You must correct yourself in order for the world to change.

If you do so, then you will discover how the Upper Force affects everything that happens, and this will change your entire model of perception and your interpretation of what you perceive. Will people feel better? Will unemployment and hunger end? Will companies really bring their workers back to work? Yes! We will see this happen with our very own eyes.

Baal HaSulam writes in the article, “The Creator’s Concealment and Revelation,” that nothing changes in our world except the Creator’s revelation or concealment. Therefore, it will help us a great deal to stop viewing this world as a static picture that’s constant before us. We should instead understand that the world depends entirely on our perception, on our qualities and inner conception. We will then begin to correct our flaws, and as a result, to see the will of the Creator in everything that happens.

The science of Kabbalah helps us accomplish this. By definition, it is the method of revealing the Creator to the created beings in this world. In the meantime, this world is the picture that you feel today.

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A question I received: Can you please remind all of us of the story about the student of a Kabbalist, who served the other students by preparing the study room, cleaning it and serving the students food and coffee, and how he had the highest spiritual attainment of all of them?

My Answer: This story is about Joshua, who helped Moses to teach his students by preparing the place of study and creating the necessary conditions. By helping his Teacher, he merited to become his successor, to be the spiritual leader of the nation.

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Questions I received on the soul:

Question: What happens to the soul when the body dies?

My Answer: The soul is “a part of the Creator,” and the Creator is the quality of bestowal and love. So, a person acquires a soul when this quality of “love for one’s neighbor” emerges in him. However, he does not have a soul until he acquires this quality of love and bestowal, and is similar to an animal. This is why it is written in Kabbalistic texts, “All of you are like animals,” “A person is born a small animal,” and so on.

One can acquire the quality of bestowal and love only under the influence of the Upper Light, which is a force that corrects one’s egoism. This Light is called Surrounding Light (Ohr Makif ) or the Creator because It surrounds us and we are inside it. It is written, “The Creator is like water that cleanses Israel (Mikve Israel Hashem), where Israel is Yashar-El, meaning, one who aspires to the Creator, to bestowal and love.

What does this mean? A person perceives our world using his natural, egoistic qualities. When he obtains the altruistic quality of bestowal and love, he feels the Upper World inside this quality. This means that he acquires a soul.

Once he acquires this quality, it stays with him even if his egoistic quality vanishes, or in other words, even if his body (the matter we feel in our sensations) dies. And that’s because there is only one created matter – the desire, and all existence is felt within this desire. If the desire has the intention, “for one’s own sake,” then one perceives “our world” or “this world.” If the desire has the intention, “for the sake of one’s neighbor,” then one perceives the Upper World or the Creator.

The birth of our bodies, our life and death, are but the emergence and extinction of the Light inside the egoistic desire. Spiritual birth, on the other hand, is the emergence of the desire to bestow and to love outside of oneself (to act not for one’s own sake, or not in order to feel egoistically comfortable).

The desire to bestow is independent of the egoistic desire, through which we feel our bodies and this world. Therefore, when the body dies and the feeling of this world vanishes, what remains is the altruistic desire and the feeling of the Upper World.

Question: How can the soul “see,” “feel,” and “perceive” without the functioning of the brain?

My Answer: We feel everything inside the desire. The brain only helps us to distinguish what we see, or rather, what we desire.

Question: Is it really possible for the soul of a person who suffers from Alzheimer’s disease, who has lost his memory and cognition, to restore all of this after death?

My Answer: Once a person develops the soul, the quality of bestowal, it never disappears.

Question: Why does it happen that infants and small children, whose souls have not yet been corrected, die so young?

My Answer: By existing for as long as they were destined to, they corrected a particular part of their spiritual development.

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A question I received: I watch the children’s lessons with my baby, play him Kabbalistic music and read your children’s books and stories to him. I try to teach him as I learn. How can a mother perceive when the first spiritual Reshimo surfaces in her children? And how can we connect to our children on the spiritual level?

My Answer: Continue showing your child the children’s lessons and studying the materials on our children’s website. The rest is no longer up to you.

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Two questions I received on consciousness:

Question: Once we acquire the sixth sense, come out into the spiritual worlds, and cross the Machsom, will our physical brain start taking part in the attainment? If our five senses’ reaction to the Light is reflected in the brain, how will this happen with the sixth sense?

My Answer: You will engage a new sense and a new mind, which will supplement and expand your corporeal senses and mind. It’s impossible to convey this, but every person is able to feel this.

Question: Albert Einstein – possibly the greatest genius of all time, said that matter is energy, that energy is fluctuating atoms, and atoms are composed of quarks (quantum physics), and then there’s consciousness. Does this mean that consciousness is also energy?

My Answer: Matter is an external manifestation of the desire, or its shell. Consciousness is the desire’s perception of itself, of its own existence. In Kabbalah matter designates the desire – the only thing created by the Light, by pleasure.

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Our world is now at the end of its intrauterine development. The current crisis is like labor pains – the last stages of our egoistic development. And the way out of this state is the birth.

Baal HaSulam explains that “coming out of Egypt” is a spiritual birth. The whole of humanity is now completing its development as an embryo, and the global crisis is the labor pains preceding humanity’s spiritual birth. These labor pains can last for a long time, like it often happens in our world when the labor pain suddenly lets go of the woman, comes back again, decreases and again increases.

Therefore, we cannot relax when the crisis suddenly diminishes and stabilizes for a period of time, as if things were returning to the regular routine. Everyone may be laughing at Kabbalists, saying: “Why were you trying to scare us by saying that something awful is coming and that this will last forever until we reject our egoism? Now everything is returning to normal and we are back to the celebration of life.” The fact is, we need to be patient, because a second and a third wave are on the way, like labor contractions that will result in the birth – our exit out of our egoism and entrance into the quality of bestowal.

However, we would like to reduce the duration of these pains as much as possible, so the birth will happen quickly, even immediately – in one push. This is possible; the time between the contractions can be significantly reduced, as well as the number of contractions. This is how we can accelerate the process of the birth.

A baby is born when the contractions accelerate so much that they merge into a single contraction, instead of coming one after another. They no longer come little by little, but become concentrated in one effort. So let us make our birth happen quickly, because it’s an unpleasant process and the best way to go through it is in one push – in the current crisis, rather than in recurring crises.

This is how the spiritual process works. In the spiritual birth, the contractions signify that the birth is taking place. It’s not like in our corporeal world, which is corrupted by egoism, where a woman may feel contractions even a month before the birth. In a corrected spiritual object, the contractions quickly concentrate around the embryo and push it out. The labor pains are meant to open the “doors” through which the newborn will come into the new world.
(Excerpt from the lesson on 01.29.2009, from 34:08 – 37:59)

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A question I received: Baal HaSulam says that our entire freedom lies only in choosing our environment. But if we were to choose our environment now, wouldn’t our choice be based on what we received from our previous environment?

My Answer: We choose a new environment under the influence of a new spiritual Reshimo: suddenly a desire for something “beyond this world” arises in us, and then we are somehow brought into contact with a new environment – Bnei Baruch. This is where your new path begins. And it’s the same for everyone. This is why we (Bnei Baruch) exist.

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