Two questions I received on Kabbalah as a science:

Question: On one hand it says that Kabbalah only talks about the Upper Worlds, but on the other hand it says that Kabbalah is a science about all of reality. If Kabbalah speaks only about spirituality and not about electrons and other such things, then it would be pointless to hold discussions with scientists, such as Dr. Jeffrey Satinover! After all, Kabbalah talks about the reality that is above matter, before it’s perceived within our senses.

My Answer: Kabbalah talks about the Upper World and the descent of the forces into our world. This is why it is the foundation of the sciences of our world. Recently scientists have begun to understand issues that border the two worlds. When these people – such as Dr. Jeffrey Satinover – receive a positive impression of Kabbalah, they then help us to popularize it.

Question: You are certain that Kabbalah is a science and that a Kabbalist attains it by conducting an inner research of the world. Is it possible that this research is actually the subjective science of a specific individual, who revealed it as a result of a specific path? Would it be correct to say that Kabbalah isn’t a science in and of itself, but only when a person realizes it in practice? What do you think of those who constantly study but don’t advance toward the truth in action? How does Kabbalah regard this?

My Answer: You lack the basic knowledge from the articles: “The Essence of the Wisdom of Kabbalah,” Kabbalah as a Root of All Sciences,” and “Preface to The Book of Zohar”. It’s impossible to explain all of this here. If you really want to know rather than to just negate, you’ll find the answers there.

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Questions I received on the spiritual path:

Question: I have been studying Kabbalah for a pretty long time (4+ years) and have been doing dissemination from the very beginning. From my first lesson and to this day, whenever I am especially impressed by something in the lesson (or by news of some great dissemination going on), I feel a clear physical sensation that is unique and that I never feel in any other situation. It feels like a wave of energy (like electricity) is going through my body, and is sort of a nice feeling. However, it always leaves me puzzled – I don’t know if this is normal, what it means, and how to relate to it. I know that spirituality is not supposed to be reflected in corporeality and shouldn’t be confused with it, but I’ve wanted to ask you this for a long time. What does it mean, and how should I relate to it?

My Answer: Gradually, everything will reach balance. You just need to alternate studying with dissemination.

Question: Would you please elaborate on how to measure one’s efforts? I may think that I am exerting a lot of effort where others might look at me and say that I’m not. And in which area should the efforts be made: dissemination or study?

My Answer: If you are always thinking about spiritual advancement, this means that you are making the necessary efforts.

Question: How do you explain it when a person who wasn’t sleepy at all before the lesson starts falling asleep during the lesson?

My Answer: This happens because the material you study does not coincide with your spiritual or physical interests and desires.

Question: I am on the path of suffering, but I never part with the book Shamati in English. What else should I do to make sure that everything I’m going through won’t be a waste?

My Answer: Study, connect to others, and disseminate. In particular, during the period of suffering, or in other words, while you still haven’t evoked the Upper Light upon you, you should focus most of all on dissemination together with the friends.

Question: I have been studying Kabbalah for two years and I have already had several descents. Right now I am in a state of a descent, which started a week and a half ago. It brought me to an environment of people who are not interested in spirituality. Now my depression is telling me that I need to go back to studying. How can I live with this?

My Answer: This is the Creator’s way of pushing you towards Him, because the descents also come from Him. You need a group, a thorough reading of the Shamati materials, and constant studies with us. Otherwise you won’t make it!

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A question I received: What exactly is the Machsom? I wanted to find a precise definition in Talmud Eser Sefirot and other technical studies, but couldn’t manage to find it. In fact, this concept doesn’t seem to exist in any article or book by Baal HaSulam or Rabash. So, my questions are:

1. Is it a technical Kabbalistic term (like Masach, for instance)?
2. If it is, why don’t the greatest Kabbalists of our generation mention it?
3. If it is not, why do you use it, and can the Machsom be explained by another non-technical term?

My Answer: The Machsom is a word that Rabash often used during our private conversations. In his public talks he used it rarely, because he never talked about the practical crossing of the Machsom. There are rare instances when it is mentioned in the text. Here’s one such instance:

תשמ”ה – מאמר כ’ 1984/85 – מאמר 20

אנו צריכים לדעת, שיש שני מפריעים, שעומדים נגד האדם ולא נותנים לעבור את המחסום, להגיע לאהבת ה’, היות שהאדם נולד עם רצון לקבל לעצמו…

Rabash’s 20th article from 1984-1985:

We have to know that there are two obstructions standing before man, preventing him from crossing the Machsom and attaining love for the Creator, because man is born with the will to receive for himself…

I advise you to look for it in the texts on your own. I’m sure that there are other instances, although they are rare.

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A question I received: I’m trying to reconcile the contradiction between the notion of “faith above reason” and your recurring claim that Kabbalah isn’t built on faith, but on sensations and accurate knowledge.

Is the meaning of “faith above reason” that instead of blindly believing something I an told, I take the path that allows me to see for myself whether the things I’m being told are right or wrong?

My Answer: The first man who felt the Creator was Adam (see Baal HaSulam’s article, “The Secret of Attaining the Wisdom” in the book Fruits of Wisdom). The Jewish calendar starts on that day – the first day of the month of Tishrey of the year 0 (5768 years ago).

In the generations following Adam there were others who attained the Creator, but Kabbalah became what it is now only twenty generations later, in Ancient Babylon (4000 years ago). A Babylonian priest named Abraham discovered Kabbalah and described its basic laws in The Book of Creation. He also gathered students and formed the first Kabbalistic group. His followers – his physical and spiritual sons (in those times people were named by the leader of the clan or tribe) continued to develop spiritually. This continued until the people fell from the sensation of the Creator to the sensation of just our world (and as a result, the Second Temple was destroyed 2000 years ago).

After this fall from the sensation of the spiritual world into our world, all of the definitions and names they used before, and their language in general (Hebrew) fell from the spiritual level to the corporeal level. The same words began to signify the things that they started to see, hear and understand. That is to say, the words acquired a corporeal meaning, instead of the things they used to signify in the past. Ever since, the Kabbalistic texts were written with the same letters and words, but everything depends on who reads them – whether it’s someone who’s on the spiritual level like the author, or only on the corporeal level.

“Faith above reason,” for instance, denotes the following condition: the desire (quality) to bestow (Bina, Hafetz Hessed, the Light of Hassadim) is above the desire to receive, called “knowledge,” because in it one receives the Light of Hochma, the Light of Wisdom.

For those who do not perceive the Upper World, the word “faith” means belief in something that may or may not exist, something people only talk about but cannot sense. Kabbalah never talks about this kind of faith, because by definition it engages only in the revelation of the Creator to man in this world! (See Baal HaSulam’s article, “The Essence of the Wisdom of Kabbalah.”)

So if you want to understand the truth, when reading the Kabbalistic texts you must “translate” what you read from the corporeal level to the spiritual level. Then you won’t err like all the religious people who read Kabbalistic texts (the Torah, the Talmud, the prayer book, and so on), interpreting them on the corporeal level. This is actually the source of mankind’s misunderstanding of the Creator.

In the article, “The Secret of Attaining the Wisdom,” Baal HaSulam writes: “The attainment of the whole universe in its absolute depth and interconnections of its parts was revealed in its entirety by Adam.” This is why we call him “The First Man” – because he was the first to achieve the level of “Human” – Adam (in Hebrew), which means “similar to the Creator.”

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Two questions I received on life after the full correction:

Question: If people will rise to the highest spiritual degree, how will we live? What will we eat? Where will we sleep? How will we travel from one place to another? What will be our general form of existence?

My Answer: There are two states:

1. Before the full correction, when our corporeal level of egoism is still not corrected. Hence even though we attain spiritual degrees, we still retain the sensation of this world.

2. After we are fully corrected, when even our corporeal egoism is corrected, we will cease perceiving this world. That’s because it is perceived precisely in this corporeal part of our desire, whereas we will sense ourselves as being fully and exclusively in the World of Infinity – the only true state. All the other states are partial states of its concealment. In Hebrew the word for “concealment” is Olama, and it is the root of the word “world” – Olam. Hence all the concealments of the one existing state of infinity are called worlds.

In the article, “The Future Generation,” Baal HaSulam provides a detailed description of what life will be like before the attainment of the second state above. I have also written a book on this article, called The Last Generation. In addition, there are lessons on it in our online archive.

Question: Did the sons of Israel accept the mutual guarantee after the exodus from Egypt? And what does the exodus from Egypt represent for us?

My Answer: Yes, after their exodus from Egypt the sons of Israel (the group of Kabbalists, students of Abraham) accepted the condition of the “mutual guarantee” – an absolute spiritual bond between them, and the willingness to be as one soul of Adam.

For them as well as for us, this signifies the complete unification into one desire (one soul). However, in our case this is no longer a unification of a portion of the “Babylonians,” but of the whole “Babylon” (all of humankind) in the joint desire of Adam.

For more on this, see the article “The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee).” In it Baal HaSulam writes that the sons of Israel are just a transitional link intended to pass the method of egoism’s correction, Kabbalah, on to all of humankind.

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Three questions I received on the global crisis:

Question: Why do you devote so much time to analyzing the crisis? Why should we care about the suffering of these oblivious and egoistic animals (or why should we pity them egoistically, since we can’t do it any other way)?

My Answer: 1. These people are all close to me!
2. Just like everything else in the world, the crisis has a reason and a purpose. Its purpose is to bring out a need in mankind’s to reevaluate its behavior.

The suffering will not stop until we accomplish this, and accomplish it right. I do the things I do in order to help people choose the correct attitude to what’s taking place, which will reduce the suffering.

Soon enough this “oblivious and egoistic animal suffering” will affect you as well. When it does, please don’t forget to write to me about how your opinion changes regarding how much time people should devote to this problem.

Question: Does it make sense to think of the reciprocal hatred (or lack of reciprocal love) that’s being revealed in the world as a reflection of the state the Bnei Baruch group is in, or my personal state?

My Answer: The group and the world are interconnected, but are on different levels: the group depends on the world for its spiritual ascent, and the world depends on the group to reduce the force of the suffering that descends upon it (whether or not it wants to listen to the group).

Question: Why is the unity of the common soul being revealed today from its reverse side? Do we really need to feel pain from realizing our connection to all people in the world?

My Answer: This is the only way to convince people to correct their nature. Pain is the measure of our imbalance with Nature. And we’re the ones who establish its severity.

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News Report (translated from news.ru): Between the years 2000 and 2007, 3,500 people per year returned to Israel. In 2008, however, the number of people who have returned jumped to 7,000, and another 15,000 have submitted their applications to the ministry of absorption. In the last two months alone, as many as 2000 people returned to Israel.

My Comment: The return of the “lost children” marks the end of their wanderings in search of a heaven on earth, and the beginning of their search for the real heaven – the revelation of the Upper World. The Book of Zohar says that this precedes the return of the truly lost sons – the return of the ten tribes that were lost 3000 years ago. Today there are hundreds of millions of them in the world…

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A question I received: A new worldview seeking to shift the entire civilization to a new level of consciousness has been published on the site of the national movement “RUSSIA IS US,” in the section “A New Worldview,” on the discussion forum, and other places.

Your thoughts and ideas from different articles published on your Kabbalah Academy websites and the Internet at large, were used in building a foundation for the new worldview. We would greatly appreciate your comments and suggestions.

With deep respect,
Alexey Yurievich Bartunov
Leader of the national movement “RUSSIA IS US”

My Answer: Dear Alexey Yurievich,

I will be very happy to participate in an opportunity to build a better Russia. I have always said that the inner demands of the Russians are close to the Kabbalistic ideas. The search for a national idea, self-expression, self-realization in the world in the capacity of a special enlightening force that draws respect and praise – all this is possible precisely by correctly implementing the idea of unity of all the nations. Russia can come forth as the initiator of an organizational plan for the new humanity. I am completely together with you in this!

Additional Comment: Professor Dov Sadan writes in his book Spiritual Revival that during the revolutionary period in Russia, Baal HaSulam took part in Polish workers’ demonstrations and supported them by carrying a red flag! He explained that what was happening in Russia signified that the masses were coming closer to the ideas of Kabbalah.

Later, after moving to Palestine in 1921, when socialistic changes started taking place in Poland, Baal HaSulam returned to Poland again and tried to get in touch with the leaders of the Polish workers’ movement. He wanted the socialist changes to be implemented correctly.

Unfortunately, people could not hear him. After all, to do this the society should have been able to rise above its egoism and recognize that there is no path other than global unity.

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A spiritual teacher is a person who shapes and molds you, sets your direction toward the purpose of life, sets an example for you, and helps you make your first steps in a world that’s completely new for you, the Upper World.

How much you can absorb from him depends on you. To the extent you incorporate in him, you will find your future degrees of ascent.

A teacher conceals and reveals himself as much or as little as necessary to give the student the ability to develop freely and along the right path. When the teacher is present, the student isn’t happy with him, but once the teacher is gone, the student isn’t happy with himself.

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Three questions I received on Kabbalah’s attitude to health and healing:

Question: During one of your classes you mentioned that when you weren’t feeling well, your teacher would ask you to study with him. I have a heart problem. Can I come to the Creator and ask for the Light that Reforms to heal my heart during the lesson or during my dissemination activities? And does this work for women?

My Answer: Yes, if it is done along with and in order to achieve the goal of creation.

Question: When I try to unite with other souls and add the intention, my blood pressure drastically raises. Why?

My Answer: Instead of getting tense, you should relax. After all, this action should bring you pleasure, shouldn’t it?

Question: I heard that Baal HaSulam once said to his students, “I don’t care where the sack with my bones will be buried.” I have never visited my parents’ graves since the day they died, about 50 years ago. However, I had a stomach pain that lasted for 10 months, and medicine did not help. I went to an alternative medicine practitioner and he advised me to visit my parents’ graves and ask them for forgiveness. How does this connect with Kabbalah, which says that the physical body is “ashes and dust?”

My Answer: There is no connection, but it may have a good psychological effect and may even heal you, since there is also a psychological aspect to your pain.

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