Preface to the Science of Kabbalah (Pticha).
Items 10 – 12, summary:

10. Thus, the Light of Life emanates from the Creator and, passing through the Worlds of AK and ABYA, it separates from the Creator until reaching the smallest desire, where its source – the Creator – is no longer felt. This state is called “our world.” However, by studying Kabbalah in a group with the intention to attain the Creator, one evokes the Light of the Upper Degree, which pulls the desire upwards, giving it the opportunity to ascend the degrees of the worlds all the way up to the World of Infinity. There, one can receive all the Light prepared for him by the Creator back in the Thought of Creation. It is hence written: “The Creator wishes to purify (from egoism) those who aspire to Him; to this end He has given them the Torah (the Correcting Light) and Commandments (the correction of one’s intentions from “for my own sake” to “for the Creator’s sake”).

11. The difference between spirituality and corporeality is this: The intention “for my own sake” is corporeal and its state is called “our world” (Olam Hazeh). The intention “for the Creator’s sake” (or “for one’s friend’s sake,” which is the same thing) is spiritual and its state is called “the Upper World” (or the Worlds of ABYA). The Upper World exists above the lowest of all degrees – our world.

All the ascents, descents, changes and movements that transpire in the Upper Worlds don’t take place in some imaginary space. They are changes in the size of one’s intention “for the Creator’s sake” and the accompanying desire. The greater the desire, the closer it is to phase 4 and the lower it is.

12. The essence of all creation is the desire (to receive pleasure, fulfillment). This desire requires correction. We are commanded to “purify” it with the help of:

• The Torah (the Upper Light), and
• The Commandments (changes of the intention from using the desire “for my own sake” to using it for “for the Creator’s sake”).

Otherwise we will not be able to attain the Upper Goal – the Thought of Creation.

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Download PDF version of Pticha

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News Report (translated from 7KANAL.com): All Israeli consulates in North America report an influx of Israelis requesting to return home. The reason for this extreme bout of patriotism is the financial crisis, which has caused many people to lose all of their savings.

Many applicants to return to Israel say that they can’t even afford their return ticket. They’re being threatened to be evicted for failure to pay their mortgages. Many are calling in pleading for assistance to buy food.

My Comment: There’s a saying, “The world is ruled by love and hunger.” In Kabbalah, this means that a person can aspire to the goal with love, or be driven to it by suffering. One way or another, he is obligated to reach the goal. In this case, people are driven by hunger!

In addition, there will be those who will refuse to leave, similar to the Jews who didn’t want to leave Nazi Germany, and they may possibly face the same consequences (see the article, “The Last Generation” and the newspaper, “The Nation”).

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A question I received: One of my friends is a philosopher studying Egyptian culture. He told me a story from the Jewish religion about a soul that has to confess its sins. When it does, it lays the sins on one side of the scale, and the other side of the scale rises.

My Answer: The Kabbalistic text that will be closest to you (in terms of clarity) is item 110 of the “Introduction to Talmud Eser Sefirot” (there you will also find references to earlier source texts). It states: “We must thoroughly understand what is written in Tractate Kidushin, p. 40: ‘One must always regard oneself half guilty and half pure. If he performs one Commandment, happy is he, for he has sentenced the world to a scale of merit. If he commits one sin, woe unto him for he has sentenced the world to a scale of demerit.’

Rabbi Elazar, son of Rabbi Shimon, says, ‘The world is judged by its majority, and the individual is also judged by the majority. Hence if he performs one Commandment, happy is he, for he has sentenced himself and the entire world to a scale of merit. If he commits one sin, woe unto him, for he has sentenced himself and the entire world to a scale of demerit. Because of this one sin that he had committed, the world and he have lost much good.’”

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Three questions I received on finding contact with me:

Question: Do you have a personal page on the site odnoklasniki.ru (the Russian version of classmates.com)? I’m asking because there are currently two personal pages of yours on this site.

My Answer: I don’t have anything to do with these pages, as you probably suspected. Someone else is writing them using my name. My opinions are stated only on this blog and the official websites of the Bnei Baruch organization.

Question: If people ask you good questions that can’t be answered during the virtual morning lesson because of the time limit, can you answer them on this blog?

My Answer: If the questions are very peculiar, for example, on the construction of the worlds, then they can’t be answered on this blog because the blog is for everyone. However, if the question is general, then I always answer it here.

Question: Someone advised me to speak to a Kabbalist. Is there any time when you take visitors?

My Answer: I don’t accept visitors and I don’t give advice or blessings. According to Kabbalah, the only way to truly change your destiny is to change yourself, because you are opposite the unchanging Light – the Creator’s force of bestowal and love. Hence Kabbalah considers everything else no more than psychological reassurance, which in the long run only exacerbates a person’s illness: his imbalance with the Creator. In other words, it causes the illness (egoism) to be neglected.

Kabbalah gives you the method to change yourself, and the rest depends on you. We always focus on questions of self-correction. Good luck!

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Three questions I received on women’s work in Kabbalah:

Question: What is a woman’s role in Kabbalah?

My Answer: Both in our world and in the society of the future, which will be corrected from egoism, a woman is a full fledged half and more, because all people complete each other in a single system. A woman can feel her own perfection and full value only through self-correction, by becoming loving and bestowing to the entire world. It’s precisely in her corrected state that the female part of the common soul feels equal, or even greater than everyone, because precisely the desire that’s embodied by the female part of the common soul becomes the reason for the revelation of the Creator (the Light).

Question: If Lo Lishma (לא לשמה) doesn’t push a person to attain Lishma (לשמה), then the group has to exert its influence on him. How can a woman elicit this pressure?

My Answer: With her desire, because she depends on the attainment of the Light by the men’s group.

Question: I want to open up a book, read it, and enjoy it. But ever since I started studying Kabbalah I no longer enjoy reading. What should I do?

My Answer: Learn to receive pleasure from the Upper Worlds!

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A question I received: The second part of the film Zeitgeist was recently released. It encourages all of humanity to unite and gives advice on how to build the new world order based on equal distribution of resources, a new education, and mutual guarantee. It also refers to the laws of nature. Are these people our partners?

My Answer: No. In fact, I’m not even familiar with this movement. However, the ideas of unity and globality are already in the air and I’m happy that more and more people are realizing that it’s urgently necessary to implement them in the human society.

However, the correction can only be achieved by the Upper Light, which descends while people study its Source. The description of the Light’s Source is found only in the authentic Kabbalistic books, and in our time, the most effective books are Baal HaSulam’s. That’s why we study them all the time. There’s nothing for me to look for anywhere else because I’ve already proven to myself and through myself that this method is effective.

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I had a conversation that was recorded about the reasons for the financial crisis with Mr. Leonid Makaron, the Director General of the largest Russian media holding company “Pronto Moscow,” Vice President of the “The Russian Periodical Press Publishers Guild,” a professor and scientific adviser of the advertisement and marketing chair at the Moscow State University of Press.

He lives on five continents, stays on top of all the events happening in the world, and is very sensitive to the changes taking place in the world. I meet with him regularly, and our meetings help me feel what’s going on in the world as well as the opinions of people in high positions about it, and then to compare all this with Kabbalah’s opinion. I hope these opinions will soon converge!

Read a transcript of the conversation

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Two questions I received on relating to one’s environment:

Question: In one of your lessons in the United States, you said that people who are ready for a new worldview should voluntarily limit their needs to the minimum bodily necessities for food, shelter, leisure and knowledge. What should we do about the rest of our surroundings such as children, spouses, and parents, who are not ready to limit themselves? Is it sufficient to limit myself while giving those around me what they desire, and show them that my path is correct just through personal example? By the way, I have acted this way all my life, and in return everyone around me tacitly hates me and puts me down.

My Answer: If one’s head is “in the clouds,” then he naturally takes no more than the necessities from this world. He does not have to limit himself because this just comes to him naturally. This is the attitude one has when he realizes that the whole world is one family.

If the people around you hate you and put you down, it’s probably because you’re forcing them or prohibiting them from something.

Question: Can one person make another person feel a lack or need (whether spiritual or corporeal)?

My Answer: The environment can evoke or suppress any earthly desire in anyone (see the article “The Freedom”). Moreover, if a person has a point in the heart, the society can accelerate its development.

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Three questions I received on souls and reincarnation:

Question: At some point you talked about how a single Soul descended into this world in different bodies throughout centuries: Abraham, Moses, Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai, the Ari, and Baal HaSulam. As I understand, you and everyone who has crossed the Machsom (or in the process of crossing it) are in contact with this Soul. Has it completed its mission?

My Answer: No, it hasn’t. We are all parts of one soul. Its “lighter” parts have already undergone correction and are now helping all of us (this is called Zhut Avot in Hebrew). Gradually, one by one, they help us to do the same thing they did – connect to the single soul of Adam. All of humanity are parts of this single soul, the only created creature.

Question: What is a “ Kabbalistic soul”?

My Answer: It’s a soul that compels a person to attain the Creator. Actually, there are no other souls, because if a person still doesn’t have the aspiration to reveal the Creator, he still doesn’t have a soul. However, this aspiration will be revealed in the future, or perhaps in the next life cycle.

Nevertheless, even if a person doesn’t have this aspiration, listening to or reading Kabbalistic materials will accelerate the revelation of the aspiration toward the Creator and the revelation of the soul.

Question: If one is born a genetic Jew, does this mean that one always reincarnates as a Jew?

My Answer: Yes, just like anyone else. It’s because our world is an imprint of the Upper World, and a person is a copy of the soul.

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On November 25, at the Foreign Press Association Media Award in London, Prince Charles stated:

Humanity has a natural tendency to consume and if there are no limits on that tendency we can become obsessed simply with satisfying our desires. The desire grows ever more potent as we consume ever more, even though we achieve very little of the actual satisfaction we desire…

We hear so many people admitting to feeling deeply dissatisfied. This reminds me of that wise observation about Gross National Product made by Robert Kennedy forty years ago, that it “measures everything except that which makes life worthwhile.”

…many do not even realize that we have lost something very precious – what I might best describe as that intuitive sense of our interconnectedness with Nature… I consider our problems today not to be an environmental crisis per se… nor a financial crisis. They all stem from this fundamental crisis in our perception.

…the denial of our real relationship with the universal truths through a deep connection with Nature and her laws has engendered a dangerous alienation. In denying or forgetting the invisible “grammar of harmony” we create cacophony and dissonance.

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