L.A. Kabbalah Convention October 31 - November 2 2014

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The Secret Of Unity

Rabash, Letter 40: And when one begins to feel the love of his friend, joy and pleasure immediately begin to awaken in him….because he always knew that he was the only one who cared for his own well being. But the minute he discovers that his friend cares for him, it evokes within him immeasurable joy, and he can no longer care for himself, since man can toil only where he feels pleasure. And since he is beginning to feel pleasure in caring for his friend, he naturally cannot think of himself.

We can never satisfy ourselves, even though it seems to us that we are doing everything for the sake of this. Our common general Kli is built such that only what we get from outside can fulfill us and not what each one of us produces. So we need to fulfill each other.

This is the most essential secret of unity, when people begin to feel that they can fulfill each other: each one includes within himself the desires of the others and begins to work on them, and the Light fills everyone. To the degree that each one is integrated in the desire of the other, the Light fills these desires.

The main rule for true elevation in the way of the Creator is a condition of unity amongfriends. And when are the friends united? This is when they gather together and each one humbles himself before the others by seeing the greatness of the friends. Even if someone doesn’t see the friends as great, he must obligate himself to see their greatness. If a person doesn’t see the others as higher than he is, he must examine himself.

In a Kabbalistic group, a person who studies correctly must always see the others as higher than he is. This is not some kind of unique state of elevation, but the normal state of the group.

He is envious of the friends with a good envy; he is drawn after them, takes an example from them. And if there is no envy, this is bad. A person must be afraid that everyone will discover that he is valueless and nothing, and will begin to despise him.

This feeling must be permanent, for it is very helpful for advancement. Everyone must be happy that he is given such a feeling, which is a useful means for advancement. So it is necessary to be concerned that it will be constant: seeing how dedicated the friends are, how they sacrifice themselves by being in much worse situations than you, and at the same time they are investing greater efforts than you do.

From small examples like these are created a yearning from “me” to “we,” because if the friends are higher than I am, I want to be with them, to be included with them, so that I will dissolve in them completely.
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From the Convention In St. Petersburg “Day Two” 9/20/14, Lesson 4

The Daily Direction 10.29.2014

The Torah commands us that we will discover, after all the variety of dominances upon us, that there is only one dominance

Each and every moment that we go through in our lives we certainly go through these moments out of the control of the Upper, the only one, and our purpose must then be, in each and every moment, to discover, to try, to yearn for it, to discover Him as the one who rules and besides that as "Good who does Good."

To what point should I discover that he is "Good who does good"? To the point of "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your will." That to such an extent we must know His actions, that in all of my vessels I discover Him as the only one and as good. And my vessels are specifically desires, that in each and every desire, in each and every thought, an opposite form appears from "Good who does good" and from "None else besides Him." Meaning, that I have to work on all of my vessels, to ask for corrections. Why do I need to correct them? To discover Him as the only one who operates as well as in the right intention, in the right attitude, in a good attitude. [Part 1, min 03:50]

To be an higher example for each and every friend

A man is unable to overcome his own desires and thoughts, mind and heart, that appear in him. Certainly if the environment is not holding him, he won't be able to hold by himself. He must have around him people that are like him, that will give him a good example versus his state.  

Meaning, a good environment is called friends who more or less are in the same situation, each one according to the Reshimo that appears in him individually, but they all have the same direction, the same goal, they all understand what has to be done. And mostly even if they don't understand, they try to be a higher example for each and every friend. [Part 1 Min 35]

The real "Lo Lishma" begins when I see everyone as great

We need to understand that the first stage, let's say the first half in the way of preparation towards the entrance to the real spiritual work, is that I need to reach a state that I'm in a holy society, that everyone are much greater than me. That I, among them, don't deserve to be among them. That I can't justify them, can't appreciate them as great. That the Creator is immersed in them, truly in this form, that for now I will even feel it in an artificial form, that I search how to stabilize my attitude towards the society.

But definitely the real "Lo Lishma" begins when I see everyone as great. That with their help I have the chance to advance in "Lo Lishma". This means that I stabilized myself in the correct “Lo Lishma” and that now the society is able give me strength by seeing them as great and I am yearning, running to be inside them, I want to stick to them, learn from them, to be inside them as the tiniest, just to be inside them.

This is the right attitude, that from this “Lo Lishma” is begin to get closer to “Lishma”. That I already arranged myself inside the general Kli. That I, if so, can now say that the Creator is in them, inside the friends, and I don’t miss nothing but to attach to them. This means that I desire for the love of friends, and after, from that to the love of God. But it is not possible that I will discover necessity for the love of God, which is spiritual, not corporeal, like we love in corporeality, by the extent that we receive, then this is what I have to do. Here in our way we have clear signs to which attitude we have towards the society, that only by that we examine our state. [Part 1, Min 39]

Games Of The Creator

Question: There can be these states where we are so integrated into the group, come to lessons, and keep the connection with the friends, as if everything was within us and there was no external force, noCreator. The question arises, whether this force exists on the outside or do we build it on our own?

Answer: The Creator plays with us. He gives you, like small children, the opportunity to be shown to what extent you are, as if, independent, understanding, clever, and brave.

You need to stop yourselves in time. There can’t be any forward advancement, only if He pulls you, carries you on His wings, pulls you forward, or pushes you from behind.

We have no motor! The motor isn’t within us, and the fuel is from Him. We don’t have any! It is done on purpose to later show us how far we have come.

We need to balance everything and not complain that we have nothing. We are nobody and have nothing, i.e., we are like a rag underfoot or a pile of broken mechanisms. No. It needs to be in the middle, somewhere in between the two.

At each moment of our existence we need to feel the necessity for the upper force: the need to recognize good and evil, the need to differentiate between them, the need for the correct choice for the direction of forward movement.

As Baal HaSulam explained, one needs to go forward correctly exactly in the middle line. This means that without any connection to the next level, to the upper line, to a higher category, you are not able to do anything.
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From the Convention In St. Petersburg “Day One” 9/19/14, Lesson 2

From A Small Stream To The Great Sea Of Wholeness

Question: What is the attitude of the wisdom of Kabbalah to the modern development of the world? Towards what is the world advancing? Will there be an end to the situation that we call the “crisis”?

Answer: The translation of the word “crisis”” from Greek means, a new birth, rather than the destruction of the old. Basically, destruction of the old means that the new already exists. It has appeared, but we have yet to discover it.

How can we pass through this state of the birth of a new world comfortably, rapidly, and pleasantly?

We have always developed with the help of the ego that has consistently pushed us by way of all the social structures until we have now reached a state in which we have totally lost the desire to evolve. Space exploration, the development of nature, and a wide range of scientific studies have all gradually waned.

For the first time in human history, we feel that our ego has completely failed us.

The world is sinking into nihilism, into lack of activity, and into an absence of desire to create anything. We see that even with the best intentions, everything that we do ultimately acts against us. The world around us doesn’t make us happy and doesn’t provides us with pleasant situations. We don’t want to bring children into the world or establish families, nor do we see anything good about the future. And all this is because our ego has exhausted itself, and we no longer have any motivation to advance.

So, what is next?

The wisdom of Kabbalah reveals the whole picture of reality to us. It says that at present, we are at a crossroad in history where we must change our egoistic nature from reception to bestowal. This means changing our nature into one that is altruistic. We must come to realize the eternal Biblical principle, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

And so through a new covenant between us, we begin to experience a new picture of reality. We begin to attract the positive forces of nature because we ourselves create a positive society from ourselves.

The wisdom of Kabbalah explains how to do this, so our task is to study this science.

Throughout all the thousands of years of its existence, the wisdom of Kabbalah has been the inheritance of only a small handful of people, the Kabbalists, who developed it from generation to generation. For many years this hidden science flowed within humanity like a small stream, although many scientists and philosophers: Newton, Leibnitz, Pico della Mirandola, and others, investigated it.

Plato and Aristotle took the basis of their knowledge from the wisdom of Kabbalah. The 16^th century German philosopher, Johannes Reuchlin, wrote a great work, De Arte Cabalistica (On the Art of the Kabbalah). This is to say that the wisdom of Kabbalah has been known to scientists, and yet, it didn’t go beyond their circle.

In our time, it has been revealed to everyone because it must explain to us how we will attain mutual connection between us.

The wisdom of Kabbalah says that our world is integrally connected as an analog system in which all parts are connected to each other. From our daily work we discover that this world is an absolute closed system. The still, vegetative, animate and speaking levels of nature are connected to each other and are found together as a single complex.

If this is indeed so, we need to reach complete harmony in the connection between us in order to reach a good and beautiful state.

How can harmony like this be reached? For this we must develop a good connection. According to the wisdom of Kabbalah, the moment we begin with the right circuits of interaction, we will immediately feel how we attract a higher positive energy onto ourselves. This will not be the negative egoistic power that exists in our world and in which everything is based upon opposition and blows, but its opposite. This is a positive energy that fills, supplies, strengthens, and connects us to each other and creates a single whole.

This general harmony will be like the unified power of nature, the great global system, this sphere within which we exist.

The general crisis, which is in fact a product of the disharmony between nature and humanity, will then disappear. We will feel the universe absolutely differently, as eternal and whole. We will merit that eternal and complete existence and our world with its ego will begin to gradually disappear from our senses.

I hope that the present generation will understand what opportunities are in our hands, and how we can truly overcome the crisis in a good and beautiful way. If we are able to do this, we will reach the better, higher state that is intended for humanity.
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From an interview with the television agency, NTV 6/20/14

Subtleties Of The Mutual Cooperation Between The Parts Of The Common Soul

Torah, “Leviticus” (Acharei Mot), 18:9: The nakedness of thy sister, the daughter of thy father, or the daughter of thy mother, whether born at home, or born abroad, even their nakedness thou shalt not uncover.

This is about a system of mutual cooperation between the male and the female parts of the general vessel (Kli).

Every part of the vessel of receiving is of a female attribute. The male attribute is the attribute of bestowal that cannot connect with the female attribute (the desire to receive) if they both stem from incorrect connections between them.

Thus, the prohibition of “The nakedness of thy sister… thou shalt not uncover” refers to the fact that it is impossible for these two parts to connect when there is no Light ofHassadim in it. That is the clothing, the dressing on the Light of Hochma.

At least twenty attributes of each Light and their names are clarified in Talmud Eser Sefirot (The Study of the Ten Sefirot) since it is very difficult to explain. However, we must understand that we are in this world only in order to work on the correction of the soul.

Now, on the current level of our evolution, we have entered the system called this world, and we must exist in it for a while and perform certain actions, and then move on.

The Torah speaks only about the corrections that we must perform while being on the level of this world when we feel ourselves inside a body, by corporeal means. The Torah doesn’t speak about the rest of the huge round we must undergo and about the other parts of our path.

When we speak about this world or about our world, we refer to our current state, and to what we think and feel now. It is because our world is a certain condition. We are placed in a certain block that was shattered into time, place, motion, and so forth, and we must perform certain actions on ourselves while living in it.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 3/19/14

I Desire, The Light Corrects

Question: It is said in Shamati #5 that the properties of Lishma (for the sake of bestowal to others and to the Creator) are awakened from Above. If this property appears in us “on its own,” without our participation, then why do we need to apply efforts, i.e., try to awaken this property from below?

Answer: The thing is that without our participation, no changes will happen to our egoistic, receiving nature. We won’t start caring for others, nor will we orient ourselves to serve them.

This mission is impossible in this material world. Any system, even a purely mechanical one, requires some energy to perform work. It always loses a certain amount of energy.

The only exceptions to this rule are low-temperature, superconducting systems in which upon certain conditions there appears a property that doesn’t allow the system to consume energy for its own sake, but makes it give the energy away. This example sheds some light on what “acting for the sake of others” means.

We are constructed in a way that we always have to gain something. Without this feeling, we cannot do anything at all. That’s why changing our nature to its opposite, bestowal, seems unfeasible and incredible to us.

We should learn how to feel other’s desires and how to fulfill them. We have to regard ourselves as a remedy to fill others. It’s not natural for this world, nor does it exist at the inanimate, vegetative, animate, or speaking levels.

That’s why Baal HaSulam raises a question about how to acquire the property for the sake of the Creator, i.e., how can we start caring for absolute strangers with whom we have nothing in common and to whom we don’t have the slightest feelings that even remotely remind us, let’s say, of the relationship between a mother and a child. This situation implies an absolutely clear understanding that we are acting without any feasible possibility to get anything in return.

Unless we acknowledge that our nature is a hundred percent egoistic, we won’t ever understand how it is possible to go through such an inversion. A human brain is incapable of comprehending how this kind of inversion can take place in this material world.

Anything that happens to us teaches us that our work that we conduct on ourselves and things that we are trying to achieve in the group is always done solely for the sake of getting a reward. It can be a “restitution” that compensates us for only 1% of our efforts; the other 99% of our activities we do for the sake of others. Still, anything we ever do is done only because of this 1%.

For example, many steam and mechanical engines have efficiency not higher than 3-5%, but they were created specifically to perform with this level of efficiency. That’s why for us 1% has a huge significance. All we do is just for this 1%. If not for this 1%, we won’t be able to give 99% to others.

The question is: Do we really work to get 1% and for this kind of reward we involuntarily give away 99%? Let’s say, I have a boss who exploits me and pays me the minimum wage, but this wage somehow supports my existence. On the contrary, the work I do for my boss equals 99%, and I get back only 1% even though I don’t approve of this state of affairs. However, I won’t be able to exist without this 1%. If I don’t understand this “plan,” I won’t be able to work for my boss at all.

If we explore ourselves deeply enough, we’ll see that in order to achieve complete bestowal without receiving anything for our own sake, we are unable to make a single move, our body just won’t let us! Therefore, it’s possible to come to a state of absolute bestowal only under a special influence from Above.

Those who are subject to this kind of impact go through the process of internal inversion and relate to themselves in a totally different way. That’s why it is said: “Try and see how beautiful the Creator is” since the property of complete bestowal “outside ourselves” is a quality of the Creator.

If it is so, then we just have to understand why we should apply all kinds of efforts, follow numerous tips, try to reach the property of complete bestowal even if we know that no advice can ever help us to re-arrange ourselves unless the upper force descends and corrects us, thus giving us a chance to work for the sake of others.

In this case, why should we keep trying? The thing is that each one of us has a responsibility to apply maximal efforts and strive to correct  ourselves using any remedies that are available to us. Exertions that we make are called “a prayer.” In other words, a prayer is a demonstration of our intentions and desires. A prayer is a manifestation of what in fact we are aspiring to.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/8/14, Shamati #5

Prayer As A Manifestation Of Human Desires

It seems to us that a prayer is a canonized appeal to a “human-like” object. However, in this world, we understand the notion of prayer incorrectly. In fact, at any given moment, whatever we do, we always pray, meaning we express our desires. The expression of our desires is called a prayer.

Kabbalah is a system of relationships with the upper force that began at the time of Adam. It is the most ancient wisdom in the world that began 5,775 years ago; a human by the name of Adam initiated the relationships with the upper level of nature that is now called the Creator because it stands for the system that created us. This explains why the most basic and correct definitions should be borrowed from the wisdom of Kabbalah.

Adam called the manifestation of human desires a prayer because our constantly changing desires modify the system we live in. The system reacts to our prayers directly since we act within its boundaries. So, we constantly pray, thus the system continuously changes, thereby impacting us.

That’s why we have to correctly direct our desires, concentrate on the system we exist in, thus shaping joint intentions and promoting our internal advancement so that we can influence the system purposefully instead of chaotically impacting it by having diverse desires. For that, we unite in groups and encourage each other, thereby approaching certain intentions and desires, and defining a vision of our future. Our focused exertions affect the system greatly; therefore, it begins reacting to our influence very sensibly.

When we interact with each other, we start feeling a great need for the property of bestowal and love, the quality of integrality and mutual aid. When we effectively and strongly influence the system, it begins influencing us. This “feedback” can dramatically modify us even if we don’t have a desire to change deep inside us.

Because we are egoists, we have only one type of desire. That’s why we are unable to demand from the system that it change our desires and intentions. No matter what, we will always bring up our egoistic incentives. However, the system is built in a way that even if our request is not sincere, it still reacts to our demands correctly. This is because the shattering, the inversion from altruism to egoism, progressed from top to bottom. That’s why when we raise our requests from the bottom up, the system corrects them.

When we are together with the group, we unite; thus, each of us receives a desire to move correctly inside the system. When we impact the system by our willingness to change and rise above our egoistic nature, it responds to us.

Most important is to remember that we are constantly under the system’s influence. Even if we are not yet a corrected element of the system but we manage to stick together in a group and continue our efforts to self-correct, then we influence the entire system in a good way. In return, the system modifies us by its reciprocal influence. By doing so, the system corrects, revives, and rectifies itself.

This explains why everything depends on our prayer, meaning on our having good aspirations even though they are still very small, weak, and primitive. Our aspirations are being calculated within the system. It is a constant cumulative process in which all sorts of reciprocal corrections take place.

It’s essential not to cool down when working in the group. We should support each other, mutually enhance our individual desires, and take advantage of our egoistic properties such as jealousy, envy, and competition. We should use these features to reach the desirable results from others, particularly from our tens, thereby multiplying our desire to improve by dozens of times.

Every friend, becoming ten times greater, will tell the others about their new increased desires. Then, each one of our friends borrows a hundred times more from others, and so on and so forth. It means that when we are in a circle, there are no limitations in strengthening our desires to change.

Moreover, when one falls, others rise. This counterbalance keeps us on a constant move to correction. In this case, we truly can raise our huge desires to the system, urge it to change us and ask it to influence us by reciprocal reaction, the so-called Ohr Makif, the Returning Light, that gradually corrects us.

A self-tuning, self-correcting spiritual system, as any other type of a search engine, constantly explores how to better react to us, absorb us, adapt us to it so that we completely correct and turn into its useful elements. This is how it is built.

The Study of the Ten Sefirot teaches us that the system of the upper worlds consists of 125 levels: five worlds each of which includes five discrete multifunctional blocks(Partzufim), and  each block in turn consisting of five sub-levels (Sefirot). It is a very flexible system that quickly adapts to our demands. When we strive to coordinate with it through our desires and become similar to it, rise to its highest levels and enter a state of absolute homeostasis, connected with it, then the system immediately reacts to our desires and corrects us in a certain way so that we turn into its active, useful, and internal components.

Then we begin controlling the system due to the fact that previously we were its corrupt elements, whereas at this point we approach a state of correction. This is an extraordinary, miraculous property: If an uncorrected particle strives to self-correct, it influences the entire system much stronger than its already corrected elements.

Due to the fact that we are positioned between the system’s corrupt and corrected layers, we have a chance to sense, understand, analyze, and synthesize the properties and possibilities that are a full degree higher than the mechanistic system itself. Our egoistic “I” that we strive to alter helps us become a totally different entity and rise to a new level in the structure of the higher force that created the entire system. I rise above the system and become similar to the property of bestowal and love, to the authentic quality of everything there is, to the Creator.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/8/14, Shamati #5

Transform To Become An Active Part Of The General System

Question: We have connections with many Jewish youth organizations. How timely is it to be involved with dissemination in a Jewish environment in our nation and how do we approach this?

Answer: I don‘t think that the prerequisites for this exist in Russia and in the Ukraine. The Jewish stratum of the population is still not concerned about questions of its nationality.

As long as the surrounding population has not touched upon this question, they don’t care about anything. But when a wave of anti-Semitism reaches them, then it could be that conditions for leaving will appear.

The fact is that the Creator will completely arouse anti-Semitism in all parts of the world to its greatest depths and will not let any Jews live in peace so that they will understand that physical persecution is conditional upon bringing them to carry out their spiritual mission.

After all,  without the participation of all the Jews of the world, the correction of humanity is impossible. We need to get them used to dissemination, study, and the implementation of this program. Otherwise there will not be success.

When we are talking about a general network in which each one of us is a node on a particular juncture in the network,  the Jews are specifically those small nodes (links) that have been actively participating in the work of this network for nearly two thousand years. They belong to the group of Abraham; they worked within the system correctly from the start but then fell from this level, which itself caused all of this.

Now this group must create itself again. By restoring the right connection, they will attract all the rest of the small links after them. And without the correction of the parts of the network that were once active, we cannot reach the correct and harmonious working of the entire system called the “soul” in which to reveal the Creator.

When the system is awakened, it searches for the problem. So then anti-Semitism appears. The connection network feels that its active parts are acting negatively and working against it.

So the anti-Semites are right when they see that the Jews, who are the inner part of the system, are the source of its malfunction. The negative association directed at Jews throughout the world must bring them to an awareness of their function within the system, and then they will begin to be corrected against their will.

The Bnei Baruch group was created among these parts that were acting incorrectly, trying to participate correctly in the work of the system. It follows that the anti-Semites will put pressure on the Jews of the world on all sides, and from within we will begin to explain to them how they must be corrected to transform into active positive parts for the entire system, meaning for all humanity. So with the help of both of them, the work will be carried out for the correction of the entire connected network.
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From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/8/14, Writing of Rabash

All The World Is A Stage

Question: Why do people like to recollect past events, even if they were tragic?

Answer: If an event recedes into the past, it is no longer perceived as a physical action, it leaves behind only the emotional experience. Moreover, a person now has an opportunity to understand the past and feel it deeply.

People love to read stories or listen to songs that remind them of past trials, to share memories about what they went through in Stalin’s or concentration camps that they miraculously managed to survive.

They reminisce about their unrequited love, about separation from loved ones, namely, about various dramas of their lives. But later, it is all mitigated, since this is how our life works. The whole life is a theater. This is the realization that we come to at the end of our life, we acquiesce, we see that it is indeed so, and therefore we view life’s entire traveled path as a theatrical performance.

We are ready to stop worrying about the past, having understood that it had to happen exactly so. The play is over, the curtain falls, and this life comes to an end.

Theater, therefore, has much to teach us. If it is a truly good production, we are ready to pay high prices for tickets, and we get ready for the outing to the theater as for a special event.

Throughout the two hours of the play, a whole period of life unfolds in front of us along with its ensuing moral. We see life’s situations that we can learn from and draw personal conclusions, imagining ourselves in the place of the characters. The theater has a very high educational potential, the only question is: How it can be used correctly?
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From KabTV’s “A New Life” 5/22/14

Nature Is Unity

We live in a “bubble” of nature, the still, vegetative, and animate.Through this we provide for our existence. And this environment “transmits” or arranges for us precisely those conditions that are required for our advancement.

In this way we are given an abundance of constant changes. Indeed, in general, it is necessary to understand that beginning from the Big Bang this process has continued to this very day, and for its entire length, the general power of development has moved us forward toward its goal, toward complete balance.

During the course of this process, the nature of the still, vegetative, and animate developed on the face of the earth, and after that the human species. And at a particular moment in history, whether it wanted this or not, the human species had to take the “reins,” meaning the management tools into its hands to be properly included in development.

From this moment on we have been involved with the process not as we were before. Until becoming aware of the situation, we developed instinctively in a way similar to the nature of the still, vegetative, and animate, among whom there are also plenty of troubles, problems, and the pressure of circumstances, including disasters.

But the more we have developed, the more we have become linked to the process; we participate in it consciously and with understanding, and this is how we have more problems. For now they are contingent upon this: Do we accept the message ourselves, are we developing together with nature? If so, it will be good for us, and if not, it will be bad for us, depending on our level of development.

Adam was the first to discover the general process of evolution through which we must go, not only on the “beastly” material level, but also on the human level. Beginning from Adam, who lived 5775 years ago, we have moved on to a new phase. We are “embedded” within nature; according to the degree of participation with it, we are ready to arouse and invite upon ourselves, as well as the overall levels of the still, vegetative, and animate, a good, pleasant, rapid, and easy development.

Natural development is generally characterized by very strict stages. They are similar to a difficult birth, they are connected to stress, problems, and dangers, and are accompanied by dramatic natural phenomena. For millions of years the Earth has cooled, hardened, and again warmed, torn by the pressure of magma.

Geological eras were replaced, the nature of the earth was changed, individual species died and others appeared, the warming and cooling alternated, and finally we reached the present situation, which is not final either. We also continue developing; moreover, it is more rapid than in previous eras.

In general, all of this has been contingent on the general force of nature, which thewisdom of Kabbalah explores in depth. The concepts of “divinity” and “nature” are identical, for this speaks about a power that has a precise general plan within which we must be integrated, gradually understanding and attaining it. We must be included within it consciously and with knowledge by discovering a more and more mature participation. This integration is also recorded in it.

Returning to Adam, he was the first to discover this program and understand that nature seeks balance. This means that we balance ourselves with the nature of the still, vegetative, and animate, and likewise build balance between us on the human level such that ultimately every person on the face of the Earth will feel that there is no rift or detachment between us and between everything that is found outside of us; this is called the development of consciousness. I reach an awareness, an understanding, a feeling, that all of nature is a unified system. And with this unified system I am in harmony, in reciprocity, in homeostasis, in a mutual exchange of materials, thoughts, and desires.

In this manner I must ultimately nullify all detachment and gaps between what I feel now as self and what feels external. My skin doesn’t separate me from the world and the environment anymore. I reach awareness and an understanding that everything belongs to a single unified system; it is all the essence of the self.

The human level is like this. Our bodies belong to the animate world, whereas our essence belongs to the human level, which is higher. Its uniqueness is that in it we see we perceive the world as a single whole.

In this single and unique world we discover the unique power of nature that manages everything, and we identify and merge with it. Anyone who has tried to attain nature as balance of a single whole has discovered and attained this process precisely to its final state where we join and merge with the surrounding force of nature.

The last “station” on the way of our development is like this. We don’t know what will happen after this. Indeed there is also some further stage…
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From KabTV’s “A New Life” 10/21/14

From Shabbat Page 24/10/14

The Place of His Glory

The Torah corrects us all the time, depending only on to what extent and with what we participate. This means that there is such a movement here in which I apparently don’t participate but react. My body necessarily reacts to what is happening, to what the Torah brings me, and this is called the way of “in its time.” More or less, this is the way in which all of humanity is found. There are also people who have the opportunity to advance consciously, with understanding and awareness, with sensitivity. According to the awakening that they get, they are called “Israel,” “Yashar-El” (Straight to God). So they can assist in their own development and advance more rapidly. But their advancement is that they are concerned about the world. They take upon themselves the task of the Creator, bringing all of creation to adherence with Him. And so these people who receive an awakening must examine the awakening they received, what it is for. This is not for their own benefit; rather they must be representatives of the Creator and convey, on whatever plane they exist, His Torah, His task, to be the conduit to all of humanity and to bring them closer to the Creator. So they have a big job of scrutiny and correction, specifically for this purpose. So they don’t want to correct themselves and advance towards being for the Creator and adherent to him, no. Rather, they must first of all be concerned about everyone. So they begin to understand that the Creator is not found alone. There is nothing like this; rather, the Creator is found within corrected humanity. They must reach this. So it takes a long time until a person scrutinizes where the place of the glory of the Creator is. And after that, he already begins to act correctly. He understands also that nullification for the sake of bestowal and adherence with the power of bestowal can only exist through the creatures, “from love of the creatures to love of the Creator.” Then he arranges all of his actions according to this.

From the Morning Lesson, The Writings of Rabash, “What is the Torah and the Work in the Way of the Creator?” October 23, 2014

Many Things Exist In This World

Question: I read your materials and was amazed concerning the issue of the development of the ego and its intermediate steps at the level of inanimate – coral, the level of vegetative – the “dog of the field,” and the level of animate – the monkey and the human being.

Many ask themselves what is the “dog of the field?” Is it a squirrel in the Arava desert or another kind of squirrel? After all, you are referring to a vegetative animal. Could you please present an exact scientific name, preferably in Latin if possible?

Otherwise, we will seem naïve and ridiculous, and there isn’t any such scientific subcategory. The children in school are taught that the monkey is also an animal. While the monkey is similar to a human being, it belongs to the animals but can constitute a kind of bridge to people. All of these materials should be presented through scientific editing.

Answer: I will leave the search for scientific confirmation of the words of the Ari to you. He was a great Kabbalist who attained the upper world and from there describes its structure in the language of the branches, which is the result of our world.

What does he mean exactly, I don’t dare argue with, but I am sure that if he wrote it from within his attainment of the upper roots, then a plant-animal, like the “dog of the field,” exists, although it hasn’t yet been discovered by science or known with these attributes.

I also don’t know exactly what kind of monkey from our evolutionary ancestors he means. The scientists try to test which of them is closest to us, but they also can make mistakes.

I only bring the words of the Ari whose opinion is correct beyond any shadow of a doubt. On the other hand, man will gradually discover all the upper roots from within his spiritual attainment and, accordingly, the corresponding branches.

Opinion (E.P. Fridman, Interesting Primatology): A man has twenty-three sets of chromosomes, and superior monkeys have twenty-four sets. However, one mustn’t think that the other monkeys, including the more inferior ones so distant from man in their chromosomal structure, determine a great similarity between types of man and many types of inferior monkeys.

However, it is understood that the greatest similarity of chromosomes is determined in man and the chimpanzee, as much as 98%. There is less similarity between the other types of monkeys as compared to man and the chimpanzee.

According to the basic principle signs of similarity between man and the monkey, according to chromosomes and genetic systems, the closest is the chimpanzee and the gorilla. After them comes the orangutan and, after that, the gibbon.

The resemblance between man and monkeys can’t be compared with the rest of the animals according to the structure and attributes of the many hormones. In the hemoglobin chain of the gorilla, there are a total of two substitutions of amino acids. The biochemist, Zurkerkendal, commented, “The gorilla is considered justifiably as an abnormal man, or man is considered an abnormal gorilla.”
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A War Over The Taste Of Life

Question: Millions of people read and study the Torah, but what are they looking for if the Creator can only be found in the connectionbetween people?

Answer: Their study is not in vain. Any study of the Torah helps a person advance and enables him to clarify things. Millions of people both religious and nonreligious have studied the Torah in many ways: the Bible, the New Testament, Islam and Christianity. Any form of studying that is somehow connected to the Torah, whether directly or indirectly, helps people advance and prepares humanity for the right connection, for correction, for the revelation of the Creator to all the created beings.

Everything that happens leads to certain outcomes. All the religious struggles and wars in the past and those that are going on today were meant to clarify the right spiritual vessel. It isn’t clear why our desire to receive has to suffer, but it is a fact that the afflictions a person undergoes develop him.

How many people die each day and what terrible diseases are revealed! New viruses will appear in the world to which modern medicine will have no answers and it is all in order to clarify the right desire.

After all, it is impossible to advance towards revealing the right desire unless you are totally disappointed of the previous desires. You are disappointed not because you cannot fulfill these desires but because you want something more meaningful.

If I suffer now, the pain doesn’t enable me to sin because I have no desire, no power, no time left, or the opportunity to do so. The afflictions force me to feel disappointed of the state I am in and to start clarifying the taste of life and of my existence.

I cannot reach the question of “what is the point of my life?” without sufferings. All the extremist streams that existed in Christianity in the past and which are rising in Islam now are meant only for this purpose: to clarify the taste of life. By demanding that the whole world accept their religion and putting their flag in every continent they are fighting for the purpose of human existence.

It is all the subconscious clarification of the thought of creation. At the moment they are clarifying it this way, but we who study Kabbalah must allow them to advance by the Light that Reforms.

This Light is revealed in our desires. If we draw the Light and begin to reveal it sufficiently, it will begin to flow from us to the rest of humanity since all the souls are connected, like connected vessels. Then they will begin to clarify these questions on a totally different level.

Then the extremist Muslims will not have to fight the corporeal bodies and will try to understand more deeply the meaning of life. In the meantime they are looking for the answer to this question by killing one another, but we can raise them to another level of clarification, to the next level.

Then they will understand that the issue isn’t bodies but desires. This clarification will be by the connection to the source of life, to a state that the Light comes from, that we all have to attain. We have to illuminate this way for them and show them that it exists, that it is open for everyone, and that the clarification is actually by the connection between different people, actually between those who are most distant and different.

Thanks to their connection above all the differences and covering all the sins by love, they will discover the upper force, which means that they will attain a deeper meaning of life.

It all depends on us. We only have to teach humanity how to connect in order to discover the Creator in the connection among us. This is the goal we are fulfilling when we organize conversation circles for the public all over the country. Thus we will be able to express the power of unity rather easily since the Israeli nation has been in this state in the past. Later this force will spread from us to the other nations.

Then we will suddenly discover that the moment we manage to connect the nation to the wisdom of truth, which means to connect thanks to the Light that Reforms, the world will suddenly calm down: the wars in Iraq, the Ukraine, and in other places will stop and so will phenomena like the Ebola virus, etc.

Our whole life will work out since we will bring people to a state in which the Upper Light will begin to clarify their desires and they will not need to clarify them by killing each other. Those who can draw the Light are only those who study the wisdom of Kabbalah.
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From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/17/14, Writing of Rabash

The Root Of Ebola: My Health Is Not In My Hands

We ourselves produce phenomena such as Ebola; we ourselves cause such outbreaks, spikes of imbalances. Much was told about this in the framework of ancient healing practices, including Eastern ones.

Modern medicine has evolved over the past few centuries and before that a real doctor was not limited to giving remedies.

Many ancient sages and healers pointed out at the importance of a person’s mental equilibrium, which has an effect on his bodily balance, on his health.

However, then times were different, we weren’t yet so interconnected with each other and so every person individually could determine the state of his health, taking care of the balance of his internal system with nature, with the environment. Accordingly, a doctor could treat him with tinctures and other natural substances, which had a real impact.

Today, they are powerless because we have been poisoned by the environment and are on a completely different level of development of egoism. But in the past, natural remedies, consisting of the elements of the still, vegetative, and animate nature, did their work, along with the measures to maintain or restore the patient’s balance with the environment on the human level.

Nowadays, this factor barely depends on the person himself. The close ties of the “global village,” the universal interconnection, do not allow him to balance and heal himself really just by natural means. In a global world, balance depends not on one person, but on society.

Therefore, I would recommend international organizations such as the UN, UNESCO, WHO and others to take care of this problem. But they should take care properly, understanding that from time immemorial to the present day, in the end everything depends only on the balance between people, which from this degree “spreads” downwards, to the lower levels of nature and our being.
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From KabTV’s “A New Life” 10/19/14

Atonement, The First Step To Correction

It is customary to read the Selichot (atonement) in the Siddurbefore Rosh HaShana and to ask for forgiveness for all the mistakes and sins that we committed in the previous year. A person usually asks for forgiveness if he has done something wrong to someone, not in order to correct evil. But the Selichot are the revelation of the recognition of evil that was caused intentionally or unintentionally by us.

We all know that even in court asking for forgiveness or an apology from one side to the other is taken into account. Sometimes the court decides that the offender should apologize to the offended and if he forgives the offender the sentence is mitigated.

This means that asking for forgiveness is already a correction since a person admits that he has caused harm. Although he has not corrected it yet, he already commits himself to correcting it. Asking for forgiveness is the first step of the correction, so we have to value it and to take it into account.

We say Selichot at the end of the year, at the end of a cycle, at the end of a spiritual level. We complete the spiritual level in a good state since the Torah always speaks about an ascent but at the same time we reach destruction. At the end of the year there is the Ninth of Av together with all the troubles associated with it: the destruction of the First and the Second Temples and more. Then there is the time of the Selichot in which we discover the outcomes of the shattering and realize how shattered, lowly, and loathsome we are, and then we ask for forgiveness.

Interestingly, the month in which we cry and ask for forgiveness brokenheartedly because of the recognition of evil is called “Elul,” which is the Hebrew acronym for “I am my beloved and my beloved is mine.”

But if I realize that I am evil, it is the Creator’s fault because He created my evil inclination. So why should I ask His forgiveness for that.

It turns out that the desired outcome of our work, of the new level we have acquired, is the revelation of the evil inclination in us. We discover the evil in us and attribute it to ourselves, realizing that it is inside us and we want to get rid of it. Otherwise, it isn’t called the recognition of evil.

If a person feels the evil in his ego (his desire to receive) he immediately wants to get rid of it. If I regret my actions I thus commit myself to getting rid of the attributes in me, but, in the meantime, I don’t know how to do that. In the meantime, I cannot do it since I lack the power and the understanding to do so. But I realize that it is bad, which means that I determine my state.

It is about the connection between us because the whole correction begins with that. This means that all the evil is revealed in contrast to the unity, which we don’t want, reject, and try to escape in every way we can.  This is the whole evil; this is our evil inclination.

Of course, the evil inclination was given to us from Above by the Creator. We don’t cry over the fact that it is part of us but over the fact that we don’t want to get rid of it! We cry because we identify with the ego and are ready to stay in it forever! We don’t regret the evil but the fact that we agree to live in it.

We should direct all our complaints to the Creator, “go to the craftsman who made me.” And what is my own sin? Is it my fault that I haven’t worked enough with the means that He gave me in order to be free of this sin? This is what I cry about, about my helplessness and about my reluctance to be free of my ego.

We cry about our inability to get out of our ego and ask the Creator to help us, realizing our weakness with regard to the evil inclination that is revealed.
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From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9.7.14, The Zohar

Learn To Work On Others’ Desires

Question: How can one pass from artificial, cognitive fear to emotional fear?

Answer: It is possible to do this by immersing oneself in thought and emotion. If I am among friends and listen to them all the time, immersing myself in their words, trying to sail on the waves of their thought, I absorb their characteristics and emotions.

Even though inside me everything may be dead, as a result of such mutual influence, my own emotions begin to appear.

If a person is full from the start, this isn’t good. The best situation is when you are empty; you have nothing, not even the smallest desire. You come to the group mechanically and begin the work on yourself from an absolutely dormant state, from a completely empty state.

But it is not worthwhile to immerse oneself in such a state intentionally and worry about that you are not in it. Learn to work with others’ desires and bring yourself to a state of awe because you are absorbing the feelings of your friends. This is very good.

If you are not ready, then invest some effort in others; try to do something physical, or just speak with the friends so that somehow they will awaken you and give you inspiration.
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From the Convention In St. Petersburg “Day One” 9/19/14, Workshop 1