Bold and in quotes: Original text of Baal HaSulam
Regular: Commentaries of Rav Laitman
lowercase italics: emphasized words
Capitalized italics: transliteration from Hebrew
The world we live in becomes more and more hostile to a human being. This has become especially evident within the last 50 years, yet at last humanity has begun realizing that it’s involved in some process, a development or evolution.
Actually the evolution isn’t completed. Who said that a human being originated from a monkey or not? It doesn’t matter. And is that all? Can’t a person evolve any further?
A human being lives on the Earth and gradually adapts himself to it, trying to adjust without even thinking about changing himself. This means that technology, science, culture, social and family patterns are developing. It seems that nothing else is demanded from us.
Before we were being developed by nature. It oppressed people and forced them to develop unconsciously and involuntary, under blows of the surrounding reality. By this we have developed to the level of a conscious human being. Since that time it is commonly assumed that only our social relations are evolving.
Such vision of our state in the world is vicious, as it draws us away from solving the problem. According to Kabbalah, a human being hasn’t finished his development and continues developing. We have to develop further and nature continues to suppress us, forcing us to develop. The only problem is that we don’t understand how to do it.
The development process humanity has to undergo now differs from what was happening to people over the last 40,000 years. Now this process has to be conscious, meaning, a person has to realize why nature makes him evolve, why it continually tries to make him different from what he is presently.
A human being develops by overcoming sufferings. Sufferings helped him to invent machines and change some controls of social relations. Many things were changing during tens of thousands of years, except people themselves. Their attributes weren’t changing, though of course they became cleverer.
Today we see that something different is demanded from us. Nature suppresses us without explaining what it wants from us. Such is its law. The Science of Kabbalah says that nature has a definite purpose; it wishes to lead us to some definite state, while we don’t understand this state or its purpose. That’s why nature simply pushes us from one state to the next state. By this we are somehow changing ourselves under the influence of sufferings. However today we see that these changes are insufficient.
In the past people had nothing to eat, and they forcedly developed agriculture instead of picking fruit and vegetables; they also domesticated animals and developed cattle breeding. They adjusted nature for their needs and survived as a result. This means that nature was forcing a human being, and somehow the human being was changing nature by intensively increasing cropping, cattle breeding, and building higher dwellings for more comfortable living. In other words, a person changed his relations with the other people and built a new lifestyle.
Today we find that all our attempts to change social patters, develop science, and invent new, more complicated mechanisms, don’t make a person happier. Even if it’s possible to provide everyone with food, clothing, and housing, a human being won’t be happy. A person still feels he remains empty inside. Presently, blows of nature are not directed against our body, rather they are aimed at revealing the discomfort of the soul.
The Science of Kabbalah says that we undergo the same process of development, but now it is already development of our soul, of our spirit, and the blows and sufferings we feel make us focus on this issue. We see that depression is the first to afflict a person, with the number of suicides growing; families break up, and children can’t find a common language with their parents. There’s a crisis in culture, in social relations, ethnic conflicts, and terrorism. It all points to the inner discomfort of a person in this world, evolution continues.
In earlier times, we could somehow compensate these sufferings of nature’s pressure by developing the environment. Today it’s already impossible, and by the pressure we feel, we begin to understand that it’s directed against our inner life. That we have to change our life inside ourselves, meaning, we have to change our attitude to the world. The same question arises here: Why? For what purpose does a human being exist?
Naturally, this question always arises during meetings with scientists, psychologists and philosophers. But it is immediately closed, as humanity has no answer for it; the question is simply ignored. Nobody has answers questions such as: “How does one prevent a family dissintegration? How can we solve the problem of a young generation, a problem of suicides, depression, and drugs? How can a person find the only way out of this suppressed state he finds himself in?”
Nature does everything to raise this question before humanity, so that everyone will feel that he’s obliged to find an answer to it. This means that we are to find an answer to the question “What do I exist for?” And the sufferings won’t end, but they will only escalate—global, ecological and inner human sufferings. We already witness the escalation of sufferings, and statistical data tells us about it.
The Science of Kabbalah says that a person has to find an answer to the question about life’s meaning; he has to get to the bottom of this question and solve it for himself. That’s because its solution doesn’t envisage simply calming ourselves and achieving a more comfortable existence in this world. An answer to this question elevates a person to quite another level of existence, which isn’t more comfortable, clearer, more conscious and acceptable for us; when we get rid of sufferings. Not at all. An answer to this question transfers a person to an absolutely different dimension, developing in him such sensations and possibilities, that a person finds himself existing in another dimension. Moreover, it happens like in a fantastic movie: a picture suddenly changes and one finds himself in another place.
All our previous stages of development were no more than the development of our body and its adjustment to the surrounding world. It wasn’t a cardinal change of ourselves, but a mere study of the surrounding world via our five senses, due to which we could achieve some more or less comfortable state for awhile, until nature started oppressing us again. This pressure is exerted neither on plants nor on animals, but on a human being only, and due to this pressure a human being finally begins thinking of how to change himself.
But the problem lies in the fact that if we passed all previous stages of development unconsciously, simply trying to come to a more comfortable state by all means, then today it’s already impossible. A principle difference of this last stage of development, which humanity has entered, is that a person needs to realize himself and the world as they really are, and not as we see them today. For this purpose there exists a method—the Science of Kabbalah.
This means that one won’t come to it naturally. That’s why the Science of Kabbalah was given to humanity at the dawn of its conscious existence 4,000 years ago in a cradleland of humanity, in Babel. And at present we have to adapt this method for ourselves and reveal our genuine existence. It is different from this temporary existence that is limited in volume, in speed and in knowledge; in those tiny years of life which are given to us, when every moment a person struggles in order to provide and to support his living. We have to come to an absolutely different level.
And here the question arises, “What depends on us?” It turns out that everything depends on us. Presently we exist under constant pressure, and every moment in our forced actions we run away from sufferings at the still, vegetative, animate and human levels in us. Every action is carried out due to a sensation of shortage of something: oxygen, position, thoughts, sensations and so on. All our systems are functioning only according to the principle, “sensation of shortage—its compensation.”
The next level of development means that a person already elevates above this, and develops independently, by himself, already consciously, without the forcing blows of nature. This independent existence, irrespective of this sense of shortage, is called the spiritual. It is because a person feels himself as free, meaning he acts this way because he wishes it himself, not because he is forced act so.
It is possible to come to such a state only if we are longing for it independently. This means that if earlier we were pushed by sufferings, then now, opposed to the previous phases of our evolution, the spiritual development occurs only under the influence of a person’s desire. But this desire is very small in a person. It also emerges only under the influence of sufferings.
Today the world undergoes crisis of science, culture, social relations, and family. It witnesses a growing number of suicides, depression, drugs, terrible diseases and ecological catastrophes, and there will be much more of them in future.
All this is done to lead a person to the initial state from which he can develop further by his own will, meaning independently, consciously, not under blows. He has to wish to transform himself into a different creature, acting according to different laws. Not by sufferings and compensation, but by something above these calculations which is an aspiration forward. This means that he has to discover the necessity for this development himself. He should feel a need to develop, not because he envies his neighbor, hates or wants to destroy somebody, longs for wealth, glory or power, but because he is aspiring to a different dimension, different state.
Here lies a certain subtlety which we don’t yet realize. We should aspire not because we lack anything, but on the contrary, because the desired state is perfection. Today nature is pushing us to this state, but we can’t move further. Those who start studying Kabbalah discover this as well. Suddenly a desire which was pushing them, starts fading away, that is, the aspiration to attain the Upper World starts declining. This is also done to enable a person to start evolving himself.
Where can a person get this desire for the new dimension, for the new state, even if it’s described to us as free, perfect, eternal, and fulfilled? When a person feels no sufferings, no needs and no lack in our present perception? When he is above it, out of it, exists above it? How can we progress, longing for such states?
Here a group, an environment helps a person. It acts upon him and supplies him with new desires, including those he never had. Under the influence of the environment a person suddenly becomes inspired by such ideas, goals, which would never occur to him or emerge in his heart naturally. Herein lays a principle of aspiring forward.
Why precisely this principle? And why is our society built in such a way to make us feel the need in it? Because movement forward, to the Upper dimension, in which a person feels himself absolutely different, existing eternally, perfectly. Where existence is not egoistic based on a sensation, “I need something else, I need to fill myself,” but altruistic, based on desire, on aspiration, on the sensation, “Now I lack something, but soon I’ll get this, and these, my sufferings from ‘lacking’ something, my needs are actually the needs of others, which I’m eager to fulfill.”
Acting this way a human being rises above his egoism. He ceases perceiving his life as a constant inner dictate, which makes him do something for the sake of himself. The sensation of time, space, and shortage disappears, because all our sensations of time, space and life are based on egoistic needs to fill ourselves all the time.
When a person rises above this, exists in the state of bestowal, he has no sense of misery or inner emptiness which has to be filled. Thus an environment not only urges a person to aspire to the next state which he is to attain according to evolution, but at the same time it’s a lab where a person perfects his relations with nature, with the world.
Our environment isn’t just the other people around us, it’s a habitat. If a person is able to transform himself in relation to people around him so that they’ll become his Kli, meaning that in his life he’ll be guided by their feelings, sufferings, desires, then his own egoistic “I” disappears. He’ll feel himself as if out of his body, he’ll cease perceiving impermanence of his existence and constant need to compensate a lack.
In our world it’s impossible, because various common methods of humanity lack transition from one Kli to anther, from one’s own body to the world’s body, to the body of the society.
The Science of Kabbalah transfers a human being from one state to another. This is called passing Machsom or a barrier between the perception of ourselves and the world in the state we are now, and the perception of ourselves and the world above this state, in a dimension where a person exists in the others.
This doesn’t mean that he starts seeing and sensing egoistic sufferings of the others and they replace his own sufferings, meaning that his own needs are replaced with needs of the society. People tried to do something like this when they were establishing socialism in Israeli Kibbutzim, and a great many times during history. However these attempts are absolutely futile.
When a person transfers himself from the sensation of only his desires, into the sensation of the surrounding society’s desires, he discovers that the surrounding nature, the surrounding society is an eternal existence free of any restrictions. And it’s attained in exactly the same manner on various levels called spiritual worlds.
We can’t carry out the method, “me in relation to the entire humanity,” by ourselves. Every time one needs to receive a confirmation from his environment that it’s necessary to come to another level of evolvement, to realize that nature demands this from him, that our evolution isn’t completed. That’s why our environment has to be right, conscious, selected. And that’s why first of all the Science of Kabbalah says that it is necessary to create a group.
This means that a group is such an environment that gives a person the right thoughts so that he doesn’t continue suffering; rather these thoughts draw him to another level, to the Upper dimension. In order to create such a group we organize congresses, meetings, and disseminate our knowledge. The wider it is spread, the more people will start understanding that there’s a way out of the states they undergo in their lives; that it’s necessary and nature pushes us to it the stronger the method will act upon us. And we’ll be able to come painlessly to the state of joy, light and eternity. This state will draw us to itself from the distance already.
Today the world doesn’t sense this yet. But soon we’ll see that due to its inner spiritual charge our group will suddenly start attracting and accepting people, showing them that there is an absolutely different existence, distinct from our current one.
Question: What is the connection between the sufferings of a person’s soul and the emergence of a point in the heart?
A human being is evolving on the Earth within thousands of years. What does it mean? He is given five senses, and what he perceives in them is called the surrounding nature. This is what is given to us, what we sense. Thus, we were evolving within frames of various social and economic patterns for about 40,000 years.
And suddenly we come to such a state, when a void appears in us. In other words, we already don’t sense that we’re able to fill ourselves at the next level of development, with technical or cultural development or some other kind of a social pattern. Imagine the most comfortable existence of humanity and you’ll feel: “Well, and what comes next?” There appears a sensation of emptiness that didn’t exist before.
In the past the problem of fathers and children, representatives of two generations, was based only on the fact that the next generation wished for some other values, evolved itself, and received them. Today the problem is different and everything around us faces a problem. That’s why a person starts yearning not for corporeal fulfillments, such as wealth, glory and power and not even for knowledge. He’s convinced that even if he could receive in this world everything he wants, nothing would fill him. There appears a new kind of lack, a demand that he can’t satisfy or fill in our world, even in the most fantastic cases. He can’t imagine what he needs, that is, he needs something but doesn’t know what.
And this sensation, this question: “What do I really need?” is called “a point in the heart.” Today this black point starts revealing itself in nearly everyone. We encounter such people in all the countries.
Kabbalah says that this is the right process of evolutionary evolvement. Evolution isn’t completed. We’re currently experiencing cataclysms in huge amounts as never before. They take place in order to form this point in the heart in a person. This point aspires somewhere but we don’t know where exactly, and we have to form it via a group, via an environment.
All present sufferings of humanity put us into an initial position: “Well, what’s next?”
In the past, sufferings in of themselves were showing us how to get rid of them. A person felt that he was poor for example, so he wanted to become rich, or he was a slave and he wanted to become free, or maybe he felt that he lacked education in comparison with the others, so he tried to get it, and so on. In other words, sufferings themselves showed us the way to solve them.
Today the situation is quite the opposite. That’s why we’re seeing morals degrading: drugs, suicides, and terror all come from emptiness. A person doesn’t understand or sense why this takes place. Suppose it’s true that a person is addicted to drugs because he senses emptiness. So then what is the reason for family disintegration, for some estrangement, which is being revealed even at the level of states and global issues? Yet China is developing with wealth and power still very valuable there. However, in about thirty years the situation will be the same there as in the rest of the world.
This means that as a result, after all these phases of development, a person finds out that he is aspiring for something but it isn’t formed. He doesn’t know what it’s for, and that’s the major problem.
Kabbalah says that if we don’t solve this problem, don’t realize what we are aspiring for today, where our point in the heart draws us, then due to this inner crisis we’ll lead ourselves practically to complete destruction. It’s just like in a family, or in any other situation. When the inner pressure accumulates it has to erupt, and for a person it’s already unimportant how. Under the influence of this inner pressure he is ready to commit suicide, to do anything in order to get rid of it.
This inner pressure will grow under the influence of both surrounding nature and the sensation of emptiness in our hearts. But this doesn’t give us the exact direction of evolvement. Only if there is a group that will show us the path, will a person be able to discover that this direction is explained by Kabbalah. In other words, by the method of revealing a desire called a point in the heart.
Here a method is necessary. And this method isn’t natural, when sufferings themselves show us how to get rid of them. As far as the goal originates from an absolutely different level of existence, from the spiritual or a new dimension, then this method was actually given to us unnaturally. And we are trying to give it to a person, to explain that it is the means for carrying out his inner greatest desires.
We can judge whether a person has reached this state during his evolutionary development or not, only by the fact that he has a point in the heart. He comes to us, studies and joins a group; it’s a long historical process. How much time did it take for humanity to pass from one social pattern to the second, and the third? And this occurred under pressure, under sufferings. The same happens at present.
We are at the beginning of this process. But since these processes are not connected with a body and are closer to the spiritual, they are carried out more rapidly. Earlier, what took humanity hundreds or thousands years of development, now is worked out within dozens or even several years, and humanity refuses it. This means that now the process is very rapid. This is the first thing.
The second thing is that this process is not collective, but individual. It means that certain individuals have evolved inside themselves, sense something, while the others don’t. It’s even possible to say that some nations have evolved more than others. For example, people in Russia have evolved more than in China. In other words, there are various degrees or levels of evolvement, but still everybody undergoes this.
Actually, it doesn’t matter where, when and how a person asks his self a question about life’s meaning, and starts his spiritual path. There are some people who suddenly stop, leave the path and in some time, come back again. But once a point in the heart has emerged, it won’t leave a person in peace.
The only consideration is whether a person has a proper environment for his development. That’s because a person can develop from below to above, that is, to the unknown, to the spiritual state, only under the influence of the desire he lacks, which he can receive and pass it through a group. A group is an enhancer. If a person with a point in the heart joins a group and carries out himself correctly, then at the end he receives a great enhancement. With a help of the enhanced desire a person passes Machsom and enters another dimension.
Soon we’ll release the movie, Attainment of Reality. In such movies, lessons and talks, we’re saying that there’s actually no reality. We simply perceive this way and thus consider that the world exists in such a form. Today science helps us to realize (that’s why it has developed to this level) that all our perceptions are conventional conventional, that actually we perceive ourselves in such a world and in such a dimension, because we have such senses. If we had other senses, we would perceive everything differently. The entire method of Kabbalah is aimed at coming out of the limits of our five corporeal senses.
A body dies and the five senses stop functioning. What next? A point in the heart is the sixth sense. If we develop this sense in advance, we’ll start perceiving in both five senses and in the sixth sense. We’ll exist simultaneously in two dimensions.
This is what the Science of Kabbalah enables us to do (Kabbalah is derived from the word “to receive”). It enables us to receive the next upper sensation of life. We sense an eternal flow of energy, of matter and of existence. The whole picture of the world changes: everything located here, in our five senses inside the body, is perceived as something limited, temporary, small and, artificially created, so that on its basis we could develop ourselves independently, as if create ourselves. That’s why we start perceiving our temporary existence differently.
Many facts of modern science confirm such phenomena as transition to other dimensions, relativity of our sensations, and the fact that our world is only what seems to us but not what exists in reality. But by now it’s only suppositions, as science doesn’t have the sixth sense. If scientists start developing it in their selves and investigate the universe with its help, they’ll become Kabbalists.
Only one who develops the sixth sense will feel and realize something, but for the rest this will remain concealed. From birth, we exist with our five senses with which we have common sensations and understanding. When we reach such a state that all of us, a great amount of people, have developed their sixth sense, then we’ll be able to communicate in another dimension as we do today in our world. In other words, in the sphere that all of us perceive. Kabbalists have developed their sixth sense and they can exchange information, sensations.
A teacher’s task is to draw his student beyond Machsom, when the sixth sense will emerge in him (such transition is called a spiritual birth), and then to develop a student to the small state and to the adult state, exactly as in our world.
When a person is still in a state called “an embryo,” a Kabbalist-instructor influences him without asking anything. A student thinks and imagines something for himself, but in reality something different happens to him. It’s unimportant. Anyway he is unable to adapt to phases of his development.
Afterwards, when the state of smallness (Katnut) emerges in him, meaning that he acquires a screen, he somehow controls himself, though it is still unconscious. And then the teacher starts instructing him on how to exist in this state, in the other dimension. Such communication between them is called Peh el Peh (mouth-to-mouth), with a common screen which is located in Peh. Afterwards the teacher leads the student until he becomes an adult (Gadlut). However this already depends on both the teacher and his student.
Below Machsom or spiritual birth, when a person starts somehow perceiving the next dimension, his need for a group is critical. He doesn’t see where his teacher is, as he is still below Machsom. Only a group, which is a social environment in our world, can act upon him and enhance his desire to progress spiritually. A teacher can’t give him such a desire that he can receive from his friends.
Question: Can you tell us about peculiarities of working with newcomers? How we can increase intention in a group?
The point is that in the spiritual world, above Machsom, a human being finds himself as a particle of the large universe, and this particle is an integral one. This way he discovers that the entire universe, the dimension he gets into, is an integrated whole, and he is a part of this whole. Everything around us is related to it, just like every cell of our body is related to us. This is a genuine authentic existence. A person finds out that the sensation we have in our world, when we feel ourselves separated, is a mere illusion given to us purposely so that we ourselves rise from this state upwards. The group is like a model of the future dimension that one can already create in this world; one as if draws himself upwards via it.
If a person is an element in the whole system of the sixth dimension (I’m saying “the sixth dimension” because there is “the sixth sense”), he returns to our world all the time and again rises. This means that he comes back to the perception in his five senses and again leaves them.
Why does he need this? He needs this to transfer the sensations of our world from the state of knowledge to the state of inner qualities by absorbing them all the time. Because every time a person is born anew, the attributes that emerge in him are absolutely different from what he had before. What he understood, realized and got to know in his previous life will be transformed into his attributes in the next life.
Question: Why is the letter "o" omitted in the word "God" in many of your articles?
I don’t omit anything. We aren’t afraid of this word. Regarding all these words such as “God,” “Creator” and so on, one should understand that it’s a convention. There exists a force, a law of the entire system of the universe. This law is call “God” or “Creator” or “Upper Force.”
This isn’t what an ordinary person who has read a lot of various books imagines. When a genuine world, where all of us exist, is revealed, all small particular laws, or forces of our world vanish, and a person senses only a single enormous Force that unites everything, fills everything. He calls it “the Creator.”
Question: After passing Machsom a human being enters an absolutely new level, or stage of evolvement. Does Kabbalah consider the possibility of an absolutely new stage of evolvement after passing Machsom and entering the spiritual world?
Within four thousand years of the existence of Kabbalah, Kabbalists (people who cultivated the sixth sense and passed Machsom), wrote what would happen to humanity. And until the present all their “predictions” came true. They tell and describe to us the Upper Forces that exist beyond Machsom and act upon our world from above to below.
Kabbalists describe how humanity has been evolving within tens of thousands of years and what it is to reach at the end. They say that since the end of the 20th century humanity will aspire to pass Machsom, because it is to undergo five phases of its evolvement. It has passed four phases and is now entering the fifth one. We study the five phases of our evolvement from the pattern of evolvement of Kli through five phases of the Direct Light: Keter, Hochma, Bina, Zeir Anpin and Malchut, or zero, first, second, third and fourth phases.
Kabbalists explain that this pattern, that is, evolvement through to five phases, exists everywhere. It is present in the spiritual world, which is the basis of the whole creature, as well as when this creature descends downwards. The same law acts upon each of its parts. And the same law acts upon the creature when it evolves from below to above. Now we are at the beginning of the last phase of evolvement, the fifth one, and we have to carry it out.
I’ve already explained what our problem is. It seems to us that we don’t have to change ourselves, that evolution is completed and nature simply is to remain as it is. But it only seems to us or we would like things to be like this. We have to change ourselves, and the whole of nature has to change for our sake. What does “nature” mean? Nature is laws that oppress us and force us to aspire to the next step.
Question: Evolution isn’t completed. Scientists have found out that we only use about 2 percent of our brains. Is it supposed that the remaining 98 percent will be used after passing Machsom?
Yes, it is. The fact that we are using only 2 percent of our intellectual capacity indicates that the remaining 98 percent is a reserve of which we need to master the spiritual path. But in no case should you think that we need our intellectual capacity in the spiritual world.
When a person truly starts attaining the Upper World, he reveals an absolutely different reserve, not these 98 percent. What he reveals is called “a soul” and he exists in his altruistic desire. When he acquires this exterior Kli, as if it is his own, then another reason evolves along with it. And we need 98 percent of our brain to adapt the Upper World to our world.
It means that through four phases one develops two percent of my brain. When he develops himself spiritually, he receive absolutely new feelings and reason, which are outside of him and thus unlimited, endless. And he needs 98 percent of the unused possibilities of his brain to adapt himself between the five senses and the sixth sense.
It means that a person’s spiritual abilities are evolving along with an absolutely different additional instrument, which is outside of him by now. Because this spiritual Kli is outside of him. Sensations and reason are placed there, but not my present ones. Gradually a person adapts them for himself through five phases of development, and the 98 percent of his brain helps him connect this with our world.
We don’t need more than two percent for sensing and working in our world.
Question: Are scientists able to discover in a human genetic code that there is a new stage of evolvement, a new stage of evolution?
Scientists are able to discover that the next stages of human evolvement are necessary; they can also discover that the next stages of human evolvement have to be altruistic exiting ourselves, our limitations. But there is no method that enables us to do this in our world, proceeding from the study of our nature. However, science will constantly confirm necessity to come out of these limitations.
This picture is starting to be revealed even today. But the truth is that even from the point of view of science, there is no solution to this problem: How can we transcend an egoistic person, who spoils himself, his life and causes all crises, catasrophies, into a different person? How can we change ourselves? Today scientists are already discovering that nature is based on altruism not egoism, and only a human being is opposite to nature. However, as scientists themselves are addmitting, these questions are sidestepped, because modern science has no possibility of solving this problem.
I started writing a book with an American philosopher and sociologist. He says, “I’m a member of the American Sociological Association and I don’t have a right to say that there exists a crisis.” Why? He responds, “What’s the purpose of threatening people by stating that science has no solution for today’s problems? Will it have any positive effect? No, it won’t.” And it’s not hypocrisy, they are right. We stopped working with him, as there was no point to write further. He says, “I, as a member the American Sociological Association, don’t have a right to write this book with you.” We stopped in the middle of working and that was it.
Question: How should a person build himself so the group influences him in the maximally effective way?
What should we achieve during our congress? We should imagine this spiritual construction, where all our desires are united for existing in an absolutely different dimension. One where all of us are connected together in the state of eternity, infinity, out of any desires, sufferings, or needs. That is, out of needs which compel us to carry out something.
It doesn’t mean that we escape from the reality, because it’s impossible to solve problems emerging in reality from its level. We want to make this world better. But being in it, we can’t do this because this world is governed from above. If we master the Upper Forces, we’ll change our world. Otherwise we won’t change it to the better; we’ll only be spoiling it all the time. We want to leave it in order to sense the Upper construction, which actually governs everything.
This common Upper construction is called the common soul. It really exists, and we exist in it now. But we are in the state of concealment and perceive our existence as isolated and dim. This is called “this world.” Nothing is changed in reality. There is no time, movement, or space, but this is our inner perception of forces we experience, and the relations between them.
This may be illustrated with an example. A picture on a computer screen is made up of various vectors, and a person perceives it. Actually there are only vectors. The same happens to everything existing around him: nature, world, society and people. None of this exists. It is the way one perceives inside him this enormous, eternal, boundless existence.
And we have to aspire to sense this existence as it really is, without any obstacles of our temporary body, that is, as we sense it when we don’t exist in this body. All of our engagements, talks, as well as everything we’ll be doing during this congress, are aimed at giving us some kind of sensation of this existence that lies beyond of the limits of our five senses.
This category, which exists outside of one’s five senses, is a kind of a spiritual object; it is him. One may call it a soul or a group.
Question: Where do we receive the energy to transform egoism into altruism?
It is we who say “egoism” and “altruism.” Actually none of this exists. There is one law of the world, and the world exists by itself, the World of Infinity.
Everything is inverted in a person’s five senses, inside him. His senses are adjusted in such a manner that they can only receive information and sensations inside themselves. What they receive is perceived by a person egoistically, it is based on reception. If he changes his senses to the opposite, he’ll start perceiving what is outside of him, and this will be called altruism.
Question: What is a point in the heart, and how can one reveal it in himself?
A point in the heart is a desire that can’t be filled in our world. In other words, if one can fill this desire by what lies in front of him, it isn’t a point in the heart. A lot of people who really have a point in the heart, come to us, start studying and then find out that it suddenly disappeared. It didn’t disappear. The point is that here emerges a very interesting phenomenon.
There exists our ego or a desire for pleasures of our world. It causes us various troubles and above these troubles there emerges an aspiration to something different. As a result, a person wishes two things: to get rid of sufferings, and to aspire for something else. When he starts aspiring for something else, for the upper and comes to the group and starts studying, then after some time he feels that a desire for this world appears in him again.
Why is he moved down to a lower level, into stronger egoism, to something in this world, for glory, money, power, safety and so on? The law says that the lower a person moves, the deeper into egoism, the more he can elevate himself to the next level by working with it.
If with the help of the group (and it may occur in the group only) a person transforms his egoism into a forward aspire, which means that he rose, and thus his point in the heart rose to the next level. According to the general model of Kli, there are five levels of this kind. The last level is already Machsom.
One overcomes each level with the help of the group. This means the group has to change itself, and egoism is changing accordingly. The group, which helps a person, has to change itself again according to this. As Baal HaSulam says in the Introduction toTalmud Eser Sefirot, a person has to change his environment all the time, influence it selectively; force and compel it to change so that this environment changes him in its turn.
Question: What influences a person more when he is below Machsom, a group or a teacher?
A group and a teacher are absolutely necessary complimenting instruments. It’s impossible to progress without a supervisor, as one doesn’t know what it’s all about. He leads a person to the sphere, about which he has no information at all. However at the same time, it’s impossible to progress without a group, beacause a person realizes himself in a group only. Overall, a person needs a supervisor to teach him the right method and a group to carry out this method inside it.
Question: What is the meaning of the statement that everybody is corrected except me?
The sensation “everybody is corrected except me” means that a person perceives the universe inside himself, according to his inner qualities.
Our inner attributes are based on egoism. A person consists of desires and reason. Desires develop reason in order to carry them out. Reason is secondary in relation to desires. People are reasonable beings as the quality of desires changes in them.
Question: What are the frontiers of knowledge in Kabbalah? Why do we need knowledge meaning, what it can provide and what it can’t?
What does “knowledge” and “knowledge is boundless” mean? Everything emerging in a person, his desires, fantasies or any impulses come from an emptiness of his desires. This is his Kli, which he has to carry out, fill and elevate. A human being, each of us, is boundless in his fulfillment.
Question: Do humanoids influence us?
Within thousands of years the humanity imagines various spirits, ghosts, witches, angels and so on—one can’t count what. But nothing of this kind exists. This is our mere imagination. It only seems so to a human being. There are no humanoids. Stop thinking that there exists anything besides what we clearly perceive.
There is a very strict law in Kabbalah, “a person doesn’t have more than his eyes see.” Like in a court of law, a witness is the one who saw, but not who heard. This means that sight, visual sensation, is the most reliable sense. A person can rely only on what is clearly confirmed. Kabbalah is a pure science and isn’t based on information such as somebody said that something exists somewhere.
One’s grandmother told him that there is God. Another ten thousand people told him about it. Will he believe them? On what grounds? A person should believe nothing.
The Science of Kabbalah says that a person has to check everything. It is a science that develops an additional sense in us. It is based on the principle that we should trust only our definite sensation, which also needs to be confirmed. How can one know if maybe he’s in some barely conscious state?
How can he confirm what he perceives, if it is true or not? What a person has in our desires, in sensations or in mind has to be controlled, confirmed by the others and himself. Only when he fixes the frequency of this sensation can he progress on this basis. By no means should he base it on belief in something, on what somebody said somewhere.
When a person moves to something unknown, does it happen in such a way that a teacher says something to him and he starts to imagine this and believe that it is so? No, it doesn’t happen this way.
Like in our world, trusting a teacher's words in the process of study should be like an exercise. For example, a person tells a child what to do or shows him how to do something. A child automatically repeats after him even though he doesn’t know what for. But as he repeats, he starts understanding the inner meaning of his actions and as a result, starts acting consciously.
The process is the same in Kabbalah. A person is moving to an unknown and can never know his next step in advance. But he masters it by performing special exercises. An instructor gives him exercises, telling him how to use them and carry them out in a group. And here a person has to listen to an instructor, because he tells him about his next state, a higher one that he hasn’t realized yet. But after a person performed this exercise and realized the next state, he sees what it has led him toward. It happens just like in our world.
There is a part that is called “concealed”, and we have to rise to it according to a method called “faith above reason.” What does it mean: “faith above reason?” It means a person believes that this exercise will elevate him, but not more than that. He doesn’t close his eyes and say, “Yes, this is what I don’t see, but it really exists.”
Here lies the difference between Kabbalah and religion. Religion describes Heaven for a person. On what basis? As if something took place somewhere. How does one find out about it? People say so.That’s why from the point of view of Kabbalah, all religions are a mere invention of humanity, necessary for psychological support, for justification of our existence. Instead there should be a real attainment, meaning in this world a person should see his future states, his future world.
Question: How important is it to stay close to a teacher?
It isn’t important. Today we see that people who study far away from us, mainly via the Internet, carry out the method correctly. They undergo correct inner states and progress, both individual students and groups. On the other hand, those people who progressed when they studied alone, and then moved to our central group, feel very uncomfortable. That’s because every person has a sphere, where his evolvement is maximally effective and optimal, and that’s why there can’t be any single standard for everyone.
I consider it not worth while to encourage a person to relocate to us, because in most cases this will be harmful for him. When a student is physically close to a teacher it may create a deceptive impression. I know it from my own experience, because I underwent many states next to my teacher. This isn’t easy. Some students are closer, others farther. Why are some of them closer, but some of them farther? Every person has many suggestions and theories about it. One doesn’t know what his soul is related to, that is, to which point in Adam, and why he’s born in such conditions to be there but not here. Today the right picture is one where the best place for a person is where he lives.
I’ll give you examples. Five of our students from Australia, very serious men, moved to us. Certainly, Australia is another world, different from ours. They adapted themselves with great difficulties and some of them already returned. Staying with us has broken them, while before coming to us they were very serious students.
Two months ago one of my students from Germany relocated to us. I made him one condition or more accurately, simply advised him. He couldn’t accept it and returned. Sometimes obstacles turn up as such problems, which seem insurmountable to a person.
Thus it isn’t necessary to be next to a teacher. But daily presence at our classes via communication channels is necessary, because it is impossible to progress without the charge that emerges during classes. Because this large group is a generator, and when a person connects to it, he may carry himself out.
That’s why I don’t believe that those who don’t study systematically together with us at least an hour a day (we study two and a half hours) can progress using some other means.
Question: How does the Science of Kabbalah treat sufferings?
The Science of Kabbalah says that a person needs sufferings to rise above them. What does it mean? We should understand that all sufferings have a purpose. When a person realizes sufferings correctly, and according to this starts developing himself towards another goal, sufferings disappear.
Sufferings are necessary to lead a person to the right direction. And then a person has to evolve not by sufferings as it has been happening during the whole history, but by attraction to the Upper state, to the spiritual state. A person can receive this aspire to the spiritual state only from the group.
For this reason, if a person is engaged in a group and carries out the method correctly, he won’t undergo earthly sufferings. Suddenly he’ll find out that everything settles down in the best possible way, because there’s no necessity to push him out of this life. A person aspires towards what he should and sufferings simply disappear. A person suddenly senses that he has everything he needs.
Then he simply attains his Upper existence, and the question about life and death disappears. He feels that he exists in a single entity, eternal and perfect. The five senses disappear, but the sixth sense, which gives him practically all sensation of life, stays with him forever. Thus, the body may easily die.
Question: Is the Creator present between us now? If so, what prevents us from sensing Him now?
The Creator is what we perceive in our collective Kli. This means the Light, the Upper Force, which created the creature, fills it. Such a state is called the World of Infinity. The Creator created the only state called the World of Infinity, and nothing else. In this World of Infinity we are as a single common system of desires and sensations. All of us are inside it.
In order to realize where and what we are, each of us received five levels of concealment called five worlds. Now a person is inside this multilayered box and senses only himself. He perceives the others only in a way in that he needs to use them egoistically.
The method is aimed at eliminating all these restrictions called worlds (“world” is Olam in Hebrew, derived from the word Olama - concealment) meaning, at removing all these worlds and perceiving ourselves in that only state, where all of us really are.
The first Olama (concealment) is called “our world.” This concealment is the closest to a person; it’s our world, attained by five senses. The other concealments, second through fifth, are so-called spiritual worlds. There a person perceives reality in a deformed way as well. In other words, he knows that he sees something from a distance, as if in a fog he feels that something is concealed from him. Now, in our world, he doesn’t feel even this concealment. However, it is the state he exists in.
This means that the creature consists of interconnected parts. Each part is called a soul and all of the parts connected together are called a creature. The creature is a sum of souls, and what creates them and fills them, is called the Upper Force or the Creator. In Hebrew the Creator is Boreh, which is a combination of words Bo, “come,” and Reh, “see” meaning, “come and reveal.”
Question: What kind of relations should be created between us to pass Machsom?
Presently those who study with us all the time are at a special stage of evolvement. There are rises and falls. By now we don’t master these states quite well. On the whole we often move with difficulties. This state is natural.
But on the whole, we (the bulk of people who are with us)have passed a certain preparation stage and now are in such a state when we can start perceiving the Upper World above our five senses. We are ready for this from inside, and any delay will cause us only harm. This delay will be expressed as disappointment or false searches.
If we correctly imagine the state called the "World of Infinity," the group, and ourselves aspiring to this, if each of us performs this exercise to the best of his ability, then after we correctly perform this exercise, it should bring us to a genuine sensation of the world. That’s for sure.
I never told you that because every particular person and the bulk of people still felt uncertain; they had to analyze, clarify something. Now this is practically completed and everything depends on how we identify the goal and aspire towards it. This isn’t easy. You’ll feel as if your vision is blurred, your sensations will be as if covered with various coarse layering and you may start sensing some inner abruption. Sensations play a very important role for a person. You’ll face problems concerning sensations; there may appear a sense of neglect, of deprivation. But all of them are obstacles that are to be perceived as exercises. If above all of this we aspire correctly from a point in the heart to the genuine state, to the extent we can imagine it, then we’ll enter it with our sensations.
Question: Why did you pass Machsom, why did you enter the sensation of the spiritual world?
It’s a good question. I can continue it.
From the entire history of humanity it is seen that everyone has his own fate. If people are a single integral body—a spiritual, a physical, no matter how we depict it, do they have to be similar? It happens that they don’t. There can’t be different and similar parts. If they are similar, they are one part. If there are plenty of them, they are different. What’s the difference?
Proceeding from the five levels of development of the Kli it finally turns out that when the Kli is ready inside itself, it consists of the same five levels. And it is divided into billions of various small particles. Among them there are lighter and darker particles, or more or less egoistic, from the right and from the left sides, different by their properties, and so on.
Like in a person’s body, where there are lots of organs, cells, and no one of them can replace the other, where each one has its own function. In our general system called a soul or a creature, each of us has his role or position that we have to carry out in our collective Kli. This is defined. Nobody chooses anything. And as it is revealed in the future, finally it doesn’t matter who each one is and where he’s from.
This may be compared to any law of nature acting in our world. For example, if resistance is less than current, then as a result one gets a certain power. Or if resistance is more than current then as a result one gets the same power. This means that each of us functions inside the general system, but proceeding from his pre-designed attributes he is absolutely similar with the others. That’s because the current, which flows via everyone, the light which spreads in everyone, is absolutely the same. It’s eternal, boundless and infinite.
One may say, “Yes, but in our world we still see that people’s fortunes are different!” Yes it is so, because a person sees a very restricted part of his existence and it isn’t enough to judge about the genuine one. As a result, when a person enters the World of Infinity or simply the spiritual world, he sees that everything is based on the principle of unity, where everything is absolutely similar and equal.
This means that today these states of concealment, worlds, screens, everything that lies before a person and what he has to overcome, is equal to what lies before the others. It’s equal. Perhaps it occurs in a different time, or the outer circumstances may be different. One person’s life may flow differently regarding his character and given conditions. But if he takes all this and makes one picture of it, he’ll see that it’s absolutely identical with the others. A person will see this.
Question: Does the level of one’s earthly knowledge influence his ability to enter the spiritual world?
It doesn’t influence it at all. It isn’t important. It is known: one studies, discusses, and goes through many things in his mind and heart, then suddenly everything disappears, and he senses or understands nothing. Then he starts sensing and understanding again, and again he looses this. This is given to a person so that he developd the necessary sensations, analysis, definitions, and realization of future spiritual states.
One doesn’t need earthly knowledge. A human being starts evolving, and the path he follows gives him everything he needs for evolvement.
But some souls require earthly knowledge according to their role. For example, I have to carry out various secondary researches to present the Science of Kabbalah as something acceptable, adjusted for people of one or another type of mentality. It is only because of my occupation as a teacher. For my personal spiritual progression it doesn’t matter whether I possess knowledge in any earthly sphere or not, this doesn’t influence my spiritual path.
Thus there is no need to read piles of books and study anything if it isn’t necessary for one’s career or for some other purposes. For Kabbalah this isn’t necessary at all.
Question: What is Tzimtzum Alef (First Restriction) in our sensations?
In our sensations Tzimtzum Alef means that a person attains such an aspiration to the spiritual, when everything on the material level ceases being attractive to him. In this moment Tzimtzum Alef takes effect. This is called Tzimtzum Alef. But a person can attain it not by the method of force, but only by balancing these two forces: an interest to the Upper World and an interest to our world. At that, he doesn’t have a right to kill an interest in this world. It isn’t Tzimtzum if he simply suppresses it
How is Tzimtzum characterized in Talmud Eser Sefirot? “Restricts himself in spite of the fact that he desires.” What does it mean, “in spite of the fact that he desires?” The point is that desires remain. A person doesn’t have a right to do anything with them, while the restriction occurs due to aspiration to the Upper.
A person aspires towards something higher, but suddenly this aspiration is overpowered by desires to our world. He‘ll aspire higher, and again he’ll be pulled to our world. This happens until he reaches such a state when, for all the Aviut, for all the desires of our world, he has an aspiration towards the Upper World. But it is only possible to achieve this with the help of the group. And when a person performs these exercises above all impulses of his ego, he passes Machsom. This is carrying out of Tzimtzum Alef.
Question: What is the purpose of our songs, meals, jokes and so on?
If one takes the Book of Zohar, then he’ll see that it tells a lot about festive meals. Two people with a donkey or without it went from one place to another, had a meal, then moved somewhere, again had dinner, and so on.
A meal isn’t simply a unifying festive meal. Here it is spiritual fulfillment. Why do we need this? By now we aren’t able to carry out a festive meal at the level where souls are merging with each other and receive multiplied enhanced Upper Light into this collective Kli. The point is that if a person has his Kli of a kilo, and his friend has his Kli of a kilo, then merging they get not two kilos and not even two kilos for each of them, but each of them gets two kilos multiplied by the entire collective Kli. This isn’t even an exponent and I’m uncertain which progression may express it.
In Kabbalah this formula is depicted as “ Panim - Achoraim, Achoraim de Achoraim, Achoraim de Achoraim.” This isn’t a geometrical progression or a logarithmical progression. It’s a multiple increase.
So what happens during all our meetings, meals, and songs? We are trying to do everything to make our unification at the earthly level similar with our spiritual unification. Naturally, without the right intention, without wishing that now at this moment we would unite spiritually, would do everything to sense the Upper Light inside our unification, without this our meals and songs are in vain. And again, if a person does everything correctly and senses nothing, this means he has to make more and more efforts.
Thus, during such states by all means try to clear up for yourselves what is “I,” and what is the group; the group is simply the collective Kli, Malchut de Ein Sof. Also, try to clear up why you don’t feel the sixth sense and spiritual state in it, why you don’t rise.
Moreover, try to realize this clearly in your sensations, not in your fantasies. You can already do it. It is really so. You’ll even feel and see what the difference is between various fantastic images and the reality that I mean.
Question: Your teacher said once that there was no state, which he hadn’t undergone. Can we, who are sitting here, repeat his path and get spiritual attainment within a comparatively short time of our lives, or only selected people can do this?
But that time I didn’t believe him.
A Kabbalist, who is going along his path, undergoes absolutely all states, which exist in the world. There isn’t such a state that he didn’t undergo. He may pass them in milliseconds, but still he does it. Moreover, it happens inside him, invisibly, insensibly for the others.
What does it mean, “to enter a spiritual state?” It means to expand one’s Kli from a point in the heart to the state when one starts sensing what the others sense, all together. This means one has to be at their place, he has to learn all the states he underwents. This is the spiritual path. This is transformation of a point in the heart into a Kli.
In other words, Rabash wanted to say “I developed myself to an absolutely perfect state. This means I experienced everything that all the other people in our world had experienced.”
Otherwise it isn’t possible. So this will happen to each one, but it will be in his consciousness. The problem of humanity is that it undergoes this in sufferings and experiences everything by itself. While the basis of spiritual evolvement is that a person rises and undergoes everything in sensations along with knowledge. When this sensation comes along with knowledge, then within milliseconds he starts to understand these states. That’s why a person compresses time.
As a result, within one life a Kabbalist undergoes dozens of lives, or in other words, what he would undergo during dozens of lives in an ordinary state, he undergoes during one life. That’s because in Kabbalah sensations emerge together with their realization. While in our ordinary life a person senses something, and in ten years he starts understanding what it was, why it happened, and whether it right or not, but within these years he did many unnecessary things, and so on.
Emergence of sensations and their realization, that is, wisdom next to sensations, shortens the path of sufferings hundreds of times, it practically nullifies it.
Question: Should one suppress his desires for pleasures of our world?
On no account should a person suppress his desires, it’s prohibited to suppress them. It's not that a person should gratify all his desires, but desires that naturally emerge and are carried out in him are to be carried out.
How can one know whether he’s developing correctly? If the only thing a person is thinking about is how to acquire the sixth sense, then everything that happens to him at the other earthly levels is of no importance. He may undergo anything. The most important thing is that if above all this he keeps an intention and an aspiration, then everything is right. And then he doesn’t suppress his desires, but works with them.
Question: I feel like a bastard. Don’t I impede the ascent of others?
On the contrary, this is an absolutely true, genuine and authentic sensation, and the one who doesn’t feel this way prevents the others from rising by his egoism.
Much time has passed before I deserved to hear something like this from my Rav: “Now you are just as spineless as me.” This wasn’t easy.
Question: Does a person find a group himself or is it given to him from above?
A group is given from above as it is said in the fourth item of Introduction to Talmud Eser Sefirot. But to strengthen oneself in a group, to cling to it, to stay in it, and to bind oneself with the others correctly, to make them influence him to give them what he has to give, is what a person has to do himself.
It is said that the Creator puts a person’s hand on the right lot and a person has to strengthen himself on this path. Thus the Creator leads a person to a group as it is said in Baal HaSulam’s article, “Freedom of Will.” But to make the group really suite him and to make him suite it, to act upon it correctly so that as a result he could receive from it what he needs for spiritual progression, is the entire work of a person. Nothing else is needed.
That’s why a person feels that in relation to the others he’s a bastard. It’s not the only correct state, but it’s good. The group is given from Above, thus one havs to treat it as something to which the Creator has led him.
Question: If a teacher and a group lead you to the goal, where is the Creator here?
The Creator is that inner force that organizes and reveals the World of Infinity via a teacher and a group, and via a person himself. As a result, a person realizes the path inside himself with the help of a teacher and a group.
It is the Creator, but the only thing is that now we don’t perceive Him and can’t refer to Him as well. There is a rule, a purely technical rule which says, that at the beginning of the path a person has to say “Everything depends on me, only on me.” While when everything is solved and revealed to him, he says “There is None Else Beside Him.” But it’s at the end of the path. If a person says this at first, he’ll never reach the second state. These are two different manifestations of reality, one doesn’t nullify another.
The goal of our congress is to create such a group, which will remain a group after we part despite the distance and will be able to break forth to an absolutely new stage within this year. I mean even Machsom. This is a goal of our meeting today, here, in this place. And all themes we’ll discuss will lead us to this.