Part 2:

Baal HaSulam. The Freedom. (The Necessity to Choose a Good Environment)

The Necessity to Choose a Good Environment (00:36) “Now you can understand…”

1. S. (05:28) How do we accelerate the revealing of the forces hidden in our source?

R. That's what he writes, try to work with it, what you recognize that you have? You have love of friends, love of the Creator, all kinds of things, good things that belong to the good inclination, so try to bring them out and by that you'll discover your good inclination. Try pray.

2. S. (06:10) The influence of the environment on a person can we say that it's through the third factor, which is this is how it influences him?

R. Yes.

S. The influence works through the concepts he receives from the environment and that works on his inclinations, can we put it this way?

R. There are a few things because we're in a net of connections here between us that's why through that whole net, the whole net, we get influences from the environment and also influence them back. It's not only the way you're saying that through one channel.

3. S. (07:07) He also writes that his previous concepts were compromised. Why?

R. His previous opinions were blurred out because he started getting mixed with all kinds of alien thoughts in the wrong way.

4. S. (07:36) He says only in the matter of choosing the environment is one's reign over oneself measured and for this he is worthy of reward or punishment. Interesting. How do I know that I came to a good environment if I have friends that keep insulting me, I keep offending them, there’s all kinds of mess, what kind of environment is it?

R. That's a very good environment. With them you can connect to higher degrees, they're telling you where you are not okay, that's really the right good environment.

S. I am wrong too, I answer not nicely, I get angry.

R. Right, that's why you have to help one another.

S. How do we help each other instead of getting up from the table, the desk, and running away?

R. Like you.

S. Exactly, so how do I do it and not run away? What's the problem?

R. Importance of the goal, importance of the goal. What else do I have to do? If this is the only thing I want to get to I have no other purposes in life, so if I see how I’m in a process whether I'm advancing more or less I have to work in that direction.

S. Personally it happened to me. I'm not blaming my ten God forbid but sometimes I just feel like it's not right for me, I look at them, it’s not right for me.

R. They're not right for you, you tell that to the Creator later.

S. What do you mean tell the Creator?

R. He's organizing everything in the end so you tell him, look what you organized for me! Come on what's up? You tell Him that.

S. DoI have the right to change my ten if I want to?

R. No.

S. Why not?I don't like it.

R. What do you mean it's not good for you?

S. I don't like it!

R. The Creator gave you all kinds of possibilities around that this is how it was chosen that you will be in that ten, so?

S. I'm not talking about my ten, don't think for a minute but many friends come to me, I don't like my ten, I want to move my ten, and by the way they get up and walk, it's not like they stay and work.

R. Yes right, they're learning from you.

S. What should I tell that friend to stay and eat crap as it says? What should he do?

R. He must stay and not run away and in this way we'll advance towards the end of correction.

S. How do I convince him not to run away? You know they run away because they cannot get along in the tens. How do I make them not run away, what should I do?

R. I don't know. I see what's written we're all studying what's written and we must organize ourselves in that way.

S. What is the good environment that's written about here?

R. The good environment is what I build every day and every day I get to a point where I see that it's not good enough and decide to make it an even better environment.

S. Oh really? I thought a good environment is nice people, good people.

R. Yes right, what nonsense.

S. You're saying fights and everything and conflicts is a good environment?

R. No, you always have to criticize and correct, criticize and correct, and that is our life until we reach the end of corrections.

S. Okay, so this is our progress I understand, thank you very much.

R. Stay at home.

5. S. (12:12) How can we give importance and greatness of the goal through concepts so people clothe in the feeling, how can we do this?

R. We can feel it in our emotions or in our mind, we need those two things. You see how Baal HaSulam writes a bit of this and a bit of that.

S. I heard you a few days ago say that if it clothes in the intellectic move to the feeling more quickly.

R. Yes.

S. That's why I'm asking, how can we clothe it? How can we explain the importance and greatness intellectually?

R. Explain it to yourself. Stand in front of the mirror and explain it to yourself.

6. S. (13:11) He writes I live only in the place of Torah. How can we decide in the ten that now it is a place of Torah and we're working in the right place?

R. I don't know. Do you have sources in front of you? So please according to that you can choose your environment. I got from Rabash his notebook of Shamati and afterwards I gave it to everyone between the students, the older students he had and that's it and I think that by that I relieved myself from being concerned about them but before that I was.

S. When we are in a ten is this already by default a place where there is Torah?

R. It all depends on the way you use what you get.

S That's exactly the question we're constantly in the ten…

R. The place these walls, right, it exists and it's all for you, but the rest depends on you.

S. How do we determine this as a ten? We have our meetings we do everything you tell us.

R. It's written it’s all written, I don't want to explain too much because you have to understand this on your own, you have to read and go deeper and to really see as much as it suits you or not. I'm not determining anything and I don't want to determine or decide and I won't stop anyone but each one has his path.

7. S. (15:33) How can the ten be locked on this quality of Rabbi Yosi Ben Kisma in all its decisions regarding choosing its environment through all the states?

R. I don't know. I was beside the Rabash, talked to him for hours about society, about man's choice in society, what he writes, what he means, I saw that it was all still what you have before you, that's what there is, the rest you need to go deeper inside and each one needs to decide for himself on his own or in a society or alone but it's all on you, it is all on you, I am not pressing or closing on anyone, it's something very serious. It's a matter of incarnation and even more than one, that's why you have an opportunity and please don't miss out on it.and don't disregard it.

8. S. (17:06) What does it mean that a tendency becomes a concept?

R. That you work on disparity more and more, to bring it into the ten so by that you start bringing it to the level of intellect.

9. S. (17:31) We read about the necessity to choose a good environment with the example of Rabbi Yosi Ben Kisma. I want to ask how do we come to such a recognition, such an awareness, that it doesn't matter what you’re offered, how you are seduced, you still choose a good environment?

R. In what else can I choose? Tell me. What, money and gold like Rabbi Yosi Ben Kisma says, what else do I have in what?

S. I'll put it differently. This realization that your choice is in the environment, what does it come from, how does it develop?

R. When I think about it more and more as much as in my life I have one opportunity, one opportunity, what do I have in life?

S. One opportunity to what?

R. To choose a path, one path, one opportunity no more.

S. Does the Creator give a person one chance?

R. Actually yes but maybe a person isn't so aware of it.

S. How do we realize it? How can we be aware that I received one chance?

R. I was searching for Rabash in Jerusalem and Rehovot all kinds of things. I went to the Baba Sali and all kinds of places and I took it seriously. I wanted to scrutinize the things until I saw that there is nothing and then when I fell on him, right, I saw that that's it, this is where I'm stopping here.

S. This stop, you were already aware that this is called choosing an environment?

R. Yes, according to the way they explained the Preface there and a few things about providence I saw that I've never heard it anywhere else and I can't get in any other place such a whole serious scientific explanation without anything to do with religion and all kinds of other things.

S. Clear. Realization that you are dependent on the choice of the environment and realization that you have to work on the connection, are these things different or are they one in the same?

R. One and the same.

S. It's the same thing?

R. Same thing. If I chose an environment so come closer and adhere to them.

S. The fact that you choose every time anew is that regarded as working in connection toward them?

R. I didn’t understand.

S. By choosing an environment is this regarded as an act of connection?

R. Yes, yes, I come there to study and for me there were a few doubts because they were all dressed as the ultra Orthodox and that was something that I was really careful with, but so I agreed under the condition that only in this way I could receive it, otherwise you didn't need to pay anything, the moment I didn't need that so we're done.

10. S. (21:57) From the moment the Creator puts a person's hand on the good fortune, puts him in the right environment, how does he not miss out on the one chance he receives in life?

R. He constantly is drawn to the teacher he found and constantly wants to adhere to the essence that he found that's it. What else is there to ask? It all depends on the teacher and the books.

11. S. (23:11) Rabash had other students and so did Baal HaSulam and we too are here, people who chose these writings, these people, this environment. I can't really say but on the outside it seems like not everyone broke through to spirituality, meaning when he took the chance that you're talking about in this life. What do we do once we get to Rabash? What more do we need to do?

R. With Rabash it was very simple, these are the hours we're studying. You can come to those hours and sit with us and keep going together with us.

S. What's the difference between one student and the other? Who decides if one reaches spirituality and the other doesn't when they're in the same environment?

R. That depends on the root of the soul, it doesn't even depend on the teacher it depends on the person himself. We ascribe everything to the teacher, no the teacher gives to everyone and opens it to everyone in a corporeal manner, meaning it's all revealed and what he does internally spiritually I can't explain it but still everything depends on as much as the student will open himself.

S. What did you do in order to open yourself up? I'm asking in order not to miss out on this chance, what should a person do in addition to already telling himself this is the environment, this is the teacher of the generation, this is the right place, what more should he do? If this was all that's required to reach connection everyone would reach it.

R. No, not everyone, what desire does everyone have? But to those people that let's say come here and other places they have maybe ten percent, twenty percent, even less that reveal inside them really such a pressure to reach adhesion.

S. You mentioned that you were searching for a long time before that and I can understand that maybe people who are with Rabash besides you are people who grew up in front of themselves in this environment not through the intensive search you had to go through, so you had this drive that we cannot ignore.

R. They also had that impulse, let's say, we won't calculate right now what kind of pressure each one had but they were searching, somehow they were searching through the deficiency they had in them. Most of them I brought from the Berg Institute. How do you call it, the Kabbalah Institute or whatever.

S. They were all searching, all wanted and only according to the root of the soul does one receive a certain advancement and another receives a different advancement?

R. Yes, but each one has an opportunity to invest and afterwards that's already whatever comes out comes out.

S. This is what's important that each one has a place in which to work.

R. Yes, that's what determines, that's a man's freedom of choice, a person’s freedom of choice.

12. S. (27:28) Friend asked a question today and you told him he's a philosopher. How do I relate as the one who's asking the questions that are philosophical, should I give into the society or not?

R. I don’t know, who was it?

S. He was talking about over an ascent over descent, is it in shame, in general I'm asking. A friend adds, he's asking from the position of taking questions from the internet, he’s asking if I see a question that's a little, like you reacted that it’s a philosophical question, so he's asking should he still bring it up or not?

R. Why not? Sometimes it's difficult to see the difference between philosophy and Kabbalah and emotion and …

S. According to the article The Freedom, if there's a correction is it because of the environment? Do I need to correct the environment? According to the wisdom of Kabbalah if there's a corruption I need to correct myself so who's right?

R. We need to see the environment because that's where we develop and in it I have to see myself. Can I be incorporated in them, connect with them, be as one man with one heart with those people? Do they have the same tendency, right? I'm not checking people according to their character or whatever, but do they also want to be as one man with one heart and so on? That's what's important for me and afterwards to invest as much as possible and even if I can't invest with them in forces and I still want to support them as much as I can. Let's say I brought them all the tapes all the recordings to those friends. I brought them when I recorded Rabash. It was almost 2,000 tapes. I brought them the writings of Rabash including Shamati that nobody had and in that way I thought that I helped in somewhat. By the way from them I didn't see anything, completely zero, but that's not my calculation.

13. S. (31:00) I heard you say, tell the Creator look what you did to my life, look what's happening, look what states I'm in, so when is it helpful to be angry with the Creator? How does it help us get closer to Him and justify Him?

R. I don't know what to tell you what to be angry at the Creator? That to begin with we're saying that He's the good that does good and He has no way from His own nature to do any bad to anybody so how can you be angry at Him? About what? Before He was the good that does good

S. I'll give you an example, let's say you're in the ten that you don't want to be in, so does that give you the right to be angry with the Creator or does it help you justify Him in the end?

R. Try and justify, try and ask Him, try and hear the answer and you'll see.