ARI Films
It is written that the Creator’s candle is man’s soul. Just as there’s the body of the candle and above it the Creator’s Light, so above our body, there is a Godly Light. According to the extent to which It operates in us, our body is annulled and only Light remains.
Here in this place, there were people who were concerned only about the evolution of the Creator’s candle, that it should grow in them and that the aspect of body should become weaker and weaker, becoming cancelled before the Creator. And that’s why we come to this place, light candles, and desire to connect to the souls that are here; that our souls work together in the world and bring Light above our bodies.
Point in the Heart
You know that everything is preordained—it's not possible that you would fail to come. The point in the heart determines what a person does. It directs a person precisely to a single central place in creation where one should be. There is no way to escape it. Some people try, but it doesn’t work because regardless, the spiritual potential in one’s heart—that point—is truly the central point. It directs a person precisely to the exact place where this point can develop, to the place where it can really feel at home. At home, meaning, in the end, through that place, through this process of evolution, one reaches the Source from which this point descended, rising up through all the worlds, to that same place in the Creator where the point originated, which is called "the Creator’s part given from Above."
Question: So a human being is like a robot?
Yes, in the sense that we’re all robots—we have no freedom of choice. The choice is only to strengthen ourselves on the way, to build a group that will support the pace. We can keep up with the pace, we can accelerate it. We can do this in one generation, within the 20 or 30 years of active life that we have. But without that means of Kabbalah, without the assistance of the books, it would be virtually impossible, or it would last thousands of years, so why waste millennia? Why make efforts in vain, to just go through reincarnation after reincarnation?
A strong group is a spiritual structure that incorporates each and every one of its members, and if they all come together, it can yield such an aspiration for the evolution of the point in the heart, that a person reaches this spiritual place, meaning the true purpose of one’s life—not just the purpose of creation, all within a few years.
Two Desires
The fact that life is hard for us is understandable, especially when a person has two desires—the body demands money, honor, physical pleasures, science, on one hand. On the other hand, we have a point in the heart that demands the recognition of Godliness, of spirituality. And it’s as if a person is torn between these two contradictory desires.
Question: Well, if that's the case, should I leave my profession?
No! It’s forbidden to leave your profession. Every person has to fulfill their whole potential, including the spiritual, especially where he currently works, as long as it's a legal trade. Meaning, we are in this world to use this world. We know that Kabbalists have to be married, have children, and have to work and be connected to this world in every way. By that, we correct the world. By that, we influence the world, we help the world reach its correction.
So the people who really bring Light to this world, and convey the design of creation, the method by which we reach the purpose of creation—its goal—these people have to be connected to every system of life in this world. And that’s why Kabbalists are forbidden to retire from working in their profession. Through everything you do in life, you must do the spiritual task that you were given. The interior and exterior should remain; you should work. But through your work you should also convey that spiritual line that stems from your heart.
The Reason for Suffering
Everybody suffers. Everybody feels unpleasant sensations. The history of mankind is one of suffering. And you have the task of explaining to a person that there is a reason for suffering, and the reason is simple: it's because we don’t listen to the point in the heart.
If humanity had listened to the point in the heart, it would have brought us to the right place, and engaged our inner development. By listening to it, we would reach a state where spiritual evolution is the most important thing in life. It doesn’t matter what you do for a living; it doesn’t matter what your surroundings are. What's important in life will change for you. You just wouldn’t want the pleasures of honor, money, or even science, as you do now. Maybe not even the spirituality that you find in theater or other cultural experiences. People would only want what their heart truly demands. They would find satisfaction only in the things that are beyond our lives.
Question: What are these things?
In the evolution of the soul...It is written in the Zohar that the reason for all of man’s troubles is that he listens only to the body, not to his inner point. If we just listened a little to that inner point, our lives would take on a completely different character. That point makes a person anxious, concerned about inner development. It simply draws a person to special books, special places, where other people, drawn in the same way, gather to engage in internal spiritual development.
The human soul wants to know the Upper World, where we were before we descended to this world, and where our souls are going to go when we end this life. The heart longs for its origin, and a person must reach that place while he is still living in this world.
Question: Where did we originate from?
From the spiritual world, in the source of our soul.
Fate
I remember how it happened with me. I had everything. I had a good profession, a good job, a house, I ran my own business. I lived in Rehovot. But I felt that I couldn’t sit still and continue living like that. Suddenly, there was such an inner drive. It was a rainy, windy, winter evening terrible weather. But I felt that I had to go out, to look for something. Maybe it was 7 or 8 p.m. But I got in the car and I just drove. All the while I thought, where and how would I find that place? What am I looking for? Where is my heart taking me? It was an inner drive that I couldn’t explain. And it wasn't the first time in my life that I felt the emptiness of my existence, but it was never like that.
I ended up driving to Bnei Brak, and I've been there maybe once or twice before. For some reason I ended up there. I stopped at a rainy street corner not far from this place, and I didn't know what to do or here where to go. I lowered the window and I shouted to a person standing by the traffic light, “Where do you study Kabbalah around here?” And as if he was ready for it, like he was waiting for me, he said, “You know what? Go left, go all the way to the citrus orchard, and you'll find a synagogue there. Go there, that’s where they study Kabbalah.”
I followed his directions and I came to a darkened building; it was dark. I went inside, and there I found a small room, with five or six old men, and they were sitting around a table, studying something from a book. They looked up at me, and I said, “I heard that you’re studying Kabbalah here; would it be ok if I listened?” So the old man at the head of the table said, “Yes, sit down.” I sat there, and I didn’t understand a word. They were studying the Book of Zohar in Aramaic.
About ten minutes passed, and the lesson ended. The elder at the head of table called me to him, and he said, "How are you? What is your name? Where are you from?" I told him, "I am so and so, from Rehovot, I’m working, I’m studying, I’m looking for a place that I can study Kabbalah. I don't know exactly what it is, but I’m drawn to it." And he said, "Well ok, give me your phone number and we’ll call you."
The very next day I get a call from him telling me, "come and study." I was skeptical. I saw only a handful of 70, 80 year old men there. What was I going to do with them? I was around 30 at the time, but I went anyway.
At the first lesson, one of them, who was appointed by the elder to teach me, said, "Alright, let’s study something." I sat opposite him; he opened a book, and he started reading and explaining things very slowly. After five minutes, I knew for certain that I had found my place. I felt something in my heart and I knew that I would not move away from it. Because, there's really nothing else. I now realized that this was the only real thing in life, and other than this, there is nothing, and that the whole world was created only to clothe this internal point.
Questions began to arise, along with their answers. All the questions I had ever asked in my life, and perhaps in previous lives as well, all began to become clear. You start to understand what you’re living for, how you’re living, how the world is built, how the whole system works. I am a scientist by profession and I began to get answers to things I asked myself for 15 years, things science could not answer. Everything around me, any phenomenon that I saw, I could perceive it coming down from above, and find its answer here. I knew by which inner act I could influence the world for the better, or God forbid, for worse. The book opened for me the possibility to be the owner of my own life.
So I continued to study. At first it was twice a week. Then every evening. Then in the mornings too After about two years they permitted me to move into their neighborhood, so that I could be close to them; I couldn't leave them. This old man, their leader, he became my Rav, my teacher, my Rebbe, so to speak, the “Great One.” I was with him, connected to him all day long. In this way, I think I slowly absorbed all that I could from Him.
The Teacher
Currently, our world is entering a situation of crisis, where everyone feels this pressure, and increased bitterness of life, and can find no solution to this. My Rav was very concerned about sweetening the way of the world, how to bring humanity to the end of correction in a quicker, more comfortable, because we will eventually have to come to that., But we are now approaching it on the path of suffering, not in the path of Torah, of Light.
He worked all of his life only for that—to show us the way of Torah, how we can reach the goal in a sweet way, so that it would not be by way of physical pressures, wars, and other disasters, but rather, to come out of this current bad state, and to escape corporeality, through a desire for spirituality.
Question: He chose this place to carry this out?
He chose this place deliberately, because from here you might say, he was conducting the world spiritually. He was managing it, helping it; he was pouring the Light, the Upper Light from here, and spreading it to the world. It's as if it's a source in this world, but even now the Lights from Above come down to here, and spread to the entire world.
Comment: It sounds unbelievable!
It’s not fantastic. These are things that everyone can feel pretty easily. It’s pretty close to matter. If you don’t feel it, then you don’t feel it. You may believe it or not. But I see and I know that my Rav was the “last of the Mohicans;” he was the last Kabbalist who was at the same level as such Kabbalists as Rashbi, the Ari, and Baal HaSulam. He took the method from them, the theoretical method that the masses couldn't use, and processed it in such a way that now, everyone can use it. That was his task; he completed it and he left the world.
Since then, no Kabbalist of that stature had appeared, I think that until the Messiah comes, until the end of correction, there won't be this sort of Kabbalists belonging to those special, ancient souls.
There will be, I hope, leaders who will come and will be able to touch the whole world and to lead them in the right way. Baal HaSulam speaks about it in his Introduction to Talmud Eser Sefirot (The Study of the Ten Sefirot), that if at least one Kabbalist leads the world, and everyone, even the simple people, follow him, then the whole world will be able to reach the end of correction, in a pleasant, direct way.
Right now, man is taking every step in a painful and wrong way. I cannot explain how much Light there is in this place, and how it expands from here, wave by wave, through the land of Israel, and all over the world.
There was a table here, with chairs. Rabash would sit here, and I would sit there. That table is now in my house.
We would sit together. There was a kettle and I'd serve him coffee. We would sit at the table for eight, nine, ten, eleven hours, nonstop. I would just get up, make some more coffee and we would sit again, immersed in the study.
The study included some special parts that he didn’t study with everyone else. It was either from the Book of Zohar, Volume I; the Introduction to the Zohar; or part 16 in Talmud Eser Sefirot; or Beit Shaar ha Kavanot (The Gatehouse of Intentions). Sometimes we would take Ramchal—Adir ba Marom, or the AGRA's Safra de Tzniuta, just to bring in the whole personal Kabbalah that could elevate me.
He was a simple man, who knew all things as they are in their nature from above. So you could talk to him about everything. Because though he didn’t know the language that people invented for every field of science in this world, he did know the nature of every teaching, and he knew it from its root, its spiritual root. And that's why if you invent a language to communicate, just like people who speak two separate languages, if you have a common language then they can communicate.
He was really a friend. I remember once I got mad at him and I just left him. And he stood in the middle of the synagogue and he said to everyone, “Is this a way to leave a friend?” And people told me that he said that, and I was so embarrassed because in saying it to everyone, he exposed our closeness.
He was my friend, but I treated him as a Rav and as an ailing man. These approaches might not seem contradictory, but they are completely different, and it was important for me to take care of him physically, without looking at him as a Rav, as a Great One; rather, just to relate to his body, and I just treated that.
So that’s in corporeality, but in spirituality, of course he was my Rav, and my teacher. The only one then, and the only one now.
I feel that everyday, he's leading us, and it's only thanks to him. If we receive any spiritual achievement, any new sensation, it's only thanks to him. If we receive any spiritual achievement, any new sensation, it's only thanks to him. And I feel as if he's pulling us. If there’s any spiritual progress, I feel the Rav’s hand in it.
This is where he slept. We would come here; I would change his sheets, put a table cloth on the table. And then…
What's the difference between these two relationships? The difference is that it’s not the lack of contact—that doesn’t matter.
If you have a spiritual connection between souls, then the physical connection… I miss him in this physical sense, but not in the spiritual sense. In spirituality, you can advance, you can study, you can ask him and you can get an answer. The problem is that the physical presence brings with it an additional abundance. Why are we in bodies, and not just souls? I guess there’s no need for it from Above. I can’t explain it, but briefly, if we were privileged enough to have that person materialize now, and live among us, we would be awarded wondrous things—the whole world would.
For the time being we have to progress as we are. What he’s left for us is plenty. We have nothing to complain about. And what Rabbi Shimon didn’t finish, what the ARI didn’t do, what Baal HaSulam didn’t do—meaning, Kabbalah for masses who want to rise—that’s what he did.
Our way was paved by him, and now anyone can elevate. In the next couple of months we’ll publish the articles of Rabash that he wrote during the last years of his life.
I asked him to write these articles because I couldn’t lead the group that he gave me, and I had to show them something and tell them something, so before every meeting, I asked him, "give me a few words, some explanation to read," and I would talk accordingly. He did this two or three times, and then eventually, he started writing articles consistently.
There are about 300 articles, 1700 pages, describing every spiritual path, and all the spiritual states of every soul. It’s a huge asset. With that alone, we could reach spirituality, if we really used it properly.
I hope that this place will remain empty for a long time, because it is kept from Above. It is enough for us that we come here once every six months—that’s reason enough for it to exist.
It’s a pity that our camera can’t capture…It's a shame that no cameras can capture spiritual Light—like there are X-ray cameras—then you would see how the Light spreads to whole world in here.
In the coming years, Rabash will be more and more important to the world because the Zohar, the writings of the ARI, and even the writings of Baal HaSulam, will not be understood by future generations. But this practical instruction on what a person should do, makes us like a baby, showing us how to make every single step, to advance in spirituality.
It is written that spiritual ascent, the entrance to the spiritual world, and the exit from this world is possible only by means of assistance. The Upper One gives you a hand, a part of Him, you catch it, and It raises you. And you need three conditions for that: Olam, Shana, Nefesh—World, Year, and Soul. Meaning a special place, a special soul, a special time.
Sukkot and Pesach are the special times. The special place is here, and the Nefesh is his soul. If at this time of Sukkot and Pesach—if you can know what you want, and what to hang on to—You immediately rise because He immediately raises you.
This is how I would approach the bed and wake him up.
The Path
Our world is similar to the Upper World in that it is built on exactly the same design, with the same parts. And every force that operates in the Upper World operates in this world too, as root and branch. Because of that, every place in this world expresses different spiritual forces. In particular, we visit the places where the great Kabbalists worked. In those places, where there still remains special forces, we can receive from them, and learn they operated. We want to come closer to them, to be like them. That is why every few months, we feel a necessity to go out and connect with them. This helps with our corrections.
Question: Is there an actual connection?
Yes especially when we are in these places, there is. There’s a special way to connect to them—when we are in a group, gathering all our desires and strength, in a special direction, for special corrections. Surely they are operating toward us as well, and we connect.
Baal HaSulam writes that the reason people can't stay in Israel, and have a need to go overseas, is because their soul is still not ready to match these Upper Forces that operate in the land of Israel. This imbalance between their own spiritual forces and those that operate in the land of Israel propels them overseas, whereas those people who feel an attraction, an appeal for spirituality, want to come to the land of Israel, and they cannot feel good anywhere else. That is why, within the land of Israel, there are special places where Kabbalists worked, Safed, Miron, Idra Rabba. We feel drawn there and we feel that every few months we just have to be in those places, to connect to the Kabbalists that worked there.
Between Life & Death
A cemetery is a place for bodies, but it’s a house of life for souls. When you get rid of the body—of the will to receive—you feel unlimited in the evolution of your soul. Because of that there’s a special article in the Zohar, Between the Womb and the Tomb, how these things are parallel; they're the same.
It depends on what you are talking about—either with respect to the will to receive (the body) or the will to bestow (the soul). So it depends who feels what in that place. If a person thinks about his physical life, his body, then of course it’s death. If he thinks about spirituality, then it’s an inlet to a new life.
A Complete Vessel
Why are we going together as a group? Because the forces of a single person are small. If we all come together, knowing how to connect to each other in such a way that the group will be a complete spiritual Partzuf—meaning a mechanism, a special whole, complete, closed spiritual mechanism—then we can absorb the spiritual abundance, the power and energy, in such a complete way that it helps us evolve, then one visit then helps us to go on for several months. We also go to Baal HaSulam, and Rabash.
There are several places in Israel where our contact with these forces will elevate us. The group is like a power supply, a battery, and we get powered up for months when we visit. The Kabbalists wrote about it, and how to create this connection.
My students are a collection of souls which together, receive the Divine revelation. I cultivate, I nurture that vessel. I create a connection between the source of every soul in each student, so that within a few years, each of them will evolve to have his own stature and will have an independent, personal contact with the Creator.
All of my students are like my own child. I cultivate them, invest in them; they are my self, my life, my hope.
Each method that I received from my Rav—who is actually my spiritual father—that is what I give to my students. The nature of the connection is such that there is really no example for it in this world. It is an eternal connection, in the souls, in such a way that it continues eternally. It’s beyond time and space. We just have no words to describe how perfect this thing is: the group, the Rav, and the student; the group and me.
Idra Rabba
We are here in the place where the group of Idra Rabba sat. The students of Rabbi Shimon Bar-Yochai sat with him and they discussed, and they wrote the Book of Zohar. Rabbi Shimon would talk, Rabbi Abba would write. This book that we're holding in our hands came from them.
At that time, everywhere in the world there was strife, killing, and wars. Everywhere, except for this place. Here, people sat and talked. They wrote in a hidden language about the secrets of the Torah, about the correction of the world and about the good future that would come to everyone.
Today the world wants to know what Nostrodamus wrote, what other hidden scriptures say. Here the Book of Zohar actually foretells everything. We just have to learn a little bit about how to receive the key, and see how to come to a state where the whole Book of Zohar, and all the Upper Lights appear in us. These Lights bring the whole world to correction, to goodness.
Credits
Director
Semion Veniokur
Editor
Chaim Kuchuk
Shai Zamir
Camera
Chaim Kuchuk
Alexander Shabataev
Vladimir Plotke
Music performed by
David Krupnik
Post Production
Thinkmusic Studios Toronto
Narration
Tony Kosinec
Produced by
ARI films