*This transcription is made from simultaneous translation which leaves possibility for errors.*
*Morning Lesson September 29, 2020*
*Excerpts for Baal HaSulam Memorial Day. #6*
1. Rav’s Introduction:
We are still according to our plan, on the day of the departure of Baal HaSulam. In truth, according to the Torah, the fact that a person departs the Partzuf, we have two different approaches. One approach which was that we had a person amongst us who lived a corporeal life and in truth we know this upon ourselves as well that there's quite a benefit but he was close to us and he passed to us everything, he wrote, he learned and he taught in his presence, in a degree, his, and us also in that bodily degree was helpful to the world. We can also see, according to our experience and our senses, is that as much as a person is amongst us, it influences us. And when he departs, it influences less. It's not so with Kabbalists. If a person is connected to the Creator and to the created beings and distances physically from his students, he doesn't distance himself. He stops to be with them in a physical connection but becomes even more connected, needed in a spiritual internal way. I too felt that with Rabash, that I was next to him all the time and when he passed, he passed in my hands. I felt physically a big, a very big difference. I didn't know what I would wake up for the next day and yet together with that there is a complete system of connections in which we have how to connect and to whom to connect and we are in such a connection. Even before a person like Baal HaSulam we could say or Rabash passed and this connection just strengthens as all that was also in this world relative to him moves now spiritually to that kind of connection with him. That's why it's written that the righteous, in their death, are even more important, even closer, even more - we are connected to them - then when they were in this world together with us. This is why we need to scrutinize over and over, more and more the connection, his method, his words which he wants to pass to us through all the means and to put his Torah in us, to live with it, those lights and Kelim that he wanted to deliver to us and to live accordingly. We will come to a state where there will be no difference between when a person was alive - he is now not alive biologically and yet he is connected with us in a spiritual way - we will feel no physical need for him but rather the spiritual connection. To be in spiritual adhesion with him opens for us a different dimension, a different world where we are in adhesion. This is why usually the students are not sorrowful for their teachers passing but rather are strengthened and strengthen one another and bring themselves to another degree, to a more superior degree in their connection to the teacher and continue with him as a guide. They see these things as an opportunity from the Creator that draws them onwards in such a way. So let's hope that we will locate this, understand, feel and execute our connection with Baal HaSulam through us, through the groups, the tens, through Rabash and to Baal HaSulam and through him, to the Creator in such a way that we will see how each time when we build this chain, we have an opportunity or an ability more and more to rise towards the upper force.
*Excerpt #6 Letter 18 of Rabash Reader (6:56 - 7:49)*
2. R. It only all depends on our efforts. How one will help his friend, we'll connect together and then in the right organization in the ten, the ten can be 200 people it doesn't matter how many 2000, in the way we organize between us we are in the right connection and then we will be able to open all the things he wrote to us, to understand them to feel them and locate them as they live in us because they are certainly alive. The teacher is always giving in to his students his whole Torah. Hence, in each of us and of course moreover than that, in the connection between us, the Torah of Rabash and Baal HaSulam lives. We just need to discover the extent in which we correct our vessels, connect between us and then you start to feel the image of Rabash, the image of Baal HaSulam, the image of the ARI, Rashbi, and so on. That's how we advance. So what we need is, to just know that amongst us this whole method is, and Baal HaSulam is serving this to us in such a way within, so that we would, as long as we try to get to it in this exertion, this effort only depends on the connection between us.
*Excerpt #7 Reader (9:43 - 11:22)*
3. R. Yes, this is a special thing that happens to a person that a higher sublime soul clothes him from above and then he begins to recognize inside the soul what's happening to him. He receives a mind, feeling, an intellect, a spiritual discernment, a connection with the Creator, the feeling of divinity in a way such as he would not attain on his own. It's truly a gift from above, the upper force from above, and sometimes people receive this but what he receives, the soul of the ARI, that incarnation of the soul of the ARI, is truly an immense thing. Hence, he could do a commentary to all the writings of the ARI. I think that he also doesn't want to talk about this because no one would believe him, but he also had the same incarnation of the soul of Rashbi. Of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai. That's why he permitted himself to write the Book of Zohar. The difference between the commentary to the study of TES or to the Etz Chaim, Tree of Life in the form of the study of TES and The Ladder, and The Sulam commentary for the Book of Zohar: the difference between the two is many years. He probably didn't immediately recognize the soul of Rashbi as well, but it is known and I am certain that if he were not to receive such an acquaintance, a tight closeness to Rashbi’s soul he wouldn't approach the Sulam commentary. Meaning Baal HaSulam from these impregnations, these incarnations of those two pillars of the wisdom of Kabbalah, by that he advanced all their matters and placed them before us as the method, as the Torah as the upper force that can help us truly reach the end of correction. Where we don't need anything. Rather if we're adhered through Rabash to Baal HaSulam and Baal HaSulam already within himself carries within him souls of the ARI and of Rashbi and this is how with the help of these great ones, we ascend towards the Creator and observe our roles to bring this method, this Torah to all of humanity.
4. S. (14:56) How can we reach the greatness of the Rav through the desire, or through equivalence of form with them through devotion on the path? How do we reach impregnation of the souls as Rashbi or ARI, through devotion? Or how?
R. We don't know, but a person who knows, he just knows. How does he feel this? I can't tell you because we don't have such feelings that he doesn't know. But now that he has feelings and sensation and a grasp in the upper system, not from his degree like it was and not from his new degree, but rather he is truly looking at the world through the ARI or through Rashbi. It takes on a very specific spiritual degree which is very high, and he begins to have everything clear to him. This system becomes understood and revealed and he sees his role. This is like they took a baby on the hands of adults and they're showing him the world this way. It's not like with a baby you just raise him and that's it. Here a person puts forth great labor even though he needs assistance from above here.
5. S. (17:50) How can you feel the reflection of Rabash and Baal HaSulam’s Torah? It's in my friends?
R. To the extent in which you connect with the friends and try to make from them one ten, you prepare the place where what you deserve to reveal, you reveal according to your efforts, according to your role, according to that which is before you that you need to do. There are several conditions here. The fact that you have come to the group it's like you were born into a family that can give you the correct education, the fact that you're now investing in connecting with the society. This is meaning that you're kind of studying how to be this correct person but what will be revealed to you will come from the root of your soul, where you will begin to feel the extent in which the Creator prepared for you this place for his revelation. That's how it will be. Slowly, slowly, meaning not to be drawn fast ahead because these things are revealed gradually. We're not jumping for it.
6. S. (20:02) You just described emotionally Baal HaSulam and Rabash and you've described it in a way that's filled with love. How can we pass on this love to the public, to the world?
R. I don't think that needs to be our goal to give our love to Baal HaSulam and Rabash as they give us a connection to internality to perfection to knowledge to the feeling of the Creator. We won't be able to deliver this to anyone. Each of us will have to reveal on his own. We're just giving out the method and also not the method to love someone. No one needs that or wants that even if it comes to him. We need to simply show them that this is what benefits humanity, what benefits man and then you will see that for an egoistic man to see that it's for his benefit he starts to appreciate them, respect them, to hold on to them and then this way come to a state that he appreciates them and begins to love them. This is to the extent that he sees that these special people have prepared for him the whole method to be an eternal and whole man, but not just to talk like that about Baal HaSulam and Rabash that we need to love them. Who needs that? We need to explain to a person only to the extent that he will feel to it his benefit and that he will take something for himself, that which is to his benefit. Just to start talking to him that he should love some people that wrote and you need to love them. No way. How could it be that someone would go for that? It's delusional. The fact that I see them that way because I see that they gave me my life, so accordingly I truly relate to them in such a way.
S. I meant love of others, not our love to Baal HaSulam and communicate that to the world but how Baal HaSulam and Rabash have love for the public.
R. That's not for giving, it is outwards. You don't understand that you cannot talk about this in such a way to strangers and to foreign people because you look delusional. Tell all kinds of people that they should love your mother, or let's say you love your mother and they should love her too, well she gave you your corporeal life, she took care of you yes, you love her. So go and tell others that they should love her as well. Why? You're not allowed to talk that way. You need to learn how to clothe in a stranger and talk to him in words that he wants to hear. Otherwise he will just do the wrong dissemination and receive rejection from the Creator, rejection instead of closeness. Be careful and hear what's being said. In your place, I wouldn't even start with what you're talking about.
7. S. (24:15) Last night I heard from you saying that after Baal HaSulam, we don't need to write a new method so can we look at our role as trying to make the matter as simple as possible, to try to give it to people in small drops so they can understand and connect to it?
R. Correct, that's exactly what we need. To take what they took and what they wrote, the closest things for execution, to write this, to rewrite this in an easy way such that the audience can understand and spread it to the broad public. That's our generation that's already in a transition between corporeality and spirituality and this is what we have to help them with.
8. S. (25:33) Do we need the sparks of lights from the Kabbalists to understand their writings?
R. No, for us trying to understand them, to simplify them and to advertise them, their ideas, accordingly we’re slowly coming closer to those Kabbalists and begin to feel them and begin to feel that they are clothing in on us and this way we actually rise to a spiritual degree.
9. S. (26:27) In what way do the great teachers influence us now, meaning they lead us, they take care of us, how does it work? And what way can we explain their concern to us?
R. They are great teachers who are no longer physically with us in this imaginary world. It appears to us as though they're not with us because we can only grasp with our vessels and our Kelim that we have and the other Kelim are not yet there and we don't understand that they are truly here and from what we learn, what we want to go towards, being closer to them, to be similar to them, to carry out their doctrines. Out of this, we start to discover how they are living in us, how I all of the sudden discover that this is what I want to say, this is what he meant and so on and this is how we bring them to life in us. That's how it works. The more we know the method, the method of coming closer to the Creator and revealing him, we'll see that they are living in us more and awakening and accompanying, truly guiding us and are truly in us and explaining to us this way how to go and what to do. This is similar to, I don't know how to say but a tree that grows, it grows from a seed, and then it develops more and more and takes more forces and more forces and starts to enter into all kinds of buildings of the components of the tree and the branches and it's fruits maybe and so on but nevertheless those forces that were to start with in that tree are operating. They have just begun to appear in their actions more and more, therefore the more we advance realizing the Torah of Baal HaSulam and Rabash, the more we will feel how they are operating in us and standing out in us.
10. S. (29:18) We learn from the writings how to connect, how to feel the words that Rabash writes to us, the ARI. We try to work with them in Arvut and love of friends through these words however we can't feel through them the public, the pain of the public as they felt it. And if we disseminate we have to know what to disseminate otherwise we will just throw out things to the outside and pray for something to hit the public. How can we feel the public through Rabash? What exactly can we put together from what they give to us and disseminate? How can we feel them?
R. What did you do to feel the public?
S. What I've done is working together in the ten.
R. That's not the public. The ten is not the public. That's the minimal spiritual Kelim. The most minimal. Without the ten you have nothing at all, one cell, the ten is one cell, ten Sephirot and there's no more and no less and what's next.
S. I understand we need to feel everything in the connection between us meaning to feel the public and just build the connection between us and try to put it out there but, put out what? That's what I'm asking.
R. I don't feel like you understand at all how to connect inside the ten and how to connect outside of the ten.
S. That's why I'm asking.
R. I can't talk to you about this right now, but you really have to go back to those lessons that we talked about. You must.
11. S. (31:34) When does the point that determines that one has a role towards humanity, when does it emerge? When does it begin?
R. This point starts when he enters a ten because all his realization, his implementation in the ten should be with the tendency to prepare himself towards humanity and all of humanity towards the Creator; that's the end of the action in the initial thought. The end of the action is bestowal to the Creator and the initial thought is where he's now Incorporated in his ten and along the way, is to be a pipeline to all of humanity in such a way.
S. What do you say to a friend who still feels that he's not ripe to tell humanity what you just explained?
R. I don't know if he's ripe or not but if he receives an awakening to come to the ten then he has to know that in order to develop in the ten through the right mechanism that he has to already be, to include into that mechanism the next stage of his development. Otherwise he won't be able to complete this stage either. He won't be able to connect to the ten in the right way if he doesn't prepare himself in the ten to connect with many other tens and the broad public. Again, according to the end result in the initial thought. In spirituality all the actions are complete actions. They cannot, they have to be actions that encompass actions that encompass the whole of creation from beginning to the end. He can say whatever he wants but if he doesn't take these things seriously and think about it every day, then nothing will happen. Also, he won't allow his whole society to advance. He has to as much as possible try to think and talk about it and gradually, gradually he will want, gradually he will want to do it.
*Excerpt #8 Letter 52 Baal HaSulam Reader (34:33 - 36:01)*
12. R. What does he want to say? It was unpleasant for him too, and when he came no one wanted to recognize him as great and willing and able, that he'll just start teaching and will come. No, he had to work hard in order to attract people to start studying with him and there will be something to write to and that they will help him advertise the wisdom of Kabbalah. This was not simple. He did it meticulously and with very great persistence. Not just in some place but in Jerusalem which is a tough place for spiritual progress. It's a place that, as he writes in another place, the place of the shattering, the place where there is the greatest resistance but he wasn't afraid of it and he started addressing everyone and he made it so that ultimately, from him onward, the method began to somehow go out there and you see that us, a hundred years afterwards are in a completely different situation. One hundred years and spirituality is like not even, it's very little time but look how much was done in that time that today is thousands and all over the world are learning his method from the books that he couldn't print. Today it's online everywhere in many languages and we are realizing what Baal HaSulam started. We are working in an office that is of dissemination. The dissemination office of disseminating the Creator to all of humanity. Disseminating how to reach the spiritual work, what exactly the Creator wants from the created beings. How can the created beings fulfill the role that they were created for? That's what we all are doing so there has to be some understanding, recognition, respect to what we're doing and not to throw it away and say I don't know, I don't think so but on the contrary the more you resist this dissemination the more you need to make an influence in that. The resistance also is awakened from above.
13. S. (39:18) He writes here that I've been serving the Creator in all that I can. How can you acquire such a quality in the work? You're also saying that your life doesn't belong to you. Where do you take such a force? Even the smallest action takes a day and a half.
R. You think that for others it's easy, or for me it’s easy. Or that Baal HaSulam had it easy? I saw it on Rabash. Sometimes when he would make an effort to do something, to do something was this kind of effort that he would barely do it, would barely do it until he would produce the very last gram of effort and then he made it. And that's what's required where we are required to show that we nevertheless want to, even though we are at the end of our efforts, where the last drop of your effort is just crying from helplessness and then you get help from above. If you don't come to that it doesn't mean you're making an effort and working. All our work is how to once again, again and again, join to ourselves more and more in order to bestow. It's always above our strength. It's not that I wait until I get it. No, I don't get it. Maybe this way I can get some intellect and some feeling but not spirituality. Rather, exactly at the last moment where I do it above the ego, it's really those last bits, those efforts, that's where I attain the spirituality. Because we have to obtain something that's on the other side of nature and that's why to attain it we have to make an effort that is above nature. That's how it works. If we connect together, with our common force then it's fine. Let's try.
S. This is all of the force of the Creator that comes to a person and nevertheless helps him to relate to himself this way?
R. It comes from the Creator? Of course, it comes from the Creator, what did you think? What from yourself? You have nothing other than a broken will to receive and also a spark which constantly tells you come on get out of there, but it doesn't give you any power. It only stimulates you. Powers you need to get through the group from the Creator. To the extent that you are drawn to the group to receive the force of bestowal from them then you advance, then you pay by lowering yourself towards the friends and in exchange you get strength that helps you advance in spirituality. Everything according to the effort.
14. S. (44:04) I feel like a Bedouin who's being told about spaceships. How can I measure my closeness to the degree of our teachers?
R. It depends on you. What are you saying? No one puts an obstacle in your wheels. You have all the opportunities and if you don't want to hear how you can advance then you are just standing still. Also standing still because it repeats itself, ultimately it amounts to great bitterness and then you make a better calculation. It's all in order to integrate with the friends and the more you integrate with them, you then make a step towards the Creator. Examine yourself. Saying that you're doing the same thing all the time means you're probably making a mistake somewhere.
15. S. (45:28) What is the advantage to humanity that the Zohar was concealed two thousand years ago and not by, a ten in the times of Baal HaSulam what do we need to learn from this process ?
R. We should accept it the way it is and not get confused and ask things that are not related to us. You got a gift. Learn how to use it correctly. Only afterwards you will be able to discover what is that gift and maybe you will understand it but to ask questions right now that are not for our progress, for the goal of progress towards adhesion with your group in order to disseminate to humanity, all the other questions are just a waste of time and energy. I'm not going to go into that.
16. S. (46:32) What's the work of your students and Baal HaSulam?
R. My students’ work and Baal HaSulam? I don't know that. Everyone is a student of Baal HaSulam and Rabash. Our work is to realize the method of coming closer to the Creator which they left for us and opened up for us and gave us. How do we come closer to the Creator? This is the goal.
*Letter #38 of Baal HaSulam Reader (47:23 - 48:50)*
17. R. So we need to do as much as we can in the right direction, the right effort and when we come to the end of it, a little bit more and that little bit more that you're doing beyond what you can, that's the correct effort, labor. Before that, all the effort you did before is just considered preparation. It sounds impossible but in a ten when you talk about it and do it together, it's possible and there's no problem, no problem. Just to understand that that's what we have to do. Only after people say we are incapable and then they don't stop and above this incapability they make another effort, beyond what they're capable of, and that is considered the labor and according to that their effort is accepted because that's where spirituality is. The efforts they did before, or by strength, they received, they already had so that's not considered exertion. The exertion is at a place and a space or towards a degree they haven't been in yet.
18. S. (50:35) What you said about the exertion and you come to the end and you give a little bit more effort and then it's labor. Only in that state can you ask for it to be prayer altogether or is there no prayer before that?
R. You can ask but it's almost not accepted. I'm saying almost because we can't tell the difference between these things but you know a baby who's nagging and you know it does help a little bit. How? Because the baby still holds himself connected to the upper one. Not going away but nagging and wanting and crying and give me and so on. Even though the baby's requests and prayer is perhaps not even in the right place, but somehow he holds his connection with the Creator even though his request is not yet ripe.
S. Good true prayer means only after I've drained myself with exertion?
R. And a little bit more above the drainage.
S. Then it's accepted immediately?
R. This I don't promise you.
S. How come?
R. Why do you want it to be immediately received? You've done it in order to show to the Creator that you're willing to do everything for him in order to bestow. So how do you tell him okay now immediately pay me.
S. I've given forth my half-shekel now he has to do what he has to do.
R. What he does is what he does. It's not your business. You prepare yourself with your half a shekel and you don't want his, what he gave you. The opportunity to make an effort with your half, your exertion towards his direction, that's where you stop. His half, you don't want to receive and your half a shekel, you say: you gave me the opportunity to make this effort completely for you, good. True, that I came to this because I wanted to benefit and gain something but now, through this effort, where I came in order to gain and benefit, but then I understood out of my effort that this is the reward, that what I've done now and in my effort, and you thank him for that, you don't want anything from him. On the contrary, just don't give me anything. You receive the Masach to do the next action, to do the greater action.
S. I do that thing that you said because in the will to receive many times you come to the maximum of exertion and you say that's the maximum that I can and you're saying do more. I know usually in sport where there's trainers that press you after you've drained yourself and they say you can do a little bit more. How can a person do more, that additional exertion?
R. There's an opportunity to do it because we don't work alone. We're not alone. The same in sports. You look at others and it gives you additional strength. Alone certainly not. From the Creator, he can't feel you can demand from him. You look at the friends and it's complete ten Sephirot and everyone gives the strength to everyone and this is how you get to feel the urgency and the strength to go forward.
19. S. (55:25) You answered the question this moment, but I want to ask anyway. In the group, it's easier because we're dividing it between everyone in this effort, that's why it's easier? Or is there some kind of support and the conditions are better like in the group or is the effort truly divided between everyone? It's like you're dividing up the work?
R. From the impressions that we get from the environment from the network, there are so many I can’t even divide it up and explain it. We will do it at some point but for now it's not felt with us through all these details that we can sort them out.
20. S. (56:26) It sounds like Baal HaSulam started his dissemination after his revelation and we need to do dissemination in order to reach revelation. Why does it sound like it's opposite work?
R. It's not the opposite work. You always learn from people that are above you, just like parents educate children and give them everything and attract them and give them an example and this is how it happens. You understand? You want him to be on your degree, he'll help you because he's on a higher degree.
21. S. (57:14) What protects me from the pride the moment I've reached the tip of my abilities and I managed to do more?
R. What guards you?
S. What will keep me from not going all to the will to receive? I will be satisfied with myself and say look, I succeeded?
R. You need to make all the effort from the will to receive that you have to reach zero and then you start a new degree.
S. What does that mean?
R. That from all your strength you give the effort with all your strength and only on that condition you start receiving a new degree in advance.
22. S. (58:08) I'm not succeeding to understand how this exertion doesn't remain my individual one. I give exertion for the ten, I don't understand how that works.
R. I don't understand what you asked.
S. This effort, additional exertion, I can only hear it as something that I do personally. I'm trying to understand where can I add the ten into this effort?
R. How will you advance if you don't receive the forces from the ten, with your forces?
S. No, the forces from the ten?
R. Well?
S So how do you add the ten so that the ten operates in more effort and more exertion?
R. You don't have any effort if you don't collect everything from the ten. All the efforts are in order to collect everyone and to make a certain action. So what is the effort? For them to tell you to understand some sentence more?
S. No it's like I collect the friend’s efforts together with mine and that's what I have right now.
R. For what?
S. To reach the prayer, the request.
R. What request, what prayer?
S. This common effort that we can add more to it, that's what I can't find?
R. That's exactly what I'm telling you and you're saying that that's not the direction you want. Do you want to advance to being closer to one another, more together to locate this effort, to locate the force. Then you need more and more to be connected and then from your connection, bring forth the spiritual action, an act of bestowal outside of each of you. Meaning each towards everyone outside of himself and then you collect these efforts as each is towards himself, towards others and when you collect yourself this way these efforts of yours - then from this you turn out to have the ten as a force of common bestowal and it is what you aim towards the Creator.
S. Where is it collected? That's where I can't...
R. It's collected in the efforts between you where each ten is trying to give it from himself and then altogether, this integral force, you give to the Creator.
S. What else do we need to do or where to focus in order to identify that space? I don't feel that it's even there.
R. I understand, I hear now, and I feel what's going on because you're not making the efforts according to what we're talking about here, word by word.
23. S. (1:01:34) This effort, what is it about? Is it justifying them or justifying how the Creator works towards me and what happens after this effort?
R. You are disconnected from the whole matter, what to do before this, what after this, like this and like that okay we need to simply read more and more and not philosophize here. It's a sign of a new state.
*Excerpt #9 The Prophecy of Baal HaSulam Reader (1:02:30 - 1:02:59)*
24.R. Do you hear what he's concerned with? How will I come to all the people of the world and tell all the people in the world what the goal is, how to develop, how to attain a true, eternal and whole thing?
*Reading continues (1:03:17 - 1:04:19)*
25. R. That's what he wants. Do you hear? He wants to advance all of humanity, everyone towards the Creator. This is what really concerns him. Hence, he is going to open the whole wisdom of Kabbalah, the whole wisdom of correction to everyone, that which wasn't before him and we need to continue in his ways. This is something someone’s asking or about something else?
26. S. (1:05:02) I wanted to ask about the efforts that we just discussed. When such a state is given to the friend that he is truly asking from the ten, and he can't cope, how can the ten help him? How can we integrate in his state? What else do we need to ask and that moment? How do we behave?
R. I think we all need to connect and to help each, help everyone who enters into difficulty. That's what you can do. And we do it practice. If you start doing these things in practice you will feel what else needs to be done more and more. You will start to understand what Baal HaSulam means.
27. S. (1:06:18) What you're saying and what we are hearing in Baal HaSulam’s prophecy really touches the heart and everyone in the ten feels that - I'm certain that everyone in the world feels it. When you started studying with Rabash, you started writing before Rabash started writing. You didn't have the same example that we have now and when Rabash started writing after you asked him and then he wrote on that note, on that piece of paper from the cigarette box and wrote the first article that we have and so how did you start? Before Rabash?
R. Because there was nothing that was known. Do you know what there was before that? There was the Zohar with a Sulam Commentary where no one can open it up and understand what is written there because it was written in Aramaic. The study of TES where there is no possibility of taking spiritual work out of it The Introduction to the Study of TES and The Introductions to the Book of the Zohar which were very difficult, we learned them several times already and they're very hard. If a person wants to understand what I should do that he's asking but what about me? I see that there's something sublime here, but I can't jump to the tenth floor or even higher immediately from where I am. I also don't know where and how to jump. That's why I started methodologically to ask to slowly slowly gradually ask people mostly Hillel Gelbstein and Rabash and I started to receive a little bit of an explanation from them. Also, Menachem, the Elder, and these were like three Elders, 80, 70, 90 years old and I was 30, that's how I was always next to them like a little child next to their grandfather. That's how I felt myself willing to do anything for them - for them to just tell me more and more and that's it that's how I did it, what I heard, and then I understood a little bit more what was written, that's what I accordingly wrote, my first books in Russian. I didn't have a choice. Later, Rabash began to give me the Shamati articles and then I brought people so he started to write himself the articles but that was all, there was nothing back then. Today you come, you enter the archives and you have all the wisdom of Kabbalah. Nothing's missing. There will always be something to add, a few words but in truth all that wasn't there. Therefore, there's no point in being concerned with why I wrote before Rabash wrote. Yes I wrote out of wanting as much as, I know a little more and in an easier way than in that which it was explained to me as in these books of TES and the Book of Zohar, to explain a little to people that are outside of this matter so they too maybe will come and want.
*Excerpt #10 Reader (1:10:57 - 1:11:46)*
28. R. Yes, that's what he wants to present to us as well, the easiest things, the most practical ones so that we won't fail but rather implement them, carry out them and rise in those degrees. To recognize the reality which is concealed for the time being from us all.
29. S. (1:12:11) You really opened up Baal HaSulam in a deep and emotional way and it really grabs your heart to tears. When Baal HaSulam says that he will be taken down to a level where he can find language suitable. Why is it a descent is not an ascent?
R. No, of course it's a descent because he has to explain, let's say you're a great scientist and you're sent to some village school where you need to teach little children. So how do you come here and teach? You need to go down to their level and find their words and to give them a lesson, and in a gentle way - that's a great descent. Baal HaSulam where he writes that he went down.
S. Right now, what I just read from the prophecy of Baal HaSulam.
R. Yes, in the prophecy of Baal HaSulam he writes that he comes down and he wasn't afraid of losing everything because it wasn't important whether he loses his spiritual degree as long as he can help regular, simple people. He was ready to go down to them and be like them just a little so he will have the possibility to explain. Do you understand what he did? That which we are a little lazy about doing. That’s why he is so great and ascended more and more. By disregarding the care for all of the people we are close to, we are truly tripping ourselves and can’t ascend because of it.
*Excerpt 11 Reader (1:14:45 - 1:16:00)*
30. R. Certainly if we go to all kinds of other commentaries, we will see that there are all kinds of spins where a person can fail and think that he's before him here in this world and all these things. He starts to see, in all the corporeal forms that there's some kind of spirit there. That's the main problem. Therefore, the fear that we will come to materializing and that's what Baal HaSulam was concerned with not happening. So that we will precisely see only spirituality disconnected from corporeality which is taking place and we have no connection to this unless it's through the connection to come to the force of faith above reason where we begin to enter into the true spirituality, and all the rest is corporeality which is here before us.
31. S. (1:17:15) If we try to compare ourselves to Baal HaSulam, it becomes sad and you become powerless. Who should we compare ourselves to?
R. A person needs to always compare himself to the Creator, to the Creator. It’s written return to the Lord your God where I need to be in equivalence of form with Him, that's our goal. Then I don't need to be just like Baal HaSulam, like the Creator, to come to bestowal, and to love of others in a complete manner. These things are not on us to do, but rather just to want and the execution is by the Creator. That’s why all our work is called the Creator’s work, whereas the Creator does, we are just asking.
32. S. (1:18:42) What did Baal HaSulam mean by the words to be warmed with the Holy Light of the Zohar?
R. He didn’t mean, he said so: that you have to enter into the Book of Zohar in such a way that you receive bestowal from it, an illumination that reaches you and warms you up, corrects you. That's it. The book is not some printed book only, but rather it's a force, it influences a person who wants to reach degrees that are written about the book. This is called to warm yourself in the light of the book.
33. S. (1:19:46) How to measure labor if there's no such measurement that you can see and say that this is the effort?
R. There is no such thing in exertion of how much more, how much is left, it's all the way to the end and even more, that's how you measure your exertion.
34. S. (1:20:13) The Kabbalist who lived during Baal HaSulam and there were very few so why did they not bow before him and understand that the great Kabbalist stands before you like it happened with the ARI?
R. That was already a different time from the ARI, to Baal HaSulam. The ARI was almost an individual in his generation. There was the Ramak, but he was already old, and it was clear - the difference between the ARI and the Ramak - the extent to which I read and understand. But when the ARI opened his method, everyone understood this is a new light. A new light. Whereas Rabash operated at the beginning of the twentieth century, when there were wars, problems, a mess, there was a clash between the Chassidim and the resistors already from the times of Baal Shem Tov. There were those people in the times of Baal HaSulam, they hated Kabbalah altogether, wanted to eradicate it, erase it all together and were resisting it. Therefore, he advertised as much as he could, and as much as he couldn't he didn’t. Also, religious people began to make influences on the institution, on the government, on the settlement that was here and that's why he was very limited. But nevertheless, he published the Book of Zohar and others, he did something. But the main thing is he established in several of his students and mostly in Rabash, who continued his ways and did everything. Also didn’t write and didn’t publish anything. Baal HaSulam at least printed, Rabash not. Rabash only in the last 10 years of his life wrote what he did. And also we have other writings that he left that are still here next to me in the archives, that we will come to a state in which we will all sit on a big table and start to sort through all these writings. A big part of them is photocopied and put in our archives in the form of a copy, some of them are printed, some of them we didn't touch yet. We will do this together. We will do it, only that this work demands a connection between us. If we will connect correctly between us we will understand what's written there more, we will also understand how to sort these writings according to his will of Baal HaSulam. Then we will begin to do so, the same we have with Rabash. We have many more writings that Rabash left in his handwriting and we need to also sort through and arrange and print. This all awaits you when you will reach being in one in one hand, in one spirit, in one mind, and then we will be able to understand what is written there. Arrange those writings and sort them and print them.