Question: Is it true that during the workshop we seemingly, enter the center of the group, and during the lesson from The Zohar, we are already reading from within the center of the group about what is taking place there?

Answer: It depends on how a person scrutinizes and feels himself. It could be that he simply reads or even when he constantly thinks about it, even if he doesn’t listen or understand the words themselves, the reading itself bestows holiness and purity on him, and this advances him.

Or it could be that he also longs to connect with the text, to understand what is written there, since after all, spiritual acts are spoken about there. The ten Sefirot, either on the smallest level or largest level, are the same ten Sefirot. This means that everything that is written here, without doubt, takes place in the first and lowest Partzuf that I acquire.

I acquire the first ten Sefirot, at the level of “pregnancy,” and in any case, also everything described in The Zohar will take place there, the entire Torah from beginning to end, at every level. It’s like a holographic picture, and therefore, it is written about me. Even if we are speaking about the Partzufim that are so very high like Atik of the world of Atzilut, and Abba ve Ima (Father and Mother), it all takes place in each level and in all kinds of details, but it takes place. Therefore, the text gives me a feeling of belonging, and it helps me to yearn. The main thing is that I want to be under its influence, like in a shower of light.
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From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/22/12, The Zohar

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Question: At the Sunday seminar you said that the center of the group did not exist before the breaking of the vessels because the three lines did not exist then, and now we are forming it. What does that mean?

Answer: We have a collection of data, but we have to gather it together into one ourselves.

Let me give an example. Suppose we used to have a mosaic image depicting the sun, clouds, a meadow, and several animals and people on it. It’s a pretty picture. Then this picture was broken into parts and the parts were mixed up.

Now you have to put the picture together again, but it will not be the same as the previous one anymore. That’s because you are adding your own component to it, the difference between what was created from existence and what was created from absence. In other words, the difference between the Creator and the creature is embedded into the mosaic, and the image transforms from flat to multidimensional.

In Kabbalah this is designated as a 620-fold addition. However, this is not talking about a quantitative addition, but about new details in the perception of reality.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/23/12

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Question: How can we reach the center of the group?

Answer: We must constantly think about our common force so it would correspond to the Creator. It has to grow forth from our equal cooperation, where every person bows down his head, joins the group, and raises the friends in his eyes since without them he would not be able to take one step toward the goal. His mind and feeling are born out of unification, and inside the unity, he finds his soul. Thus, aspiring to the center means aspiring to one’s soul.

No one has his own, separate soul. Baal HaSulam writes that only one soul, one common vessel was created. Therefore, without revealing the center of the group, we remain on the “animate” level, outside of the spiritual world, outside of our soul, and exist in the material bodies.

We must constantly form the center of the group. It is a point, like an elevator that rises up the spiritual degrees by the might of the unity of its constituent parts, rising higher and higher, to greater quality, to a greater concentration of our aspirations and desires. This enormous field is the “territory” of our common vessel.

The Creator endowed us with various qualities by means of the breaking, and with the help of intention we focus on the central point.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/23/12

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Question: What kind of an effort do we need during the seminar? Should it be a burst like that of an attack, or a fine internal search?

Answer: The seminar and our path in general are completely based on feelings, since we are clarifying everything inside of our material, the desire to enjoy. The desire perceives itself through feeling, but in order to realize the different states experienced, we need the mind. The mind comes to us only on the elevated levels, when we begin to unite desires in hope of reaching a corrected vessel. And this is when we begin to form our spiritual mind.

Prior to this we are only at the disposal of the earthly, animate mind, which helps us to better serve our egoism. This mind does not ascend higher than the level of this world because the lot of a slave adjusts to his master. That’s why those feelings and the mind with which we exist now are completely limited by the level of this world and don’t have anything pertaining to the spiritual. And here, it’s not important how smart a person is. This absolutely does not relate to the spiritual.

With the new feelings and mind, which do relate to spirituality, we now begin to develop in the search for our common point. This sensitivity must localize in the area where we are connected to each other, in the center of the group. The mind will appear in order to uncover the various subtleties in this and to help us unite. These are already the spiritual feelings and mind, belonging to the spiritual ladder.

That’s why at the seminar the inspiration precisely for unity must reign, and not a simple enthusiasm in the hope of receiving new knowledge and for the development of the self. If I want my awakening and preparation for the seminar to join into this work, then from the very beginning I need to focus myself only towards unity. This means focusing on the importance of unity, the importance of the group and friends, and not to long only to attain something by and for myself. It’s a pity for those who exert such futile efforts, since they will be left out of the circle.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/21/12, “Talk About the Seminar”

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Question: Although you warned us that we cannot be late to a workshop, we still had latecomers. Did we do the right thing by taking pity on them and accepting them into the common circle instead of making a separate circle for the latecomers?

Answer: It’s baffling how people can allow themselves to be late for a clarification of this kind! It’s the same case as when the Ari invited his students to go to Jerusalem and perform the final correction, but no one came at the appointed hour. I don’t understand how a person can be late to a gathering devoted to spiritual work.

Everything depends only on the preparation, on concentration, on the desire for it to happen. We need to start thinking about it for several hours before the workshop. Nothing will happen without preparation, we need to prepare the desire.

In everyday life, the feeling of hunger and other needs rise up on their own thanks to hormones and natural processes in the body. But when it comes to the spiritual, I myself need to arrange my desire through the environment. There is no desire in me for anything spiritual that would arise on its own like the need for food, sex, money, power, and knowledge do.

I was given only a single point in the heart so that I could develop my spiritual hunger from it. And everything else besides that point needs to come from the environment. Before the workshop, I need to arrange such an environment that it would influence me and I would arrive with an already prepared desire. Otherwise I will miss all the opportunities, as though I’m suddenly invited to a festive meal bursting with food, but I didn’t know and had just eaten a full meal. I look at all this abundance and don’t know what to do with it.

Preparation is essential. Thus, people who come late and burst into a group from a different world, from their job, or from a store; they cause harm. They cannot penetrate the common circle right away, at best only towards the end of the workshop are they able to somehow grasp the common feeling, and they interfere with others for sure.

Therefore, you shouldn’t welcome them with open arms right away, but verify what has happened: Is it truly the most important event in their life? I would not allow latecomers to enter. It’s necessary to take care in advance about not being late since we’re talking about the salvation of the soul. After all, haven’t you come in order to build the place where a soul is received?
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/21/12, “Talk About the Seminar”

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Question: During the process of upbringing, a person has to learn certain models of behavior. What are these models of behavior?

Answer: These elements of behavior are commutation laws, something similar to the multiplication table. Primarily, it’s individual readiness to enter others, to feel another as your partner in the same tuning process.

When we meet people in our egoistic world, we enter into a certain contact with them. For example, we smile in order to first establish a purely visual connection and later, an emotional one. Only after that we begin to perceive each other more closely. The same happens here.

When I speak about groups and societies, I am referring to a multitude of groups, which will become acquainted with each other, connect, and work together, either by merging or mixing with each other, to the point of creating enormous conventions and festivals, when different groups with identical preparation come together and perform certain actions with each other.

In other words, here we are already dealing with thousands of people in a certain limited space, who have to interact with one another. At the same time, we can involve them in special states and games in order to overcome a variety of problems and processes. Besides, these problems and processes must be natural and not artificial. For example, electricity suddenly disappears, or a certain danger appears, or the other way around, a certain opportunity arises, meaning someone finds treasure somewhere. How do we interact in this situation?

We create different conditions of play and excitement for them, we try to get them out of the altruistic habits they are accustomed to and once again make them dependent on each other as egoistically as possible. At the same time, we observe how they overcome these states, then forget about them, and once again attempt to excite themselves, to remember, and to climb out of their egoism in an attempt to find new strengths within for absolutely unexpected situations.

There are many opportunities for people here. I think that the most important thing is to work through these situations because like a child, when a person plays, he ultimately corrects himself, his nature. We think that it’s just a game, but in reality this is an enormous universal goal to correct human egoism, besides for which nothing else exists. Everything else is the still, instinctive nature.
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From “A Talk on Integral Upbringing” #16, 2/27/2012 

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Question: What is the role of the Internet in integral interaction? After all, there must be a reason for its very rapid development.

Answer: I think that integral learning courses will be constantly broadcast. However, the learning process, whereby we can watch the broadcast at any time convenient to us in every part of the world, is not the only thing that matters to us. There is also the possibility to transition from the perception of the virtual world and the real world to the perception of a single world. This is a third world where we perceive the new reality as boundless, when we come out of ourselves and begin to perceive the world outside of time, space, and movement in a new sense, the quality of bestowal, which can’t be measured in meters, seconds, or speed.

In the end we come to a state when through using all virtual possibilities in the learning process, we gradually come to a world where all the electronic methods of communication become replaced with our inner qualities. And the need for technical means of communication will simply disappear since I will begin to perceive absolutely all the worlds together with my new inner altruistic integral vision, not just our world, our space, our universe, or our globe.

Of course, for now we naturally need all the virtual possibilities the Internet provides so we can learn. But later, as soon as a new perception of self and space begins to appear in a person, he will exist in it without occupying himself with these electronic toys. We will reach this very quickly.
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From “A Talk on Integral Upbringing” #16, 2/27/2012

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Question: What is the best way for the virtual student to participate in the workshop?

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Question: Should we invite new people to seminars?

Answer: You shouldn’t invite people who at completely new. These seminars are not for beginners. Beginners should discuss questions about the importance of the group, the greatness of the goal and the friends, and the insignificance of oneself, which are discerned in Rabash’s articles about the group. But I deliberately chose a topic for the seminar that relates to the foot of the spiritual ladder.

This ladder stands upon the central point of the group, and its summit reaches up to Infinity. This is the ladder onto which we have to climb.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/21/12

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Question: Water in Russia is almost free. In other words, it is an unlimited public resource. However, recently, a water pipe burst somewhere in Russia, and mineral water prices rose tenfold immediately. Water has become a limited resource.

Why should men change and not increase the price of water by a factor of ten times its previous price if it has become a limited resource? Is it really possible to change the nature of people?

Answer: No, that is absolutely impossible. It can be achieved only through a gradual reconstruction of our consciousness, when we enter a completely different force, an environment where we completely depend on one another.

Let’s move away from the sellers and shortages and take a different look at the problem. Imagine that we exist on Earth in a limited number, and we all are interconnected. How can we build a society where all of us would have a reasonable and sufficient level of existence regarding healthcare, heat, food, clothing, shelter, safety, and so on? How can we achieve this without taking our interconnection into consideration?

Question: Theoretically, everyone understands this, but prices of water are rising in the city of Uryupinsk where the pipe has burst.

Answer: This is natural. We cannot jump over this stage. In this case, we must provide mankind or that very same Uryupinsk with integral upbringing. We must change the system of human relations within it to the point of making a person realize that his advancement toward happiness depends on his being going hand-in-hand with others. There is no other way for us to enter the integration of the world that now is being offered to us.

Question: Let us say that I arrive in Uryupinsk ten years after the introduction of integral upbringing there. Suddenly, a water pipe bursts, but the cost of water remains the same. What needs to happen to the city for this to happen? What will make life in this city turn upside down?

Answer: Life is overturned because people always think about themselves and providing for themselves in a way that problems will not separate people. First of all, everyone must be ruled and controlled by constant balance and integration. The bursting of a pipe is a common problem, a common disaster, and we pay for it together.

Question: How does a storeowner need to change in order not to rewrite price tags?

Answer: I do not think that this is up to the storeowners. When we speak of a society where everything is interconnected, we refer to a society of reasonable consumption.

The thing is that I am speaking of a distant future, not something that will happen in ten years. We must go from one type of society to another.

We must build it so that all the people within it are mutually balanced, which means that they would have absolutely equal rights and equal benefits, that they would reasonably consume what they need without producing absolutely unnecessary types of goods, embellishments, and things just because someone wants to profit from them.

There will be practically no advertising. We produce a necessary amount of goods, products, and everything else in the exact quantities that a person needs to exist normally on the corporeal level. Right now, we are speaking about satisfying our fundamental, basic needs.

Question: I remember that this is the way it was in the Soviet Union, but sailors would bring in suitcases of jeans and sell them at insane prices.

Answer: The thing is that, in the past, we were forced and limited in every way by the government. We were completely unprepared for the change of this paradigm.

Today, practically in all the countries in the world, we live in a society that is in a state of depression, a society that understands that this path of development leads to a dead end. A society of unlimited consumption that constantly sucks everything it can from the ground and contaminates it cannot exist.

The main thing is that nature is showing us that today we are becoming integrally connected. If we were to take any integral system, be it a mechanical, electrical, or absolutely any system, all the elements in it are completely interconnected. They mutually define one another and take care of the operation of the entire system. This is an analog system where the entrance and the exit are the same. Everything is built on the balance inside the system.

How can we see our future in this analog, integral system? Every part must feel that it is a part of a common organism. When a pipe bursts somewhere, it must be the first to plug the hole. In other words, all the parts together strive toward this. This is a common problem, and the entire system experiences it. It is not just a problem of someplace, somewhere.

Question: We are painting a desirable picture.

Answer: It is a necessary one because nature demands this of us, and it will continue pushing us toward this with a stick! What will we do with this challenge that nature is throwing us?

If we begin to penetrate the system, we will begin to see certain ins and outs, and a gradual coming together. This, of course, will take many, lengthy years, but this is evolution. Moreover, the interesting thing is that, if we only were to begin to move in this direction, we already would be in search of balance with nature. We would begin being in balance and homeostasis with it, and thus, would evoke positive forces over us.
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From KabTV’s “Global Crisis: The Deficit of Resources” 3/1/12

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