Hurrying Up To Be A Man

The society provides the person with artificial behavior patterns, plays with his ego, without asking him if he wants to live by them or not. The place on Earth, where one is born, determines what cultural values will be implanted in him from birth, and educates him to be the person he needs to be. Whether he wants it or not, he drinks those values, and lives by them his whole life. In order to use the person even more, the society also adds promises of reward in the next world. And as stated, man has no free choice, he has no choice.

But sometime, "the point in the heart" suddenly awakens in a person, and he despairs of his previous life. And then he starts a new page in his life. All of his previous values are destroyed and vanish from the horizons, losing all importance. The previous behavior patterns get canceled because there is nothing in them to give him reward or punishment. Only the necessary behavioral norms, without which one cannot exist, remain.

If he is a religious man, then doubts regarding the next world awaken in him as well. The circumstances bring him to the group, to Kabbalists' books, and now he must choose: how much does he want to integrate in this group, in this path? His freedom is not in choosing the path, but in the pace of the advancement, in how much energy he will invest, in the speed in which he will absorb their examples, new behavioral patterns, and new values.

His choice is only to the degree that he will integrate in the collective process, advancing forward faster or slower. And here he is given the freedom of absorbing the new examples and patterns provided by the new group at the maximal speed.

Although his choice is only in the pace that he accepts those new examples, it is still a choice. It is indeed higher than his egoistic desire to enjoy. And thus he begins to build a "person" inside of him.

--Taken from the Preparation to the Lesson

Why Kabbalah, Specifically?

Sometimes people ask me: why not something else, why Kabbalah specifically? If it must be Kabbalah: what is the matter of creation, what operates on it, where is the giver and where is the receiver? Show me a different method.

What could be different? Can you create a different physics in our world? No. And here it is the same as well. Kabbalah is not a theory that someone made up. Kabbalists investigated the laws by which the desire to enjoy operates, and the force that operates on it, the plus and the minus, one against the other. From their observations they created the wisdom of Kabbalah - the wisdom that explains how the Light and the desire, from which all of creation is composed, are connected in various possible situations. And therefore, Kabbalah is called a science.

--Taken from the Preparation to the Lesson

Growing From Day To Day, Like A Baby

Don't you ever ask why we needed to go through millions of years of evolution in order to start ascending back from below upwards? An enormous desire lies within us, which is concealed from us. This desire is connected with all the worlds. I must enhance myself, and the changes I go through influence this entire infinite desire - all of creation; whereas the changes in the creation influence me and create minor changes in me - because these are the precise doses that I can tolerate.

We are doing great work that is concealed from us. Like a baby, who advances in his development from day to day at a rate he will not ever advance later throughout his whole life, enormous changes occur in his development each month during the first year as compared to the changes he will go through in a month at the age of five, ten or twenty; we also change fast, except it is hidden from us!

Therefore it is called "the time of concealment." Indeed the great work which we perform is hidden from us. Like a baby, who makes an effort and does not realize what he is doing; we do not realize it either. But at the same time great changes occur in us.

What Is The Reason For The Crisis?

How does a person dare declare that he is not part of nature's system? If you aren't part of nature, then what are you? A thousand years ago, or a century ago, you were controlled by nature, but now you're not? And why is the world not controlled by nature? Is it because you have created a few toys - cars and planes? All you did was take different substances and mix them together, and you came up with plastic and bubblegum. So what has made you separate from nature?

The fact is that we have not been separated from nature. All the sciences, including Darwin's theory, say that we are the result of evolution of the still, vegetative and animate levels of nature. So why does the person suddenly deem himself above nature, separate from the integral system of the universe? Why does he suddenly step beyond its boundaries and say, "I am free"? What is he free from?

So now, because of our senseless pride, because we impudently think we are free, we are facing a crisis. The fact is that we aren't free, and we exist inside the integral, global system of Nature (the Creator). Therefore, we have to behave in harmony with the system.

We are inside the Creator. He controls us, and there is no one else besides Him. We don't have any possibility of acting freely, not in any regard. Even the sensation that we seem to stand opposite Him is given to us by Him, in order to raise us.

--Taken from the 3rd Part of the Lesson, Introduction to TES