What is “corrected egoism”? It is a state where you feel bliss from bestowing pleasure upon the people around you, and not from using them for your own pleasure. This bliss can only be felt in such a state, which is characteristic of the spiritual world.

Egoistic and Altruistic Perception

What do you see in our world? All kinds of objects, plants, and bodies. How do you relate to them? You love them if they bring you pleasant sensations, and you hate them if they don’t bring you any pleasure. In other words, your attitude toward them is completely egoistic.

What happens when you correct your egoism, or even when you merely begin the process of its step-by-step correction? You suddenly begin to notice things you hadn’t noticed before. Through this imaginary world, you begin to see the real world, one that has always existed around you, a world that is full of Light, Love, and mutual bestowal, the Creator’s world, the so-called “world to come.”

You have never seen it. It was concealed from you by your own ego.

Our Next State, the “World to Come”

Your world and “the world to come” have nothing in common whatsoever, as they exist by different laws. Many people carry the false notion that “the world to come” is a place they go to after death.

Not so. “To come” means it is your next state, which you must attain not after death, but in your lifetime, here and now. The moment you adapt yourself to “the world to come,” you acquire the ability to see it.

It is as if you exit yourself, leave your egoistic body, and open yourself up to a new world, a world with only one law—the Law of Bestowal. And you aspire toward that world because the lives of its inhabitants are founded on mutual love. Thus, instead of perceiving only our world with its bodies and objects, you begin to perceive the force that governs it, to the extent that you grow more similar to this force. By aspiring to bestow, you realize that this force is the absolute good. This force is the Creator.

This is how you come to perceive the pure, genuine Light, just as it stems from the Creator. It is as if you come out to meet the Light before it enters and fills you. This, the Creator’s Light, is not yet weakened by your egoistic filters. It is still pure, and you are given the opportunity to feel it. The very fact that you are capable of detecting it is happiness in its own right. This is called, “to hear the Creator’s call.”

A Great Ego and a “Tiny Candle” as Tools for Answering the Creator’s Call

The pure Light trickles into our world through the thick wall of egoism that screens it. It enters here with the sole purpose of maintaining life in our world. This Light “hides” within all the objects of our world, dressed in all kinds of garments.

A small spark of this Light that you had felt as your point in the heart. It is what Kabbalists call “a tiny candle.”

The very fact that you have a desire (and a great one at that) to attain the depth of what is happening to you speaks of one thing and one thing only (no offense intended): that you are a big egoist, much bigger than everybody else. Whereas others are satisfied with this world, you demand nothing less than the spiritual one! You will not rest until you reveal it with the help of this “tiny candle”, and that is precisely what the Creator wants from you.

“What Is Corrected Egoism?” is based on the book, The Secrets of the Eternal Book: The Meaning of the Stories of the Pentateuch by Semion Vinokur.

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The Heaven and the Earth

“Heaven” means the quality of bestowal. When acquired, the creature becomes filled with the Light of Mercy—the pleasure of being similar to the Creator.

“Heaven” means the Creator’s spark within you, a tiny grain of completely selfless bestowal and love that you discover within. It is precisely this quality of “heaven” that prompts the feeling of unease, compelling you to search insistently for something that doesn’t exist in this world.

“Earth” is all of your egoistic desires. This entire world is built on them.

And between these two polar opposites—“the heaven and the earth”—is your soul. Its state is unstable, as though hung on a string.

Subject to these two forces, in times of ascent the soul draws nearer to the heaven, to bestowal, to the Creator, and you feel like you’re soaring as joy overcomes you. In times of descent, the soul falls to the ground, to the desires of the body, to egoism, and you are imbued with worldly concerns, calculations, fear for the future, and a total lack of faith.

The Correction of the Soul: Cultivating “Heaven” Over “Earth”

The correction process is the same. You find your “golden mean,” that is, you utilize your innate egoistic desire by transforming it into an altruistic one, in order to climb up the spiritual ladder to the Creator, ultimately acquiring His quality of bestowal.

It can further be said that correction constitutes the very understanding that the quality of bestowal exists, that it must be acquired, and that you must work with your egoism—“earth”—to achieve this goal.

You must constantly cultivate the “heaven” within yourself. We have plenty of “earth.” Being born egoists, our entire lives are filled with “earth.” However, we have only a tiny spark of “heaven,” and this spark must be kindled.

Spiritual Life through the Light of Mercy

So how does spiritual life begin on earth? Or, to use the language of Kabbalah, how do I use my egoistic desires (earth) to grow the first sprouts of bestowal within me? How do I break through my egoism and move toward the Creator?

This is done with the help of a special Light that He sends us. Two types of Light emanate from the Creator: “The Light of Life” and “The Light of Mercy.” This is precisely how the creature perceives them.

By using the quality of the Light of Mercy, which is called “water,” you acquire the ability to bestow.

You must “cleanse” yourself by reading the books composed by those who have already attained the spiritual worlds, writing to us from their heights. In so doing, you draw the emanation of the Upper Light that these books contain.

Herein lies your spiritual work. The very process of reading is already helpful, but if you approach it with the desire to change, to be like the Light, to cleanse yourself of the ego, the Light influences you to a much greater degree. It is precisely this influence of the Light that separates the works of Kabbalists from all the other texts in our world.

That is when “life appears on the earth,” meaning you begin to clearly sense the first, tender sprouts of spiritual desires. These desires haven’t yet taken a complete hold of you. Rather, your state is like that of a baby who hasn’t yet learned to walk, but can already use his feet to kick. Better yet, you are like those first blossoms—unable to move, but which are drawn toward the sun.

“What Is the Heaven & the Earth in the Bible?” is based on the book, The Secrets of the Eternal Book: The Meaning of the Stories of the Pentateuch by Semion Vinokur.

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Every one of us consists of two contrasting qualities: darkness and light, evening and morning. These states represent our spiritual ascents and descents. The entry into spirituality is found in between them.

Understanding “Day-Night” in Its Spiritual Meaning

When the notions of “day-night” and “morning- evening” are mentioned in Genesis, know that they refer to your changing states. The goal in spiritual progress is to find ways to keep the descents short-lived, and swiftly shift to the next phase—one of ascent, of morning.

The secret of good and bad states can be defined by proximity to the Creator: when I am close to His quality of Love, I enjoy a state of ascent, and feel good. The farther I am from this Law, the more I suffer a state of descent, and feel bad.

Although I always look to attribute my despair to corporeal factors,  these justifications are false. The situation appears that way to me from my uncorrected state, when the root—the force that’s really pulling the strings—is concealed from me. Thus, I find myself immersed in my “I,” in my egoism, instead of trying with all my might to come out of it.

The truth is that no matter how hard I try, I am powerless to escape. However, this fervent striving is what leads me to the true prayer, found not in the mind but in the heart. This is precisely the prayer the Creator wants from me, one that He answers instantly and without fail.

Prayer as a Demand from the Heart

A “prayer” is a plea, a demand that is born in my heart. It is “inscribed” in it, rather than read in a prayer book. A prayer is my desperate plea for help, for deliverance, an appeal to the Creator, not to abandon me to the bondage of egoism.

When does such a prayer arise? Only when I come to realize that I cannot escape the ego’s deadly grip by myself.

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“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was unformed and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the spirit of God hovered over the face of the waters.”

An Adventure for those Who Ask

If you are still satisfied with the pleasures of this world, then go ahead and enjoy music, art, and any other delight this world can offer. But if you want to attain the spiritual world, you should be concerned with something altogether different—you need the Creator.

If you need answers to questions that will not leave you alone, if you want to know why you were born, the purpose of this vast universe we live in, it means only one thing: that you will not rest until you get to the bottom of the mystery that is your soul.

“What surrounds me? Bodies upon bodies. They eat, make money, propagate… What lies ahead of me? Death? But if that’s the case, then what is the purpose of my existence?”

These are the questions that prompt one to embark on the path “back to the sources,” to Beresheet, “the beginning.” You ascend toward the forces that govern the world. Every spiritual degree along the path is a mystery: “What other great surprises does the Creator have in store for me?”

The Soul Covered Under Layers of the Ego

“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” This passage speaks of the creation of the Upper World—a space wherein your soul will exist. Your “I” is not yet awake; you do not yet perceive your own existence.

“…the earth (desire) was unformed and void.” It follows that the desire was not yet formed (unformed and void), meaning we had no desire to reveal the spiritual world.

So what was there? Only a clean sheet of paper ready to record the history of humankind, the history of the one soul. That is what the passages allude to—the very beginning, when the spiritual world was conceived within you.

Your spiritual life is formed by tumultuous processes that you do not sense until you begin to feel an overwhelming desire to become a participant, or better yet, the protagonist in this wondrous play.

This is how your soul is formed.

But in the meantime, you must be patient, as a black, impenetrable screen separates you from everything that transpires on the inside; you cannot see or otherwise sense anything through it. It has been growing thicker over a long time rendering you increasingly egoistic and interested in external, rather than internal matters. Just think back to all the desires that sprang up inside you through your life, and how far from spirituality they were.

The Meaning of Genesis (Beresheet) and the Return to Absolute Pleasure

The word Beresheet encompasses the entire path of humankind and the full meaning of the Bible. Included is the understanding that you have exited from the Creator’s bosom and must return to Him following a long path of growing egoism that all of humankind must undergo. For that to happen, you must realize that you have truly become distant from the Creator and have immersed yourself in egoism, that you are unwell, and egoism is the cause of your illness.

This is how we gradually begin to cleanse ourselves of this dark coating called “egoism,” for it prevents us from living, breathing, seeing. More and more, we begin to uncover our souls—a complicated mechanism for attaining the spiritual world.

The pleasure we are meant to experience is absolute. It is precisely what the Creator has prepared for us. Herein lies the goal of creation—to fill us, His creations, with the feeling of eternity and perfection. Because the Creator Himself is eternal and perfect, He wants to impart His state to His creations.

“What Is the Meaning of Genesis (Beresheet) in the Bible?” is based on the book, The Secrets of the Eternal Book: The Meaning of the Stories of the Pentateuch by Semion Vinokur.

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The ancient wisdom of Kabbalah is a scientific method, helping people of our times to discover the single force that created reality. This method uses a special language using the names of our well known corporeal world to connect to the Upper Reality. Using this language and the written sources with the right intention we can ascend to our root right here, right now.

Abraham’s Method for the Modern Man

More than 5,000 years ago in Mesopotamia, a place that gave rise to many of today’s civilizations, there lived a man called Abraham. Nearly all religions and spiritual factions recognize him as their founder and patriarch. They record his name into their holy writings as the first man to reveal the Law behind the world’s existence, the first man to attain the Upper Governance.

It is none other than Abraham who is the forefather of the science that transcends nationality, a science that is universal, for it emerged before the world was split into nations and languages.

But it is precisely in our time that this science, known as “Kabbalah,” is meant to be revealed. “Our time” is when egoism in our world reaches its final phase of development and becomes so powerful that humanity will be unable to control it, needing a remedy to save itself from the ego. It is then that the wisdom of Kabbalah will appear.

Changing Perception of Reality by the Correct Usage of the Ego

The word “Kabbalah” translates as “reception.” In other words, it is a science about how to receive correctly, or how to properly utilize one’s egoism to receive all the pleasures prepared for humanity.

Kabbalah takes nothing on faith. It invites you to “taste and see that the Creator is good.” It does not mean you should agree with something that somebody tells you. You yourself must acquire the sensation of the Creator, and Kabbalah is here to help you do just that.

When a person is constantly changing in our perception as we get to know him better, in truth has always been the same; we simply needed to get to know him better. It is very important for our advancement to understand that it wasn’t the person who changed, but that we have opened up to him, as if absorbing him within us.

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