What are dreams? What do they mean and how do dreams affect us? - Rabbi Alon Anava

So, we're going to talk about today about a very interesting topic about dreams. And not only about dreams, about another concept that we know in our faith that is called mazal. You go to a bar mitzvah, you go to a wedding, you go to an event, right away you wish everybody mazal tov. Now, the translation of the word mazal is luck. But it's not referring to the luck that you need in Atlantic City. So, this is a completely different thing. And mainly we're going to start with the topic about the dreams, which raises many, many questions by many people. Everybody has dreams at night. Some people they have short dreams, long dreams, amazing dreams, nightmares, good dreams. And many people wonder what is the what is the idea behind the dreams? Now, in order to understand that this is not a half an hour class. This is more like a a five-week course. But we're going to try to kind of cover as much as possible about the topic of the dreams. Now, before we even start, we have to understand that this world, this physical world that we're in, is one of many, many worlds. This is not the only world that exists in the universe. This is actually the lowest and the most smallest of all worlds. And the physical world, all the rest of the worlds are spiritual. And before this world was created, there were many other worlds that were created. And as we speak simultaneously, there are other dimensions, there are other worlds. Some will call it a dimension. The teachings of Kabbalah calls it a world. And we're not here. I know a lot of people are very interested to know if there's a UFOs and aliens and all that stuff. And people and agencies and governments, they spend billions of dollars to find out if there's other life force on other planets. But nevertheless, the whole galaxy and the universe, all this physical world, is not even a dot in the comparisons to the spiritual worlds. Now, a very quick synopsis of what's going on in the universe, before the world was even created, there was just the Kadosh Baruch Hu, just Hashem. And he wanted to create a world in order so he can be a giver. If I'm a giver, but nobody's there to receive, then what kind of a giver am I? And more than that, the Kadosh Baruch Hu, he wanted to be a king, but how can I be a king if I don't have who to be king over? I can now declare and say, you know, I'm now a king. What? King of what? I'm king of this house. And I'm going to start now ruling this house, and whatever I'm going to say is going to happen. And where who's the nation? Who's the Who are you king over? Or the teddy bear? What are you king over? You need a nation to be a king over. So, the Kadosh Baruch Hu, the master of the universe, wanted to be a king in order for him to give, so he created a universe, he created a world. And it's much more in-depth, much, much more details into that. This is not the time to to explain that, but we want to get an idea what's going on here in this universe. So, when Hashem created the world, of course the spiritual world is something not tangible, something that our mind cannot understand. There's no shapes in the spiritual world, there's no colors, there's no dimensions, there's no distance. Spiritual world is something that is spiritual, that you can't touch it. You can maybe feel it, you know about its existence, but you can't see it or touch it. Now, as the world was created, it was created in a way that the higher the world is, meaning the closer it is to God, then the world is much more refined. The more it will manifest to a lower level, then the world will be much, much more physical. In the beginning, God was like a, so to say, a beam of light, and he shined his light into the universe. That's why in the terms of Kabbalah, we call God a light, or en sof, an infinite light. Now, it doesn't mean that God is a lightbulb. Rather, he lights up the universe. Now, the way that it it it worked, that in the beginning, the Kadosh Baruch Hu created the world with a massive amount of light, but there wasn't enough powers to contain this light. The Kabbalistic term to it is called kelim, a vessel. If I want now to give you something to drink, if I don't have a cup, then where am I going to put the water in? I can have a lot of water, and I want to minister to you in giving you this water. But if you don't have a cup, how am I going to give you the water? So, I'm now the giver. First of all, there has to be a receiver, and then has to be what I'm giving, and then how it's going to be received. And I can give you now a $5 million check. Not that I have $5 million, but hypothetically, I can give you a $5 million check. You know, if you don't have a bank account, you've nothing to do with this check. Hypothetically, I mean, you can find somebody on the street that will cash it for you. But nevertheless, the point is that anything in this world that you need, you want to hold in any type of a way, has to have a vessel, some type of a uh uh container that can hold what I want to be given, or what I want to give. And God is a giver, his emotion is only to give, so had to be a system how the the merchandise, so to say, is received. In the beginning, the light was way too great, and what happened was that the vessels that were supposed to hold the light, they couldn't contain the light, and they broke. This is called in the Kabbalistic term Shevirat HaKelim, the breaking of the vessels. Later on, Hashem, so to say, recreated the world, but this time it was done in a much more sophisticated way. Hashem created a system. The system is called ten Sefirot, Eser Sefirot, the ten emanations that are known in the teachings of Kabbalah. And these are vessels that hold spiritual lights in order for the world to be created. You want to build a house, you need a foundation, you need material, you need the the the skeleton of the house, so to say, the frames and everything, and then slowly, slowly you start building another piece and another piece and another piece. And needless to say that you need the workers. So, God took these ten Sefirot, these ten vessels, he created them to be able to contain the light. Now that the light was contained, then it started to manifest into one world to another world to another world from a a spiritual into a less spiritual world into a less spiritual world. The highest spiritual world that we are aware of is called the world of Adam Kadmon. The acronym of it was AK. That's what the teachings of Kabbalah explains. Then comes another spiritual world that is more familiar, it is called the world of Atzilut. The world of emanation, where the light of Hashem is is shining there. Then comes another spiritual world that is called the world of Beriah. The world of creation. That's when everything started getting some type of a shape, some type of an existence, more than a shape. Then comes another spiritual world that's called the world of Yetzirah, the world of formation, when things starting to get a shape. And then comes the world of Asiyah, the world of action, and then this physical world. And this godly revelation is this light, this spiritual light is manifesting in a in a descending chain from one world to another world to another world till it creates this beautiful world. The word The reason why it's called the world, of course the the names in English are not accurate. We have to go by their names in Hebrew. The world The name in Hebrew for the word the word world is Olam. Olam comes from the word in Hebrew Ha'alamah. Ha'alamah means concealment. God is everywhere. There's not one space in this universe that God doesn't exist. Of course, we're all wondering, how does God look? Does he look like me? Does he look like What does he look like? Is it a spirit, a cloud? What is it? And God doesn't have a shape, and God doesn't have a size, it doesn't have any type of definition. But we do know that God exists everywhere. He's He's existing in this table, and existing in the walls, and every There's not even one place in the universe that doesn't exist. Kind of like you take a balloon now, you blow air into the balloon, and now you have a big balloon. Now, where Where's the air? In that corner or this corner? No, the entire balloon is full of air. And the proof is because you inflated the balloon. So, the entire universe is existing because, so to say, God is dressed into that universe, and he inflated the the universe with his existence. That's where we find all these verses in the Torah that umlo chol ha'aretz kevodo, his presence is everywhere in the universe. Ve'eit atar panuy minehu, every place in the world that God exists, we just don't see it. If you would see God now, you would probably lose it. You would probably not going to be able to contain such a revelation. So, God conceals himself. And this is why it comes to the word in Hebrew Ha'alamah, that you just don't see it. You don't see Hashem, and you don't see his creation. Now, with that said, this is a very short introduction to a very deep concept. Then at some point, once the resort was made, now starts you have to bring the people. So, the world was created, now you have to bring in souls. So, it's in the beginning the souls were not created, but later on souls were created. They were emanated from Hashem, they were part of Hashem. And then there's a whole history how they evolved from a spiritual world to a less spiritual world and so forth. The structure of the universe is that this world is the lowest of all worlds, and there's many worlds above it. And we originate from a spiritual world. We didn't This is not the only world where we we are. This world is just a short visit. We come here for 60 years, 70 years, 80 years, sometimes 20 years, 30 years, and that's it, and you're gone. But a soul lives forever. The body is very temporary. The body is created in this world, and the person dies, they put the person in the ground, the body decomposes, the body dies, and the soul lives for eternity. We also know that the soul keeps on returning into this world. It's called a reincarnation, a gilgul. You will come back again, come back again, another round, another round. So, we're not here for 67 years to eat sushi and watch movies and go on Facebook and pass our life and then leave. We come here with a purpose. We come here with a reason. There's not There's not for nothing that we came here. Everybody has a purpose in this world. Every person has a journey in this world. And this is a whole concept to talk about in itself. Why are we here and what are we doing here? We had a beautiful lecture yesterday and the day before. What is the purpose of this world? Why did God create a world with 7 billion people, so many different people, so many things going on here, good things, bad things? What am I doing this in this world? What did I Why did God put me in this world? Specifically in this city, in this family, in this community? Sometimes people they live their life, they're too busy running after money, so they don't notice what's going on around them. I'm not saying it in a negative way. They need money to support their family, to send the kids to to school. I'm not saying it in a negative way. But sometimes life becomes so busy and hectic, you don't even stop for a second to think, "What am I doing here? What did I come to the world for? Came to the world for what? To eat? To go on another vacation? To buy another car? If a person doesn't ask himself at least once a day, "What am I doing here? Or am I doing what I'm supposed to do in this world?" then you're wasting your time. You're going to wake up one day when you're 90 years old and say, "Oh my gosh, I wasted my life. What What did I live for?" So, that's a whole different topic. It's nothing to do with tonight. We want I just want to give a very broad overview so we can start understanding what happens to us at night when we dream. Why do we have dreams? Why at night? And why don't we have dreams when we are awake? And what does a dream mean? What happens at night? So, the way it works, and again, very short version, is that our soul the main part of the soul is sitting in the world above. And a little piece of the soul is sent into this world, like a space shuttle, you know, just send a little a little ship over there. All countries they send a diplomat. They don't send the whole country, they send a representative. He's going to be the diplomat. He's going to run the show from in the foreign land. Our soul comes down to this world because it came here with a certain purpose. It doesn't matter right now what the purpose is, but each and every one of us comes to this world with a certain task, with a certain mission, with a certain purpose, and the soul gets a whole instructions what to do. You don't know it. You don't remember it because when we're born, the second that the baby's born, the devil stands outside of the mother's womb, hits the baby on his mouth, makes you forget the entire Torah. That's why we all have this mark here on our lip because this angel of death it stands out and it makes you forget the entire Torah. Why? Because you need to research. You need to find it. You need to to explore. If everything would be obvious, then what's what's the what's the point of the game, so to say? Now, when we come down to this world, we come with a mission. So, not the whole soul comes to this world, just a piece of the soul comes. Now, the soul is built in five components. The highest level of the soul is called Yechidah. Yechidah comes from the word in Hebrew Yichud. Yichud means unity. It's connected to Hashem. It's a piece of Hashem. Then comes another level of the soul that called is Chayah. Some Kabbalistic teaching calls it Tzelem. Tzelem is a surrounding light, like a aura. Sure you saw in many different situations and and classes that we have some type of a shining light around us, an aura. And it changes the tones that based on our behavior, based on our thoughts and actions. But these two pieces of the soul, they're so holy, they don't even penetrate into this world. They just they're around the the the body. Then there's another three piece parts of the soul that are called Neshamah, Ruach, and Nefesh. These are three levels. These pieces even penetrate into the body. The Neshamah, the main place of the Neshamah where it dwells is in the brain, in the front part of the brain. The Ruach is in the heart, and this Nefesh is all around our body and our blood. The Torah says that the Nefesh, the most lowest spiritual level of our soul, is in the the blood. That's why everywhere you're going to poke with a needle, blood will come out. Doesn't matter where, your ear, your nose, your finger, there's always going to be blood coming out. That means that that's where the part of the Nefesh. Famous story when the world was created, I'm sure you remember Adam and Eve, Adam and Chava. They had two kids, Cain and Abel. Cain got upset at Abel for whatever reason, and he killed him. The Torah says that he stabbed him 300 times because he didn't know where the Nefesh will come out from. He knew it's in the blood, he just didn't know where it's going to come out from. So, he stabbed him all over waiting to see where the Nefesh is coming from. Take a human being, he starts losing blood. There's a certain quote of blood that you can lose and you still stay alive. After a certain amount of blood left in the body, you're not going to There's not enough Nefesh in the body, the person will die. And it doesn't matter right now if the bleeding is internal or external, it doesn't It's It's not relevant. It doesn't matter. Now, these three parts of the Neshamah, they work in conjunction. The easiest way to explain it, if I want to be a puppeteer, then I have one hand here, one hand here. I put my hands in the puppets, and then I start moving the hands, and I start making a show with the with the puppets. Now, if I want to move the puppet's hand, then I need to move this finger. And I want to move this puppet's hand, then I move this finger, and I start moving my hand, and the puppet will start moving. So, if I need to move this body, this body is physical. Without a spiritual entity in the body, the body is a piece of meat. It's bones, flesh, blood, that's it. If you take the soul out of the body, the body is dead. Can't do anything. It can't move, it won't develop, it won't grow. It's a piece of meat. Once you get the soul into the body, the body will be the puppet, and the soul can start moving the puppet. I'm sure you saw once in a construction site they have these massive cranes, and you see a crane moving 50 tons of cement to a height of 80 floors, and there's a little man inside, you know, moving the moving the crane. This little little man moving this massive massive crane. Or sometimes you see these huge machineries, tractors, trucks, and a little driver. The soul, the size of the soul, the teachings of Kabbalah explains that if you take a hair, cut the hair a thousand times. Now take another piece of the hair from those thousand, cut that in a thousand times, that's the size of the soul in your body. It's so small, it's like an atom. Now, the soul is the driver of the of the vehicle. Without the soul, the body can't do anything. Now, the soul, when it gets When I'm saying soul, I'm talking about the word the level that is called Neshamah. The Neshamah gets dressed into the Ruach, that gets dressed into the Nefesh. These are the terms the the terms the Torah explains to us. In English, you would say soul would be a Neshamah, Ruach would be the spirit, and Nefesh would be like I don't even know, there's not even a really a word for it in English. But nevertheless, they get dressed inside each other, and one cannot operate without the other. It's a whole system. Now, when the Neshamah is in the body, the body can move. If I want to move my hand, it's only because the Neshamah is interested in moving the hand. So, it will give an order to the Ruach, to the Nefesh, then it will start working in the physical part of the brain, muscles, nerves, and so forth, and then I'm moving and I'm interacting. Why do I need this whole system? Because the soul has to come down to this world to do a certain act, a certain task, and it needs a vehicle. Now, imagine now, you know of a ship that sank into the ocean a hundred years ago, and on the ship there's diamonds and rubies and gold. You know, they were looking for the Titanic for a hundred years. Finally they found it. You know how they found it? It was 13 kilometers I think down in the No, I don't remember the depth. Depth that was not even possible to even go go into. But finally they were able to develop certain submarines to be able to go all the way down to where the Titanic fell to bring it up. Why? They knew there's a lot a lot of money on it. Not money in cash, gold and jewelry and It was this It was like the Queen Elizabeth, you know, all the trillionaires went from from England to to New York. It was like the the the ship, the the cruise line. And they knew that there's a lot of a lot of goods on it, so it was worth investing so much money how to get down there, and they brought it up. The same analogy is in this world. When the world the world was created, and I told you that the lights of Hashem exploded, so to say, in this world, millions of millions of godly sparks fell into this world like an explosion. These are called nitzotzot kedusha, holy sparks. Now, they fell into the world of the darkness, this physical world. Now, when when you have a problem, who do you call? The Ghostbusters, right? So, only the old people understand what I'm saying. The young ones are like, "What?" So, when you need to get something from the behind the enemy lines, you bring the the commando. You need bring the Navy SEALs. Kadosh Baruch Hu hired us to come into this world behind enemy lines and start bringing all these godly sparks that got stuck in this world. And they got stuck in food, and they got stuck in so many different thing. Everything that I come down to this world is to go like this to start sifting between thing to find these godly sparks. Imagine now you go with a bag of diamonds on the beach. The bag of diamond falls on the sand of the beach, such soft sand that within seconds it's in the sand. You stop everybody. Nobody move. Nobody move. The diamonds are in the sand. You still you find the those diamonds. Same thing here. Now, how do we know how to find the diamonds? God gave us a book. The book is called Torah. Torah comes on the word in Hebrew hora'ah, to teach. And that book tells me, "Do not eat this animal." Why? There's no diamonds there. There's no godly sparks there. You have nothing to do there. If you touch it, it's going to damage you. Don't eat this animal. Eat that animal." Why? Because there's godly sparks that fell in that animal. And if you want to extract that godly spark out of it, then you have to slaughter it in a certain way, you will extract the godly spark out of it. How? Because you follow the rules that I tell you. You have to slaughter it. You have to say a bracha. You have to eat it in a certain way, and so forth. The Torah comes and gives me a whole manual where to find everything, what to do, how to do, and how not to get damaged. The Torah tells me, "Don't do this act." It's not because it doesn't wants to make my life hard. It's to tell me, "You're going to cause yourself a problem." Now, when I come down into this world, I have to get some vacations. Can't be here for 80 years. You know how tiring it is for the neshama? So, every night, the system is operating in a way that the body shuts down, and then the neshama goes out of the body. The soul leaves the the body at night. Now, the reason why you get tired at night, in the evening, is not because you worked hard. Not because you carried things. Not because you're up for 8 hours or 9 hours or 12 hours. It's only because the neshama is tired. Your neshama has, so to say, a spiritual battery. When your phone runs out of battery, either it will turn off or you plug it again. Every night, our soul gets depleted from energy cuz it was working all day long. At night, it needs to go up to the spiritual charger and be plugged in order to be charged. So, at night, you start becoming more tired and more tired and more tired. You blame it on the fact that you worked hard. And then you go to sleep, your soul leaves the body. You would be able to see what happens at night. There's no soul in the body when you fall asleep. That's why we have a a prayer that we say before we go to sleep. It's called the bedtime Shema that you surround the body with spiritual angels that guard the body because when you leave the body at night, it's almost like leaving your house, and you go on a vacation and you leave the door open. And then the robbers they start driving around. Hey, look at that. This house is empty. Maybe we can go in see what's going in in there. So, if you don't leave an alarm and a dog and close all the doors and windows, the robbers come in. Now, imagine what happens if the robbers come in. They start taking things. They're like, "Hey, why are we taking things? Let's just stay here. Let's just camp here. We'll make it our place." And you come back from the vacation and they tell you, "We're sorry, we took over the house." What do you mean you took over the house? We're sorry. You have a problem with that? Now, in this world, you call the police. But in the spiritual world, the soul leaves the body, the body is left on the bed empty. Demons, spirits, all sorts of spiritual entities, they come to the body and they come and take, so to say, some kedusha from the body, some holiness. Cuz during the day, you do mitzvot. You're nice to other people. You're courteous. You do charity and chesed. So, you're radiating from holiness. These spirits will come to start sucking this holiness away. So, you need to park some guards around your body that the soul that the body will not be affected. Unfortunately, if you don't do that, when the soul comes back in the morning to the body, it finds some roommates here. That's where people get affected from different diseases, mainly mental and emotional diseases, fears and anxieties and being worried and all sorts of things. Why? Because there's another entity in the body. Now, when we go to sleep, there are three reasons why we go to sleep. There are more, but main three reasons. The first of all is to spiritually charge my soul because my soul is completely depleted. So, the soul goes up to the heavenly charger, gets plugged in, and then you wake up in the morning like a new man or a woman. Now, what happens if you wake up in the morning and you're still tired? And you slept for 8 hours, 9 hours, and you're still weak and tired. Means your soul didn't go up to the right place at night. It went to a completely different place. It didn't get a full charge. It only got a little bit of a charge. The second thing that the soul does when it goes up to the heavens, it has to write a journal. Like uh how do you call it? Not a diary. Uh a diary, right? At the end of the day, you write a diary. Okay, so the soul goes up to the heavens. They give her a little piece of paper and starts writing. At 7:00, I woke up. At 7:10, I made breakfast. At 7:15, I did this and that. And it writes everything. Why? So, after 120 years, when you come up to the heavens, they they and you go to your heavenly court, you're going to be judged for everything that you do. They show you your own paper. They say, "You you wrote it." You are the you're witnessing, you're testifying against yourself. Another thing that the soul is doing at night, it's subpoenaed to testify in other souls' court cases. And if I stole from you, and you're now in the heavenly court, you subpoena me at night, and the soul comes and testifies. He stole from me. He helped me. He assisted me. So, yeah, there's a whole system going on up at night. And another thing that happens at night is that the soul gets connected, so to say, to its spiritual source, and it sees what's going on in the world above. Gets all this information. And then, when it comes down in the morning, it remembers everything. It just went on a journey. Then it's time to come back into the body. When it comes back into the body, most people they wake up. Most people wake up from a dream. Very few people don't dream. Unless you are extremely exhausted or drunk or I don't know what, you're not going to dream. But everybody dreams. Now, sometimes the dreams are very, very powerful. Sometimes the dreams are so vivid, you think this is the reality. Sometimes the dreams are insane, weird things. Then it switches and you here and you there and you there. And most people wake up and they don't know what what they were dreaming about. More than that, sometimes the dreams are so powerful, they don't know what to take from that. What does the dream mean? I dreamt about this and that. How many messages I get a month? People tell me, "I dreamt about a snake with two heads. What does it mean?" Uh it means something. Everything has a meaning. Now, a lot of the dreams have zero meaning. There are four types of dreams. The first type is the dreams that you dream right when you fall asleep. I'm sure it happened to you once or twice or maybe 100 times that you fall asleep in front of the TV. You sleep for 3 seconds and you wake up. Wow! Wow! I had such a dream. You know what I mean? You slept for 2 seconds. What do you mean you had a dream? So, that happens to everybody. The dreams that you have right when you fall asleep. These dreams are completely nothing. They're meaningless. They're They're no meaning behind it. What happens is that all day long, you have a system in your mind. You have thoughts. You're seeing things. Everything that you see is being registered, recorded like security cameras. And and usually what you're looking at is complete junk. The junk what we're looking at all day long. When you fall asleep, all this data is still in the front part of the brain. So, this information is running in your brain. But with no sequence. So, all that you saw that day is all sorts of junk that's still in your memory. So, you see it because you you're still not 100% asleep. The soul still didn't really leave the body. So, these dreams are completely nothing. They have no meaning. Then you have the dreams that come right after that when it's in the beginning part of the sleep. These dreams are also completely meaningless. They have no meaning whatsoever. The teachings of Kabbalah explains that, unfortunately, a lot of people eat before they go to sleep. If you ask our nutritionists or if you look in the the doctors based on the Torah, like Maimonides, Rambam, and so forth, they all say, "Don't eat before you go to sleep." Because the food doesn't get digested. And if you go to sleep and the food is not digested, the fumes from the food, they go up to your brain, and then they take all the memories in your brain and they start mishmashing it. And then you get all these weird, weird dreams that have no meaning. They're just weird. And if you wake up in the middle of the night, not towards the end of the night, then you say, "What weird dreams I had." And then you don't nothing makes sense. So, these two types of dreams, they're completely irrelevant. You can completely forget about them. And if you want to avoid them, then either don't eat before you go to sleep. Then there's no It's in the stomach. There's not going to be any fumes. then you're going to sleep 10 times better by the way. Or during the day be very careful with what you're looking at because you know one of the hardest things to do in this world and one of the most common things that the great sages of our nation do is that they guard their eyes. They don't look at things. The more you look at things, the more you harm your system. Every day we say Kriat Shema. Three times a day minimum and it says in Kriat Shema so don't go after your heart, don't what your what your heart desires and don't go after your and don't go after your eyes. And it continues as a share of them zoning after them after what you go after you look at something and right away you you want it. The way it works is that you look at something, your heart starts desiring it, then the brain starts working how am I getting it? And usually what we look at all day long is not pure things, whether it's pure not pure videos, not pure pictures, not pure situations. And then it causes me to look at the person instead of judge the person favorably then I judge the person not nice and I become very judgmental with my eyes and I only see the bad in people. I can look now at any person and tell you all the bad person things about person about people what they do. That's what most people do. You would look at a person says he's a thief. You look at that person he's a liar. That's because the eye is so damaged that you're not able to see the good things that the person does. Why can't you look at the person says wow he's an amazing father and he's a such an honest businessman and he's a great husband. So the tool of the eye is a very sophisticated tool that has to be completely guarded. Now comes the other two types of dreams that these are the real dreams. What the first type is early in the morning the dreams that you're already very into the sleep and then the dreams that you right before you wake up. The dreams that right before you wake up, these are the most accurate dreams. Now when your soul goes up to the heavens at night and it does a whole review of what's going on, it has a lot a lot of recollection, a lot of memories. It went through to see what's going on there. Now if the person is not refined, doesn't have a lot of Torah and mitzvahs, lies, cheats, all these bad things what happens is as the soul comes down every world, every connection between the world sends an angel and slaps the soul and the soul forgets everything and goes one one world down, another world down, another world down by the time it goes into the body, 99% of what it saw it forgets. Doesn't remember anything. The more the person will be refined, refined means clean clean spiritually of course, not taking a shower. Don't lie, don't cheat, no lashon hara, no slandering and refining their their their attributes, no anger, no jealousy, really refining themselves then everything that they see up there remains. This is not something that we can get to. These are very few people and we call them prophets. And they're so high level they remember everything that they see in the world above. That's why all the prophecies, all the prophets except Moshe Rabbeinu, they got the prophecy when they were sleeping. Moshe Rabbeinu was the only prophet that was up, awake and seeing Hashem and talking to Hashem face to face. All the other prophets they went to sleep, that's where they got their prophecy. Now we all have a potential of a prophet. We have the capacity to reach through prophecy, everybody. There are books that will teach you how to reach through prophecy. If you can follow the the instructions, you'll be able to receive prophecy. I'm not saying it's easy. It's very hard but you have the potential. Whether you want to do it, that's your your decision. Now when a person is very refined, a little bit refined, not refined, that will determine how much the capacity of the memory he's bringing back from the world above. Now we are not in that level so what happens? You remember 2%, you remember 4%, you remember 8% but you come back into the body, the soul comes back in the body with a memory and I saw something. Now the dreams are always going to be prophetic and if not going to be prophetic, they're going to be clear clarifying situation. You know there are so many stories that our rabbis, teachers, sages, they had a certain question in the Torah, they prayed about it and when they went to sleep, the teacher, the rabbi who taught it revealed himself and gave him the answer. And then he woke up in the morning, they had the answer. Just imagine that in the night you are a tourist, you're going without a passport and a bag but you're leaving this world. That's why in Judaism there's a whole system how you go to sleep. You you don't just fall in the bed. You have to clean yourself, clean your body, say prayers, prepare the bed. Why? You're going on a journey. First of all, you might not come back. Who says you're going to come back? You know how many people go to sleep and they never come back? A one way ticket. But some people they come back and they have a lot of information. Now it's you going to determine how much of the information you understand. Most people they they don't have all the information together so the dream is very vivid, is very real and you feel that this is that you're living the dream but the information don't make sense. You're having a puzzle, a 500 piece puzzle but here a piece, here a piece, here a piece and can't put the connections together. Now there's different types of dreams that you get different messages. Sometimes you see a relative, sometimes you see a loved one. Just imagine that you're going to the world above and you you've you're visiting the resort. So yeah, sometimes there'll be situation that you a lot of people report that they see relatives. Their parents come to them in their dream, a grandparent comes to them in the dream. Sometimes you see situations and scenes that allow you to understand things that's going on in your life. Now what is the difference between the dreams that a little bit in the early morning and the dreams that right before you wake up because the soul, the nefesh, the ruach and the neshama they gradually start coming back into the body. I know many people and I can say including myself, many people they report that they have dreams that right before they wake up they feel that they're falling and they're falling and falling and falling and falling and falling and falling and then they they wake up. That's my much when you see the soul is falling into the body and then the person will wake up. The closer it is to the time you wake up, the more memory you have, the more you remember. Now then these dreams are real. The information is real just that it's scrambled in such of a way that you can you can understand what it means. You remember certain things, you remember one word or you'll remember a scene or a message or somebody giving you something and that's what you remember from the dream or the person says a certain word and it echoes in your mind oh the person says that word, what does it mean? So we do know there are many different books that will tell you if you saw this it means this, if you saw that it means that. It's very confusing, very very confusing. I know a lot of people they dream of snakes for example. Well not long ago somebody emailed me told me I saw a snake in a dream, what does it mean? I said you know how many how many interpretations, how many meanings it means? If the snake if you just saw him it means one thing. If you saw many snakes it means another thing. If the snake bit you it means another thing. If he spat on you it means another thing. If he bite you it means a different thing. But there's different books that they explain. Now it's not good to go into it because most people don't really remember all the details of the dream. When I asked that person what did the snake do? I don't remember. How did he look? I don't remember. Did he bite you? I don't remember. Did he spit on you? I don't remember. So what did you remember? So you saw a snake. So I can't help you. So it's not good to try to interpret dreams because you don't know if really that's the situation. There are very very few people that know how to interpret dreams. Very very few. The Gemara, the Talmud says that the interpretation of the dreams depends on who interprets it because you can take it one dream and interpret it in a negative way and one dream and interpret it in a in a positive way. So it all depends how you interpret the dream. The suggestion is don't don't try to interpret dreams. And once in a blue moon if you have a certain dream that repeats itself and repeats itself and repeats itself over and over, then maybe you want to seek some guidance, what does it mean? Or you want to maybe look a little bit but usually the dream is is here to guide you. The problem is that when we wake up in the morning you come from the world above but within minutes you are already in this world. Right away you wake up in the morning, 99% of people in this planet know what they do when they wake up in the morning? Right away they go like this to the phone, right away check the text messages. Like if somebody texted you 3:00 in the morning. And I'm this is the reality. Everybody reaches to their phone in the morning. Who's going to text you at 4:00 in the morning? Why are you checking your WhatsApp? Who was it? But that's the reality. Now you know how I know it's true? Everybody's like how does he know? Cuz everybody use their phone as an alarm clock. Very few people they don't check their phone within the next in the first 30 minutes of the day. Everybody's already checking their emails, their stocks, their everything. What are you checking? Wake up and open your eyes first. So within minutes that you are in this world, you're already already sunk into this world because right away you check your messages, you wake up frantically cuz you're late to work or whatever it is. So right away you forget everything. If you have a dream and you remember it very very vividly when you wake up, don't don't move. Wait a minute, let me let it stay because in a few minutes it's going to start evaporating in my memory. So there are different ways to remember the dream but really if a person wants to receive something from dreams, it's only if a person really refines themselves. It starts with the person that the diet has to be perfectly perfect kosher. I'm not talking about not eating a donuts. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about when you want to refine yourself, the kosher diet has to be perfect. No no discounts. Then the person can't have any type of of inappropriate behavior. No cheating, no lying, no slandering, no shonara, no anything. Any impurity that you bring on the body, the body is not a vessel to receive this information. That's why only prophets that are in such a high level of dusha, they're able to receive some prophecy, some clear information of what's going to happen. But just that you know that the dreams that right before you wake are prophetic dreams. I had numerous dreams that I saw something in the dream and it and it happened one on one. Why? Because the dreams are literally a report. The soul goes up to the main headquarters and it sees everything. Sees all the information that it needs to know. Just because the spiritual level that we possess is not high, then as you go down into the worlds, one details missed, another details pushed, another details put. Before you get it, you get so you details, you don't remember anything. Now this is a very general explanation about the dreams, but we also want to talk a little bit about mazel. What does it mean mazel? Take all the information that we just talked about and go back to the structure of the soul that I explained. The highest level is called The chida. The chida is attached to to the master of the universe. I don't want to compare it, but just that we have some type of an analogy. A woman that gives birth comes out a baby. And you know what comes right after that? A placenta. A huge organ. It's an organ that is attached to the woman's stomach from inside and that's what feeding the soul the the baby for 9 months. It's an organ. I saw it the first time I was completely shocked. It's a second second baby coming out. The baby is whatever it is, 6 7 8 lbs, and then it's this huge piece that comes out. The placenta is so to say attached to the mother and is the system that is giving nourishment into the baby. So I don't want to compare it, but just that you have some type of an analogy, the chida is attached to the master of the universe. It's receiving all this information and it's holding in it everything. Now the Talmud explains that when the parents conceive a child then before there's anything, they're just in the act. There's a certain angel that comes and takes the drop. Takes the drop, goes all the way up to the master of the universe and to tell and tells God, this drop, what's going to happen with this? It's not even a human. There's nothing there. It's just a drop. And what's going to happen with this drop? Is he going to be a man? Going to be a woman? Going to be tall, short, rich, wealthy, successful, a hero, weak, sick, skinny, blonde. What's going to happen? Everything is already written down. That's where we we get the famous quote "Hakol bidei Shamayim." Everything is in the hands of heavens. Everything is already predestined. Every little thing. Till the last detail of what color your hair will be, what pigment your eyes will be, how much money you're going to have, when you're going to make the money, when you're going to get married, how many kids. Every little detail is already predestined. Besides one thing. "Hakol bidei Shamayim." Everything is in the hands of Hashem "chuts m'Yirat Shamayim." Besides your level of God-fearing. This is depends on you. This is free choice. You choose how much you choose how much you'll be God-fearing, how much do you not. Now when the person is born into this world, everything is already predestined. In this so to say data is all the information that is going to happen to you in this world. And with that, you're getting a certain system. Because you come down to this world, Hashem didn't create you to open a profile on Facebook. Hashem didn't create you to become another individual in the in the the list of social security. Hashem created you with a specific mission. Doesn't matter who you are, where you came from, you're smart, you're not, you're rich, you're poor. Doesn't matter, Jew, non-Jew. Everybody comes down to this world with a whole mission. Your part of the mission is to find out what is this mission. Now since I have here a mission, I also have to have tools how to to produce this mission. I hire a worker and I want to build a house. The worker comes and says, "Yeah, I'm a carpenter. I'll build whatever you want. But you have to give me tools. Give me a hammer. Give me a saw. Give me screwdrivers. Give me nails. Give me everything." Kadosh Baruch Hu gives me a task in this world and right away he gives me tools how to do it. These tools are called in our language mazel. Mazel is not luck that you're throwing the the dice in the in Las Vegas. Mazel is the spiritual tools that allow you to fulfill your mission in this world. Anything that you need. If I don't have the right tools, how can the boss demand from me to do anything in this world? God demands from me to do this task. Here's your tools. Don't tell me you don't have anything. Here's the tools. The mazel is brought down to me as I grow spiritually and emotionally. Imagine our little kid gets an inheritance. He's 4 years old now. Can a 4-year-old handle the money? No, the money's put in a trust fund. And every year he gets a certain amount. And then he goes to college, he gets another amount. Then he wants to buy a house, he gets another amount. Doesn't get the whole money in one shot. He's not going to know what to do with it. Besides the fact that he might lose it or Hashem knows what he's going to do with it. Same thing here. Hashem gives me a certain quantity of tools, but he's not going to give it to me in one shot. Slowly slowly he gives it to me. Now why is it called mazel? Because in Hebrew the word that is equivalent where the word comes from is called nazil. Nazil is something liquid. Something that is very very easy to to to bring from one place to the other. In Hebrew when you have a leak, it's called nazila and the water is leaking from above. So the mazel is trickling from above slowly slowly every day, every moment, every hour you get a little piece of it. And that's the tool that allows you to deal in this world. If you have to battle a certain situation, it gives you bravery. Gives you strength. Gives you hope. If you need to do a certain task in this world, it will give you the wisdom, the knowledge how to do it. Now why do we wish people mazel tov? Because sometimes, imagine now into this house there are different pipes. One pipe is coming from there to bring water into the house. If you're not going to have a pipe of water, how are you going to have water in the house? Now in the house it's already splitting to the kitchen, to the bathroom, to the shower. But there's a main pipe coming into the house. There's another pipe coming from there. Brings electricity. Once it hits the house, it will start going into all the rooms. But there's a main pipe of electricity coming into the house. Then you have another pipe, gas. Then you have another one, you have cable. Then you have phone and whoa, imagine how many pipes are coming into this house. Now imagine now somebody comes, one of your neighbors, and says "Let me take this pipe. I'm going to cut it now and I'm going to direct this pipe into my house." Now you don't have water. You're paying the bill. You don't have water. The water is now going to the neighbor. And then another neighbor is taking your electricity and you're paying the bills, but you're going to get getting nothing. When I have these pipes, I call it pipes. In Hebrew it's called tzinorot shefa. Pipes or channels of abundance where I get all this shefa, this energy, this abundance. If I now do a certain mitzvah, mitzvah comes from the word hamschacha that I bring on to me this shefa, this abundance. Then I'm connecting myself to this pipe. If I now do an avera, avera is a sin, I cut one of them. Now I have a problem. The electricity is going that way. Or the water is going this way. Now what happens is sometimes I do certain acts and I make a clog. Like you have a clog in your pipes, the water is not coming in or the the stream is very very low. Now it's stopping the mazel from coming down. We We are the only ones that stop our own shefa. Hashem is giving me with no conditions. If you would see what Hashem gives you, you would be shocked how much happiness, health, money, everything. We are the ones who are cutting the connection. The Zohar explains that between me and God, there's a certain tzinor, certain pipe. And this pipe is built from 620 little strings. Corresponding to 620 mitzvot. There are 613 mitzvot from the Torah. Remember I told you when we started it's 613? That's the number. There's 613 mitzvot in the Torah and another seven mitzvot from our sages. Totaling at 620 mitzvot. The Zohar calls it 620 pillars of light. Why pillars? Because if I have a floor and I have a ceiling, what holds the ceiling? The pillars. You have to have pillars that are holding the ceiling. You move the pillars, the whole ceiling falls down. So these mitzvot are the pillars that are connecting the world above to the world below. Now if I do all the mitzvot and I refrain from doing all the averot, I have 620 channels where I'm getting shefa. Shefa means an abundance. One is the electricity will be my happiness. One is the gas will be my sustenance, my parnassa. One is the cables will be my health. One is the water will be my my common sense. Whatever it is. If I start cutting them then I'm cutting these tzinorot shefa, these channels of abundance. Now the more that I will cut it, the less of the mazel is coming into me. That's why we wish people have mazel tov. You go on a journey, mazel tov. You have a big mazel tov. Should the mazel should be good. Cuz you know what? Sometimes the mazel can turn to not so good. So, why is mazel is connected to a dream? Because when you go up and you see everything, A, you can see your mazel. You can see what's going on and it will come to you as information in a dream. And sometimes people that are about to go into a business deal, they have a dream. Don't go. Don't do business with this guy. He's going to rip you off. You wake up in the morning. I'm not doing the deal. Why would happen? I had a dream. A dream? It's a $5 million deal. A dream? Not doing the deal. Why? The person went up to shamayim. The mazel was shining. Person says, "I don't want to deal with this person." Now, not everybody sees it, but some people they wake up in the morning, the dream is like so vivid like I don't want to do this thing. I don't want to go on this journey. I don't want to marry that person. Why? Because the neshama saw in the world above something that they came down here with this message. Regardless to the dreams, you constantly want to make sure that the connection of your soul to the world above is clear that the mazel can drip into the world in the right quantity. If you go now into a hospital, lo aleinu v'lo aleichem, you see a person sitting in the hospital with the IV and right away connected to the hand. The quantity of the what's going on in the IV is perfectly calculated. You give a little bit too much, it's going to damage. You little bit You give a little bit too less, it's also going to damage. It's the quantity, the the time, everything is calculated exactly. Same thing with your mazel. You can't get everything in one shot. It comes in the right increments. You just have to be careful and cautious not to create any barriers that will stop this shefa, this abundance from coming down. And Hashem is the one who decides how much you're going to get. If you think you have any control how much money you're going to make, you have a big mistake. You have zero control how much money you make. You have zero control on anything in this world. The only control that you have is how God-fearing you are. How much you fear Hashem. Fear doesn't mean that you're afraid that he's going to beat you up. Fear it means that Do you know if a king would walk now into this to this room, most likely everybody will stand up just from the respect. Why? Uh, it's a king. This is called God-fearing that I awe Hashem. I respect Hashem. I see his greatness. Most people they don't see the greatness of Hashem. If you would see the greatness of Hashem, you would not cheat, you would not lie, you would not say lashon hara, you would stand like this scared not to move even. But we don't see Hashem. So, the point to take from all this because there's so much more information to talk about. I mean, what we talked about now is not even scraping the the surface even. Is to first of all understand that we're not here just to play games. We didn't come to this world to to pass another day and another day and another day and to plan my next vacation and to buy another car. All these things are nice. I'm not telling you not to. You have to live your life. You want to live comfortable. You want to enjoy yourself. But that's not the purpose of life. Even when you do certain things, you have to say what what am I doing here? Even if I go on vacation, must be some type of a purpose that so I can elevate something there. So, the point is to take two things. We'll start from the second and not the first. The first thing that we want to take which which regards to the mazel, you want to know sometimes that you can empower the mazel. Sometimes the mazel is not going so well for whatever reason, there a way to change it. It says in the Talmud that if a person has a certain problem with mazel, the four things that they need to do. One of them is to give to the to give charity. This is one of the most powerful things to change the decree. The second thing is called tze'akah. Tze'akah means to scream. Scream means to pray. You have to pray. The third one is changing your name. Shinuy Hashem. And the fourth one is shinuy ma'asim. Changing of your actions. If you run into a situation that you feel my mazel is stuck. Stuck. Can't get married. Can't have a child. No parnassah. I have bad luck in this home. Not this home. Ship ship baracha in this home. But I have bad luck somewhere. That you still that something is stuck there, either you give or you can do all together all four together. But either it's tzedakah, praying, changing the name, changing your actions. So, charity is easy. And charity is not only writing a check. Charity can be with your time. Can be with your emotions, with your car, with your building, whatever it is. You can do many charitable acts. You don't have to only write a check. Tefillah, that's an easy thing. You pray. Either you pray from a siddur, either you pray from the heart. A lot of people think that they have to pray only from the siddur. Hashem says, "I want you to pray from the siddur because you know why? The siddur specifically, the siddurs are are a code to a safe." That's why it's repetitive. That's why we say every day the same text. When I became observant, I was like, "Couldn't they make like every day a different text? Every day the same text? I mean, let's say like have stories every day. This different story." But the text in the siddur is code. Every day is a different code. You open up a safe. But Hashem also says, "Pray from your heart." Talk to Hashem. Hashem, help me. I need help here. I need guidance here. So, we have to pray a lot to the Kadosh Baruch Hu. The third one is shinuy Hashem is that you change your name. We actually had yesterday the day before and the day before that beautiful lectures about the the the the power and the secrets of the name. This is not something that you jump to do so fast, but when a person is very very sick uh very has a tragedy, chas v'shalom, then you a lot of people they do is they change a name. They add a letter. They add another name and it changes the mazel. Suddenly the person has a completely different mazel. And needless to say is shinuy ma'asim, the changing of the actions. So, if I see that a problem happening, my mazel is stuck, change your actions. Maybe you're doing something wrong. Maybe you're doing something that is blocking this mazel from coming in. The connection to dreams is the second thing that you want to take is that the dream will allow you to get this information. Now, it doesn't mean that tomorrow you're going to become Eliyahu Hanavi, but you can a little bit refine yourself. Your kosher diet, make you sure that your diet is more kosher and much less things, you'll see that the dreams will come a little bit vivid. First thing in the morning, don't just read a right away reach to the phone. Wash your hands. Put a packet next to the bed. Wash your hands. Right away say the morning prayers. Keep some kedusha in the brain. Maybe you'll remember something of the dream. Sometimes the the message will be so clear. I know so many people that the dream was so clear and they're like, "That's it. That's it. It's obvious." Now, you're afraid to tell it to people cuz you're going to say, "Oh, people are going to think I'm crazy." So, don't tell it to anybody. You believe it. You saw it. You experienced it. Just do what you need to do. You understand it. So, if you want to get a little bit more information about the dreams, then you need to refine yourself. And the last and most important thing to remember is that we're 3 and 1/2 weeks before Rosh Hashanah. And you saw now the rabbi here blew the shofar. This is such a powerful month. The month of Elul is the month where one can do teshuvah. You blow the shofar to wake yourself up. Wait a minute. How am I doing? In 3 and 1/2 weeks I'm standing in front of the master of the universe going to judge me. I don't know where I'm holding right now. I don't know what's my situation. Rosh Hashanah is decided what's going to be the whole mazel for the next year. How much money I'm going to make, who I'm going to marry, I'm going to have kids, where I'm going to live. Everything is decided. You look at the text that we pray on Rosh Hashanah. Who's going to be rich? Who's going to be poor? Who's going to live? Who's going to die? Everything decided on one day. So, this is the time to prepare myself. So, you want to take all this information. Like I told you, this is the on the And we in Hebrew we say ktzeh hamazleg, on the tip of the of the of the fork this information. But if you want to learn more, I have Baruch Hashem hundreds of videos online. You can find them on YouTube on on my website. Hundreds and hundreds of videos of all different types of topics. And Baruch Hashem, you can learn a lot about it. But I like when I come to teach and to give a class is not just to teach you something nice. Is you have to know how to apply something practically. And practically saying, when you walk out of this door, you want to take something with you. Not just to eat the the beautiful food and and the company. Is to say, "Okay, what am I taking it to so I can apply to my life?" If I do If I learn something and I don't apply it in my life, then what did you Why did you come here? What? To eat good food? No, you came here because God brought you. You know how many people wanted to come to them couldn't make it? They couldn't get off work. They couldn't find a babysitter. So, obviously Hashem wanted you to be here. So, obviously he wants you to take some of the words and internalize them say, "Okay, what what am I applying in in my life that I can change something that maybe my mazel will be a little bit better. Maybe I can connect myself a little bit more to my my essence, to my neshama." It doesn't mean that tomorrow you have to become Rabi Shimon bar Yochai, but you need to understand that I need to refine something in myself. Maybe be a little bit less judgmental from now on. Maybe I'll control my anger. Maybe I'll stop gossiping all day long, lying, cheating, more honest in business. I'll treat my wife a little bit better. I'll take care of my kids. Give more charity. Go and pray. Whatever it is. The list is long from here to tomorrow. It doesn't mean A lot of people when you tell them, you know, "Come closer to God." No, no, no, I'm going to become fanatic like you. I have a friend that I took me half a year to convince him to put tefillin on. I told him, "You don't have to. Just put tefillin on in the morning. 10 minutes. What's the big deal?" Finally I convinced him. He bought tefillin. Every day puts tefillin on. So, he used to in the beginning used to call him, "Did you put tefillin on?" Yeah, yeah, yeah. One time I called him. I told him, "No, did you put tefillin on today?" He told me no. Told him, "Why not?" He's like, "I don't want to become fanatic like you." I don't want to I don't want to become fanatic like you. Told him, "I'm a fanatic?" So, he says, "Yeah, you put tefillin on every day. You're fanatic." I said, "No, but that's how you do it. It's almost like saying I don't want to eat every day. I don't want to become fanatic." Okay, so on Mondays don't eat. Let's see you go that. So, I told him, "What is it? That's how you do the mitzvah. You put it every day from Sunday to Friday. If you're going to do it every day for the rest of your life, you It doesn't mean you're fanatic. It means you're doing the mitzvah the right way." So, a lot of people you tell them come a little bit closer to Hashem. No, no, no, now you're going to I'm going to have to dress in a black suit and you're going to take me to the show. I'm not taking you anywhere. It's only ditching out a better your life a little bit. So you want to choose in you what you can make yourself a much better person. Needless to say you I would offer the whole package. So but everyone does their own analysis, their own personal efforts. Where can I get better? Maybe I'll go once a week to a Torah to show Torah. Maybe once a week I'll go to the Knesset, maybe every day. Maybe put filling on every day. I'll give charity every day. Whatever it is, the list is from here to tomorrow. You choose. And the reason why you want to choose A because it's the right thing to do. B you are affecting your mazel. Everybody needs more mazel. Everybody wants more parnassah. Everybody wants to have better health. Everybody wants to see the kids getting married. Everybody has problems. You're not the only one who has problems by the way. Everybody, 7 billion people on the planet, everybody has problems. And if you think you have problems, you don't have problems. I see people with real problems. So but everybody wants a little bit of a better situation. So Hashem says no problem. Just step it up a little bit. I'm not telling you now to become a Baba Sali. But uh make it a few steps. Your life will get better. Your mazel will get better. I want to take the opportunity again. We want to dedicate the class to the health, the immediate health and the miraculous recovery of Miriam bat Rachel. And also of Jack Joseph Joseph Chaim ben Rachel. And anyone else that needs refuah should have refuah shleimah and immediate recovery, miraculous recovery. Anybody who needs to get married should get married. Anybody who needs to get to have kids should have kids and the kids should be God-fearing and loving and with a lot of good midos. Should have parnassah and ashirut and everything that your heart desires should elevate you to a spiritual place where you can reach to the highest spiritual point of your life that you can serve Hashem and should all merit to see coming of Messiah with your own eyes and you should all have gmar chatima tova and shana tova. And thank you all for coming and thank you for opening your house and and inviting everybody. Hashem should bless you with shefa shel bracha v'hatzlacha. Thank you so much.