Question: I know from experience that a person is prepared to study if you explain to him why that’s needed. So why does he need a course on the evolution of egoism?

Answer: From this course he will learn not only the beginning, but also the end of this whole chain. He will feel himself existing within it. He will see where all of this is headed. On the basis of that he could make correct decisions regarding all his personal states.

Comment: Let’s say I learn how the planets got formed. How is this related to my life?

Answer: It’s a part of an overall worldview that slightly raises a person above his animal part. When he turns to look back a few billion years, and when he looks forward to tens or maybe even hundreds of years ahead, he begins to see this practically endless axis of time within which he exists at this moment—a small, weak, and dependent element. And from here a question arises in him: “Who am I?”

When he sees his pitiful condition upon this axis, it will be possible to start raising him above it into a new state where he will feel: “All of this is below me, I can be in control of it all, I am actually on a higher level and can exit the boundaries of time, space, and history.” This is the beginning of that enlightenment that will appear within him.
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From a “Talk on Integral Education” 12/12/11

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Question: Is it possible to give the notion of religion a modern definition? After all, soccer and basketball today captivate people the same way.

Answer: No, that is not really religion after all. “Religion” is something that answers my questions about the meaning of life, about reward and punishment.

Suppose I live a regular life of seventy years from birth until death. Besides that, I ask questions about the cause and the outcome of my life, about my destiny. In other words, I wish to attain that what exists above me, something that cannot be revealed through regular sensations.

Soccer does not answer these questions. It only allows me to fill my seventy-year existence with something, along with other pleasures from food, sex, family, money, respect, and knowledge. However, I wish to rise above these things.

I understand that they are summoned to confuse and “deafen” me. I do not wish to go any deeper into this mire than my life’s necessities require. No matter what, I only use food, sex, family, money, respect, knowledge, envy, and passions in order to reveal the essence.

This is the kind of attitude that I must develop toward life. What should be important to me are cause, destiny, and consequence, not what lies beneath them.

Naturally, today we fulfill ourselves with corporeal pleasures in that segment between birth and death. This is why mass media shapes social opinion, even though who are they, in essence? What do they understand? We see the results of their actions with our own eyes. However, the public does not care who shapes their opinions. Let soccer do it.

Still, at least this is the lesser of the evils. Mass media lulls the masses and feeds them substitute goods. For example, the Internet is a real sedative with plenty of benefits. People would lose their minds without it, not being able to apply themselves. A person pounds the keyboard, chatting with virtual friends, and searches for nonsense on the net while the clock is ticking, and death comes nearer. Just imagine what we would do today without the Internet.

However, when a person rises to the level of questions about the meaning of life, he begins to research what this life is for. He wants to know why he started researching, why he is living, why he was given an opportunity for an analysis, who set this up, and what will the result be like. The person is not just curious; he is searching for purpose. All of this falls under the notion of “religion.”

This does not refer to philosophy or fantasies, but to the highest evaluation of our lives, an evaluation that takes place in vessels above our body. It is these vessels that we must develop, new vessels where it is really possible to study cause, destiny, and consequence.

All of this is programmed in me from the beginning. I am only given a small spark that I blow up to open myself up. How do I do that? I do it through a united environment, the group, which will drag me up from this world with its influence.

When I am among my friends, I gradually grow new vessels inside that are different from anything that I experience in our world. They do not stand against it; the world stays as it was. My animal body with its five senses does not change.

At the same time, I develop in a spiritual environment and manifest five new senses together with my friends. They are called KHB-ZON in the language of Kabbalah. I discover “religion” in them: the upper force as the origin, its program, and the purpose of this program.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/24/2011, “The Essence of Religion and Its Purpose”

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Kabbalah answers the question about the meaning of life. In reality, this question is very important. It is because in my search for an answer to this question, I primarily examine myself. Do I have the right attitude toward life in everything that I do?

I have the desire for pleasure that obligates me to create a family, have children, and care for them, my work, my future, my parents, my close environment, my city, my country, and maybe even the entire world. All this is only so that I suffer less.

In this way, in the end, I am only driven by different degrees of suffering. In the best case scenario, I am driven by how I can benefit from it. However, what if I should rise above all this? What if I stopped depending on suffering or pleasure and became objective, like Man with capital “M”? Perhaps I would then become free of all these bonds. After all, nothing but animal instincts impel me to start a family, and social instincts make me follow social laws. What would I do if I were not driven by suffering and pleasure?

Today, I resemble an animal that is being directed every step of the way, spurred and forced to slow down with the two reins of pain and sweetness. I am like a doll, a puppet, a fragile mechanism that lacks any opportunity to do anything on its own, even a tiny fragment of its way.

So, can I take over these reins? If not, can I at least analyze the situation, understand why it is happening and for what purpose? On the other hand, should I even strive upward? Perhaps it would be best to close my eyes and submerge myself in religious and other practices. Maybe it would give me peace for the rest of my life if I disconnected from the essence.

This is where a person who does not give up and reject what matters most manifests himself. Regardless of the pleasure, suffering, shame, pride, and other methods that drive and control him in life, he still searches for independence. “Whatever happens, will happen, but I must find the essence. This is where I feel like a person. There is no other way.” Abraham searched for people like this in ancient Babylon, and he found several thousand.

This is the criterion for humanity that helps determine the level its animal element reaches and the level to which it is ready to become Man.

Are we able to accelerate human development through dissemination and education so that he would come more quickly to these fundamental questions? Essentially, in our days, this is what “social” work is.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/24/2011, “The Essence of Religion and Its Purpose”

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Question: As part of the integral upbringing there will be a course in integral economy. What will it be about?

Answer: Today it’s clear to experts that we have to come to normal, healthy, balanced consumption, when each receives what he is entitled to and not more than that. We mustn’t allow luxuries on nature’s account and waste natural resources and its treasures.

Balance is the understanding of what a person needs in his world. Otherwise there will be a catastrophe and we, having no choice, will follow the same direction but in a bad way, without the understanding of what is going on.

If we follow this way, we should expect many disasters and wars that will bring us nowhere. They will only compel us to get wiser and to understand that we have to move over to the good side, in order to advance not by sufferings, but by connection and mutual guarantee, meaning by the reason. Actually, throughout history we’ve advanced by sufferings. Did it make us wiser in any way? Do we know how to advance? This means that it’s a long and very hard way.

On the other hand, following the good way, we use education and this is totally different. Thanks to education, you begin to understand what’s going on, you acquire tools that you can use, see how to act, and discover the laws of nature. Of course, the wisdom of Kabbalah should be part of this, otherwise where will we get the knowledge? Only the wisdom of Kabbalah speaks about an integral world, and the integral world is the upper world.

We’ve ended development on the still, vegetative, and animate levels of nature. Then there is a borderline that separates us from the level of man. Everything below it belongs to reception and everything above it belongs to bestowal.

You don’t reach bestowal through sufferings. The difference between the animate level and that of man is in our consciousness, realization.

A person should understand where he is, meaning in which world, which system; he has to realize what nature is and then to reach the level of man. The difference between the animate in you and the man in you is in your consciousness, in your feeling and your mind. You have to acquire this addition.

Now we’re still part of the animate world, and we’re even more corrupt since everything we do harms us. Our whole life is made of different attempts to control each other and to harm one another. Thus we destroy ourselves, our health, all our lives, and the whole world.

From the side we seem rather strange, and only if we know the result of our development, will we be able to agree with the intermediate phases that we have to go through. So our consciousness separates man from beast. It says: “Know the God of thy father and worship Him.” We have to know the Creator, nature. This is the whole difference.

In his article “This Is for Judah,” Baal HaSulam wrote: “Thus, after all the inquiries and scrutiny, we find that the only need in man’s wishes, which does not exist in the whole of the animate species, is the awakening towards Godly Dvekut (adhesion). Only the human species is ready for it, and none other. It follows that the whole issue of presence in the human species is in that preparation imprinted in him to crave His work, and in that, he is superior to the beast.”

This is the only difference. In every other way, even if we differ from the animate world, it is only in the negative sense. What clever creature would ruin its home, as we do with our planet? What sensible creature would create such an economic system as we did? As for today, we have safes full of bills that have no backing. So today, in order to be saved from the troubles, we only need realization, change of consciousness.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/21/2011, “The Freedom”

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Question: What message should we convey to people in a course of rational economics?

Answer: We must relay very interesting statistics to them: the amount of resources humanity must spend, the efficient way to use natural and human resources, energy and so on. In other words, we teach people a course of harmony with nature, when we don’t take anything unnecessary from it, like animals.

After all, in our regular lives we are no different from animals. So why should we take from nature more than we need? An animal digs a hole for itself, stores food, procreates instinctively, raises its offspring, kills other creatures and eats them—but never in excess of its needs. And we must act the same way.

Everything must function only in harmony with nature. The only difference is that in our case this harmony must be something we achieve consciously, as opposed to harmony on the still, vegetative and animate levels, which is maintained instinctively. We must create harmony ourselves.
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From a “Talk on Integral Education” 12/12/11

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Question: What is “fate in reward and punishment?”

Answer: At every moment in our life we face reward and punishment. At every moment I must demand correction. If I demand it properly, I get a reward, and if I don’t demand it properly, I get correction.

The reward is getting stronger desires with which I can direct myself more accurately to the goal. I become more sensitive and tune myself more accurately, calibrate myself, and imagine more accurately what the “Creator” is.

I understand this by building myself by myself over again according to Him, and learning about the way I am built. Thus I become more similar to Him and this is my reward—to bestow more. The punishment is in seeing that I missed.

But this also becomes part of the correction, and then the punishment becomes my reward. After all, it makes no difference whether I receive a positive or a negative reaction. The main thing is that it allows me to find out my deviation and to correct it.

I accept all these deviations as good and beneficial, no matter whether they are positive or negative, whether they are repulsive or attractive. I don’t know which additional desires I have to reveal now. All the evils that I have to discover are hidden in me, and when they are revealed, I perceive it as reward. Although I feel bad, I rise above my feeling.

I perceive everything I receive from the reforming Light, no matter how it is felt, as a great reward. This is my direction. But in order to do that, I need the support of the environment, so that I will constantly see myself as part of this system. Only there will I be able to change in order to join it.

Suppose, for example, I have to become a part of the friends in a space that is cone shaped. As I try to fit into the shape, I constantly receive further clarification about what I am lacking and how to do it more accurately, so that I can fit in this special form.

So although every new revelation can be felt as negative, the troubles and confusion become a blessing for me. It says that the wisdom of the Torah is opposite from the wisdom of landlords, because you are happy with these revelations.

This is a “very narrow bridge” that we have to cross. A person who advances by spirituality, finds a reward both in positive and in negative feelings. The main thing is to correct one’s tuning.
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From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/1/12, “Study of the Ten Sefirot”

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Question: The extremist right wing movements in Europe are getting stronger. In general when a person doesn’t see a solution to a problem, he tends to accept the apparent simplicity of radical claims. How can we present our message in contrast to that?

Answer: First, there are many scientific facts. But scientists cannot provide a serious platform at the moment, and so we have to organize it in a way that will show the rational “grain” in our recommendations.

Besides, we shouldn’t forget that radical trends unite people on the one hand, but on the other hand lead to conflicts and wars. Here we have to explain that these tendencies are in contrast to nature. In the present conditions of total mutual connection, any conflict will lead to serious implications.

This is why Europe cannot break apart now. First, it isn’t in Germany’s favor. The Germans are ready to pay billion of Euros only to prevent that from happening. After all, they see where this will lead to: to losing their market. If you seclude yourself, the next day your economy will begin to suffocate. So everyone will lose as a result of the disintegration of the EU.

Day by day it becomes clearer that protectionism isn’t the solution to the current problems. It is used in a very limited manner, but on the whole, everyone already understands the fact that we are all mutually connected and that this connection cannot be broken. It can only be destroyed by war, meaning by extreme actions, but there are no intermediate ways.

I hope that we will be able to prepare our method and wrap it up in a way that will enable people to understand the basic idea. We offer, “Let’s check its effectiveness together,” “Let’s continue to develop it together,” as a result we need to create a platform that will lead the mutual connection among people to a new qualitative level, which is the basis for all the changes that will take place in the world, in humanity. [Read more →]

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Question: In western countries, advertising everywhere mostly uses women in a sexual context that is more or less obvious. Why do the modern day men regard a woman as a sexual object?

Answer: That’s because over the years, our evil inclination (egoistic desire) has reached tremendous dimensions. We haven’t corrected it and it still stays at an animal level. Sexual attraction is the most uncomplicated and natural call that is easy to implement. Practically everything revolves around it; it is very easy to create a whole “industry of love” comprised of movies, TV, music, etc.

Never in the past was such an ideal of “love” built. No matter how we perceive old times, people used to be more straightforward and simple. A man married a “suitable” woman from his neighborhood and created a family without involving such “high matters.” The massive glorification of “love” was launched about 150 years ago; before, no “cult” associated with it ever existed.

This cult-like notion of love didn’t arise by chance—after all, a man must be something to enjoy. What could they get fulfilled with? What good could they find in life? This is how an industry of “wholesale love” was created. It uses a simple, powerful and affordable pleasure, which, unlike others, requires almost no investment. Today, it is overused on the Internet and TV without any restrictions.

Moreover, we force-feed our children with side effects of the “sexual revolution.” With the help of media, society overwhelms a child with adult stereotypes that are unnatural for the younger generation. In conjunction with hormones that children intake with food, we violate a natural process of growth and literally force kids to “mutate.” This is only one side of a general crisis.

We consider ourselves to be a rational intelligent society with certain principles and considerable experience; if so, how can we allow such things to happen? In the past, parents tried hard to protect their children from bad influences; they gave them the best they could and cultivated in their kids high spiritual values. What do we do with our children now? Why do we allow contemporary mass media filled with cruelty, cynicism, and filth to interfere with our children’s lives?

Why do we tolerate vulgarity by silently consenting to it?

A child goes to school, watches TV, and browses through the Internet. The environment carves him in a way that he becomes similar to it. Why don’t we at least become concerned about it? Do we have anything more precious than children?

We cannot confine them in four walls; so the channels that pour poison into our children’s ears must be shut down. Let’s at least take care of our offspring since we have already failed the adults. Society should be held responsible for the content that is being offered to our young generation. Unnecessary things should not be imposed on them.

Returning to the topic of women—we shouldn’t compel girls to think that they were born to seduce men and thus have to look accordingly. By doing so, we enhance prostitution and create wrong standards in relationships between genders only because someone earns money from it. This way or the other everything rotates around money.

As long as we allow media to “educate” people that distorts them instead, we cannot expect anything positive from them. At the same time, the situation can be improved solely with the help of mass media, but we should take their activity under control.

Society must be called to order; among other things, it means that media has to be regulated. We are not talking about the freedom of speech, but rather about the freedom of animal appeal. Media should be organized differently and continue working for the sake of public benefit instead of letting advertisement agencies and their affiliates earn more money.

We have to start with mass education; otherwise there is nobody to talk with. People have already been “carved” and perceive the current state of affairs as the only possibility.

Hence, parents carry vague priorities; they indifferently watch their children degrade.

If a particular person—someone older or an adult —was harming my child, I would do everything in my power to stop any contacts between them. But somehow we do not act against the media. On the contrary, we knowingly allow them to enter our house and agree with what they are doing. The same applies to schools.

People simply gave up. We prefer to keep our good moods by abiding with the situation and thinking that everything is fine. Our common trouble is that we are completely (not partially) consoled.

Altering the environment will bring us relief. But first we have to clean it up a bit. So far, while we are being suppressed by our indifference time passes by….
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/28/11, “The Freedom”
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Writings of Rabash “Letter 24”
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The Book of Zohar – Selected Chapter “Beresheet (Genesis),” “Let There Be Lights,” Item 102, Lesson 26
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“Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot,” Item 18, Lesson 13
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Writings of Baal HaSulam “The Freedom,” “Taking After the Collective,” Lesson 16
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