Question: Assuming I became integral and later another stage of development becomes revealed in nature. Do I have to readjust again or this is the last stage of development?

Answer: Nobody knows. I can’t tell you that.

What kind of serious person can talk about something that doesn’t fall into his framework of sensations and study? Imagining something? That is not serious. Only philosophers and mystics are capable of that.

We deal with science and rest only on scientific data. We don’t discuss and take into consideration anything that we don’t discover in nature. Thus there is only room for experiment.
[72792]
From a “Talk on Integral Upbringing” #12, 12/16/11

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We can talk about our advancement and ourselves as well as imagine the perspective from Above, from the source of reality. We reveal our work from below, while its cause from Above.

What was the purpose of creation? It is said that such is the desire of the upper one: to create a creature as perfect as He is. Thus in all our actions and intentions, while we scrutinize what happens with us, we should always remember that the end goal of it all is to reveal the Creator, to reveal precisely Him.

Whatever I feel, think, ponder, or aspire for is correct; such is the path of analysis. But what do I reveal on this path, my own self? No, I reveal myself opposite to the Creator. That is, in fact, I reveal Him.

We know from the wisdom of Kabbalah that in the world of Infinity there is no deficiency in anything but the realization of the Giver. The creature, called Malchut of the world of Infinity, must understand, feel, and attain Him.

That is why this round of creation is necessary: the descent into our world and the ascent back into Malchut of Infinity, which we have to carry out. This path from the bottom up is intended for the sole purpose of ascension in the attainment of the Giver.

We attain Him according to the equivalence of form: The more we resemble Him, the more we understand and feel Him, and the nearer we draw to Him. The end result is in its initial thought; hence, first and foremost, we have to establish the intention, that is, what do I want to achieve through all of my actions? What’s done is done, but why do I need it?

However, even before I clarify the intention, I need the initial thought of this intention’s primary origin since the idea is to reveal the Giver, the Creator. That is our goal.

I reveal in myself thoughts, intentions, desires, and attitudes, but essentially, through these actions I search for Him. “How do I go about doing it? What do I think? What do I want? How to I interact with someone or something?” Before each such discernment I prepare myself for the right attitude: Everything that I do is intended to reveal the Creator.

I need to draw some connections here:

• Whoever I am, He prepared it for me;
• Whatever I think every second, He gives me;
• Whatever happens with me right now during this analysis, it happens according to His will;
• However I react to what I feel, He, too, gives it to me.

There is only one thought, one statement that should always be mine: “Everything that is happening with me is coming from the Creator.” The first Shamati article talks about it: “There is None else Beside Him.”

Now, when I clarify my intentions—either for the sake of reception or for the sake of bestowal—they certainly come from the Creator. However, what is important to me in this analysis is that I reveal Him; I clarify who He is.

Out of all these discernments, the mosaic of reality takes shape inside of me. My friends, the world around me, its events and circumstances, everything should merge into one picture of the Creator. To the extent it appears internally, separate pieces come together: all creatures, this entire world, and all worlds together in one whole structure whose internal form is called the “Creator.” In its entirety, this structure represents Malchut of the world of Infinity or, in other words, the vessel, the desire. It is precisely His form, His structure, and interaction of all of His parts: desires, thoughts, and intentions that take on the form of the Giver.

The Creator Himself, Azmuto, does not have a form. However, we conduct a ceaseless analysis in ourselves and gradually create the form similar to His. As a result, He can be revealed. In the same manner, to detect waves that are unknown to us, we build a device in which they can be duplicated and reproduced. It allows us to discover them and study their nature.

The internal scrutiny helps us create a “place” to reveal the Creator; otherwise, He will remain concealed from us. That is why it is said that the Creator wants to dwell in the lower ones, meaning to reveal Himself to them. That is the reason He created the world of Infinity, and our work is comprised of revealing Him through our efforts.

Thus, the revelation of the Creator is the result of our internal scrutiny. He will not reveal Himself—our efforts and exertion are needed here. We exert our efforts, we want it and we don’t, the forces of reception and bestowal collide inside of us, and thereby we constantly prepare a place for His revelation.

Eventually, this place will become “pliable” enough so we could detect in it small “waves,” the Creator’s forms in the matter of desire. The more we soften our material, the more the Creator is revealed within it. He Himself is concealed; however, the matter begins to assume His form. This is what comprises all our clarifications: With their help we are preparing our desire to take on His imprint, His revelation.

Hence, with our every action it is necessary to remember that we, the world, and everything else in general exist only in order for us to reveal the Creator. It’s not a topic for discussion but the fact descending from the sources of creation. If I lay the foundation for any of my actions, thoughts, or intentions with that fact in mind, if I originally take this course, if I am directed toward the revelation of the Creator since such is His desire, then I am aimed at Infinity, at that very goal. And everything that I do later on will surely enter that depository of efforts that we must replenish.

Everything else will take place anyway. Only one thing depends on us: to direct our all our efforts toward the revelation of the Creator.

Later, the following questions arise: What does this revelation represent? How does one actualize it? What actions will prove most effective? Who does it depend on: myself, others, or our interaction? All in all, we are talking about the method that Kabbalists describe for us, explaining how to carry out actions that are most beneficial for the revelation of the Creator.

Today, the whole of humanity stands at the beginning of this revelation. Evolution came to the conclusion; the world has already realized the potential of materialistic progress. We have nothing to look for on other planets and nothing to extract from the earth; we have tried everything on its surface as well, and we saw that our life is limited and leads to a dead-end.

It is the beginning of the Creator’s revelation to all creatures. Because of this impediment people will start asking the question: “What for and why do we live? What is the purpose of life?”

From here on we learn that the purpose of our life is to reveal the Creator or, to be more precise, to prepare ourselves for His revelation. We achieve that through uniting, and thereby soften our desire to receive so it could become altruistic and begin to assume various sorts of bestowal. After all, the Creator is the quality of bestowal, and if we establish such a connection with each other, we help Him reveal Himself between us, we prepare the soil for it, the matter that will be able to assume His qualities, His projection.

Thus we develop ourselves in precise equivalence to His form.
[71271]
From the Arava Convention 2/23/12, Lesson #2

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When developed countries became sufficiently advanced, they started developing the so-called “third world” countries (in Asia and Africa) and entered these countries in order to establish factories and prepare all their infrastructures. But in order to set up manufacturing, it’s also necessary to educate people; therefore, they started opening schools there. In addition, developed nations began to accept international students from these regions into their universities. And from that point on, all of humanity became very interconnected at the level of material prosperity, education, science, and culture.

Today, all of the world’s countries are bound together by very close ties. The Americans jokingly say that whenever they want to call from New York to Boston, the call first goes through India, where people sit answering the phones and then connect them. It appears that these phone lines connect us to each other to such a degree that we don’t worry about distances, don’t neglect any country, and aren’t even concerned that we’ll have to install a transcontinental communication cable.

And if we delve into this issue even deeper, we’ll see that the entire planet is wrapped in an enormous multifaceted and multilayered communications network. And today, it’s impossible to build or manufacture something if you don’t have sufficient knowledge or an opportunity to receive the most suitable equipment from any producer in the world, or if you don’t have access to necessary information and specialists. This is how our world is built now.

All these ties developed throughout the last century, but suddenly we’ve discovered that for many reasons this system isn’t working. Analysts in the fields of sociology, political science, economics, and finance are offering their solutions to this problem, each in their own way. But ultimately, there’s just one simple solution: This system now demands a more internal connection of us.

And in order to continue our development, we must achieve a closer connection and understand and accept the necessity of mutual guarantee, that is, the fact that we depend on one another, live on one planet Earth, and that no other alternative exists other than to feel that we all are like one family.

In other words, our development began by trading what we produced: equipment, foodstuffs, and so on. Gradually, joint ventures and international banks started to form; stock exchanges began to join together. I can make transactions on the Tokyo stock exchange and right after, on the stock exchanges in Germany, Moscow, or New York. It doesn’t matter where and what I trade because in any place, everything is essentially the same. I only analyze where it’s worthwhile to invest and where it’s not.

But money is kept in one place, and banks only send each other transaction notifications through electronic means, and this is sufficient. It doesn’t even matter to us where the money is stored physically because we consider gold to be the main equivalent of their value. Perhaps the money itself is kept in one of the “third world” countries as a repository of all the gold reserves, but what’s important is that strict accounting is maintained there.

As I already mentioned, lately we feel that our connection cannot continue in this manner. This is especially true in Europe. On one hand, it’s the most developed place, but on the other, it is the most disunited one. And we are now seeing that due to this disconnection, they are deprived of inner concordance, of understanding and feeling that they belong to a single system. This hinders all the countries of the global market since the single market isn’t enough. It’s also necessary to unite all these countries with much tighter bonds, but this isn’t easy.

The difficulty is that we need to be closer to each other in spirit, based on our understanding of the situation and recognition of the fact that we cannot exist without each other. This is why it’s necessary to cultivate in the nations of Europe an understanding that mutual dependence between them is required.

It’s clear that that’s the case, but the problem is that even though the decision-makers in politics, scientists, the middle class, and the average folk understand with their reason the necessity for changes, they aren’t yet emotionally ready to give up their individual lives and national characteristics.

In truth, we believe that this isn’t even necessary. A person doesn’t need to change their behavior and habits that pertain to culture and national traditions. One should only rise above them towards connection with other people, towards mutual guarantee.
[67795]
From KabTV’s “A New Life” Episode 5, 1/2/12

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As we investigate the universe, we discover that all of its systems are interdependent. Planets revolve around the sun, while their satellites orbit around these planets. The more we investigate this enormous system, the clearer we see that all of its components exist in interdependent motion and influence one another. The moon above the Earth influences everything that takes place on the Earth’s surface: our health, feelings, deep ocean currents, and so on.

The sun influences us as well: We perceive even the smallest solar flares that happen there. They even say that some phenomena on the sun may threaten the Earth’s very existence as they are capable of literally incinerating it. Naturally, it affects all of our electronic systems. The globe itself is a “boiling cauldron,” and we are living on the surface of a sphere, which inside is ablaze with fire. And all of this exists in a very shaky equilibrium.

Biologists, zoologists, and botanists tell us that the emergence of life on Earth was only possible due to absolutely special conditions that don’t exist anywhere else in the universe. To this day, they haven’t been discovered anywhere, and it is highly doubtful that they exist at all. And since the origin of life requires that many conditions related to such parameters as the gravitational force, amount of water, pressure, temperature, and so on are met simultaneously, it follows that all of these parameters comprise one gigantic formula. And only if we make a very precise calculation according to this formula, will we be able to learn what preconditions are conducive to the emergence of life.

In the news they usually tell us what the weather is going to be in the next few days. Meteorologists can prepare a weather forecast for the week ahead, but no more. Why is that?

The temperature, humidity, or wind speed forecasts are based on calculations performed using extremely complex formulas and powerful computers, taking into consideration climate conditions across the entire planet. In short, the connections between these parameters are so multifaceted, deep, and rich that even a single prediction for tomorrow’s air temperature, height of waves, and other factors we need for planning airplane flights, ship routes, and all kinds of other purposes speaks of the interconnection of all parts of nature, of how the still nature influences the vegetative, the vegetative influences the animate, and the animate influences man, while man, in response, influences all of them.

Our life depends on the still nature since we live on the earth and extract all the necessary resources from its depths. We depend on the vegetative nature too since this is what our agriculture is based on, and also on the animate nature since these are food products necessary for our existence. On top of that, we won’t be able to sustain a normal life except in a society where each occupies their corresponding nook within it by performing some particular function.

The further we progressed over the course of history, the more complex our society became, and the more dependent we became on one another. Today we make transactions and transfer money from bank to bank; we send ships with various cargoes from one continent to another. And if we consider the clothes that we wear, we can confidently say that it wasn’t just one single country that was involved in their manufacturing. Someone produced the raw materials, someone else processed them, others sewed it all together, and yet others engaged in marketing and sales. This only emphasizes how dependent we are on one another.

We are already accustomed to this interdependence and take it for granted. Except that this is entirely commercial and financial dependence, and it never required any emotional involvement from us. But lately we see that the connection between us has reached such proportions that it demands of us a deeper, tighter, and closer cooperation.

Moreover, it manifests itself to such degree that whatever happens in one country directly affects the events in another. It’s no accident that today we see how one country can intervene in the business of another, even changing the regime and encroaching on its independence. A vivid example is the protests in Syria, where the representatives of different countries are voicing their grievances about the fact that many peaceful civilians are being killed. And the Syrian ambassador has nothing to respond to that. He is acting as if it’s not his country and he has nothing to do with it. Thus, this dependence obliges all of us.

We see that we are so interconnected with one another that we now require various international governance mechanisms, without which we cannot exist normally. After all, if we want to have trade, develop science and culture, if we want a prosperous life, we need to develop very similar systems of upbringing, culture, and approach to life.

During the past few decades tourism flourished in the world. While visiting different countries, we can see how during this time countries drew closer to each other in terms of people’s life quality level and their ability to perceive their surroundings. After all, we watch television, listen to the news, and connect with each other virtually through the Internet. And this connection between us will soon help us eliminate all language barriers: New machines will automatically make translations for us, and someone who doesn’t know say, English, which today is the international language, will have an ability to be connected with everyone.

According to modern research, it appears that an average person is connected to the entire world through four of his acquaintances. We are becoming closer to each other to such an extent that we, so to speak, are holding each other’s hands. Today, no country can drill deep boreholes, even in its own territory because through this it can disrupt the balance inside the earth’s crust, and whatever happens in one country will have consequences not only for its neighbors, but the rest of the world too.

We signed international agreements regarding different spheres of human activities that can cause harm to others, for example, agreements that set quotas on fishing. Each country has its own limit on emissions of harmful elements into the atmosphere or on extraction of natural resources from the earth’s depths. We are starting to feel more and more that we live on one planet and that it is our shared home. And indeed, here we are all dependent on one another and we cannot just do as we please.

Unfortunately, we are still developing egoistically and this doesn’t allow us to take each other into consideration. We’ve even littered outer space by sending rockets out there so that at this point, a great quantity of satellites as well as millions of their fragments, small and large, circle the earth. And if some kind of an accident occurs on the space station, all of its fragments can fall anywhere and on anyone.

We’ve also been witnesses to such unpleasant phenomena as the eruption of a volcano in Iceland, which affected all of Europe, all the way to Siberia, paralyzing the operations of many airports. And the tsunami in Japan that was provoked by an earthquake and caused damage to a nuclear power plant forced many countries to think that perhaps it’s worthwhile to suspend the development of nuclear power.

We see that not a single nation can build their domestic and foreign policy without considering tens and even hundreds of external factors. In every movement it makes, it needs to take the whole world into consideration. And this pertains even to the strong and leading countries that seemingly don’t have to justify themselves to anyone. And yet, they must consider others because we are all dependent on each other, and who knows how even the tiniest change occurring in one of the countries will impact the others.
[67803]
From KabTV’s “A New Life” Episode 5, 1/2/12

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Preparation to the Lesson
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Writings of Baal HaSulam “What Is Support in the Torah in the Work,” (To: “In that state one says”)
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The Book of Zohar – Selected Chapter “Beresheet (Genesis),” “The Correction of the Lower World from the Upper World,” Item 311, Lesson 86
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Talmud Eser Sefirot, Part 7, Item 23, Lesson 9
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“Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot,” Item 115, Lesson 52
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