Question for ML: I just came back from a meeting at school, and it made me see the collapse of the education system even more acutely. What’s your opinion about home schooling? Maybe it’s better to educate children at home, like how it was in the past?

My Answer: Let’s prepare more material for our children together, make games and films that can set them with a good example, provide them with the opportunity to spend time at our centers where they would see good examples, and gain respect for adults being engaged in something special. This is what the education of a person is, and not how studies are taught at school.

Question for ML: When can one start reading the children Kabbalah newspapers? And if they have questions, how would I know what to answer? What kind of material is more suitable?

My Answer: Select whatever is suitable from our materials. You may turn to the women’s department.

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If the 20th century was dubbed by psychologists as the century of concerns, the 21st century, which we have barely entered, is already being recognized as the century of depression. People are tired of fearing extremists, terrorists, cataclysms and crises, and are now quietly wallowing in depression.

Each year, up to 200 million workers lose their ability to work due to depression. Moreover, if we add cases that don’t fall within official medicine’s field of vision, then the World Health Organization’s numbers multiply this number by five.

More than half of the pharmacological substances produced in the world today are antidepressants and psychoactive medications.

Depression is the main reason for disability, and is predicted to become the second most severe disease (after cardiovascular) by 2020 (see the World Health Organization’s page on depression).

My Current Mood: depressed

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Question for ML: From our birth, we’re controlled by the genes embedded in us. So who are we? Where is our “I”? Please, can you write something about how genes (Reshimot) control us from the inside, and society from the outside, making us all ROBOTS! There is no free will – there’s no reward or punishment for our actions!

My Answer: Kabbalah reveals the desires and thoughts in which a person is free! Using this knowledge, we can change our destiny.

Anorexia as addictive as ecstasy

Everything is controlled by the desire for pleasure.

Scientists are suggesting that anorexia is addictive. Their studies show that the feeling of hunger stimulates similar bodily responses as does the drug ecstasy. If their studies are correct, then you could say that anorexic girls are simply drug addicts, getting their fix from hunger. What difference does it make what a person gets pleasure from?

Genes affecting generosity may be found

Scientists are just beginning to find genes that may underlie generosity. Their DNA tests showed that people with a particular variation of a gene called AVPR1a gave away their money 50% more of the time. This study was published in the magazine, Genes, Brain and Behavior. “The experiment provided the first evidence, to my knowledge, for a relationship between DNA variability and real human altruism,” said Dr. Ariel Knafo, a psychologist who was part of the research team.

The genes responsible for altruism have evolutionary significance. Since good deeds can be considered as having mutual benefit, and since today’s social relations are becoming increasingly complex, concepts such as altruism and the ability to cooperate are becoming more important than ever before.

My Current Mood: cheerful

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The inability to concentrate, the inability to pay attention, quick temper, verging on cruelty – we’re seeing more and more children for whom this kind of behavior has become normal. “Hyperactivity” – we have defined the problem appropriately. Now we can even treat it. We substitute Dexedrine with Ritalin, going on the offensive against our own children, trying to make sure we don’t miss our chance at the very beginning so that it doesn’t develop, to suppress and defeat it. But can we beat this disease with just pills? Can we beat this disease by fighting its symptoms, and not its cause? Moreover, is it even a disease?

Remember how in the past these kinds of children were few and far between. They were referred to as – just think! – underdeveloped, and they were locked away in special schools. The problem thus took care of itself: it was seldom seen and soon forgotten – and we kept moving boldly into the bright future. Today, however, now that the problem has grown to critical proportions – after all, according to some estimates, up to twenty percent of children between the ages of 6 and 16 suffer from attention deficit disorder and hyperactivity – and since there isn’t enough space for these children at special schools, it was decided to dub hyperactivity a disease.

But not everyone agrees. [Read more →]

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The Crisis of Buddhism in Japan

“‘Many of us priests share the sense of crisis, and a need to do something to reach out to people,’ said Kosuke Kikkawa, a 37 year old priest. ‘We won’t change Buddha’s teachings, but perhaps we need a different presentation that can touch the feelings of the people today.’

More than 1,200 years after it first arrived from mainland Asia, Buddhism in Japan is in crisis, priests say.

Almost three-quarters of Japan’s population of 120 million are registered as Buddhist, but for many, the only time they enter a temple is to attend a funeral. That has sent many of the country’s 75,000 temples into financial trouble.”

What’s your opinion? Aren’t all of the world’s religions and faiths currently in the same situation?

My Current Mood: satisfied

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In today’s morning lesson I talked a lot about perception of reality. I recommend watching it, especially the first part [the articles of Shamati].

Shamati article #89 (Feb 4, 2008): wmv video | mp3 audio

It’s hard for us to believe the Kabbalists, when they say that our world is an illusion, because we have never disconnected from it or seen it from outside. We have nothing left to do but either disagree with them, “because it can’t be true,” or to check it on ourselves. However, I see from my teaching experience that a person gradually starts understanding our illusion and the fact that the world can exist only within us.

We know from experience that only by equipping ourselves with certain senses can we perceive something new that we haven’t felt before.

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Statement: Preparation for war is well underway. Crises in national debts broke out before the first and the second World Wars, and they are accruing again today. Both the United States and Britain are accumulating exterior debts of 2 trillion dollars a year. Such debts cannot be returned, and no one is planning on returning them! So what are they thinking?

If we, however, look at the present actions of western politicians as preparations for a large war, then their actions look rather reasoned and purposeful. Even Norway accumulated a debt of $469 billion for population of 4.6 million, even though there was absolutely no need for it! Besides, 7 billion people living in our planet is way too many! Even if a quarter of them remain, the planet will breathe easier…

My Response: The basis of the world – is egoism, fulfillment. The lack of a method to control it leads the world to war. The evolution of egoism under the influence of Light took place even before the appearance of matter – in “the Four Phases of Direct Light.” This formula is called the “principal four-letter name of the Creator” (HaVaYaH). Any phenomenon in the worlds develops according to it. [Read more →]

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Something interesting that somebody sent me by e-mail:

The world is comprehended with the aid of science, which doesn’t explain anything, but only registers facts through experience. For instance, science doesn’t explain what the force of gravity is; it describes the phenomenon of gravity itself. The purpose of science – to supply, based on available data, the most precise prediction. It is mistaken to accept descriptions of methods for getting results as scientific explanations. Science – is what works.

The increase in fertility through the use of fertilizers is better than offerings to the god of fertility. However, if studies showed that offerings to the god of fertility are more effective than the use of fertilizers, such offerings would then be recognized by the scientific community as scientific, and would no longer be considered supernatural. The principle of science is that if “something” works, science studies it; and if “something” is unattainable – then there is nothing to talk about.

My Current Mood: high

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Question for ML: I want to know whether it is possible to attain knowledge without performing experiments on animals. Is spiritual attainment a substitution for experiments? Why do animals suffer in our world? What is the purpose of this? I really want you to direct me to the sources. I don’t understand why these horrible things happen.

My Answer: It is said that the entire world, with the exception of the person – still, vegetative and animate – ascend and descend according to the person’s actions. Animals – are a part of us, just like the rest of the world, which we incorporate within us. This is what we learn in the method of attaining the universe.

The person’s evolving ego destroys the whole of nature, including the person himself. We need to realize that the ego’s further evolution will destroy us. Kabbalah offers itself as a method for correcting the ego. Only the correction of the person will correct one’s attitude toward oneself, other people, and animals – toward the entire world that surrounds us.

Besides the correction of our properties, the attainment of the Upper World provides all the necessary knowledge about the world – and the need to perform experiments on animals disappears. Moreover, to the extent of humanity’s collective correction, diseases, which are consequences of our ego’s diseases, also disappear – and the need to perform experiments on animals disappears with them.

My Current Mood: crazy

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The liberal system in the West has become its own trap. If, in the past, liberal ideologists believed that there needed to be laws for people, nowadays, in place of morals, laws lack moral boundaries and mechanisms of self-restraint. In a society where rules exist for the sake of rules, and not for the sake of people, there ceases to be any common sense.

In his article, Introduction to the Book of Zohar, Baal HaSulam writes that out of four possibilities – matter, form in matter, form abstracted from matter and essence – a person can only work with matter and form clothed in matter. All of the liberals’ morals, however, are based on abstractions from matter and from a person. Therefore, they cannot be controlled, and like all of our theories, they lead to mistakes that cost us dearly.

This is why the science of Kabbalah only studies concrete (spiritual) forms that clothe into matter (i.e. desires and thoughts). Kabbalah is a science of forms assumed by matter.

My Current Mood: confused

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