In the News (from BBC News): Surely when people need relief from their financial worries they reach for the natural medication created by body contact? Professor Helen Fisher of Rutgers University argues that the sheer stress of money worries in general elevates levels of the chemical dopamine in the brain – and dopamine is associated with romantic love.

My Comment: Desire is the matter of all creation, including us. Our entire essence is the will to fulfill our desire. We want to fulfill it by any means possible and as much as possible.

In times of crisis, people’s desires change, as do the sources of fulfillment for the desires. Since people can’t get the fulfillment they desire, they go back to the most natural sources of fulfillment – love and sex.

However, nowadays even this won’t make people feel fulfilled because our desires are transforming into a global desire, which can only be fulfilled when everyone will unite into a single whole.

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The earth is similar to a single cell, and just like everything living on it, our world evolves from competitive individualization toward life-sustaining interaction. Nature illustrates the historic, global interconnection and interdependence of all living things on earth.

The economic system functions in a similar way to the human body. By studying the body as a single, unified organism, we can discover the right principles of governing ourselves and our society. These principles are not instilled in us by nature, but rather given to us to be used freely, for us to master them voluntarily and apply them to ourselves. We will then eliminate the principles that are harmful for the economy and for life in general, and use only those that are beneficial

The human body constantly regenerates its cells, thus preserving its form and getting rid of what it doesn’t need. The body is able to sustain life only under the condition that its biological parts support each other and don’t oppose one another. In the past, the struggle for survival was the developmental principle. However, today’s society is like a single, unified organism, and as such, it is governed by a new principle, that of a single organism. This principle states that life is founded on the interconnection between the living systems.

This is why in our generation, we have to shift from the principle of boundless rivalry to voluntary interaction. Unbridled evolution has ended. Nature’s system has become revealed and we must become a part of it.

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Three questions I received about the meanings of different Biblical references:

Question: I would like to learn the deeper meaning of the Book of Ruth. Is this possible? Can I read about it somewhere?

My Answer: The Book of Zohar contains a Kabbalistic interpretation of the Book of Ruth.

Question: How does the commandment, “love thy neighbor as thyself,” differ from acquiring the quality of bestowal?

My Answer: They differ in the same way that a quality differs from an action.

Question: Help me understand the meaning of the phrase, “Envy, passion, and honor will lead a person out of this world” (Avot).

My Answer: By using these qualities correctly, a person can leave the egoistic world and enter the altruistic world.

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In the News (from The New York Times): “Survey Reveals Broad Support for President” A month into Mr. Obama’s term, more than three-quarters of the people polled said they were optimistic about the next four years with him as president.

My Comment: “The hearts of the world’s rulers are in the Creator’s hands (Lev Sarim VeMelachim BaYad HaShem – a Kabbalistic quote) .

In the News (cont’d): [However,] nearly all Americans are concerned that the cost of the economic programs will have significant long-term effects on future generations, with 65 percent saying they are very concerned about increasing the national debt.

My Comment: The real crisis still hasn’t been revealed in its entirety, and when it is, people’s opinions will change.

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A question I received: At the Congress, while answering a woman’s question, you said that sometimes, when a person begins to study Kabbalah, he loses interest in his profession, especially if it’s a creative profession that involves making movies, music, art, and so on. I write songs, but recently I realized that I don’t want to do this anymore, even though this work used to be the meaning of my life. Why does this happen?

My Answer: It’s because you have revealed something that’s more important in life than art. Now you have to combine Kabbalah with your former occupation: create movies, music, or art about attaining the meaning of life, unification, one’s inner search, and so on.

Actually, everyone in our world will have to bring their occupations into harmony with the new state of the world and the revelation of the Creator. And if someone is unable to do this, it means that their profession has no future.

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A question I received: How should we interpret Baal HaSulam’s mathematical equations, and numerical operations such as addition and multiplication that he uses? I will give three examples:

1) HATEVA = ELOKIM, i.e., 86 = 86 (from the article “The Peace”)
2) 2 х EKЕ = МB, i.e., 2 х 21 = 42
3) МХ + HAKAL = MAKOM, i.е., 48 + 138 = 186 (both examples are from your morning lesson on Talmud Eser Sefirot).

I can understand the first example: it means that the essence of these two objects is the same. But what is the meaning of the “sum” of two spiritual qualities, or a quality “multiplied” by a number?

My Answer: These operations refer to the combination of qualities between two spiritual objects or two states of one object, as well as their result. For example, they might refer to you in two different states or you in connection with someone else.

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A question I received: The wife of one of my friends is Jewish and she forwarded me this email from a friend:

“I sent you The Third Jihad. Now I’m sending you this, photos of a Muslim march in San Francisco. When did this kind of hate speech stop being against the law?”

So, I sent her the link to Kab TV to see that there were more than 6,000 souls meeting for peace and unity in Israel. I said I think there is still hope for the world.

Her fearful and arrogant reply this morning caught me by surprise: “It is incredibly naive to think that these 6,000 misguided souls, who by the way, are mostly what I’d refer to as self-loathing Jews, out of the billions of people in the world who are anti-Zionist, anti-Israeli and/or anti-Semitic can offer any relief to the enormous battle facing the Jews and the infidels in the future.”

I believe it is part of my responsibility to help anchor the Light in the midst of the unrest. Can you help me to reconcile this negative reaction from both a Christian and a Jew?

My Answer: There is no means of correction besides dissemination of the wisdom of Kabbalah to everyone. If it were not for anti-Semitism, the Jews would have forgotten all about their predestination long ago! Everything that exists in the world, especially the negative things, is necessary until we correct ourselves. Then these things will disappear.

A person moves forward only when he feels a need to leave his present condition behind, because he feels bad in it. However, Kabbalah gives us an opportunity to see the goal ahead of us. In this case, a person advances toward the goal; he aspires to it with love, moving forward, instead of being pushed from behind by suffering.

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A question I received: I am the CEO of a high-tech company in the center of Israel. Currently, sales are at a standstill, while expenses continue to mount as before. In addition, the crisis may continue to develop in unpredictable ways. I have two options: either I close down the company and fire all the employees, or I cut back on everything to the minimum and wait for the crisis to pass.

During one of the morning lessons, you said that everyone should sit down at a desk and learn about the laws of Nature. By doing this, we will draw a positive influence from above, and as a result, bring an end to the crisis. So would you recommend that I use the company’s savings to sit my employees down in a classroom and have them learn the science of correction? If yes, then what should I explain to them?

My Answer: Contact me through my assistant at 054-560-6721, and we can meet to discuss the possibility of the second option.

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Questions I received on dreams, terminal cancer, manic illness and the Freemasons:

Question: My son asked me, “How do I know when something is a dream and when it isn’t?”

My Answer: You can only tell once you “wake up!”

Question: Our father has cancer. Today we were told that he has about two months left to live. He does not know about this. What’s your advice: should we tell him or keep him in the dark?

My Answer: Don’t tell him about this and help him to be joyful.

Question: If I can’t control my thoughts because they are given to me from above, what should I do to bear them? They haunt me and bring me harm. I saw a psychiatrist and was diagnosed with manic illness. However, the medication does not help me. What is your advice?

My Answer: Kabbalah requires a great deal of effort, both physical and mental. Therefore, it’s not for you. At least, not yet.

You have to look for the proper treatment. Don’t count on some kind of “healer” to come and cure you, but rather turn to medicine, sports, and massage. In addition, you should work a lot, especially in physical work.

Question: What do you think about the Freemasons who still work actively all around the world? Do you see an opportunity to work together with them?

My Answer: No!

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In the News (from The Independent): “Brown flies to meet President Obama for economy crisis talks” Paul Volcker, former chairman of the Fed and now adviser to President Obama, said that, while he felt capitalism would survive, “I’m not so sure about financial capitalism.”

In the News (from The Socialist Alternative): “Marx on the Cover of Time Magazine in Europe — Capitalism Losing Legitimacy” Karl Marx made the front cover of the February 2 issue of the European edition of Time Magazine, displaying the weakening confidence of the capitalist ruling elite in their system.

In the News (translated from Utro.ru): “Capitalism Will Not Survive the Crisis” Some members of the US economic elite are fearful that capitalism will be replaced by socialism.

Karl Marx said, “Owners of capital will stimulate the working class to buy more and more expensive goods, real estate and equipment, pushing them to take more and more expensive loans until the loans end up in default. The defaulted loans will cause banks to go bankrupt and nationalized by the government, and this, in turn, will lead to the emergence of communism.”

My Comment: Marx predicted the future rather well. We underestimate him only because Russia did not carry out its experiment correctly. If they would have done it according to Marx, then everything would have worked out. But in actuality, they would have not even attempted it because they were not ready for it.

Now these ideas are starting to come to life regardless. In fact, Marx derived his theory from practice, basing it on the development of human egoism. For more, see the newspaper, “The Nation.”

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