A question I received: What will the relationships be like in a corrected society, and how will the intention “for bestowal” change them?

My Answer: If I were rich, I would buy out all the businesses, banks, and everything possible, and leave all the people at their jobs so they would have an opportunity to study. Let them produce 10 to 20 percent of their normal daily output, since the world doesn’t need any more than that anyway. This would also reduce the environmental pollution.

The remainder of their time at work would be spent studying, like little children in nursery and elementary schools. People would play all kinds of games of goodness, intended to teach them the answer to the question, “What does it mean to bestow?” This way they would learn what the quality of bestowal is, the reason it’s necessary, why it’s necessary to give, and the fact that we have no other choice.

(From the lesson on Baal HaSulam’s article, “One Precept,” on 03-10-2009)

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A question I received: Did Moses really teach the rule, “an eye for an eye”? This seems really contrary to the rule, “love thy neighbor as thyself.” If he did, then what does it mean?

My Answer: This rule refers to causing a permanent injury to a slave, which would require freeing him. This was done in order to prevent people from causing injury to one another. It had nothing to do with Moses’s wishes, but rather it is Nature’s law of balancing Its parts, where punishment equals correction.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: The Source of Happiness
The Kabbalah Experience: “Questions and Thoughts”
Lesson: “Unconditional Love”

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In the News (from The New Scientist): The meeting in London last week marked the revival of the Club of Rome, the think tank that almost 30 years ago gave the world the phrase “limits to growth.” Now the club is back, in our hour of need. Yvo de Boer, the UN’s chief climate negotiator, agreed that “the financial crisis is the result of our living beyond our financial means. The climate crisis is a result of our living beyond our planet’s means.”

My Comment: For now we must try to find ways to optimize consumption on the global scale, not via international agreements that we’ve been using until now, but forcibly, and without delay or exceptions. To this end, we need a global government, or at least a single government for North America, Europe and Russia. Together they’ll be able to impose the method on the rest of the world. But then again, Russia, which always seems to do things “its own way,” may not be all that necessary.

This unification will put these countries in balance, in relative equivalence to Nature (the Creator), and this will yield good results. It will also serve as an example to others, as Baal HaSulam writes in “The Future Generation.”

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: The Way Out of the Recession Is to Change Our Attitude
Laitman.com Post: Prince Charles on the Crisis: “We Have to Alter Our Perspective of the World”
Laitman.com Post: Excessive Production Is a Thing of the Past
Laitman.com Post: How Can We Reach Balance With Nature and Stop Global Warming?

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In the News (from The Financial Times): “Obama’s bank plan could rob the taxpayer” A thinly veiled attempt to transfer up to hundreds of billions of dollars of US taxpayer funds to the commercial banks, by buying toxic assets from the banks at far above their market value … is dressed up as a market transaction but that is a fig-leaf, since the government will put in 90 per cent or more of the funds and the “price discovery” process is not genuine. It is no surprise that stock market capitalization of the banks has risen about 50 per cent from the lows of two weeks ago. Taxpayers are the losers, even as they stand on the sidelines cheering the rise of the stock market. It is their money fueling the rally, yet the banks are the beneficiaries.

My comment: People are being cheated – the banks are getting the profits, while the people are cheering at the fake numbers they’re given, not understanding that they are being swindled.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Bankers’ Greed Will Wreck the World Unless We Take the Needed Measures
Laitman.com Post: Where Did Obama’s Billions Go?

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Sometimes my computer breaks down and I call in specialists to fix it. They come over and begin explaining that I need to replace my hard drive, add some program, that the computer has been infected by a virus, and so on. I don’t understand any of this. I just see the external picture, while they are talking about the inner picture.

Yesterday there was a notice in the news about how many people have been laid off from their jobs here in Israel and in the rest of the world, what the world is facing, what problems lie ahead, and that no one sees the end to these problems. This process isn’t clear to anyone, and it is impossible to calculate because there’s no “formula” for it.

This is the external side of things. Meanwhile, on the inside, if you were to see them on a computer, you would call a technician and tell him, “Make everything okay.” And so it is here: you are looking at the crisis from the point of view of a regular person, who looks at the computer screen and says, “Here we are downsizing, there we have other problems, and we have to do something about it.” However, when the specialists come in, they explain that we have to perform an upgrade by renewing the parts and the software. Then the picture will improve. You are saying, “I don’t know about this. I just want this problem to go away from the screen.”

Well, this is impossible. We have to learn the changes that must take place inside the system, and then the outside will be corrected as well. Our world is changing. Until now we lived, earned money, and gathered crops in particular conditions in our society. Now however, in order to earn a living, we have to modernize, improve, and take the current natural conditions into account, which are more complex.

You are being promised a better salary, and you are not permitted to keep the old, lower salary. What’s happening is modernization, and nature is forcing it on us.

In order to grow plants, we consider all the parameters that exist in Nature, but in order to grow a human being, there is just one condition: to be connected with others. We have to learn how to do this, and then we will be corrected. We will become better and the world will also change. The conditions are simple: Nature is revealing the lack of the proper connection between people. Everyone affects each other, but we affect each other negatively. And this has to be corrected. There is nothing difficult about this.
(From the lesson on Baal HaSulam’s article, “One Precept,” on 03.05.2009)

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I just received a letter from one of my students in America, who writes that when he and his wife went to a store, they saw a lot of people in line to buy weapons. There were different kinds of weapons on sale, even a machine gun. The store clerk said that some of the weapons were out of stock and they were waiting for an additional order to come in. He explained that it’s because people have been buying weapons like crazy! In the past, people used to stock up on food before a famine, and in a similar way, they’re now stocking up on guns. But who will these guns be used on?

Are they scared that someone will attack America? Or are they scared that hunger will bring them to a situation where they’ll have to start attacking and stealing from each other? It will be the same all over the world, and this is exactly where the recognition of evil will come from!
Today every person wants to lock himself up in his house (or bunker) where he will have food, medicine, and other necessities for the rest of his days. And he wants this bunker to be able to withstand the entire world. This is what our ego instinctively wants.

People have to think about tomorrow, and they have to take care of themselves. Yet, at the same time, they should also think about how to have a connection with others tomorrow, since then they won’t have to use others in order to get the necessities.

Today Americans are isolating from each other more and more, and this is bringing them closer to the recognition of evil. However, all of this is the dawn of a good state. The Americans will realize that it is the wrong path only after they have gone through some of it.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: In the News, “US a Likely Candidate for Civil Violence”
Laitman.com Post: What Does a Fallow Year Have to Do with Rice? – an Article about the Food Crisis
Laitman.com Post: We Have to Reveal the Magnificence of the System We’re In

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The virtual lesson held on 03.29.09 from 4:00pm to 5:00pm Israel time, was the fifth lesson on Baal HaSulam’s article, “Inner Reflection,” from Part 1 of Talmud Eser Sefirot. These lessons are translated from Russian into English, Spanish, French, German and Hebrew.

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The protests in London, in anticipation of the G20’s meetings and presentations, are an appeal to the G20 to unite. It was a severe warning to all the governments of the world that the crisis must be solved within the framework of “One Nature, One Country, One World,” at least for their own safety.

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A question I received: What is the meaning of the Kabbalistic expression, “Death is better than this life”? Does a person have a choice whether to live or die? Or, does living mean being in the spiritual world, and death is equal to a lack of spirituality?

My Answer: Kabbalah speaks only about spiritual states, rather than the death or life of our bodies. the expression says that the death of one’s egoism is better than this life, even though one’s life may be filled with various kinds of pleasure. That’s because the pleasure may distance one from the truth, and one will reach the end of his life without any result.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: On Life, Death and Free Choice
Kabbalah Today Article: “To Be or Not to Be?”
Kabbalah Revealed: “The Ego’s Inevitable Death”
Talks: “Why There Has to Be Death?”

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A true guide knows everything that might happen along the path and does not lead people astray. This is how each and every teacher in the world should be teaching. Teachers of mathematics, physics and other pragmatic subjects are able to educate students successfully because they are teaching children about real laws that exist in Nature. They are transferring their own knowledge and experience. So, the teachers of the exact and natural sciences are ok – they don’t lie to their students.

However, the teachers who want to teach children about how to behave in life do not provide correct or realistic information. First of all, they do not live properly themselves, they do not know what will happen tomorrow, and they are unable to imagine what will happen to a child, because they have never advanced along the same path. So, when it comes to schooling, the school teachers should only teach mathematics, physics and other exact sciences.

However, when it comes to true upbringing, the only ones who can teach are those who have ascended up the spiritual ladder and are found a few degrees above the children. It doesn’t matter if the students are small children or big children – a student may even be 60 or 70 years old.

This is why we have so many problems between parents and children. The parents are still on the level of the egoistic desire, in a world that’s already moved forward. They are like dinosaurs that fell into a new world! They still want to teach their children, but their children have a new level of desire and need new teachers. So there is a two-fold mistake here! A parent belonging to a previous century is teaching a child who lives in the current century, but that child needs a teacher from the next century. There is a gap between the two degrees, and we still allege that we can teach our children something.

We do not fit the children when it comes to their desires or their fulfillment. So it’s no surprise that we do not succeed in education. Today, a new, global connection between everyone is being revealed, and we, the whole world, are completely out of touch with it.

So if we are talking about making individuals into human beings, about preparing them for life, then the teacher can only be someone who has ascended a few degrees higher. He cannot just be someone who has graduated from a college or university. After all, how could he possibly teach a child how to behave in the world if he does not understand what happens in this world himself?
[3513]
From the lesson on Baal HaSulam’s article, “One Precept,” on 3/18/2009

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