A question I received: When you were explaining the principles of correction, you said an organization should keep only the minimum needed for maintenance, and transfer the profits to a joint account that would belong to all the people. This account would accumulate a large amount of money. But what will this money be used for?

My Answer: Using this approach, the world will attain balance with Nature because it won’t consume more than it needs and won’t take excess from Nature. Whatever is left will be filled with spirituality. This means that a person will have leisure time, a good salary, a car and so on. And in addition, he will have the right relationships with other people and the whole of Nature – its still, vegetative and animate levels. Therefore, he will not break nature’s ecological balance. Relative to other people, he would consume only what he needs for a normal life, and relative to the whole of Nature, all of humanity would do the same.

If you are in balance with Nature, then you won’t have any ecological anomalies. Health problems will also cease to exist – both the ones that come to us from inside, meaning from the animate level, and those that come from external influences. Since people will be in balance, there won’t be any surplus, since nothing extra would be left over. If everyone consumes only what is necessary for existence, we wouldn’t have to work 20 hours a day, polluting the environment, and we won’t have the problem of not knowing what to do with the surplus. We just won’t have any.

Everyone will live his life righteously, not wanting anything for himself. If I have all the necessities and my mind is occupied with spirituality, then I’ll be in the spiritual world and I will enjoy it. But in the past, all I had to enjoy was 20 pounds of meat that I have stored away! Surplus is only needed as long as not everyone has everything that is necessary. But if everyone is provided with everything they need, then we will not require anything else from Nature. When humanity unites as one person, then it will interact with Nature only on the basis of necessity.

This is how a Kabbalist acts: he consumes whatever he needs for physical life and devotes the rest to spiritual work. In fact, this is the only thing that fulfills him. We have to work 8-10 hours per day only as long as there are people in need. And if there is no one in need, then there is no need to work so many hours. How much will people work?  It will be determined by the necessity. And how will necessity be defined? People will define it according to their feeling of balance.

This way, the world will reach balance, as will the world’s population. We just don’t understand what balance is. It is when “the horse” (the creature) moves along with “the rider” (the Creator), and there is no strain or difference between them.
(From the lesson on Baal HaSulam’s article, “One Precept,” on 03.08.2009)

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