In the News (from University of Washington): “Screening for childhood depressive symptoms could start in second grade” New research indicates that screening children for symptoms of depression, the most common mental health disorder in the United States, can begin a lot earlier than previously thought, as early as the second grade.

My Comment: And the number of depressed people will rise even higher, because their egoism is increasing, but the possibilities to fulfill it are not. The main question, “What for?” is what leads to depression.

It is getting more and more difficult for people to find something appealing for kids in our world. And thus, they “go away” into their own world…

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In the News (from Science Daily): “Discoveries Shed New Light On How The Brain Processes What The Eye Sees” Researchers at the Center for Molecular and Behavioral Neuroscience at Rutgers University in Newark have identified the need to develop a new framework for understanding “perceptual stability” and how we see the world with their discovery that visual input obtained during eye movements is being processed by the brain but blocked from awareness.

My Comment: We are surrounded by all the spiritual worlds, but we can only perceive them to the extent of our similarity to them. Because all the worlds, with the exception of our world, are comprised of the force of bestowal, rather than reception (attraction), we don’t perceive them.

However, if a person uses the science of Kabbalah – the method of acquiring the quality of bestowal, then to the degree he attains this quality, he begins to sense the Upper Worlds and feels his existence in them.

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In the News (from Physorg): “Twitter ain’t cool, British teenager tells global investors” 15-year-old Briton has set the financial world abuzz with a research note penned for a major US bank in which he reveals teenagers’ media habits – including that Twitter is just not cool. The research note – which has been circulated to Morgan Stanley clients – reveals that while teenagers consume a huge variety of media, from television to computer games to the Internet and music, they are unwilling to pay for it. “They rarely listen to the radio or buy CDs, preferring to use websites that stream music or to download it illegally,” teenager Matthew Robson wrote in his report.

Robson says teenagers watch television but do not have time to watch regular programs, particularly when they can watch them afterwards online, and says his peers have no time for outdoor advertising or banner ads on websites, preferring instead viral marketing. The report concludes with a helpful list of what is hot and what is not: anything with a touch screen, mobile phones with large capacity for music and “really big tellies” are desirable.

My Comment: People don’t even imagine how much technology will change their lives, culture, relationships and preferences. Ten years from now, the world will be very different, emptier. As people become more and more interconnected, they will expose the emptiness between them, and thus they will face a crisis of man living in an empty world.

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In the News (from LiveScience): “Cancer Kills Wild Animals Too” Cancer accounts for about 10 percent of all human deaths. If you think that sets us apart, scientists have news for you: Wild animals die of cancer at about the same rate, and it threatens some species with extinction.

My Comment: Cancer is a result of egoism, because it is something that forms inside an animate body and kills adjacent tissues or its environment (as we do with the environment around us). As a result, the cancerous cells die as well.

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Two questions I received about humanity during the last generation:

Question: How will the new kind of humanity live?

My Answer: The new kind of humanity will be organized according to people’s development, rather than according to orders. Baal HaSulam describes this in the book, “The Last Generation.” In addition, this will only last until humanity completely corrects itself and attains bestowal at the level of the Creator. Then the physical world we see today will vanish.

Question: If a person remains in his corporeal body, then all his desires must also remain, including his animate desires.

My Answer: Every desire has a use. Our desires are not considered egoistic if they are necessary for our existence. When they are used for this purpose, they start to be perceived as spiritual. This is because food, sex and any other desire are the means by which we come to be like the Creator. They are the means by which we are able to become part of the common harmony of nature.

People will reach a state where the purpose of supporting one’s spiritual and corporeal body is to exist in the realm of bestowal and love.

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A question I received from my student: What are you supposed to say to friends who are gathering when one asks “How do you feel?” or “How are you?” while you are feeling half dead with the flu (or any illness)? Is it better to avoid the group when I am feeling weak so as not to bring them down?

Poor health has plagued me for my entire adult life, and there are others like me who really, really need to understand health issues in a little more depth than being told it is a problem caused by “ego,” because most of us have probably been given all sorts of more specific, yet conflicting, advice spiritually, psychologically and medically. I have been with Bnei Baruch for a couple of years now and I think that Bnei Baruch can be marketed to the chronically ill as a target group if we have more articles discussing “remedies” or reasons.

My Answer: There is only one answer – this comes from the difference between us and the Creator. The specific differences become revealed depending on one’s level of correction, because correction includes the sensation of being different from the Creator as well as its subsequent rectification.

You don’t have to parade your differences from the Creator, which manifest as illnesses, in front of the friends. But the friends have to know about them in order to ask the Creator for correction and healing on your behalf.

Why do the differences between a person and the Creator manifest differently in different people? Why does one person experience this externally, in the form of an illness, and another – in the form of personal problems or other manifestations? You will find the answers to all of this as you correct yourself. In short, start working on yourself!

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A question I received: I would like to receive and share the Light for the sake of the Creator, not me. So, I have been reading your essays, clues, and teachings very happily and thanking you all the time. If you don’t mind, I would like to get your advice on the must-do and must-not-do, or the key works that one must do in order to receive the Light and be a servant of the Creator. I don’t know how many of my 613 (+ 7) egoistic desires have been corrected by now. However, will it be a selfish request if I ask you to help me correct myself and receive the Light and reach the Thought of creation?

My Answer: All of one’s 613 desires become corrected simultaneously. It’s because the soul is always whole and never in parts, just like a drop of semen, an embryo, or an adult always have all the elements of a body.

Your task is to go through the 125 steps of correction. If you ascend to the first step, you will reveal the Creator to the degree designated by this step. I cannot help you do this in the way you are asking me to. I cannot do it for you. I can only nourish you and teach you to grow.

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A question I received: Each of our material life events is followed by emotions and feelings. Sometimes the same feelings can follow rather different events. Does it matter what the event is, which causes us to have feelings, regarding the root and branch connection? Does each material life event have only one root, or can one root come into action as branch through different events depending on the person?

My Answer: Every object, time, event or act has its own spiritual root. An Upper Force that descends to our world cannot produce more than one action. Each object or act has its own force, or its own angel.

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A question I received: You have often mentioned that man has to bring the entirety of nature to harmony. But wasn’t nature created in harmony?

My Answer: Nature dwells in absolute harmony, but this harmony lacks one element – man’s “I.” This is missing from nature’s harmony because of the egoism inherent to man, which was intentionally created within him. When Nature is seen through man’s ego, it appears chaotic and lacking in harmony.

There is a world and a Nature that are much wider and greater, far more integral and global than what we see. It incorporates the whole system of the universe, where all elements are ideally tied together. And this entire system is governed by forces that we can’t feel or see. The reason why they elude our perception and understanding is our egoism. Our egoism stands in the way and distorts Nature’s perfection.

Thus, we see the immense global and perfect system as imperfect, because it is distorted by our egoism. However, this gives us an opportunity to correct ourselves: Through our efforts toward correction, we become equal to the Creator.

Imagine that I bought a puzzle in a toy store. I bring it home, shuffle the pieces and give them to my toddler son to put back together. Why did I break the puzzle? It was for my son to learn and to realize how to assemble the pieces correctly.

Thus, our entire society, everything man has created throughout the millennia, our entire culture and civilization, are nothing but a game that we must master in order to become like Nature (the Creator). Then, this entire world will disappear from our perception and cease to exist. When we attain the spiritual world, then our entire universe, everything we perceive today through our five senses, including ourselves and the word around us, will vanish. This world will disappear like an old toy.

Instead of it, we will perceive another level of existence, another world, different kinds of interactions, and another layer of reality – one that’s eternal and perfect.

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Our civilization has gone through many transitions from one socio-cultural framework to another, but all of these transitions occurred on the animate level, the level of human egoism. This is why the frameworks were always changed in minor ways, but never in the way of an inversion. It is because they were all founded on egoism, where people’s end goal was “to get the most.” And because a person always “gets the most” at others’ expense, all our existing institutions were founded with the sole purpose of holding people back from annihilating one another.

Eventually, all these institutions will naturally transform to their opposite, because people will change inside. Once transformed, these institutions will support us in a way that enables us to complete each other, give to each other, love and fulfill each other.

However, none of these changes will be carried out “from above” – by the authorities, but rather, they will happen because every individual will go through an inner transformation. New ways of relating to each other will develop from the ground up, just like our civilization developed; this will happen in accordance with strict laws of Nature, guided by the development of informational data or genes – Reshimot.

The science of Kabbalah says that one way or another, we will reach the final state. It says, “You will reach a state of being in harmony with Nature and equal to the Creator. However, your path there can be good and fast, or you can be brought there through suffering and blows of fate.”

This is the same as the treatment that a child receives: If he is smart, he understands what is being demanded of him and sees that there is no other way to go but to become a human being and to learn. He then applies his own efforts to get there. But if he doesn’t acknowledge the need to change, then he will be forced to do so by way of “beatings.” Either way, he will have to change. Thus, the current crisis is Nature’s way of pushing us to advance and become human.

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